There was little need for conversation. Thayer was distinctly disappointed in this, for he felt that the purchase of ten carloads of such expensive creatures was momentous4 enough to merit much conversation.
“They speak for themselves,” Dick had assured him, and turned aside to give data to Naismith for his impending5 article on Shropshires in California and the Northwest.
“I wouldn’t advise you to bother to select them,” Dick told Thayer ten minutes later. “The average is all top. You could spend a week picking your ten carloads and have no higher grade than if you had taken the first to hand.”
This cool assumption that the sale was already consummated6 so perturbed7 Thayer, that, along with the sure knowledge that he had never seen so high a quality of rams, he was nettled8 into changing his order to twenty carloads.
As he told Naismith, after they had regained9 the Big House and as they chalked their cues to finish the interrupted game:
“It’s my first visit to Forrest’s. He’s a wizard. I’ve been buying in the East and importing. But those Shropshires won my judgment10. You noticed I doubled my order. Those Idaho buyers will be wild for them. I only had buying orders straight for six carloads, and contingent11 on my judgment for two carloads more; but if every buyer doesn’t double his order, straight and contingent, when he sees them rams, and if there isn’t a stampede for what’s left, I don’t know sheep. They’re the goods. If they don’t jump up the sheep game of Idaho ... well, then Forrest’s no breeder and I’m no buyer, that’s all.”
As the warning gong for lunch rang out—a huge bronze gong from Korea that was never struck until it was first indubitably ascertained12 that Paula was awake—Dick joined the young people at the goldfish fountain in the big patio13. Bert Wainwright, variously advised and commanded by his sister, Rita, and by Paula and her sisters, Lute14 and Ernestine, was striving with a dip-net to catch a particularly gorgeous flower of a fish whose size and color and multiplicity of fins15 and tails had led Paula to decide to segregate16 him for the special breeding tank in the fountain of her own secret patio. Amid high excitement, and much squealing17 and laughter, the deed was accomplished18, the big fish deposited in a can and carried away by the waiting Italian gardener.
“And what have you to say for yourself?” Ernestine challenged, as Dick joined them.
“Nothing,” he answered sadly. “The ranch is depleted19. Three hundred beautiful young bulls depart to-morrow for South America, and Thayer— you met him last night—is taking twenty carloads of rams. All I can say is that my congratulations are extended to Idaho and Chile.”
“Plant more acorns,” Paula laughed, her arms about her sisters, the three of them smilingly expectant of an inevitable21 antic.
He shook his head solemnly.
“I’ve got a better one. It’s purest orthodoxy. It’s got Red Cloud and his acorn song skinned to death. Listen! This is the song of the little East-sider, on her first trip to the country under the auspices22 of her Sunday School. She’s quite young. Pay particular attention to her lisp.”
And then Dick chanted, lisping:
“The goldfish thwimmeth in the bowl,
What maketh them thit so eathily?
Who stuckth the fur upon their breasths?
God! God! He done it!”
“Cribbed,” was Ernestine’s judgment, as the laughter died away.
“Sure,” Dick agreed. “I got it from the Rancher and Stockman, that got it from the Swine Breeders’ Journal, that got it from the Western Advocate, that got it from Public Opinion, that got it, undoubtedly24, from the little girl herself, or, rather from her Sunday School teacher. For that matter I am convinced it was first printed in Our Dumb Animals.”
The bronze gong rang out its second call, and Paula, one arm around Dick, the other around Rita, led the way into the house, while, bringing up the rear, Bert Wainwright showed Lute Ernestine a new tango step.
“One thing, Thayer,” Dick said in an aside, after releasing himself from the girls, as they jostled in confusion where they met Thayer and Naismith at the head of the stairway leading down to the dining room. “Before you leave us, cast your eyes over those Merinos. I really have to brag25 about them, and American sheepmen will have to come to them. Of course, started with imported stock, but I’ve made a California strain that will make the French breeders sit up. See Wardman and take your pick. Get Naismith to look them over with you. Stick half a dozen of them in your train-load, with my compliments, and let your Idaho sheepmen get a line on them.”
They seated at a table, capable of indefinite extension, in a long, low dining room that was a replica26 of the hacienda dining rooms of the Mexican land-kings of old California. The floor was of large brown tiles, the beamed ceiling and the walls were whitewashed27, and the huge, undecorated, cement fireplace was an achievement in massiveness and simplicity28. Greenery and blooms nodded from without the deep-embrasured windows, and the room expressed the sense of cleanness, chastity, and coolness.
On the walls, but not crowded, were a number of canvases—most ambitious of all, in the setting of honor, all in sad grays, a twilight29 Mexican scene by Xavier Martinez, of a peon, with a crooked-stick plow30 and two bullocks, turning a melancholy31 furrow32 across the foreground of a sad, illimitable, Mexican plain. There were brighter pictures, of early Mexican-Californian life, a pastel of twilight eucalyptus33 with a sunset-tipped mountain beyond, by Reimers, a moonlight by Peters, and a Griffin stubble-field across which gleamed and smoldered34 California summer hills of tawny35 brown and purple-misted, wooded canyons36.
“Say,” Thayer muttered in an undertone across to Naismith, while Dick and the girls were in the thick of exclamatory and giggling37 banter38, “here’s some stuff for that article of yours, if you touch upon the Big House. I’ve seen the servants’ dining room. Forty head sit down to it every meal, including gardeners, chauffeurs39, and outside help. It’s a boarding house in itself. Some head, some system, take it from me. That Chiney boy, Oh Joy, is a wooz. He’s housekeeper40, or manager, of the whole shebang, or whatever you want to call his job—and, say, it runs that smooth you can’t hear it.”
“Forrest’s the real wooz,” Naismith nodded. “He’s the brains that picks brains. He could run an army, a campaign, a government, or even a three-ring circus.”
“Oh, Paula,” Dick said across to his wife. “I just got word that Graham arrives to-morrow morning. Better tell Oh Joy to put him in the watch-tower. It’s man-size quarters, and it’s possible he may carry out his threat and work on his book.”
“You met him once two years ago, in Santiago, at the Café Venus. He had dinner with us.”
Dick shook his head.
“The civilian45. Don’t you remember that big blond fellow—you talked music with him for half an hour while Captain Joyce talked our heads off to prove that the United States should clean Mexico up and out with the mailed fist.”
“Oh, to be sure,” Paula vaguely46 recollected47. “He’d met you somewhere before... South Africa, wasn’t it? Or the Philippines?”
“That’s the chap. South Africa, it was. Evan Graham. Next time we met was on the Times dispatch boat on the Yellow Sea. And we crossed trails a dozen times after that, without meeting, until that night in the Café Venus.
“Heavens—he left Bora-Bora, going east, two days before I dropped anchor bound west on my way to Samoa. I came out of Apia, with letters for him from the American consul48, the day before he came in. We missed each other by three days at Levuka—I was sailing the Wild Duck then. He pulled out of Suva as guest on a British cruiser. Sir Everard Im Thurm, British High Commissioner49 of the South Seas, gave me more letters for Graham. I missed him at Port Resolution and at Vila in the New Hebrides. The cruiser was junketing, you see. I beat her in and out of the Santa Cruz Group. It was the same thing in the Solomons. The cruiser, after shelling the cannibal villages at Langa-Langa, steamed out in the morning. I sailed in that afternoon. I never did deliver those letters in person, and the next time I laid eyes on him was at the Café Venus two years ago.”
“But who about him, and what about him?” Paula queried. “And what’s the book?”
“Well, first of all, beginning at the end, he’s broke—that is, for him, he’s broke. He’s got an income of several thousand a year left, but all that his father left him is gone. No; he didn’t blow it. He got in deep, and the ‘silent panic’ several years ago just about cleaned him. But he doesn’t whimper.
“He’s good stuff, old American stock, a Yale man. The book—he expects to make a bit on it—covers last year’s trip across South America, west coast to east coast. It was largely new ground. The Brazilian government voluntarily voted him a honorarium50 of ten thousand dollars for the information he brought out concerning unexplored portions of Brazil. Oh, he’s a man, all man. He delivers the goods. You know the type—clean, big, strong, simple; been everywhere, seen everything, knows most of a lot of things, straight, square, looks you in the eyes—well, in short, a man’s man.”
Ernestine clapped her hands, flung a tantalizing51, man-challenging, man-conquering glance at Bert Wainwright, and exclaimed: “And he comes tomorrow!”
Dick shook his head reprovingly.
“Oh, nothing in that direction, Ernestine. Just as nice girls as you have tried to hook Evan Graham before now. And, between ourselves, I couldn’t blame them. But he’s had good wind and fast legs, and they’ve always failed to run him down or get him into a corner, where, dazed and breathless, he’s mechanically muttered ‘Yes’ to certain interrogatories and come out of the trance to find himself, roped, thrown, branded, and married. Forget him, Ernestine. Stick by golden youth and let it drop its golden apples. Pick them up, and golden youth with them, making a noise like stupid failure all the time you are snaring52 swift-legged youth. But Graham’s out of the running. He’s old like me—just about the same age—and, like me, he’s run a lot of those queer races. He knows how to make a get-away. He’s been cut by barbed wire, nose-twitched, neck-burnt, cinched to a fare-you-well, and he remains53 subdued54 but uncatchable. He doesn’t care for young things. In fact, you may charge him with being wobbly, but I plead guilty, by proxy55, that he is merely old, hard bitten, and very wise.”
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1
rams
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| n.公羊( ram的名词复数 )；(R-)白羊（星）座；夯；攻城槌v.夯实（土等）( ram的第三人称单数 )；猛撞；猛压；反复灌输 | |
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2
ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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6
consummated
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| v.使结束( consummate的过去式和过去分词 )；使完美；完婚；（婚礼后的）圆房 | |
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perturbed
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| adj.烦燥不安的v.使（某人）烦恼，不安( perturb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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8
nettled
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| v.拿荨麻打，拿荨麻刺（nettle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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9
regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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contingent
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| adj.视条件而定的；n.一组，代表团，分遣队 | |
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12
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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patio
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| n.庭院，平台 | |
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lute
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| n.琵琶，鲁特琴 | |
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15
fins
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| [医]散热片；鱼鳍；飞边；鸭掌 | |
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16
segregate
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| adj.分离的，被隔离的；vt.使分离，使隔离 | |
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17
squealing
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| v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的现在分词 ) | |
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18
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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19
depleted
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| adj. 枯竭的, 废弃的 动词deplete的过去式和过去分词 | |
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20
acorn
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| n.橡实，橡子 | |
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21
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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auspices
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| n.资助，赞助 | |
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23
robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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24
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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25
brag
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| v./n.吹牛，自夸；adj.第一流的 | |
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replica
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| n.复制品 | |
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27
whitewashed
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| 粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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29
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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30
plow
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| n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough | |
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31
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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32
furrow
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| n.沟；垄沟；轨迹；车辙；皱纹 | |
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33
eucalyptus
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| n.桉树，桉属植物 | |
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34
smoldered
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| v.用文火焖烧，熏烧，慢燃( smolder的过去式 ) | |
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35
tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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36
canyons
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| n.峡谷( canyon的名词复数 ) | |
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37
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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38
banter
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| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
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39
chauffeurs
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| n.受雇于人的汽车司机( chauffeur的名词复数 ) | |
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40
housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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41
concurred
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| 同意（concur的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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42
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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43
queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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44
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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45
civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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46
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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47
recollected
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| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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49
commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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50
honorarium
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| n.酬金，谢礼 | |
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51
tantalizing
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| adj.逗人的；惹弄人的；撩人的；煽情的v.逗弄，引诱，折磨( tantalize的现在分词 ) | |
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52
snaring
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| v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的现在分词 ) | |
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53
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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54
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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55
proxy
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| n.代理权，代表权；（对代理人的）委托书；代理人 | |
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