THE OCTOPUS A Story of California by Frank Norris ... - Pink Monkey

tissue paper, the pretty tinted photographs that had hung on the
wall--the choir boys with beautiful eyes, the pensive young girls
in pink gowns--the pieces of wood carving that represented quails
and ducks, and, last of all, its curtains of crisp, clean muslin,
cruelly torn and crushed--the bed, the wonderful canopied bed so
brave and gay, of which Hilma had been so proud, thrust out there
into the common road, torn from its place, from the discreet
intimacy of her bridal chamber, violated, profaned, flung out
into the dust and garish sunshine for all men to stare at, a
mockery and a shame.
To Hilma it was as though something of herself, of her person,
had been thus exposed and degraded; all that she held sacred
pilloried, gibbeted, and exhibited to the world's derision.
Tears of anguish sprang to her eyes, a red flame of outraged
modesty overspread her face.
"Oh," she cried, a sob catching her throat, "oh, how could they
do it?" But other fears intruded; other greater terrors impended.
"Go on," she cried to Vacca, "go on quickly."
But Vacca would go no further. He had seen what had escaped
Hilma's attention, two men, deputies, no doubt, on the porch of
the ranch house. They held possession there, and the evidence of
the presence of the enemy in this raid upon Quien Sabe had
daunted him.
"No, SIR," he declared, getting out of the carry-all, "I ain't
going to take you anywhere where you're liable to get hurt.
Besides, the road's blocked by all this stuff. You can't get the
team by."
Hilma sprang from the carry-all.
"Come," she said to Mrs. Derrick.
The older woman, trembling, hesitating, faint with dread, obeyed,
and Hilma, picking her way through and around the wreck of her
home, set off by the trail towards the Long Trestle and Hooven's.
When she arrived, she found the road in front of the German's
house, and, indeed, all the surrounding yard, crowded with
people. An overturned buggy lay on the side of the road in the
distance, its horses in a tangle of harness, held by two or three