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The Valley of the Moon

by Jack London

September, 1998  [Etext #1449]


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Scanned and proofread by Jerry Wann and Dianne Bean.





THE VALLEY OF THE MOON by Jack London




BOOK I

CHAPTER 1

"You hear me, Saxon? Come on along. What if it is the
Bricklayers? I'll have gentlemen friends there, and so'll you.
The Al Vista band'll be along, an' you know it plays heavenly.
An' you just love dancin'---"

Twenty feet away, a stout, elderly woman interrupted the girl's
persuasions. The elderly woman's back was turned, and the
back-loose, bulging, and misshapen--began a convulsive heaving.

"Gawd!" she cried out. "O Gawd!"

She flung wild glances, like those of an entrapped animal, up and
down the big whitewashed room that panted with heat and that was
thickly humid with the steam that sizzled from the damp cloth
under the irons of the many ironers. From the girls and women
near her, all swinging irons steadily but at high pace, came
quick glances, and labor efficiency suffered to the extent of a
score of suspended or inadequate movements. The elderly woman's
cry had caused a tremor of money-loss to pass among the
piece-work ironers of fancy starch.

She gripped herself and her iron with a visible effort, and
dabbed futilely at the frail, frilled garment on the board under
her hand.

"I thought she'd got'em again--didn't you?" the girl said.

"It's a shame, a women of her age, and . . . condition," Saxon
answered, as she frilled a lace ruffle with a hot fluting-iron.
Her movements were delicate, safe, and swift, and though her face
was wan with fatigue and exhausting heat, there was no slackening
in her pace.

"An' her with seven, an' two of 'em in reform school," the girl
at the next board sniffed sympathetic agreement. "But you just
got to come to Weasel Park to-morrow, Saxon. The Bricklayers' is
always lively--tugs-of-war, fat-man races, real Irish jiggin',
an' . . . an' everything. An' The floor of the pavilion's swell."

But the elderly woman brought another interruption. She dropped
her iron on the shirtwaist, clutched at the board, fumbled it,
caved in at the knees and hips, and like a half-empty sack
collapsed on the floor, her long shriek rising in the pent room
to the acrid smell of scorching cloth. The women at the boards
near to her scrambled, first, to the hot iron to save the cloth,
and then to her, while the forewoman hurried belligerently down
the aisle. The women farther away continued unsteadily at their
work, losing movements to the extent of a minute's set-back to
the totality of the efficiency of the fancy-starch room.

"Enough to kill a dog," the girl muttered, thumping her iron down
on its rest with reckless determination. "Workin' girls' life
ain't what it's cracked up. Me to quit--that's what I'm comin'
to."

"Mary!" Saxon uttered the other's name with a reproach so
profound that she was compelled to rest her own iron for emphasis
and so lose a dozen movements.

Mary flashed a half-frightened look across.

"I didn't mean it, Saxon," she whimpered. "Honest, I didn't. I
wouldn't never go that way. But I leave it to you, if a day like
this don't get on anybody's nerves. Listen to that!"

The stricken woman, on her back, drumming her heels on the floor,
was shrieking persistently and monotonously, like a mechanical
siren. Two women, clutching her under the arms, were dragging her
down the aisle. She drummed and shrieked the length of it. The
door opened, and a vast, muffled roar of machinery burst in; and
in the roar of it the drumming and the shrieking were drowned ere
the door swung shut. Remained of the episode only the scorch of
cloth drifting ominously through the air.

"It's sickenin'," said Mary.

And thereafter, for a long time, the many irons rose and fell,
the pace of the room in no wise diminished; while the forewoman
strode the aisles with a threatening eye for incipient breakdown
and hysteria. Occasionally an ironer lost the stride for an
instant, gasped or sighed, then caught it up again with weary
determination. The long summer day waned, hut not the heat, and
under the raw flare of electric light the work went on.

By nine o'clock the first women began to go home. The mountain of
fancy starch had been demolished--all save the few remnants, here
and there, on the boards, where the ironers still labored.

Saxon finished ahead of Mary, at whose board she paused on the
way out.

"Saturday night an' another week gone," Mary said mournfully, her
young cheeks pallid and hollowed, her black eyes blue-shadowed
and tired. "What d'you think you've made, Saxon?"

"Twelve and a quarter," was the answer, just touched with pride
"And I'd a-made more if it wasn't for that fake bunch of
starchers."

"My! I got to pass it to you," Mary congratulated. "You're a sure
fierce hustler--just eat it up. Me--I've only ten an' a half, an'
for a hard week ... See you on the nine-forty. Sure now. We can
just fool around until the dancin' begins. A lot of my gentlemen
friends'll be there in the afternoon."

Two blocks from the laundry, where an arc-light showed a gang of
toughs on the corner, Saxon quickened her pace. Unconsciously her
face set and hardened as she passed. She did not catch the words
of the muttered comment, but the rough laughter it raised made
her guess and warmed her checks with resentful blood. Three
blocks more, turning once to left and once to right, she walked
on through the night that was already growing cool. On either
side were workingmen's houses, of weathered wood, the ancient
paint grimed with the dust of years, conspicuous only for
cheapness and ugliness.

Dark it was, but she made no mistake, the familiar sag and
screeching reproach of the front gate welcome under her hand. She
went along the narrow walk to the rear, avoided the missing step
without thinking about it, and entered the kitchen, where a
solitary gas-jet flickered. She turned it up to the best of its
flame. It was a small room, not disorderly, because of lack of
furnishings to disorder it. The plaster, discolored by the steam
of many wash-days, was crisscrossed with cracks from the big
earthquake of the previous spring. The floor was ridged,
wide-cracked, and uneven, and in front of the stove it was worn
through and repaired with a five-gallon oil-can hammered flat and
double. A sink, a dirty roller-towel, several chairs, and a
wooden table completed the picture.

An apple-core crunched under her foot as she drew a chair to the
table. On the frayed oilcloth, a supper waited. She attempted the
cold beans, thick with grease, but gave them up, and buttered a
slice of bread.

The rickety house shook to a heavy, prideless tread, and through
the inner door came Sarah, middle-aged, lop-breasted,
hair-tousled, her face lined with care and fat petulance.

"Huh, it's you," she grunted a greeting. "I just couldn't keep
things warm. Such a day! I near died of the heat. An' little
Henry cut his lip awful. The doctor had to put four stitches in
it."

Sarah came over and stood mountainously by the table.

"What's the matter with them beans?" she challenged.

"Nothing, only ..." Saxon caught her breath and avoided the
threatened outburst. "Only I'm not hungry. It's been so hot all
day. It was terrible in the laundry."

Recklessly she took a mouthful of the cold tea that had been
steeped so long that it was like acid in her mouth, and
recklessly, under the eye of her sister-in-law, she swallowed it
and the rest of the cupful. She wiped her mouth on her
handkerchief and got up.

"I guess I'll go to bed."

"Wonder you ain't out to a dance," Sarah sniffed. "Funny, ain't
it, you come home so dead tired every night, an' yet any night in
the week you can get out an' dance unearthly hours."

Saxon started to speak, suppressed herself with tightened lips,
then lost control and blazed out. "Wasn't you ever young?"

Without waiting for reply, she turned to her bedroom, which
opened directly off the kitchen. It was a small room, eight by
twelve, and the earthquake had left its marks upon the plaster. A
bed and chair of cheap pine and a very ancient chest of drawers
constituted the furniture. Saxon had known this chest of drawers
all her life. The vision of it was woven into her earliest
recollections. She knew it had crossed the plains with her people
in a prairie schooner. It was of solid mahogany. One end was
cracked and dented from the capsize of the wagon in Rock Canyon.
A bullet-hole, plugged, in the face of the top drawer, told of
the fight with the Indians at Little Meadow. Of these happenings
her mother had told her; also had she told that the chest had
come with the family originally from England in a day even
earlier than the day on which George Washington was born.

Above the chest of drawers, on the wall, hung a small
looking-glass. Thrust under the molding were photographs of young
men and women, and of picnic groups wherein the young men, with
hats rakishly on the backs of their heads, encircled the girls
with their arms. Farther along on the wall were a colored
calendar and numerous colored advertisements and sketches torn
out of magazines. Most of these sketches were of horses. From the
gas-fixture hung a tangled bunch of well-scribbled dance
programs.

Saxon started to take off her hat, but suddenly sat down on the
bed. She sobbed softly, with considered repression, but the
weak-latched door swung noiselessly open, and she was startled by
her sister-in-law's voice.

"NOW what's the matter with you? If you didn't like them beans--"

"No, no," Saxon explained hurriedly. "I'm just tired, that's all,
and my feet hurt. I wasn't hungry, Sarah. I'm just beat out."

"If you took care of this house," came the retort, "an' cooked
an' baked, an' washed, an' put up with what I put up, you'd have
something to be beat out about. You've got a snap, you have. But
just wait." Sarah broke off to cackle gloatingly. "Just wait,
that's all, an' you'll be fool enough to get married some day,
like me, an' then you'll get yours--an' it'll be brats, an'
brats, an' brats, an' no more dancin', an' silk stockin's, an'
three pairs of shoes at one time. You've got a cinch-nobody to
think of but your own precious self--an' a lot of young hoodlums
makin' eyes at you an' tellin' you how beautiful your eyes are.
Huh! Some fine day you'll tie up to one of 'em, an' then, mebbe,
on occasion, you'll wear black eyes for a change."

"Don't say that, Sarah," Saxon protested. "My brother never laid
hands on you. You know that."

"No more he didn't. He never had the gumption. Just the same,
he's better stock than that tough crowd you run with, if he can't
make a livin' an' keep his wife in three pairs of shoes. Just the
same he's oodles better'n your bunch of hoodlums that no decent
woman'd wipe her one pair of shoes on. How you've missed trouble
this long is beyond me. Mebbe the younger generation is wiser in
such thins--I don't know. But I do know that a young woman that
has three pairs of shoes ain't thinkin' of anything but her own
enjoyment, an' she's goin' to get hers, I can tell her that much.
When I was a girl there wasn't such doin's. My mother'd taken the
hide off me if I done the things you do. An' she was right, just
as everything in the world is wrong now. Look at your brother,
a-runnin' around to socialist meetin's, an' chewin' hot air, an'
diggin' up extra strike dues to the union that means so much
bread out of the mouths of his children, instead of makin' good
with his bosses. Why, the dues he pays would keep me in seventeen
pairs of shoes if I was nannygoat enough to want 'em. Some day,
mark my words, he'll get his time, an' then what'll we do?
What'll I do, with five mouths to feed an' nothin' comin' in?"

She stopped, out of breath but seething with the tirade yet to
come.

"Oh, Sarah, please won't you shut the door?" Saxon pleaded.

The door slammed violently, and Saxon, ere she fell to crying
again, could hear her sister-in-law lumbering about the kitchen
and talking loudly to herself.



CHAPTER II

Each bought her own ticket at the entrance to Weasel Park. And
each, as she laid her half-dollar down, was distinctly aware of
how many pieces of fancy starch were represented by the coin. It
was too early for the crowd, but bricklayers and their families,
laden with huge lunch-baskets and armfuls of babies, were already
going in--a healthy, husky race of workmen, well-paid and
robustly fed. And with them, here and there, undisguised by their
decent American clothing, smaller in bulk and stature, weazened
not alone by age but by the pinch of lean years and early
hardship, were grandfathers and mothers who had patently first
seen the light of day on old Irish soil. Their faces showed
content and pride as they limped along with this lusty progeny of
theirs that had fed on better food.

Not with these did Mary and Saxon belong. They knew them not, had
no acquaintances among them. It did not matter whether the
festival were Irish, German, or Slavonian; whether the picnic was
the Bricklayers', the Brewers', or the Butchers'. They, the
girls, were of the dancing crowd that swelled by a certain
constant percentage the gate receipts of all the picnics.

They strolled about among the booths where peanuts were grinding
and popcorn was roasting in preparation for the day, and went on
and inspected the dance floor of the pavilion. Saxon, clinging to
an imaginary partner, essayed a few steps of the dip-waltz. Mary
clapped her hands.

"My!" she cried. "You're just swell! An' them stockin's is
peaches."

Saxon smiled with appreciation, pointed out her foot,
velvet-slippered with high Cuban heels, and slightly lifted the
tight black skirt, exposing a trim ankle and delicate swell of
calf, the white flesh gleaming through the thinnest and flimsiest
of fifty-cent black silk stockings. She was slender, not tall,
yet the due round lines of womanhood were hers. On her white
shirtwaist was a pleated jabot of cheap lace, caught with a large
novelty pin of imitation coral. Over the shirtwaist was a natty
jacket, elbow-sleeved, and to the elbows she wore gloves of
imitation suede. The one essentially natural touch about her
appearance was the few curls, strangers to curling-irons, that
escaped from under the little naughty hat of black velvet pulled
low over the eyes.

Mary's dark eyes flashed with joy at the sight, and with a swift
little run she caught the other girl in her arms and kissed her
in a breast-crushing embrace. She released her, blushing at her
own extravagance.

"You look good to me," she cried, in extenuation. "If I was a man
I couldn't keep my hands off you. I'd eat you, I sure would."

They went out of the pavilion hand in hand, and on through the
sunshine they strolled, swinging hands gaily, reacting
exuberantly from the week of deadening toil. They hung over the
railing of the bear-pit, shivering at the huge and lonely
denizen, and passed quickly on to ten minutes of laughter at the
monkey cage. Crossing the grounds, they looked down into the
little race track on the bed of a natural amphitheater where the
early afternoon games were to take place. After that they
explored the woods, threaded by countless paths, ever opening out
in new surprises of green-painted rustic tables and benches in
leafy nooks, many of which were already pre-empted by family
parties. On a grassy slope, tree-surrounded, they spread a
newspaper and sat down on the short grass already tawny-dry under
the California sun. Half were they minded to do this because of
the grateful indolence after six days of insistent motion, half
in conservation for the hours of dancing to come.

"Bert Wanhope'll be sure to come," Mary chattered. "An' he said
he was going to bring Billy Roberts--'Big Bill,' all the fellows
call him. He's just a big boy, but he's awfully tough. He's a
prizefighter, an' all the girls run after him. I'm afraid of him.
He ain't quick in talkin'. He's more like that big bear we saw.
Brr-rf! Brr-rf!--bite your head off, just like that. He ain't
really a prize-fighter. He's a teamster--belongs to the union.
Drives for Coberly and Morrison. But sometimes he fights in the
clubs. Most of the fellows are scared of him. He's got a bad
temper, an' he'd just as soon hit a fellow as eat, just like
that. You won't like him, but he's a swell dancer. He's heavy,
you know, an' he just slides and glides around. You wanta have a
dance with'm anyway. He's a good spender, too. Never pinches. But
my!--he's got one temper."

The talk wandered on, a monologue on Mary's part, that centered
always on Bert Wanhope.

"You and he are pretty thick," Saxon ventured.

"I'd marry'm to-morrow," Mary flashed out impulsively. Then her
face went bleakly forlorn, hard almost in its helpless pathos.
"Only, he never asks me. He's ..." Her pause was broken by sudden
passion. "You watch out for him, Saxon, if he ever comes foolin'
around you. He's no good. Just the same, I'd marry him to-morrow.
He'll never get me any other way." Her mouth opened, but instead
of speaking she drew a long sigh. "It's a funny world, ain't it?"
she added. "More like a scream. And all the stars are worlds,
too. I wonder where God hides. Bert Wanhope says there ain't no
God. But he's just terrible. He says the most terrible things. I
believe in God. Don't you? What do you think about God, Saxon?"

Saxon shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

"But if we do wrong we get ours, don't we?" Mary persisted.
"That's what they all say, except Bert. He says he don't care
what he does, he'll never get his, because when he dies he's
dead, an' when he's dead he'd like to see any one put anything
across on him that'd wake him up. Ain't he terrible, though? But
it's all so funny. Sometimes I get scared when I think God's
keepin' an eye on me all the time. Do you think he knows what I'm
sayin' now? What do you think he looks like, anyway?"

"I don't know," Saxon answered. "He's just a funny proposition."

"Oh!" the other gasped.

"He IS, just the same, from what all people say of him," Saxon
went on stoutly. "My brother thinks he looks like Abraham
Lincoln. Sarah thinks he has whiskers."

"An' I never think of him with his hair parted," Mary confessed,
daring the thought and shivering with apprehension. "He just
couldn't have his hair parted. THAT'D be funny."

"You know that little, wrinkly Mexican that sells wire puzzles?"
Saxon queried. "Well, God somehow always reminds me of him."

Mary laughed outright.

"Now that IS funny. I never thought of him like that How do you
make it out?"

"Well, just like the little Mexican, he seems to spend his time
peddling puzzles. He passes a puzzle out to everybody, and they
spend all their lives tryin' to work it out They all get stuck. I
can't work mine out. I don't know where to start. And look at the
puzzle he passed Sarah. And she's part of Tom's puzzle, and she
only makes his worse. And they all, an' everybody I know--you,
too--are part of my puzzle."

"Mebbe the puzzles is all right," Mary considered. "But God don't
look like that yellow little Greaser. THAT I won't fall for. God
don't look like anybody. Don't you remember on the wall at the
Salvation Army it says 'God is a spirit'?"

"That's another one of his puzzles, I guess, because nobody knows
what a spirit looks like."

"That's right, too." Mary shuddered with reminiscent fear.
"Whenever I try to think of God as a spirit, I can see Hen Miller
all wrapped up in a sheet an' runnin' us girls. We didn't know,
an' it scared the life out of us. Little Maggie Murphy fainted
dead away, and Beatrice Peralta fell an' scratched her face
horrible. When I think of a spirit all I can see is a white sheet
runnin' in the dark. Just the same, God don't look like a
Mexican, an' he don't wear his hair parted."

A strain of music from the dancing pavilion brought both girls
scrambling to their feet.

"We can get a couple of dances in before we eat," Mary proposed.
"An' then it'll be afternoon an' all the fellows 'll be here.
Most of them are pinchers--that's why they don't come early, so
as to get out of taking the girls to dinner. But Bert's free with
his money, an' so is Billy. If we can beat the other girls to it,
they'll take us to the restaurant. Come on, hurry, Saxon."

There were few couples on the floor when they arrived at the
pavilion, and the two girls essayed the first waltz together.

"There's Bert now," Saxon whispered, as they came around the
second time.

"Don't take any notice of them," Mary whispered back. "We'll just
keep on goin'. They needn't think we're chasin' after them."

But Saxon noted the heightened color in the other's cheek, and
felt her quicker breathing.

"Did you see that other one?" Mary asked, as she backed Saxon in
a long slide across the far end of the pavilion. "That was Billy
Roberts. Bert said he'd come. He'll take you to dinner, and
Bert'll take me. It's goin' to be a swell day, you'll see. My! I
only wish the music'll hold out till we can get back to the other
end."

Down the floor they danced, on man-trapping and dinner-getting
intent, two fresh young things that undeniably danced well and
that were delightfully surprised when the music stranded them
perilously near to their desire.

Bert and Mary addressed each other by their given names, but to
Saxon Bert was "Mr. Wanhope," though he called her by her first
name. The only introduction was of Saxon and Billy Roberts. Mary
carried it off with a flurry of nervous carelessness.

"Mr. Robert--Miss Brown. She's my best friend. Her first name's
Saxon. Ain't it a scream of a name?"

"Sounds good to me," Billy retorted, hat off and hand extended.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Brown."

As their hands clasped and she felt the teamster callouses on his
palm, her quick eyes saw a score of things. About all that he saw
was her eyes, and then it was with a vague impression that they
were blue. Not till later in the day did he realize that they
were gray. She, on the contrary, saw his eyes as they really
were--deep blue, wide, and handsome in a sullen-boyish way. She
saw that they were straight-looking, and she liked them, as she
had liked the glimpse she had caught of his hand, and as she
liked the contact of his hand itself. Then, too, but not sharply,
she had perceived the short, square-set nose, the rosiness of
cheek, and the firm, short upper lip, ere delight centered her
flash of gaze on the well-modeled, large clean mouth where red
lips smiled clear of the white, enviable teeth. A BOY, A GREAT
BIG MAN-BOY, was her thought; and, as they smiled at each other
and their hands slipped apart, she was startled by a glimpse of
his hair--short and crisp and sandy, hinting almost of palest
gold save that it was too flaxen to hint of gold at all.

So blond was he that she was reminded of stage-types she had
seen, such as Ole Olson and Yon Yonson; but there resemblance
ceased. It was a matter of color only, for the eyes were
dark-lashed and -browed, and were cloudy with temperament rather
than staring a child-gaze of wonder, and the suit of smooth brown
cloth had been made by a tailor. Saxon appraised the suit on the
instant, and her secret judgment was NOT A CENT LESS THAN FIFTY
DOLLARS. Further, he had none of the awkwardness of the
Scandinavian immigrant. On the contrary, he was one of those rare
individuals that radiate muscular grace through the ungraceful
man-garments of civilization. Every movement was supple, slow,
and apparently considered. This she did not see nor analyze. She
saw only a clothed man with grace of carriage and movement. She
felt, rather than perceived, the calm and certitude of all the
muscular play of him, and she felt, too, the promise of easement
and rest that was especially grateful and craved-for by one who
had incessantly, for six days and at top-speed, ironed fancy
starch. As the touch of his hand had been good, so, to her, this
subtler feel of all of him, body and mind, was good.

As he took her program and skirmished and joked after the way of
young men, she realized the immediacy of delight she had taken in
him. Never in her life had she been so affected by any man. She
wondered to herself: IS THIS THE MAN?

He danced beautifully. The joy was hers that good dancers take
when they have found a good dancer for a partner. The grace of
those slow-moving, certain muscles of his accorded perfectly with
the rhythm of the music. There was never doubt, never a betrayal
of indecision. She glanced at Bert, dancing "tough" with Mary,
caroming down the long floor with more than one collision with
the increasing couples. Graceful himself in his slender, tall,
lean-stomached way, Bert was accounted a good dancer; yet Saxon
did not remember ever having danced with him with keen pleasure.
Just a hit of a jerk spoiled his dancing--a jerk that did not
occur, usually, but that always impended. There was something
spasmodic in his mind. He was too quick, or he continually
threatened to be too quick. He always seemed just on the verge of
overrunning the time. It was disquieting. He made for unrest.

"You're a dream of a dancer," Billy Roberts was saying. "I've
heard lots of the fellows talk about your dancing."

"I love it," she answered.

But from the way she said it he sensed her reluctance to speak,
and danced on in silence, while she warmed with the appreciation
of a woman for gentle consideration. Gentle consideration was a
thing rarely encountered in the life she lived. IS THIS THE MAN?
She remembered Mary's "I'd marry him to-morrow," and caught
herself speculating on marrying Billy Roberts by the next day--if
he asked her.

With eyes that dreamily desired to close, she moved on in the
arms of this masterful, guiding pressure. A PRIZE-FIGHTER! She
experienced a thrill of wickedness as she thought of what Sarah
would say could she see her now, Only he wasn't a prizefighter,
but a teamster.

Came an abrupt lengthening of step, the guiding pressure grew
more compelling, and she was caught up and carried along, though
her velvet-shod feet never left the floor. Then came the sudden
control down to the shorter step again, and she felt herself
being held slightly from him so that he might look into her face
and laugh with her in joy at the exploit. At the end, as the band
slowed in the last bars, they, too, slowed, their dance fading
with the music in a lengthening glide that ceased with the last
lingering tone.

"We're sure cut out for each other when it comes to dancin'," he
said, as they made their way to rejoin the other couple.

"It was a dream," she replied.

So low was her voice that he bent to hear, and saw the flush in
her cheeks that seemed communicated to her eyes, which were
softly warm and sensuous. He took the program from her and
gravely and gigantically wrote his name across all the length of
it.

"An' now it's no good," he dared. "Ain't no need for it."

He tore it across and tossed it aside.

"Me for you, Saxon, for the next," was Bert's greeting, as they
came up. "You take Mary for the next whirl, Bill."

"Nothin' doin', Bo," was the retort. "Me an' Saxon's framed up to
last the day."

"Watch out for him, Saxon," Mary warned facetiously. "He's liable
to get a crush ou you."

"I guess I know a good thing when I see it," Billy responded
gallantly.

"And so do I," Saxon aided and abetted.

"I'd 'a' known you if I'd seen you in the dark," Billy added.

Mary regarded them with mock alarm, and Bert said good-naturedly:

"All I got to say is you ain't wastin' any time gettin' together.
Just the same, if' you can spare a few minutes from each other
after a couple more whirls, Mary an' me'd be complimented to have
your presence at dinner."

"Just like that," chimed Mary.

"Quit your kiddin'," Billy laughed back, turning his head to look
into Saxon's eyes. "Don't listen to 'em. They're grouched because
they got to dance together. Bert's a rotten dancer, and Mary
ain't so much. Come on, there she goes. See you after two more
dances."



CHAPTER III

They had dinner in the open-air, tree-walled dining-room, and
Saxon noted that it was Billy who paid the reckoning for the
four. They knew many of the young men and women at the other
tables, and greetings and fun flew back and forth. Bert was very
possessive with Mary, almost roughly so, resting his hand on
hers, catching and holding it, and, once, forcibly slipping off
her two rings and refusing to return them for a long while. At
times, when he put his arm around her waist, Mary promptly
disengaged it; and at other times, with elaborate obliviousness
that deceived no one, she allowed it to remain.

And Saxon, talking little but studying Billy Roberts very
intently, was satisfied that there would be an utter difference
in the way he would do such things . . . if ever he would do
them. Anyway, he'd never paw a girl as Bert and lots of the other
fellows did. She measured the breadth of Billy's heavy shoulders.

"Why do they call you 'Big' Bill?" she asked. "You're not so very
tall."

"Nope," he agreed. "I'm only five feet eight an' three-quarters.
I guess it must be my weight."

"He fights at a hundred an' eighty," Bert interjected.

"Oh, out it," Billy said quickly, a cloud-rift of displeasure
showing in his eyes. "I ain't a fighter. I ain't fought in six
months. I've quit it. It don't pay."

"Yon got two hundred the night you put the Frisco Slasher to the
bad," Bert urged proudly.

"Cut it. Cut it now.--Say, Saxon, you ain't so big yourself, are
you? But you're built just right if anybody should ask you.
You're round an' slender at the same time. I bet I can guess your
weight."

"Everybody gnesses over it," she warned, while inwardly she was
puzzled that she should at the same time be glad and regretful
that he did not fight any more.

"Not me," he was saying. "I'm a wooz at weight-guessin'. Just you
watch me." He regarded her critically, and it was patent that
warm approval played its little rivalry with the judgment of his
gaze. "Wait a minute."

He reached over to her and felt her arm at the biceps. The
pressure of the encircling fingers was firm and honest, and Saxon
thrilled to it. There was magic in this man-boy. She would have
known only irritation had Bert or any other man felt her arm. But
this man! IS HE THE MAN? she was questioning, when he voiced his
conclusion.

"Your clothes don't weigh more'n seven pounds. And seven
from--hum--say one hundred an' twenty-three--one hundred an'
sixteen is your stripped weight."

But at the penultimate word, Mary cried out with sharp reproof:

"Why, Billy Roberts, people don't talk about such things."

He looked at her with slow-growing, uncomprehending surprise.

"What things?" he demanded finally.

"There you go again! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look!
You've got Saxon blushing!"

"I am not," Saxon denied indignantly.

"An' if you keep on, Mary, you'll have me blushing," Billy
growled. "I guess I know what's right an' what ain't. It ain't
what a guy says, but what he thinks. An' I'm thinkin' right, an'
Saxon knows it. An' she an' I ain't thinkin' what you're thinkin'
at all."

"Oh! Oh!" Mary cried. "You're gettin' worse an' worse. I never
think such things."

"Whoa, Mary! Backup!" Bert checked her peremptorily. "You're in
the wrong stall. Billy never makes mistakes like that."

"But he needn't be so raw," she persisted.

"Come on, Mary, an' be good, an' cut that stuff," was Billy's
dismissal of her, as he turned to Saxon. "How near did I come to
it?"

"One hundred and twenty-two," she answered, looking deliberately
at Mary. "One twenty two with my clothes."

Billy burst into hearty laughter, in which Bert joined.

"I don't care," Mary protested, "You're terrible, both of
you--an' you, too, Saxon. I'd never a-thought it of you."

"Listen to me, kid," Bert began soothingly, as his arm slipped
around her waist.

But in the false excitement she had worked herself into, Mary
rudely repulsed the arm, and then, fearing that she had wounded
her lover's feelings, she took advantage of the teasing and
banter to recover her good humor. His arm was permitted to
return, and with heads bent together, they talked in whispers.

Billy discreetly began to make conversation with Saxon.

"Say, you know, your name is a funny one. I never heard it tagged
on anybody before. But it's all right. I like it."

"My mother gave it to me. She was educated, and knew all kinds of
words. She was always reading books, almost until she died. And
she wrote lots and lots. I've got some of her poetry published in
a San Jose newspaper long ago. The Saxons were a race of
people--she told me all about them when I was a little girl. They
were wild, like Indians, only they were white. And they had blue
eyes, and yellow hair, and they were awful fighters."

As she talked, Billy followed her solemnly, his eyes steadily
turned on hers.

"Never heard of them," he confessed. "Did they live anywhere
around here?"

She laughed.

"No, They lived in England. They were the first English, and you
know the Americans came from the English. We're Saxons, you an'
me, an' Mary, an' Bert, and all the Americans that are real
Americans, you know, and not Dagoes and Japs and such."

"My folks lived in America a long time," Billy said slowly,
digesting the information she had given and relating himself to
it. "Anyway, my mother's folks did. They crossed to Maine
hundreds of years ago."

"My father was 'State of Maine," she broke in, with a little
gurgle of joy. "And my mother was horn in Ohio, or where Ohio is
now. She used to call it the Great Western Reserve. What was your
father?"

"Don't know." Billy shrugged his shoulders. "He didn't know
himself. Nobody ever knew, though he was American, all right, all
right."

"His name's regular old American," Saxon suggested. "There's a
big English general right now whose name is Roberts. I've read it
in the papers."

"But Roberts wasn't my father's name. He never knew what his name
was. Roberts was the name of a gold-miner who adopted him. You
see, it was this way. When they was Indian-fightin' up there with
the Modoc Indians, a lot of the miners an' settlers took a hand.
Roberts was captain of one outfit, and once, after a fight, they
took a lot of prisoners--squaws, an' kids an' babies. An' one of
the kids was my father. They figured he was about five years old.
He didn't know nothin' but Indian."

Saxon clapped her hands, and her eyes sparkled: "He'd been
captured on an Indian raid!"

"That's the way they figured it," Billy nodded. "They recollected
a wagon-train of Oregon settlers that'd been killed by the Modocs
four years before. Roberts adopted him, and that's why I don't
know his real name. But you can bank on it, he crossed the plains
just the same."

"So did my father," Saxon said proudly.

"An' my mother, too," Billy added, pride touching his own voice.
"Anyway, she came pretty close to crossin' the plains, because
she was born in a wagon on the River Platte on the way out."

"My mother, too," said Saxon. "She was eight years old, an' she
walked most of the way after the oxen began to give out."

Billy thrust out his hand.

"Put her there, kid," he said. "We're just like old friends, what
with the same kind of folks behind us."

With shining eyes, Saxon extended her hand to his, and gravely
they shook.

"Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "We're both old American
stock. And if you aren't a Saxon there never was one--your hair,
your eyes, your skin, everything. And you're a fighter, too."

"I guess all our old folks was fighters when it comes to that. It
come natural to 'em, an' dog-gone it, they just had to fight or
they'd never come through."

"What are you two talkin' about?" Mary broke in upon them.

"They're thicker'n mush in no time," Bert girded. "You'd think
they'd known each other a week already."

"Oh, we knew each other longer than that," Saxon returned.
"Before ever we were born our folks were walkin' across the
plains together."

"When your folks was waitin' for the railroad to be built an' all
the Indians killed off before they dasted to start for
California," was Billy's way of proclaiming the new alliance.
"We're the real goods,Saxon an'n me, if anybody should ride up on
a buzz-wagon an' ask you."

"Oh, I don't know," Mary boasted with quiet petulance. "My father
stayed behind to fight in the Civil War. He was a drummer-boy.
That's why he didn't come to California until afterward."

"And my father went back to fight in the Civil War," Saxon said.

"And mine, too," said Billy.

They looked at each other gleefully. Again they had found a new
contact

"Well, they're all dead, ain't they?" was Bert's saturnine
comment. "There ain't no difference dyin' in battle or in the
poorhouse. The thing is they're deado. I wouldn't care a rap if
my father'd been hanged. It's all the same in a thousand years.
This braggin' about folks makes me tired. Besides, my father
couldn't a-fought. He wasn't born till two years after the war.
Just the same, two of my uncles were killed at Gettysburg. Guess
we done our share."

"Just like that," Mary applauded.

Bert's arm went around her waist again.

"We're here, ain't we?" he said. "An' that's what counts. The
dead are dead, an' you can bet your sweet life they just keep on
stayin' dead."

Mary put her hand over his mouth and began to chide him for his
awfulness, whereupon he kissed the palm of her hand and put his
head closer to hers.

The merry clatter of dishes was increasing as the dining-room
filled up. Here and there voices were raised in snatches of song.
There were shrill squeals and screams and bursts of heavier male
laughter as the everlasting skirmishing between the young men and
girls played on. Among some of the men the signs of drink were
already manifest. At a near table girls were calling out to
Billy. And Saxon, the sense of temporary possession already
strong on her, noted with jealous eyes that he was a favorite and
desired object to them.

"Ain't they awful?" Mary voiced her disapproval. "They got a
nerve. I know who they are. No respectable girl 'd have a thing
to do with them. Listen to that!"

"Oh, you Bill, you," one of them, a buxom young brunette, was
calling. "Hope you ain't forgotten me, Bill."

"Oh, you chicken," he called back gallantly.

Saxon flattered herself that he showed vexation, and she
conceived an immense dislike for the brunette.

"Goin' to dance?" the latter called.

"Mebbe," he answered, and turned abruptly to Saxon. "Say, we old
Americans oughta stick together, don't you think? They ain't many
of us left. The country's fillin' up with all kinds of
foreigners."

He talked on steadily, in a low, confidential voice, head close
to hers, as advertisement to the other girl that he was occupied.

From the next table on the opposite side, a young man had singled
out Saxon. His dress was tough. His companions, male and female,
were tough. His face was inflamed, his eyes touched with
wildness.

"Hey, you!" he called. "You with the velvet slippers. Me for
you."

The girl beside him put her arm around his neck and tried to hush
him, and through the mufflement of her embrace they could hear
him gurgling:

"I tell you she's some goods. Watch me go across an' win her from
them cheap skates."

"Butchertown hoodlums," Mary sniffed.

Saxon's eyes encountered the eyes of the girl, who glared hatred
across at her. And in Billy's eyes she saw moody anger
smouldering. The eyes were more sullen, more handsome than ever,
and clouds and veils and lights and shadowe shifted and deepened
in the blue of them until they gave her a sense of unfathomable
depth. He had stopped talking, and he made no effort to talk.

"Don't start a rough house, Bill," Bert cautioned. "They're from
across the hay an' they don't know you, that's all."

Bert stood up suddenly, stepped over to the other table,
whispered briefly, and came back. Every face at the table was
turned on Billy. The offendor arose brokenly, shook off the
detaining hand of his girl, and came over. He was a large man,
with a hard, malignant face and bitter eyes. Also, he was a
subdued man.

"You're Big Bill Roberts," he said thickly, clinging to the table
as he reeled. "I take my hat off to you. I apologire. I admire
your taste in skirts, an' take it from me that's a compliment;
but I did'nt know who you was. If I'd knowed you was Bill Roberts
there wouldn't been a peep from my fly-trap. D'ye get me? I
apologize. Will you shake hands?"

Gruffly, Billy said, "It's all right--forget it, sport;" and
sullenly he shook hands and with a slow, massive movement thrust
the other back toward his own table.

Saxon was glowing. Here was a man, a protector, something to lean
against, of whom even the Butchertown toughs were afraid as soon
as his name was mentioned.



CHAPTER IV

After dinner there were two dances in the pavilion, and then the
band led the way to the race track for the games. The dancers
followed, and all through the grounds the picnic parties left
their tables to join in. Five thousand packed the grassy slopes
of the amphitheater and swarmed inside the race track. Here,
first of the events, the men were lining up for a tug of war. The
contest was between the Oakland Bricklayers and the San Francisco
Bricklayers, and the picked braves, huge and heavy, were taking
their positions along the rope. They kicked heel-holds in the
soft earth, rubbed their hands with the soil from underfoot, and
laughed and joked with the crowd that surged about them.

The judges and watchers struggled vainly to keep back this crowd
of relatives and friends. The Celtic blood was up, and the Celtic
faction spirit ran high. The air was filled with cries of cheer,
advice, warning, and threat. Many elected to leave the side of
their own team and go to the side of the other team with the
intention of circumventing foul play. There were as many women as
men among the jostling supporters. The dust from the trampling,
scuffling feet rose in the air, and Mary gasped and coughed and
begged Bert to take her away. But he, the imp in him elated with
the prospect of trouble, insisted on urging in closer. Saxon
clung to Billy, who slowly and methodically elbowed and
shouldered a way for her.

"No place for a girl," he grumbled, looking down at her with a
masked expression of absent-mindedness, while his elbow
powerfully crushed on the ribs of a big Irishman who gave room.
"Things'll break loose when they start pullin'. They's been too
much drink, an' you know what the Micks are for a rough house."

Saxon was very much out of place among these large-bodied men and
women. She seemed very small and childlike, delicate and fragile,
a creature from another race. Only Billy's skilled bulk and
muscle saved her. He was continually glancing from face to face
of the women and always returning to study her face, nor was she
unaware of the contrast he was making.

Some excitement occurred a score of feet away from them, and to
the sound of exclamations and blows a surge ran through the
crowd. A large man, wedged sidewise in the jam, was shoved
against Saxon, crushing her closely against Billy, who reached
across to the man's shoulder with a massive thrust that was not
so slow as usual. An involuntary grunt came from the victim, who
turned his head, showing sun-reddened blond skin and unmistakable
angry Irish eyes.

"What's eatin' yeh?" he snarled.

"Get off your foot; you're standin' on it," was Billy's
contemptuous reply, emphasized by an increase of thrust.

The Irishman grunted again and made a frantic struggle to twist
his body around, but the wedging bodies on either side held him
in a vise.

"I'll break yer ugly face for yeh in a minute," he announced in
wrath-thick tones.

Then his own face underwent transformation. The snarl left the
lips, and the angry eyes grew genial.

"An' sure an' it's yerself," he said. "I didn't know it was yeh
a-shovin'. I seen yeh lick the Terrible Swede, if yeh WAS robbed
on the decision."

"No, you didn't, Bo," Billy answered pleasantly. "You saw me take
a good beatin' that night. The decision was all right."

The Irishman was now beaming. He had endeavored to pay a
compliment with a lie, and the prompt repudiation of the lie
served only to increase his hero-worship.

"Sure, an' a bad beatin' it was," he acknowledged, "but yeh
showed the grit of a bunch of wildcats. Soon as I can get me arm
free I'm goin' to shake yeh by the hand an' help yeh aise yer
young lady."

Frustrated in the struggle to get the crowd back, the referee
fired his revolver in the air, and the tug-of-war was on.
Pandemonium broke loose. Saxon, protected by the two big men, was
near enough to the front to see much that ensued. The men on the
rope pulled and strained till their faces were red with effort
and their joints crackled. The rope was new, and, as their hands
slipped, their wives and daughters sprang in, scooping up the
earth in double handfuls and pouring it on the rope and the hands
of their men to give them better grip.

A stout, middle-aged woman, carried beyond herself by the passion
of the contest, seized the rope and pulled beside her husband,
encouraged him with loud cries. A watcher from the opposing team
dragged her screaming away and was dropped like a steer by an
ear-blow from a partisan from the woman's team. He, in turn, went
down, and brawny women joined with their men in the battle.
Vainly the judges and watchers begged, pleaded, yelled, and swung
with their fists. Men, as well as women, were springing in to thc
rope and pulling. No longer was it team against team, but all
Oakland against all San Francisco, festooned with a free-for-all
fight. Hands overlaid hands two and three deep in the struggle to
grasp the rope. And hands that found no holds, doubled into
bunches of knuckles that impacted on the jaws of the watchers who
strove to tear hand-holds from the rope.

Bert yelped with joy, while Mary clung to him, mad with fear.
Close to the rope the fighters were going down and being
trampled. The dust arose in clouds, while from beyond, all
around, unable to get into the battle, could be heard the shrill
and impotent rage-screams and rage-yells of women and men.

"Dirty work, dirty work," Billy muttered over and over; and,
though he saw much that occurred, assisted by the friendly
Irishman he was coolly and safely working Saxon back out of the
melee.

At last the break came. The losing team, accompanied by its host
of volunteers, was dragged in a rush over the ground and
disappeared under the avalanche of battling forms of the
onlookers.

Leaving Saxon under the protection of the Irishman in an outer
eddy of calm, Billy plunged back into the mix-up. Several minutes
later he emerged with the missing couple--Bert bleeding from a
blow on the ear, but hilarious, and Mary rumpled and hysterical.

"This ain't sport," she kept repeating. "It's a shame, a dirty
shame."

"We got to get outa this," Billy said. "The fun's only
commenced."

"Aw, wait," Bert begged. "It's worth eight dollars. It's cheap at
any price. I ain't seen so many black eyes and bloody noses in a
month of Sundays."

"Well, go on back an' enjoy yourself," Billy commended. "I'll
take the girls up there on the side hill where we can look on.
But I won't give much for your good looks if some of them Micks
lands on you."

The trouble was over in an amazingly short time, for from the
judges' stand beside the track the announcer was bellowing the
start of the boys' foot-race; and Bert, disappointed, joined
Billy and the two girls on the hillside looking down upon the
track.

There were boys' races and girls' races, races of young women and
old women, of fat men and fat women, sack races and three-legged
races, and the contestants strove around the small track through
a Bedlam of cheering supporters. The tug-of-war was already
forgotten, and good nature reigned again.

Five young men toed the mark, crouching with fingertips to the
ground and waiting the starter's revolver-shot. Three were in
their stocking-feet, and the remaining two wore spiked
running-shoes.

"Young men's race," Bert read from the program. "An' only one
prize--twenty-five dollars. See the red-head with the spikes--the
one next to the outside. San Francisco's set on him winning. He's
their crack, an' there's a lot of bets up."

"Who's goin' to win?" Mary deferred to Billy's superior athletic
knowledge.

"How can I tell!" he answered. "I never saw any of 'em before.
But they all look good to me. May the best one win, that's all."

The revolver was fired, and the five runners were off and away.
Three were outdistanced at the start. Redhead led, with a
black-haired young man at his shoulder, and it was plain that the
race lay between these two. Halfway around, the black-haired one
took the lead in a spurt that was intended to last to the finish.
Ten feet he gained, nor could Red-head cut it down an inch.

"The boy's a streak," Billy commented. "He ain't tryin' his
hardest, an' Red-head's just bustin' himself."

Still ten feet in the lead, the black-haired one breasted the
tape in a hubbub of cheers. Yet yells of disapproval could be
distinguished. Bert hugged himself with joy.

"Mm-mm," he gloated. "Ain't Frisco sore? Watch out for fireworks
now. See! He's bein' challenged. The judges ain't payin' him the
money. An' he's got a gang behind him. Oh! Oh! Oh! Ain't had so
much fun since my old woman broke her leg!"

"Why don't they pay him, Billy?" Saxon asked. "He won."

"The Frisco bunch is challengin' him for a professional," Billy
elucidated. "That's what they're all beefin' about. But it ain't
right. They all ran for that money, so they're all professional."

The crowd surged and argued and roared in front of the judges'
stand. The stand was a rickety, two-story affair, the second
story open at the front, and here the judges could be seen
debating as heatedly as the crowd beneath them.

"There she starts!" Bert cried. "Oh, you rough-house!"

The black-haired racer, backed by a dozen supporters, was
climbing the outside stairs to the judges.

"The purse-holder's his friend," Billy said. "See, he's paid him,
an' some of the judges is willin' an' some are beefin'. An' now
that other gang's going up--they're Redhead's." He turned to
Saxon with a reassuring smile. "We're well out of it this time.
There's goin' to be rough stuff down there in a minute."

"The judges are tryin' to make him give the money back," Bert
explained. "An' if he don't the other gang'll take it away from
him. See! They're reachin' for it now."

High above his head, the winner held the roll of paper containing
the twenty-five silver dollars. His gang, around him, was
shouldering back those who tried to seize the money. No blows had
been struck yet, but the struggle increased until the frail
structure shook and swayed. From the crowd beneath the winner was
variously addressed: "Give it baok, you dog!" "Hang on to it,
Tim!" "You won fair, Timmy!" "Give it back, you dirty robber!"
Abuse unprintable as well as friendly advice was hurled at him.

The struggle grew more violent. Tim's supporters strove to hold
him off the floor so that his hand would still be above the
grasping hands that shot up. Once, for an instant, his arm was
jerked down. Again it went up. But evidently the paper had
broken, and with a last desperate effort, before he went down,
Tim flung the coin out in a silvery shower upon the heads of the
crowd beneath. Then ensued a weary period of arguing and
quarreling.

"I wish they'd finish, so as we could get back to the dancin',"
Mary complained. "This ain't no fun."

Slowly and painfully the judges' stand was cleared, and an
announcer, stepping to the front of the stand, spread his arms
appealing for silence. The angiy clamor died down.

 "The judges have decided," he shouted, "that this day of good
fellowship an' brotherhood--"

"Hear! Hear!" Many of the cooler heads applauded. "That's the
stuff!" "No fightin'!" "No hard feelin's!"

"An' therefore," the announcer became audible again, "the judges
have decided to put up another purse of twenty-five dollars an'
run the race over again!"

"An' Tim?" bellowed scores of throats. "What about Tim?" "He's
been robbed!" "The judges is rotten!"

Again the announcer stilled the tumult with his arm appeal.

"The judges have decided, for the sake of good feelin', that
Timothy McManus will also run. If he wins, the money's his."

"Now wouldn't that jar you?" Billy grumbled disgustedly. "If
Tim's eligible now, he was eligible the first time. An' if he was
eligible the first time, then the money was his."

"Red-head'll bust himself wide open this time," Bert jubilated.

"An' so will Tim," Billy rejoined. "You can bet he's mad clean
through, and he'll let out the links he was holdin' in last
time."

Another quarter of an hour was spent in clearing the track of the
excited crowd, and this time only Tim and Red-head toed the mark.
The other three young men had abandoned the contest.

The leap of Tim, at the report of the revolver, put him a clean
yard in the lead.

"I guess he's professional, all right, all right," Billy
remarked. "An' just look at him go!"

Half-way around, Tim led by fifty feet, and, running swiftly,
maintaining the same lead, he came down the homestretch an easy
winner. When directly beneath the group on the hillside, the
incredible and unthinkable happened. Standing close to the inside
edge of the track was a dapper young man with a light switch
cane. He was distinctly out of place in such a gathering, for
upon him was no ear-mark of the working class. Afterward, Bert
was of the opinion that he looked like a swell dancing master,
while Billy called him "the dude."

So far as Timothy McManus was concerned, the dapper young man was
destiny; for as Tim passed him, the young man, with utmost
deliberation, thrust his cane between Tim's flying legs. Tim
sailed through the air in a headlong pitch, struck spread-eagled
on his face, and plowed along in a cloud of dust.

There was an instant of vast and gasping silence. The young man,
too, seemed petrified by the ghastliness of his deed. It took an
approciable interval of time for him, as well as for the
onlookers, to realize what he had done. They recovered first, and
from a thousand throats the wild Irish yell went up. Red-head won
the race without a cheer. The storm center had shifted to the
young man with the cane. After the yell, he had one moment of
indecision; then he turned and darted up the track.

"Go it, sport!" Bert cheered, waving his hat in the air. "You're
the goods for me! Who'd a-thought it? Who'd a-thought it?
Say!--wouldn't it, now? Just wouldn't it?"

"Phew! He's a streak himself," Billy admired. "But what did he do
it for? He's no bricklayer."

Like a frightened rabbit, the mad roar at his heels, the young
man tore up the track to an open space on the hillside, up which
he clawed and disappeared among the trees. Behind him toiled a
hundred vengeful runners.

"It's too bad he's missing the rest of it," Billy said. "Look at
'em goin' to it."

Bert was beside himself. He leaped up and down and cried
continuously.

"Look at 'em! Look at 'em! Look at 'em!"

The Oakland faction was outraged. Twice had its favorite runner
been jobbed out of the race. This last was only another vile
trick of the Frisco faction. So Oakland doubled its brawny fists
and swung into San Francisco for blood. And San Francisco,
consciously innocent, was no less willing to join issues. To be
charged with such a crime was no less monstrous than the crime
itself. Besides, for too many tedious hours had the Irish
heroically suppressed themselves. Five thousands of them exploded
into joyous battle. The women joined with them. The whole
amphitheater was filled with the conflict. There were rallies,
retreats, charges, and counter-charges. Weaker groups were forced
fighting up the hillsides. Other groups, bested, fled among the
trees to carry on guerrilla warfare, emerging in sudden dashes to
overwhelm isolated enemies. Half a dozen special policemen, hired
by the Weasel Park management, received an impartial trouncing
from both sides.

"Nohody's the friend of a policeman," Bert chortled, dabbing his
handkerchief to his injured ear, which still bled.

The bushes crackled behind him, and he sprang aside to let the
locked forms of two men go by, rolling over and over down the
hill, each striking when uppermost, and followed by a screaming
woman who rained blows on the one who was patently not of her
clan.

The judges, in the second story of the stand, valiantly withstood
a fierce assault until the frail structure toppled to the ground
in splinters.

"What's that woman doing?" Saxon asked, calling attention to an
elderly woman beneath them on the track, who had sat down and was
pulling from her foot an elastic-sided shoe of generous
dimensions.

"Goin' swimming," Bert chuckled, as the stocking followed.

They watched, fascinated. The shoe was pulled on again over the
bare foot. Then the woman slipped a rock the size of her fist
into the stocking, and, brandishing this ancient and horrible
weapon, lumbered into the nearest fray.

"Oh!--Oh!--Oh!" Bert screamed, with every blow she struck "Hey,
old flannel-mouth! Watch out! You'll get yours in a second. Oh!
Oh! A peach! Did you see it? Hurray for the old lady! Look at her
tearin' into 'em! Watch out, old girl! ... Ah-h-h."

His voice died away regretfully, as the one with the stocking,
whose hair had been clutched from behind by another Amazon, was
whirled about in a dizzy semicircle.

Vainly Mary clung to his arm, shaking him back and forth and
remonstrating.

"Can't you be sensible?" she cried. "It's awful! I tell you it's
awful!"

But Bert was irrepressible.

"Go it, old girl!" he encouraged. "You win! Me for you every
time! Now's your chance! Swat! Oh! My! A peach! A peach!"

"It's the biggest rough-house I ever saw," Billy confided to
Saxon. "It sure takes the Micks to mix it. But what did that dude
wanta do it for? That's what gets me. He wasn't a bricklayer--not
even a workingman--just a regular sissy dude that didn't know a
livin' soul in the grounds. But if he wanted to raise a
rough-house he certainly done it. Look at 'em. They're fightin'
everywhere."

He broke into sudden laughter, so hearty that the tears came into
his eyes.

"What is it?" Saxon asked, anxious not to miss anything.

"It's that dude," Billy explained between gusts. "What did he
wanta do it for? That's what gets my goat. What'd he wanta do it
for?"

There was more crashing in the brush, and two women erupted upon
the scene, one in flight, the other pursuing. Almost ere they
could realize it, the little group found itself merged in the
astounding conflict that covered, if not the face of creation, at
least all the visible landscape of Weasel Park.

The fleeing woman stumbled in rounding the end of a picnic bench,
and would have been caught had she not seized Mary's arm to
recover balance, and then flung Mary full into the arms of the
woman who pursued. This woman, largely built, middle-aged, and
too irate to comprehend, clutched Mary's hair by one hand and
lifted the other to smack her. Before the blow could fall, Billy
had seized both the woman's wrists.

"Come on, old girl, cut it out," he said appeasingly. "You're in
wrong. She ain't done nothin'."

Then the woman did a strange thing. Making no resistance, but
maintaining her hold on the girl's hair, she stood still and
calmly began to scream. The scream was hideously compounded of
fright and fear. Yet in her face was neither fright nor fear. She
regarded Billy coolly and appraisingly, as if to see how he took
it--her scream merely the cry to the clan for help.

"Aw, shut up, you battleax!" Bert vociferated, trying to drag her
off by the shoulders.

The result was that The four rocked back and forth, while the
woman calmly went on screaming. The scream became touched with
triumph as more crashing was heard in the brush.

Saxon saw Billy's slow eyes glint suddenly to the hardness of
steel, and at the same time she saw him put pressure on his
wrist-holds. The woman released her grip on Mary and was shoved
back and free. Then the first man of the rescue was upon them. He
did not pause to inquire into the merits of the affair. It was
sufficient that he saw the woman reeling away from Billy and
screaming with pain that was largely feigned.

"It's all a mistake," Billy cried hurriedly. "We apologize,
sport--"

The Irishman swung ponderously. Billy ducked, cutting his apology
short, and as the sledge-like fist passed over his head, he drove
his left to the other's jaw. The big Irishman toppled over
sidewise and sprawled on the edge of the slope. Half-scrambled
back to his feet and out of balance, he was caught by Bert's
fist, and this time went clawing down the slope that was slippery
with short, dry grass.   Bert was redoubtable. "That for you, old
girl--my compliments," was his cry, as he shoved the woman over
the edge on to the treacherous slope. Three more men were
emerging from the brush.

In the meantime, Billy had put Saxon in behind the protection of
the picnic table. Mary, who was hysterical, had evinced a desire
to cling to him, and he had sent her sliding across the top of
the table to Saxon.

"Come on, you flannel-mouths!" Bert yelled at the newcomers,
himself swept away by passion, his black eyes flashing wildly,
his dark face inflamed by the too-ready blood. "Come on, you
cheap skates! Talk about Gettysburg. We'll show you all the
Americans ain't dead yet!"

"Shut your trap--we don't want a scrap with the girls here,"
Billy growled harshly, holding his position in front of the
table. He turned to the three rescuers, who were bewildered by
the lack of anything visible to rescue. "Go on, sports. We don't
want a row. You're in wrong. They ain't nothin' doin' in the
fight line. We don't wanta fight--d'ye get me?"

They still hesitated, and Billy might have succeeded in avoiding
trouble had not the man who had gone down the bank chosen that
unfortunate moment to reappear, crawling groggily on hands and
knees and showing a bleeding face. Again Bert reached him and
sent him downslope, and the other three, with wild yells, sprang
in on Billy, who punched, shifted position, ducked and punched,
and shifted again ere he struck the thiird time. His blows were
clean end hard, scientifically delivered, with the weight of his
body behind.

Saxon, looking on, saw his eyes and learned more about him. She
was frightened, but clear-seeing, and she was startled by the
disappearance of all depth of light and shadow in his eyes. They
showed surface only--a hard, bright surface, almost glazed,
devoid of all expression save deadly seriousness. Bert's eyes
showed madness. The eyes of the Irishmen were angry and serious,
and yet not all serious. There was a wayward gleam in them, as if
they enjoyed the fracas. But in Billy's eyes was no enjoyment. It
was as if he had certain work to do and had doggedly settled down
to do it.

Scarcely more expression did she note in the face, though there
was nothing in common between it and the one she had seen all
day. The boyishness had vanished. This face was mature in a
terrifying, ageless way. There was no anger in it, Nor was it
even pitiless. It seemed to have glazed as hard and passionlessly
as his eyes. Something came to her of her wonderful mother's
tales of the ancient Saxons, and he seemed to her one of those
Saxons, and she caught a glimpse, on the well of her
consciousness, of a long, dark boat, with a prow like the beak of
a bird of prey, and of huge, half-naked men, wing-helmeted, and
one of their faces, it seemed to her, was his face. She did not
reason this. She felt it, and visioned it as by an unthinkable
clairvoyance, and gasped, for the flurry of war was over. It had
lasted only seconds, Bert was dancing on the edge of the slippery
slope and mocking the vanquished who had slid impotently to the
bottom. But Billy took charge.

"Come on, you girls," he commanded. "Get onto yourself, Bert. We
got to get onta this. We can't fight an army."

He led the retreat, holding Saxon's arm, and Bert, giggling and
jubilant, brought up the rear with an indignant Mary who
protested vainly in his unheeding ears.

For a hundred yards they ran and twisted through the trees, and
then, no signs of pursuit appearing, they slowed down to a
dignified saunter. Bert, the trouble-seeker, pricked his ears to
the muffled sound of blows and sobs, and stepped aside to
investigate.

"Oh! look what I've found!" he called.

They joined him on the edge of a dry ditch and looked down. In
the bottom were two men, strays from the fight, grappled together
and still fighting. They were weeping out of sheer fatigue and
helplessness, and the blows they only occasionally struck were
open-handed and ineffectual.

"Hey, you, sport--throw sand in his eyes," Bert counseled.
"That's it, blind him an' he's your'n."

"Stop that!" Billy shouted at the man, who was following
instructions, "Or I'll come down there an' beat you up myself.
It's all over--d'ye get me? It's all over an' everybody's
friends. Shake an' make up. The drinks are on both of you. That's
right--here, gimme your hand an' I'll pull you out."

They left them shaking hands and brushing each other's clothes.

"It soon will be over," Billy grinned to Saxon. "I know 'em.
Fight's fun with them. An' this big scrap's made the days howlin'
success. what did I tell you!--look over at that table there."

A group of disheveled men and women, still breathing heavily,
were shaking hands all around.

"Come on, let's dance," Mary pleaded, urging them in the
direction of the pavilion.

All over the park the warring bricklayers were shaking hands and
making up, while the open-air bars were crowded with the
drinkers.

Saxon walked very close to Billy. She was proud of him. He could
fight, and he could avoid trouble. In all that had occurred he
had striven to avoid trouble. And, also, consideration for her
and Mary had been uppermost in his mind.

"You are brave," she said to him.

"It's like takin' candy from a baby," he disclaimed. "They only
rough-house. They don't know boxin'. They're wide open, an' all
you gotta do is hit 'em. It ain't real fightin', you know." With
a troubled, boyish look in his eyes, he stared at his bruised
knuckles. "An' I'll have to drive team to-morrow with 'em," he
lamented. "Which ain't fun, I'm tellin' you, when they stiffen
up."



CHAPTER V

At eight o'clock the Al Vista band played "Home, Sweet Home,"
and, following the hurried rush through the twilight to the
picnic train, the four managed to get double seats facing each
other. When the aisles and platforms were packed by the hilarious
crowd, the train pulled out for the short run from the suburbs
into Oakland. All the car was singing a score of songs at once,
and Bert, his head pillowed on Mary's breast with her arms around
him, started "On the Banks of the Wabash." And he sang the song
through, undeterred by the bedlam of two general fights, one on
the adjacent platform, the other at the opposite end of the car,
both of which were finally subdued by special policemen to the
screams of women and the crash of glass.

Billy sang a lugubrious song of many stanzas about a cowboy, the
refrain of which was, "Bury me out on the lone pr-rairie."

"That's one you never heard before; my father used to sing it,"
he told Saxon, who was glad that it was ended.

She had discovered the first flaw in him. He was tonedeaf. Not
once had he been on the key.

"I don't sing often," he added.

"You bet your sweet life he don't," Bert exclaimed. "His
friends'd kill him if he did."

"They all make fun of my singin'," he complained to Saxon.
"Honest, now, do you find it as rotten as all that?"

"It 's...it's maybe flat a bit," she admitted reluctantly.

"It don't sound flat to me," he protested. "It's a regular josh
on me. I'll bet Bert put you up to it. You sing something now,
Saxon. I bet you sing good. I can tell it from lookin' at you."

She began "When the Harvest Days Are Over." Bert and Mary joined
in; but when Billy attempted to add his voice he was dissuaded by
a shin-kick from Bert. Saxon sang in a clear, true soprano, thin
but sweet, and she was aware that she was singing to Billy.

"Now THAT is singing what is," he proclaimed, when she had
finished. "Sing it again. Aw, go on. You do it just right. It's
great."

His hand slipped to hers and gathered it in, and as she sang
again she felt the tide of his strength flood warmingly through
her.

"Look at 'em holdin' hands," Bert jeered. "Just a-holdin' hands
like they was afraid. Look at Mary an' me, Come on an' kick in,
you cold-feets. Get together. If you don't, it'll look
suspicious. I got my suspicions already. You're framin' somethin'
up."

Thers was no mistaking his innuendo, and Saxon felt her cheeks
flaming.

"Get onto yourself, Bert," Billy reproved.

"Shut up!" Mary added the weight of her indignation. "You're
awfully raw, Bert Wanhope, an' I won't have anything more to do
with you--there!"

She withdrew her arms and shoved him away, only to receive him
forgivingly half a dozen seconds afterward.

 "Come on, the four of us," Bert went on irrepressibly. "The
night's young. Let's make a time of it--Pabst's Cafe first, and
then some. What you say, Bill? What you say, Saxon? Mary's game."

Saxon waited and wondered, half sick with apprehension of this
man beside her whom she had known so short a time.

"Nope," he said slowly. "I gotta get up to a hard day's work
to-morrow, and I guess the girls has got to, too."

Saxon forgave him his tone-deafness. Here was the kind of man she
always had known existed. It was for some such man that she had
waited. She was twenty-two, and her first marriage offer had come
when she was sixteen. The last had occurred only the month
before, from the foreman of the washing-room, and he had been
good and kind, but not young. But this one beside her--he was
strong and kind and good, and YOUNG. She was too young herself
not to desire youth. There would have been rest from fancy starch
with the foreman, but there would have been no warmth. But this
man beside her.... She caught herself on the verge involuntarily
of pressing his hand that held hers.

"No, Bert, don't tease he's right," Mary was saying. "We've got
to get some sleep. It's fancy starch to-morrow, and all day on
our feet."

It came to Saxon with a chill pang that she was surely older than
Billy. She stole glances at the smoothness of his face, and the
essential boyishness of him, so much desired, shocked her. Of
course he would marry some girl years younger than himself, than
herself. How old was he? Could it be that he was too young for
her? As he seemed to grow insecessible, she was drawn toward him
more compellingly. He was so strong, so gentle. She lived over
the events of the day. There was no flaw there. He had considered
her and Mary, always. And he had torn the program up and danced
only with her. Surely he had liked her, or he would not have done
it.

She slightly moved her hand in his and felt the harsh contact of
his teamster callouses. The sensation was exquisite. He, too,
moved his hand, to accommodate the shift of hers, and she waited
fearfully. She did not want him to prove like other men, and she
could have hated him had he dared to take advantage of that
slight movement of her fingers and put his arm around her. He did
not, and she flamed toward him. There was fineness in him. He was
neither rattle-brained, like Bert, nor coarse like other men she
had encountered. For she had had experiences, not nice, and she
had been made to suffer by the lack of what was termed chivalry,
though she, in turn, lacked that word to describe what she
divined and desired.

And he was a prizefighter. The thought of it almost made her
gasp. Yet he answered not at all to her conception of a
prizefighter. But, then, he wasn't a prizefighter. He had said he
was not. She resolved to ask him about it some time if . . . if
he took her out again. Yet there was little doubt of that, for
when a man danced with one girl a whole day he did not drop her
immediately. Almost she hoped that he was a prizefighter. There
was a delicious tickle of wickedness about it. Prizefighters were
such terrible and mysterious men. In so far as they were out of
the ordinary and were not mere common workingmen such as
carpenters and laundrymen, they represented romance. Power also
they represented. They did not work for bosses, but spectacularly
and magnificently, with their own might, grappled with the great
world and wrung splendid living from its reluctant hands. Some of
them even owned automobiles and traveled with a retinue of
trainers and servants. Perhaps it had been only Billy's modesty
that made him say he had quit fighting. And yet, there were the
callouses on his hands. That showed he had quit.



CHAPTER VI

They said good-bye at the gate. Billy betrayed awkwardness that
was sweet to Saxon. He was not one of the take-it-for-granted
young men. There was a pause, while she feigned desire to go into
the house, yet waited in secret eagerness for the words she
wanted him to say.

"When am I goin' to see you again?" he asked, holding her hand in
his.

She laughed consentingly.

"I live 'way up in East Oakland," he explained. "You know there's
where the stable is, an' most of our teaming is done in that
section, so I don't knock around down this way much. But, say--"
His hand tightened on hers. "We just gotta dance together some
more. I'll tell you, the Orindore Club has its dance Wednesday.
If you haven't a date--have you?"

"No," she said.

"Then Wednesday. What time'll I come for you?"

And when they had arranged the details, and he had agreed that
she should dance some of the dances with the other fellows, and
said good night again, his hand closed more tightly on hers and
drew her toward him. She resisted slightly, but honestly. It was
the custom, but she felt she ought not for fear he might
misunderstand. And yet she wanted to kiss him as she had never
wanted to kiss a man. When it came, her face upturned to his, she
realized that on his part it was an honest kiss. There hinted
nothing behind it. Rugged and kind as himself, it was virginal
almost, and betrayed no long practice in the art of saying
good-bye. All men were not brutes after all, was her thought.

"Good night," she murmured; the gate screeched under her hand;
and she hurried along the narrow walk that led around to the
corner of the house.

"Wednesday," he celled softly.

"Wednesday," she answered.

But in the shadow of the narrow alley between the two houses she
stood still and pleasured in the ring of his foot falls down the
cement sidewalk. Not until they had quite died away did she go
on. She crept up the back stairs and across the kitchen to her
room, registering her thanksgiving that Sarah was asleep.

She lighted the gas, and, as she removed the little velvet hat,
she felt her lips still tingling with the kiss. Yet it had meant
nothing. It was the way of the young men. They all did it. But
their good-night kisses had never tingled, while this one tingled
in her brain as wall as on her lip. What was it? What did it
mean? With a sudden impulse she looked at herself in the glass.
The eyes were happy and bright. The color that tinted her cheeks
so easily was in them and glowing. It was a pretty reflection,
and she smiled, partly in joy, partly in appreciation, and the
smile grew at sight of the even rows of strong white teeth. Why
shouldn't Billy like that face? was her unvoiced query. Other men
had liked it. Other men did like it. Even the other girls
admitted she was a good-looker. Charley Long certainly liked it
from the way he made life miserable for her.

She glanced aside to the rim of the looking-glass where his
photograph was wedged, shuddered, and made a moue of distaste.
There was cruelty in those eyes, and brutishness. He was a brute.
For a year, now, he had bullied her. Other fellows were afraid to
go with her. He warned them off. She had been forced into almost
slavery to his attentions. She remembered the young bookkeeper at
the laundry--not a workingman, but a soft-handed, soft-voiced
gentleman--whom Charley had beaten up at the corner because he
had been bold enough to come to take her to the theater. And she
had been helpless. For his own sake she had never dared accept
another invitation to go out with him.

And now, Wednesday night, she was going with Billy. Billy! Her
heart leaped. There would be trouble, but Billy would save her
from him. She'd like to see him try and beat Billy up.

With a quick movement, she jerked the photograph from its niche
and threw it face down upon the chest of drawers. It fell beside
a small square case of dark and tarnished leather. With a feeling
as of profanation she again seized the offending photograph and
flung it across the room into a corner. At the same time she
picked up the leather case. Springing it open, she gazed at the
daguerreotype of a worn little woman with steady gray eyes and a
hopeful, pathetic mouth. Opposite, on the velvet lining, done in
gold lettering, was, CARLTON FROM DAISY. She read it reverently,
for it represented the father she had never known, and the mother
she had so little known, though she could never forget that those
wise sad eyes were gray.

Despite lack of conventional religion, Saxon's nature was deeply
religious. Her thoughts of God were vague and nebulous, and there
she was frankly puzzled. She could not vision God. Here, in the
daguerreotype, was the concrete; much she had grasped from it,
and always there seemed an infinite more to grasp. She did not go
to church. This was her high altar and holy of holies. She came
to it in trouble, in loneliness, for counsel, divination, end
comfort. In so far as she found herself different from the girls
of her acquaintance, she quested here to try to identify her
characteristics in the pictured face. Her mother had been
different from other women, too. This, forsooth, meant to her
what God meant to others. To this she strove to be true, and not
to hurt nor vex. And how little she really knew of her mother,
and of how much was conjecture and surmise, she was unaware; for
it was through many years she had erected this mother-myth.

Yet was it all myth? She resented the doubt with quick jealousy,
and, opening the bottom drawer of the chest, drew forth a
battered portfolio. Out rolled manuscripts, faded and worn, and
arose a faint far scent of sweet-kept age. The writing was
delicate and curled, with the quaint fineness of half a century
before. She read a stanza to herself:

"Sweet as a wind-lute's airy strains
Your gentle muse has learned to sing,
And California's boundless plains
Prolong the soft notes echoing."

She wondered, for the thousandth time, what a windlute was; yet
much of beauty, much of beyondness, she sensed of this dimly
remembered beautiful mother of hers. She communed a while, then
unrolled a second manuscript. "To C. B.," it read. To Carlton
Brown, she knew, to her father, a love-poem from her mother.
Saxon pondered the opening lines:

"I have stolen away from the crowd in the groves,
Where the nude statues stand, and the leaves point and shiver
At ivy-crowned Bacchus, the Queen of the Loves,
Pandora and Psyche, struck voiceless forever."

This, too, was beyond her. But she breathed the beauty of it.
Bacchus, and Pandora and Psyche--talismans to conjure with! But
alas! the necromancy was her mother's. Strange, meaningless words
that meant so much! Her marvelous mother had known their meaning.
Saxon spelled the three words aloud, letter by letter, for she
did not dare their pronunciation; and in her consciousness
glimmered august connotations, profound and unthinkable. Her mind
stumbled and halted on the star-bright and dazzling boundaries of
a world beyond her world in which her mother had roamed at will.
Again and again, solemnly, she went over the four lines. They
were radiance and light to the world, haunted with phantoms of
pain and unrest, in which she had her being. There, hidden among
those cryptic singing lines, was the clue. If she could only
grasp it, all would be made clear. Of this she was sublimely
confident. She would understand Sarah's sharp tongue, her unhappy
brother, the cruelty of Charley Long, the justness of the
bookkeeper's beating, the day-long, month-long, year-long toil at
the ironing-board.

She skipped a stanza that she knew was hopelessly beyond her, and
tried again:

"The dusk of the greenhouse is luminous yet
With quivers of opal and tremors of gold;
For the sun is at rest, and the light from the west,
Like delicate wine that is mellow and old,

"Flushes faintly the brow of a naiad that stands
In the spray of a fountain, whose seed-amethysts
Tremble lightly a moment on bosom and hands,
Then dip in their basin from bosom and wrists."

"It's beautiful, just beautiful," she sighed. And then, appalled
at the length of all the poem, at the volume of the mystery, she
rolled the manuscript and put it away. Again she dipped in the
drawer, seeking the clue among the cherished fragments of her
mother's hidden soul.

This time it was a small package, wrapped in tissue paper and
tied with ribbon. She opened it carefully, with the deep gravity
and circumstance of a priest before an altar. Appeared a little
red-satin Spanish girdle, whale-boned like a tiny corset,
pointed, the pioneer finery of a frontier woman who had crossed
the plains. It was hand-made after the California-Spanish model
of forgotten days. The very whalebone had been home-shaped of the
raw material from the whaleships traded for in hides and tallow.
The black lace trimming her mother had made. The triple edging of
black velvet strips--her mother's hands had sewn the stitches.

Saxon dreamed over it in a maze of incoherent thought. This was
concrete. This she understood. This she worshiped as man-created
gods have been worshiped on less tangible evidence of their
sojourn on earth.

Twenty-two inches it measured around. She knew it out of many
verifications. She stood up and put it about her waist. This was
part of the ritual. It almost met. In places it did meet. Without
her dress it would meet everywhere as it had met on her mother.
Closest of all, this survival of old California-Ventura days
brought Saxon in touch. Hers was her mother's form. Physically,
she was like her mother. Her grit, her ability to turn off work
that was such an amazement to others, were her mother's. Just so
had her mother been an amazement to her generation--her mother,
the toy-like creature, the smallest and tha youngest of the
strapping pioneer brood, who nevertheless had mothered the brood.
Always it had been her wisdom that was sought, even by the
brothers and sisters a dozen years her senior. Daisy, it was, who
had put her tiny foot down and commanded the removal from the
fever flatlands of Colusa to the healthy mountains of Ventura;
who had backed the savage old Indian-fighter of a father into a
corner and fought the entire family that Vila might marry the man
of her choice; who had flown in the face of the family and of
community morality and demanded the divorce of Laura from her
criminally weak husband; and who on the other hand, had held the
branches of the family together when only misunderstanding and
weak humanness threatened to drive them apart.

The peacemaker and the warrior! All the old tales trooped before
Saxon's eyes. They were sharp with detail, for she had visioned
them many times, though their content was of things she had never
seen. So far as details were concerned, they were her own
creation, for she had never seen an ox, a wild Indian, nor a
prairie schooner. Yet, palpitating and real, shimmering in the
sun-flashed dust of ten thousand hoofs, she saw pass, from East
to West, across a continent, the great hegira of the land-hungry
Anglo-Saxon. It was part and fiber of her. She had been nursed on
its traditions and its facts from the lips of those who had taken
part. Clearly she saw the long wagon-train, the lean, gaunt men
who walked before, the youths goading the lowing oxen that fell
and were goaded to their feet to fall again. And through it all,
a flying shuttle, weaving the golden dazzling thread of
personality, moved the form of her little, indomitable mother,
eight years old, and nine ere the great traverse was ended, a
necromancer and a law-giver, willing her way, and the way and the
willing always good and right.

Saxon saw Punch, the little, rough-coated Skye-terrier with the
honest eyes (who had plodded for weary months), gone lame and
abandoned; she saw Daisy, the chit of a child, hide Punch in the
wagon. She saw the savage old worried father discover the added
burden of the several pounds to the dying oxen. She saw his
wrath, as he held Punch by the scruff of the neck. And she saw
Daisy, between the muzzle of the long-barreled rifle and the
little dog. And she saw Daisy thereafter, through days of alkali
and heat, walking, stumbling, in the dust of the wagons, the
little sick dog, like a baby, in her arms.

But most vivid of all, Saxon saw the fight at Little Meadow--and
Daisy, dressed as for a gala day, in white, a ribbon sash about
her waist, ribbons and a round-comb in her hair, in her hands
small water-pails, step forth into the sunshine on the
flower-grown open ground from the wagon circle, wheels
interlocked, where the wounded screamed their delirium and
babbled of flowing fountains, and go on, through the sunshine and
the wonder-inhibition of the bullet-dealing Indians, a hundred
yards to the waterhole and back again.

Saxon kissed the little, red satin Spanish girdle passionately,
and wrapped it up in haste, with dewy eyes, abandoning the
mystery and godhead of mother and all the strange enigma of
living.

In bed, she projected against her closed eyelids the few rich
scenes of her mother that her child-memory retained. It was her
favorite way of wooing sleep. She had done it all her life--sunk
into the death-blackness of sleep with her mother limned to the
last on her fading consciousness. But this mother was not the
Daisy of the plains nor of the daguerreotype. They had been
before Saxon's time. This that she saw nightly was an older
mother, broken with insomnia and brave with sorrow, who crept,
always crept, a pale, frail creature, gentle and unfaltering,
dying from lack of sleep, living by will, and by will refraining
from going mad, who, nevertheless, could not will sleep, and whom
not even the whole tribe of doctors could make sleep.
Crept--always she crept, about the house, from weary bed to weary
chair and back again through long days and weeks of torment,
never complaining, though her unfailing smile was twisted with
pain, and the wise gray eyes, still wise and gray, were grown
unutterably larger and profoundly deep.

But on this night Saxon did not win to sleep quickly; the little
creeping mother came and went; and in the intervals the face of
Billy, with the cloud-drifted, sullen, handsome eyes, burned
against her eyelids. And once again, as sleep welled up to
smother her, she put to herself the question IS THIS THE MAN?



CHAPTER VII

Tun work in the ironing-room slipped off, but the three days
until Wednesday night were very long. She hummed over the fancy
starch that flew under the iron at an astounding rate.

"I can't see how you do it," Mary admired. "You'll make thirteen
or fourteen this week at that rate."

Saxon laughed, and in the steam from the iron she saw dancing
golden letters that spelled WEDNESDAY.

"What do you think of Billy?" Mary asked.

"I like him," was the frank answer.

"Well, don't let it go farther than that."

"I will if I want to," Saxon retorted gaily.

"Better not," came the warning. "You'll only make trouble for
yourself. He ain't marryin'. Many a girl's found that out. They
just throw themselves at his head, too."

"I'm not going to throw myself at him, or any other man."

"Just thought I'd tell you," Mary concluded. "A word to the
wise."

Saxon had become grave.

"He's not . . . not . . ." she began, than looked the
significance of the question she could not complete.

"Oh, nothin' like that--though there's nothin' to stop him. He's
straight, all right, all right. But he just won't fall for
anything in skirts. He dances, an' runs around, an' has a good
time, an' beyond that--nitsky. A lot of 'em's got fooled on him.
I bet you there's a dozen girls in love with him right now. An'
he just goes on turnin' 'em down. There was Lily Sanderson--you
know her. You seen her at that Slavonic picnic last summer at
Shellmound--that tall, nice-lookin' blonde that was with Butch
Willows?"

"Yes, I remember her," Saxon sald. "What about her?"

"Well, she'd been runnin' with Butch Willows pretty steady, an'
just because she could dance, Billy dances a lot with her. Butch
ain't afraid of nothin'. He wades right in for a showdown, an'
nails Billy outside, before everybody, an' reads the riot act.
An' Billy listens in that slow, sleepy way of his, an' Butch gets
hotter an' hotter, an' everybody expects a scrap.

"An' then Billy says to Butch, 'Are you done?' 'Yes,' Butch says;
'I've said my say, an' what are you goin' to do about it?' An'
Billy says--an' what d'ye think he said, with everybody lookin'
on an' Butch with blood in his eye? Well, he said, 'I guess
nothin', Butch.' Just like that. Butch was that surprised you
could knocked him over with a feather. 'An' never dance with her
no more?' he says. 'Not if you say I can't, Butch,' Billy says.
Just like that.

"Well, you know, any other man to take water the way he did from
Butch--why, everybody'd despise him. But not Billy. You see, he
can afford to. He's got a rep as a fighter, an' when he just
stood back 'an' let Butch have his way, everybody knew he wasn't
scared, or backin' down, or anything. He didn't care a rap for
Lily Sanderson, that was all, an' anybody could see she was just
crazy after him."

The telling of this episode caused Saxon no little worry. Hers
was the average woman's pride, but in the matter of
man-conquering prowess she was not unduly conceited. Billy had
enjoyed her dancing, and she wondered if that were all. If
Charley Long bullied up to him would he let her go as he had let
Lily Sanderson go? He was not a marrying man; nor could Saxon
blind her eyes to the fact that he was eminently marriageable. No
wonder the girls ran after him. And he was a man-subduer as well
as a woman-subduer. Men liked him. Bert Wanhope seemed actually
to love him. She remembered the Butchertown tough in the
dining-room at Weasel Park who had come over to the table to
apologize, and the Irishman at the tug-of-war who had abandoned
all thought of fighting with him the moment he learned his
identity.

A very much spoiled young man was a thought that flitted
frequently through Saxon's mind; and each time she condemned it
as ungenerous. He was gentle in that tantalizing slow way of his.
Despite his strength, he did not walk rough-shod over others.
There was the affair with Lily Sanderson. Saxon analysed it again
and again. He had not cared for the girl, and he had immediately
stepped from between her and Butch. It was just the thing that
Bert, out of sheer wickedness and love of trouble, would not have
done. There would have been a fight, hard feelings, Butch turned
into an enemy, and nothing profited to Lily. But Billy had done
the right thing--done it slowly and imperturbably and with the
least hurt to everybody. All of which made him more desirable to
Saxon and less possible.

She bought another pair of silk stockings that she had hesitated
at for weeks, and on Tuesday night sewed and drowsed wearily over
a new shirtwaist and earned complaint from Sarah concerning her
extravagant use of gas.

Wednesday night, at the Orindore dance, was not all undiluted
pleasure. It was shameless the way the girls made up to Billy,
and, at times, Saxon found his easy consideration for them almost
irritating. Yet she was compelled to acknowledge to herself that
he hurt none of the other fellows' feelings in the way the girls
hurt hers. They all but asked him outright to dance with them,
and little of their open pursuit of him escaped her eyes. She
resolved that she would not be guilty of throwing herself at him,
and withheld dance after dance, and yet was secretly and
thrillingly aware that she was pursuing the right tactics. She
deliberately demonstrated that she was desirable to other men, as
he involuntarily demonstrated his own desirableness to the women.

Her happiness came when he coolly overrode her objections and
insisted on two dances more than she had allotted him. And she
was pleased, as well as angered, when she chanced to overhear two
of the strapping young cannery girls. "The way that little
sawed-off is monopolizin' him," said one. And the other: "You'd
think she might have the good taste to run after somebody of her
own age." "Cradle-snatcher," was the final sting that sent the
angry blood into Saxon's cheeks as the two girls moved away,
unaware that they had been overheard.

Billy saw her home, kissed her at the gate, and got her consent
to go with him to the dance at Germania Hall on Friday night.

"I wasn't thinkin' of goin'," he sald. "But if you'll say the
word . . . Bert's goin' to be there."

Next day, at the ironing boards, Mary told her that she and Bert
were dated for Germania Hall.

"Are you goin'?" Mary asked.

Saxon nodded.

"Billy Roberts?"

The nod was repeated, and Mary, with suspended iron, gave her a
long and curions look.

"Say, an' what if Charley Long butts in?"

Saxon shrugged her shoulders.

They ironed swiftly and silently for a quarter of an hour.

"Well," Mary decided, "if he does butt in maybe he'll get his.
I'd like to see him get it--the big stiff! It all depends how
Billy feels--about you, I mean."

"I'm no Lily Sanderson," Saxon answered indignantly. "I'll never
give Billy Roberts a chance to turn me down."

"You will, if Charley Long butts in. Take it from me, Saxon, he
ain't no gentleman. Look what he done to Mr. Moody. That was a
awful beatin'. An' Mr. Moody only a quiet little man that
wouldn't harm a fly. Well, he won't find Billy Roberts a sissy by
a long shot."

That night, outside the laundry entrance, Saxon found Charley
Long waiting. As he stepped forward to greet her and walk
alongside, she felt the sickening palpitation that he had so
thoroughly taught her to know. The blood ebbed from her face with
the apprehension and fear his appearance caused. She was afraid
of the rough bulk of the man; of the heavy brown eyes, dominant
and confident; of the big blacksmith-hands and the thick strong
fingers with the hair-pads on the back to every first joint. He
was unlovely to the eye, and he was unlovely to all her finer
sensibilities. It was not his strength itself, but the quality of
it and the misuse of it, that affronted her. The beating he had
given the gentle Mr. Moody had meant half-hours of horror to her
afterward. Always did the memory of it come to her accompanied by
a shudder. And yet, without shock, she had seen Billy fight at
Weasel Park in the same primitive man-animal way. But it had been
ditferent. She recognized, but could not analyze, the difference.
She was aware only of the brutishness of this man's hands and
mind.

"You're lookin' white an' all beat to a frazzle," he was saying.
"Why don't you cut the work? You got to some time, anyway. You
can't lose me, kid."

"I wish I could," she replied.

He laughed with harsh joviality. "Nothin' to it, Saxon. You're
just cut out to be Mrs. Long, an' you're sure goin' to be."

"I wish I was as certain about all things as you are," she said
with mild sarcasm that missed.

"Take it from me," he went on, "there's just one thing you can be
certain of--an' that is that I am certain." He was pleased with
the cleverness of his idea and laughed approvingly. "When I go
after anything I get it, an' if anything gets in between it gets
hurt. D'ye get that? It's me for you, an' that's all there is to
it, so you might as well make up your mind and go to workin' in
my home instead of the laundry. Why, it's a snap. There wouldn't
be much to do. I make good money, an' you wouldn't want for
anything. You know, I just washed up from work an' skinned over
here to tell it to you once more, so you wouldn't forget. I ain't
ate yet, an' that shows how much I think of you."

"You'd better go and eat then," she advised, though she knew the
futility of attempting to get rid of him.

She scarcely heard what he said. It had come upon her suddenly
that she was very tired and very small and very weak alongside
this colossus of a man. Would he dog her always? she asked
despairingly, and seemed to glimpse a vision of all her future
life stretched out before her, with always the form and face of
the burly blacksmith pursuing her.

"Come on, kid, an' kick in," he continued. "It's the good old
summer time, an' that's the time to get married."

"But I'm not going to marry you," she protested. "I've told you a
thousand times already."

"Aw, forget it. You want to get them ideas out of your think-box.
Of course, you're goin' to marry me. It's a pipe. An' I'll tell
you another pipe. You an' me's goin' acrost to Frisco Friday
night. There's goin' to he big doin's with the Horseshoers."

"Only I'm not," she contradicted.

"Oh, yes you are," he asserted with absolute assurance. "We'll
eatch the last boat back, an' you'll have one fine time. An' I'll
put you next to some of the good dancers. Oh, I ain't a pincher,
an' I know you like dancin'."

"But I tell you I can't," she reiterated.

He shot a glance of suspicion at her from under the black thatch
of brows that met above his nose and were as one brow.

"Why can't you?"

"A date," she said.

"Who's the bloke?"

"None of your business, Charley Long. I've got a date, that's
all."

"I'll make it my business. Remember that lah-de-dah bookkeeper
rummy? Well, just keep on rememborin' him an' what he got."

"I wish yon'd leave me alone," she pleaded resentfully. "Can't
you be kind just for once?"

The blacksmith laughed unpleasantly.

"If any rummy thinks he can butt in on you an' me, he'll learn
different, an' I'm the little boy that'll learn 'm.--Fridey
night, eh? Where?"

"I won't tell you."

"Where?" he repeated.

Her lips were drawn in tight silence, and in her cheeks were
little angry spots of blood.

"Huh!--As if I couldn't guess! Germania Hall. Well, I'll be
there, an' I'll take you home afterward. D'ye get that? An' you'd
better tell the rummy to beat it unless you want to see'm get his
face hurt."

Saxon, hurt as a prideful woman can be hurt by cavalier
treatment, was tempted to cry out the name and prowess of her
new-found protector. And then came fear. This was a big man, and
Billy was only a boy. That was the way he affected her. She
remembered her first impression of his hands and glanced quickly
at the hands of the man beside her. They seemed twice as large as
Billy's, and the mats of hair seemed to advertise a terrible
strength. No, Billy could not fight this big brute. He must not.
And then to Saxon came a wicked little hope that by the
mysterious and unthinkable ability that prizefighters possessed,
Billy might be able to whip this bully and rid her of him. With
the next glance doubt came again, for her eye dwelt on the
blacksmith's broad shoulders, the cloth of the coat
muscle-wrinkled and the sleeves bulging above the biceps.

"If you lay a hand on anybody I'm going with again---" she began.

"Why, they'll get hurt, of course," Long grinned. "And they'll
deserve it, too. Any rummy that comes between a fellow an' his
girl ought to get hurt."

"But I'm not your girl, and all your saying so doesn't make it
so."

"That's right, get mad," he approved. "I like you for that, too.
You've got spunk an' fight. I like to see it. It's what a man
needs in his wife--and not these fat cows of women. They're the
dead ones. Now you're a live one, all wool, a yard long and a
yard wide."

She stopped before the house and put her hand on the gate.

"Good-bye," she said. "I'm going in."

"Come on out afterward for a run to Idora Park," he suggested.

"No, I'm not feeling good, and I'm going straight to bed as soon
as I eat supper."

"Huh!" he sneered. "Gettin' in shape for the fling to-morrow
night, eh?"

With an impatient movement she opened the gate and stepped
inside.

"I've given it to you straight," he went on. "If you don't go
with me to-morrow night somebody'll get hurt."

"I hope it will be you," she cried vindictively.

He laughed as he threw his head back, stretched his big chest,
and half-lifted his heavy arms. The action reminded her
disgustingly of a great ape she had once seen in a circus.

"Well, good-bye," he said. "See you to-morrow night at Germania
Hall."

"I haven't told you it was Germania Hall."

"And you haven't told me it wasn't. All the same, I'll be there.
And I'll take you home, too. Be sure an' keep plenty of round
dances open fer me. That's right. Get mad. It makes you look
fine."



CHAPTER VIII

The music stopped at the end of the waltz, leaving Billy and
Saxon at the big entrance doorway of the ballroom. Her hand
rested lightly on his arm, and they were promenading on to find
seats, when Charley Long, evidently just arrived, thrust his way
in front of them.

"So you're the buttinsky, eh?" he demanded, his face malignant
with passion and menace.

"Who?--me?" Billy queried gently. "Some mistake, sport. I never
butt in."

"You're goin' to get your head beaten off if you don't make
yourself scarce pretty lively."

"I wouldn't want that to happen for the world," Billy drawled.
"Come on, Saxon. This neighborhood's unhealthy for us."

He started to go on with her, but Long thrust in front again.

"You're too fresh to keep, young fellow," he snarled. "You need
saltin' down. D'ye get me?"

Billy scratched his head, on his face exaggerated puzzlement.

"No, I don't get you," he said. "Now just what was it you said?"

But the big blacksmith turned contemptuously away from him to
Saxon.

"Come here, you. Let's see your program."

"Do you want to dance with him?" Billy asked.

She shook her head.

"Sorry, sport, nothin' doin'," Billy said, again making to start
on.

For the third time the blacksmith blocked the way.

"Get off your foot," said Billy. "You're standin' on it."

Long all but sprang upon him, his hands clenched, one arm just
starting back for the punch while at the same instant shoulders
and chest were coming forward. But he restrained himself at sight
of Billy's unstartled body and cold and cloudy ayes. He had made
no move of mind or muscle. It was as if he were unaware of the
threatened attack. All of which constituted a new thing in Long's
experience.

"Maybe you don't know who I am," he bullied.

"Yep, I do," Billy answered airily. "You're a recordbreaker at
rough-housin'." (Here Long's face showed pleasure.) "You ought to
have the Police Gazette diamond belt for rough-bousin' baby
buggies'. I guess there ain't a one you're afraid to tackle."

"Leave 'm alone, Charley," advised one of the young men who had
crowded about them. "He's Bill Roberts, the fighter. You know'm.
Big Bill."

"I don't care if he's Jim Jeffries. He can't butt in on me this
way."

Nevertheless it was noticeable, even to Saxon, that the fire had
gone out of his fiercenes. Billy's name seemed to have a quieting
effect on obstreperous males.

"Do you know him?" Billy asked her.

She signified yes with her eyes, though it seemed she must cry
out a thousand things against this man who so steadfastly
persecuted her. Billy turned to the blacksmith.

"Look here, sport, you don't want trouble with me. I've got your
number. Besides, what do we want to fight for? Hasn't she got a
say so in the matter?"

"No, she hasn't. This is my affair an' yourn."

Billy shook his head slowly. "No; you're in wrong. I think she
has a say in the matter."

"Well, say it then," Long snarled at Saxon. "who're you goin' to
go with?--me or him? Let's get it settled."

For reply, Saxon reached her free hand over to the hand that
rested on Billy's arm.

"Nuff said," was Billy's remark.

Long glared at Saxon, then transferred the glare to her
protector.

"I've a good mind to mix it with you anyway," Long gritted
through his teeth.

Saxon was elated as they started to move away. Lily Sanderson's
fate had not been hers, and her wonderful man-boy, without the
threat of a blow, slow of speech and imperturbable, had conquered
the big blacksmith.

"He's forced himself upon me all the time," she whispered to
Billy. "He's tried to run me, and beaten up every man that came
near me. I never want to see him again."

Billy halted immediately. Long, who was reluctantly moving to get
out of the way, also halted.

"She says she don't want anything more to do with you," Billy
said to him. "An' what she says goes. If I get a whisper any time
that you've been botherin' her, I'll attend to your case. D'ye
get that?"

Long glowered and remained silent.

"D'ye get that?" Billy repeated, more imperatively.

A growl of assent came from the blacksmith

"All right, then. See you remember it. An' now get outa the way
or I'll walk over you."

Long slunk back, muttering inarticulate threats, and Saxon moved
on as in a dream. Charley Long had taken water. He had been
afraid of this smooth-skinned, blue-eyed boy. She was quit of
him--something no other man had dared attempt for her. And Billy
had liked her better than Lily Sanderson.

Twice Saxon tried to tell Billy the detalls of her acquaintance
with Long, but each time was put off.

"I don't care a rap about it," Billy said the second time.
"You're here, ain't you?"

But she insisted, and when, worked up and angry by the recital,
she had finished, he patted her hand soothingly.

"It's all right, Saxon," he said. "He's just a big stiff. I took
his measure as soon as I looked at him. He won't bother you
again. I know his kind. He's a dog. Roughhouse? He couldn't
rough-house a milk wagon."

"But how do you do it?" she asked breathlessly. "Why are men so
afraid of you? You're just wonderful."

He smiled in an embarrassed way and changed the subject.

"Say," he said, "I like your teeth. They're so white an' regular,
an' not big, an' not dinky little baby's teeth either. They're
... they're just right, an' they fit you. I never seen such fine
teeth on a girl yet. D'ye know, honest, they kind of make me
hungry when I look at 'em. They're good enough to eat."

At midnight, leaving the insatiable Bert and Mary still dancing,
Bllly and Saxon started for home. It was on his suggestion that
they left early, and he felt called upon to explain.

"It's one thing the fightin' game's taught me," he said. "To take
care of myself. A fellow can't work all day and dance all night
and keep in condition. It's the same way with drinkin'--an' not
that I'm a little tin angel. I know what it is. I've been soused
to the guards an' all the rest of it. I like my beer--big
schooners of it; but I don't drink all I want of it. I've tried,
but it don't pay. Take that big stiff to-night that butted in on
us. He ought to had my number. He's a dog anyway, but besides he
had beer bloat. I sized that up the first rattle, an' that's the
difference about who takes the other fellow's number. Condition,
that's what it is."

"But he is so big," Saxon protested. "Why, his fists are twice as
big as yours."

"That don't mean anything. What counts is what's behind the
fists. He'd turn loose like a buckin' bronco. If I couldn't drop
him at the start, all I'd do is to keep away, smother up, an'
wait. An' all of a sudden he'd blow up--go all to pieces, you
know, wind, heart, everything, and then I'd have him where I
wanted him. And the point is he knows it, too."

"You're the first prizefighter I ever knew," Saxon said, after a
pause.

"I'm not any more," he disclaimed hastily. "That's one thing the
fightin' game taught me--to leave it alone. It don't pay. A
fellow trains as fine as silk--till he's all silk, his skin,
everything, and he's fit to live for a hundred years; an' then he
climbs through the ropes for a hard twenty rounds with some tough
customer that's just as good as he is, and in those twenty rounds
he frazzles out all his silk an' blows in a year of his life.
Yes, sometimes he blows in five years of it, or cuts it in half,
or uses up all of it. I've watched 'em. I've seen fellows strong
as bulls fight a hard battle and die inside the year of
consumption, or kidney disease, or anything else. Now what's the
good of it? Money can't buy what they throw away. That's why I
quit the game and went back to drivin' team. I got my silk, an'
I'm goin' to keep it, that's all."

"It must make you feel proud to know you are the master of other
men," she said softly, aware herself of pride in the strength and
skill of him.

"It does," he admitted frankly. "I'm glad I went into the
game--just as glad as I am that I pulled out of it. ... Yep, it's
taught me a lot--to keep my eyes open an' my head cool. Oh, I've
got a temper, a peach of a temper. I get scared of myself
sometimes. I used to be always breakin' loose. But the fightin'
taught me to keep down the steam an' not do things I'd be sorry
for afterward."

"Why, you're the sweetest, easiest tempered man I know," she
interjected.

"Don't you believe it. Just watch me, and sometime you'll see me
break out that bad that I won't know what I'm doin' myself. Oh,
I'm a holy terror when I get started!"

This tacit promise of continued acquaintance gave Saxon a little
joy-thrill.

"Say," he said, as they neared her neighborhood, "what are you
doin' next Sunday?"

"Nothing. No plans at all."

"Well, suppose you an' me go buggy-riding all day out in the
hills?"

She did not answer immediately, and for the moment she was seeing
the nightmare vision of her last buggy-ride; of her fear and her
leap from the buggy; and of the long miles and the stumbling
through the darkness in thin-soled shoes that bruised her feet on
every rock. And then it came to her with a great swell of joy
that this man beside her was not such a man.

"I love horses," she said. "I almost love them better than I do
dancing, only I don't know anything about them. My father rode a
great roan war-horse. He was a captain of cavalry, you know. I
never saw him, but somehow I always can see him on that big
horse, with a sash around his waist and his sword at his side. My
brother George has the sword now, but Tom--he's the brother I
live with says it is mine because it wasn't his father's. You
see, they're only my half-brothers. I was the only child by my
mother's second marriage. That was her real marriage--her
love-marriage, I mean."

Saxon ceased abruptly, embarrassed by her own garrulity; and yet
the impulse was strong to tell this young man all about herself,
and it seemed to her that these far memories were a large part of
her.

"Go on an' tell me about it," Billy urged. "I like to hear about
the old people of the old days. My people was along in there,
too, an' somehow I think it was a better world to live in than
now. Things was more sensible and natural. I don't exactly say
what I mean. But it's like this: I don't understand life to-day.
There's the labor unions an' employers' associations, an'
strikes', an' hard times, an' huntin' for jobs, an' all the rest.
Things wasn't like that in the old days. Everybody farmed, an'
shot their meat, an' got enough to eat, an' took care of their
old foiks. But now it's all a mix-up that I can't understand.
Mebbe I'm a fool, I don't know. But, anyway, go ahead an' tell us
about your mother."

"Well, you see, when she was only a young woman she and Captain
Brown fell in love. He was a soldier then, before the war. And he
was ordered East for the war when she was away nursing her sister
Laura. And then came the news that he was killed at Shiloh. And
she married a man who had loved her for years and years. He was a
boy in the same wagon-train coming across the plains. She liked
him, but she didn't love him. And afterwerd came the news that my
father wasn't killed after all. So it made her very sad, but it
did not spoil her life. She was a good mother end a good wife and
all that, but she was always sad, and sweet, and gentle, and I
think her voice was the most beautiful in the world."

"She was game, all right," Billy approved.

"And my father never married. He loved her all the time. I've got
a lovely poem home that she wrote to him, It's just wonderful,
and it sings like music. Well, long, long afterward her husband
died, and then she and my father made their love marriage. They
didn't get married until 1882, and she was pretty well along."

More she told him, as they stood hy the gate, and Saxon tried to
think that the good-bye kiss was a trifle longer than just
ordinary,

"How about nine o'clock?" he queried across the gate. "Don't
bother about lunch or anything. I'll fix all that up. You just be
ready at nine."



CHAPTER IX

Sunday morning Saxon was beforehand in getting ready, and on her
return to the kitchen from her second journey to peep through the
front windows, Sarah began her customary attack.

"It's a shame an' a disgrace the way some people can afford silk
stockings," she began. "Look at me, a-toilin' and a-stewin' day
an' night, and I never get silk stockings--nor shoes, three pairs
of them all at one time. But there's a just God in heaven, and
there'll be some mighty big surprises for some when the end comes
and folks get passed out what's comin' to them."

Tom, smoking his pipe and cuddling his youngest-born on his
knees, dropped an eyelid surreptitiously on his cheek in token
that Sarah was in a tantrum. Saxon devoted herself to tying a
ribbon in the hair of one of the little girls. Sarah lumbered
heavily about the kitchen, washing and putting away the breakfast
dishes. She straightened her back from the sink with a groan and
glared at Saxon with fresh hostility.

"You ain't sayin' anything, eh? An' why don't you? Because I
guess you still got some natural shame in you a-runnin' with a
prizefighter. Oh, I've heard about your goings-on with Bill
Roberts. A nice specimen he is. But just you wait till Charley
Long gets his hands on him, that's all."

"Oh, I don't know," Tom intervened. "Bill Roberts is a pretty
good boy from what I hear."

Saxon smiled with superior knowledge, and Sarah, catching her,
was infuriated.

"Why don't you marry Charley Long? He's crazy for you, and he
ain't a drinkin' man."

"I guess he gets outside his share of beer," Saxon retorted.

"That's right," her brother supplemented. "An' I know for a fact
that he keeps a keg in the house all the time as well."

"Maybe you've been guzzling from it," Sarah snapped.

"Maybe I have," Tom said, wiping his mouth reminiscently with the
back of his hand.

"Well, he can afford to keep a keg in the house if he wants to,"
she returned to the attack, which now was directed at her husband
as well. "He pays his bills, and he certainly makes good
money--better than most men, anyway."

"An' he hasn't a wife an' children to watch out for," Tom said.

"Nor everlastin' dues to unions that don't do him no good."

"Oh, yes, he has," Tom urged genially. "Blamed little he'd work
in that shop, or any other shop in Oakland, if he didn't keep in
good standing with the Blacksmiths. You don't understand labor
conditions, Sarah. The unions have got to stick, if the men
aren't to starve to death."

"Oh, of course not," Sarah sniffed. "I don't understand anything.
I ain't got a mind. I'm a fool, an' you tell me so right before
the children." She turned savagely on her eldest, who startled
and shrank away. "Willie, your mother is a fool. Do you get that?
Your father says she's a fool--says it right before her face and
yourn. She's just a plain fool. Next he'll be sayin' she's crazy
an' puttin' her away in the asylum. An' how will you like that,
Willie? How will you like to see your mother in a straitjacket
an' a padded cell, shut out from the light of the sun an' beaten
like a nigger before the war, Willie, beaten an' clubbed like a
regular black nigger? That's the kind of a father you've got,
Willie. Think of it, Willie, in a padded cell, the mother that
bore you, with the lunatics sereechin' an' screamin' all around,
an' the quick-lime eatin' into the dead bodies of them that's
beaten to death by the cruel wardens--"

She continued tirelessly, painting with pessimistic strokes the
growing black future her husband was meditating for her, while
the boy, fearful of some vague, incomprehensible catastrophe,
began to weep silently, with a pendulous, trembling underlip.
Saxon, for the moment, lost control of herself.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, can't we be together five minutes without
quarreling?" she blazed.

Sarah broke off from asylum conjurations and turned upon her
sister-in-law.

"Who's quarreling? Can't I open my head without bein' jumped on
by the two of you?"

Saxon shrugged her shoulders despairingly, and Sarah swung about
on her husband.

"Seein' you love your sister so much better than your wife, wby
did you want to marry me, that's borne your children for you, an'
slaved for you, an' toiled for you, an' worked her fingernails
off for you, with no thanks, an 'insultin' me before the
children, an' sayin' I'm crazy to their faces. An' what have you
ever did for me? That's what I want to know--me, that's cooked
for you, an' washed your stinkin' clothes, and fixed your socks,
an' sat up nights with your brats when they was ailin'. Look at
that!"

She thrust out a shapeless, swollen foot, encased in a monstrous,
untended shoe, the dry, raw leather of which showed white on the
edges of bulging cracks.

"Look at that! That's what I say. Look at that!" Her voice was
persistently rising and at the same time growing throaty. "The
only shoes I got. Me. Your wife. Ain't you ashamed? Where are my
three pairs? Look at that stockin'."

Speech failed her, and she sat down suddenly on a chair at the
table, glaring unutterable malevolence and misery. She arose with
the abrupt stiffness of an automaton, poured herself a cup of
cold coffee, and in the same jerky way sat down again. As if too
hot for her lips, she filled her saucer with the greasy-looking,
nondescript fluid, and continued her set glare, her breast rising
and falling with staccato, mechanical movement.

"Now, Sarah, be c'am, be c'am," Tom pleaded anxiously.

In response, slowly, with utmost deliberation, as if the destiny
of empires rested on the certitude of her act, she turned the
saucer of coffee upside down on the table. She lifted her right
hand, slowly, hugely, and in the same slow, huge way landed the
open palm with a sounding slap on Tom's astounded cheek.
Immediately thereafter she raised her voice in the shrill,
hoarse, monotonous madness of hysteria, sat down on the floor,
and rocked back and forth in the throes of an abysmal grief.

Willie's silent weeping turned to noise, and the two little
girls, with the fresh ribbons in their hair, joined him. Tom's
face was drawn and white, though the smitten cheek still blazed,
and Saxon wanted to put her arms comfortingly around him, yet
dared not. He bent over his wife.

"Sarah, you ain't feelin' well. Let me put you to bed, and I'll
finish tidying up."

"Don't touch me!--don't touch me!" she screamed, jerking
violently away from him.

"Take the children out in the yard, Tom, for a walk,
anything--get them away," Saxon said. She was sick, and white,
and trembling. "Go, Tom, please, please. There's your hat. I'll
take care of her. I know just how."

Left to herself, Saxon worked with frantic haste, assuming the
calm she did not possess, but which she must impart to the
screaming bedlamite upon the floor. The light frame house leaked
the noise hideously, and Saxon knew that the houses on either
side were hearing, and the street itself and the houses across
the street. Her fear was that Billy should arrive in the midst of
it. Further, she was incensed, violated. Every fiber rebelled,
aimost in a nausea; yet she maintained cool control and stroked
Sarah's forehead and hair with slow, soothing movements. Soon,
with one arm around her, she managed to win the first diminution
in the strident, atrocious, unceasing scream. A few minutes
later, sobbing heavily, the elder woman lay in bed, across her
forehead and eyes a wet-pack of towel for easement of the
headache she and Saxon tacitly accepted as substitute for the
brain-storm.

When a clatter of hoofs came down the street and stopped, Saxon
was able to slip to the front door and wave her hand to Billy. In
the kitchen she found Tom waiting in sad anxiousness.

"It's all right," she said. "Billy Roberts has come, and I've got
to go. You go in and sit beside her for a while, and maybe she'll
go to sleep. But don't rush her. Let her have her own way. If
she'll let you take her hand, why do it. Try it, anyway. But
first of all, as an opener and just as a matter of course, start
wetting the towel over her eyes."

He was a kindly, easy-going man; but, after the way of a large
percentage of the Western stock, he was undemonstrative. He
nodded, turned toward the door to obey, and paused irresolutely.
The look he gave back to Saxon was almost dog-like in gratitude
and all-brotherly in love. She felt it, and in spirit leapt
toward it.

"It's all right--everything's all right," she cried hastily.

Tom shook his head.

"No, it ain't. It's a shame, a blamed shame, that's what it is."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I don't care for myself. But it's
for you. You got your life before you yet, little kid sister.
You'll get old, and all that means, fast enough. But it's a bad
start for a day off. The thing for you to do is to forget all
this, and skin out with your fellow, an' have a good time." In
the open door, his hand on the knob to close it after him, he
halted a second time. A spasm contracted his brow. "Hell! Think
of it! Sarah and I used to go buggy-riding once on a time. And I
guess she had her three pairs of shoes, too. Can you beat it?"

In her bedroom Saxon completed her dressing, for an instant
stepping upon a chair so as to glimpse critically in the small
wall-mirror the hang of her ready-made linen skirt. This, and the
jacket, she had altered to fit, and she had double-stitched the
seams to achieve the coveted tailored effect. Still on the chair,
all in the moment of quick clear-seeing, she drew the skirt
tightly back and raised it. The sight was good to her, nor did
she under-appraise the lines of the slender ankle above the low
tan tie nor did she under-appraise the delicate yet mature swell
of calf outlined in the fresh brown of a new cotton stocking.
Down from the chair, she pinned on a firm sailor hat of white
straw with a brown ribbon around the crown that matched her
ribbon belt. She rubbed her cheeks quickly and fiercely to bring
back the color Sarah had driven out of them, and delayed a moment
longer to put on her tan lisle-thread gloves. Once, in the
fashion-page of a Sunday supplement, she had read that no lady
ever put on her gloves after she left the door.

With a resolute self-grip, as she crossed the parlor and passed
the door to Sarah's bedroom, through the thin wood of which came
elephantine moanings and low slubberings, she steeled herself to
keep the color in her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes. And
so well did she succeed that Billy never dreamed that the
radiant, live young thing, tripping lightly down the steps to
him, had just come from a bout with soul-sickening hysteria and
madness.

To her, in the bright sun, Billy's blondness was startling. His
cheeks, smooth as a girl's, were touched with color. The blue
eyes seemed more cloudily blue than usual, and the crisp, sandy
hair hinted more than ever of the pale straw-gold that was not
there. Never had she seen him quite so royally young. As he
smiled to greet her, with a slow white flash of teeth from
between red lips, she caught again the promise of easement and
rest. Fresh from the shattering chaos of her sister-in-law's
mind, Billy's tremendous calm was especially satisfying, and
Saxon mentally laughed to scorn the terrible temper he had
charged to himself.

She had been buggy-riding before, but always behind one horse,
jaded, and livery, in a top-buggy, heavy and dingy, such as
livery stables rent because of sturdy unbreakableness. But here
stood two horses, head-tossing and restless, shouting in every
high-light glint of their satin, golden-sorrel coats that they
had never been rented out in all their glorious young lives.
Between them was a pole inconceivably slender, on them were
harnesses preposterously string-like and fragile. And Billy
belonged here, by elemental right, a part of them and of it, a
master-part and a component, along with the spidery-delicate,
narrow-boxed, wide- and yellow-wheeled, rubber-tired rig,
efficient and capable, as different as he was different from the
other man who had taken her out behind stolid, lumubering horses.
He held the reins in one hand, yet, with low, steady voice,
confident and assuring, held the nervous young animals more by
the will and the spirit of him.

It was no time for lingering. With the quick glance and
fore-knowledge of a woman, Saxon saw, not merely the curious
children clustering about, but the peering of adult faces from
open doors and windows, and past window-shades lifted up or held
aside. With his free hand, Billy drew back the linen robe and
helped her to a place beside him. The high-backed, luxuriously
upholstered seat of brown leather gave her a sense of great
comfort; yet even greater, it seemed to her, was the nearness and
comfort of the man himself and of his body.

"How d'ye like 'em?" he asked, changing the reins to both hands
and chirruping the horses, which went out with a jerk in an
immediacy of action that was new to her. "They're the boss's, you
know. Couldn't rent animals like them. He lets me take them out
for exercise sometimes. If they ain't exercised regular they're a
handful.--Look at King, there, prancin'. Some style, eh? Some
style! The other one's the real goods, though. Prince is his
name. Got to have some bit on him to hold'm.--Ah! Would you?--Did
you see'm, Saxon? Some horse! Some horse!"

From behind came the admiring cheer of the neighborhood children,
and Saxon, with a sigh of content, knew that the happy day had at
last begun.



CHAPTER X

"I don't know horses," Saxon said. "I've never been on one's
back, and the only ones I've tried to drive were single, and
lame, or almost falling down, or something. But I'm not afraid of
horses. I just love them. I was born loving them, I guess."

Billy threw an admiring, appreciative glance at her.

"That's the stuff. That's what I like in a woman--grit. Some of
the girls I've had out--well, take it from me, they made me sick.
Oh, I'm hep to 'em. Nervous, an' trembly, an' screechy, an'
wabbly. I reckon they come out on my account an' not for the
ponies. But me for the brave kid that likes the ponies. You're
the real goods, Saxon, honest to God you are. Why, I can talk
like a streak with you. The rest of 'em make me sick. I'm like a
clam. They don't know nothin', an' they're that scared all the
time--well, I guess you get me"

"You have to be born to love horses, maybe," she answered. "Maybe
it's because I always think of my father on his roan war-horse
that makes me love horses. But, anyway, I do. When I was a little
girl I was drawing horses all the time. My mother always
encouraged me. I've a scrapbook mostly filled with horses I drew
when I was little. Do you know, Billy, sometimes I dream I
actually own a horse, all my own. And lots of times I dream I'm
on a horse's back, or driving him."

"I'll let you drive 'em, after a while, when they've worked their
edge off. They're pullin' now.--There, put your hands in front of
mine--take hold tight. Feel that? Sure you feel it. An' you ain't
feelin' it all by a long shot. I don't dast slack, you bein' such
a lightweight."

Her eyes sparkled as she felt the apportioned pull of the mouths
of the beautiful, live things; and he, looking at her, sparkled
with her in her delight.

"What's the good of a woman if she can't keep up with a man?" he
broke out enthusiastically.

"People that like the same things always get along best
together," she answered, with a triteness that concealed the joy
that was hers at being so spontaneously in touch with him.

"Why, Saxon, I've fought battles, good ones, frazzlin' my silk
away to beat the band before whisky-soaked, smokin' audiences of
rotten fight-fans, that just made me sick clean through. An'
them, that couldn't take just one stiff jolt or hook to jaw or
stomach, a-cheerin' me an' yellin' for blood. Blood, mind you!
An' them without the blood of a shrimp in their bodies. Why,
honest, now, I'd sooner fight before an audience of one--you for
instance, or anybody I liked. It'd do me proud. But them
sickenin', sap-headed stiffs, with the grit of rabbits and the
silk of mangy ky-yi's, a-cheerin' me--ME! Can you blame me for
quittin'the dirty game?--Why, I'd sooner fight before broke-down
old plugs of work-horses that's candidates for chicken-meat, than
before them rotten bunches of stiffs with nothin' thicker'n water
in their veins, an' Contra Costa water at that when the rains is
heavy on the hills."

"I...I didn't know prizefighting was like that," she faltered, as
she released her hold on the lines and sank back again beside
him.

"It ain't the fightin', it's the fight-crowds," he defended with
instant jealousy. "Of course, fightin' hurts a young fellow
because it frazzles the silk outa him an' all that. But it's the
low-lifers in the audience that gets me. Why the good things they
say to me, the praise an' that, is insuiting. Do you get me? It
makes me cheap. Think of it--booze-guzzlin' stiffs that 'd be
afraid to mix it with a sick cat, not fit to hold the coat of any
decent man, think of them a-standin' up on their hind legs an'
yellin' an' cheerin' me--ME!"

"Ha! ha! What d'ye think of that? Ain't he a rogue?"

A big bulldog, sliding obliquely and silently across the street,
unconcerned with the team he was avoiding, had passed so close
that Prince, baring his teeth like a stallion, plunged his head
down against reins and check in an effort to seize the dog.

"Now he's some fighter, that Prince. An' he's natural. He didn't
make that reach just for some low-lifer to yell'm on. He just
done it outa pure cussedness and himself. That's clean. That's
right. Because it's natural. But them fight-fans! Honest to God,
Saxon..."

And Saxon, glimpsing him sidewise, as he watched the horses and
their way on the Sunday morning streets, checking them back
suddenly and swerving to avoid two boys coasting across street on
a toy wagon, saw in him deeps and intensities, all the magic
connotations of temperament, the glimmer and hint of rages
profound, bleaknesses as cold and far as the stars, savagery as
keen as a wolf's and clean as a stallion's, wrath as implacable
as a destroying angel's, and youth that was fire and life beyond
time and place. She was awed and fascinated, with the hunger of
woman bridging the vastness to him, daring to love him with arms
and breast that ached to him, murmuring to herself and through
all the halls of her soul, "You dear, you dear."

"Honest to God, Saxon," he took up the broken thread, "they's
times when I've hated them, when I wanted to jump over the ropes
and wade into them, knock-down and drag-out, an' show'm what
fightin' was. Take that night with Billy Murphy. Billy
Murphy!--if you only knew him. My friend. As clean an' game a boy
as ever jumped inside the ropes to take the decision. Him! We
went to the Durant School together. We grew up chums. His fight
was my fight. My trouble was his trouble. We both took to the
fightin' game. They matched us. Not the first time. Twice we'd
fought draws. Once the decision was his; once it was mine. The
fifth fight of two lovin' men that just loved each other. He's
three years older'n me. He's a wife and two or three kids, an' I
know them, too. And he's my friend. Get it?

"I'm ten pounds heavier--but with heavyweights that 'a all right.
He can't time an' distance as good as me, an' I can keep set
better, too. But he's cleverer an' quicker. I never was quick
like him. We both can take punishment, an' we're both two-handed,
a wallop in all our fists. I know the kick of his, an' he knows
my kick, an' we're both real respectful. And we're even-matched.
Two draws, and a decision to each. Honest, I ain't any kind of a
hunch who's gain' to win, we're that even.

"Now, the fight.--You ain't squeamish, are you?"

"No, no," she cried. "I'd just love to hear--you are so
wonderful."

He took the praise with a clear, unwavering look, and without
hint of acknowledgment.

"We go along--six rounds--seven rounds--eight rounds; an' honors
even. I've been timin' his rushes an' straight-leftin' him, an'
meetin' his duck with a wicked little right upper-cut, an' he's
shaken me on the jaw an' walloped my ears till my head's all
singin' an' buzzin'. An' everything lovely with both of us, with
a noise like a draw decision in sight. Twenty rounds is the
distance, you know.

"An' then his bad luck comes. We're just mixin' into a clinch
that ain't arrived yet, when he shoots a short hook to my
head--his left, an' a real hay-maker if it reaches my jaw. I make
a forward duck, not quick enough, an' he lands bingo on the side
of my head. Honest to God, Saxon, it's that heavy I see some
stars. But it don't hurt an' ain't serious, that high up where
the bone's thick. An' right there he finishes himself, for his
bad thumb, which I've known since he first got it as a kid
fightin' in the sandlot at Watts Tract--he smashes that thumb
right there, on my hard head, back into the socket with an
out-twist, an' all the old cords that'd never got strong gets
theirs again. I didn't mean it. A dirty trick, fair in the game,
though, to make a guy smash his hand on your head. But not
between friends. I couldn't a-done that to Bill Murphy for a
million dollars. It was a accident, just because I was slow,
because I was born slow.

"The hurt of it! Honest, Saxon, you don't know what hurt is till
you've got a old hurt like that hurt again. What can Billy Murphy
do but slow down? He's got to. He ain't fightin' two-handed any
more. He knows it; I know it; The referee knows it; but nobody
else. He goes on a-moving that left of his like it's all right.
But it ain't. It's hurtin' him like a knife dug into him. He
don't dast strike a real blow with that left of his. But it
hurts, anyway. Just to move it or not move it hurts, an' every
little dab-feint that I'm too wise to guard, knowin' there's no
weight behind, why them little dab-touches on that poor thumb
goes right to the heart of him, an' hurts worse than a thousand
boils or a thousand knockouts--just hurts all over again, an'
worse, each time an' touch.

"Now suppose he an' me was boxin' for fun, out in the back yard,
an' he hurts his thumb that way, why we'd have the gloves off in
a jiffy an' I'd be putting cold compresses on that poor thumb of
his an' bandagin' it that tight to keep the inflammation down.
But no. This is a fight for fight-fans that's paid their
admission for blood, an' blood they're goin' to get. They ain't
men. They're wolves.

"He has to go easy, now, an' I ain't a-forcin' him none. I'm all
shot to pieces. I don't know what to do. So I slow down, an' the
fans get hep to it. 'Why don't you fight?' they begin to yell;
'Fake! Fake!' 'Why don't you kiss'm?' 'Lovin' cup for yours, Bill
Roberts!' an' that sort of bunk.

"'Fight!' says The referee to me, low an' savage. 'Fight, or I'll
disqualify you--you, Bill, I mean you.' An' this to me, with a
touch on the shoulder 'so they's no mistakin'.

"It ain't pretty. It ain't right. D'ye know what we was fightin'
for? A hundred bucks. Think of it! An' the game is we got to do
our best to put our man down for the count because of the fans
has bet on us. Sweet, ain't it? Well, that's my last fight. It
finishes me deado. Never again for yours truly.

"'Quit,' I says to Billy Murphy in a clinch; 'for the love of
God, Bill, quit.' An' he says back, in a whisper, 'I can't,
Bill--you know that.'

"An' then the referee drags us apart, an' a lot of the fans
begins to hoot an' boo.

"'Now kick in, damn you, Bill Roberts, an' finish'm' the referee
says to me, an' I tell'm to go to hell as Bill an' me flop into
the next clinch, not hittin', an' Bill touches his thumb again,
an' I see the pain shoot across his face. Game? That good boy's
the limit. An' to look into the eyes of a brave man that's sick
with pain, an' love 'm, an' see love in them eyes of his, an'
then have to go on givin' 'm pain--call that sport? I can't see
it. But the crowd's got its money on us. We don't count. We've
sold ourselves for a hundred bucks, an' we gotta deliver the
goods.

"Let me tell you, Saxon, honest to God, that was one of the times
I wanted to go through the ropes an' drop them fans a-yellin' for
blood an' show 'em what blood is.

"'For God's sake finish me, Bill,' Bill says to me in that
clinch; 'put her over an' I'll fall for it, but I can't lay
down.'

"D'ye want to know? I cry there, right in the ring, in that
clinch. The weeps for me. 'I can't do it, Bill,' I whisper back,
hangin' onto'm like a brother an' the referee ragin' an' draggin'
at us to get us apart, an' all the wolves in the house snarlin'.

'You got 'm!' the audience is yellin'. 'Go in an' finish 'm!'
'The hay for him, Bill; put her across to the jaw an' see 'm
fall!'

"'You got to, Bill, or you're a dog,' Bill says, lookin' love at
me in his eyes as the referee's grip untangles us clear.

"An' them wolves of fans yellin': 'Fake! Fake! Fake!' like that,
an' keepin' it up.

"Well, I done it. They's only that way out. I done it. By God, I
done it. I had to. I feint for 'm, draw his left, duck to the
right past it, takin' it across my shoulder, an come up with my
right to his jaw. An' he knows the trick. He's hep. He's beaten
me to it an' blocked it with his shoulder a thousan' times. But
this time he don't. He keeps himself wide open on purpose. Blim!
It lands. He's dead in the air, an' he goes down sideways,
strikin' his face first on the rosin-canvas an' then layin' dead,
his head twisted under 'm till you'd a-thought his neck was
broke. ME--I did that for a hundred bucks an' a bunch of stiffs
I'd be ashamed to wipe my feet on. An' then I pick Bill up in my
arms an' carry'm to his corner, an' help bring'm around. Well,
they ain't no kick comin'. They pay their money an' they get
their blood, an' a knockout. An' a better man than them, that I
love, layin' there dead to the world with a skinned face on the
mat."

For a moment he was still, gazing straight before him at the
horses, his face hard and angry. He sighed, looked at Saxon, and
smiled.

"An' I quit the game right there. An' Billy Murphy's laughed at
me for it. He still follows it. A side-line, you know, because he
works at a good trade. But once in a while, when the house needs
paintin', or the doctor bills are up, or his oldest kid wants a
bicycle, he jumps out an' makes fifty or a hundred bucks before
some of the clubs. I want you to meet him when it comes handy.
He's some boy I'm tellin' you. But it did make me sick that
night."

Again the harshness and anger were in his face, and Saxon amazed
herself by doing unconsciously what women higher in the social
scale have done with deliberate sincerity. Her hand went out
impulsively to his holding the lines, resting on top of it for a
moment with quick, firm pressure. Her reward was a smile from
lips and eyes, as his face turned toward her.

"Gee!" he exclaimed. "I never talk a streak like this to anybody.
I just hold my hush an' keep my thinks to myself. But, somehow, I
guess it's funny, I kind of have a feelin' I want to make good
with you. An' that's why I'm tellin' you my thinks. Anybody can
dance."

The way led uptown, past the City Hall and the Fourteenth Street
skyscrapers, and out Broadway to Mountain View. Turning to the
right at the cemetery, they climbed the Piedmont Heights to Blair
Park and plunged into the green coolness of Jack Hayes Canyon.
Saxon could not suppress her surprise and joy at the quickness
with which they covered the ground.

"They are beautiful," she said. "I never dreamed I'd ever ride
behind horses like them. I'm afraid I'll wake up now and find
it's a dream. You know, I dream horses all the time. I'd give
anything to own one some time."

"It's funny, ain't it?" Billy answered. "I like horses that way.
The boss says I'm a wooz at horses. An' I know he's a dub. He
don't know the first thing. An' yet he owns two hundred big heavy
draughts besides this light drivin' pair, an' I don't own one."

"Yet God makes the horses," Saxon said.

"It's a sure thing the boss don't. Then how does he have so
many?--two hundred of 'em, I'm tellin' you. He thinks he likes
horses. Honest to God, Saxon, he don't like all his horses as
much as I like the last hair on the last tail of the scrubbiest
of the bunch. Yet they're his. Wouldn't it jar you?"

"Wouldn't it?" Saxon laughed appreciatively. "I just love fancy
shirtwaists, an' I spent my life ironing some of the
beautifullest I've ever seen. It's funny, an' it isn't fair."

Billy gritted his teeth in another of his rages.

"An' the way some of them women gets their shirtwaists. It makes
me sick, thinkin' of you ironin' 'em. You know what I mean,
Saxon. They ain't no use wastin' words over it. You know. I know.
Everybody knows. An' it's a hell of a world if men an' women
sometimes can't talk to each other about such things." His manner
was almost apologetic yet it was defiantly and assertively right.
"I never talk this way to other girls. They'd think I'm workin up
to designs on 'em. They make me sick the way they're always
lookin' for them designs. But you're different I can talk to you
that way. I know I've got to. It's the square thing. You're like
Billy Murphy, or any other man a man can talk to."

She sighed with a great happiness, and looked at him with
unconscious, love-shining eyes.

"It's the same way with me," she said. "The fellows I've run with
I've never dared let talk about such things, because I knew
they'd take advantage of it. Why, all the time, with them, I've a
feeling that we're cheating and lying to each other, playing a
game like at a masquerade ball." She paused for a moment,
hesitant and debating, then went on in a queer low voice. "I
haven't been asleep. I've seen... and heard. I've had my chances,
when I was that tired of the laundry I'd have done almost
anything. I could have got those fancy shirtwaists... an' all the
rest... and maybe a horse to ride. There was a bank cashier...
married, too, if you please. He talked to me straight out. I
didn't count, you know. I wasn't a girl, with a girl's feelings,
or anything. I was nobody. It was just like a business talk. I
learned about men from him. He told me what he'd do. He..."

Her voice died away in sadness, and in the silence she could hear
Billy grit his teeth.

"You can't tell me," he cried. "I know. It's a dirty world--an
unfair, lousy world. I can't make it out. They's no squareness in
it.--Women, with the best that's in 'em, bought an' sold like
horses. I don't understand women that way. I don't understand men
that way. I can't see how a man gets anything but cheated when he
buys such things. It's funny, ain't it? Take my boss an' his
horses. He owns women, too. He might a-owned you, just because
he's got the price. An', Saxon, you was made for fancy
shirtwaists an' all that, but, honest to God, I can't see you
payin' for them that way. It'd be a crime--"

He broke off abruptly and reined in the horses. Around a sharp
turn, speeding down the grade upon them, had appeared an
automobile. With slamming of brakes it was brought to a stop,
while the faces of the occupants took new lease of interest of
life and stared at the young man and woman in the light rig that
barred the way. Billy held up his hand.

"Take the outside, sport," he said to the chauffeur.

"Nothin' doin', kiddo," came the answer, as the chauffeur
measured with hard, wise eyes the crumbling edge of the road and
the downfall of the outside bank.

"Then we camp," Billy announced cheerfully. "I know the rules of
the road. These animals ain't automobile broke altogether, an' if
you think I'm goin' to have 'em shy off the grade you got another
guess comin'."

A confusion of injured protestation arose from those that sat in
the car.

"You needn't be a road-hog because you're a Rube," said the
chauffeur. "We ain't a-goin' to hurt your horses. Pull out so we
can pass. If you don't..."

"That'll do you, sport," was Billy's retort. "You can't talk that
way to yours truly. I got your number an' your tag, my son.
You're standin' on your foot. Back up the grade an' get off of
it. Stop on the outside at the first psssin'-place an' we'll pass
you. You've got the juice. Throw on the reverse."

After a nervous consultation, the chauffeur obeyed, and the car
backed up the hill and out of sight around the turn.

"Them cheap skates," Billy sneered to Saxon, "with a couple of
gallons of gasoline an' the price of a machine a-thinkin' they
own the roads your folks an' my folks made."

"Takln' all night about it?" came the chauffeur's voice from
around the bend. "Get a move on. You can pass."

"Get off your foot," Billy retorted contemptuously. "I'm a-comin'
when I'm ready to come, an' if you ain't given room enough I'll
go clean over you an' your load of chicken meat."

He slightly slacked the reins on the restless, head-tossing
animals, and without need of chirrup they took the weight of the
light vehicle and passed up the hill and apprehensively on the
inside of the purring machine.

"Where was we?" Billy queried, as the clear road showed in front.
"Yep, take my boss. Why should he own two hundred horses, an'
women, an' the rest, an' you an' me own nothin'?"

"You own your silk, Billy," she said softly.

"An' you yours. Yet we sell it to 'em like it was cloth across
the counter at so much a yard. I guess you're hep to what a few
more years in the laundry'll do to you. Take me. I'm sellin' my
silk slow every day I work. See that little finger?" He shifted
the reins to one hand for a moment and held up the free hand for
inspection. "I can't straighten it like the others, an' it's
growin'. I never put it out fightin'. The teamin's done it.
That's silk gone across the counter, that's all. Ever see a old
four-horse teamster's hands? They look like claws they're that
crippled an' twisted."

"Things weren't like that in the old days when our folks crossed
the plains," she answered. "They might a-got their fingers
twisted, but they owned the best goin' in the way of horses and
such."

"Sure. They worked for themselves. They twisted their fingers for
themselves. But I'm twistin' my fingers for my boss. Why, d'ye
know, Saxon, his hands is soft as a woman's that's never done any
work. Yet he owns the horses an' the stables, an' never does a
tap of work, an' I manage to scratch my meal-ticket an' my
clothes. It's got my goat the way things is run. An' who runs 'em
that way? That's what I want to know. Times has changed. Who
changed 'em?"

"God didn't."

"You bet your life he didn't, An' that's another thing that gets
me. Who's God anyway? If he's runnin' things--an' what good is he
if he ain't?--then why does he let my boss, an' men like that
cashier you mentioned, why does he let them own the horses, an'
buy the women, the nice little girls that oughta be lovin' their
own huabands, an' havin' children they're not ashamed of, an'
just bein' happy aecordin' to their nature?"



CHAPTER XI

The horses, resting frequently and lathered by the work, had
climbed the steep grade of the old road to Moraga Valley, and on
the divide of the Contra Costa hills the way descended sharply
through the green and sunny stillness of Redwood Canyon.

"Say, ain't it swell?" Billy queried, with a wave of his hand
indicating the circled tree-groups, the trickle of unseen water,
and the summer hum of bees.

"I love it"' Saxon affirmed. "It makes me want to live in the
country, and I never have."

"Me, too, Saxon. I've never lived in the country in my life--an'
all my folks was country folks."

"No cities then. Everybody lived in the country."

"I guess you're right," he nodded. "They just had to live in the
country."

There was no brake on the light carriage, and Billy became
absorbed in managing his team down the steep, winding road. Saxon
leaned back, eyes closed, with a feeling of ineeffable rest. Time
and again he shot glances at her closed eyes.

"What's the matter?" he asked finally, in mild alarm. "You ain't
sick?"

"It's so beautiful I'm afraid to look," she answered. "It's so
brave it hurts."

"BRAVE?--now that's funnny."

"Isn't it? But it just makes me feel that way. It's brave. Now
the houses and streets and things in the city aren't brave. But
this is. I don't know why. It just is."

"By golly, I think you're right," he exclaimed. "It strikes me
that way, now you speak of it. They ain't no games or tricks
here, no cheatin' an' no lyin'. Them trees just stand up natural
an' strong an' clean like young boys their first time in the ring
before they've learned its rottenness an' how to double-cross an'
lay down to the bettin' odds an' the fightfans. Yep; it is brave.
Say, Saxon, you see things, don't you?" His pause was almost
wistful, and he looked at her and studied her with a caressing
softness that ran through her in resurgent thrills. "D'ye know,
I'd just like you to see me fight some time--a real fight, with
something doin' every moment. I'd be proud to death to do it for
you. An' I'd sure fight some with you lookin' on an'
understandin'. That'd be a fight what is, take it from me. An'
that's funny, too. I never wanted to fight before a woman in my
life. They squeal and screech an' don't understand. But you'd
understand. It's dead open an' shut you would."

A little later, swinging along the flat of the valley, through
the little clearings of the farmers and the ripe grain-stretches
golden in the sunshine, Billy turned to Saxon again.

"Say, you've ben in love with fellows, lots of times. Tell me
about it. What's it like?"

She shook her head slowly.

"I only thought I was in love--and not many times, either--"

"Many times!" he cried.

"Not really ever," she assured him, secretly exultant at his
unconscious jealousy. "I never was really in love. If I had been
I'd be married now. You see, I couldn't see anything else to it
but to marry a man if I loved him."

"But suppose he didn't love you?"

"Oh, I don't know," she smiled, half with facetiousness and half
with certainty and pride. "I think I could make him love me."

"I guess you sure could," Billy proclaimed enthusiastically.

"The trouble is," she went on, "the men that loved me I never
cared for that way.--Oh, look!"

A cottontail rabbit had scuttled across the road, and a tiny dust
cloud lingered like smoke, marking the way of his flight. At the
next turn a dozen quail exploded into the air from under the
noses of the horses. Billy and Saxon exclaimed in mutual delight.

"Gee," he muttered, "I almost wisht I'd ben born a farmer. Folks
wasn't made to live in cities."

"Not our kind, at least," she agreed. Followed a pause and a long
sigh. "It's all so beautiful. It would be a dream just to live
all your life in it. I'd like to be an Indian squaw sometimes."

Several times Billy checked himself on the verge of speech.

"About those fellows you thought you was in love with," he said
finally. "You ain't told me, yet."

"You want to know?" she asked. "They didn't amount to anything."

"Of course I want to know. Go ahead. Fire away."

"Well, first there was Al Stanley--"

"What did he do for a livin'?" Billy demanded, almost as with
authority.

"He wss a gambler."

Billy's face abruptly stiffened, and she could see his eyes
cloudy with doubt in the quick glance he flung at her.

"Oh, it was all right," she laughed. "I was only eight years old.
You see, I'm beginning at the beginning. It was after my mother
died and when I was adopted by Cady. He kept a hotel and saloon.
It was down in Los Angeles. Just a small hotel. Workingmen, just
common laborers, mostly, and some railroad men, stopped at it,
and I guess Al Stanley got his share of their wages. He was so
handsome and so quiet and soft-spoken. And he had the nicest eyes
and the softest, cleanest hands. I can see them now. He played
with me sometimes, in the afternoon, and gave me candy and little
presents. He used to sleep most of the day. I didn't know why,
then. I thought he was a fairy prince in disguise. And then he
got killed, right in the bar-room, but first he killed the man
that killed him. So that was the end of that love affair.

"Next was after the asylum, when I was thirteen and living with
my brother--I've lived with him ever since. He was a boy that
drove a bakery wagon. Almost every morning, on the way to school,
I used to pass him. He would come driving down Wood Street and
turn in on Twelfth. Maybe it was because he drove a horse that
attracted me. Anyway, I must have loved him for a couple of
months. Then he lost his job, or something, for another boy drove
the wagon. And we'd never even spoken to each other.

"Then there was a bookkeeper when I was sixteen. I seem to run to
bookkeepers. It was a bookkeeper at the laundry that Charley Long
beat up. This other one was when I was working in Hickmeyer's
Cannery. He had soft hands, too. But I quickly got all I wanted
of him. He was . . . well, anyway, he had ideas like your boss.
And I never really did love him, truly and honest, Billy. I felt
from the first that he wasn't just right. And when I was working
in the paper-box factory I thought I loved a clerk in Kahn's
Emporium--you know, on Eleventh and Washington. He was all right.
That was the trouble with him. He was too much all right. He
didn't have any life in him, any go. He wanted to marry me,
though. But somehow I couldn't see it. That shows I didn't love
him. He was narrow-chested and skinny, and his hands were always
cold and fishy. But my! he could dress--just like he came out of
a bandbox. He said he was going to drown himself, and all kinds
of things, but I broke with him just the same.

"And after that...well, there isn't any after that. I must have
got particular, I guess, but I didn't see anybody I could love.
It seemed more like a game with the men I met, or a fight. And we
never fought fair on either side. Seemed as if we always had
cards up our sleeves. We weren't honest or outspoken, but instead
it seemed as if we were trying to take advantage of each other.
Charley Long was honest, though. And so was that bank cashier.
And even they made me have the fight feeling harder than ever.
All of them always made me feel I had to take care of myself.
They wouldn't. That was sure."

She stopped and looked with interest at the clean profile of his
face as he watched and guided the homes. He looked at her
inquiringly, and her eyes laughed lazily into his as she
stretched her arms.

"That's all," she concluded. "I've told you everything, which
I've never done before to any one. And it's your turn now."

"Not much of a turn, Saxon. I've never cared for girls--that is,
not enough to want to marry 'em. I always liked men
better--fellows like Billy Murphy. Besides, I guess I was too
interested in trainin' an' fightin' to bother with women much.
Why, Saxon, honest, while I ain't ben altogether good--you
understand what I mean--just the same I ain't never talked love
to a girl in my life. They was no call to."

"The girls have loved you just the same," she teased, while in
her heart was a curious elation at his virginal confession.

He devoted himself to the horses.

"Lots of them," she urged.

Still he did not reply.

"Now, haven't they?"

"Well, it wasn't my fault," he said slowly. "If they wanted to
look sideways at me it was up to them. And it was up to me to
sidestep if I wanted to, wasn't it? You've no idea, Saxon, how a
prizefighter is run after. Why, sometimes it's seemed to me that
girls an' women ain't got an ounce of natural shame in their
make-up. Oh, I was never afraid of them, believe muh, but I
didn't hanker after 'em. A man's a fool that'd let them kind get
his goat.

"Maybe you haven't got love in you," she challenged.

"Maybe I haven't," was his discouraging reply. "Anyway, I don't
see myself lovin' a girl that runs after me. It's all right for
Charley-boys, but a man that is a man don't like bein' chased by
women."

"My mother always said that love was the greatest thing in the
world," Saxon argued. "She wrote poems about it, too. Some of
them were published in the San Jose Mercury."

"What do you think about it?"

"Oh, I don't know," she baffled, meeting his eyes with another
lazy smile. "All I know is it's pretty good to be alive a day
like this."

"On a trip like this--you bet it is," he added promptly.

At one o'clock Billy turned off the road and drove into an open
space among the trees.

"Here's where we eat," he announced. "I thought it'd be better to
have a lunch by ourselves than atop at one of these roadside
dinner counters. An' now, just to make everything safe an'
comfortable, I'm goin' to unharness the horses. We got lots of
time. You can get the lunch basket out an' spread it on the
lap-robe."

As Saxon unpacked she basket she was appalled at his
extravagance. She spread an amazing array of ham and chicken
sandwiches, crab salad, hard-boiled eggs, pickled pigs' feet,
ripe olives and dill pickles, Swiss cheese, salted almonds,
oranges and bananas, and several pint bottles of beer. It was the
quantity as well as the variety that bothered her. It had the
appearance of a reckless attempt to buy out a whole delicatessen
shop.

"You oughtn't to blow yourself that way," she reproved him as he
sat down beside her. "Why it's enough for half a dozen
bricklayers."

"It's all right, isn't it?"

"Yes," she acknowledged. "But that's the trouble. It's too much
so."

"Then it's all right," he concluded. "I always believe in havin'
plenty. Have some beer to wash the dust away before we begin?
Watch out for the glasses. I gotta return them."

Later, the meal finished, he lay on his back, smoking a
cigarette, and questioned her about her earlier history. She had
been telling him of her life in her brother's house, where she
paid four dollars and a half a week board. At fifteen she had
graduated from grammar school and gone to work in the jute mills
for four dollars a week, three of which she had paid to Sarah.

"How about that saloonkeeper?" Billy asked. "How come it he
adopted you?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, except that all my
relatives were hard up. It seemed they just couldn't get on. They
managed to scratch a lean living for themselves, and that was
all. Cady--he was the saloonkeeper--had been a soldier in my
father's company, and he always swore by Captain Kit, which was
their nickname for him. My father had kept the surgeons from
amputating his leg in the war, and he never forgot it. He was
making money in the hotel and saloon, and I found out afterward
he helped out a lot to pay the doctors and to bury my mother
alongside of father. I was to go to Uncle Will--that was my
mother's wish; but there had been fighting up in the Ventura
Mountains where his ranch was, and men had been killed. It was
about fences and cattlemen or something, and anyway he was in
jail a long time, and when he got his freedom the lawyers had got
his ranch. He was an old man, then, and broken, and his wife took
sick, and he got a job as night watchman for forty dollars a
month. So he couldn't do anything for me, and Cady adopted me.

"Cady was a good man, if he did run a saloon. His wife was a big,
handsome-looking woman. I don't think she was all right . . . and
I've heard so since. But she was good to me. I don't care what
they say about her, or what she was. She was awful good to me.
After he died, she went altogether bad, and so I went into the
orphan asylum. It wasn't any too good there, and I had three
years of it. And then Tom had married and settled down to steady
work, and he took me out to live with him. And--well, I've been
working pretty steady ever since."

She gazed sadly away across the fields until her eyes came to
rest on a fence bright-splashed with poppies at its base. Billy,
who from his supine position had been looking up at her, studying
and pleasuring in the pointed oval of her woman's face, reached
his hand out slowly as he murmured:

"You poor little kid."

His hand closed sympathetically on her bare forearm, and as she
looked down to greet his eyes she saw in them suprise and
delight.

"Say, ain't your skin cool though," he said. "Now me, I'm always
warm. Feel my hand."

It was warmly moist, and she noted microscopic beads of sweat on
his forehead and clean-shaven upper lip.

"My, but you are sweaty."

She bent to him and with her handkerchief dabbed his lip and
forehead dry, then dried his palms.

"I breathe through my skin, I guess," he explained. "The wise
guys in the trainin' camps and gyms say it's a good sign for
health. But somehow I'm sweatin' more than usual now. Funny,
ain't it?"

She had been forced to unclasp his hand from her arm in order to
dry it, and when she finished, it returned to its old position.

"But, say, ain't your skin cool," he repeated with renewed
wonder. "Soft as velvet, too, an' smooth as silk. It feels
great."

Gently explorative, he slid his hand from wrist to elbow and came
to rest half way back. Tired and languid from the morning in the
sun, she found herself thrilling to his touch and half-dreamily
deciding that here was a man she could love, hands and all.

"Now I've taken the cool all out of that spot." He did not look
up to her, and she could see the roguish smile that curled on his
lips. "So I guess I'll try another."

He shifted his hand along her arm with soft sensuousness, and
she, looking down at his lips, remembered the long tingling they
had given hers the first time they had met.

"Go on and talk," he urged, after a delicious five minutes of
silence. "I like to watch your lips talking. It's funny, but
every move they make looks like a tickly kiss."

Greatly she wanted to stay where she was. Instead, she said:

"If I talk, you won't like what I say."

"Go on," he insisted. "You can't say anything I won't like."

"Well, there's some poppies over there by the fence I want to
pick. And then it's time for us to be going."

"I lose," he laughed. "But you made twenty-five tickle kisses
just the same. I counted 'em. I'll tell you what: you sing 'When
the Harvest Days Are Over,' and let me have your other cool arm
while you're doin' it, and then we'll go."

She sang looking down into his eyes, which ware centered, not on
hers, but on her lips. When she finished, she slipped his hands
from her arms and got up. He was about to start for the horses,
when she held her jacket out to him. Despite the independence
natural to a girl who earned her own living, she had an innate
love of the little services and finenesses; and, also, she
remembered from her childhood the talk by the pioneer women of
the courtesy and attendance of the caballeros of the
Spanish-California days.

Sunset greeted them when, after a wide circle to the east and
south, they cleared the divide of the Contra Costa hills and
began dropping down the long grade that led past Redwood Peak to
Fruitvale. Beneath them stretched the flatlands to the bay,
checkerboarded into fields and broken by the towns of Elmhurst,
San Leandro, and Haywards. The smoke of Oakland filled the
western sky with haze and murk, while beyond, across the bay,
they could see the first winking lights of San Francisco.

Darkness was on them, and Billy had become curiously silent. For
half an hour he had given no recognition of her existence save
once, when the chill evening wind caused him to tuck the robe
tightly about her and himself. Half a dozen times Saxon found
herself on the verge of the remark, "What's on your mind?" but
each time let it remain unuttered. She sat very close to him. The
warmth of their bodies intermingled, and she was aware of a great
restfulness and content.

"Say, Saxon," he began abruptly. "It's no use my holdin' it in
any longer. It's ben in my mouth all day, ever since lunch.
What's the matter with you an' me gettin' married?"

She knew, very quietly and very gladly, that he meant it.
Instinctively she wss impelled to hold off, to make him woo her,
to make herself more desirably valuable ere she yielded. Further,
her woman's sensitiveness and pride were offended. She had never
dreamed of so forthright and bald a proposal from the man to whom
she would give herself. The simplicity and directness of Billy's
proposal constituted almost a hurt. On the other hand she wanted
him so much--how much she had not realized until now, when he had
so unexpectedly made himself accessible.

"Well you gotta say something, Saxon. Hand it to me, good or bad;
but anyway hand it to me. An' just take into consideration that I
love you. Why, I love you like the very devil, Saxon. I must,
because I'm askin' you to marry me, an' I never asked any girl
that before."

Another silence fell, and Saxon found herself dwelling on the
warmth, tingling now, under the lap-robe. When she realized
whither her thoughts led, she blushed guiltily in the darkness.

"How old are you, Billy?" she questioned, with a suddenness and
irrelevance as disconcerting as his first words had been.

"Twenty-two," he answered.

"I am twenty-four."

"As if I didn't know. When you left the orphan asylum and how old
you were, how long you worked in the jute mills, the cannery, the
paper-box factory, the laundry--maybe you think I can't do
addition. I knew how old you was, even to your birthday."

"That doesn't change the fact that I'm two years older."

"What of it? If it counted for anything, I wouldn't be lovin'
you, would I? Your mother was dead right. Love's the big stuff.
It's what counts. Don't you see? I juat love you, an' I gotta
have you. It's natural, I guess; and I've always found with
horses, dogs, and other folks, that what's natural is right.
There's no gettin' away from it, Saxon; I gotta have you, an' I'm
just hopin' hard you gotta have me. Maybe my hands ain't soft
like bookkeepers' an' clerks, but they can work for you, an'
fight like Sam Hill for you, and, Saxon, they can love you."

The old sex antagonism which she had always experienced with men
seemed to have vanished. She had no sense of being on the
defensive. This was no game. It was what she had been looking for
and dreaming about. Before Billy she was defenseless, and there
was an all-satisfaction in the knowledge. She could deny him
nothing. Not even if he proved to be like the others. And out of
the greatness of the thought rose a greater thought--he would not
so prove himself.

She did not speak. Instead, in a glow of spirit and flesh, she
reached out to his left hand and gently tried to remove it from
the rein. He did not understand; but when she persisted he
shifted the rein to his right and let her have her will with the
other hand. Her head bent over it, and she kissed the teamster
callouses.

For the moment he was stunned.

"You mean it?" he stammered.

For reply, she kissed the hand again and murmured:

"I love your hands, Billy. To me they are the most beautiful
hands in the world, and it would take hours of talking to tell
you all they mean to me."

"Whoa!" he called to the horses.

He pulled them in to a standstill, soothed them with his voice,
and made the reins fast around the whip. Then he turned to her
with arms around her and lips to lips.

"Oh, Billy, I'll make you a good wife," she sobbed, when the kiss
was broken.

He kissed her wet eyes and found her lips again.

"Now you know what I was thinkin' and why I was sweatin' when we
was eatin' lunch. Just seemed I couldn't hold in much longer from
tellin' you. Why, you know, you looked good to me from the first
moment I spotted you."

"And I think I loved you from that first day, too, Billy. And I
was so proud of you all that day, you were so kind and gentle,
and so strong, and the way the men all respected you and the
girls all wanted you, and the way you fought those three Irishmen
when I was behind the picnic table. I couldn't love or marry a
man I wasn't proud of, and I'm so proud of you, so proud."

"Not half as much as I am right now of myself," he answered, "for
having won you. It's too good to he true. Maybe the alarm
clock'll go off and wake me up in a couple of minutes. Well,
anyway, if it does, I'm goin' to make the best of them two
minutes first. Watch out I don't eat you, I'm that hungry for
you."

He smothered her in an embrace, holding her so tightly to him
that it almost hurt. After what was to her an age-long period of
bliss, his arms relaxed and he seemed to make an effort to draw
himself together.

 "An' the clock ain't gone off yet," he whispered against her
cheek. "And it's a dark night, an' there's Fruitvale right ahead,
an' if there ain't King and Prince standin' still in the middle
of the road. I never thought the time'd come when I wouldn't want
to take the ribbons on a fine pair of horses. But this is that
time. I just can't let go of you, and I've gotta some time
to-night. It hurts worse'n poison, but here goes."

He restored her to herself, tucked the disarranged robe about
her, and chirruped to the impatient team.

Half an hour later he called "Whoa!"

"I know I'm awake now, but I don't know but maybe I dreamed all
the rest, and I just want to make sure."

And again be made the reins fast and took her in his arms.



CHAPTER XII

The days flew by for Saxon. She worked on steadily at the
laundry, even doing more overtime than usual, and all her free
waking hours were devoted to preparations for the great change
and to Billy. He had proved himself God's own impetuous lover by
insisting on getting married the next day after the proposal, and
then by resolutely refusing to compromise on more than a week's
delay.

"Why wait?" he demanded. "We're not gettin' any younger so far as
I can notice, an' think of all we lose every day we wait."

In the end, he gave in to a month, which was well, for in two
weeks he was transferred, with half a dozen other drivers, to
work from the big stables of Corberly and Morrison in West
Oakland. House-hunting in the other end of town ceased, and on
Pine Street, between Fifth and Fourth, and in immediate proximity
to the great Southern Pacific railroad yards, Billy and Saxon
rented a neat cottage of four small rooms for ten dollars a
month.

"Dog-cheap is what I call it, when I think of the small rooms
I've ben soaked for," was Billy's judgment. "Look at the one I
got now, not as big as the smallest here, an' me payin' six
dollars a month for it."

"But it's furnished," Saxon remmded him. "You see, that makes a
difference."

But Billy didn't see.

"I ain't much of a scholar, Saxon, but I know simple arithmetic;
I've soaked my watch when I was hard up, and I can calculate
interest. How much do you figure it will cost to furnish the
house, carpets on the floor, linoleum on the kitchen, and all?"

"We can do it nicely for three hundred dollars," she answered.
"I've been thinking it over and I'm sure we can do it for that."

"Three hundred," he muttered, wrinkling his brows with
concentration. "Three hundred, say at six per cent.--that'd be
six cents on the dollar, sixty cents on ten dollars, six dollars
on the hundred, on three hundred eighteen dollars. Say--I'm a
bear at multiplyin' by ten. Now divide eighteen by twelve, that'd
be a dollar an' a half a month interest." He stopped, satisfied
that he had proved his contention. Then his face quickened with a
fresh thought. "Hold on! That ain't all. That'd be the interest
on the furniture for four rooms. Divide by four. What's a dollar
an' a half divided by four?"

"Four into fifteen, three times and three to carry," Saxon
recited glibly. "Four into thirty is seven, twenty-eight, two to
carry; and two-fourths is one-half. There you are."

"Gee! You're the real bear at figures." He hesitated. "I didn't
follow you. How much did you say it was?"

"Thirty-seven and a half cents."

"Ah, ha! Now we'll see how much I've ben gouged for my one room.
Ten dollars a month for four rooms is two an' a half for one. Add
thirty-seven an' a half cents interest on furniture, an' that
makes two dollars an' eighty-seven an' a half cents. Subtract
from six dollars ..."

"Three dollars and twelve and a half cents," she supplied
quickly.

"There we are! Three dollars an' twelve an' a half cents I'm
jiggered out of on the room I'm rentin'. Say! Bein' married is
like savin' money, ain't it?"

"But furniture wears out, Billy."

"By golly, I never thought of that. It ought to be figured, too.
Anyway, we've got a snap here, and next Saturday afternoon you've
gotta get off from the laundry so as we can go an' buy our
furniture. I saw Salinger's last night. I give'm fifty down, and
the rest installment plan, ten dollars a month. In twenty-five
months the furniture's ourn. An' remember, Saxon, you wanta buy
everything you want, no matter how much it costs. No scrimpin' on
what's for you an' me. Get me?"

She nodded, with no betrayal on her face of the myriad secret
economies that filled her mind. A hint of moisture glistened in
her eyes.

"You're so good to me, Billy," she murmured, as she came to him
and was met inside his arms.

"So you've gone an' done it," Mary commented, one morning in the
laundry. They had not been at work ten minutes ere her eye had
glimpsed the topaz ring on the third finger of Saxon's left hand.
"Who's the lucky one? Charley Long or Billy Roberts?"

"Billy," was the answer.

"Huh! Takin' a young boy to raise, eh?"

Saxon showed that the stab had gone home, and Mary was all
contrition.

"Can't you take a josh? I'm glad to death at the news. Billy's a
awful good man, and I'm glad to see you get him. There ain't many
like him knockin' 'round, an' they ain't to be had for the
askin'. An' you're both lucky. You was just made for each other,
an' you'll make him a better wife than any girl I know. when is
it to be?"

Going home from the laundry a few days later, Saxon encountered
Charley Long. He blocked the sidewalk, and compelled speech with
her.

"So you're runnin' with a prizefighter," he sneered. "A blind man
can see your finish."

For the first time she was unafraid of this big-bodied,
black-browed men with the hairy-matted hands and fingers. She
held up her left hand.

"See that? It's something, with all your strength, that you could
never put on my finger. Billy Roberts put it on inside a week. He
got your number, Charley Long, and at the same time he got me."

"Skiddoo for you," Long retorted. "Twenty-three's your number."

"He's not like you," Saxon went on. "He's a man, every bit of
him, a fine, clean man."

Long laughed hoarsely.

"He's got your goat all right."

"And yours," she flashed back.

"I could tell you things about him. Saxon, straight, he ain't no
good. If I was to tell you--"

"You'd better get out of my way," she interrupted, "or I'll tell
him, and you know what you'll get, you great big bully."

Long shuffled uneasily, then reluctantly stepped aside.

"You're a caution," he said, half admiiringly.

"So's Billy Roberts," she laughed, and continned on her way.
After half a dozen steps she stopped. "Say," she called.

The big blacksmith turned toward her with eagerness.

"About a block back," she said, "I saw a man with hip disease.
You might go and beat him up."

Of one extravagance Saxon was guilty in the course of the brief
engagement period. A full day's wages she spent in the purchase
of half a dozen cabinet photographs of herself. Billy had
insisted that life was unendurable could he not look upon her
semblance the last thing when he went to bed at night and the
first thing when he got up in the morning. In return, his
photographs, one conventional and one in the stripped fighting
costume of the ring, ornamented her looking glass. It was while
gazing at the latter that she was reminded of her wonderful
mother's tales of the ancient Saxons and sea-foragers of the
English coasts. From the chest of drawers that had crossed the
plains she drew forth another of her several precious heirloom--a
scrap-book of her mother's in which was pasted much of the
fugitive newspaper verse of pioneer California days. Also, there
were copies of paintings and old wood engravings from the
magazines of a generation and more before.

Saxon ran the pages with familiar fingers and stopped at the
picture she was seeking. Between bold headlands of rock and under
a gray cloud-blown sky, a dozen boats, long and lean and dark,
beaked like monstrous birds, were landing on a foam-whitened
beach of sand. The men in the boats, half naked, huge-muscled and
fair-haired, wore winged helmets. In their hands were swords and
spears, and they were leaping, waist-deep, into the sea-wash and
wading ashore. Opposed to them, contesting the landing, were
skin-clad savages, unlike Indians, however, who clustered on the
beach or waded into the water to their knees. The first blows
were being struck, and here and there the bodies of the dead and
wounded rolled in the surf. One fair-haired invader lay across
the gunwale of a boat, the manner of his death told by the arrow
that transfixed his breast. In the air, leaping past him into the
water, sword in hand, was Billy. There was no mistaking it. The
striking blondness, the face, the eyes, the mouth were the same.
The very expression on the face was what had been on Billy's the
day of the picnic when he faced the three wild Irishmen.

Somewhere out of the ruck of those warring races had emerged
Billy's ancestors, and hers, was her afterthought, as she closed
the book and put it back in the drawer. And some of those
ancestors had made this ancient and battered chest of drawers
which had crossed the salt ocean and the plains and been pierced
by a bullet in the fight with the Indians at Little Meadow.
Almost, it seemed, she could visualize the women who had kept
their pretties and their family homespun in its drawers--the
women of those wandering generations who were grandmothers and
greater great grandmothers of her own mother. Well, she sighed,
it was a good stock to be born of, a hard-working, hard-fighting
stock. She fell to wondering what her life would have been like
had she been born a Chinese woman, or an Italian woman like those
she saw, head-shawled or bareheaded, squat, ungainly and swarthy,
who carried great loads of driftwood on their heads up from tha
beach. Then she laughed at her foolishness, remembered Billy and
the four-roomed cottage on Pine Street, and went to bed with her
mind filled for the hundredth time with the details of the
furniture.



CHAPTER XIII

"Our cattle were all played out," Saxon was saying, "and winter
was so near that we couldn't dare try to cross the Great American
Desert, so our train stopped in Salt Lake City that winter. The
Mormons hadn't got bad yet, and they were good to us."

"You talk as though you were there," Bert commented.

"My mother was," Saxon answered proudly. "She was nine years old
that winter."

They were seated around the table in the kitchen of the little
Pine Street cottage, making a cold lunch of sandwiches, tamales,
and bottled beer. It being Sunday, the four were free from work,
and they had come early, to work harder than on any week day,
washing walls and windows, scrubbing floors, laying carpets and
linoleum, hanging curtains, setting up the stove, putting the
kitchen utensils and dishes away, and placing the furniture.

"Go on with the story, Saxon," Mary begged. "I'm just dyin' to
hear. And Bert, you just shut up and listen."

"Well, that winter was when Del Hancock showed up. He was
Kentucky born, but he'd been in the West for years. He was a
scout, like Kit Carson, and he knew him well. Many's a time Kit
Carson and he slept under the same blankets. They were together
to California and Oregon with General Fremont. Well, Del Hancock
was passing on his way through Salt Lake, going I don't know
where to raise a company of Rocky Mountain trappers to go after
beaver some new place he knew about. Ha was a handsome man. He
wore his hair long like in pictures, and had a silk sash around
his waist he'd learned to wear in California from the Spanish,
and two revolvers in his belt. Any woman 'd fall in love with him
first sight. Well, he saw Sadie, who was my mother's oldest
sister, and I guess she looked good to him, for he stopped right
there in Salt Lake and didn't go a step. He was a great Indian
fighter, too, and I heard my Aunt Villa say, when I was a little
girl, that he had the blackest, brightest eyes, and that the way
he looked was like an eagle. He'd fought duels, too, the way they
did in those days, and he wasn't afraid of anything.

"Sadie was a beauty, and she flirted with him and drove him
crazy. Maybe she wasn't sure of her own mind, I don't know. But I
do know that she didn't give in as easy as I did to Billy.
Finally, he couldn't stand it any more. Ha rode up that night on
horseback, wild as could be. 'Sadie,' he said, 'if you don't
promise to marry me to-morrow, I'll shoot myself to-night right
back of the corral.' And he'd have done it, too, and Sadie knew
it, and said she would. Didn't they make love fast in those
days?"

"Oh, I don't know," Mary sniffed. "A week after you first laid
eyes on Billy you was engaged. Did Billy say he was going to
shoot himself back of the laundry if you turned him down?"

"I didn't give him a chance," Saxon confessed. "Anyway Del
Hancock and Aunt Sadie got married next day. And they were very
happy afterward, only she died. And after that he was killed,
with General Custer and all the rest, by the Indians. He was an
old man by then, but I guess he got his share of Indians before
they got him. Men like him always died fighting, and they took
their dead with them. I used to know Al Stanley when I was a
little girl. He was a gambler, but he was game. A railroad man
shot him in the back when he was sitting at a table. That shot
killed him, too. He died in about two seconds. But before he died
he'd pulled his gun and put three bullets into the man that
killed him."

"I don't like fightin'," Mary protested. "It makes me nervous.
Bert gives me the willies the way he's always lookin' for
trouble. There ain't no sense in it."

"And I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for a man without
fighting spirit," Saxon answered. "why, we wouldn't be here
to-day if it wasn't for the fighting spirit of our people before
us."

"You've got the real goods of a fighter in Billy," Bert assured
her; "a yard long and a yard wide and genuine A Number One,
long-fleeced wool. Billy's a Mohegan with a scalp-lock, that's
what he is. And when he gets his mad up it's a case of get out
from under or something will fall on you--hard."

"Just like that," Mary added.

Billy, who had taken no part in the conversation, got up, glanced
into the bedroom off the kitchen, went into the parlor and the
bedroom off the parlor, then returned and stood gazing with
puzzled brows into the kitchen bedroom.

"What's eatin' you, old man," Bert queried. "You look as though
you'd lost something or was markin' a three-way ticket. What you
got on your chest? Cough it up."

"Why, I'm just thinkin' where in Sam Hill's the bed an' stuff for
the back bedroom."

"There isn't any," Saxon explained. "We didn't order any."

"Then I'll see about it to-morrow."

"What d'ye want another bed for?" asked Bert. "Ain't one bed
enough for the two of you?"

"You shut up, Bert!" Mary cried. "Don't get raw."

"Whoa, Mary!" Bert grinned. "Back up. You're in the wrong stall
as usual."

"We don't need that room," Saxon was saying to Billy. "And so I
didn't plan any furniture. That money went to buy better carpets
and a better stove."

Billy came over to her, lifted her from the chair, and seated
himself with her on his knees.

"That's right, little girl. I'm glad you did. The best for us
every time. And to-morrow night I want you to run up with me to
Salinger's an' pick out a good bedroom set an' carpet for that
room. And it must be good. Nothin' snide."

"It will cost fifty dollars," she objected.

"That's right," he nodded. "Make it cost fifty dollars and not a
cent less. We're goin' to have the best. And what's the good of
an empty room? It'd make the house look cheap. Why, I go around
now, seein' this little nest just as it grows an' softens, day by
day, from the day we paid the cash money down an' nailed the
keys. Why, almost every moment I'm drivin' the horses, all day
long, I just keep on seein' this nest. And when we're married,
I'll go on seein' it. And I want to see it complete. If that
room'd he bare-floored an' empty, I'd see nothin' but it and its
bare floor all day long. I'd be cheated. The house'd be a lie.
Look at them curtains you put up in it, Saxon. That's to make
believe to the neighbors that it's furnished. Saxon, them
curtains are lyin' about that room, makin' a noise for every one
to hear that that room's furnished. Nitsky for us. I'm goin' to
see that them curtains tell the truth."

"You might rent it," Bert suggested. "You're close to the
railroad yards, and it's only two blocks to a restaurant."

"Not on your life. I ain't marryin' Saxon to take in lodgers. If
I can't take care of her, d'ye know what I'll do ? Go down to
Long Wharf, say 'Here goes nothin',' an' jump into the bay with a
stone tied to my neck. Ain't I right, Saxon?"

It was contrary to her prudent judgment, but it fanned her pride.
She threw her arms around her lover's neck, and said, ere she
kissed him:

"You're the boss, Billy. What you say goes, and always will go."

"Listen to that!" Bert gibed to Mary. "That's the stuff. Saxon's
onto her job."

"I guess we'll talk things over together first before ever I do
anything," Billy was saying to Saxon.

"Listen to that," Mary triumphed. "You bet the man that marries
me'll have to talk things over first."

"Billy's only givin' her hot air," Bert plagued. "They all do it
before they're married."

Mary sniffed contemptuously.

"I'll bet Saxon leads him around by the nose. And I'm goin' to
say, loud an' strong, that I'll lead the man around by the nose
that marries me."

"Not if you love him," Saxon interposed.

"All the more reason," Mary pursued.

Bert assumed an expression and attitude of mournful dejection.

"Now you see why me an' Mary don't get married," he said. "I'm
some big Indian myself, an' I'll be everlastingly jiggerooed if I
put up for a wigwam I can't be boss of."

"And I'm no squaw," Mary retaliated, "an' I wouldn't marry a big
buck Indian if all the rest of the men in the world was dead."

"Well this big buck Indian ain't asked you yet."

"He knows what he'd get if he did."

"And after that maybe he'll think twice before he does ask you."

Saxon, intent on diverting the conversation into pleasanter
channels, clapped her hands as if with sudden recollection.

"Oh! I forgot! I want to show you something." From her purse she
drew a slender ring of plain gold and passed it around. "My
mother's wedding ring. I've worn it around my neck always, like a
locket. I cried for it so in the orphan asylum that the matron
gave it back for me to wear. And now, just to think, after next
Tuesday I'll be wearing it on my finger. Look, Billy, see the
engraving on the inside."

"C to D, 1879," he read.

"Carlton to Daisy--Carlton was my father's first name. And now,
Billy, you've got to get it engraved for you and me."

Mary was all eagerness and delight.

"Oh, it's fine," she cried. "W to S, 1907."

Billy considered a moment.

"No, that wouldn't be right, because I'm not giving it to Saxon."

"I'll tell you what," Saxon said. "W and S."

"Nope." Billy shook his head. "S and W, because you come first
with me."

"If I come first with you, you come first with us. Billy, dear, I
insist on W and S."

"You see," Mary said to Bert. "Having her own way and leading him
by the nose already."

Saxon acknowledged the sting.

"Anyway you want, Billy," she surrendered. His arms tightened
about her.

"We'll talk it over first, I guess."



CHAPTER XIV

Sarah was conservative. Worse, she had crystallized at the end of
her love-time with the coming of her first child. After that she
was as set in her ways as plaster in a mold. Her mold was the
prejudices and notions of her girlhood and the house she lived
in. So habitual was she that any change in the customary round
assumed the proportions of a revolution. Tom had gone through
many of these revolutions, three of them when he moved house.
Then his stamina broke, and he never moved house again.

So it was that Saxon had held back the announcement of her
approaching marriage until it was unavoidable. She expected a
scene, and she got it.

"A prizefighter, a hoodlum, a plug-ugly," Sarah sneered, after
she had exhausted herself of all calamitous forecasts of her own
future and the future of her children in the absence of Saxon's
weekly four dollars and a half. "I don't know what your mother'd
thought if she lived to see the day when you took up with a tough
like Bill Roberts. Bill! Why, your mother was too refined to
associate with a man that was called Bill. And all I can say is
you can say good-bye to silk stockings and your three pair of
shoes. It won't be long before you'll think yourself lucky to go
sloppin' around in Congress gaiters and cotton stockin's two pair
for a quarter."

"Oh, I'm not afraid of Billy not being able to keep me in all
kinds of shoes," Saxon retorted with a proud toss of her head.

"You don't know what you're talkin' about." Sarah paused to laugh
in mirthless discordance. "Watch for the babies to come. They
come faster than wages raise these days."

"But we're not going to have any babies ... that is, at first.
Not until after the furniture is all paid for anyway."

"Wise in your generation, eh? In my days girls were more modest
than to know anything about disgraceful subjects."

"As babies?" Saxon queried, with a touch of gentle malice.

"Yes, as babies."

"The first I knew that babies were disgraceful. Why, Sarah, you,
with your five, how disgraceful you have been. Billy and I have
decided not to be half as disgraceful. We're only going to have
two--a boy and a girl."

Tom chuckled, but held the peace by hiding his face in his coffee
cup. Sarah, though checked by this flank attack, was herself an
old hand in the art. So temporary was the setback that she
scarcely paused ere hurling her assault from a new angle.

"An' marryin' so quick, all of a sudden, eh? If that ain't
suspicious, nothin' is. I don't know what young women's comin'
to. They ain't decent, I tell you. They ain't decent. That's what
comes of Sunday dancin' an' all the rest. Young women nowadays
are like a lot of animals. Such fast an' looseness I never saw
..."

Saxon was white with anger, but while Sarah wandered on in her
diatribe, Tom managed to wink privily and prodigiously at his
sister and to implore her to help in keeping the peace.

"It's all right, kid sister," he comforted Saxon when they were
alone. "There's no use talkin' to Sarah. Bill Roberts is a good
boy. I know a lot about him. It does you proud to get him for a
husband. You're bound to he happy with him . . ." His voice sank,
and his face seemed suddenly to be very old and tired as he went
on anxiously. "Take warning from Sarah. Don't nag. Whatever you
do, don't nag. Don't give him a perpetual-motion line of chin.
Kind of let him talk once in a while. Men have some horse sense,
though Sarah don't know it. Why, Sarah actually loves me, though
she don't make a noise like it. The thing for you is to love your
husband, and, by thunder, to make a noise of lovin' him, too. And
then you can kid him into doing 'most anything you want. Let him
have his way once in a while, and he'll let you have yourn. But
you just go on lovin' him, and leanin' on his judgement--he's no
fool--and you'll be all hunky-dory. I'm scared from goin' wrong,
what of Sarah. But I'd sooner be loved into not going wrong."

"Oh, I'll do it, Tom," Saxon nodded, smiling through the tears
his sympathy had brought into her eyes. "And on top of it I'm
going to do something else, I'm going to make Billy love me and
just keep on loving me. And then I won't have to kid him into
doing some of the things I want. He'll do them because he loves
me, you see."

"You got the right idea, Saxon. Stick with it, an' you'll win
out."

Later, when she had put on her hat to start for the laundry, she
found Tom waiting for her at the corner.

"An', Saxon," he said, hastily and haltingly, "you won't take
anything I've said . . . you know . .--about Sarah . . . as bein'
in any way disloyal to her? She's a good woman, an' faithful. An'
her life ain't so easy by a long shot. I'd bite out my tongue
before I'd say anything against her. I gueas all folks have their
troubles. It's hell to be poor, ain't it?"

"You've been awful good to me, Tom. I can never forget it. And I
know Sarah means right. She does do her best."

"I won't be able to give you a wedding present," her brother
ventured apologetically. "Sarah won't hear of it. Says we didn't
get none from my folks when we got married. But I got something
for you just the same. A surprise. You'd never guess it."

Saxon waited.

"When you told me you was goin' to get married, I just happened
to think of it, an' I wrote to brother George, askin' him for it
for you. An' by thunder he sent it by express. I didn't tell you
because I didn't know but maybe he'd sold it. He did sell the
silver spurs. He needed the money, I guess. But the other, I had
it sent to the shop so as not to bother Sarah, an' I sneaked it
in last night an' hid it in the woodshed."

"Oh, it is something of my father's! What is it? Oh, what is it?"

"His army sword."

"The one he wore on his roan war horse! Oh, Tom, you couldn't
give me a better present. Let's go back now. I want to see it. We
can slip in the back way. Sarah's washing in the kitchen, and she
won't begin hanging out for an hour."

"I spoke to Sarah about lettin' you take the old chest of drawers
that was your mother's," Tom whispered, as they stole along the
narrow alley between the houses. "Only she got on her high horse.
Said that Daisy was as much my mother as yourn, even if we did
have different fathers, and that the chest had always belonged in
Daisy's family and not Captain Kit's, an' that it was mine, an'
what was mine she had some say-so about."

"It's all right," Saxon reassured him. "She sold it to me last
night. She was waiting up for me when I got home with fire in her
eye."

"Yep, she was on the warpath all day after I mentioned it. How
much did you give her for it?"

"Six dollars."

"Robbery--it ain't worth it," Tom groaned. "It's all cracked at
one end and as old as the hills."

"I'd have given ten dollars for it. I'd have given 'most anything
for it, Tom. It was mother's, you know. I remember it in her room
when she was still alive."

In the woodshed Tom resurrected the hidden treasure and took off
the wrapping paper. Appeared a rusty, steel-scabbarded saber of
the heavy type carried by cavalry officers in Civil War days. It
was attached to a moth-eaten sash of thick-woven crimson silk
from which hung heavy silk tassels. Saxon almost seized it from
her brother in her eagerness. She drew forth the blade and
pressed her lips to the steel.

It was her last day at the laundry. She was to quit work that
evening for good. And the next afternoon, at five, she and Billy
were to go before a justice of the peace and be married. Bert and
Mary were to be the witnesses, and after that the four were to go
to a private room in Barnum's Restaurant for the wedding supper.
That over, Bert and Mary would proceed to a dance at Myrtle Hall,
while Billy and Saxon would take the Eighth Street car to Seventh
and Pine. Honeymoons are infrequent in the working class. The
next morning Billy must be at the stable at his regular hour to
drive his team out.

All the women in the fancy starch room knew it was Saxon's last
day. Many exulted for her, and not a few were envious of her, in
that she had won a husband and to freedom from the suffocating
slavery of the ironing board. Much of bantering she endured; such
was the fate of every girl who married out of the fancy starch
room. But Saxon was too happy to be hurt by the teasing, a great
deal of which was gross, but all of which was good-natured.

In the steam that arose from under her iron, and on the surfaces
of the dainty lawns and muslins that flew under her hands, she
kept visioning herself in the Pine Street cottage; and steadily
she hummed under her breath her paraphrase of the latest popular
song:

"And when I work, and when I work,
I'll always work for Billy."

By three in the afternoon the strain of the piece-workers in the
humid, heated room grew tense. Elderly women gasped and sighed;
the color went out of the cheeks of the young women, their faces
became drawn and dark circles formed under their eyes; but all
held on with weary, unabated speed. The tireless, vigilant
forewoman kept a sharp lookout for incipient hysteria, and once
led a narrow-chested, stoop-shouldered young thing out of the
place in time to prevent a collapse.

Saxon was startled by the wildest scream of terror she had evor
heard. The tense thread of human resolution snapped; wills and
nerves broke down, and a hundred women suspended their irons or
dropped them. It was Mary who had screamed so terribly, and Saxon
saw a strange black animal flapping great claw-like wings and
nestling on Mary's shoulder. With the scream, Mary crouched down,
and the strange creature, darting into the air, fluttered full
into the startled face of a woman at the next board. This woman
promptly screamed and fainted. Into the air again, the flying
thing darted hither and thither, while the shrieking, shrinking
women threw up their arms, tried to run away along the aisles, or
cowered under their ironing boards.

"It's only a bat!" the forewoman shouted. She was furious. "Ain't
you ever seen a bat? It won't eat you!"

But they were ghetto people, and were not to be quieted. Some
woman who could not see the cause of the uproar, out of her
overwrought apprehension raised the cry of fire and precipitated
the panic rush for the doors. All of them were screaming the
stupid, soul-sickening high note of terror, drowning the
forewoman's voice. Saxon had been merely startled at first, but
the screaming panic broke her grip on herself and swept her away.
Though she did not scream, she fled with the rest. When this
horde of crazed women debouched on the next department, Those who
worked there joined in the stampede to escape from they knew not
what danger. In ten minutes the laundry was deserted, save for a
few men wandering about with hand grenades in futile search for
the cause of the disturbance.

The forewoman was stout, but indomitable. Swept along half the
length of an aisle by the terror-stricken women, she had broken
her way back through the rout and quickly caught the
light-blinded visitant in a clothes basket.

"Maybe I don't know what God looks like, but take it from me I've
seen a tintype of the devil," Mary gurgled, emotionally
fluttering back and forth between laughter and tears.

But Saxon was angry with herself, for she had been as frightened
as the rest in that wild flight for out-of-doors.

"We're a lot of fools," she said. "It was only a bat. I've heard
about them. They live in the country. They wouldn't hurt a fly.
They can't see in the daytime. That was what was the matter with
this one. It was only a bat."

"Huh, you can't string me," Mary replied. "It was the devil." She
sobbed a moment, and then laughed hysterically again. "Did you
see Mrs. Bergstrom faint? And it only touched her in the face.
Why, it was on my shoulder and touching my bare neck like the
hand of a corpse. And I didn't faint." She laughed again. "I
guess, maybe, I was too scared to faint."

"Come on back," Saxon urged. "We've lost half an hour."

"Not me. I'm goin' home after that, if they fire me. I couldn't
iron for sour apples now, I'm that shaky."

One woman had broken a leg, another an arm, and a number nursed
milder bruises and bruises. No bullying nor entreating of the
forewoman could persuade the women to return to work. They were
too upset and nervous, and only here and there could one be found
brave enough to re-enter the bullding for the hats and lunch
baskets of the others. Saxon was one of the handful that returned
and worked till six o'clock.



CHAPTER XV

"Why, Bert!--you're squiffed!" Mary cried reproachfully.

The four were at the table in the private room at Barnum's. The
wedding supper, simple enough, but seemingly too expensive to
Saxon, had been eaten. Bert, in his hand a glass of California
red wine, which the management supplied for fifty cents a bottle,
was on his feet endeavoring a speech. His face was flushed; his
black eyes wers feverishly bright.

"You've ben drinkin' before you met me," Mary continued. "I can
see it stickin' out all over you."

"Consult an oculist, my dear," he replied. "Bertram is himself
to-night. An' he is here, arisin' to his feet to give the glad
hand to his old pal. Bill, old man, here's to you. It's how-de-do
an' good-bye, I guess. You're a married man now, Bill, an' you
got to keep regular hours. No more runnin' around with the boys.
You gotta take care of yourself, an' get your life insured, an'
take out an accident policy, an' join a buildin' an' loan
society, an' a buryin' association--"

"Now you shut up, Bert," Mary broke in. "You don't talk about
buryin's at weddings. You oughta be ashamed of yourself."

"Whoa, Mary! Back up! I said what I said because I meant it. I
ain't thinkin' what Mary thinks. What I was thinkin' ... Let me
tell you what I was thinkin'. I said buryin' association, didn't
I? Well, it was not with the idea of castin' gloom over this
merry gatherin'. Far be it..."

He was so evidently seeking a way out of his predicament, that
Mary tossed her head triumphantly. This acted as a spur to his
reeling wits.

"Let me tell you why," he went on. "Because, Bill, you got such
an all-fired pretty wife, that's why. All the fellows is crazy
over her, an' when they get to runnin' after her, what'll you be
doin'? You'll be gettin' busy. And then won't you need a buryin'
association to bury 'em? I just guess yes. That was the
compliment to your good taste in skirts I was tryin' to come
across with when Mary butted in."

His glittering eyes rested for a moment in bantering triumph on
Mary.

"Who says I'm squiffed? Me? Not on your life. I'm seein' all
things in a clear white light. An' I see Bill there, my old
friend Bill. An' I don't see two Bills. I see only one. Bill was
never two-faced in his life. Bill, old man, when I look at you
there in the married harness, I'm sorry--" He ceased abruptly and
turned on Mary. "Now don't go up in the air, old girl. I'm onto
my job. My grandfather was a state senator, and he could spiel
graceful an' pleasin' till the cows come home. So can I.--Bill,
when I look at you, I'm sorry. I repeat, I'm sorry. He glared
challengingly at Mary. "For myself when I look at you an' know
all the happiness you got a hammerlock on. Take it from me,
you're a wise guy, bless the women. You've started well. Keep it
up. Marry 'em all, bless 'em. Bill, here's to you. You're a
Mohegan with a scalplock. An' you got a squaw that is some squaw,
take it from me. Minnehaha, here's to you--to the two of you--an'
to the papooses, too, gosh-dang them!"

He drained the glass suddenly and collapsed in his chair,
blinking his eyes across at the wedded couple while tears
trickled unheeded down his cheeks. Mary's hand went out
soothingly to his, completing his break-down.

"By God, I got a right to cry," he sobbed. "I'm losin' my best
friend, ain't I? It'll never be the same again never. When I
think of the fun, an' scrapes, an' good times Bill an' me has had
together, I could darn near hate you, Saxon, sittin' there with
your hand in his."

"Cheer up, Bert," she laughed gently. "Look at whose hand you are
holding."

"Aw, it's only one of his cryin' jags," Mary said, with a
harshness that her free hand belied as it caressed his hair with
soothing strokes. "Buck up, Bert. Everything's all right. And now
it's up to Bill to say something after your dandy spiel."

Bert recovered himself quickly with another glass of wine.

"Kick in, Bill," he cried. "It's your turn now."

"I'm no hotair artist," Billy grumbled. "What'll I say, Saxon?
They ain't no use tellin' 'em how happy we are. They know that."

"Tell them we're always going to he happy," she said. "And thank
them for all their good wishes, and we both wish them the same.
And we're always going to be together, like old times, the four
of us. And tell them they're invited down to 507 Pine Street next
Sunday for Sunday dinner.--And, Mary, if you want to come
Saturday night you can sleep in the spare bedroom."

"You've told'm yourself, better'n I could." Billy clapped his
hands. "You did yourself proud, an' I guess they ain't much to
add to it, but just the same I'm goin' to pass them a hot one."

He stood up, his hand on his glass. His clear blue eyes under the
dark brows and framed by the dark lashes, seemed a deeper blue,
and accentuated the blondness of hair and skin. The smooth cheeks
were rosy--not with wine, for it was only his second glass--but
with health and joy. Saxon, looking up at him, thrilled with
pride in him, he was so well-dressed, so strong, so handsome, so
clean-looking--her man-boy. And she was aware of pride in
herself, in her woman's desirableness that had won for her so
wonderful a lover.

"Well, Bert an' Mary, here you are at Saxon's and my wedding
supper. We're just goin' to take all your good wishes to heart,
we wish you the same back, and when we say it we mean more than
you think we mean. Saxon an' I believe in tit for tat. So we're
wishin' for the day when the table is turned clear around an'
we're sittin' as guests at your weddin' supper. And then, when
you come to Sunday dinner, you can both stop Saturday night in
the spare bedroom. I guess I was wised up when I furnished it,
eh?"

"I never thought it of you, Billy!" Mary exclaimed. "You're every
hit as raw as Bert. But just the same ... "

There was a rush of moisture to her eyes. Her voice faltered and
broke. She smiled through her tears at them, then turned to look
at Bert, who put his arm around her and gathered her on to his
knees.

When they left the restaurant, the four walked to Eighth and
Broadway, where they stopped beside the electric car. Bert and
Billy were awkward and silent, oppressed by a strange aloofness.
But Mary embraced Saxon with fond anxiousness.

"It's all right, dear," Mary whispered. "Don't be scared. It's
all right. Think of all the other women in the world."

The conductor clanged the gong, and the two couples separated in
a sudden hubbub of farewell.

"Oh, you Mohegan!" Bert called after, as the car got under way.
"Oh, you Minnehaha!"

"Remember what I said," was Mary's parting to Saxon.


The car stopped at Seventh and Pine, the terminus of the line. It
was only a little over two blocks to the cottage. On the front
steps Billy took the key from his pocket.

"Funny, isn't it?" he said, as the key turned in tlie lock. "You
an' me. Just you an' me."

While he lighted the lamp in the parlor, Saxon was taking off her
hat. He went into the bedroom and lighted the lamp there, then
turned back and stood in the doorway. Saxon, still unaccountably
fumbling with her hatpins, stole a glance at him. He held out his
arms.

"Now," he said.

She came to him, and in his arms he could feel her trembling.



BOOK II

CHAPTER I

The first evening after the marriage night Saxon met Billy at the
door as he came up the front steps. After their embrace, and as
they crossed the parlor hand in hand toward the kitchen, he
filled his lungs through his nostrils with audible satisfaction.

"My, but this house smells good, Saxon! It ain't the coffee--I
can smell that, too. It's the whole house. It smells ... well, it
just smells good to me, that's all."

He washed and dried himself at the sink, while she heated the
frying pan on the front hole of the stove with the lid off. As he
wiped his hands he watched her keenly, and cried out with
approbation as she dropped the steak in the fryin pan.

"Where'd you learn to cook steak on a dry, hot pan? It's the only
way, but darn few women seem to know about it."

As she took the cover off a second frying pan and stirred the
savory contents with a kitchen knife, he came behind her, passed
his arms under her arm-pits with down-drooping hands upon her
breasts, and bent his head over her shoulder till cheek touched
cheek.

"Um-um-um-m-m! Fried potatoes with onions like mother used to
make. Me for them. Don't they smell good, though! Um-um-m-m-m!"

The pressure of his hands relaxed, and his cheek slid caressingly
past hers as he started to release her. Then his hands closed
down again. She felt his lips on her hair and heard his
advertised inhalation of delight.

"Um-um-m-m-m! Don't you smell good--yourself, though! I never
understood what they meant when they said a girl was sweet. I
know, now. And you're the sweetest I ever knew."

His joy was boundless. When he returned from combing his hair in
the bedroom and sat down at the small table opposite her, he
paused with knife and fork in hand.

"Say, bein' married is a whole lot more than it's cracked up to
be by most married folks. Honest to God, Saxon, we can show 'em a
few. We can give 'em cards and spades an' little casino an' win
out on big casino and the aces. I've got but one kick comin'."

The instant apprehension in her eyes provoked a chuckle from him.

"An' that is that we didn't get married quick enough. Just think.
I've lost a whole week of this."

Her eyes shone with gratitude and happiness, and in her heart she
solemnly pledged herself that never in all their married life
would it be otherwise.

Supper finished, she cleared the table and began washing the
dishes at the sink. When he evinced the intention of wiping them,
she caught him by the lapels of the coat and backed him into a
chair.

"You'll sit right there, if you know what's good for you. Now be
good and mind what I say. Also, you will smoke a cigarette.--No;
you're not going to watch me. There's the morning paper beside
you. And if you don't hurry to read it, I'll be through these
dishes before you've started."

As he smoked and read, she continually glanced across at him from
her work. One thing more, she thought--slippers; and then the
picture of comfort and content would be complete.

Several minutes later Billy put the paper aside with a sigh.

"It's no use," he complained. "I can't read."

"What's the matter?" she teased. "Eyes weak?"

"Nope. They'ra sore, and there's only one thing to do 'em any
good, an' that's lookin' at you."

"All right, then, baby Billy; I'll be through in a jiffy."

When she had washed the dish towel and scalded out the sink, she
took off her kitchen apron, came to him, and kissed first one eye
and then the other.

"How are they now. Cured?"

"They feel some better already."

She repeated the treatment.

"And now?"

"Still better."

"And now?"

"Almost well."

After he had adjudged them well, he ouched and informed her that
there was still some hurt in the right eye.

In the course of treating it, she cried out as in pain. Billy was
all alarm.

"What is it? What hurt you?"

"My eyes. They're hurting like sixty."

And Billy became physician for a while and she the patient. When
the cure was accomplished, she led him into the parlor, where, by
the open window, they succeeded in occupying the same Morris
chair. It was the most expensive comfort in the house. It had
cost seven dollars and a half, and, though it was grander than
anything she had dreamed of possessing, the extravagance of it
had worried her in a half-guilty way all day.

The salt chill of the air that is the blessing of all the bay
cities after the sun goes down crept in about them. They heard
the switch engines puffing in the railroad yards, and the
rumbling thunder of the Seventh Street local slowing down in its
run from the Mole to stop at West Oakland station. From the
street came the noise of children playing in the summer night,
and from the steps of the house next door the low voices of
gossiping housewives.

"Can you beat it?" Billy murmured. "When I think of that
six-dollar furnished room of mine, it makes me sick to think what
I was missin' all the time. But there's one satisfaction. If I'd
changed it sooner I wouldn't a-had you. You see, I didn't know
you existed only until a couple of weeks ago."

His hand crept along her bare forearm and up and partly under the
elbow-sleeve.

"Your skin's so cool," he said. "It ain't cold; it's cool. It
feels good to the hand."

"Pretty soon you'll be calling me your cold-storage baby," she
laughed.

"And your voice is cool," he went on. "It gives me the feeling
just as your hand does when you rest it on my forehead. It's
funny. I can't explain it. But your voice just goes all through
me, cool and fine. It's like a wind of coolness--just right. It's
like the first of the sea-breeze settin' in in the afternoon
after a scorchin' hot morning. An' sometimes, when you talk low,
it sounds round and sweet like the 'cello in the Macdonough
Theater orchestra. And it never goes high up, or sharp, or
squeaky, or scratchy, like some women's voices when they're mad,
or fresh, or excited, till they remind me of a bum phonograph
record. Why, your voice, it just goes through me till I'm all
trembling--like with the everlastin' cool of it. It's it's
straight delicious. I guess angels in heaven, if they is any,
must have voices like that."

After a few minutes, in which, so inexpreasible was her happiness
that she could only pass her hand through his hair and cling to
him, he broke out again.

"I'll tell you what you remind me of. Did you ever see a
thoroughbred mare, all shinin' in the sun, with hair like satin
an' skin so thin an' tender that the least touch of the whip
leaves a mark--all fine nerves, an' delicate an' sensitive,
that'll kill the toughest bronco when it comes to endurance an'
that can strain a tendon in a flash or catch death-of-cold
without a blanket for a night? I wanta tell you they ain't many
beautifuler sights in this world. An' they're that fine-strung,
an' sensitive, an' delicate. You gotta handle 'em right-side up,
glass, with care. Well, that's what you remind me of. And I'm
goin' to make it my job to see you get handled an' gentled in the
same way. You're as different from other women as that kind of a
mare is from scrub work-horse mares. You're a thoroughbred.
You're clean-cut an' spirited, an' your lines ...

"Say, d'ye know you've got some figure? Well, you have. Talk
about Annette Kellerman. You can give her cards and spades. She's
Australian, an' you're American, only your figure ain't. You're
different. You're nifty--I don't know how to explain it. Other
women ain't built like you. You belong in some other country.
You're Frenchy, that's what. You're built like a French woman an'
more than that--the way you walk, move, stand up or sit down, or
don't do anything."

And he, who had never been out of California, or, for that
matter, had never slept a night away from his birthtown of
Oakland, was right in his judgment. She was a flower of
Anglo-Saxon stock, a rarity in the exceptional smallness and
fineness of hand and foot and bone and grace of flesh and
carriage--some throw-back across the face of time to the foraying
Norman-French that had intermingled with the sturdy Saxon breed.

"And in the way you carry your clothes. They belong to you. They
seem just as much part of you as the cool of your voice and skin.
They're always all right an' couldn't be better. An' you know, a
fellow kind of likes to be seen taggin' around with a woman like
you, that wears her clothes like a dream, an' hear the other
fellows say: 'Who's Bill's new skirt? She's a peach, ain't she?
Wouldn't I like to win her, though.' And all that sort of talk."

And Saxon, her cheek pressed to his, knew that she was paid in
full for all her midnight sewings and the torturing hours of
drowsy stitching when her head nodded with the weariness of the
day's toil, while she recreated for herself filched ideas from
the dainty garments that had steamed under her passing iron.

"Say, Saxon, I got a new name for you. You're my Tonic Kid.
That's what you are, the Tonic Kid."

"And you'll never get tired of me?" she queried.

"Tired? Why we was made for each other."

"Isn't it wonderful, our meeting, Billy? We might never have met.
It was just by accident that we did."

"We was born lucky," he proclaimed. "That's a cinch."

"Maybe it was more than luck," she ventured.

"Sure. It just had to be. It was fate. Nothing could a-kept us
apart."

They sat on in a silence that was quick with unuttered love, till
she felt him slowly draw her more closely and his lips come near
to her ear as they whispered: "What do you say we go to bed?"


Many evenings they spent like this, varied with an occasional
dance, with trips to the Orpheum and to Bell's Theater, or to the
moving picture shows, or to the Friday night band concerts in
City Hall Park. Often, on Sunday, she prepared a lunch, and he
drove her out into the hills behind Prince and King, whom Billy's
employer was still glad to have him exercise.

Each morning Saxon was called by the alarm clock. The first
morning he had insisted upon getting up with her and building the
fire in the kitchen stove. She gave in the first morning, but
after that she laid the fire in the evening, so that all that was
required was the touching of a match to it. And in bed she
compelled him to remain for a last little doze ere she called him
for breakfast. For the first several weeks she prepared his lunch
for him. Then, for a week, he came down to dinner. After that he
was compelled to take his lunch with him. It depended on how far
distant the teaming was done.

"You're not starting right with a man," Mary cautioned. "You wait
on him hand and foot. You'll spoil him if you don't watch out.
It's him that ought to be waitin' on you."

"He's the bread-winner," Saxon replied. "He works harder than I,
and I've got more time than I know what to do with--time to burn.
Besides, I want to wait on him because I love to, and because ...
well, anyway, I want to."



CHAPTER II

Despite the fastidiousness of her housekeeping, Saxon, once she
had systematized it, found time and to spare on her hands.
Especially during the periods in which her husband carried his
lunch and there was no midday meal to prepare, she had a number
of hours each day to herself. Trained for years to the routine of
factory and laundry work, she could not abide this unaccustomed
idleness. She could not bear to sit and do nothing, while she
could not pay calls on her girlhood friends, for they still
worked in factory and laundry. Nor was she acquainted with the
wives of the neighborhood, save for one strange old woman who
lived in the house next door and with whom Saxon had exchanged
snatches of conversation over the backyard division fence.

One time-consuming diversion of which Saxon took advantage was
free and unlimited baths. In the orphan asylum and in Sarah's
house she had been used to but one bath a week. As she grew to
womanhood she had attempted more frequent baths. But the effort
proved disastrous, arousing, first, Sarah's derision, and next,
her wrath. Sarah had crystallized in the era of the weekly
Saturday night bath, and any increase in this cleansing function
was regarded by her as putting on airs and as an insinuation
against her own cleanliness. Also, it was an extravagant misuse
of fuel, and occasioned extra towels in the family wash. But now,
in Billy's house, with her own stove, her own tub and towels and
soap, and no one to say her nay, Saxon was guilty of a daily
orgy. True, it was only a common washtub that she placed on the
kitchen floor and filled by hand; but it was a luxury that had
taken her twenty-four years to achieve. It was from the strange
woman next door that Saxon received a hint, dropped in casual
conversation, of what proved the culminating joy of bathing. A
simple thing--a few drops of druggist's ammonia in the water; but
Saxon had never heard of it before.

She was destined to learn much from the strange woman. The
acquaintance had begun one day when Saxon, in the back yard, was
hanging out a couple of corset covers and several pieces of her
finest undergarments. The woman leaning on the rail of her back
porch, had caught her eye, and nodded, as it seemed to Saxon,
half to her and half to the underlinen on the line.

"You're newly married, aren't you?" the woman asked. "I'm Mrs.
Higgins. I prefer my first name, which is Mercedes."

"And I'm Mrs. Roberts," Saxon replied, thrilling to the newness
of the designation on her tongue. "My first name is Saxon."

"Strange name for a Yankee woman," the other commented.

"Oh, but I'm not Yankee," Saxon exclaimed. "I'm Californian."

"La la," laughed Mercedes Higgins. "I forgot I was in America. In
other lands all Americans are called Yankees. It is true that you
are newly married?"

Saxon nodded with a happy sigh. Mercedes sighed, too.

"Oh, you happy, soft, beautiful young thing. I could envy you to
hatred--you with all the man-world ripe to be twisted about your
pretty little fingers. And you don't realize your fortune. No one
does until it's too late."

Saxon was puzzled and disturbed, though she answered readily:

"Oh, but I do know how lucky I am. I have the finest man in the
world."

Mercedes Higgins sighed again and changed the subject. She nodded
her head at the garments.

"I see you like pretty things. It is good judgment for a young
woman. They're the bait for men--half the weapons in the battle.
They win men, and they hold men--" She broke off to demand almost
fiercely: "And you, you would keep your husband?--always,
always--if you can?"

"I intend to. I will make him love me always and always."

Saxon ceased, troubled and surprised that she should be so
intimate with a stranger.

"'Tis a queer thing, this love of men," Mercedes said. "And a
failing of all women is it to believe they know men like books.
And with breaking hearts, die they do, most women, out of their
ignorance of men and still foolishly believing they know all
about them. Oh, la la, the little fools. And so you say, little
new-married woman, that you will make your man love you always
and always? And so they all say it, knowing men and the queerness
of men's love the way they think they do. Easier it is to win the
capital prize in the Little Louisiana, but the little new-married
women never know it until too late. But you--you have begun well.
Stay by your pretties and your looks. 'Twas so you won your man,
'tis so you'll hold him. But that is not all. Some time I will
talk with you and tell what few women trouble to know, what few
women ever come to know.--Saxon!--'tis a strong, handsome name
for a woman. But you don't look it. Oh, I've watched you. French
you are, with a Frenchiness beyond dispute. Tell Mr. Roberts I
congratulate him on his good taste."

She paused, her hand on the knob of her kitchen door.

"And come and see me some time. You will never be sorry. I can
teach you much. Come in the afternoon. My man is night watchman
in the yards and sleeps of mornings. He's sleeping now."

Saxon went into the house puzzling and pondering. Anything but
ordinary was this lean, dark-skinned woman, with the face
withered as if scorched in great heats, and the eyes, large and
black, that flashed and flamed with advertisement of an
unquenched inner conflagration. Old she was--Saxon caught herself
debating anywhere between fifty and seventy; and her hair, which
had once been blackest black, was streaked plentifully with gray.
Especially noteworthy to Saxon was her speech. Good English it
was, better than that to which Saxon was accustomed. Yet the
woman was not American. On the other hand, she had no perceptible
accent. Rather were her words touched by a foreignness so elusive
that Saxon could not analyze nor place it.

"Uh, huh," Billy said, when she had told him that evening of the
day's event. "So SHE'S Mrs. Higgins? He's a watchman. He's got
only one arm. Old Higgins an' her--a funny bunch, the two of
them. The people's scared of her--some of 'em. The Dagoes an'
some of the old Irish dames thinks she's a witch. Won't have a
thing to do with her. Bert was tellin' me about it. Why, Saxon,
d'ye know, some of 'em believe if she was to get mad at 'em, or
didn't like their mugs, or anything, that all she's got to do is
look at 'em an' they'll curl up their toes an' croak. One of the
fellows that works at the stable--you've seen 'm--Henderson--he
lives around the corner on Fifth--he says she's bughouse."

"Oh, I don't know," Saxon defended her new acquaintance. "She may
be crazy, but she says the same thing you're always saying. She
says my form is not American but French."

"Then I take my hat off to her," Billy responded. "No wheels in
her head if she says that. Take it from me, she's a wise gazabo."

"And she speaks good English, Billy, like a school teacher, like
what I guess my mother used to speak. She's educated."

"She ain't no fool, or she wouldn't a-sized you up the way she
did."

"She told me to congratulate you on your good taste in marrying
me," Saxon laughed.

"She did, eh? Then give her my love. Me for her, because she
knows a good thing when she sees it, an' she ought to be
congratulating you on your good taste in me."

It was on another day that Mercedes Higgins nodded, half to
Saxon, and half to the dainty women's things Saxon was hanging on
the line.

"I've been worrying over your washing, little new-wife," was her
greeting.

"Oh, but I've worked in the laundry for years," Saxon said
quickly.

Mercedes sneered scornfully.

"Steam laundry. That's business, and it's stupid. Only common
things should go to a steam laundry. That is their punishment for
being common. But the pretties! the dainties! the flimsies!--la
la, my dear, their washing is an art. It requires wisdom, genius,
and discretion fine as the clothes are fine. I will give you a
recipe for homemade soap. It will not harden the texture. It will
give whiteness, and softness, and life. You can wear them long,
and fine white clothes are to be loved a long time. Oh, fine
washing is a refinement, an art. It is to be done as an artist
paints a picture, or writes a poem, with love, holily, a true
sacrament of beauty.

"I shall teach you better ways, my dear, better ways than you
Yankees know. I shall teach you new pretties." She nodded her
head to Saxon's underlinen on the line. "I see you make little
laces. I know all laces--the Belgian, the Maltese, the
Mechlin--oh, the many, many loves of laces! I shall teach you
some of the simpler ones so that you can make them for yourself,
for your brave man you are to make love you always and always."

On her first visit to Mercedes Higgins, Saxon received the recipe
for home-made soap and her head was filled with a minutiae of
instruction in the art of fine washing. Further, she was
fascinated and excited by all the newness and strangeness of the
withered old woman who blew upon her the breath of wider lands
and seas beyond the horizon.

"You are Spanish?" Saxon ventnred.

"No, and yes, and neither, and more. My father was Irish, my
mother Peruvian-Spanish. 'Tis after her I took, in color and
looks. In other ways after my father, the blue-eyed Celt with the
fairy song on his tongue and the restless feet that stole the
rest of him away to far-wandering. And the feet of him that he
lent me have led me away on as wide far roads as ever his led
him."

Saxon remembered her school geography, and with her mind's eye
she saw a certain outline map of a continent with jiggly wavering
parallel lines that denoted coast.

"Oh," she cried, "then you are South American."

Mercedes shrugged her shoulders.

"I had to be born somewhere. It was a great ranch, my mother's.
You could put all Oakland in one of its smallest pastures."

Mercedes Higgins sighed cheerfully and for the time was lost in
retrospection. Saxon was curious to hear more about this woman
who must have lived much as the Spanish-Californians had lived in
the old days.

"You received a good education," she said tentatively. "Your
English is perfect."

"Ah, the English came afterward, and not in school. But, as it
goes, yes, a good education in all things but the most
important--men. That, too, came afterward. And little my mother
dreamed--she was a grand lady, what you call a
cattle-queen--little she dreamed my fine education was to fit me
in the end for a night watchman's wife." She laughed genuinely at
the grotesqueness of the idea. "Night watchman, laborers, why, we
had hundreds, yes, thousands that toiled for us. The peons--they
are like what you call slaves, almost, and the cowboys, who could
ride two hundred miles between side and side of the ranch. And in
the big house servants beyond remembering or counting. La la, in
my mother's house were many servants."

Mercedes Higgins was voluble as a Greek, and wandered on in
reminiscence.

"But our servants were lazy and dirty. The Chinese are the
servants par excellence. So are the Japanese, when you find a
good one, but not so good as the Chinese. The Japanese
maidservants are pretty and merry, but you never know the moment
they'll leave you. The Hindoos are not strong, but very obedient.
They look upon sahibs and memsahibs as gods! I was a
memsahib--which means woman. I once had a Russian cook who always
spat in the soup for luck. It was very funny. But we put up with
it. It was the custom."

"How you must have traveled to have such strange servants!" Saxon
encouraged.

The old woman laughed corroboration.

"And the strangest of all, down in the South Seas, black slaves,
little kinky-haired cannibals with bones through their noses.
When they did not mind, or when they stole, they were tied up to
a cocoanut palm behind the compound and lashed with whips of
rhinoceros hide. They were from an island of cannibals and
head-hunters, and they never cried out. It was their pride. There
was little Vibi, only twelve years old--he waited on me--and when
his back was cut in shreds and I wept over him, he would only
laugh and say, 'Short time little bit I take 'm head belong big
fella white marster.' That was Bruce Anstey, the Englishman who
whipped him. But little Vibi never got the head. He ran away and
the bushmen cut off his own head and ate every bit of him."

Saxon chilled, and her face was grave; but Mercedes Higgins
rattled on.

"Ah, those were wild, gay, savage days. Would you believe it, my
dear, in three years those Englishmen of the plantation drank up
oceans of champagne and Scotch whisky and dropped thirty thousand
pounds on the adventure. Not dollars--pounds, which means one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They were princes while it
lasted. It was splendid, glorious. It was mad, mad. I sold half
my beautiful jewels in New Zealand before I got started again.
Bruce Anstey blew out his brains at the end. Roger went mate on a
trader with a black crew, for eight pounds a month. And Jack
Gilbraith--he was the rarest of them all. His people were wealthy
and titled, and he went home to England and sold cat's meat, sat
around their big house till they gave him more money to start a
rubber plantation in the East Indies somewhere, on Sumatra, I
think--or was it New Guinea?"

And Saxon, back in her own kitchen and preparing supper for
Billy, wondered what lusts and rapacities had led the old,
burnt-faced woman from the big Peruvian ranch, through all the
world, to West Oakland and Barry Higgins Old Barry was not the
sort who would fling away his share of one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, much less ever attain to such opulence.
Besides, she had mentioned the names of other men, but not his.

Much more Mercedes had talked, in snatches and fragments. There
seemed no great country nor city of the old world or the new in
which she had not been. She had even been in Klondike, ten years
before, in a half-dozen flashing sentences picturing the
fur-clad, be-moccasined miners sowing the barroom floors with
thousands of dollars' worth of gold dust. Always, so it seemed to
Saxon, Mrs. Higgins had been with men to whom money was as water.



CHAPTER III

Saxon, brooding over her problem of retaining Billy's love, of
never staling the freshness of their feeling for each other and
of never descending from the heights which at present they were
treading, felt herself impelled toward Mrs. Higgins. SHE knew;
surely she must know. Had she not hinted knowledge beyond
ordinary women's knowledge?

Several weeks went by, during which Saxon was often with her. But
Mrs. Higgins talked of all other matters, taught Saxon the making
of certain simple laces, and instructed her in the arts of
washing and of marketing. And then, one afternoon, Saxon found
Mrs. Higgins more voluble than usual, with words, clean-uttered,
that rippled and tripped in their haste to escape. Her eyes were
flaming. So flamed her face. Her words were flames. There was a
smell of liquor in the air and Saxon knew that the old woman had
been drinking. Nervous and frightened, at the same time
fascinated, Saxon hemstitched a linen handkerchief intended for
Billy and listened to Mercedes' wild flow of speech.

"Listen, my dear. I shall tell you about the world of men. Do not
be stupid like all your people, who think me foolish and a witch
with the evil eye. Ha! ha! When I think of silly Maggie Donahue
pulling the shawl across her baby's face when we pass each other
on the sidewalk! A witch I have been, 'tis true, but my witchery
was with men. Oh, I am wise, very wise, my dear. I shall tell you
of women's ways with men, and of men's ways with women, the best
of them and the worst of them. Of the brute that is in all men,
of the queerness of them that breaks the hearts of stupid women
who do not understand. And all women are stupid. I am not stupid.
La la, listen.

"I am an old woman. And like a woman, I'll not tell you how old I
am. Yet can I hold men. Yet would I hold men, toothless and a
hundred, my nose touching my chin. Not the young men. They were
mine in my young days. But the old men, as befits my years. And
well for me the power is mine. In all this world I am without kin
or cash. Only have I wisdom and memories--memories that are
ashes, but royal ashes, jeweled ashes. Old women, such as I,
starve and shiver, or accept the pauper's dole and the pauper's
shroud. Not I. I hold my man. True, 'tis only Barry Higgins--old
Barry, heavy, an ox, but a male man, my dear, and queer as all
men are queer. 'Tis true, he has one arm." She shrugged her
shoulders. "A compensation. He cannot beat me, and old bones are
tender when the round flesh thins to strings.

"But when I think of my wild young lovers, princes, mad with the
madness of youth! I have lived. It is enough. I regret nothing.
And with old Barry I have my surety of a bite to eat and a place
by the fire. And why? Because I know men, and shall never lose my
cunning to hold them. 'Tis bitter sweet, the knowledge of them,
more sweet than bitter--men and men and men! Not stupid dolts,
nor fat bourgeois swine of business men, but men of temperament,
of flame and fire; madmen, maybe, but a lawless, royal race of
madmen.

"Little wife-woman, you must learn. Variety! There lies the
magic. 'Tis the golden key. 'Tis the toy that amuses. Without it
in the wife, the man is a Turk; with it, he is her slave, and
faithful. A wife must be many wives. If you would have your
husband's love you must be all women to him. You must be ever
new, with the dew of newness ever sparkling, a flower that never
blooms to the fulness that fades. You must be a garden of
flowers, ever new, ever fresh, ever different. And in your garden
the man must never pluck the last of your posies.

"Listen, little wife-woman. In the garden of love is a snake. It
is the commonplace. Stamp on its head, or it will destroy the
garden. Remember the name. Commonplace. Never be too intimate.
Men only seem gross. Women are more gross than men.--No, do not
argue, little new-wife. You are an infant woman. Women are less
delicate than men. Do I not know? Of their own husbands they will
relate the most intimate love-secrets to other women. Men never
do this of their wives. Explain it. There is only one way. In all
things of love women are less delicate. It is their mistake. It
is the father and the mother of the commonplace, and it is the
commonplace, like a loathsome slug, that beslimes and destroys
love.

"Be delicate, little wife-woman. Never be without your veil,
without many veils. Veil yourself in a thousand veils, all
shimmering and glittering with costly textures and precious
jewels. Never let the last veil be drawn. Against the morrow
array yourself with more veils, ever more veils, veils without
end. Yet the many veils must not seem many. Each veil must seem
the only one between you and your hungry lover who will have
nothing less than all of you. Each time he must seem to get all,
to tear aside the last veil that hides you. He must think so. It
must not be so. Then there will be no satiety, for on the morrow
he will find another last veil that has escaped him.

"Remember, each veil must seem the last and only one. Always you
must seem to abandon all to his arms; always you must reserve
more that on the morrow and on all the morrows you may abandon.
Of such is variety, surprise, so that your man's pursuit will be
everlasting, so that his eyes will look to you for newness, and
not to other women. It was the freshness and the newness' of your
beauty and you, the mystery of you, that won your man. When a man
has plucked and smelled all the sweetness of a flower, he looks
for other flowers. It is his queerness. You must ever remain a
flower almost plucked yet never plucked, stored with vats of
sweet unbroached though ever broached.

"Stupid women, and all are stupid, think the first winning of the
man the final victory. Then they settle down and grow fat, and
state, and dead, and heartbroken. Alas, they are so stupid. But
you, little infant-woman with your first victory, you must make
your love-life an unending chain of victories. Each day you must
win your man again. And when you have won the last victory, when
you can find no more to win, then ends love. Finis is written,
and your man wanders in strange gardens. Remember, love must be
kept insatiable. It must have an appetite knife-edged and never
satisfied. You must feed your lover well, ah, very well, most
well; give, give, yet send him away hungry to come back to you
for more.

Mrs. Higgins stood up suddenly and crossed out of the room. Saxon
had not failed to note the litheness and grace in that lean and
withered body. She watched for Mrs. Higgins' return, and knew
that the litheness and grace had not been imagined.

"Scarcely have I told you the first letter in love's alphabet,"
said Mercedes Higgins, as she reseated herself.

In her hands was a tiny instrument, beautifully grained and
richly brown, which resembled a guitar save that it bore four
strings. She swept them back and forth with rhythmic forefinger
and lifted a voice, thin and mellow, in a fashion of melody that
was strange, and in a foreign tongue, warm-voweled, all-voweled,
and love-exciting. Softly throbbing, voice and strings arose on
sensuous crests of song, died away to whisperings and caresses,
drifted through love-dusks and twilights, or swelled again to
love-cries barbarically imperious in which were woven plaintive
calls and madnesses of invitation and promise. It went through
Saxon until she was as this instrument, swept with passional
strains. It seemed to her a dream, and almost was she dizzy, when
Mercedes Higgins ceased.

"If your man had clasped the last of you, and if all of you were
known to him as an old story, yet, did you sing that one song, as
I have sung it, yet would his arms again go out to you and his
eyes grow warm with the old mad lights. Do you see? Do you
understand, little wife-woman?"

Saxon could only nod, her lips too dry for speech.

"The golden koa, the king of woods," Mercedes was crooning over
the instrument. "The ukulele--that is what the Hawaiians call it,
which means, my dear, the jumping flea. They are golden-fleshed,
the Hawalians, a race of lovers, all in the warm cool of the
tropic night where the trade winds blow."

Again she struck the strings. She sang in another language, which
Saxon deemed must be French. It was a gayly-devilish lilt,
tripping and tickling. Her large eyes at times grew larger and
wilder, and again narrowed in enticement and wickedness. When she
ended, she looked to Saxon for a verdict.

"I don't like that one so well," Saxon said.

Mercedes shrugged her shoulders.

"They all have their worth, little infant-woman with so much to
learn. There are times when men may be won with wine. There are
times when men may be won with the wine of song, so queer they
are. La la, so many ways, so many ways. There are your pretties,
my dear, your dainties. They are magic nets. No fisherman upon
the sea ever tangled fish more successfully than we women with
our flimsies. You are on the right path. I have seen men enmeshed
by a corset cover no prettier, no daintier, than these of yours I
have seen on the line.

"I have called the washing of fine linen an art. But it is not
for itself alone. The greatest of the arts is the conquering of
men. Love is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for
their existence. Listen. In all times and ages have been women,
great wise women. They did not need to be beautiful. Greater then
all woman's beauty was their wisdom. Princes end potentates bowed
down before them. Nations battled over them. Empires crashed
because of them. Religions were founded on them. Aphrodite,
Astarte, the worships of the night--listen, infant-woman, of the
great women who conquered worlds of men."

And thereafter Saxon listened, in a maze, to what almost seemed a
wild farrago, save that the strange meaningless phrases were
fraught with dim, mysterious significance. She caught glimmerings
of profounds inexpressible and unthinkable that hinted
connotations lawless and terrible. The woman's speech was a lava
rush, scorching and searing; and Saxon's cheeks, and forehead,
and neck burned with a blush that continuously increased. She
trembled with fear, suffered qualms of nausea, thought sometimes
that she would faint, so madly reeled her brain; yet she could
not tear herself away, sad sat on and on, her sewing forgotten on
her lap, staring with inward sight upon a nightmare vision beyond
all imagining. At last, when it seemed she could endure no more,
and while she was wetting her dry lips to cry out in protest,
Mercedes ceased.

"And here endeth the first lesson," she said quite calmly, then
laughed with a laughter that was tantalizing and tormenting.
"What is the matter? You are not shocked?"

"I am frightened," Saxon quavered huskily, with a half-sob of
nervousness. "You frighten me. I am very foolish, and I know so
little, that I had never dreamed ... THAT."

Mercedes nodded her head comprehendingly.

"It is indeed to be frightened at," she said. "It is solemn; it
is terrible; it is magnificent!"



CHAPTER IV

Saxon had been clear-eyed all her days, though her field of
vision had been restricted. Clear-eyed, from her childhood days
with the saloonkeeper Cady and Cady's good-natured but unmoral
spouse, she had observed, and, later, generalized much upon sex.
She knew the post-nuptial problem of retaining a husband's love,
as few wives of any class knew it, just as she knew the
pre-nuptial problem of selecting a husband, as few girls of the
working class knew it.

She had of herself developed an eminently rational philosophy of
love. Instinctively, and consciously, too, she had made toward
delicacy, and shunned the perils of the habitual and commonplace.
Thoroughly aware she was that as she cheapened herself so did she
cheapen love. Never, in the weeks of their married life, had
Billy found her dowdy, or harshly irritable, or lethargic. And
she had deliberately permeated her house with her personal
atmosphere of coolness, and freshness, and equableness. Nor had
she been ignorant of such assets as surprise and charm. Her
imagination had not been asleep, and she had been born with
wisdom. In Billy she had won a prize, and she knew it. She
appreciated his lover's ardor and was proud. His open-handed
liberality, his desire for everything of the best, his own
personal cleanliness and care of himself she recognized as far
beyond the average. He was never coarse. He met delicacy with
delicacy, though it was obvious to her that the initiative in all
such matters lay with her and must lie with her always. He was
largely unconscious of what he did and why. But she knew in all
full clarity of judgment. And he was such a prize among men.

Despite her clear sight of her problem of keeping Billy a lover,
and despite the considerable knowledge and experience arrayed
before her mental vision, Mercedes Higgins had spread before her
a vastly wider panorama. The old woman had verified her own
conclusions, given her new ideas, clinched old ones, and even
savagely emphasized the tragic importance of the whole problem.
Much Saxon remembered of that mad preachment, much she guessed
and felt, and much had been beyond her experience and
understanding. But the metaphors of the veils and the flowers,
and the rules of giving to abandonment with always more to
abandon, she grasped thoroughly, and she was enabled to formulate
a bigger and stronger love-philosophy. In the light of the
revelation she re-examined the married lives of all she had ever
known, and, with sharp definiteness as never before, she saw
where and why so many of them had failed.

With renewed ardor Saxon devoted herself to her household, to her
pretties, and to her charms. She marketed with a keener desire
for the best, though never ignoring the need for economy. From
the women's pages of the Sunday supplements, and from the women's
magazines in the free reading room two blocks away, she gleaned
many idess for the preservation of her looks. In a systematic way
she exercised the various parts of her body, and a certain period
of time each day she employed in facial exercises and massage for
the purpose of retaining the roundness and freshness, and
firmness and color. Billy did not know. These intimacies of the
toilette were not for him. The results, only, were his. She drew
books from the Carnegie Library and studied physiology and
hygiene, and learned a myriad of things about herself and the
ways of woman's health that she had never been taught by Sarah,
the women of the orphan asylum, nor by Mrs. Cady.

After long debate she subscribed to a woman's magazine, the
patterns and lessons of which she decided were the best suited to
her taste and purse. The other woman's magazines she had aceess
to in the free reading room, and more than one pattern of lace
and embroidery she copied by means of tracing paper. Before the
lingerie windows of the uptown shops she often stood and studied;
nor was she above taking advantage, when small purchases were
made, of looking over the goods at the hand-embroidered underwear
counters. Once, she even considered taking up with hand-painted
china, but gave over the idea when she learned its expensiveness.

She slowly replaced all her simple maiden underlinen with
garments which, while still simple, were wrought with beautiful
French embroidery, tucks, and drawnwork. She crocheted fine
edgings on the inexpensive knitted underwear she wore in winter.
She made little corset covers and chemises of fine but fairly
inexpensive lawns, and, with simple flowered designs and perfect
laundering, her nightgowns were always sweetly fresh and dainty.
In some publication she ran across a brief printed note to the
effect that French women were just beginning to wear fascinating
beruffled caps at the breakfast table. It meant nothing to her
that in her case she must first prepare the breakfast. Promptly
appeared in the house a yard of dotted Swiss muslin, and Saxon
was deep in experimenting on patterns for herself, and in sorting
her bits of laces for suitable trimmings. The resultant dainty
creation won Mercedes Higgins' enthusiastic approval.

Saxon made for herself simple house slips of pretty gingham, with
neat low collars turned back from her fresh round throat. She
crocheted yards of laces for her underwear, and made Battenberg
in abundance for her table and for the bureau. A great
achievement, that aroused Billy's applause, was an Afghan for the
bed. She even ventured a rag carpet, which, the women's magazines
informed her, had newly returned into fashion. As a matter of
course she hemstitched the best table linen and bed linen they
could afford.

As the happy months went by she was never idle. Nor was Billy
forgotten. When the cold weather came on she knitted him
wristlets, which he always religiously wore from the house and
pocketed immediately thereafter. The two sweaters she made for
him, however, received a better fate, as did the slippers which
she insisted on his slipping into, on the evenings they remained
at home.

The hard practical wisdom of Mercedes Higgins proved of immense
help, for Saxon strove with a fervor almost religious to have
everything of the best and at the same time to be saving. Here
she faced the financial and economic problem of keeping house in
a society where the cost of living rose faster than the wages of
industry. And here the old woman taught her the science of
marketing so thoroughly that she made a dollar of Billy's go half
as far again as the wives of the neighborhood made the dollars of
their men go.

Invariably, on Saturday night, Billy poured his total wages into
her lap. He never asked for an accounting of what she did with
it, though he continually reiterated that he had never fed so
well in his life. And always, the wages still untouched in her
lap, she had him take out what he estimated he would need for
spending money for the week to come. Not only did she bid him
take plenty but she insisted on his taking any amount extra that
he might desire at any time through the week. And, further, she
insisted he should not tell her what it was for.

"You've always had money in your pocket," she reminded him, "and
there's no reason marriage should change that. If it did, I'd
wish I'd never married you. Oh, I know about men when they get
together. First one treats and then another, and it takes money.
Now if you can't treat just as freely as the rest of thcm, why I
know you so well that I know you'd stay away from them. And that
wouldn't be right ... to you, I mean. I want you to be together
with men. It's good for a man."

And Billy buried her in his arms and swore she was the greatest
little bit of woman that ever came down the pike.

"Why," he jubilated; "not only do I feed better, and live more
comfortable, and hold up my end with the fellows; but I'm
actually saving money--or you are for me. Here I am, with
furniture being paid for regular every month, and a little woman
I'm mad over, and on top of it money in the bank. How much is it
now?"

"Sixty-two dollars," she told him. "Not so bad for a rainy day.
You might get sick, or hurt, or something happen.

It was in mid-winter, when Billy, with quite a deal of obvious
reluctance, broached a money matter to Saxon. His old friend,
Billy Murphy, was laid up with la grippe, and one of his
children, playing in the street, had been seriously injured by a
passing wagon. Billy Murphy, still feeble after two weeks in bed,
had asked Billy for the loan of fifty dollars.

"It's perfectly safe," Billy concluded to Saxon. "I've known him
since we was kids at the Durant School together. He's straight as
a die."

"That's got nothing to do with it," Saxon chided. "If you were
single you'd have lent it to him immediately, wouldn't you?"

Billy nodded.

"Then it's no different because you're married. It's your money,
Billy."

"Not by a damn sight," he cried. "It ain't mine. It's ourn. And I
wouldn't think of lettin' anybody have it without seein' you
first."

"I hope you didn't tell him that," she ssid with quick concern.

"Nope," Billy laughed. "I knew, if I did, you'd be madder'n a
hatter. I just told him I'd try an' figure it out. After all, I
was sure you'd stand for it if you had it."

"Oh, Billy," she murmured, her voice rich and low with love;
"maybe you don't know it, but that's one of the sweetest things
you've said since we got married."

The more Saxon saw of Mercedes Higgins the less did she
understand her. That the old woman was a close-fisted miser,
Saxon soon learned. And this trait she found hard to reconcile
with her tales of squandering. On the other hand, Saxon was
bewildered by Mercedes' extravagance in personal matters. Her
underlinen, hand-made of course, was very costly. The table she
set for Barry was good, but the table for herself was vastly
better. Yet both tables were set on the same table. While Barry
contented himaelf with solid round steak, Mercedes ate
tenderloin. A huge, tough muttonchop on Barry's plate would be
balanced by tiny French chops on Mercedes' plate. Tea was brewed
in separate pots. So was coffee. While Barry gulped twenty-five
cent tea from a large and heavy mug, Mercedes sipped three-dollar
tea from a tiny cup of Belleek, rose-tinted, fragile as all
egg-shell. In the same manner, his twenty-five cent coffee was
diluted with milk, her eighty cent Turkish with cream.

"'Tis good enough for the old man," she told Saxon. "He knows no
better, and it would be a wicked sin to waste it on him."

Little traffickings began between the two women. After Mercedes
had freely taught Saxon the loose-wristed facility of playing
accompaniments on the ukulele, she proposed an exchange. Her time
was past, she said, for such frivolities, and she offered the
instrument for the breakfast cap of which Saxon had made so good
a success.

"It's worth a few dollars," Mercedes said. "It cost me twenty,
though that was years ago. Yet it is well worth the value of the
cap."

"But wouldn't the cap be frivolous, too?" Saxon queried, though
herself well pleased with the bargain.

"'Tis not for my graying hair," Mercedes frankly disclaimed. "I
shall sell it for the money. Much that I do, when the rheumatism
is not maddening my fingers, I sell. La la, my dear, 'tis not old
Barry's fifty a month that'll satisfy all my expensive tastes.
'Tis I that make up the difference. And old age needs money as
never youth needs it. Some day you will learn for yourself."

"I am well satisfied with the trade," Saxon said. "And I shall
make me another cap when I can lay aside enough for the
material."

"Make several," Mercedes advised. "I'll sell them for you,
keeping, of course, a small commission for my services. I can
give you six dollars apiece for them. We will consult about them.
The profit will more than provide material for your own."



CHAPTER V

Four eventful things happened in the course of the winter. Bert
and Mary got married and rented a cottage in the neighborhood
three blocks away. Billy's wages were cut, along with the wages
of all the teamsters in Oakland. Billy took up shaving with a
safety razor. And, finally, Saxon was proven a false prophet and
Sarah a true one.

Saxon made up her mind, beyond any doubt, ere she confided the
news to Billy. At first, while still suspecting, she had felt a
frightened sinking of the heart and fear of the unknown and
unexperienced. Then had come economic fear, as she contemplated
the increased expense entailed. But by the time she had made
surety doubly sure, all was swept away before a wave of
passionate gladness. HERS AND BILLY'S! The phrase was continually
in her mind, and each recurrent thought of it brought an actual
physical pleasure-pang to her heart.

The night she told the news to Billy, he withheld his own news of
the wage-cut, and joined with her in welcoming the little one.

"What'll we do? Go to the theater to celebrate?" he asked,
relaxing the pressure of his embrace so that she might speak. "Or
suppose we stay in, just you and me, and ... and the three of
us?"

"Stay in," was her verdict. "I just want you to hold me, and hold
me, and hold me."

"That's what I wanted, too, only I wasn't sure, after bein' in
the house all day, maybe you'd want to go out."

There was frost in the air, and Billy brought the Morris chair in
by the kitchen stove. She lay cuddled in his arms, her head on
his shoulder, his cheek against her hair.

"We didn't make no mistake in our lightning marriage with only a
week's courtin'," he reflected aloud. "Why, Saxon, we've been
courtin' ever since just the same. And now . . . my God, Saxon,
it's too wonderful to be true. Think of it! Ourn! The three of
us! The little rascal! I bet he's goin' to he a boy. An' won't I
learn 'm to put up his fists an' take care of himself! An'
swimmin' too. If he don't know how to swim by the time he's
six..."

"And if HE'S a girl?"

"SHE'S goin' to he a boy," Billy retorted, joining in the playful
misuse of pronouns.

And both laughed and kissed, and sighed with content. "I'm goin'
to turn pincher, now," he announced, after quite an interval of
meditation. "No more drinks with the boys. It's me for the water
wagon. And I'm goin' to ease down on smokes. Huh! Don't see why I
can't roll my own cigarettes. They're ten times cheaper'n tailor-
mades. An' I can grow a beard. The amount of money the barbers
get out of a fellow in a year would keep a baby."

"Just you let your beard grow, Mister Roberts, and I'll get a
divorce," Saxon threatened. "You're just too handsome and strong
with a smooth face. I love your face too much to have it covered
up.--Oh, you dear! you dear! Billy, I never knew what happiness
was until I came to live with you."

"Nor me neither."

"And it's always going to be so?"

"You can just bet," he assured her.

"I thought I was going to he happy married," she went on; "but I
never dreamed it would be like this." She turned her head on his
shoulder and kissed his cheek. "Billy, it isn't happiness. It's
heaven."

And Billy resolutely kept undivulged the cut in wages. Not until
two weeks later, when it went into effect, and he poured the
diminished sum into her lap, did he break it to her. The next
day, Bert and Mary, already a month married, had Sunday dinner
with them, and the matter came up for discussion. Bert was
particularly pessmistic, and muttered dark hints of an impending
strike in the railroad shops.

"If you'd all shut your traps, it'd be all right," Mary
criticized. "These union agitators get the railroad sore. They
give me the cramp, the way they butt in an' stir up trouble. If I
was boss I'd cut the wages of any man that listened to them."

"Yet you belonged to the laundry workers' union," Saxon rebuked
gently.

"Because I had to or I wouldn't a-got work. An' much good it ever
done me."

"But look at Billy," Bert argued "The teamsters ain't ben sayin'
a word, not a peep, an' everything lovely, and then, bang, right
in the neck, a ten per cent cut. Oh, hell, what chance have we
got? We lose. There's nothin' left for us in this country we've
made and our fathers an' mothers before us. We're all shot to
pieces. We Can see our finish--we, the old stock, the children of
the white people that broke away from England an' licked the tar
outa her, that freed the slaves, an' fought the Indians, 'an made
the West! Any gink with half an eye can see it comin'."

"But what are we going to do about it?" Saxon questioned
anxiously.

"Fight. That's all. The country's in the hands of a gang of
robbers. Look at the Southern Pacific. It runs California."

"Aw, rats, Bert," Billy interrupted. "You're takin' through your
lid. No railroad can ran the government of California."

"You're a bonehead," Bert sneered. "And some day, when it's too
late, you an' all the other boneheads'll realize the fact.
Rotten? I tell you it stinks. Why, there ain't a man who wants to
go to state legislature but has to make a trip to San Francisco,
an' go into the S. P. offices, an' take his hat off, an' humbly
ask permission. Why, the governors of California has been
railroad governors since before you and I was born. Huh! You
can't tell me. We're finished. We're licked to a frazzle. But
it'd do my heart good to help string up some of the dirty thieves
before I passed out. D'ye know what we are?--we old white stock
that fought in the wars, an' broke the land, an' made all this?
I'll tell you. We're the last of the Mohegans."

"He scares me to death, he's so violent," Mary said with
unconcealed hostility. "If he don't quit shootin' off his mouth
he'll get fired from the shops. And then what'll we do? He don't
consider me. But I can tell you one thing all right, all right.
I'll not go back to the laundry." She held her right hand up and
spoke with the solemnity of an oath. "Not so's you can see it.
Never again for yours truly."

"Oh, I know what you're drivin' at," Bert said with asperity.
"An' all I can tell you is, livin' or dead, in a job or out, no
matter what happens to me, if you will lead that way, you will,
an' there's nothin' else to it."

"I guess I kept straight before I met you," she came back with a
toss of the head. "And I kept straight after I met you, which is
going some if anybody should ask you."

Hot words were on Bert's tongue, but Saxon intervened and brought
about peace. She was concerned over the outcome of their
marriage. Both were highstrung, both were quick and irritable,
and their continual clashes did not augur well for their future.

The safety razor was a great achievement for Saxon. Privily she
conferred with a clerk she knew in Pierce's hardware store and
made the purchase. On Sunday morning, after breakfast, when Billy
was starting to go to the barber shop, she led him into the
bedroom, whisked a towel aside, and revealed the razor box,
shaving mug, soap, brush, and lather all ready. Billy recoiled,
then came back to make curious investigation. He gazed pityingly
at the safety razor.

"Huh! Call that a man's tool!"

"It'll do the work," she said. "It does it for thousands of men
every day."

But Billy shook his head and backed away.

"You shave three times a week," she urged. "That's forty-five
cents. Call it half a dollar, and there are fifty-two weeks in
the year. Twenty-six dollars a year just for shaving. Come on,
dear, and try it. Lots of men swear by it."

He shook his head mutinously, and the cloudy deeps of his eyes
grew more cloudy. She loved that sullen handsomeness that made
him look so boyish, and, laughing and kissing him, she forced him
into a chair, got off his coat, and unbuttoned shirt and
undershirt and turned them in.

Threatening him with, "If you open your mouth to kick I'll shove
it in," she coated his face with lather.

"Wait a minute," she checked him, as he reached desperately for
the razor. "I've been watching the barbers from the sidewalk.
This is what they do after the lather is on."

And thereupon she proceeded to rub the lather in with her
fingers.

"There," she said, when she had coated his face a second time.
"You're ready to begin. Only remember, I'm not always going to do
this for you. I'm just breaking you in, you see."

With great outward show of rebellion, half genuine, half
facetious, he made several tentative scrapes with the razor. He
winced violently, and violently exclaimed:

"Holy jumping Jehosaphat!"

He examined his face in the glass, and a streak of blood showed
in the midst of the lather.

"Cut!--by a safety razor, by God! Sure, men swear by it. Can't
blame 'em. Cut! By a safety!"

"But wait a second," Saxon pleaded. "They have to be regulated.
The clerk told me. See those little screws. There ... That's it
.. turn them around."

Again Billy applied the blade to his face. After a couple of
scrapes, be looked at himself closely in the mirror, grinned, and
went on shaving. With swiftness and dexterity he scraped his face
clean of lather. Saxon clapped her hands.

"Fine," Billy approved. "Great! Here. Give me your hand. See what
a good job it made."

He started to rub her hand against his cheek. Saxon jerked away
with a little cry of disappointment, then examined him closely.

"It hasn't shaved at all," she said.

"It's a fake, that's what it is. It cuts the hide, but not the
hair. Me for the barber."

But Saxon was persistent.

"You haven't given it a fair trial yet. It was regulated too
much. Let me try my hand at it. There, that's it, betwixt and
between. Now, lather again and try it."

This time the unmistakable sand-papery sound of hair-severing
could he heard.

"How is it?" she fluttered anxiously.

"It gets the--ouch!--hair," Billy grunted, frowning and making
faces. "But it--gee!--say!--ouch!--pulls like Sam Hill."

"Stay with it," she encouraged. "Don't give up the ship, big
Injun with a scalplock. Remember what Bert says and be the last
of the Mohegans."

At the end of fifteen minutes he rinsed his face and dried it,
sighing with relief.

"It's a shave, in a fashion, Saxon, but I can't say I'm stuck on
it. It takes out the nerve. I'm as weak as a cat."

He groaned with sudden discovery of fresh misfortune.

"What's the matter now?" she asked.

"The back of my neck--how can I shave the back of my neck? I'll
have to pay a barber to do it."

Saxon's consternation was tragic, but it only lasted a moment.
She took the brush in her hand.

"Sit down, Billy."

"What?--you?" he demanded indignantly.

"Yes; me. If any barber is good enough to shave your neck, and
then I am, too."

Billy moaned and groaned in the abjectness of humility and
surrender, and let her have her way.

"There, and a good job," she informed him when she had finished.
"As easy as falling off a log. And besides, it means twenty-six
dollars a year. And you'll buy the crib, the baby buggy, the
pinning blankets, and lots and lots of things with it. Now sit
still a minute longer."

She rinsed and dried the back of his neck and dusted it with
talcum powder.

"You're as sweet as a clean little baby, Billy Boy."

The unexpected and lingering impact of her lips on the back of
his neck made him writhe with mingled feelings not all
unpleasant.

Two days later, though vowing in the intervening time to have
nothing further to do with the instrument of the devil, he
permitted Saxon to assist him to a second shave. This time it
went easier.

"It ain't so bad," he admitted. "I'm gettin' the hang of it. It's
all in the regulating. You can shave as close as you want an' no
more close than you want. Barbers can't do that. Every once an'
awhile they get my face sore."

The third shave was an unqualified success, and the culminating
bliss was reached when Saxon presented him with a bottle of witch
hazel. After that he began active proselyting. He could not wait
a visit from Bert, but carried the paraphernalia to the latter's
house to demonstrate.

"We've ben boobs all these years, Bert, runnin' the chances of
barber's itch an' everything. Look at this, eh? See her take
hold. Smooth as silk. Just as easy... There! Six minutes by the
clock. Can you beat it? When I get my hand in, I can do it in
three. It works in the dark. It works under water. You couldn't
cut yourself if you tried. And it saves twenty-six dollars a
year. Saxon figured it out, and she's a wonder, I tell you."



CHAPTER VI

The trafficking between Saxon and Mercedes increased. The latter
commanded a ready market for all the fine work Saxon could
supply, while Saxon was eager and happy in the work. The expected
babe and the cut in Billy's wages had caused her to regard the
economic phase of existence more seriously than ever. Too little
money was being laid away in the bank, and her conscience pricked
her as she considered how much she was laying out on the pretty
necessaries for the household and herself. Also, for the first
time in her life she was spending another's earnings. Since a
young girl she had been used to spending her own, and now, thanks
to Mercedes she was doing it again, and, out of her profits,
assaying more expensive and delightful adventures in lingerie.

Mercedes suggested, and Saxon carried out and even bettered, the
dainty things of thread and texture. She made ruffled chemises of
sheer linen, with her own fine edgings and French embroidery on
breast and shoulders; linen hand-made combination undersuits; and
nightgowns, fairy and cobwebby, embroidered, trimmed with Irish
lace. On Mercedes' instigation she executed an ambitious and
wonderful breakfast cap for which the old woman returned her
twelve dollars after deducting commission.

She was happy and busy every waking moment, nor was preparation
for the little one neglected. The only ready made garments she
bought were three fine little knit shirts. As for the rest, every
bit was made by her own hands--featherstitched pinning blankets,
a crocheted jacket and cap, knitted mittens, embroidered bonnets;
slim little princess slips of sensible length; underskirts on
absurd Lilliputian yokes; silk-embroidered white flannel
petticoats; stockings and crocheted boots, seeming to burgeon
before her eyes with wriggly pink toes and plump little calves;
and last, but not least, many deliciously soft squares of
bird's-eye linen. A little later, as a crowning masterpiece, she
was guilty of a dress coat of white silk, embroidered. And into
all the tiny garments, with every stitch, she sewed love. Yet
this love, so unceasingly sewn, she knew when she came to
consider and marvel, was more of Billy than of the nebulous,
ungraspable new bit of life that eluded her fondest attempts at
visioning.

"Huh," was Billy's comment, as he went over the mite's wardrobe
and came back to center on the little knit shirts, "they look
more like a real kid than the whole kit an' caboodle. Why, I can
see him in them regular manshirts."

Saxon, with a sudden rush of happy, unshed tears, held one of the
little shirts up to his lips. He kissed it solemnly, his eyes
resting on Saxon's.

"That's some for the boy," he said, "but a whole lot for you."

But Saxon's money-earning was doomed to cease ignominiously and
tragically. One day, to take advantage of a department store
bargain sale, she crossed the bay to San Francisco. Passing along
Sutter Street, her eye was attracted by a display in the small
window of a small shop. At first she could not believe it; yet
there, in the honored place of the window, was the wonderful
breakfast cap for which she had received twelve dollars from
Mercedes. It was marked twenty-eight dollars. Saxon went in and
interviewed the shopkeeper, an emaciated, shrewd-eyed and
middle-aged woman of foreign extraction.

"Oh, I don't want to buy anything," Saxon said. "I make nice
things like you have here, and I wanted to know what you pay for
them-for that breakfast cap in the window, for instance."

The woman darted a keen glance to Saxon's left hand, noted the
innumerable tiny punctures in the ends of the first and second
fingers, then appraised her clothing and her face.

"Can you do work like that?"

Saxon nodded.

"I paid twenty dollars to the woman that made that." Saxon
repressed an almost spasmodic gasp, and thought coolly for a
space. Mercedes had given her twelve. Then Mercedes had pocketed
eight, while she, Saxon, had furnished the material and labor.

"Would you please show me other hand-made things nightgowns,
chemises, and such things, and tell me the prices you pay?"

"Can you do such work?"

"Yes."

"And will you sell to me?"

"Certainly," Saxon answered. "That is why I am here."

"We add only a small amount when we sell," the woman went on;
"you see, light and rent and such things, as well as a profit or
else we could not be here."

"It's only fair," Saxon agreed.

Amongst the beautiful stuff Saxon went over, she found a
nightgown and a combination undersuit of her own manufacture. For
the former she had received eight dollars from Mercedes, it was
marked eighteen, and the woman had paid fourteen; for the latter
Saxon received six, it was marked fifteen, and the woman had paid
eleven.

"Thank you," Saxon said, as she drew on her gloves. "I should
like to bring you some of my work at those prices."

"And I shall be glad to buy it ... if it is up to the mark." The
woman looked at her severely. "Mind you, it must be as good as
this. And if it is, I often get special orders, and I'll give you
a chance at them."

Mercedes was unblushingly candid when Saxon reproached her.

"You told me you took only a commission," was Saxon's accusation.

"So I did; and so I have."

"But I did all the work and bought all the materials, yet you
actually cleared more out of it than I did. You got the lion's
share."

"And why shouldn't I, my dear? I was the middleman. It's the way
of the world. 'Tis the middlemen that get the lion's share."

"It seems to me most unfair," Saxon reflected, more in sadness
than anger.

"That is your quarrel with the world, not with me," Mercedes
rejoined sharply, then immediately softened with one of her quick
changes. "We mustn't quarrel, my dear. I like you so much. La la,
it is nothing to you, who are young and strong with a man young
and strong. Listen, I am an old woman. And old Barry can do
little for me. He is on his last legs. His kidneys are 'most
gone. Remember, 'tis I must bury him. And I do him honor, for
beside me he'll have his last long steep. A stupid, dull old man,
heavy, an ox, 'tis true; but a good old fool with no trace of
evil in him. The plot is bought and paid for--the final
installment was made up, in part, out of my commissions from you.
Then there are the funeral expenses. It must be done nicely. I
have still much to save. And Barry may turn up his toes any day."

Saxon sniffed the air carefully, and knew the old woman had been
drinking again.

"Come, my dear, let me show you." Leading Saxon to a large sea
chest in the bedroom, Mercedes lifted the lid. A faint perfume,
as of rose-petals, floated up. "Behold, my burial trousseau. Thus
I shall wed the dust."

Saxon's amazement increased, as, article by article, the old
woman displayed the airiest, the daintiest, the most delicious
and most complete of bridal outfits. Mercedes held up an ivory
fan.

"In Venice 'twas given me, my dear.--See, this comb, turtle
shell; Bruce Anstey made it for me the week before he drank his
last bottle and scattered his brave mad brains with a Colt's
44.--This scarf. La la, a Liberty scarf--"

"And all that will be buried with you," Saxon mused, "Oh, the
extravagance of it!"

Mercedes laughed.

"Why not? I shall die as I have lived. It is my pleasure. I go to
the dust as a bride. No cold and narrow bed for me. I would it
were a coach, covered with the soft things of the East, and
pillows, pillows, without end."

"It would buy you twenty funerals and twenty plots," Saxon
protested, shocked by this blasphemy of conventional death. "It
is downright wicked."

"'Twill be as I have lived," Mercedes said complacently. "And
it's a fine bride old Barry'll have to come and lie beside him."
She closed the lid and sighed. "Though I wish it were Bruce
Anstey, or any of the pick of my young men to lie with me in the
great dark and to crumble with me to the dust that is the real
death."

She gazed at Saxon with eyes heated by alcohol and at the same
time cool with the coolness of content.

"In the old days the great of earth were buried with their live
slaves with them. I but take my flimsies, my dear."

"Then you aren't afraid of death? ...in the least?"

Mercedes shook her head emphatically.

"Death is brave, and good, and kind. I do not fear death. 'Tis of
men I am afraid when I am dead. So I prepare. They shall not have
me when I am dead."

Saxon was puzzled.

"They would not want you then," she said.

"Many are wanted," was the answer. "Do you know what becomes of
the aged poor who have no money for burial? They are not buried.
Let me tell you. We stood before great doors. He was a queer man,
a professor who ought to have been a pirate, a man who lectured
in class rooms when he ought to have been storming walled cities
or robbing banks. He was slender, like Don Juan. His hands were
strong as steel. So was his spirit. And he was mad, a bit mad, as
all my young men have been. 'Come, Mercedes,' he said; 'we will
inspect our brethren and become humble, and glad that we are not
as they--as yet not yet. And afterward, to-night, we will dine
with a more devilish taste, and we will drink to them in golden
wine that will be the more golden for having seen them. Come,
Mercedes.'

"He thrust the great doors open, and by the hand led me in. It
was a sad company. Twenty-four, that lay on marble slabs, or sat,
half erect and propped, while many young men, bright of eye,
bright little knives in their hands, glanced curiously at me from
their work."

"They were dead?" Saxon interrupted to gasp.

"They were the pauper dead, my dear. 'Come, Mercedes,' said he.
'There is more to show you that will make us glad we are alive.'
And he took me down, down to the vats. The salt vats, my dear. I
was not afraid. But it was in my mind, then, as I looked, how it
would be with me when I was dead. And there they were, so many
lumps of pork. And the order came, 'A woman; an old woman.' And
the man who worked there fished in the vats. The first was a man
he drew to see. Again he fished and stirred. Again a man. He was
impatient, and grumbled at his luck. And then, up through the
brine, he drew a woman, and by the face of her she was old, and
he was satisfied."

"It is not true!" Saxon cried out.

"I have seen, my dear, I know. And I tell you fear not the wrath
of God when you are dead. Fear only the salt vats. And as I stood
and looked, and as be who led me there looked at me and smiled
and questioned and bedeviled me with those mad, black,
tired-scholar's eyes of his, I knew that that was no way for my
dear clay. Dear it is, my clay to me; dear it has been to others.
La la, the salt vat is no place for my kissed lips and love-
lavished body." Mercedes lifted the lid of the chest and gazed
fondly at her burial pretties. "So I have made my bed. So I shall
lie in it. Some old philosopher said we know we must die; we do
not believe it. But the old do believe. I believe.

"My dear, remember the salt vats, and do not be angry with me
because my commissions have been heavy. To escape the vats I
would stop at nothing steal the widow's mite, the orphan's crust,
and pennies from a dead man's eyes."

"Do you believe in God?" Saxon asked abruptly, holding herself
together despite cold horror.

Mercedes dropped the lid and shrugged her shoulders.

"Who knows? I shall rest well."

"And punishment?" Saxon probed, remembering the unthinkable tale
of the other's life.

"Impossible, my dear. As some old poet said, 'God's a good
fellow.' Some time I shall talk to you about God. Never be afraid
of him. Be afraid only of the salt vats and the things men may do
with your pretty flesh after you are dead."



CHAPTER VII

Billy quarreled with good fortune. He suspected he was too
prosperous on the wages he received. What with the accumulating
savings account, the paying of the monthly furniture installment
and the house rent, the spending money in pocket, and the good
fare he was eating, he was puzzled as to how Saxon managed to pay
for the goods used in her fancy work. Several times he had
suggested his inability to see how she did it, and been baffled
each time by Saxon's mysterious laugh.

"I can't see how you do it on the money," he was contending one
evening.

He opened his mouth to speak further, then closed it and for five
minutes thought with knitted brows.

"Say," he said, "what's become of that frilly breakfast cap you
was workin' on so hard, I ain't never seen you wear it, and it
was sure too big for the kid."

Saxon hesitated, with pursed lips and teasing eyes. With her,
untruthfulness had always been a difficult matter. To Billy it
was impossible. She could see the cloud-drift in his eyes
deepening and his face hardening in the way she knew so well when
he was vexed.

"Say, Saxon, you ain't ... you ain't ... sellin' your work?"

And thereat she related everything, not omitting Mercedes
Higgins' part in the transaction, nor Mercedes Higgins'
remarkable burial trousseau. But Billy was not to be led aside by
the latter. In terms anything but uncertain he told Saxon that
she was not to work for money.

"But I have so much spare time, Billy, dear," she pleaded.

He shook his head.

"Nothing doing. I won't listen to it. I married you, and I'll
take care of you. Nobody can say Bill Roberts' wife has to work.
And I don't want to think it myself. Besides, it ain't
necessary."

"But Billy--" she began again.

"Nope. That's one thing I won't stand for, Saxon. Not that I
don't like fancy work. I do. I like it like hell, every bit you
make, but I like it on YOU. Go ahead and make all you want of it,
for yourself, an' I'll put up for the goods. Why, I'm just
whistlin' an' happy all day long, thinkin' of the boy an' seein'
you at home here workin' away on all them nice things. Because I
know how happy you are a-doin' it. But honest to God, Saxon, it'd
all be spoiled if I knew you was doin' it to sell. You see, Bill
Roberts' wife don't have to work. That's my brag--to myself, mind
you. An' besides, it ain't right."

"You're a dear," she whispered, happy despite her disappointment.

"I want you to have all you want," be continued. "An' you're
goin' to get it as long as I got two hands stickin' on the ends
of my arms. I guess I know how good the things are you wear--good
to me, I mean, too. I'm dry behind the ears, an' maybe I've
learned a few things I oughtn't to before I knew you. But I know
what I'm talkin' about, and I want to say that outside the
clothes down underneath, an' the clothes down underneath the
outside ones, I never saw a woman like you. Oh--"

He threw up his hands as if despairing of ability to express what
he thought and felt, then essayed a further attempt.

"It's not a matter of bein' only clean, though that's a whole
lot. Lots of women are clean. It ain't that. It's something more,
an' different. It's ... well, it's the look of it, so white, an'
pretty, an' tasty. It gets on the imagination. It's something I
can't get out of my thoughts of you. I want to tell you lots of
men can't strip to advantage, an' lots of women, too. But
you--well, you're a wonder, that's all, and you can't get too
many of them nice things to suit me, and you can't get them too
nice.

"For that matter, Saxon, you can just blow yourself. There's lots
of easy money layin' around. I'm in great condition. Billy Murphy
pulled down seventy-five round iron dollars only last week for
puttin' away the Pride of North Beach. That's what ha paid us the
fifty back out of."

But this time it was Saxon who rebelled.

"There's Carl Hansen," Billy argued. "The second Sharkey, the
alfalfa sportin' writers are callin' him. An' he calls himself
Champion of the United States Navy. Well, I got his number. He's
just a big stiff. I've seen 'm fight, an' I can pass him the
sleep medicine just as easy. The Secretary of the Sportin' Life
Club offered to match me. An' a hundred iron dollars in it for
the winner. And it'll all be yours to blow in any way you want.
What d'ye say?"

"If I can't work for money, you can't fight," was Saxon's
ultimatum, immediately withdrawn. "But you and I don't drive
bargains. Even if you'd let me work for money, I wouldn't let you
fight. I've never forgotten what you told me about how
prizefighters lose their silk. Well, you're not going to lose
yours. It's half my silk, you know. And if you won't fight, I
won't work--there. And more, I'll never do anything you don't
want me to, Billy."

"Same here," Billy agreed. "Though just the same I'd like most to
death to have just one go at that squarehead Hansen." He smiled
with pleasure at the thought. "Say, let's forget it all now, an'
you sing me 'Harvest Days' on that dinky what-you-may-call-it."

When she had complied, accompanying herself on the ukulele, she
suggested his weird "Cowboy's Lament." In some inexplicable way
of love, she had come to like her husband's one song. Because he
sang it, she liked its inanity and monotonousness; and most of
all, it seemed to her, she loved his hopeless and adorable
flatting of every note. She could even sing with him, flatting as
accurately and deliciously as he. Nor did she undeceive him in
his sublime faith.

"I guess Bert an' the rest have joshed me all the time," he said.

"You and I get along together with it fine," she equivoeated; for
in such matters she did not deem the untruth a wrong.

Spring was on when the strike came in the railroad shops. The
Sunday before it was called, Saxon and Billy had dinner at Bert's
house. Saxon's brother came, though he had found it impossible to
bring Sarah, who refused to budge from her household rut. Bert
was blackly pessimistic, and they found him singing with sardonic
glee:

"Nobody loves a mil-yun-aire.
Nobody likes his looks.
Nobody'll share his slightest care,
He classes with thugs and crooks.
Thriftiness has become a crime,
So spend everything you earn;
We're living now in a funny time,
When money is made to burn."

Mary went about the dinner preparation, flaunting unmistakable
signals of rebellion; and Saxon, rolling up her sleeves and tying
on an apron, washed the breakfast dishes. Bert fetched a pitcher
of steaming beer from the corner saloon, and the three men smoked
and talked about the coming strike.

"It oughta come years ago," was Bert's dictum. "It can't come any
too quick now to suit me, but it's too late. We're beaten thumbs
donn. Here's where the last of the Mohegans gets theirs, in the
neck, ker-whop!"

"Oh, I don't know," Tom, who had been smoking his pipe gravely,
began to counsel. "Organized labor's gettin' stronger every day.
Why, I can remember when there wasn't any unions in California,
Look at us now--wages, an' hours, an' everything."

"You talk like an organizer," Bert sneered, "shovin' the bull con
on the boneheads. But we know different. Organized wages won't
buy as much now as unorganized wages used to buy. They've got us
whipsawed. Look at Frisco, the labor leaders doin' dirtier
polities than the old parties, pawin' an' squabblin' over graft,
an' goin' to San Quentin, while--what are the Frisco carpenters
doin'? Let me tell you one thing, Tom Brown, if you listen to all
you hear you'll hear that every Frisco carpenter is union an'
gettin' full union wages. Do you believe it? It's a damn lie.
There ain't a carpenter that don't rebate his wages Saturday
night to the contractor. An' that's your buildin' trades in San
Francisco, while the leaders are makin' trips to Europe on the
earnings of the tenderloin--when they ain't coughing it up to the
lawyers to get out of wearin' stripes."

"That's all right," Tom concurred. "Nobody's denyin' it. The
trouble is labor ain't quite got its eyes open. It ought to play
politics, but the politics ought to be the right kind."

"Socialism, eh?" Bert caught him up with scorn. "Wouldn't they
sell us out just as the Ruefs and Schmidts have?"

"Get men that are honest," Billy said. "That's the whole trouble.
Not that I stand for socialism. I don't. All our folks was a long
time in America, an' I for one won't stand for a lot of fat
Germans an' greasy Russian Jews tellin' me how to run my country
when they can't speak English yet."

"Your country!" Bert cried. "Why, you bonehead, you ain't got a
country. That's a fairy story the grafters shove at you every
time they want to rob you some more."

"But don't vote for the grafters," Billy contended. "If we
selected honest men we'd get honest treatment."

"I wish you'd come to some of our meetings, Billy," Tom said
wistfully. "If you would, you'd get your eyes open an' vote the
socialist ticket next election."

"Not on your life," Billy declined. ""When you catch me in a
socialist meeting'll be when they can talk like white men."

Bert was humming:

"We're living now in a funny time,
When money is made to burn."

Mary was too angry with her husband, because of the impending
strike and his incendiary utterances, to hold conversation with
Saxon, and the latter, bepuzzled, listened to the conflicting
opinions of the men.

"Where are we at?" she asked them, with a merriness that
concealed her anxiety at heart.

"We ain't at," Bert snarled. "We're gone."

"But meat and oil have gone up again," she chafed. "And Billy's
wages have been cut, and the shop men's were cut last year.
Something must be done."

"The only thing to do is fight like hell," Bert answered. "Fight,
an' go down fightin'. That's all. We're licked anyhow, but we can
have a last run for our money."

"That's no way to talk," Tom rebuked.

"The time for talkin' 's past, old cock. The time for fightin' 's
come."

"A hell of a chance you'd have against regular troops and machine
guns," Billy retorted.

"Oh, not that way. There's such things as greasy sticks that go
up with a loud noise and leave holes. There's such things as
emery powder--"

"Oh, ho!" Mary burst out upon him, arms akimbo. "So that's what
it means. That's what the emery in your vest pocket meant."

Her husband ignored her. Tom smoked with a troubled air. Billy
was hurt. It showed plainly in his face.

"You ain't ben doin' that, Bert?" he asked, his manner showing
his expectancy of his friend's denial.

"Sure thing, if you wont to know. I'd see'm all in hell if I
could, before I go."

"He's a bloody-minded anarchist," Mary complained. "Men like him
killed McKinley, and Garfield, an'--an' an' all the rest. He'll
be hung. You'll see. Mark my words. I'm glad there's no children
in sight, that's all."

"It's hot air," Billy comforted her.

"He's just teasing you," Saxon soothed. "He always was a josher."

But Mary shook her head.

"I know. I hear him talkin' in his sleep. He swears and curses
something awful, an' grits his teeth. Listen to him now."

Bert, his handsome face bitter and devil-may-care, had tilted his
chair back against the wall and was singing

"Nobody loves a mil-yun-aire,
Nobody likes his looks,
Nobody'll share his slightest care,
He classes with thugs and crooks."

Tom was saying something about reasonableness and justice, and
Bert ceased from singing to catch him up.

"Justice, eh? Another pipe-dream. I'll show you where the working
class gets justice. You remember Forbes--J. Alliston
Forbes--wrecked the Alta California Trust Company an' salted down
two cold millions. I saw him yesterday, in a big hell-bent
automobile. What'd he get? Eight years' sentence. How long did he
serve? Less'n two years. Pardoned out on account of ill health.
Ill hell! We'll be dead an' rotten before he kicks the bucket.
Here. Look out this window. You see the back of that house with
the broken porch rail. Mrs. Danaker lives there. She takes in
washin'. Her old man was killed on the railroad. Nitsky on
damages--contributory negligence, or
fellow-servant-something-or-other flimflam. That's what the
courts handed her. Her boy, Archie, was sixteen. He was on the
road, a regular road-kid. He blew into Fresno an' rolled a drunk.
Do you want to know how much he got? Two dollars and eighty
cents. Get that? --Two-eighty. And what did the alfalfa judge
hand'm? Fifty years. He's served eight of it already in San
Quentin. And he'll go on serving it till he croaks. Mrs. Danaker
says he's bad with consumption--caught it inside, but she ain't
got the pull to get'm pardoned. Archie the Kid steals two dollars
an' eighty cents from a drunk and gets fifty years. J. Alliston
Forbes sticks up the Alta Trust for two millions en' gets less'n
two years. Who's country is this anyway? Yourn an' Archie the
Kid's? Guess again. It's J. Alliston Forbes'--Oh:

"Nobody likes a mil-yun-aire,
Nobody likes hia looks,
Nobody'll share his slightest care,
He classes with thugs and crooks."

Mary, at the sink, where Saxon was just finishing the last dish,
untied Saxon's apron and kissed her with the sympathy that women
alone feel for each other under the shadow of maternity.

"Now you sit down, dear. You mustn't tire yourself, and it's a
long way to go yet. I'll get your sewing for you, and you can
listen to the men talk. But don't listen to Bert. He's crazy."

Saxon sewed and listened, and Bert's face grew bleak and bitter
as he contemplated the baby clothes in her lap.

"There you go," he blurted out, "bringin' kids into the world
when you ain't got any guarantee you can feed em.

"You must a-had a souse last night," Tom grinned.

Bert shook his head.

"Aw, what's the use of gettin' grouched?" Billy cheered. "It's a
pretty good country."

"It WAS a pretty good country," Bert replied, "when we was all
Mohegans. But not now. We're jiggerooed. We're hornswoggled.
We're backed to a standstill. We're double-crossed to a
fare-you-well. My folks fought for this country. So did yourn,
all of you. We freed the niggers, killed the Indians, an starved,
an' froze, an' sweat, an' fought. This land looked good to us. We
cleared it, an' broke it, an' made the roads, an' built the
cities. And there was plenty for everyhody. And we went on
fightin' for it. I had two uncles killed at Gettysburg. All of us
was mixed up in that war. Listen to Saxon talk any time what her
folks went through to get out here an' get ranches, an' horses,
an' cattle, an' everything. And they got 'em. All our folks' got
'em, Mary's, too--"

"And if they'd ben smart they'd a-held on to them," she
interpolated.

"Sure thing," Bert continued. "That's the very point. We're the
losers. We've ben robbed. We couldn't mark cards, deal from the
bottom, an' ring in cold decks like the others. We're the white
folks that failed. You see, times changed, and there was two
kinds of us, the lions and the plugs. The plugs only worked, the
lions only gobbled. They gobbled the farms, the mines, the
factories, an' now they've gobbled the government. We're the
white folks an' the children of white folks, that was too busy
being good to be smart. We're the white folks that lost out.
We're the ones that's ben skinned. D'ye get me?"

"You'd make a good soap-boxer," Tom commended, "if only you'd get
the kinks straightened out in your reasoning."

"It sounds all right, Bert," Billy said, "only it ain't. Any man
can get rich to-day--"

"Or be president of the United States," Bert snapped. "Sure
thing--if he's got it in him. Just the same I ain't heard you
makin' a noise like a millionaire or a president. Why? You ain't
got it in you. You're a bonehead. A plug. That's why. Skiddoo for
you. Skiddoo for all of us."

At the table, while they ate, Tom talked of the joys of
farm-life he had known as a boy and as a young man, and confided
that it was his dream to go and take up government land somewhere
as his people had done before him. Unfortunately, as he
explained, Sarah was set, so that the dream must remain a dream.

"It's all in the game," Billy sighed. "It's played to rules. Some
one has to get knocked out, I suppose."

A little later, while Bert was off on a fresh diatribe, Billy
became aware that he was making comparisons. This house was not
like his house. Here was no satisfying atmosphere. Things seemed
to run with a jar. He recollected that when they arrived the
breakfast dishes had not yet been washed. With a man's general
obliviousness of household affairs, he had not noted details; yet
it had been borne in on him, all morning, in a myriad ways, that
Mary was not the housekeeper Saxon was. He glanced proudly across
at her, and felt the spur of an impulse to leave his seat, go
around, and embrace her. She was a wife. He remembered her dainty
undergarmenting, and on the instant, into his brain, leaped the
image of her so appareled, only to be shattered by Bert.

"Hey, Bill, you seem to think I've got a grouch. Sure thing. I
have. You ain't had my experiences. You've always done teamin'
an' pulled down easy money prizefightin'. You ain't known hard
times. You ain't ben through strikes. You ain't had to take care
of an old mother an' swallow dirt on her account. It wasn't until
after she died that I could rip loose an' take or leave as I felt
like it.

"Take that time I tackled the Niles Electric an' see what a
work-plug gets handed out to him. The Head Cheese sizes me up,
pumps me a lot of questions, an' gives me an application blank. I
make it out, payin' a dollar to a doctor they sent me to for a
health certificate. Then I got to go to a picture garage an' get
my mug taken for the Niles Electric rogues' gallery. And I cough
up another dollar for the mug. The Head Squirt takes the blank,
the health certificate, and the mug, an' fires more questions.
DID I BELONG TO A LABOR UNION?--ME? Of course I told'm the truth
I guess nit. I needed the job. The grocery wouldn't give me any
more tick, and there was my mother.

"Huh, thinks I, here's where I'm a real carman. Back platform for
me, where I can pick up the fancy skirts. Nitsky. Two dollars,
please. Me--my two dollars. All for a pewter badge. Then there
was the uniform--nineteen fifty, and get it anywhere else for
fifteen. Only that was to be paid out of my first month. And then
five dollars in change in my pocket, my own money. That was the
rule.--I borrowed that five from Tom Donovan, the policeman. Then
what? They worked me for two weeks without pay, breakin' me in."

"Did you pick up any fancy skirts?" Saxon queried teasingly.

Bert shook his head glumly.

"I only worked a month. Then we organized, and they busted our
union higher'n a kite."

"And you boobs in the shops will be busted the same way if you go
out on strike," Mary informed him.

"That's what I've ben tellin' you all along," Bert replied. "We
ain't got a chance to win."

"Then why go out?" was Saxon's question.

He looked at her with lackluster eyes for a moment, then answered

"Why did my two uncles get killed at Gettysburg?"



CHAPTER VIII

Saxon went about her housework greatly troubled. She no longer
devoted herself to the making of pretties. The materials cost
money, and she did not dare. Bert's thrust had sunk home. It
remained in her quivering consciousness like a shaft of steel
that ever turned and rankled. She and Billy were responsible for
this coming young life. Could they be sure, after all, that they
could adequately feed and clothe it and prepare it for its way in
the world? Where was the guaranty? She remembered, dimly, the
blight of hard times in the past, and the plaints of fathers and
mothers in those days returned to her with a new significance.
Almost could she understand Sarah's chronic complaining.

Hard times were already in the neighborhood, where lived the
families of the shopmen who had gone out on strike. Among the
small storekeepers, Saxon, in the course of the daily marketing,
could sense the air of despondency. Light and geniality seemed to
have vanished. Gloom pervaded everywhere. The mothers of the
children that played in the streets showed the gloom plainly in
their faces. When they gossiped in the evenings, over front gates
and on door stoops, their voices were subdued and less of
laughter rang out.

Mary Donahue, who had taken three pints from the milkman, now
took one pint. There were no more family trips to the moving
picture shows. Scrap-meat was harder to get from the butcher.
Nora Delaney, in the third house, no longer bought fresh fish for
Friday. Salted codfish, not of the best quality, was now on her
table. The sturdy children that ran out upon the street between
meals with huge slices of bread and butter and sugar now came out
with no sugar and with thinner slices spread more thinly with
butter. The very custom was dying out, and some children already
had desisted from piecing between meals.

Everywhere was manifest a pinching and scraping, a tightenig and
shortening down of expenditure. And everywhere was more
irritation. Women became angered with one another, and with the
children, more quickly than of yore; and Saxon knew that Bert and
Mary bickered incessantly.

"If she'd only realize I've got troubles of my own," Bert
complained to Saxon.

She looked at him closely, and felt fear for him in a vague, numb
way. His black eyes seemed to burn with a continuous madness. The
brown face was leaner, the skin drawn tightly across the
cheekbones. A slight twist had come to the mouth, which seemed
frozen into bitterness. The very carriage of his body and the way
he wore his hat advertised a recklessness more intense than had
been his in the past.

Sometimes, in the long afternoons, sitting by the window with
idle hands, she caught herself reconstructing in her vision that
folk-migration of her people across the plains and mountains and
deserts to the sunset land by the Western sea. And often she
found herself dreaming of the arcadian days of her people, when
they had not lived in cities nor been vexed with labor unions and
employers' associations. She would remember the old people's
tales of self-sufficingness, when they shot or raised their own
meat, grew their own vegetables, were their own blacksmiths and
carpenters, made their own shoes--yes, and spun the cloth of the
clothes they wore. And something of the wistfulness in Tom's face
she could see as she recollected it when he talked of his dream
of taking up government land.

A farmer's life must be fine, she thought. Why was it that people
had to live in cities? Why had times changed? If there had been
enough in the old days, why was there not enough now? Why was it
necessary for men to quarrel and jangle, and strike and fight,
all about the matter of getting work? Why wasn't there work for
all?--Only that morning, and she shuddered with the recollection,
she had seen two scabs, on their way to work, beaten up by the
strikers, by men she knew by sight, and some by name, who lived
in the neighhorhood. It had happened directly across the street.
It had been cruel, terrible--a dozen men on two. The children had
begun it by throwing rocks at the scabs and cursing them in ways
children should not know. Policemen had run upon the scene with
drawn revolvers, and the strikers had retreated into the houses
and through the narrow alleys between the houses. One of the
scabs, unconscious, had been carried away in an ambulance; the
other, assisted by special railroad police, had been taken away
to the shops. At him, Mary Donahue, standing on her front stoop,
her child in her arms, had hurled such vile abuse that it had
brought the blush of shame to Saxon's cheeks. On the stoop of the
house on the other side, Saxon had noted Mercedes, in the height
of the beating up, looking on with a queer smile. She had seemed
very eager to witness, her nostrils dilated and swelling like the
beat of pulses as she watched. It had struck Saxon at the time
that the old woman was quite unalarmed and only curious to see.

To Mercedes, who was so wise in love, Saxon went for explanation
of what was the matter with the world. But the old woman's wisdom
in affairs industrial and economic was cryptic and unpalatable.

"La la, my dear, it is so simple. Most men are born stupid. They
are the slaves. A few are born clever. They are the masters. God
made men so, I suppose."

"Then how about God and that terrible beating across the street
this morning?"

"I'm afraid he was not interested," Mercedes smiled. "I doubt he
even knows that it happened."

"I was frightened to death," Saxon declared. "I was made sick by
it. And yet you--I saw you--you looked on as cool as you please,
as if it was a show."

"It was a show, my dear."

"Oh, how could you?"

"La la, I have seen men killed. It is nothing strange. All men
die. The stupid ones die like oxen, they know not why. It is
quite funny to see. They strike each other with fists and clubs,
and break each other's heads. It is gross. They are like a lot of
animals. They are like dogs wrangling over bones. Jobs are bones,
you know. Now, if they fought for women, or ideas, or bars of
gold, or fabulous diamonds, it would be splendid. But no; they
are only hungry, and fight over scraps for their stomach."

"Oh, if I could only understand!" Saxon murmured, her hands
tightly clasped in anguish of incomprehension and vital need to
know.

"There is nothing to understand. It is clear as print. There have
always been the stupid and the clever, the slave and the master,
the peasant and the prince. There always will be."

"But why?"

"Why is a peasant a peasant, my dear? Because he is a peasant.
Why is a flea a flea?"

Saxon tossed her head fretfully.

"Oh, but my dear, I have answered. The philosophies of the world
can give no better answer. Why do you like your man for a husband
rather than any other man? Because you like him that way, that is
all. Why do you like? Because you like. Why does fire burn and
frost bite? Why are there clever men and stupid men? masters and
slaves? employers and workingmen? Why is black black? Answer that
and you answer everything."

"But it is not right That men should go hungry and without work
when they want to work if only they can get a square deal," Saxon
protested.

"Oh, but it is right, just as it is right that stone won't burn
like wood, that sea sand isn't sugar, that thorns prick, that
water is wet, that smoke rises, that things fall down and not
up."

But such doctrine of reality made no impression on Saxon.
Frankly, she could not comprehend. It seemed like so much
nonsense.

"Then we have no liberty and independence," she cried
passionately. "One man is not as good as another. My child has
not the right to live that a rich mother's child has."

"Certainly not," Mercedes answered.

"Yet all my people fought for these things," Saxon urged,
remembering her school history and the sword of her father.

"Democracy--the dream of the stupid peoples. Oh, la la, my dear,
democracy is a lie, an enchantment to keep the work brutes
content, just as religion used to keep them content. When they
groaned in their misery and toil, they were persuaded to keep on
in their misery and toil by pretty tales of a land beyond the
skies where they would live famously and fat while the clever
ones roasted in everlasting fire. Ah, how the clever ones must
have chuckled! And when that lie wore out, and democracy was
dreamed, the clever ones saw to it that it should be in truth a
dream, nothing but a dream. The world belongs to the great and
clever."

"But you are of the working people," Saxon charged.

The old woman drew herself up, and almost was angry.

"I? Of the working people? My dear, because I had misfortune with
moneys invested, because I am old and can no longer win the brave
young men, because I have outlived the men of my youth and there
is no one to go to, because I live here in the ghetto with Barry
Higgins and prepare to die--why, my dear, I was born with the
masters, and have trod all my days on the necks of the stupid. I
have drunk rare wines and sat at feasts that would have supported
this neighborhood for a lifetime. Dick Golden and I--it was
Dickie's money, but I could have had it Dick Golden and I dropped
four hundred thousand francs in a week's play at Monte Carlo. He
was a Jew, but he was a spender. In India I have worn jewels that
could have saved the lives of ten thousand families dying before
my eyes."

"You saw them die? ... and did nothing?" Saxon asked aghast.

"I kept my jewels--la la, and was robbed of them by a brute of a
Russian officer within the year."

"And you let them die," Saxon reiterated.

"They were cheap spawn. They fester and multiply like maggots.
They meant nothing--nothing, my dear, nothing. No more than your
work people mean here, whose crowning stupidity is their
continuing to beget more stupid spawn for the slavery of the
masters."

So it was that while Saxon could get little glimmering of common
sense from others, from the terrible old woman she got none at
all. Nor could Saxon bring herself to believe much of what she
considered Mercedes' romancing. As the weeks passed, the strike
in the railroad shops grew bitter and deadly. Billy shook his
head and confessed his inability to make head or tail of the
troubles that were looming on the labor horizon.

"I don't get the hang of it," he told Saxon. "It's a mix-up. It's
like a roughhouse with the lights out. Look at us teamsters. Here
we are, the talk just starting of going out on sympathetic strike
for the mill-workers. They've ben out a week, most of their
places is filled, an' if us teamsters keep on haulin' the
mill-work the strike's lost."

"Yet you didn't consider striking for yourselves when your wages
were cut," Saxon said with a frown.

"Oh, we wasn't in position then. But now the Frisco teamsters and
the whole Frisco Water Front Confederation is liable to back us
up. Anyway, we're just talkin' about it, that's all. But if we do
go out, we'll try to get back that ten per cent cut."

"It's rotten politics," he said another time. "Everybody's
rotten. If we'd only wise up and agree to pick out honest men--"

"But if you, and Bert, and Tom can't agree, how do you expect all
the rest to agree?" Saxon asked.

"It gets me," he admitted. "It's enough to give a guy the willies
thinkin' about it. And yet it's plain as the nose on your face.
Get honest men for politics, an' the whole thing's straightened
out. Honest men'd make honest laws, an' then honest men'd get
their dues. But Bert wants to smash things, an' Tom smokes his
pipe and dreams pipe dreams about by an' by when everybody votes
the way he thinks. But this by an' by ain't the point. We want
things now. Tom says we can't get them now, an' Bert says we
ain't never goin' to get them. What can a fellow do when
everybody's of different minds? Look at the socialists
themselves. They're always disagreeing, splittin' up, an' firin'
each other out of the party. The whole thing's bughouse, that's
what, an' I almost get dippy myself thinkin' about it. The point
I can't get out of my mind is that we want things now."

He broke off abruptly and stared at Saxon.

"What is it?" he asked, his voice husky with anxiety. "You ain't
sick ... or .. or anything?"

One hand she had pressed to her heart; but the startle and fright
in her eyes was changing into a pleased intentness, while on her
mouth was a little mysterious smile. She seemed oblivious to her
husband, as if listening to some message from afar and not for
his ears. Then wonder and joy transfused her face, and she looked
at Billy, and her hand went out to his.

"It's life," she whispered. "I felt life. I am so glad, so glad."

The next evening when Billy came home from work, Saxon caused him
to know and undertake more of the responsibilities of fatherhood.

"I've been thinking it over, Billy," she began, "and I'm such a
healthy, strong woman that it won't have to be very expensive.
There's Martha Skelton--she's a good midwife."

But Billy shook his head.

"Nothin' doin' in that line, Saxon. You're goin' to have Doc
Hentley. He's Bill Murphy's doc, an' Bill swears by him. He's an
old cuss, but he's a wooz."

"She confined Maggie Donahue," Saxon argued; "and look at her and
her baby."

"Well, she won't confine you--not so as you can notice it."

"But the doctor will charge twenty dollars," Saxon pursued, "and
make me get a nurse because I haven't any womenfolk to come in.
But Martha Skelton would do everything, and it would be so much
cheaper."

But Billy gathered her tenderly in his arms and laid down the
law.

"Listen to me, little wife. The Roberts family ain't on the
cheap. Never forget that. You've gotta have the baby. That's your
business, an' it's enough for you. My business is to get the
money an' take care of you. An' the best ain't none too good for
you. Why, I wouldn't run the chance of the teeniest accident
happenin' to you for a million dollars. It's you that counts. An'
dollars is dirt. Maybe you think I like that kid some. I do. Why,
I can't get him outa my head. I'm thinkin' about'm all day long.
If I get fired, it'll be his fault. I'm clean dotty over him. But
just the same, Saxon, honest to God, before I'd have anything
happen to you, break your little finger, even, I'd see him dead
an' buried first. That'll give you something of an idea what you
mean to me.

"Why, Saxon, I had the idea that when folks got married they just
settled down, and after a while their business was to get along
with each other. Maybe it's the way it is with other people; but
it ain't that way with you an' me. I love you more 'n more every
day. Right now I love you more'n when I began talkin' to you five
minutes ago. An' you won't have to get a nurse. Doc Hentley'll
come every day, an' Mary'll come in an' do the housework, an'
take care of you an' all that, just as you'll do for her if she
ever needs it."

As the days and weeks pussed, Saxon was possessed by a conscious
feeling of proud motherhood in her swelling breasts. So
essentially a normal woman was she, that motherhood was a
satisfying and passionate happiness. It was true that she had her
moments of apprehension, but they were so momentary and faint
that they tended, if anything, to give zest to her happiness.

Only one thing troubled her, and that was the puzzling and
perilous situation of labor which no one seemed to understand,
her self least of all.

"They're always talking about how much more is made by machinery
than by the old ways," she told her brother Tom. "Then, with all
the machinery we've got now, why don't we get more?"

"Now you're talkin'," he answered. "It wouldn't take you long to
understand socialism."

But Saxon had a mind to the immediate need of things.

"Tom, how long have you been a socialist?"

"Eight years."

"And you haven't got anything by it?"

"But we will ... in time."

"At that rate you'll be dead first," she challenged.

Tom sighed.

"I'm afraid so. Things move so slow."

Again he sighed. She noted the weary, patient look in his face,
the bent shoulders, the labor-gnarled hands, and it all seemed to
symbolize the futility of his social creed.



CHAPTER IX

It began quietly, as the fateful unexpected so often begins.
Children, of all ages and sizes, were playing in the street, and
Saxon, by the open front window, was watching them and dreaming
day dreams of her child soon to be. The sunshine mellowed
peacefully down, and a light wind from the bay cooled the air and
gave to it a tang of salt. One of the children pointed up Pine
Street toward Seventh. All the children ceased playing, and
stared and pointed. They formed into groups, the larger boys, of
from ten to twelve, by themselves, the older girls anxiously
clutching the small children by the hands or gathering them into
their arms.

Saxon could not see the cause of all this, but she could guess
when she saw the larger boys rush to the gutter, pick up stones,
and sneak into the alleys between the houses. Smaller boys tried
to imitate them. The girls, dragging the tots by the arms, banged
gates and clattered up the front steps of the small houses. The
doors slammed behind them, and the street was deserted, though
here and there front shades were drawn aside so that
anxious-faced women might peer forth. Saxon heard the uptown
train puffing and snorting as it pulled out from Center Street.
Then, from the direction of Seventh, came a hoarse, throaty
manroar. Still, she could see nothing, and she remembered
Mercedes Higgins' words "THEY ARE LIKE DOGS WRANGLING OVER BONES.
JOBS ARE BONES, YOU KNOW"

The roar came closer, and Saxon, leaning out, saw a dozen scabs,
conveyed by as many special police and Pinkertons, coming down
the sidewalk on her side of tho street. They came compactly, as
if with discipline, while behind, disorderly, yelling confusedly,
stooping to pick up rocks, were seventy-five or a hundred of the
striking shopmen. Saxon discovered herself trembling with
apprehension, knew that she must not, and controlled herself. She
was helped in this by the conduct of Mercedes Higgins. The o]d
woman came out of her front door, dragging a chair, on which she
coolly seated herself on the tiny stoop at the top of the steps.

In the hands of the special police were clubs. The Pinkertons
carried no visible weapons. The strikers, urging on from behind,
seemed content with yelling their rage and threats, and it
remained for the children to precipitate the conflict. From
across the street, between the Olsen and the Isham houses, came a
shower of stones. Most of these fell short, though one struck a
scab on the head. The man was no more than twenty feet away from
Saxon. He reeled toward her front picket fence, drawing a
revolver. With one hand he brushed the blood from his eyes and
with the other he discharged the revolver into the Isham house. A
Pinkerton seized his arm to prevent a second shot, and dragged
him along. At the same instant a wilder roar went up from the
strikers, while a volley of stones came from between Saxon's
house and Maggie Donahue's. The scabs and their protectors made a
stand, drawing revolvers. From their hard, determined
faces--fighting men by profession--Saxon could augur nothing but
bloodshed and death. An elderly man, evidently the leader, lifted
a soft felt hat and mopped the perspiration from the bald top of
his head. He was a large man, very rotund of belly and helpless
looking. His gray beard was stained with streaks of tobacco
juice, and he was smoking a cigar. He was stoop-shouldered, and
Saxon noted the dandruff on the collar of his coat,

One of the men pointed into the street, and several of his
companions laughed. The cause of it was the little Olsen boy,
barely four years old, escaped somehow from his mother and
toddling toward his economic enemies. In his right he bore a rock
so heavy that he could scarcely lift it. With this he feebly
threatened them. His rosy little face was convulsed with rage,
and he was screaming over and over "Dam scabs! Dam scabs! Dam
scabs!" The laughter with which they greeted him only increased
his fury. He toddled closer, and with a mighty exertion threw the
rock, It fell a scant six feet beyond his hand.

This much Saxon saw, and also Mrs. Olsen rushing into the street
for her child. A rattling of revolver-shots from the strikers
drew Saxon's attention to the men beneath her. One of them cursed
sharply and examined the biceps of his left arm, which hung
limply by his side, Down the hand she saw the blood beginning to
drip. She knew she ought not remain and watch, but the memory of
her fighting forefathers was with her, while she possessed no
more than normal human fear--if anything, less. She forgot her
child in the eruption of battle that had broken upon her quiet
street, And she forgot the strikers, and everything else, in
amazement at what had happened to the round-bellied,
cigar-smoking leader. In some strange way, she knew not how, his
head had become wedged at the neck between the tops of the
pickets of her fence. His body hung down outside, the knees not
quite touching the ground. His hat had fallen off, and the sun
was making an astounding high light on his bald spot. The cigar,
too, was gone. She saw he was looking at her. One hand, between
the pickets, seemed waving at her, and almost he seemed to wink
at her jocosely, though she knew it to be the contortion of
deadly pain.

Possibly a second, or, at most, two seconds, she gazed at this,
when she was aroused by Bert's voice. He was running along the
sidewMk, in front of her house, and behind him charged several
more strikers, while he shouted: "Come on, you Mohegans! We got
'em nailed to the cross!"

In his left hand he carried a pick-handle, in his right a
revolver, already empty, for he clicked the cylinder vainly
around as he ran. With an abrupt stop, dropping the pick-handle,
he whirled half about, facing Saxon's gate. He was sinking down,
when he straightened himself to throw the revolver into the face
of a scab who was jumping toward him. Then he began swaying, at
the same time sagging at the knees and waist. Slowly, with
infinite effort, he caught a gate picket in his right hand, and,
still slowly, as if lowering himself, sank down, while past him
leaped the crowd of strikers he had led.

It was battle without quarter--a massacre. The scabs and their
protectors, surrounded, backed against Saxon's fence, fought like
cornered rats, but could not withstand the rush of a hundred men.
Clubs and pick-handles were swinging, revolvers were exploding,
and cobblestones were flung with crushing effect at arm's
distance. Saxon saw young Frank Davis, a friend of Bert's and a
father of several months' standing, press the muzzle of his
revolver against a scab's stomach and fire. There were curses and
snarls of rage, wild cries of terror and pain. Mercedes was
right. These things were not men. They were beasts, fighting over
bones, destroying one another for bones.

JOBS ARE BONES; JOBS ARE BONES. The phrase was an incessant
iteration in Saxon's brain. Much as she might have wished it, she
was powerless now to withdraw from the window. It was as if she
were paralyzed. Her brain no longer worked. She sat numb,
staring, incapable of anything save seeing the rapid horror
before her eyes that flashed along like a moving picture film
gone mad. She saw Pinkertons, special police, and strikers go
down. One scab, terribly wounded, on his knees and begging for
mercy, was kicked in the face. As he sprawled backward another
striker, standing over him, fired a revolver into his chest,
quickly and deliberately, again and again, until the weapon was
empty. Another scab, backed over the pickets by a hand clutching
his throat, had his face pulped by a revolver butt. Again and
again, continually, the revolver rose and fell, and Saxon knew
the man who wielded it--Chester Johnson. She had met him at
dances and danced with him in the days before she was married. He
had always been kind and good natured. She remembered the Friday
night, after a City Hall band concert, when he had taken her and
two other girls to Tony's Tamale Grotto on Thirteenth street. And
after that they had all gone to Pabst's Cafe and drunk a glass of
beer before they went home. It was impossible that this could be
the same Chester Johnson. And as she looked, she saw the
round-bellied leader, still wedged by the neck between the
pickets, draw a revolver with his free hand, and, squinting
horribly sidewise, press the muzzle against Chester's side. She
tried to scream a warning. She did scream, and Chester looked up
and saw her. At that moment the revolver went off, and he
collapsed prone upon the body of the scab. And the bodies of
three men hung on her picket fence.

Anything could happen now. Quite without surprise, she saw the
strikers leaping the fence, trampling her few little geraniums
and pansies into the earth as they fled between Mercedes' house
and hers. Up Pine street, from the railroad yards, was coming a
rush of railroad police and Pinkertons, firing as they ran. While
down Pine street, gongs clanging, horses at a gallop, came three
patrol wagons packed with police. The strikers were in a trap.
The only way out was between the houses and over the back yard
fences. The jam in the narrow alley prevented them all from
escaping. A dozen were cornered in the angle between the front of
her house and the steps. And as they had done, so were they done
by. No effort was made to arrest. They were clubbed down and shot
down to the last man by the guardians of the peace who were
infuriated by what had been wreaked on their brethren.

It was all over, and Saxon, moving as in a dream, clutching the
banister tightly, came down the front steps. The round-bellied
leader still leered at her and fluttered one hand, though two big
policemen were just bending to extricate him. The gate was off
its hinges, which seemed strange, for she had been watching all
the time and had not seen it happen.

Bert's eyes were closed. His lips were blood-flecked, and there
was a gurgling in his throat as if he were trying to say
something. As she stooped above him, with her handkerchief
brushing the blood from his cheek where some one had stepped on
him, his eyes opened. The old defiant light was in them. He did
not know her. The lips moved, and faintly, almout reminiscently,
he murmured, "The last of the Mohegans, the last of the
Mohegans." Then he groaned, and the eyelids drooped down again.
He was not dead. She knew that, The chest still rose and fell,
and the gurgling still continued in his throat.

She looked up. Mercedes stood beside her. The old woman's eyes
were very bright, her withered cheeks flushed.

"Will you help me carry him into the house?" Saxon asked.

Mercedes nodded, turned to a sergeant of police, and made the
request to him. The sergeant gave a swift glance at Bert, and his
eyes were bitter and ferocious as he refused.

"To hell with'm. We'll care for our own."

"Maybe you and I can do it," Saxon said.

"Don't be a fool." Mercedes was beckoning to Mrs. Olsen across
the street. "You go into the house, little mother that is to be.
This is bad for you. We'll carry him in. Mrs. Olsen is coming,
and we'll get Maggie Donahue."

Saxon led the way into the back bedroom which Billy had insisted
on furnishing. As she opened the door, the carpet seemed to fly
up into her face as with the force of a blow, for she remembered
Bert had laid that carpet. And as the women placed him on the bed
she recalled that it was Bert and she, between them, who had set
the bed up one Sunday morning.

And then she felt very queer, and was surprised to see Mercedes
regarding her with questioning, searching eyes. After that her
queerness came on very fast, and she descended into the hell of
pain that is given to women alone to know. She was supported,
half-carried, to the front bedroom. Many faces were about
her--Mercedes, Mrs. Olsen, Maggie Donahue. It seemed she must ask
Mrs. Olsen if she had saved little Emil from the street, but
Mercedes cleared Mrs. Olsen out to look after Bert, and Maggie
Donahue went to answer a knock at the front door. From the street
came a loud hum of voices, punctuated by shouts and commands, and
from time to time there was a clanging of the gongs of ambulances
and patrol wagon's. Then appeared the fat, comfortable face of
Martha Shelton, and, later, Dr. Hentley came. Once, in a clear
interval, through the thin wall Saxon heard the high opening
notes of Mary's hysteria. And, another time, she heard Mary
repeating over and over. "I'll never go back to the laundry.
Never. Never."



CHAPTER X

Billy could never get over the shock, during that period, of
Saxon's appearance. Morning after morning, and evening after
evening when he came home from work, he would enter the room
where she lay and fight a royal battle to hide his feelings and
make a show of cheerfulness and geniality. She looked so small
lying there so small and shrunken and weary, and yet so
child-like in her smallness. Tenderly, as he sat beside her, he
would take up her pale hand and stroke the slim, transparent arm,
marveling at the smallness and delicacy of the bones.

One of her first questions, puzzling alike to Billy and Mary,
was:

"Did they save little Emil Olsen?"

And when she told them how he had attacked, singlehanded, the
whole twenty-four fighting men, Billy's face glowed with
appreciation.

"The little cuss!" he said. "That's the kind of a kid to be proud
of."

He halted awkwardly, and his very evident fear that he had hurt
her touched Saxon. She put her hand out to his.

"Billy," she began; then waited till Mary left the room.

"I never asked before--not that it matters ... now. But I waited
for you to tell me. Was it ... ?"

He shook his head.

"No; it was a girl. A perfect little girl. Only ... it was too
soon."

She pressed his hand, and almost it was she that sympathized with
him in his affliction.

"I never told you, Billy--you were so set on a boy; but I
planned, just the same, if it was a girl, to call her Daisy. You
remember, that was my mother's name."

He nodded his approbation.

"Say, Saxon, you know I did want a boy like the very dickens ...
well, I don't care now. I think I'm set just as hard on a girl,
an', well, here's hopin' the next will be called ... you wouldn't
mind, would you?"

"What?"

"If we called it the same name, Daisy?"

"Oh, Billy! I was thinking the very same thing."

Then his face grew stern as he went on.

"Only there ain't goin' to be a next. I didn't know what havin'
children was like before. You can't run any more risks like
that."

"Hear the big, strong, afraid-man talk!" she jeered, with a wan
smile. "You don't know anything about it. How can a man? I am a
healthy, natural woman. Everything would have been all right this
time if ... if all that fighting hadn't happened. Where did they
bury Bert?"

"You knew?"

"All the time. And where is Mercedes? She hasn't been in for two
days."

"Old Barry's sick. She's with him."

He did not tell her that the old night watchman was dying, two
thin walls and half a dozen feet away.

Saxon's lips were trembling, and she began to cry weakly,
clinging to Billy's hand with both of hers.

"I--I can't help it," she sobbed. "I'll be all right in a minute
... Our little girl, Billy. Think of it! And I never saw her!"


She was still lying on her bed, when, one evening, Mary saw fit
to break out in bitter thanksgiving that she had escaped, and was
destined to escape, what Saxon had gone through.

"Aw, what are you talkin' about?" Billy demanded. "You'll get
married some time again as sure as beans is beans."

"Not to the best man living," she proclaimed. "And there ain't no
call for it. There's too many people in the world now, else why
are there two or three men for every job? And, besides, havin'
children is too terrible."

Saxon, with a look of patient wisdom in her face that became
glorified as she spoke, made answer:

"I ought to know what it means. I've been through it, and I'm
still in the thick of it, and I want to say to you right now, out
of all the pain and the ache and the sorrow, that it is the most
beautiful, wonderful thing in the world."


As Saxon's strength came back to her (and when Doctor Hentley had
privily assured Billy that she was sound as a dollar), she
herself took up the matter of the industrial tragedy that had
taken place before her door. The militia had been called out
immediately, Billy informed her, and was encamped then at the
foot of Pine street on the waste ground next to the railroad
yards. As for the strikers, fifteen of them were in jail. A house
to house search had been made in the neighborhood by the police,
and in this way nearly the whole fifteen, all wounded, had been
captured. It would go hard with them, Billy foreboded gloomily.
The newspapers were demanding blood for blood, and all the
ministers in Oakland had preached fierce sermons against the
strikers. The railroad had filled every place, and it was well
known that the striking shopmen not only would never get their
old jobs back but were blacklisted in every railroad in the
United States. Already they were beginning to scatter. A number
had gone to Panama, and four were talking of going to Ecuador to
work in the shops of the railroad that ran over the Andes to
Quito.

With anxiety keenly concealed, she tried to feel out Billy's
opinion on what had happened.

"That shows what Bert's violent methods come to," she said.

He shook his head slowly and gravely.

"They'll hang Chester Johnson, anyway," be answered indirectly.
"You know him. You told me you used to dance with him. He was
caught red-handed, lyin' on the body of a scab he beat to death.
Old Jelly Belly's got three bullet holes in him, but he ain't
goin' to die, and he's got Chester's number. They'll hang'm on
Jelly Belly's evidence. It was all in the papers. Jelly Belly
shot him, too, a-hangin' by the neck on our pickets."

Saxon shuddered. Jelly Belly must be the man with the bald spot
and the tobacco-stained whiskers.

"Yes," she said. "I saw it all. It seemed he must have hung there
for hours."

"It was all over, from first to last, in five minutes."

"It seemed ages and ages."

"I guess that's the way it seemed to Jelly Belly, stuck on the
pickets," Billy smiled grimly. "But he's a hard one to kill. He's
been shot an' cut up a dozen different times. But they say now
he'll be crippled for life--have to go around on crutches, or in
a wheel-chair. That'll stop him from doin' any more dirty work
for the railroad. He was one of their top gun-fighters--always up
to his ears in the thick of any fightin' that was goin' on. He
never was leery of anything on two feet, I'll say that much
for'm."

"Where does he live?" Saxon inquired.

"Up on Adeline, near Tenth--fine neighborhood an' fine
two-storied house. He must pay thirty dollars a month rent. I
guess the railroad paid him pretty well."

"Then he must be married?"

"Yep. I never seen his wife, but he's got one son, Jack, a
passenger engineer. I used to know him. He was a nifty boxer,
though he never went into the ring. An' he's got another son
that's teacher in the high school. His name's Paul. We're about
the same age. He was great at baseball. I knew him when we was
kids. He pitched me out three times hand-runnin' once, when the
Durant played the Cole School."

Saxon sat back in the Morris chair, resting and thinking. The
problem was growing more complicated than ever. This elderly,
round-bellied, and bald-headed gunfighter, too, had a wife and
family. And there was Frank Davis, married barely a year and with
a baby boy. Perhaps the scab he shot in the stomach had a wife
and children. All seemed to be acquainted, members of a very
large family, and yet, because of their particular families, they
battered and killed each other. She had seen Chester Johnson kill
a scab, and now they were going to hang Chester Johnson, who had
married Kittie Brady out of the cannery, and she and Kittie Brady
had worked together years before in the paper box factory.

Vainly Saxon waked for Billy to say something that would show he
did not countenance the killing of the scabs.

"It was wrong," she ventured finally.

"They killed Bert," he countered. "An' a lot of others. An' Frank
Davis. Did you know he was dead? Had his whole lower jaw shot
away--died in the ambulance before they could get him to the
receiving hospital. There was never so much killin' at one time
in Oakland before."

"But it was their fault," she contended. "They began it. It was
murder."

Billy did not reply, but she heard him mutter hoarsely. She knew
he said "God damn them"; but when she asked, "What?" he made no
answer. His eyes were deep with troubled clouds, while the mouth
had hardened, and all his face was bleak.

To her it was a heart-stab. Was he, too, like the rest? Would he
kill other men who had families, like Bert, and Frank Davis, and
Chester Johnson had killed? Was he, too, a wild beast, a dog that
would snarl over a bone?

She sighed. Life was a strange puzzle. Perhaps Mercedes Higgins
was right in her cruel statement of the terms of existence.

"What of it," Billy laughed harshly, as if in answer to her
unuttered questions. "It's dog eat dog, I guess, and it's always
ben that way. Take that scrap outside there. They killed each
other just like the North an' South did in the Civil War."

"But workingmen can't win that way, Billy. You say yourself that
it spoiled their chance of winning."

"I suppose not," he admitted reluctantly. "But what other chance
they've got to win I don't see. Look at 'us. We'll be up against
it next."

"Not the teamsters?" she cried.

He nodded gloomily.

"The bosses are cuttin' loose all along the line for a high old
time. Say they're goin' to beat us to our knees till we come
crawlin' back a-beggin' for our jobs. They've bucked up real high
an' mighty what of all that killin' the other day. Havin' the
troops out is half the fight, along with havin' the preachers an'
the papers an' the public behind 'em. They're shootin' off their
mouths already about what they're goin' to do. They're sure
gunning for trouble. First, they're goin' to hang Chester Johnson
an' as many more of the fifteen as they can. They say that flat.
The Tribune, an' the Enquirer an' the Times keep sayin' it over
an over every day. They're all union-hustin' to beat the band. No
more closed shop. To hell with organized labor. Why, the dirty
little Intelligencer come out this morning an' said that every
union official in Oakland ought to be run outa town or stretched
up. Fine, Eh? You bet it's fine.

"Look at us. It ain't a case any more of sympathetic strike for
the mill-workers. We got our own troubles. They've fired our four
best men--the ones that was always on the conference committees.
Did it without cause. They're lookin' for trouble, as I told you,
an' they'll get it, too, if they don't watch out. We got our tip
from the Frisco Water Front Confederation. With them backin' us
we'll go some."

"You mean you'll ... strike?" Saxon asked.

He bent his head.

"But isn't that what they want you to do?--from the way they're
acting?"

"What "s the difference?" Billy shrugged his shoulders, then
continued. "It's better to strike than to get fired. We beat 'em
to it, that's all, an' we catch 'em before they're ready. Don't
we know what they're doin'? They're collectin' gradin'-camp
drivers an' mule-skinners all up an' down the state. They got
forty of 'em, feedin' 'em in a hotel in Stockton right now, an'
ready to rush 'em in on us an' hundreds more like 'em. So this
Saturday's the last wages I'll likely bring home for some time."

Saxon closed her eyes and thought quietly for five minutes. It
was not her way to take things excitedly. The coolness of poise
that Billy so admired never deserted her in time of emergency.
She realized that she herself was no more than a mote caught up
in this tangled, nonunderstandable conflict of many motes.

"We'll have to draw from our savings to pay for this month's
rent," she said brightly.

Billy's face fell.

"We ain't got as much in the bank as you think," he confessed.
"Bert had to be buried, you know, an I coughed up what the others
couldn't raise."

"How much was it?"

"Forty dollars. I was goin' to stand off the butcher an' the rest
for a while. They knew I was good pay. But they put it to me
straight. They'd been carryin' the shopmen right along an was up
against it themselves. An' now with that strike smashed they're
pretty much smashed themselves. So I took it all out of the bank.
I knew you wouldn't mind. You don't, do you?"

She smiled bravely, and bravely overcame the sinking feeling at
her heart.

"It was the only right thing to do, Billy. I would have done it
if you were lying sick, and Bert would have done it for you an'
me if it had been the other way around."

His face was glowing.

"Gee, Saxon, a fellow can always count on you. You're like my
right hand. That's why I say no more babies. If I lose you I'm
crippled for life."

"We've got to economize," she mused, nodding her appreciation.
"How much is in bank?"

"Just about thirty dollars. You see, I had to pay Martha Skelton
an' for the ... a few other little things. An' the union took
time by the neck and levied a four dollar emergency assessment on
every member just to be ready if the strike was pulled off. But
Doc Hentley can wait. He said as much. He's the goods, if anybody
should ask you. How'd you like'm?"

"I liked him. But I don't know about doctors. He's the first I
ever had--except when I was vaccinated once, and then the city
did that."

"Looks like the street car men are goin' out, too. Dan Fallon's
come to town. Came all the way from New York. Tried to sneak in
on the quiet, but the fellows knew when he left New York, an'
kept track of him all the way acrost. They have to. He's
Johnny-on-the-Spot whenever street car men are licked into shape.
He's won lots of street car strikes for tha bosses. Keeps an army
of strike breakers an' ships them all over the country on special
trains wherever they're needed. Oakland's never seen labor
troubles like she's got and is goin' to get. All hell's goin' to
break loose from the looks of it."

"Watch out for yourself, then, Billy. I don't want to lose you
either."

"Aw, that's all right. I can take care of myself. An' besides, it
ain't as though we was licked. We got a good chance."

"But you'll lose if there is any killing."

"Yep; we gotta keep an eye out against that."

"No violence."

"No gun-fighting or dynamite," he assented. "But a heap of
scabs'll get their heads broke. That has to be."

"But you won't do any of that, Billy."

"Not so as any slob can testify before a court to havin' seen
me." Then, with a quick shift, he changed the subject. "Old Barry
Higgins is dead. I didn't want to tell you till you was outa bed.
Buried'm a week ago. An' the old woman's movin' to Frisco. She
told me she'd be in to say good-bye. She stuck by you pretty well
them first couple of days, an' she showed Martha Shelton a few
that made her hair curl. She got Martha's goat from the jump."



CHAPTER XI

With Billy on strike and away doing picket duty, and with the
departure of Mercedes and the death of Bert, Saxon was left much
to herself in a loneliness that even in one as healthy-minded as
she could not fail to produce morbidness. Mary, too, had left,
having spoken vaguely of taking a job at housework in Piedmont.

Billy could help Saxon little in her trouble. He dimly sansed her
suffering, without comprehending the scope and intensity of it.
He was too man-practical, and, by his very sex, too remote from
the intimate tragedy that was hers. He was an outsider at the
best, a friendly onlooker who saw little. To her the baby had
been quick and real. It was still quick and real. That was her
trouble. By no deliberate effort of will could she fill the
achiiig void of its absence. Its reality became, at times, an
hallucination. Somewhere it still was, and she must find it. She
would catch herself, on occasion, listening with strained ears
for the cry she had never heard, yet which, in fancy, she had
heard a thousand times in the happy months before the end. Twice
she left her bed in her sleep and went searching--each time
coming to herself beside her mother's chest of drawers in which
were the tiny garments. To herself, at such moments, she would
say, "I had a baby once." And she would say it, aloud, as she
watched the children playing in the street.

One day, on the Eighth street cars, a young mother sat beside
her, a crowing infant in her arms. And Saxon said to her:

"I had a baby once. It died."

The mother looked at her, startled, half-drew the baby tighter in
her arms, jealously, or as if in fear; then she softened as she
said:

"You poor thing."

"Yes," Saxon nodded. "It died."

Tear's welled into her eyes, and the telling of her grief seemed
to have brought relief. But all the day she suffered from an
almost overwhelming desire to recite her sorrow to the world--to
the paying teller at the bank, to the elderly floor-walker in
Salinger's, to the blind woman, guided by a little boy, who
played on the concertina--to every one save the policeman. The
police were new and terrible creatures to her now. She had seen
them kill the strikers as mercilessly as the strikers had killed
the scabs. And, unlike the strikers, the police were professional
killers. They were not fighting for jobs. They did it as a
business. They could have taken prisoners that day, in the angle
of her front steps and the house. But they had not.
Unconsciously, whenever approaching one, she edged across the
sidewalk so as to get as far as possible away from him. She did
not reason it out, but deeper than consciousness was the feeling
that they were typical of something inimical to her and hers.

At Eighth and Broadway, waiting for her car to return home, the
policeman on the corner recognized her and greeted her. She
turned white to the lips, and her heart fluttered painfully. It
was only Ned Hermanmann, fatter, bronder-faced, jollier looking
than ever. He had sat across the aisle from her for three terms
at school. He and she had been monitors together of the
composition books for one term. The day the powder works blew up
at Pinole, breaking every window in the school, he and she had
not joined in the panic rush for out-of-doors. Both had remained
in the room, and the irate principal had exhibited them, from
room to room, to the cowardly classes, and then rewarded them
with a month's holiday from school. And after that Ned Hermanmann
had become a policeman, and married Lena Highland, and Saxon had
heard they had five children.

But, in spite of all that, he was now a policeman, and Billy was
now a striker. Might not Ned Hermanmann some day club and shoot
Billy just as those other policemen clubbed and shot the strikers
by her front steps?

"What's the matter, Saxon?" he asked. "Sick?"

She nodded and choked, unable to speak, and started to move
toward her car which was coming to a stop.

"I'll help you," he offered.

She shrank away from his hand.

"No; I'm all right," she gasped hurriedly. "I'm not going to take
it. I've forgotten something."

She turned away dizzily, up Broadway to Ninth. Two blocks along
Ninth, she turned down Clay and back to Eighth street, where she
waited for another car.


As the summer months dragged along, the industrial situation in
Oakland grew steadily worse. Capital everywhere seemed to have
selected this city for the battle with organized labor. So many
men in Oakland were out on strike, or were locked out, or were
unable to work because of the dependence of their trades on the
other tied-up trade's, that odd jobs at common labor were hard to
obtain. Billy occasionally got a day's wdrk to do, but did not
earn enough to make both ends meet, despite the small strike
wages received at first, and despite the rigid economy he and
Saxon practiced.

The table she set had scarcely anything in common with that of
their first married year. Not alone was every item of cheaper
quality, but many items had disappeared. Meat, and the poorest,
was very seldom on the table. Cow's milk had given place to
condensed milk, and even the sparing use of the latter had
ceased. A roll of butter, when they had it, lastad half a dozen
times as long as formerly. Where Billy had been used to drinking
three cups of coffee for breakfast, he now drank one. Saxon
boiled this coffee an atrocious length of time, and she paid
twenty cents a pound for it.

The blight of hard times was on all the neighborhood. The
families not involved in one strike were touched by some other
strike or by the cessation of work in some dependent trade. Many
single young men who were lodgers had drifted away, thus
increasing the house rent of the families which had sheltered
them.

"Gott!" said the butcher to Saxon. "We working class all suffer
together. My wife she cannot get her teeth fixed now. Pretty soon
I go smash broke maybe."

Once, when Billy was preparing to pawn his watch, Saxon suggested
his borrowing the money from Billy Murphy.

"I was plannin' that," Billy answered, "only I can't now. I
didn't tell you what happened Tuesday night at the Sporting Life
Club. You remember that squarehead Champion of the United States
Navy? Bill was matched with him, an' it was sure easy money. Bill
had 'm goin' south by the end of the sixth round, an' at the
seventh went in to finish 'm. And then--just his luck, for his
trade's idle now--he snaps his right forearm. Of course the
squarehead comes back at 'm on the jump, an' it's good night for
Bill. Gee! Us Mohegans are gettin' our bad luck handed to us in
chunks these days."

"Don't!" Saxon cried, shuddering involuntarily.

"What?" Billy asked with open mouth of surprise.

"Don't say that word again. Bert was always saying it."

"Oh, Mohegans. All right, I won't. You ain't superstitions, are
you?"

"No; but just the same there's too much truth in the word for me
to like it. Sometimes it seems as though he was right. Times have
changed. They've changed even since I was a little girl. We
crossed the plains and opened up this country, and now we're
losing even the chance to work for a living in it. And it's not
my fault, it's not your fault. We've got to live well or bad just
hy luck, it seems. There's no other way to explain it."

"It beats me," Billy concurred. "Look at the way I worked last
year. Never missed a day. I'd want to never miss a day this year,
an' here I haven't done a tap for weeks an' weeks an' weeks. Say!
Who runs this country anyway?"

Saxon had stopped the morning paper, but frequently Maggie
Donahue's boy, who served a Tribune route, tossed an "extra" on
her steps. From its editorials Saxon gleaned that organized labor
was trying to run the country and that it was making a mess of
it. It was all the fault of domineering labor--so ran the
editorials, column by column, day by day; and Saxon was
convinced, yet remained unconvinced. The social puzzle of living
was too intricate.

The teamsters' strike, backed financially by the teamsters of San
Francisco and by the allied unions of the San Francisco Water
Front Confederation, promised to be long-drawn, whether or not it
was successful. The Oakland harness-washers and stablemen, with
few exceptions, had gone out with the teamsters. The teaming
firm's were not half-filling their contracts, but the employers'
association was helping them. In fact, half the employers'
associations of the Pacific Coast were helping the Oakland
Employers' Association.

Saxon was behind a month's rent, which, when it is considered
that rent was paid in advance, was equivalent to two months.
Likewise, she was two months behind in the installments on the
furniture. Yet she was not pressed very hard by Salinger's, the
furniture dealers.

"We're givin' you all the rope we can," said their collector. "My
orders is to make yon dig up every cent I can and at the same
time not to be too hard. Salinger's are trying to do the right
thing, but they're up against it, too. You've no idea how many
accounts like yours they're carrying along. Sooner or later
they'll have to call a halt or get it in the neck themselves. And
in the meantime just see if you can't scrape up five dollars by
next week--just to cheer them along, you know."

One of the stablemen who had not gone out, Henderson by name,
worked at Billy's stables. Despite the urging of the bosses to
eat and sleep in the stable like the other men, Henderson had
persisted in coming home each morning to his little house around
the corner from Saxon's on Fifth street. Several times she had
seen him swinging along defiantly, his dinner pail in his hand,
while the neighborhood boys dogged his heels at a safe distance
and informed him in yapping chorus that he was a scab and no
good. But one evening, on his way to work, in a spirit of bravado
he went into the Pile-Drivers' Home, the saloon at Seventh and
Pine. There it was his mortal mischance to encounter Otto Frank,
a striker who drove from the same stable. Not many minutes later
an ambulance was hurrylug Henderson to the receiving hospital
with a fractured skull, while a patrol wagon was no less swiftly
carrying Otto Frank to the city prison.

Maggie Donahue it was, eyes shining with gladness, who told Saxon
of the happening.

"Served him right, too, the dirty scab," Maggie concluded.

"But his poor wife!" was Saxon's cry. "She's not strong. And then
the children. She'll never be able to take care of them if her
husband dies."

"An' serve her right, the damned slut!"

Saxon was both shocked and hurt by the Irishwoman's brutality.
But Maggie was implacable.

" 'Tis all she or any woman deserves that'll put up an' live with
a scab. What about her children? Let'm starve, an' her man
a-takin' the food out of other children's mouths."

Mrs. Olsen's attitude was different. Beyond passive sentimental
pity for Henderson's wife and children, she gave them no thought,
her chief concern being for Otto Frank and Otto Frank's wife and
children--herself and Mrs. Frank being full sisters.

"If he dies, they will hang Otto," she asid. "And then what will
poor Hilda do? She has varicose veins in both legs, and she never
can stand on her feet all day an' work for wages. And me, I
cannot help. Ain't Carl out of work, too?"

Billy had still another point of view.

"It will give the strike a black eye, especially if Henderson
croaks," he worried, when he came home. "They'll hang Frank on
record time. Besides, we'll have to put up a defense, an' lawyers
charge like Sam Hill. They'll eat a hole in our treasury you
could drive every team in Oakland through. An' if Frank hadn't
ben screwed up with whisky he'd never a-done it. He's the
mildest, good-naturedest man sober you ever seen."

Twice that evening Billy left the house to find out if Henderson
was dead yet. In the morning the papers gave little hope, and the
evening papers published his death. Otto Frank lay in jail
without bail. The Tribune demanded a quick trial and summary
execution, calling on the prospective jury manfully to do its
duty and dwelling at length on the moral effect that would be so
produced upon the lawless working class. It went further,
emphasising the salutary effect machine guns would have on the
mob that had taken the fair city of Oakland by the throat.

And all such occurrences struck at Saxon personally. Practically
alone in the world, save for Billy, it was her life, and his, and
their mutual love-life, that was menaced. From the moment he left
the house to the moment of his return she knew no peace of mind.
Rough work was afoot, of which he told her nothing, and she knew
he was playing his part in it. On more than one occasion she
noticed fresh-broken skin on his knuckles. At such times he was
remarkably taciturn, and would sit in brooding silence or go
almost immediately to bed. She was afraid to have this habit of
reticence grow on him, and bravely she bid for his confidence.
She climbed into his lap and inside his arms, one of her arms
around his neck, and with the free hand she caressed his hair
back from the forehead and smoothed out tbe moody brows.

"Now listen to me, Billy Boy," she began lightly. "You haven't
been playing fair, and I won't have it. No!" She pressed his lips
shut with her fingers. "I'm doing the talking now, and because
you haven't been doing your share of the talking for some time.
You remember we agreed at the start to always talk things over. I
was the first to break this, when I sold my fancy work to Mrs.
Higgins without speaking to you about it. And I was very sorry. I
am still sorry. And I've never done it since. Now it's your turn.
You're not talking things over with me. You are doing things you
don't tell me about.

"Billy, you're dearer to me than anything else in the world. You
know that. We're sharing each other's lives, only, just now,
there's something you're not sharing. Every time your knuckles
are sore, there's something you don't share. If you can't trust
me, you can't trust anybody. And, besides, I love you so that no
matter what you do I'll go on loving you just the same."

Billy gazed at her with fond incredulity.

"Don't be a pincher," she teased. "Remember, I stand for whatever
you do."

"And you won't buck against me?" he queried.

"How can I? I'm not your boss, Billy. I wouldn't boss you for
anything in the world. And if you'd let me boss you, I wouldn't
love you half as much."

He digested this slowly, and finally nodded.

"An' you won't be mad?"

"With you? You've never seen me mad yet. Now come on and be
generous and tell me how you hurt your knuckles. It's fresh
to-day. Anybody can see that."

"All right. I'll tell you how it happened." He stopped and
giggled with genuine boyish glee at some recollection. "It's like
this. You won't be mad, now? We gotta do these sort of things to
hold our own. Well, here's the show, a regular movin' picture
except for file talkin'. Here's a big rube comin' along, hayseed
stickin' out all over, hands like hams an' feet like Mississippi
gunboats. He'd make half as much again as me in size an' he's
young, too. Only he ain't lookin' for trouble, an' he's as
innocent as ... well, he's the innocentest scab that ever come
down the pike an' bumped into a couple of pickets. Not a regular
strike-breaker, you see, just a big rube that's read the bosses'
ads an' come a-humpin' to town for the big wages.

"An' here's Bud Strothers an' me comin' along. We always go in
pairs that way, an' sometimes bigger bunches. I flag the rube.
'Hello,' says I, 'lookin' for a job?' 'You bet,' says he. 'Can
you drive?' 'Yep.' 'Four horses!' 'Show me to 'em,' says he. 'No
josh, now,' says I; 'you're sure wantin' to drive?' 'That's what
I come to town for,' he says. 'You're the man we're lookin' for,'
says I. 'Come along, an' we'll have you busy in no time.'

"You see, Saxon, we can't pull it off there, because there's Tom
Scanlon--you know, the red-headed cop only a couple of blocks
away an' pipin' us off though not recognizin' us. So away we go,
the three of us, Bud an' me leadin' that boob to take our jobs
away from us I guess nit. We turn into the alley back of
Campwell's grocery. Nobody in sight. Bud stops short, and the
rube an' me stop.

" 'I don't think he wants to drive,' Bud says, considerin'. An'
the rube says quick, 'You betcher life I do.' 'You're dead sure
you want that job?' I says. Yes, he's dead sure. Nothin's goin'
to keep him away from that job. Why, that job's what he come to
town for, an' we can't lead him to it too quick.

" 'Well, my friend,' says I, 'it's my sad duty to inform you that
you've made a mistake.' 'How's that?' he says. 'Go on,' I says;
'you're standin' on your foot.' And, honest to God, Saxon, that
gink looks down at his feet to see. 'I don't understand,' says
he. 'We're goin' to show you,' says I.

"An' then--Biff! Bang! Bingo! Swat! Zooie! Ker-slambango-blam!
Fireworks, Fourth of July, Kingdom Come, blue lights,
sky-rockets, an' hell fire--just like that. It don't take long
when you're scientific an' trained to tandem work. Of course it's
hard on the knuckles. But say, Saxon, if you'd seen that rube
before an' after you'd thought he was a lightnin' change artist.
Laugh? You'd a-busted."

Billy halted to give vent to his own mirth. Saxon forced herself
to join with him, but down in her heart was horror. Mercedes was
right. The stupid workers wrangled and snarled over jobs. The
clever masters rode in automobiles and did not wrangle and snarl.
They hired other stupid ones to do the wrangling and snarling for
them. It was men like Bert and Frank Davis, like Chester Johnson
and Otto Frank, like Jelly Belly and the Pinkertons, like
Henderson and all the rest of the scabs, who were beaten up,
shot, clubbed, or hanged. Ah, the clever ones were very clever.
Nothing happened to them. They only rode in their automobiles.

" 'You big stiffs,' the rube snivels as he crawls to his feet at
the end," Billy was continuing. " 'You think you still want that
job?' I ask. He shakes his head. Then I read'm the riot act
'They's only one thing for you to do, old hoss, an' that's beat
it. D'ye get me? Beat it. Back to the farm for YOU. An' if you
come monkeyin' around town again, we'll be real mad at you. We
was only foolin' this time. But next time we catch you your own
mother won't know you when we get done with you.'

"An'--say!--you oughta seen'm beat it. I bet he's goin' yet. Ah'
when he gets back to Milpitas, or Sleepy Hollow, or wherever he
hangs out, an' tells how the boys does things in Oakland, it's
dollars to doughnuts they won't be a rube in his district that'd
come to town to drive if they offered ten dollars an hour."

"It was awful," Saxon said, then laughed well-simulated
appreciation.

"But that was nothin'," Billy went on. "A bunch of the boys
caught another one this morning. They didn't do a thing to him.
My goodness gracious, no. In less'n two minutes he was the worst
wreck they ever hauled to the receivin' hospital. The evenin'
papers gave the score: nose broken, three bad scalp wounds, front
teeth out, a broken collarbone, an' two broken ribs. Gee! He
certainly got all that was comin' to him. But that's nothin'.
D'ye want to know what the Frisco teamsters did in the big strike
before the Earthquake? They took every scab they caught an' broke
both his arms with a crowbar. That was so he couldn't drive, you
see. Say, the hospitals was filled with 'em. An' the teamsters
won that strike, too."

"But is it necessary, Billy, to be so terrible? I know they're
scabs, and that they're taking the bread out of the strikers'
children's mouths to put in their own children's mouths, and that
it isn't fair and all that; but just the same is it necessary to
be so ... terrible?"

"Sure thing," Billy answered confidently. "We just gotta throw
the fear of God into them--when we can do it without bein'
caught."

"And if you're caught?"

"Then the union hires the lawyers to defend us, though that ain't
much good now, for the judges are pretty hostyle, an' the papers
keep hammerin' away at them to give stiffer an' stiffer
sentences. Just the same, before this strike's over there'll be a
whole lot of guys a-wishin' they'd never gone scabbin'."

Very cautiously, in the next half hour, Saxon tried to feel out
her husband's attitude, to find if he doubted the rightness of
the violence he and his brother teamsters committed. But Billy's
ethical sanction was rock-bedded and profound. It never entered
his head that he was not absolutely right. It was the game.
Caught in its tangled meshes, he could see no other way to play
it than the way all men played it. He did not stand for dynamite
and murder, however. But then the unions did not stand for such.
Quite naive was his explanation that dynamite and murder did not
pay; that such actions always brought down the condemnation of
the public and broke the strikes. But the healthy beating up of a
scab, he contended--the "throwing of the fear of God into a
scab," as he expressed it--was the only right and proper thing to
do.

"Our folks never had to do such things," Saxon said finally.
"They never had strikes nor scabs in those times."

"You bet they didn't," Billy agreed "Them was the good old days.
I'd liked to a-lived then." He drew a long breath and sighed.
"But them times will never come again."

"Would you have liked living in the country?" Saxon asked.

"Sure thing."

"There's lots of men living in the country now," she suggested.

"Just the same I notice them a-hikin' to town to get our jobs,"
was his reply.



CHAPTER XII

A gleam of light came, when Billy got a job driving a grading
team for the contractors of the big bridge then building at
Niles. Before he went he made certain that it was a union job.
And a union job it was for two days, when the concrete workers
threw down their tools. The contractors, evidently prepared for
such happening, immediately filled the places of the concrete men
with nonunion Italians. Whereupon the carpenters, structural
ironworkers and teamsters walked out; and Billy, lacking train
fare, spent the rest of the day in walking home.

"I couldn't work as a scab," he concluded his tale.

"No," Saxon said; "you couldn't work as a scab."

But she wondered why it was that when men wanted to work, and
there was work to do, yet they were unable to work because their
unions said no. Why were there unions? And, if unions had to be,
why were not all workingmen in them? Then there would be no
scabs, and Billy could work every day. Also, she wondered where
she was to get a sack of flour, for she had long since ceased the
extravagance of baker's bread. And so many other of the
neighborhood women had done this, that the little Welsh baker had
closed up shop and gone away, taking his wife and two little
daughters with him. Look where she would, everybody was being
hurt by the industrial strife.

One afternoon came a caller at her door, and that evening came
Billy with dubious news. He had been approached that day. All he
had to do, he told Saxon, was to say the word, and he could go
into the stable as foreman at one hundred dollars a month.

The nearness of such a sum, the possibility of it, was almost
stunning to Saxon, sitting at a supper which consisted of boiled
potatoes, warmed-over beans, and a small dry onion which they
were eating raw. There was neither bread, coffee, nor butter. The
onion Billy had pulled from his pocket, having picked it up in
the street. One hundred dollars a month! She moistened her lips
and fought for control.

"What made them offer it to you?" she questioned.

"That's easy," was his answer. "They got a dozen reasons. The guy
the boss has had exercisin' Prince and King is a dub. King has
gone lame in the shoulders. Then they're guessin' pretty strong
that I'm the party that's put a lot of their scabs outa
commission. Macklin's ben their foreman for years an' years--why
I was in knee pants when he was foreman. Well, he's sick an' all
in. They gotta have somebody to take his place. Then, too, I've
been with 'em a long time. An' on top of that, I'm the man for
the job. They know I know horses from the ground up. Hell, it's
all I'm good for, except sluggin'."

"Think of it, Billy!" she broathed. "A hundred dollars a month! A
hundred dollars a month!"

"An' throw the fellows down," he said.

It was not a question. Nor was it a statement. It was anything
Saxon chose to make of it. They looked at each other. She waited
for him to speak; but he continued merely to look. It came to her
that she was facing one of the decisive moments of her life, and
she gripped herself to face it in all coolness. Nor would Billy
proffer her the slightest help. Whatever his own judgment might
be, he masked it with an expressionless face. His eyes betrayed
nothing. He looked and waited.

"You ... you can't do that, Billy," she said finally. "You can't
throw the fellows down."

His hand shot out to hers, and his face was a sudden, radiant
dawn.

"Put her there!" he cried, their hands meeting and clasping.
"You're the truest true blue wife a man ever had. If all the
other fellows' wives was like you, we could win any strike we
tackled."

"What would you have done if you weren't married, Billy?"

"Seen 'em in hell first."

"Than it doesn't make any difference being married. I've got to
stand by you in everything you stand for. I'd be a nice wife if I
didn't."

She remembered her caller of the afternoon, and knew the moment
was too propitious to let pass.

"There was a man here this afternoon, Billy. He wanted a room. I
told him I'd speak to you. He said he would pay six dollars a
month for the back bedroom. That would pay half a month's
installment on the furniture and buy a sack of flour, and we're
all out of flour."

Billy's old hostility to the idea was instantly uppermost, and
Saxon watched him anxiously.

"Some scab in the shops, I suppose?"

"No; he's firing on the freight run to San Jose. Harmon, he said
his name was, James Harmon. They've just transferred him from the
Truckee division. He'll sleep days mostly, he said; and that's
why he wanted a quiet house without children in it."

In the end, with much misgiving, and only after Saxon had
insistently pointed out how little work it entailed on her, Billy
consented, though he continued to protest, as an afterthought

"But I don't want you makin' beds for any man. It ain't right,
Saxon. I oughta take care of you."

"And you would," she flashed back at him, "if you'd take the
foremanship. Only you can't. It wouldn't be right. And if I'm to
stand by you it's only fair to let me do what I can."

James Harmon proved even less a bother than Saxon had
anticipated. For a fireman he was scrupulously clean, always
washing up in the roundhouse before he came home. He used the key
to the kitchen door, coming and going by the back steps. To Saxon
he barely said how-do-you-do or good day; and, sleeping in the
day time and working at night, he was in the house a week before
Billy laid eyes on him.

Billy had taken to coming home later and later, and to going out
after supper by himself. He did not offer to tell Saxon where he
went. Nor did she ask. For that matter it required little
shrewdness on her part to guess. The fumes of whisky were on his
lips at such times. His slow, deliberate ways were even slower,
even more deliberate. Liquor did not affect his legs. He walked
as soberly as any man. There was no hesitancy, no faltering, in
his muscular movements. The whisky went to his brain, making his
eyes heavy-lidded and the cloudiness of them more cloudy. Not
that he was flighty, nor quick, nor irritable. On the contrary,
the liquor imparted to his mental processes a deep gravity and
brooding solemnity. He talked little, but that little was ominous
and oracular. At such times there was no appeal from his
judgment, no discussion. He knew, as God knew. And when he chose
to speak a harsh thought, it was ten-fold harsher than
ordinarily, because it seemed to proceed out of such profundity
of cogitation, because it was as prodigiously deliberate in its
incubation as it was in its enunciation.

It was not a nice side he was showing to Saxon. It was, almost,
as if a stranger had come to live with her. Despite herself, she
found herself beginning to shrink from him. And little could she
comfort herself with the thought that it was not his real self,
for she remembered his gentleness and considerateness, all his
finenesses of the past. Then he had made a continual effort to
avoid trouble and fighting. Now he enjoyed it, exulted in it,
went looking for it. All this showed in his face. No longer was
he the smiling, pleasant-faced boy. He smiled infrequently now.
His face was a man's face. The lips, the eyes, the lines were
harsh as his thoughts were harsh.

He was rarely unkind to Saxon; but, on the other hand he was
rarely kind. His attitude toward her was growing negative. He was
disinterested. Despite the fight for the union she was enduring
with him, putting up with him shoulder to shoulder, she occupied
but little space in his mind. When he acted toward her gently,
she could see that it was merely mechanical, just as she was well
aware that the endearing terms he used, the endearing caresses he
gave, were only habitual. The spontaneity and warmth had gone
out. Often, when he was not in liquor, flashes of the old Billy
came back, but even such flashes dwindled in frequency. He was
growing preoccupied, moody. Hard times and the bitter stresses of
industrial conflict strained him. Especially was this apparent in
his sleep, when he suffered paroxysms of lawless dreams, groaning
and muttering, clenching his fists, grinding his teeth, twisting
with muscular tensions, his face writhing with passions and
violences, his throat guttering with terrible curses that rasped
and aborted on his lips. And Saxon, lying beside him, afraid of
this visitor to her bed whom she did not know, remembered what
Mary had told her of Bert. He, too, had cursed and clenched his
fists, in his nights fought out the battles of his days.

One thing, however, Saxon saw clearly. By no deliberate act of
Billy's was he becoming this other and unlovely Billy. Were there
no strike, no snarling and wrangling over jobs, there would be
only the old Billy she had loved in all absoluteness. This
sleeping terror in him would have lain asleep. It was something
that was being awakened in him, an image incarnate of outward
conditions, as cruel, as ugly, as maleficent as were those
outward conditions. But if the strike continued, then, she
feared, with reason, would this other and grisly self of Billy
strengthen to fuller and more forbidding stature. And this, she
knew, would mean the wreck of their love-life. Such a Billy she
could not love; in its nature such a Billy was not lovable nor
capable of love. And then, at the thought of offspring, she
shuddered. It was too terrible. And at such moments of
contemplation, from her soul the inevitable plaint of the human
went up: WHY? WHY? WHY?

Billy, too, had his unanswerable queries.

"Why won't the building trades come out?" he demanded wrathfuly
of the obscurity that veiled the ways of living and the world.
"But no; O'Brien won't stand for a strike, and he has the
Building Trades Council under his thumb. But why don't they chuck
him and come out anyway? We'd win hands down all along the line.
But no, O'Brien's got their goat, an' him up to his dirty neck in
politics an' graft! An' damn the Federation of Labor! If all the
railroad boys had come out, wouldn't the shop men have won
instead of bein' licked to a frazzle? Lord, I ain't had a smoke
of decent tobacco or a cup of decent coffee in a coon's age. I've
forgotten what a square meal tastes like. I weighed myself
yesterday. Fifteen pounds lighter than when the strike begun. If
it keeps on much more I can fight middleweight. An' this is what
I get after payin' dues into the union for years and years. I
can't get a square meal, an' my wife has to make other men's
beds. It makes my tired ache. Some day I'll get real huffy an'
chuck that lodger out."

"But it's not his fault, Billy," Saxon protested.

"Who said it was?" Billy snapped roughly. "Can't I kick in
general if I want to? Just the same it makes me sick. What's the
good of organized labor if it don't stand together? For two cents
I'd chuck the whole thing up an' go over to the employers. Only I
wouldn't, God damn them! If they think they can beat us down to
our knees, let'em go ahead an' try it, that's all. But it gets me
just the same. The whole world's clean dippy. They ain't no sense
in anything. What's the good of supportin' a union that can't win
a strike? What's the good of knockin' the blocks off of scabs
when they keep a-comin' thick as ever? The whole thing's
bughouse, an' I guess I am, too."

Such an outburst on Billy's part was so unusual that it was the
only time Saxon knew it to occur. Always he was sullen, and
dogged, and unwhipped; while whisky only served to set the
maggots of certitude crawling in his brain.

One night Billy did not get home till after twelve. Saxon's
anxiety was increased by the fact that police fighting and head
breaking had been reported to have occurred. When Billy came, his
appearance verified the report. His coatsleeves were half torn
off. The Windsor tie had disappeared from under his soft
turned-down collar, and every button had been ripped off the
front of the shirt. When he took his hat off, Saxon was
frightened by a lump on his head the size of an apple.

"D'ye know who did that? That Dutch slob Hermanmann, with a riot
club. An' I'll get'm for it some day, good an' plenty. An'
there's another fellow I got staked out that'll be my meat when
this strike's over an' things is settled down. Blanchard's his
name, Roy Blanchard."

"Not of Blanchard, Perkins and Company?" Saxon asked, busy
washing Billy's hurt and making her usual fight to keep him calm.

"Yep; except he's the son of the old man. What's he do, that
ain't done a tap of work in all his life except to blow the old
man's money? He goes strike-breakin'. Grandstand play, that's
what I call it. Gets his name in the papers an makes all the
skirts he runs with fluster up an' say: 'My! Some bear, that Roy
Blanchard, some bear.' Some bear--the gazabo! He'll be bear-meat
for me some day. I never itched so hard to lick a man in my life.

"And--oh, I guess I'll pass that Dutch cop up. He got his
already. Somebody broke his head with a lump of coal the size of
a water bucket. That was when the wagons was turnin' into
Franklin, just off Eighth, by the old Galindo Hotel. They was
hard fightin' there, an' some guy in the hotel lams that coal
down from the second story window.

"They was fightin' every block of the way--bricks, cobblestones,
an' police-clubs to beat the band. They don't dast call out the
troops. An' they was afraid to shoot. Why, we tore holes through
the police force, an' the ambulanees and patrol wagons worked
over-time. But say, we got the procession blocked at Fourteenth
and Broadway, right under the nose of the City Hall, rushed the
rear end, cut out the horses of five wagons, an' handed them
college guys a few love-pats in passin'. All that saved 'em from
hospital was the police reserves. Just the same we had 'em jammed
an hour there. You oughta seen the street cars blocked,
too--Broadway, Fourteenth, San Pablo, as far as you could see."

"But what did Blanchard do?" Saxon called him back.

"He led the procession, an' he drove my team. All the teams was
from my stable. He rounded up a lot of them college
fellows--fraternity guys, they're called--yaps that live off
their fathers' money. They come to the stable in big tourin' cars
an' drove out the wagons with half the police of Oakland to help
them. Say, it was sure some day. The sky rained cobblestones. An'
you oughta heard the clubs on our heads--rat-tat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat-tat! An' say, the chief of police, in a police auto,
sittin' up like God Almighty--just before we got to Peralta
street they was a block an' the police chargin', an' an old
woman, right from her front gate, lammed the chief of police full
in the face with a dead cat. Phew! You could hear it. 'Arrest
that woman!' he yells, with his handkerchief out. But the boys
beat the cops to her an' got her away. Some day? I guess yes. The
receivin' hospital went outa commission on the jump, an' the
overflow was spilled into St. Mary's Hospital, an' Fabiola, an' I
don't know where else. Eight of our men was pulled, an' a dozen
of the Frisco teamsters that's come over to help. They're holy
terrors, them Frisco teamsters. It seemed half the workingmen of
Oakland was helpin' us, an' they must be an army of them in jail.
Our lawyers'll have to take their cases, too.

"But take it from me, it's the last we'll see of Roy Blanchard
an' yaps of his kidney buttin' into our affairs. I guess we
showed 'em some football. You know that brick buildin' they're
puttin' up on Bay street? That's where we loaded up first, an',
say, you couldn't see the wagon-seats for bricks when they
started from the stables. Blanchard drove the first wagon, an' he
was knocked clean off the seat once, but he stayed with it."

"He must have been brave," Saxon commented.

"Brave?" Billy flared. "With the police, an' the army an' navy
behind him? I suppose you'll be takin' their part next. Brave?
A-takin' the food outa the mouths of our women an children.
Didn't Curley Jones's little kid die last night? Mother's milk
not nourishin', that's what it was, because she didn't have the
right stuff to eat. An' I know, an' you know, a dozen old aunts,
an' sister-in-laws, an' such, that's had to hike to the poorhouse
because their folks couldn't take care of 'em in these times."

In the morning paper Saxon read the exciting account of the
futile attempt to break the teamsters' strike. Roy Blanchard was
hailed a hero and held up as a model of wealthy citizenship. And
to save herself she could not help glowing with appreciation of
his courage. There was something fine in his going out to face
the snarling pack. A brigadier general of the regular army was
quoted as lamenting the fact that the troops had not been called
out to take the mob by the throat and shake law and order into
it. "This is the time for a little healthful bloodletting," was
the conclusion of his remarks, after deploring the pacific
methods of the police. "For not until the mob has been thoroughly
beaten and cowed will tranquil industrial conditions obtain."

That evening Saxon and Billy went up town. Returning home and
finding nothing to eat, he had taken her on one arm, his overcoat
on the other. The overcoat he had pawned at Uncle Sam's, and he
and Saxon had eaten drearily at a Japanese restaurant which in
some miraculous way managed to set a semi-satisfying meal for ten
cents. After eating, they started on their way to spend an
additional five cents each on a moving picture show.

At the Central Bank Building, two striking teamsters accosted
Billy and took him away with them. Saxon waited on the corner,
and when he returned, three quarters of an hour later, she knew
he had been drinking.

Half a block on, passing the Forum Cafe, he stopped suddenly. A
limousine stood at the curb, and into it a young man was helping
several wonderfully gowned women. A chauffeur sat in the driver's
sent. Billy touched the young man on the arm. He was as
broad-shouldered as Billy and slightly taller. Blue-eyed,
strong-featured, in Saxon's opinion he was undeniably handsome.

"Just a word, sport," Billy said, in a low, slow voice.

The young man glanced quickly at Billy and Saxon, and asked
impatiently:

"Well, what is it?"

"You're Blanchard," Billy began. "I seen you yesterday lead out
that bunch of teams."

"Didn't I do it all right?" Blanchard asked gaily, with a flash
of glance to Saxon and back again.

"Sure. But that ain't what I want to talk about."

"Who are you?" the other demanded with sudden suspicion.

"A striker. It just happens you drove my team, that's all. No;
don't move for a gun." (As Blanchard half reached toward his hip
pocket.) "I ain't startin' anythin' here. But I just want to tell
you something."

"Be quick, then."

Blanchard lifted one foot to step into the machine.

"Sure," Billy went on without any diminution of his exasperating
slowness. "What I want to tell you is that I'm after you. Not
now, when the strike's on, but some time later I'm goin' to get
you an' give you the beatin' of your life."

Blanchard looked Billy over with new interest and measuring eyes
that sparkled with appreciation.

"You are a husky yourself," he said. "But do you think you can do
it?"

"Sure. You're my meat."

"All right, then, my friend. Look me up after the strike is
settled, and I'll give you a chance at me."

"Remember," Billy added, "I got you staked out."

Blanchard nodded, smiled genially to both of them, raised his hat
to Saxon, and stepped into the machine.



CHAPTER XIII

From now on, to Saxon, life seemed bereft of its last reason and
rhyme. It had become senseless, nightmarish. Anything irrational
was possible. There was nothing stable in the anarchic flux of
affairs that swept her on she knew not to what catastrophic end.
Had Billy been dependable, all would still have been well. With
him to cling to she would have faced everything fearlessly. But
he had been whirled away from her in the prevailing madness. So
radical was the change in him that he seemed almost an intruder
in the house. Spiritually he was such an intruder. Another man
looked out of his eyes--a man whose thoughts were of violence and
hatred; a man to whom there was no good in anything, and who had
become an ardent protagonist of the evil that was rampant aud
universal. This man no longer condemned Bert, himself muttering
vaguely of dynamite, end sabotage, and revolution.

Saxon strove to maintain that sweetness and coolness of flesh and
spirit that Billy had praised in the old days. Once, only, she
lost control. He had been in a particularly ugly mood, and a
final harshness and unfairness cut her to the quick.

"Who are you speaking to?" she flamed out at him.

He was speechless and abashed, and could only stare at her face,
which was white with anger.

"Don't you ever speak to me like that again, Billy," she
commanded.

"Aw, can't you put up with a piece of bad temper?" he muttered,
half apologetically, yet half defiantly. "God knows I got enough
to make me cranky."

After he left the house she flung herself on the bed and cried
heart-brokenly. For she, who knew so thoroughly the humility of
love, was a proud woman. Only the proud can be truly humble, as
only the strong may know the fullness of gentleness. But what was
the use, she demanded, of being proud and game, when the only
person in the world who mattered to her lost his own pride and
gameness and fairness and gave her the worse share of their
mutual trouble?

And now, as she had faced alone the deeper, organic hurt of the
loss of her baby, she faced alone another, and, in a way, an even
greater personal trouble. Perhaps she loved Billy none the less,
but her love was changing into something less proud, less
confident, less trusting; it was becoming shot through with
pity--with the pity that is parent to contempt. Her own loyalty
was threatening to weaken, and she shuddered and shrank from the
contempt she could see creeping in.

She struggled to steel herself to face the situation. Forgiveness
stole into her heart, and she knew relief until the thought came
that in the truest, highest love forgiveness should have no
place. And again she cried, and continued her battle. After all,
one thing was incontestable: THIS BILLY WES NOT THE BILLY SHE HAD
LOVED. This Billy was another man, a sick man, and no more to be
held responsible than a fever-patient in the ravings of delirium.
She must be Billy's nurse, without pride, without contempt, with
nothing to forgive. Besides, he was really bearing the brunt of
the fight, was in the thick of it, dizzy with the striking of
blows and the blows he received. If fault there was, it lay
elsewhere, somewhere in the tangled scheme of things that made
men snarl over jobs like dogs over bones.

So Saxon arose and buckled on her armor again for the hardest
fight of all in the world's arena--the woman's fight. She ejected
from her thought all doubting and distrust. She forgave nothing,
for there was nothing requiring forgiveness. She pledged herself
to an absoluteness of belief that her love and Billy's was
unsullied, unperturbed--serere as it had always been, as it would
be when it came back again after the world settled down once more
to rational ways.

That night, when he came home, she proposed, as an emergency
measure, that she should resume her needlework and help keep the
pot boiling until the strike was over, But Billy would hear
nothing of it.

"It's all right," he assured her repeatedly. "They ain't no call
for you to work. I'm goin' to get some money before the week is
out. An' I'll turn it over to you. An' Saturday night we'll go to
the show--a real show, no movin' pictures. Harvey's nigger
minstrels is comin' to town. We'll go Saturday night. I'll have
the money before that, as sure as beans is beans."

Friday evening he did not come home to supper, which Saxon
regretted, for Maggie Donahue had returned a pan of potatoes and
two quarts of flour (borrowed the week before), and it was a
hearty meal that awaited him. Saxon kept the stove going till
nine o'clock, when, despite her reluctance, she went to bed. Her
preference would have been to wait up, but she did not dare,
knowing full well what the effect would be on him did he come
home in liquor.

The clock had just struck one, when she heard the click of the
gate. Slowly, heavily, ominously, she heard him come up the steps
and fumble with his key at the door. He entered the bedroom, and
she heard him sigh as he sat down. She remained quiet, for she
had learned the hypersensitiveness induced by drink and was
fastidiously careful not to hurt him even with the knowledge that
she had lain awake for him. It was not easy. Her hands were
clenched till the nails dented the palms, and her body was rigid
in her passionate effort for control. Never had he come home as
bad as this.

"Saxon," he called thickly. "Saxon."

She stired and yawned.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Won't you strike a light? My fingers is all thumbs."

Without looking at him, she complied; but so violent was the
nervous trembling of her hands that the glass chimney tinkled
against the globe and the match went out.

"I ain't drunk, Saxon," he said in the darkness, a hint of
amusement in his thick voice. "I've only had two or three jolts
... of that sort."

On her second attempt with the lamp she succeeded. When she
turned to look at him she screamed with fright. Though she had
heard his voice and knew him to be Billy, for the instant she did
not recognize him. His face was a face she had never known.
Swollen, bruised, discolored, every feature had been beaten out
of all semblance of familiarity. One eye was entirely closed, the
other showed through a narrow slit of blood-congested flesh. One
ear seemed to have lost most of its skin. The whole face was a
swollen pulp. His right jaw, in particular, was twice the size of
the left. No wonder his speech had been thick, was her thought,
as she regarded the fearfully cut and swollen lips that still
bled. She was sickened by the sight, and her heart went out to
him in a great wave of tenderness. She wanted to put her arms
around him, and cuddle and soothe him; but her practical judgment
bade otherwise.

"You poor, poor boy," she cried. "Tell me what you want me to do
first. I don't know about such things."

"If you could help me get my clothes off," he suggested meekly
and thickly. "I got 'em on before I stiffened up."

"And then hot water--that will be good," she said, as she began
gently drawing his coat sleeve over a puffed and helpless hand.

"I told you they was all thumbs," he grimaced, holding up his
hand and squinting at it with the fraction of sight remaining to
him.

"You sit and wait," she said, "till I start the fire and get the
hot water going. I won't be a minute. Then I'll finish getting
your clothes off."

From the kitchen she could hear him mumbling to himself, and when
she returned he was repeating over and over:

"We needed the money, Saxon. We needed the money."

Drunken he was not, she could see that, and from his babbling she
knew he was partly delirious.

"He was a surprise box," he wandered on, while she proceeded to
undress him; and bit by bit she was able to piece together what
had happened. "He was an unknown from Chicago. They sprang him on
me. The secretary of the Acme Club warned me I'd have my hands
full. An' I'd a-won if I'd been in condition. But fifteen pounds
off without trainin' ain't condition, Then I'd been drinkin'
pretty regular, an' I didn't have my wind."

But Saxon, stripping his undershirt, no longer heard him. As with
his face, she could not recognize his splendidly muscled back.
The white sheath of silken skin was torn and bloody. The
lacerations occurred oftenest in horizontal lines, though there
were perpendicular lines as well.

"How did you get all that?" she asked.

"The ropes. I was up against 'em more times than I like to
remember. Gee! He certainly gave me mine. But I fooled 'm. He
couldn't put me out. I lasted the twenty rounds, an' I wanta tell
you he's got some marks to remember me by. If he ain't got a
couple of knuckles broke in the left hand I'm a geezer.--Here,
feel my head here. Swollen, eh? Sure thing. He hit that more
times than he's wishin' he had right now. But, oh, what a lacin'!
What a lacin'! I never had anything like it before. The Chicago
Terror, they call 'm. I take my hat off to 'm. He's some bear.
But I could a-made 'm take the count if I'd ben in condition an'
had my wind.--Oh! Ouch! Watch out! It's like a boil!"

Fumbling at his waistband, Saxon's hand had come in contact with
a brightly inflamed surface larger than a soup plate

"That's from the kidney blows," Billy explained. "He was a
regular devil at it. 'Most every clench, like clock work, down
he'd chop one on me. It got so sore I was wincin' ... until I got
groggy an' didn't know much of anything. It ain't a knockout
blow, you know, but it's awful wearin' in a long fight. It takes
the starch out of you."

When his knees were bared, Saxon could see the skin across the
knee-caps was broken and gone.

"The skin ain't made to stand a heavy fellow like me on the
knees," he volunteered. "An' the rosin in the canvas cuts like
Sam Hill."

The tears were in Saxon's eyes, and she could have cried over the
manhandled body of her beautiful sick boy.

As she carried his pants across the room to hang them up, a
jingle of money came from them. He called her back, and from the
pocket drew forth a handful of silver.

"We needed the money, we needed the money," he kept muttering, as
he vainly tried to count the coins; and Saxon knew that his mind
was wandering again.

It cut her to the heart, for she could not but remember the harsh
thoughts that had threatened her loyalty during the week past.
After all, Billy, the splendid physical man, was only a boy, her
boy. And he had faced and endured all this terrible punishment
for her, for the house and tha furniture that were their house
and furniture. He said so, now, when he scarcely knew what he
said. He said "WE needed the money." She was not so absent from
his thoughts as she had fancied. Here, down to the naked tie-ribs
of his soul, when he was half unconscious, the thought of her
persisted, was uppermost. We needed the money. WE!

The tears were trickling down her checks as she bent over him,
and it seemed she had never loved him so much as now.

"Here; you count," he said, abandoning the effort and handing the
money to her. "... How much do you make it?"

"Nineteen dollars and thirty-five cents."

"That's right ... the loser's end ... twenty dollars. I had some
drinks, an' treated a couple of the boys, an' then there was
carfare. If I'd a-won, I'd a-got a hundred. That's what I fought
for. It'd a-put us on Easy street for a while. You take it an'
keep it. It's better 'n nothin'."

In bed, he could not sleep because of his pain, and hour by hour
she worked over him, renewing the hot compresses over his
bruises, soothing the lacerations with witch hazel and cold cream
and the tenderest of finger tips. And all the while, with broken
intervals of groaning, he babbled on, living over the fight,
seeking relief in telling her his trouble, voicing regret at loss
of the money, and crying out the hurt to his pride. Far worse
than the sum of his physical hurts was his hurt pride.

"He couldn't put me out, anyway. He had full swing at me in the
times when I was too much in to get my hands up. The crowd was
crazy. I showed 'em some stamina. They was times when he only
rocked me, for I'd evaporated plenty of his steam for him in the
openin' rounds. I don't know how many times he dropped me. things
was gettin' too dreamy ...

"Sometimes, toward the end, I could see three of him in the ring
at once, an' I wouldn't know which to hit an' which to duck ...

"But I fooled 'm. When I couldn't see, or feel, an' when my knees
was shakin an my head goin' like a merry-go-round, I'd fall safe
into clenches just the same. I bet the referee's arms is tired
from draggin' us apart ...

"But what a lacin'! What a lacin'! Say, Saxon ... where are you?
Oh, there, eh? I guess I was dreamin'. But, say, let this be a
lesson to you. I broke my word an' went fightin', an' see what I
got. Look at me, an' take warnin' so you won't make the same
mistake an' go to makin' an' sellin' fancy work again ...

"But I fooled 'em--everybody. At the beginnin' the bettin' was
even. By the sixth round the wise gazabos was offerin' two to one
against me. I was licked from the first drop outa the
box--anybody could see that; but he couldn't put me down for the
count. By the tenth round they was offerin' even that I wouldn't
last the round. At the eleventh they was offerin' I wouldn't last
the fifteenth. An' I lasted the whole twenty. But some
punishment, I want to tell you, some punishment.

"Why, they was four rounds I was in dreamland all the time ...
only I kept on my feet an' fought, or took the count to eight an'
got up, an' stalled an' covered an' whanged away. I don't know
what I done, except I must a-done like that, because I wasn't
there. I don't know a thing from the thirteenth, when he sent me
to the mat on my head, till the eighteenth.

"Where was I? Oh, yes. I opened my eyes, or one eye, because I
had only one that would open. An' there I was, in my corner, with
the towels goin' an' ammonia in my nose an' Bill Murphy with a
chunk of ice at the back of my neck. An' there, across the ring,
I could see the Chicago Terror, an' I had to do some thinkin' to
remember I was fightin' him. It was like I'd been away somewhere
an' just got back. 'What round's this comin'?' I ask Bill. 'The
eighteenth,' says he. 'The hell,' I says. 'What's come of all the
other rounds? The last I was figlitin' in was the thirteenth.'
'You're a wonder,' says Bill. 'You've ben out four rounds, only
nobody knows it except me. I've ben tryin' to get you to quit all
the time.' Just then the gong sounds, an' I can see the Terror
startin' for me. 'Quit,' says Bill, makin' a move to throw in the
towel. 'Not on your life,' I says. 'Drop it, Bill.' But he went
on wantin' me to quit. By that time the Terror had come across to
my corner an' was standin' with his hands down, lookin' at me.
The referee was lookin', too, an' the house was that quiet,
lookin', you could hear a pin drop. An' my head was gettin' some
clearer, but not much.

"'You can't win,' Bill says.

"'Watch me,' says I. An' with that I make a rush for the Terror,
catchin' him unexpeeted. I'm that groggy I can't stand, but I
just keep a-goin', wallopin' the Terror clear across the ring to
his corner, where he slips an' falls, an' I fall on top of 'm.
Say, that crowd goes crazy.

"Where was I?--My head's still goin' round I guess. It's buzzin'
like a swarm of bees."

"You'd just fallen on top of him in his corner," Saxon prompted.

"Oh, yes. Well, no sooner are we on our feet--an' I can't
stand--I rush 'm the same way back across to my corner an' fall
on 'm. That was luck. We got up, an' I'd a-fallen, only I
clenched an' held myself up by him. 'I got your goat,' I says to
him. 'An' now I'm goin' to eat you up.'

"I hadn't his goat, but I was playin' to get a piece of it, an' I
got it, rushin' 'm as soon as the referee drags us apart an'
fetchin' 'm a lucky wallop in the stomach that steadied 'm an'
made him almighty careful. Too almighty careful. He was afraid to
chance a mix with me. He thought I had more fight left in me than
I had. So you see I got that much of his goat anyway.

"An' he couldn't get me. He didn't get me. An' in the twentieth
we stood in the middle of the ring an' exchanged wallops even. Of
course, I'd made a fine showin' for a licked man, but he got the
decision, which was right. But I fooled 'm. He couldn't get me.
An' I fooled the gazabos that was bettin' he would on short
order."

At last, as dawn came on, Billy slept. He groaned and moaned, his
face twisting with pain, his body vainly moving and tossing in
quest of easement.

So this was prizefighting, Saxon thought. It was much worse than
she had dreamed. She had had no idea that such damage could be
wrought with padded gloves. He must never fight again. Street
rioting was preferable. She was wondering how much of his silk
had been lost, when he mumbled and opened his eyes.

"What is it?" she asked, ere it came to her that his eyes were
unseeing and that he was in delirium.

"Saxon! ... Saxon!" he called.

"Yes, Billy. What is it?"

His hand fumbled over the bed where ordinarily it would have
encountered her.

Again he called her, and she cried her presence loudly in his
ear. He sighed with relief and muttered brokenly:

"I had to do it. ... We needed the money."

His eyes closed, and he slept more soundly, though his muttering
continued. She had heard of congestion of the brain, and was
frightened. Then she remembered his telling her of the ice Billy
Murphy had held against his head.

Throwing a shawl over her head, she ran to the Pile Drivers' Home
on Seventh street. The barkeeper had just opened, and was
sweeping out. From the refrigerator he gave her all the ice she
wished to carry, breaking it into convenient pieces for her. Back
in the house, she applied the ice to the base of Billy's brain,
placed hot irons to his feet, and bathed his head with witch
hazel made cold by resting on the ice.

He slept in the darkened room until late afternoon, when, to
Saxon's dismay, he insisted on getting up.

"Gotta make a showin'," he explained. "They ain't goin' to have
the laugh on me."

In torment he was helped by her to dress, and in torment he went
forth from the house so that his world should have ocular
evidence that the beating he had received did not keep him in
bed.

It was another kind of pride, different from a woman's, and Saxon
wondered if it were the less admirable for that.



CHAPTER XIV

In the days that followed Billy's swellings went down and the
bruises passed away with surprising rapidity. The quick healing
of the lacerations attested the healthiness of his blood. Only
remained the black eyes, unduly conspicuous on a face as blond as
his. The discoloration was stubborn, persisting half a month, in
which time happened divers events of importance.

Otto Frank's trial had been expeditious. Found guilty by a jury
notable for the business and professional men on it, the death
sentence was passed upon him and he was removed to San Quentin
for execution.

The case of Chester Johnson and the fourteen others had taken
longer, but within the same week, it, too, was finished. Chester
Johnson was sentenced to be hanged. Two got life; three, twenty
years. Only two were acquitted. The remaining seven received
terms of from two to ten years.

The effect on Saxon was to throw her into deep depression. Billy
was made gloomy, but his fighting spirit was not subdued.

"Always some men killed in battle," he said. "That's to be
expected. But the way of sentencin' 'em gets me. All found guilty
was responsible for the killin'; or none was responsible. If all
was, then they should get the same sentence. They oughta hang
like Chester Johnson, or else he oughtn't to hang. I'd just like
to know how the judge makes up his mind. It must be like markin'
China lottery tickets. He plays hunches. He looks at a guy an'
waits for a spot or a number to come into his head. How else
could he give Johnny Black four years an' Cal Hutchins twenty
years? He played the hunches as they came into his head, an' it
might just as easy ben the other way around an' Cal Hutchins got
four years an' Johnny Black twenty.

"I know both them boys. They hung out with the Tenth an' Kirkham
gang mostly, though sometimes they ran with my gang. We used to
go swimmin' after school down to Sandy Beach on the marsh, an' in
the Transit slip where they said the water was sixty feet deep,
only it wasn't. An' once, on a Thursday, we dug a lot of clams
together, an' played hookey Friday to peddle them. An' we used to
go out on the Rock Wall an' catch pogies an' rock cod. One
day--the day of the eclipse--Cal caught a perch half as big as a
door. I never seen such a fish. An' now he's got to wear the
stripes for twenty years. Lucky he wasn't married. If he don't
get the consumption he'll be an old man when he comes out. Cal's
mother wouldn't let 'm go swimmin', an' whenever she suspected
she always licked his hair with her tongue. If it tasted salty,
he got a beltin'. But he was onto himself. Comin' home, he'd jump
somebody's front fence an' hold his head under a faucet."

"I used to dance with Chester Johnson," Saxon said. "And I knew
his wife, Kittie Brady, long and long ago. She had next place at
the table to me in the paper-box factory. She's gone to San
Francisco to her married sister's. She's going to have a baby,
too. She was awfully pretty, and there was always a string of
fellows after her."

The effect of the conviction and severe sentences was a bad one
on the union men. Instead of being disheartening, it intensified
the bitterness. Billy's repentance for having fought and the
sweetness and affection which had flashed up in the days of
Saxon's nursing of him were blotted out. At home, he scowled and
brooded, while his talk took on the tone of Bert's in the last
days ere that Mohegan died. Also, Billy stayed away from home
longer hours, and was again steadily drinking.

Saxon well-nigh abandoned hope. Almost was she steeled to the
inevitable tragedy which her morbid fancy painted in a thousand
guises. Oftenest, it was of Billy being brought home on a
stretcher. Sometimes it was a call to the telephone in the corner
grocery and the curt information by a strange voice that her
husband was lying in the receiving hospital or the morgue. And
when the mysterious horse-poisoning cases occurred, and when the
residence of one of the teaming magnates was half destroyed by
dynamite, she saw Billy in prison, or wearing stripes, or
mounting to the scaffold at San Quentin while at the same time
she could see the little cottage on Pine street besieged by
newspaper reporters and photographers.

Yet her lively imagination failed altogether to anticipate the
real catastrophe. Harmon, the fireman lodger, passing through the
kitchen on his way out to work, had paused to tell Saxon about
the previous day's train-wreck in the Alviso marshes, and of how
the engineer, imprisoned under the overturned engine and unhurt,
being drowned by the rising tide, had begged to be shot. Billy
came in at the end of the narrative, and from the somber light in
his heavy-lidded eyes Saxon knew he had been drinking. He
glowered at Harmon, and, without greeting to him or Saxon, leaned
his shoulder against the wall.

Harmon felt the awkwardness of the situation, and did his best to
appear oblivious.

"I was just telling your wife--" he began, but was savagely
interrupted.

"I don't care what you was tellin' her. But I got something to
tell you, Mister Man. My wife's made up your bed too many times
to suit me."

"Billy!" Saxon cried, her face scarlet with resentment, and hurt,
and shame.

Billy ignored her. Harmon was saying:

"I don't understand--"

"Well, I don't like your mug," Billy informed him. "You're
standin' on your foot. Get off of it. Get out. Beat it. D'ye
understand that?"

"I don't know what's got into him," Saxon gasped hurriedly to the
fireman. "He's not himself. Oh, I am so ashamed, so ashamed."

Billy turned on her.

"You shut your mouth an' keep outa this."

"But, Billy," she remonstrated.

"An' get outa here. You go into the other room."

"Here, now," Harmon broke in. "This is a fine way to treat a
fellow."

"I've given you too much rope as it is," was Billy's answer.

"I've paid my rent regularly, haven't I?"

"An' I oughta knock your block off for you. Don't see any reason
I shouldn't, for that matter."

"If you do anything like that, Billy--" Saxon began.

"You here still? Well, if you won't go into the other room, I'll
see that you do."

His hand clutched her arm. For one instant she resisted his
strength; and in that instant, the flesh crushed under his
fingers, she realized the fullness of his strength.

In the front room she could only lie back in the Morris chair
sobbing, and listen to what occurred in the kitchen. "I'll stay
to the end of the week," the fireman was saying. "I've paid in
advance."

"Don't make no mistake," came Billy's voice, so slow that it was
almost a drawl, yet quivering with rage. "You can't get out too
quick if you wanta stay healthy--you an' your traps with you. I'm
likely to start something any moment."

"Oh, I know you're a slugger--" the fireman's voice began.

Then came the unmistakable impact of a blow; the crash of glass;
a scuffle on the back porch; and, finally, the heavy bumps of a
body down the steps. She heard Billy reenter the kitchen, move
about, and knew he was sweeping up the broken glass of the
kitchen door. Then he washed himself at the sink, whistling while
he dried his face and hands, and walked into the front room. She
did not look at him. She was too sick and sad. He paused
irresolutely, seeming to make up his mind.

"I'm goin' up town," he stated. "They's a meeting of the union.
If I don't come back it'll be because that geezer's sworn out a
warrant."

He opened the front door and paused. She knew he was looking at
her. Then the door closed and she heard him go down the steps.

Saxon was stunned. She did not think. She did not know what to
think. The whole thing was incomprehensible, incredible. She lay
back in the chair, her eyes closed, her mind almost a blank,
crushed by a leaden feeling that the end had come to everything.

The voices of children playing in the street aroused her. Night
had fallen. She groped her way to a lamp and lighted it. In the
kitchen she stared, lips trembling, at the pitiful, half prepared
meal. The fire had gone out. The water had boiled away from the
potatoes. When she lifted the lid, a burnt smell arose.
Methodically she scraped and cleaned the pot, put things in
order, and peeled and sliced the potatoes for next day's frying.
And just as methodically she went to bed. Her lack of
nervousness, her placidity, was abnormal, so abnormal that she
closed her eyes and was almost immediately asleep. Nor did she
awaken till the sunshine was streaming into the room.

It was the first night she and Billy had slept apart. She was
amazed that she had not lain awake worrying about him. She lay
with eyes wide open, scarcely thinking, until pain in her arm
attracted her attention. It was where Billy had gripped her. On
examination she found the bruised flesh fearfully black and blue.
She was astonished, not by the spiritual fact that such bruise
had been administered by the one she loved most in the world, but
by the sheer physical fact that an instant's pressure had
inflicted so much damage. The strength of a man was a terrible
thing. Quite impersonally, she found herself wondering if Charley
Long were as strong as Billy.

It was not until she dressed and built the fire that she began to
think about more immediate things. Billy had not returned. Then
he was arrested. What was she to do?--leave him in jail, go away,
and start life afresh? Of course it was impossible to go on
living with a man who had behaved as he had. But then, came
another thought, WAS it impossible? After all, he was her
husband. FOR BETTER OR WORSE--the phrase reiterated itself, a
monotonous accompaniment to her thoughts, at the back of her
consciousness. To leave him was to surrender. She carried the
matter before the tribunal of her mother's memory. No; Daisy
would never have surrendered. Daisy was a fighter. Then she,
Saxon, must fight. Besides--and she acknowledged it--readily,
though in a cold, dead way--besides, Billy was better than most
husbands. Better than any other husband she had heard of, she
concluded, as she remembered many of his earlier nicenesses and
finenesses, and especially his eternal chant: NOTHING IS TOO GOOD
FOR US. THE ROBERTSES AIN'T ON THE CHEAP.

At eleven o'clock she had a caller. It was Bud Strothers, Billy's
mate on strike duty. Billy, he told her, had refused bail,
refused a lawyer, had asked to be tried by the Court, had pleaded
guilty, and had received a sentence of sixty dollars or thirty
days. Also, he had refused to let the boys pay his fine.

"He's clean looney," Strothers summed up. "Won't listen to
reason. Says he'll serve the time out. He's been tankin' up too
regular, I guess. His wheels are buzzin'. Here, he give me this
note for you. Any time you want anything send for me. The boys'll
all stand by Bill's wife. You belong to us, you know. How are you
off for money?"

Proudly she disclaimed any need for money, and not until her
visitor departed did she read Billy's note:

Dear Saxon--Bud Strothers is going to give you this. Don't worry
about me. I am going to take my medicine. I deserve it--you know
that. I guess I am gone bughouse. Just the same, I am sorry for
what I done. Don't come to see me. I don't want you to. If you
need money, the union will give you some. The business agent is
all right. I will be out in a month. Now, Saxon, you know I love
you, and just say to yourself that you forgive me this time, and
you won't never have to do it again.

                                  Billy.

Bud Strothers was followed by Maggie Donahue, and Mrs. Olsen, who
paid neighborly calls of cheer and were tactful in their offers
of help and in studiously avoiding more reference than was
necessary to Billy's predicament.

In the afternoon James Harmon arrived. He limped slightly, and
Saxon divined that he was doing his best to minimize that
evidence of hurt. She tried to apologize to him, but he would not
listen.

"I don't blame you, Mrs. Roberts," he said. "I know it wasn't
your doing. But your husband wasn't just himself, I guess. He was
fightin' mad on general principles, and it was just my luck to
get in the way, that was all."

"But just the same--"

The fireman shook his head.

"I know all about it. I used to punish the drink myself, and I
done some funny things in them days. And I'm sorry I swore that
warrant out and testified. But I was hot in the collar. I'm
cooled down now, an' I'm sorry I done it."

"You're awfully good and kind," she said, and then began
hesitantly on what was bothering her. "You ... you can't stay
now, with him... away, you know."

"Yes; that wouldn't do, would it? I'll tell you: I'll pack up
right now, and skin out, and then, before six o'clock, I'll send
a wagon for my things. Here's the key to the kitchen door."

Much as he demurred, she compelled him to receive back the
unexpired portion of his rent. He shook her hand heartily at
leaving, and tried to get her to promise to call upon him for a
loan any time she might be in need.

"It's all right," he assured her. "I'm married, and got two boys.
One of them's got his lungs touched, and she's with 'em down in
Arizona campin' out. The railroad helped with passes."

And as he went down the steps she wondered that so kind a man
should be in so madly cruel a world.

The Donahue boy threw in a spare evening paper, and Saxon found
half a column devoted to Billy. It was not nice. The fact that he
had stood up in the police court with his eyes blacked from some
other fray was noted. He was described as a bully, a hoodlum, a
rough-neck, a professional slugger whose presence in the ranks
was a disgrace to organized labor. The assault he had pleaded
guilty of was atrocious and unprovoked, and if he were a fair
sample of a striking teamster, the only wise thing for Oakland to
do was to break up the union and drive every member from the
city. And, finally, the paper complained at the mildness of the
sentence. It should have been six months at least. The judge was
quoted as expressing regret that he had been unable to impose a
six months' sentence, this inability being due to the condition
of the jails, already crowded beyond capacity by the many eases
of assault committed in the course of the various strikes.

That night, in bed, Saxon experienced her first loneliness. Her
brain seemed in a whirl, and her sleep was broken by vain
gropings for the form of Billy she imagined at her side. At last,
she lighted the lamp and lay staring at the ceiling, wide-eyed,
conning over and over the details of the disaster that had
overwhelmed her. She could forgive, and she could not forgive.
The blow to her love-life had been too savage, too brutal. Her
pride was too lacerated to permit her wholly to return in memory
to the other Billy whom she loved. Wine in, wit out, she repeated
to herself; but the phrase could not absolve the man who had
slept by her side, and to whom she had consecrated herself. She
wept in the loneliness of the all-too-spacious bed, strove to
forget Billy's incomprehensible cruelty, even pillowed her cheek
with numb fondness against the bruise of her arm; but still
resentment burned within her, a steady flame of protest against
Billy and all that Billy had done. Her throat was parched, a dull
ache never ceased in her breast, and she was oppressed by a
feeling of goneness. WHY, WHY?--And from the puzzle of the world
came no solution.

In the morning she received a visit from Sarah--the second in all
the period of her marriage; and she could easily guess her
sister-in-law's ghoulish errand. No exertion was required for the
assertion of all of Saxon's pride. She refused to be in the
slightest on the defensive. There was nothing to defend, nothing
to explain. Everything was all right, and it was nobody's
business anyway. This attitude but served to vex Sarah.

"I warned you, and you can't say I didn't," her diatribe ran. "I
always knew he was no good, a jailbird, a hoodlum, a slugger. My
heart sunk into my boots when I heard you was runnin' with a
prizefighter. I told you so at the time. But no; you wouldn't
listen, you with your highfalutin' notions an' more pairs of
shoes than any decent woman should have. You knew better'n me.
An' I said then, to Tom, I said, 'It's all up with Saxon now.'
Them was my very words. Them that touches pitch is defiled. If
you'd only a-married Charley Long! Then the family wouldn't a-ben
disgraced. An' this is only the beginnin', mark me, only the
beginnin'. Where it'll end, God knows. He'll kill somebody yet,
that plug-ugly of yourn, an' be hanged for it. You wait an' see,
that's all, an' then you'll remember my words. As you make your
bed, so you will lay in it"

"Best bed I ever had," Saxon commented.

"So you can say, so you can say," Sarah snorted.

"I wouldn't trade it for a queen's bed," Saxon added.

"A jailbird's bed," Sarah rejoined witheringly.

"Oh, it's the style," Saxon retorted airily. "Everybody's getting
a taste of jail. Wasn't Tom arrested at some street meeting of
the socialists? Everybody goes to jail these days."

The barb had struck home.

"But Tom was acquitted," Sarah hastened to proclaim.

"Just the same he lay in jail all night without bail."

This was unanswerable, and Sarah executed her favorite tactic of
attack in flank.

"A nice come-down for you, I must say, that was raised straight
an' right, a-cuttin' up didoes with a lodger."

"Who says so?" Saxon blazed with an indignation quickly mastered.

"Oh, a blind man can read between the lines. A lodger, a young
married woman with no self respect, an' a prizefighter for a
husband--what else would they fight about?"

"Just like any family quarrel, wasn't it?" Saxon smiled placidly.

Sarah was shocked into momentary speechlessness.

"And I want you to understand it," Saxon continued. "It makes a
woman proud to have men fight over her. I am proud. Do you hear?
I am proud. I want you to tell them so. I want you to tell all
your neighbors. Tell everybody. I am no cow. Men like me. Men
fight for me. Men go to jail for me. What is a woman in the world
for, if it isn't to have men like her? Now, go, Sarah; go at
once, and tell everybody what you've read between the lines. Tell
them Billy is a jailbird and that I am a bad woman whom all men
desire. Shout it out, and good luck to you. And get out of my
house. And never put your feet in it again. You are too decent a
woman to come here. You might lose your reputation. And think of
your children. Now get out. Go."

Not until Sarah had taken an amazed and horrified departure did
Saxon fling herself on the bed in a convulsion of tears. She had
been ashamed, before, merely of Billy's inhospitality, and
surliness, and unfairness. But she could see, now, the light in
which others looked on the affair. It had not entered Saxon's
head. She was confident that it had not entered Billy's. She knew
his attitude from the first. Always he had opposed taking a
lodger because of his proud faith that his wife should not work.
Only hard times had compelled his consent, and, now that she
looked back, almost had she inveigled him into consenting.

But all this did not alter the viewpoint the neighborhood must
hold, that every one who had ever known her must hold. And for
this, too, Billy was responsible. It was more terrible than all
the other things he had been guilty of put together. She could
never look any one in the face again. Maggie Donahue and Mrs.
Olsen had been very kind, but of what must they have been
thinking all the time they talked with her? And what must they
have said to each other? What was everybody saying?--over front
gates and back fences,--the men standing on the corners or
talking in saloons?

Later, exhausted by her grief, when the tears no longer fell, she
grew more impersonal, and dwelt on the disasters that had
befallen so many women since the strike troubles began--Otto
Frank's wife, Henderson's widow, pretty Kittie Brady, Mary, all
the womenfolk of the other workmen who were now wearing the
stripes in San Quentin. Her world was crashing about her ears. No
one was exempt. Not only had she not escaped, but hers was the
worst disgrace of all. Desperately she tried to hug the delusion
that she was asleep, that it was all a nightmare, and that soon
the alarm would go off and she would get up and cook Billy's
breakfast so that he could go to work.

She did not leave the bed that day. Nor did she sleep. Her brain
whirled on and on, now dwelling at insistent length upon her
misfortunes, now pursuing the most fantastic ramifications of
what she considered her disgrace, and, again, going back to her
childhood and wandering through endless trivial detail. She
worked at all the tasks she had ever done, performing, in fancy,
the myriads of mechanical movements peculiar to each
occupation--shaping and pasting in the paper box factory, ironing
in the laundry, weaving in the jute mill, peeling fruit in the
cannery and countless boxes of scalded tomatoes. She attended all
her dances and all her picnics over again; went through her
school days, recalling the face and name and seat of every
schoolmate; endured the gray bleakness of the years in the orphan
asylum; revisioned every memory of her mother, every tale; and
relived all her life with Billy. But ever--and here the torment
lay--she was drawn back from these far-wanderings to her present
trouble, with its parch in the throat, its ache in the breast,
and its gnawing, vacant goneness.



CHAPTER XV

All that night Saxon lay, unsleeping, without taking off her
clothes, and when she arose in the morning and washed her face
and dressed her hair she was aware of a strange numbness, of a
feeling of constriction about her head as if it were bound by a
heavy band of iron. It seemed like a dull pressure upon her
brain. It was the beginning of an illness that she did not know
as illness. All she knew was that she felt queer. It was not
fever. It was not cold. Her bodily health was as it should be,
and, when she thought about it, she put her condition down to
nerves--nerves, according to her ideas and the ideas of her
class, being unconnected with disease.

She had a strange feeling of loss of self, of being a stranger to
herself, and the world in which she moved seemed a vague and
shrouded world. It lacked sharpness of definition. Its customary
vividness was gone. She had lapses of memory, and was continually
finding herself doing unplanned things. Thus, to her
astonishment, she came to in the back yard hanging up the week's
wash. She had no recollection of having done it, yet it had been
done precisely as it should have been done. She had boiled the
sheets and pillow-slips and the table linen. Billy's woolens had
been washed in warm water only, with the home-made soap, the
recipe of which Mercedes had given her. On investigation, she
found she had eaten a mutton chop for breakfast. This meant that
she had been to the butcher shop, yet she had no memory of having
gone. Curiously, she went into the bedroom. The bed was made up
and everything in order.

At twilight she came upon herself in the front room, seated by
the window, crying in an ecstasy of joy. At first she did not
know what this joy was; then it came to her that it was because
she had lost her baby. "A blessing, a blessing," she was chanting
aloud, wringing her hands, but with joy, she knew it was with joy
that she wrung her hands.

The days came and went. She had little notion of time. Sometimes,
centuries agone, it seemed to her it was since Billy had gone to
jail. At other times it was no more than the night before. But
through it all two ideas persisted: she must not go to see Billy
in jail; it was a blessing she had lost her baby.

Once, Bud Strothers came to see her. She sat in the front room
and talked with him, noting with fascination that there were
fringes to the heels of his trousers. Another day, the business
agent of the union called. She told him, as she had told Bud
Strothers, that everything was all right, that she needed
nothing, that she could get along comfortably until Billy came
out.

A fear began to haunt her. WHEN HE CAME OUT. No; it must not be.
There must not be another baby. It might LIVE. No, no, a thousand
times no. It must not be. She would run away first. She would
never see Billy again. Anything but that. Anything but that.

This fear persisted. In her nightmare-ridden sleep it became an
accomplished fact, so that she would awake, trembling, in a cold
sweat, crying out. Her sleep had become wretched. Sometimes she
was convinced that she did not sleep at all, and she knew that
she had insomnia, and remembered that it was of insomnia her
mother had died.

She came to herself one day, sitting in Doctor Hentley's office.
He was looking at her in a puzzled way.

"Got plenty to eat?" he was asking.

She nodded.

"Any serious trouble?"

She shook her head.

"Everything's all right, doctor . . . except . . ."

"Yes, yes," he encouraged.

And then she knew why she had come. Simply, explicitly,she told
him. He shook his head slowly.

"It can't be done, little woman," he said

"Oh, but it can!" she cried. "I know it can."

"I don't mean that," he answered. "I mean I can't tell you. I
dare not. It is against the law. There is a doctor in Leavenworth
prison right now for that."

In vain she pleaded with him. He instanced his own wife and
children whose existence forbade his imperiling

"Besides, there is no likelihood now," he told her.

"But there will be, there is sure to be," she urged.

But he could only shake his head sadly.

"Why do you want to know?" he questioned finally.

Saxon poured her heart out to him. She told of her first year of
happiness with Billy, of the hard times caused by the labor
troubles, of the change in Billy so that there was no love-life
left, of her own deep horror. Not if it died, she concluded. She
could go through that again. But if it should live. Billy would
soon be out of jail, and then the danger would begin. It was only
a few words. She would never tell any one. Wild horses could not
drag it out of her.

But Doctor Hentley continued to shake his head. "I can't tell
you, little woman. It's a shame, but I can't take the risk. My
hands are tied. Our laws are all wrong. I have to consider those
who are dear to me."

It was when she got up to go that he faltered. "Come here," he
said. "Sit closer."

He prepared to whisper in her ear, then, with a sudden excess of
caution, crossed the room swiftly, opened the door, and looked
out. When he sat down again he drew his chair so close to hers
that the arms touched, and when he whispered his beard tickled
her ear.

"No, no," he shut her off when she tried to voice her gratitude.
"I have told you nothing. You were here to consult me about your
general health. You are run down, out of condition--"

As he talked he moved her toward the door. When he opened it, a
patient for the dentist in the adjoining office was standing in
the hall. Doctor Hentley lifted his voice.

"What you need is that tonic I prescribed. Remember that. And
don't pamper your appetite when it comes back. Eat strong,
nourishing food, and beefsteak, plenty of beefsteak. And don't
cook it to a cinder. Good day."

At times the silent cottage became unendurable, and Saxon would
throw a shawl about her head and walk out the Oakland Mole, or
cross the railroad yards and the marshes to Sandy Beach where
Billy had said he used to swim. Also, by going out the Transit
slip, by climbing down the piles on a precarious ladder of iron
spikes, and by crossing a boom of logs, she won access to the
Rock Wall that extended far out into the bay and that served as a
barrier between the mudflats and the tide-scoured channel of
Oakland Estuary. Here the fresh sea breezes blew and Oakland sank
down to a smudge of smoke behind her, while across the bay she
could see the smudge that represented San Francisco. Ocean
steamships passed up and down the estuary, and lofty-masted
ships, towed by red-stacked tugs.

She gazed at the sailors on the ships, wondered on what far
voyages and to what far lands they went, wondered what freedoms
were theirs. Or were they girt in by as remorseless and cruel a
world as the dwellers in Oakland were? Were they as unfair, as
unjust, as brutal, in their dealings with their fellows as were
the city dwellers? It did not seem so, and sometimes she wished
herself on board, out-bound, going anywhere, she cared not where,
so long as it was away from the world to which she had given her
best and which had trampled her in return.

She did not know always when she left the house, nor where her
feet took her. Once, she came to herself in a strange part of
Oakland. The street was wide and lined with rows of shade trees.
Velvet lawns, broken only by cement sidewalks, ran down to the
gutters. The houses stood apart and were large. In her vocabulary
they were mansions. What had shocked her to consciousness of
herself was a young man in the driver's seat of a touring car
standing at the curb. He was looking at her curiously and she
recognized him as Roy Blanchard, whom, in front of the Forum,
Billy had threatened to whip. Beside the car, bareheaded, stood
another young man. He, too, she remembered. He it was, at the
Sunday picnic where she first met Billy, who had thrust his cane
between the legs of the flying foot-racer and precipitated the
free-for-all fight. Like Blanchard, he was looking at her
curiously, and she became aware that she had been talking to
herself. The babble of her lips still beat in her ears. She
blushed, a rising tide of shame heating her face, and quickened
her pace. Blanchard sprang out of the car and came to her with
lifted hat. "Is anything the matter?" he asked.

She shook her head, and, though she had stopped, she evinced her
desire to go on.

"I know you," he said, studying her face. "You were with the
striker who promised me a licking."

"He is my husband," she said.

"Oh! Good for him." He regarded her pleasantly and frankly. "But
about yourself? Isn't there anything I can do for you? Something
IS the matter."

"No, I'm all right," she answered. "I have been sick," she lied;
for she never dreamed of connecting her queerness with sickness.

"You look tired," he pressed her. "I can take you in the machine
and run you anywhere you want. It won't be any trouble. I've
plenty of time."

Saxon shook her head.

"If... if you would tell me where I can catch the Eighth street
cars. I don't often come to this part of town."

He told her where to find an electric car and what transfers to
make, and she was surprised at the distance she had wandered.

"Thank you," she said. "And good bye."

"Sure I can't do anything now?"

"Sure."

"Well, good bye," he smiled good humoredly. "And tell that
husband of yours to keep in good condition. I'm likely to make
him need it all when he tangles up with me."

"Oh, but you can't fight with him," she warned. "You mustn't. You
haven't got a show."

"Good for you," he admired. "That's the way for a woman to stand
up for her man. Now the average woman would be so afraid he was
going to get licked--"

"But I'm not afraid. .. for him. It's for you. He's a terrible
fighter. You wouldn't have any chance. It would be like....
like...."

"Like taking candy from a baby?" Blanchard finished for her.

"Yes," she nodded. "That's just what he would call it. And
whenever he tells you you are standing on your foot watch out for
him. Now I must go. Good bye, and thank you again."

She went on down the sidewalk, his cheery good bye ringing in her
ears. He was kind--she admitted it honestly; yet he was one of
the clever ones, one of the masters, who, according to Billy,
were responsible for all the cruelty to labor, for the hardships
of the women, for the punishment of the labor men who were
wearing stripes in San Quentin or were in the death cells
awaiting the scaffold. Yet he was kind, sweet natured, clean,
good. She could read his character in his face. But how could
this be, if he were responsible for so much evil? She shook her
head wearily. There was no explanation, no understanding of this
world which destroyed little babes and bruised women's breasts.

As for her having strayed into that neighborhood of fine
residences, she was unsurprised. It was in line with her
queerness. She did so many things without knowing that she did
them. But she must be careful. It was better to wander on the
marshes and the Rock Wall.

Especially she liked the Rock Wall. There was a freedom about it,
a wide spaciousness that she found herself instinctively trying
to breathe, holding her arms out to embrace and make part of
herself. It was a more natural world, a more rational world. She
could understand it--understand the green crabs with white-
bleached claws that scuttled before her and which she could see
pasturing on green-weeded rocks when the tide was low. Here,
hopelessly man-made as the great wall was, nothing seemed
artificial. There were no men here, no laws nor conflicts of men.
The tide flowed and ebbed; the sun rose and set; regularly each
afternoon the brave west wind came romping in through the Golden
Gate, darkening the water, cresting tiny wavelets, making the
sailboats fly. Everything ran with frictionless order. Everything
was free. Firewood lay about for the taking. No man sold it by
the sack. Small boys fished with poles from the rocks, with no
one to drive them away for trespass, catching fish as Billy had
caught fish, as Cal Hutchins had caught fish. Billy had told her
of the great perch Cal Hutchins caught on the day of the eclipse,
when he had little dreamed the heart of his manhood would be
spent in convict's garb.

And here was food, food that was free. She watched the small boys
on a day when she had eaten nothing, and emulated them, gathering
mussels from the rocks at low water, cooking them by placing them
among the coals of a fire she built on top of the wall. They
tasted particularly good. She learned to knock the small oysters
from the rocks, and once she found a string of fresh-caught fish
some small boy had forgotten to take home with him.

Here drifted evidences of man's sinister handiwork--from a
distance, from the cities. One flood tide she found the water
covered with muskmelons. They bobbed and bumped along up the
estuary in countless thousands. Where they stranded against the
rocks she was able to get them. But each and every melon--and she
patiently tried scores of them--had been spoiled by a sharp gash
that let in the salt water. She could not understand. She asked
an old Portuguese woman gathering driftwood.

"They do it, the people who have too much," the old woman
explained, straightening her labor-stiffened back with such an
effort that almost Saxon could hear it creak. The old woman's
black eyes flashed angrily, and her wrinkled lips, drawn tightly
across toothless gums, wry with bitterness. "The people that have
too much. It is to keep up the price. They throw them overboard
in San Francisco."

"But why don't they give them away to the poor people?" Saxon
asked.

"They must keep up the price."

"But the poor people cannot buy them anyway," Saxon objected. "It
would not hurt the price."

The old woman shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not know. It is their way. They chop each melon so that the
poor people cannot fish them out and eat anyway. They do the same
with the oranges, with the apples. Ah, the fishermen! There is a
trust. When the boats catch too much fish, the trust throws them
overboard from Fisherman Wharf, boat-loads, and boat-loads, and
boatloads of the beautiful fish. And the beautiful good fish sink
and are gone. And no one gets them. Yet they are dead and only
good to eat. Fish are very good to eat."

And Saxon could not understand a world that did such things--a
world in which some men possessed so much food that they threw it
away, paying men for their labor of spoiling it before they threw
it away; and in the same world so many people who did not have
enough food, whose babies died because their mothers' milk was
not nourishing, whose young men fought and killed one another for
the chance to work, whose old men and women went to the poorhouse
because there was no food for them in the little shacks they wept
at leaving. She wondered if all the world were that way, and
remembered Mercedes' tales. Yes; all the world was that way. Had
not Mercedes seen ten thousand families starve to death in that
far away India, when, as she had said, her own jewels that she
wore would have fed and saved them all? It was the poorhouse and
the salt vats for the stupid, jewels and automobiles for the
clever ones.

She was one of the stupid. She must be. The evidence all pointed
that way. Yet Saxon refused to accept it. She was not stupid. Her
mother had not been stupid, nor had the pioneer stock before her.
Still it must be so. Here she sat, nothing to eat at home, her
love-husband changed to a brute beast and lying in jail, her arms
and heart empty of the babe that would have been there if only
the stupid ones had not made a shambles of her front yard in
their wrangling over jobs.

She sat there, racking her brain, the smudge of Oakland at her
back, staring across the bay at the smudge of Ban Francisco. Yet
the sun was good; the wind was good, as was the keen salt air in
her nostrils; the blue sky, flecked with clouds, was good. All
the natural world was right, and sensible, and beneficent. It was
the man-world that was wrong, and mad, and horrible. Why were the
stupid stupid? Was it a law of God? No; it could not be. God had
made the wind, and air, and sun. The man-world was made by man,
and a rotten job it was. Yet, and she remembered it well, the
teaching in the orphan asylum, God had made everything. Her
mother, too, had believed this, had believed in this God. Things
could not be different. It was ordained.

For a time Saxon sat crushed, helpless. Then smoldered protest,
revolt. Vainly she asked why God had it in for her. What had she
done to deserve such fate? She briefly reviewed her life in quest
of deadly sins committed, and found them not. She had obeyed her
mother; obeyed Cady, the saloon-keeper, and Cady's wife; obeyed
the matron and the other women in the orphan asylum; obeyed Tom
when she came to live in his house, and never run in the streets
because he didn't wish her to. At school she had always been
honorably promoted, and never had her deportment report varied
from one hundred per cent. She had worked from the day she left
school to the day of her marriage. She had been a good worker,
too. The little Jew who ran the paper box factory had almost wept
when she quit. It was the same at the cannery. She was among the
high-line weavers when the jute mills closed down. I And she had
kept straight. It was not as if she had been ugly or
unattractive. She had known her temptations and encountered her
dangers. The fellows had been crazy about her. They had run after
her, fought over her, in a way to turn most girls' heads. But she
had kept straight. And then had come Billy, her reward. She had
devoted herself to him, to his house, to all that would nourish
his love; and now she and Billy were sinking down into this
senseless vortex of misery and heartbreak of the man-made world.

No, God was not responsible. She could have made a better world
herself--a finer, squarer world. This being so, then there was no
God. God could not make a botch. The matron had been wrong, her
mother had been wrong. Then there was no immortality, and Bert,
wild and crazy Bert, falling at her front gate with his foolish
death-cry, was right. One was a long time dead.

Looking thus at life, shorn of its superrational sanctions, Saxon
floundered into the morass of pessimism. There was no
justification for right conduct in the universe, no square
deal for her who had earned reward, for the millions who worked
like animals, died like animals, and were a long time and forever
dead. Like the hosts of more learned thinkers before her, she
concluded that the universe was unmoral and without concern for
men.

And now she sat crushed in greater helplessness than when she had
included God in the scheme of injustice. As long as God was,
there was always chance for a miracle, for some supernatural
intervention, some rewarding with ineffable bliss. With God
missing, the world was a trap. Life was a trap. She was like a
linnet, caught by small boys and imprisoned in a cage. That was
because the linnet was stupid. But she rebelled. She fluttered
and beat her soul against the hard face of things as did the
linnet against the bars of wire. She was not stupid. She did not
belong in the trap. She would fight her way out of the trap.
There must be such a way out. When canal boys and rail-splitters,
the lowliest of the stupid lowly, as she had read in her school
history, could find their way out and become presidents of the
nation and rule over even the clever ones in their automobiles,
then could she find her way out and win to the tiny reward she
craved--Billy, a little love, a little happiness. She would not
mind that the universe was unmoral, that there was no God, no
immortality. She was willing to go into the black grave and
remain in its blackness forever, to go into the salt vats and let
the young men cut her dead flesh to sausage-meat, if--if only she
could get her small meed of happiness first.

How she would work for that happiness! How she would appreciate
it, make the most of each least particle of it! But how was she
to do it, Where was the paths She could not vision it. Her eyes
showed her only the smudge of San Francisco, the smudge of
Oakland, where men were breaking heads and killing one another,
where babies were dying, born and unborn, and where women were
weeping with bruised breasts.



CHAPTER XVI

Her vague, unreal existence continued. It seemed in some previous
life-time that Billy had gone away, that another life-time would
have to come before he returned. She still suffered from
insomnia. Long nights passed in succession, during which she
never closed her eyes. At other times she slept through long
stupors, waking stunned and numbed, scarcely able to open her
heavy eyes, to move her weary limbs. The pressure of the iron
band on her head never relaxed. She was poorly nourished. Nor had
she a cent of money. She often went a whole day without eating.
Once, seventy-two hours elapsed without food passing her lips.
She dug clams in the marsh, knocked the tiny oysters from the
rocks, and gathered mussels.

And yet, when Bud Strothers came to see how she was getting
along, she convinced him that all was well. One evening after
work, Tom came, and forced two dollars upon her. He was terribly
worried. He would like to help more, but Sarah was expecting
another baby. There had been slack times in his trade because of
the strikes in the other trades. He did not know what the country
was coming to. And it was all so simple. All they had to do was
see things in his way and vote the way he voted. Then everybody
would get a square deal. Christ was a Socialist, he told her.

"Christ died two thousand years ago," Saxon said.

"Well?" Tom queried, not catching her implication.

"Think," she said, "think of all the men and women who died in
those two thousand years, and socialism has not come yet. And in
two thousand years more it may be as far away as ever. Tom, your
socialism never did you any good. It is a dream."

"It wouldn't be if--" he began with a flash of resentment.

"If they believed as you do. Only they don't. You don't succeed
in making them."

"But we are increasing every year," he argued.

"Two thousand years is an awfully long time," she said quietly.

Her brother's tired face saddened as he noted. Then he sighed:

"Well, Saxon, if it's a dream, it is a good dream."

"I don't want to dream," was her reply. "I want things real. I
want them now."

And before her fancy passed the countless generations of the
stupid lowly, the Billys and Saxons, the Berts and Marys, the
Toms and Sarahs. And to what end? The salt vats and the grave.
Mercedes was a hard and wicked woman, but Mercedes was right. The
stupid must always be under the heels of the clever ones. Only
she, Saxon, daughter of Daisy who had written wonderful poems and
of a soldier-father on a roan war-horse, daughter of the strong.
generations who hall won half a world from wild nature and the
savage Indian--no, she was not stupid. It was as if she suffered
false imprisonment. There was some mistake. She would find the
way out.

With the two dollars she bought a sack of flour and half a sack
of potatoes. This relieved the monotony of her clams and mussels.
Like the Italian and Portuguese women, she gathered driftwood and
carried it home, though always she did it with shamed pride,
timing her arrival so that it would be after dark. One day, on
the mud-flat side of the Rock Wall, an Italian fishing boat
hauled up on the sand dredged from the channel. From the top of
the wall Saxon watched the men grouped about the charcoal
brazier, eating crusty Italian bread and a stew of meat and
vegetables, washed down with long draughts of thin red wine. She
envied them their freedom that advertised itself in the
heartiness of their meal, in the tones of their chatter and
laughter, in the very boat itself that was not tied always to one
place and that carried them wherever they willed. Afterward, they
dragged a seine across the mud-flats and up on the sand,
selecting for themselves only the larger kinds of fish. Many
thousands of small fish, like sardines, they left dying on the
sand when they sailed away. Saxon got a sackful of the fish, and
was compelled to make two trips in order to carry them home,
where she salted them down in a wooden washtubs

Her lapses of consciousness continued. The strangest thing she
did while in such condition was on Sandy Beach. There she
discovered herself, one windy afternoon, lying in a hole she had
dug, with sacks for blankets. She had even roofed the hole in
rough fashion by means of drift wood and marsh grass. On top of
the grass she had piled sand.

Another time she came to herself walking across the  marshes, a
bundle of driftwood, tied with bale-rope, on her shoulder.
Charley Long was walking beside her. She could see his face in
the starlight. She wondered dully how long he had been talking,
what he had said. Then she was curious to hear what he was
saying. She was not afraid, despite his strength, his wicked
nature, and tho loneliness and darkness of the marsh.

"It's a shame for a girl like you to have to do this," he was
saying, apparently in repetition of what he had already urged.
"Come on an' say the word, Saxon. Come on an' say the word."

Saxon stopped and quietly faced him.

"Listen, Charley Long. Billy's only doing thirty days, and his
time is almost up. When he gets out your life won't be worth a
pinch of salt if I tell him you've been bothering me. Now listen.
If you go right now away from here, and stay away, I won't tell
him. That's all I've got to say."

The big blacksmith stood in scowling indecisions his face
pathetic in its fierce yearning, his hands making unconscious,
clutching contractions.

"Why, you little, small thing," he said desperately, "I could
break you in one hand. I could--why, I could do anything I
wanted. I don't want to hurt you, Saxon. You know that. Just say
the word--"

"I've said the only word I'm going to say."

"God!" he muttered in involuntary admiration. "You ain't afraid.
You ain't afraid."

They faced each other for long silent minutes.

"Why ain't you afraid?" he demanded at last, after peering into
the surrounding darkness as if searching for her hidden allies.

"Because I married a man," Saxon said briefly. "And now you'd
better go."

When he had gone she shifted the load of wood to her other
shoulder and started on, in her breast a quiet thrill of pride in
Billy. Though behind prison bars, still she leaned against his
strength. The mere naming of him was sufficient to drive away a
brute like Charley Long.

On the day that Otto Frank was hanged she remained indoors. The
evening papers published the account. There had been no reprieve.
In Sacramento was a railroad Governor who might reprieve or even
pardon bank-wreckers and grafters, but who dared not lift his
finger for a workingman. All this was the talk of the
neighborhood. It had been Billy's talk. It had been Bert's talk.

The next day Saxon started out the Rock Wall, and the specter of
Otto Frank walked by her side. And with him was a dimmer, mistier
specter that she recognized as Billy. Was he, too, destined to
tread his way to Otto Frank's dark end? Surely so, if the blood
and strike continued. He was a fighter. He felt he was right in
fighting. It was easy to kill a man. Even if he did not intend
it, some time, when he was slugging a scab, the scab would
fracture his skull on a stone curbing or a cement sidewalk. And
then Billy would hang. That was why Otto Frank hanged. He had not
intended to kill Henderson. It was only by accident that
Henderson's skull was fractured. Yet Otto Frank had been hanged
for it just the same.

She wrung her hands and wept loudly as she stumbled among the
windy rocks. The hours passed, and she was lost to herself and
her grief. When she came to she found herself on the far end of
the wall where it jutted into the bay between the Oakland and
Alameda Moles. But she could see no wall. It was the time of the
full moon, and the unusual high tide covered the rocks. She was
knee deep in the water, and about her knees swam scores of big
rock rats, squeaking and fighting, scrambling to climb upon her
out of the flood. She screamed with fright and horror, and kicked
at them. Some dived and swam away under water; others circled
about her warily at a distance; and one big fellow laid his teeth
into her shoe. Him she stepped on and crushed with her free foot.
By this time, though still trembling, she was able coolly to
consider the situation. She waded to a stout stick of driftwood a
few feet away, and with this quickly cleared a space about
herself.

A grinning small boy, in a small, bright-painted and half-decked
skiff, sailed close in to the wall and let go his sheet to spill
the wind. "Want to get aboard?" he called.

"Yes," she answered. "There are thousands of big rats here. I'm
afraid of them."

He nodded, ran close in, spilled the wind from his sail, the
boat's way carrying it gently to her.

"Shove out its bow," he commanded. "That's right. I don't want to
break my centerboard.... An' then jump aboard in the
stern--quick!--alongside of me."

She obeyed, stepping in lightly beside him. He held the tiller up
with his elbow, pulled in on the sheet, and as the sail filled
the boat sprang away over the rippling water.

"You know boats," the boy said approvingly.

He was a slender, almost frail lad, of twelve or thirteen years,
though healthy enough, with sunburned freckled face and large
gray eyes that were clear and wistful.

Despite his possession of the pretty boat, Saxon was quick to
sense that he was one of them, a child of the people.

"First boat I was ever in, except ferryboats," Saxon laughed.

He looked at her keenly. "Well, you take to it like a duck to
water is all I can say about it. Where d'ye want me to land you?"

"Anywhere."

He opened his mouth to speak, gave her another long look,
considered for a space, then asked suddenly: "Got plenty of
time?"

She nodded.

"All day?"

Again she nodded.

"Say--I'll tell you, I'm goin' out on this ebb to Goat Island for
rockcod, an' I'll come in on the flood this evening. I got plenty
of lines an' bait. Want to come along7 We can both fish. And what
you catch you can have."

Saxon hesitated. The freedom and motion of the small boat
appealed to her. Like the ships she had envied, it was outbound.

"Maybe you'll drown me," she parleyed.

The boy threw back his head with pride.

"I guess I've been sailin' many a long day by myself, an' I ain't
drowned yet."

"All right," she consented. "Though remember, I don't know
anything about boats."

"Aw, that's all right.--Now I'm goin' to go about. When I say
'Hard a-lee!' like that, you duck your head so the boom don't hit
you, an' shift over to the other side."

He executed the maneuver, Saxon obeyed, and found herself sitting
beside him on the opposite side of the boat, while the boat
itself, on the other tack, was heading toward Long Wharf where
the coal bunkers were. She was aglow with admiration, the more so
because the mechanics of boat-sailing was to her a complex and
mysterious thing.

"Where did you learn it all?" she inquired.

"Taught myself, just naturally taught myself. I liked it, you
see, an' what a fellow likes he's likeliest to do. This is my
second boat. My first didn't have a centerboard. I bought it for
two dollars an' learned a lot, though it never stopped leaking.
What d 'ye think I paid for this one? It's worth twenty-five
dollars right now. What d 'ye think I paid for it?"

"I give up," Saxon said. "How much?"

"Six dollars. Think of it! A boat like this! Of course I done a
lot of work, an' the sail cost two dollars, the oars one forty,
an' the paint one seventy-five. But just the same eleven dollars
and fifteen cents is a real bargain. It took me a long time
saving for it, though. I carry papers morning and
evening--there's a boy taking my route for me this afternoon--I
give 'm ten cents, an' all the extras he sells is his; and I'd
a-got the boat sooner only I had to pay for my shorthand lessons.
My mother wants me to become a court reporter. They get sometimes
as much as twenty dollars a day. Gee! But I don't want it. It's a
shame to waste the money on the lessons."

"What do you want?" she asked, partly from idleness, and yet with
genuine curiosity; for she felt drawn to this boy in knee pants
who was so confident and at the same time so wistful.

"What do I want?" he repeated after her.

Turning his head slowly, he followed the sky-line, pausing
especially when his eyes rested landward on the brown Contra
Costa hills, and seaward, past Alcatraz, on the Golden Glate. The
wistfulness in his eyes was overwhelming and went to her heart.

"That," he said, sweeping the circle of the world with a wave of
his arm.

"That?" she queried.

He looked at her, perplexed in that he had not made his meaning
clear.

"Don't you ever feel that way?" he asked, bidding for sympathy
with his dream. "Don't you sometimes feel you'd die if you didn't
know what's beyond them hills an' what's beyond the other hills
behind them hills? An' the Golden Gate! There's the Pacific Ocean
beyond, and China, an' Japan, an' India, an'. .. an' all the
coral islands. You can go anywhere out through the Golden
Gate--to Australia, to Africa, to the seal islands, to the North
Pole, to Cape Horn. Why, all them places are just waitin' for me
to come an' see 'em. I've lived in Oakland all my life, but I'm
not going to live in Oakland the rest of my life, not by a long
shot. I'm goin' to get away. .. away. .."

Again, as words failed to express the vastness of his desire, the
wave of his arm swept the circle of the world.

Saxon thrilled with him. She too, save for her earlier childhood,
had lived in Oakland all her life. And it had been a good place
in which to live. .. until now. And now, in all its nightmare
horror, it was a place to get away from, as with her people the
East had been a place to get away from. And why not? The world
tugged at her, and she felt in touch with the lad's desire. Now
that she thought of it, her race had never been given to staying
long in one place. Always it had been on the move. She remembered
back to her mother's tales, and to the wood engraving in her
scrapbook where her half-clad forebears, sword in hand, leaped
from their lean beaked boats to do battle on the blood-drenched
sands of England.

"Did you ever hear about the Anglo-Saxons?" she asked the boy.

"You bet!" His eyes glistened, and he looked at her with new
interest. "I'm an Anglo-Saxon, every inch of me. Look at the
color of my eyes, my skin. I'm awful white where I ain't
sunburned. An' my hair was yellow when I was a baby. My mother
says it'll be dark brown by the time I'm grown up, worse luck.
Just the same, I'm Anglo-Saxon. I am of a fighting race. We ain't
afraid of nothin'. This bay--think I'm afraid of it!" He looked
out over the water with flashing eye of scorn. "Why, I've crossed
it when it was howlin' an' when the scow schooner sailors said I
lied an' that I didn't. Huh! They were only squareheads. Why, we
licked their kind thousands of years ago. We lick everything we
go up against. We've wandered all over the world, licking the
world. On the sea, on the land, it's all the same. Look at Ivory
Nelson, look at Davy Crockett, look at Paul Jones, look at Clive,
an' Kitchener, an' Fremont, an' Kit Carson, an' all of 'em."

Saxon nodded, while he continued, her own eyes shining, and it
came to her what a glory it would be to be the mother of a
man-child like this. Her body ached with the fancied quickening
of unborn life. A good stock, a good stock, she thought to
herself. Then she thought of herself and Billy, healthy shoots of
that same stock, yet condemned to childlessness because of the
trap of the manmade world and the curse of being herded with the
stupid ones.

She came back to the boy.

"My father was a soldier in the Civil War," he was telling her,
"a scout an' a spy. The rebels were going to hang him twice for a
spy. At the battle of Wilson's Creek he ran half a mile with his
captain wounded on his back. He's got a bullet in his leg right
now, just above the knee. It's been there all these years. He let
me feel it once. He was a buffalo hunter and a trapper before the
war. He was sheriff of his county when he was twenty years old.
An' after the war, when he was marshal of Silver City, he cleaned
out the bad men an' gun-fighters. He's been in almost every state
in the Union. He could wrestle any man at the railings in his
day, an' he was bully of the raftsmen of the Susquehanna when he
was only a youngster. His father killed a man in a standup fight
with a blow of his fist when he was sixty years old. An' when he
was seventy-four, his second wife had twins, an' he died when he
was plowing in the field with oxen when he was ninety-nine years
old. He just unyoked the oxen, an' sat down under a tree, an'
died there sitting up. An' my father's just like him. He's pretty
old now, but he ain't afraid of nothing. He's a regular
Anglo-Saxon, you see. He's a special policeman, an' he didn't do
a thing to the strikers in some of the fightin'. He had his face
all cut up with a rock, but he broke his club short off over some
hoodlum's head."

He paused breathlessly and looked at her.

"Gee!" he said. "I'd hate to a-ben that hoodlum."

"My name is Saxon," she said.

"Your name?"

"My first name."

"Gee!" he cried. "You're lucky. Now if mine had been only
Erling--you know, Erling the Bold--or Wolf, or Swen, or Jarl!"

"What is it?" she asked.

"Only John," he admitted sadly. "But I don't let 'em call one
John. Everybody's got to call me Jack. I've scrapped with a dozen
fellows that tried to call me John, or Johnnie--wouldn't that
make you sick?--Johnnie!"

They were now off the coal bunkers of Long Wharf, and the boy put
the skiff about, heading toward San Francisco. They were well out
in the open bay. The west wind had strengthened and was
whitecapping the strong ebb tide. The boat drove merrily along.
When splashes of spray flew aboard, wetting them, Saxon laughed,
and the boy surveyed her with approval. They passed a ferryboat,
and the passengers on the upper deck crowded to one side to watch
them. In the swell of the steamer's wake, the skiff shipped
quarter-full of water. Saxon picked up an empty can and looked at
the boy.

"That's right," he said. "Go ahead an' bale out." And, when she
had finished: "We'll fetch Goat Island next tack. Right there off
the Torpedo Station is where we fish, in fifty feet of water an'
the tide runnin' to beat the band. You're wringing wet, ain't
you? Gee! You're like your name. You're a Saxon, all right. Are
you married?"

Saxon nodded, and the boy frowned.

"What'd you want to do that for, Now you can't wander over the
world like I'm going to. You're tied down. You're anchored for
keeps."

"It's pretty good to be married, though," she smiled.

"Sure, everybody gets married. But that's no reason to be in a
rush about it. Why couldn't you wait a while, like me, I'm goin'
to get married, too, but not until I'm an old man an' have been
everywheres."

Under the lee of Goat Island, Saxon obediently sitting still, he
took in the sail, and, when the boat had drifted to a position to
suit him, he dropped a tiny anchor. He got out the fish lines and
showed Saxon how to bait her hooks with salted minnows. Then they
dropped the lines to bottom, where they vibrated in the swift
tide, and waited for bites.

"They'll bite pretty soon," he encouraged. "I've never failed but
twice to catch a mess here. What d'ye say we eat while we're
waiting?"

Vainly she protested she was not hungry. He shared his lunch with
her with a boy's rigid equity, even to the half of a hard-boiled
egg and the half of a big red apple.

Still the rockcod did not bite. From under the stern-sheets he
drew out a cloth-bound book.

"Free Library," he vouchsafed, as he began to read, with one hand
holding the place while with the other he waited for the tug on
the fishline that would announce rockcod.

Saxon read the title. It was "Afloat in the Forest."

"Listen to this," he said after a few minutes, and he read
several pages descriptive of a great flooded tropical forest
being navigated by boys on a raft.

"Think of that!" he concluded. "That's the Amazon river in flood
time in South America. And the world's full of places like
that--everywhere, most likely, except Oakland. Oakland's just a
place to start from, I guess. Now that's adventure, I want to
tell you. Just think of the luck of them boys! All the same, some
day I'm going to go over the Andes to the headwaters of the
Amazon, all through the rubber country, an' canoe down the Amazon
thousands of miles to its mouth where it's that wide you can't
see one bank from the other an' where you can scoop up perfectly
fresh water out of the ocean a hundred miles from land."

But Saxon was not listening. One pregnant sentence had caught her
fancy. Oakland just a place to start from. She had never viewed
the city in that light. She had accepted it as a place to live
in, as an end in itself. But a place to start from! Why not! Why
not like any railroad station or ferry depot! Certainly, as
things were going, Oakland was not a place to stop in. The boy
was right. It was a place to start from. But to go where? Here
she was halted, and she was driven from the train of thought by a
strong pull and a series of jerks on the line. She began to haul
in, hand under hand, rapidly and deftly, the boy encouraging her,
until hooks, sinker, and a big gasping rockcod tumbled into the
bottom of the boat. The fish was free of the hook, and she baited
afresh and dropped the line over. The boy marked his place and
closed the book.

"They'll be biting soon as fast as we can haul 'em in," he said.

But the rush of fish did not come immediately.

"Did you ever read Captain Mayne Reid?" he asked. "Or Captain
Marryatt? Or Ballantyne?"

She shook her head.

"And you an Anglo-Saxon!" he cried derisively. "Why, there's
stacks of 'em in the Free Library. I have two cards, my mother's
an' mine, an' I draw 'em out all the time, after school, before I
have to carry my papers. I stick the books inside my shirt, in
front, under the suspenders. That holds 'em. One time, deliverin'
papers at Second an' Market--there's an awful tough gang of kids
hang out there--I got into a fight with the leader. He hauled off
to knock my wind out, an' he landed square on a book. You ought
to seen his face. An' then I landed on him. An' then his whole
gang was goin' to jump on me, only a couple of iron-molders
stepped in an' saw fair play. I gave 'em the books to hold."

"Who won?" Saxon asked.

"Nobody," the boy confessed reluctantly. "I think I was lickin'
him, but the molders called it a draw because the policeman on
the beat stopped us when we'd only teen fightin' half an hour.
But you ought to seen the crowd. I bet there was five hundred--"

He broke off abruptly and began hauling in his line. Saxon, too,
was hauling in. And in the next couple of hours they caught
twenty pounds of fish between them.

That night, long after dark, the little, half-decked skiff sailed
up the Oakland Estuary. The wind was fair but light, and the boat
moved slowly, towing a long pile which the boy had picked up
adrift and announced as worth three dollars anywhere for the wood
that was in it. The tide flooded smoothly under the full moon,
and Saxon recognized the points they passed--the Transit slip,
Sandy Beach, the shipyards, the nail works, Market street wharf.
The boy took the skiff in to a dilapidated boat-wharf at the foot
of Castro street, where the scow schooners, laden with sand and
gravel, lay hauled to the shore in a long row. He insisted upon
an equal division of the fish, because Saxon had helped catch
them, though he explained at length the ethics of flotsam to show
her that the pile was wholly his.

At Seventh and Poplar they separated, Saxon walking on alone to
Pine street with her load of fish. Tired though she was from the
long day, she had a strange feeling of well-being, and, after
cleaning the fish, she fell asleep wondering, when good times
came again, if she could persuade Billy to get a boat and go out
with her on Sundays as she had gone out that day.



CHAPTER VII

She slept all night, without stirring, without dreaming, and
awoke naturally and, for the first time in weeks, refreshed. She
felt her old self, as if some depressing weight had been lifted,
or a shadow had been swept away from between her and the sun. Her
head was clear. The seeming iron band that had pressed it so hard
was gone. She was cheerful. She even caught herself humming aloud
as she divided the fish into messes for Mrs. Olsen, Maggie
Donahue, and herself. She enjoyed her gossip with each of them,
and, returning home, plunged joyfully into the task of putting
the neglected house in order. She sang as she worked, and ever as
she sang the magic words of the boy danced and sparkled among the
notes: OAKLAND IS JUST A PLACE TO START FROM.

Everything was clear as print. Her and Billy's problem was as
simple as an arithmetic problem at school: to carpet a room so
many feet long, so many feet wide, to paper a room so many feet
high, so many feet  around. She had been sick in her head, she
had had strange lapses, she had been irresponsible. Very well.
All this had been because of her troubles--troubles in which she
had had no hand in the making. Billy's case was hers precisely.
He had behaved strangely because he had been irresponsible. And
all their troubles were the troubles of the trap. Oakland was the
trap. Oakland was a good place to start from.

She reviewed the events of her married life. The strikes and the
hard times had caused everything. If it had not been for the
strike of the shopmen and the fight in her front yard, she would
not have lost her baby. If Billy had not been made desperate by
the idleness and the hopeless fight of the teamsters, he would
not have taken to drinking. If they had not been hard up, they
would not have taken a lodger, and Billy would not be in jail.

Her mind was made up. The city was no place for her and Billy, no
place for love nor for babies. The way out was simple. They would
leave Oakland. It was the stupid that remained and bowed their
heads to fate. But she and Billy were not stupid. They would not
bow their heads. They would go forth and face fate.--Where, she
did not know. But that would come. The world was large. Beyond
the encircling hills, out through the Golden Gate, somewhere they
would find what they desired. The boy had been wrong in one
thing. She was not tied to Oakland, even if she was married. The
world was free to her and Billy as it had been free to the
wandering generations before them. It was only the stupid who had
been left behind everywhere in the race's wandering. The strong
had gone on. Well, she and Billy were strong. They would go on,
over the brown Contra Costa hills or out through the Golden Gate.

The day before Billy's release Saxon completed her meager
preparations to receive him. She was without money, and, except
for her resolve not to offend Billy in that way again, she would
have borrowed ferry fare from Maggie Donahue and journeyed to San
Francisco to sell some of her personal pretties. As it was, with
bread and potatoes and salted sardines in the house, she went out
at the afternoon low tide and dug clams for a chowder. Also, she
gathered a load of driftwood, and it was nine in the evening when
she emerged from the marsh, on her shoulder a bundle of wood and
a short-handled spade, in her free hand the pail of clams. She
sought the darker side of the street at the corner and hurried
across the zone of electric light to avoid detection by the
neighbors. But a woman came toward her, looked sharply and
stopped in front of her. It was Mary.

"My God, Saxon!" she exclaimed. "Is it as bad as this?"

Saxon looked at her old friend curiously, with a swift glance
that sketched all the tragedy. Mary was thinner, though there was
more color in her cheeks--color of which Saxon had her doubts.
Mary's bright eyes were handsomer, larger--too large, too
feverish bright, too restless. She was well dressed--too well
dressed; and she was suffering from nerves. She turned her head
apprehensively to glance into the darkness behind her.

"My God!" Saxon breathed. "And you. .." She shut her lips, then
began anew. "Come along to the house," she said.

"If you're ashamed to be seen with me--" Mary blurted, with one
of her old quick angers.

"No, no," Saxon disclaimed. "It's the driftwood and the clams. I
don't want the neighbors to know. Come along."

"No; I can't, Saxon. I'd like to, but I can't. I've got to catch
the next train to F'risco. I've ben waitin' around. I knocked at
your back door. But the house was dark. Billy's still in, ain't
he?"

"Yes, he gets out to-morrow."

"I read about it in the papers," Mary went on hurriedly, looking
behind her. "I was in Stockton when it happened." She turned upon
Saxon almost savagely. "You don't blame me, do you? I just
couldn't go back to work after bein' married. I was sick of work.
Played out, I guess, an' no good anyway. But if you only knew how
I hated the laundry even before I got married. It's a dirty
world. You don't dream. Saxon, honest to God, you could never
guess a hundredth part of its dirtiness. Oh, I wish I was dead, I
wish I was dead an' out of it all. Listen--no, I can't now.
There's the down train puffin' at Adeline. I'll have to run for
it. Can I come--"

"Aw, get a move on, can't you?" a man's voice interrupted.

Behind her the speaker had partly emerged from the darkness. No
workingman, Saxon could see that--lower in the world scale,
despite his good clothes, than any workingman.

"I'm comin', if you'll only wait a second," Mary placated.

And by her answer and its accents Saxon knew that Mary was afraid
of this man who prowled on the rim of light.

Mary turned to her.

"I got to beat it; good bye," she said, fumbling in the palm of
her glove.

She caught Saxon's free hand, and Saxon felt a small hot coin
pressed into it. She tried to resist, to force it back.

"No, no," Mary pleaded. "For old times. You can do as much for me
some day. I'll see you again. Good bye."

Suddenly, sobbing, she threw her arms around Saxon's waist,
crushing the feathers of her hat against the load of wood as she
pressed her face against Saxon's breast. Then she tore herself
away to arm's length, passionate, queering, and stood gazing at
Saxon.

"Aw, get a hustle, get a hustle," came from the darkness the
peremptory voice of the man.

"Oh, Saxon!" Mary sobbed; and was gone.

In the house, the lamp lighted, Saxon looked at the coin. It was
a five-dollar piece--to her, a fortune. Then she thought of Mary,
and of the man of whom she was afraid. Saxon registered another
black mark against Oakland. Mary was one more destroyed. They
lived only five years, on the average, Saxon had heard somewhere.
She looked at the coin and tossed it into the kitchen sink. When
she cleaned the clams, she heard the coin tinkle down the vent
pipe.

It was the thought of Billy, next morning, that led Saxon to go
under the sink, unscrew the cap to the catchtrap, and rescue the
five-dollar piece. Prisoners were not well fed, she had been
told; and the thought of placing clams and dry bread before
Billy, after thirty days of prison fare, was too appalling for
her to contemplate. She knew how he liked to spread his butter on
thick, how he liked thick, rare steak fried on a dry hot pan, and
how he liked coffee that was coffee and plenty of it.

Not until after nine o'clock did Billy arrive, and she was
dressed in her prettiest house gingham to meet him. She peeped on
him as he came slowly up the front steps, and she would have run
out to him except for a group of neighborhood children who were
staring from across the street. The door opened before him as his
hand reached for the knob, and, inside, he closed it by backing
against it, for his arms were filled with Saxon. No, he had not
had breakfast, nor did he want any now that he had her. He had
only stopped for a shave. He had stood the barber off, and he had
walked all the way from the City Hall because of lack of the
nickel carfare. But he'd like a bath most mighty well, and a
change of clothes. She mustn't come near him until he was clean.

When all this was accomplished, he sat in the kitchen and watched
her cook, noting the driftwood she put in the stove and asking
about it. While she moved about, she told how she had gathered
the wood, how she had managed to live and not be beholden to the
union, and by the time they were seated at the table she was
telling him about her meeting with Mary the night before. She did
not mention the five dollars.

Billy stopped chewing the first mouthful of steak. His expression
frightened her. He spat the meat out on his plate.

"You got the money to buy the meat from her," he accused slowly.
"You had no money, no more tick with the butcher, yet here's
meat. Am I right?"

Saxon could only bend her head.

The terrifying, ageless look had come into his face, the bleak
and passionless glaze into his eyes, which she had first seen on
the day at Weasel Park when he had fought with the three
Irishmen.

"What else did you buy?" he demanded--not roughly, not angrily,
but with the fearful coldness of a rage that words could not
express.

To her surprise, she had grown calm. What did it matter? It was
merely what one must expect, living in Oakland--something to be
left behind when Oakland was a thing behind, a place started
from.

"The coffee," she answered. "And the butter."

He emptied his plate of meat and her plate into the frying pan,
likewise the roll of butter and the slice on the table, and on
top he poured the contents of the coffee canister. All this he
carried into the back yard and dumped in the garbage can. The
coffee pot he emptied into the sink. "How much of the money you
got left?" he next wanted to know.

Saxon had already gone to her purse and taken it out.

"Three dollars and eighty cents," she counted, handing it to him.
"I paid forty-five cents for the steak."

He ran his eye over the money, counted it, and went to the front
door. She heard the door open and close, and knew that the silver
had been flung into the street. When he came back to the kitchen,
Saxon was already serving him fried potatoes on a clean plate.

"Nothin's too good for the Robertses," he said; "but, by God,
that sort of truck is too high for my stomach. It's so high it
stinks."

He glanced at the fried potatoes, the fresh slice of dry bread,
and the glass of water she was placing by his plate.

"It's all right," she smiled, as he hesitated. "There's nothing
left that's tainted."

He shot a swift glance at her face, as if for sarcasm, then
sighed and sat down. Almost immediately he was up again and
holding out his arms to her.

"I'm goin' to eat in a minute, but I want to talk to you first,"
he said, sitting down and holding her closely. "Besides, that
water ain't like coffee. Gettin' cold won't spoil it none. Now,
listen. You're the only one I got in this world. You wasn't
afraid of me an' what I just done, an' I'm glad of that. Now
we'll forget all about Mary. I got charity enough. I'm just as
sorry for her as you. I'd do anything for her. I'd wash her feet
for her like Christ did. I'd let her eat at my table, an' sleep
under my roof. But all that ain't no reason I should touch
anything she's earned. Now forget her. It's you an' me, Saxon,
only you an' me an' to hell with the rest of the world. Nothing
else counts. You won't never have to be afraid of me again.
Whisky an' I don't mix very well, so I'm goin' to cut whisky out.
I've been clean off my nut, an' I ain't treated you altogether
right. But that's all past. It won't never happen again. I'm
goin' to start out fresh.

"Now take this thing. I oughtn't to acted so hasty. But I did. I
oughta talked it over. But I didn't. My damned temper got the
best of me, an' you know I got one. If a fellow can keep his
temper in boxin', why he can keep it in bein' married, too. Only
this got me too sudden-like. It's something I can't stomach, that
I never could stomach. An' you wouldn't want me to any more'n I'd
want you to stomach something you just couldn't."

She sat up straight on his knees and looked at him, afire with an
idea.

"You mean that, Billy?"

"Sure I do."

"Then I'll tell you something I can't stomach any more. I'll die
if I have to."

"Well?" he questioned, after a searching pause.

"It's up to you," she said.

"Then fire away."

"You don't know what you're letting yourself in for," she warned.
"Maybe you'd better back out before it's too late."

He shook his head stubbornly.

"What you don't want to stomach you ain't goin' to stomach. Let
her go."

"First," she commenced, "no more slugging of scabs."

His mouth opened, but he checked the involuntary protest.

"And, second, no more Oakland."

"I don't get that last."

"No more Oakland. No more living in Oakland. I'll die if I have
to. It's pull up stakes and get out."

He digested this slowly.

"Where?" he asked finally.

"Anywhere. Everywhere. Smoke a cigarette and think it over."

He shook his head and studied her.

"You mean that?" he asked at length.

"I do. I want to chuck Oakland just as hard as you wanted to
chuck the beefsteak, the coffee, and the butter."

She could see him brace himself. She could feel him brace his
very body ere he answered.

"All right then, if that's what you want. We'll quit Oakland.
We'll quit it cold. God damn it, anyway, it never done nothin'
for me, an' I guess I'm husky enough to scratch for us both
anywheres. An' now that's settled, just tell me what you got it
in for Oakland for."

And she told him all she had thought out, marshaled all the facts
in her indictment of Oakland, omitting nothing, not even her last
visit to Doctor Hentley's office nor Billy's drinking. He but
drew her closer and proclaimed his resolves anew. The time
passed. The fried potatoes grew cold, and the stove went out.

When a pause came, Billy stood up, still holding her. He glanced
at the fried potatoes.

"Stone cold," he said, then turned to her. "Come on. Put on your
prettiest. We're goin' up town for something to eat an' to
celebrate. I guess we got a celebration comin', seein' as we're
going to pull up stakes an' pull our freight from the old burg.
An' we won't have to walk. I can borrow a dime from the barber,
an' I got enough junk to hock for a blowout."

His junk proved to be several gold medals won in his amateur days
at boxing tournaments. Once up town and in the pawnshop, Uncle
Sam seemed thoroughly versed in the value of the medals, and
Billy jingled a handful of silver in his pocket as they walked
out.

He was as hilarious as a boy, and she joined in his good spirits.
When he stopped at a corner cigar store to buy a sack of Bull
Durham, he changed his mind and bought Imperials.

"Oh, I'm a regular devil," he laughed. "Nothing's too good
to-day--not even tailor-made smokes. An' no chop houses nor Jap
joints for you an' me. It's Barnum's."

They strolled to the restaurant at Seventh and Broadway where
they had had their wedding supper.

"Let's make believed we're not married," Saxon suggested.

"Sure," he agreed, "--an' take a private room so as the waiter'll
have to knock on the door each time he comes in."

Saxon demurred at that.

"It will be too expensive, Billy. You'll have to tip him for the
knocking. We'll take the regular dining room."

"Order anything you want," Billy said largely, when they were
seated. "Here's family porterhouse, a dollar an' a half. What
d'ye say?"

"And hash-browned," she abetted, "and coffee extra special, and
some oysters first--I want to compare them with the rock
oysters."

Billy nodded, and looked up from the bill of fare.

"Here's mussels bordelay. Try an order of them, too, an' see if
they beat your Rock Wall ones."

"Why not?" Saxon cried, her eyes dancing. "The world is ours.
We're just travelers through this town."

"Yep, that's the stuff," Billy muttered absently. He was looking
at the theater column. He lifted his eyes from the paper.
"Matinee at Bell's. We can get reserved seats for a
quarter.--Doggone the luck anyway!"

His exclamation was so aggrieved and violent that it brought
alarm into her eyes.

"If I'd only thought," he regretted, "we could a-gone to the
Forum for grub. That's the swell joint where fellows like Roy
Blanchard hangs out, blowin' the money we sweat for them."

They bought reserved tickets at Bell's Theater; but it was too
early for the performance, and they went down Broadway and into
the Electric Theater to while away the time on a moving picture
show. A cowboy film was run off, and a French comic; then came a
rural drama situated somewhere in the Middle West. It began with
a farm yard scene. The sun blazed down on a corner of a barn and
on a rail fence where the ground lay in the mottled shade of
large trees overhead. There were chickens, ducks, and turkeys,
scratching, waddling, moving about. A big sow, followed by a
roly-poly litter of seven little ones, marched majestically
through the chickens, rooting them out of the way. The hens, in
turn, took it out on the little porkers, pecking them when they
strayed too far from their mother. And over the top rail a horse
looked drowsily on, ever and anon, at mathematically precise
intervals, switching a lazy tail that flashed high lights in the
sunshine.

"It's a warm day and there are flies--can't you just feel it?"
Saxon whispered.

"Sure. An' that horse's tail! It's the most natural ever. Gee! I
bet he knows the trick of clampin' it down over the reins. I
wouldn't wonder if his name was Iron Tail."

A dog ran upon the scene. The mother pig turned tail and with
short ludicrous jumps, followed by her progeny and pursued by the
dog, fled out of the film. A young girl came on, a sunbonnet
hanging down her back, her apron caught up in front and filled
with grain which she threw to the buttering fowls. Pigeons flew
down from the top of the film and joined in the scrambling feast.
The dog returned, wading scarcely noticed among the feathered
creatures, to wag his tail and laugh up at the girl. And, behind,
the horse nodded over the rail and switched on. A young man
entered, his errand immediately known to an audience educated in
moving pictures. But Saxon had no eyes for the love-making, the
pleading forcefulness, the shy reluctance, of man and maid. Ever
her gaze wandered back to the chickens, to the mottled shade
under the trees, to the warm wall of the barn, to the sleepy
horse with its ever recurrent whisk of tail

She drew closer to Billy, and her hand, passed around his arm,
sought his hand.

"Oh, Billy," she sighed. "I'd just die of happiness in a place
like that." And, when the film was ended. "We got lots of time
for Bell's. Let's stay and see that one over again."

They sat through a repetition of the performance, and when the
farm yard scene appeared, the longer Saxon looked at it the more
it affected her. And this time she took in further details. She
saw fields beyond, rolling hills in the background, and a
cloud-flecked sky. She identified some of the chickens,
especially an obstreperous old hen who resented the thrust of the
sow's muzzle, particularly pecked at the little pigs, and laid
about her with a vengeance when the grain fell. Saxon looked back
across the fields to the hills and sky, breathing the
spaciousness of it, the freedom, the content. Tears welled into
her eyes and she wept silently, happily.

"I know a trick that'd fix that old horse if he ever clamped his
tail down on me," Billy whispered

"Now I know where we're going when we leave Oakland," she
informed him.

"Where?"

"There."

He looked at her, and followed her gaze to the screen. "Oh," he
said, and cogitated. "An' why shouldn't we?" he added.

"Oh, Billy, will you?"

Her lips trembled in her eagerness, and her whisper broke and was
almost inaudible "Sure," he said. It was his day of royal
largess.

"What you want is yourn, an' I'll scratch my fingers off for it.
An' I've always had a hankerin' for the country myself. Say! I've
known horses like that to sell for half the price, an' I can sure
cure 'em of the habit."



CHAPTER XVIII

It was early evening when they got off the car at Seventh and
Pine on their way home from Bell's Theater. Billy and Saxon did
their little marketing together, then separated at the corner,
Saxon to go on to the house and prepare supper, Billy to go and
see the boys--the teamsters who had fought on in the strike
during his month of retirement.

"Take care of yourself, Billy," she called, as he started off.

"Sure," he answered, turning his face to her over his shoulder.

Her heart leaped at the smile. It was his old, unsullied
love-smile which she wanted always to see on his face--for which,
armed with her own wisdom and the wisdom of Mercedes, she would
wage the utmost woman's war to possess. A thought of this flashed
brightly through her brain, and it was with a proud little smile
that she remembered all her pretty equipment stored at home in
the bureau and the chest of drawers.

Three-quarters of an hour later, supper ready, all but the
putting on of the lamb chops at the sound of his step, Saxon
waited. She heard the gate click, but instead of his step she
heard a curious and confused scraping of many steps. She flew to
open the door. Billy stood there, but a different Billy from the
one she had parted from so short a time before. A small boy,
beside him, held his hat. His face had been fresh-washed, or,
rather, drenched, for his shirt and shoulders were wet. His pale
hair lay damp and plastered against his forehead, and was
darkened by oozing blood. Both arms hung limply by his side. But
his face was composed, and he even grinned.

"It's all right," he reassured Saxon. "The joke's on me. Somewhat
damaged but still in the ring." He stepped gingerly across the
threshold. "--Come on in, you fellows. We're all mutts together."

He was followed in by the boy with his hat, by Bud Strothers and
another teamster she knew, and by two strangers. The latter were
big, hard-featured, sheepish-faced men, who stared at Saxon as if
afraid of her.

"It's all right, Saxon," Billy began, but was interrupted by Bud.

"First thing is to get him on the bed an' cut his clothes off
him. Both arms is broke, and here are the ginks that done it."

He indicated the two strangers, who shuffled their feet with
embarrassment and looked more sheepish than ever.

Billy sat down on the bed, and while Saxon held the lamp, Bud and
the strangers proceeded to cut coat, shirt, and undershirt from
him.

"He wouldn't go to the receivin' hospital," Bud said to Saxon.

"Not on your life," Billy concurred. "I had 'em send for Doc
Hentley. He'll be here any minute. Them two arms is all I got.
They've done pretty well by me, an' I gotta do the same by them.-
-No medical students a-learnin' their trade on me."

"But how did it happens" Saxon demanded, looking from Billy to
the two strangers, puzzled by the amity that so evidently existed
among them all.

"Oh, they're all right," Billy dashed in. "They done it through
mistake. They're Frisco teamsters, an' they come over to help
us--a lot of 'em."

The two teamsters seemed to cheer up at this, and nodded their
heads.

"Yes, missus," one of them rumbled hoarsely. "It's all a mistake,
an'... well, the joke's on us."

"The drinks, anyway," Billy grinned.

Not only was Saxon not excited, but she was scarcely perturbed.
What had happened was only to be expected.

It was in line with all that Oakland had already done to her and
hers, and, besides, Billy was not dangerously hurt. Broken arms
and a sore head would heal. She brought chairs and seated
everybody.

"Now tell me what happened," she begged. "I'm all at sea, what of
you two burleys breaking my husband's arms, then seeing him home
and holding a love-fest with him."

"An' you got a right," Bud Strothers assured her. "You see, it
happened this way--"

"You shut up, Bud," Billy broke it. "You didn't see anything of
it."

Saxon looked to the San Francisco teamsters.

"We'd come over to lend a hand, seein' as the Oakland boys was
gettin' some the short end of it," one spoke up, "an' we've sure
learned some scabs there's better trades than drivin' team. Well,
me an' Jackson here was nosin' around to see what we can see,
when your husband comes moseyin' along. When he--"

"Hold on," Jackson interrupted. "get it straight as you go along.
We reckon we know the boys by sight. But your husband we ain't
never seen around, him bein'. .."

"As you might say, put away for a while," the first teamster took
up the tale. "So, when we sees what we thinks is a scab dodgin'
away from us an' takin' the shortcut through the alley--"

"The alley back of Campbell's grocery," Billy elucidated.

"Yep, back of the grocery," the first teamster went on; "why,
we're sure he's one of them squarehead scabs, hired through
Murray an' Ready, makin' a sneak to get into the stables over the
back fences."

"We caught one there, Billy an' me," Bud interpolated.

"So we don't waste any time," Jackson said, addressing himself to
Saxon. "We've done it before, an' we know how to do 'em up brown
an' tie 'em with baby ribbon. So we catch your husband right in
the alley."

"I was lookin' for Bud," said Billy. "The boys told me I'd find
him somewhere around the other end of the alley. An' the first
thing I know, Jackson, here, asks me for a match."

"An' right there's where I get in my fine work," resumed the
first teamster.

"What?" asked Saxon.

"That." The man pointed to the wound in Billy's scalp. "I laid 'm
out. He went down like a steer, an' got up on his knees dippy,
a-gabblin' about somebody standin' on their foot. He didn't know
where he was at, you see, clean groggy. An' then we done it."

The man paused, the tale told.

"Broke both his arms with the crowbar," Bud supplemented.

"That's when I come to myself, when the bones broke," Billy
corroborated. "An' there was the two of 'em givin' me the ha-ha.
'That'll last you some time,' Jackson was sayin'. An' Anson says,
'I'd like to see you drive horses with them arms.' An' then
Jackson says, 'let's give 'm something for luck.' An' with that
he fetched me a wallop on the jaw--"

"No," corrected Anson. "That wallop was mine."

"Well, it sent me into dreamland over again," Billy sighed. "An'
when I come to, here was Bud an' Anson an' Jackson dousin' me at
a water trough. An' then we dodged a reporter an' all come home
together."

Bud Strothers held up his fist and indicated freshly abraded
skin.

"The reporter-guy just insisted on samplin' it," he said. Then,
to Billy: "That's why I cut around Ninth an' caught up with you
down on Sixth."

A few minutes later Doctor Hentley arrived, and drove the men
from the rooms. They waited till he had finished, to assure
themselves of Billy's well being, and then departed. In the
kitchen Doctor Hentley washed his hands and gave Saxon final
instructions. As he dried himself he sniffed the air and looked
toward the stove where a pot was simmering.

"Clams," he said. "Where did you buy them?"

"I didn't buy them," replied Saxon. "I dug them myself."

"Not in the marsh?" he asked with quickened interest.

"Yes."

"Throw them away. Throw them out. They're death and corruption.
Typhoid--I've got three cases now, all traced to the clams and
the marsh."

When he had gone, Saxon obeyed. Still another mark against
Oakland, she reflected--Oakland, the man-trap, that poisoned
those it could not starve.

"If it wouldn't drive a man to drink," Billy groaned, when Saxon
returned to him. "Did you ever dream such luck? Look at all my
fights in the ring, an' never a broken bone, an' here, snap,
snap, just like that, two arms smashed."

"Oh, it might be worse," Saxon smiled cheerfully.

"I'd like to know how." It might have been your neck."

"An' a good job. I tell you, Saxon, you gotta show me anything
worse."

"I can," she said confidently.

"Well?"

"Well, wouldn't it be worse if you intended staying on in Oakland
where it might happen again?"

"I can see myself becomin' a farmer an' plowin' with a pair of
pipe-stems like these," he persisted.

"Doctor Hentley says they'll be stronger at the break than ever
before. And you know yourself that's true of clean-broken bones.
Now you close your eyes and go to sleep. You're all done up, and
you need to keep your brain quiet and stop thinking."

He closed his eyes obediently. She slipped a cool hand under the
nape of his neck and let it rest.

"That feels good," he murmured. "You're so cool, Saxon. Your
hand, and you, all of you. Bein' with you is like comin' out into
the cool night after dancin' in a hot room."

After several minutes of quiet, he began to giggle.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Oh, nothin'. I was just thinkin'--thinking of them mutts doin'
me up--me, that's done up more scabs than I can remember."

Next morning Billy awoke with his blues dissipated. From the
kitchen Saxon heard him painfully wrestling strange vocal
acrobatics.

"I got a new song you never heard," he told her when she came in
with a cup of coffee. "I only remember the chorus though. It's
the old man talkin' to some hobo of a hired man that wants to
marry his daughter. Mamie, that Billy Murphy used to run with
before he got married, used to sing it. It's a kind of a sobby
song. It used to always give Mamie the weeps. Here's the way the
chorus goes--an' remember, it's the old man spielin'."

And with great solemnity and excruciating Batting, Billy sang:

"O treat my daughter kind-i-ly;
An' say you'll do no harm,
An' when I die I'll will to you
My little house an' farm--
My horse, my plow, my sheep, my cow,
An' all them little chickens in the ga-a-rden.

"It's them little chickens in the garden that gets me," he
explained. "That's how I remembered it--from the chickens in the
movin' pictures yesterday. An' some day we'll have little
chickens in the garden, won't we, old girl?"

"And a daughter, too," Saxon amplified.

"An' I'll be the old geezer sayin' them same words to the hired
man," Billy carried the fancy along. "It don't take long to raise
a daughter if you ain't in a hurry."

Saxon took her long-neglected ukulele from its case and strummed
it into tune.

"And I've a song you never heard, Billy. Tom's always singing it.
He's crazy about taking up government land and going farming,
only Sarah won't think of it. He sings it something like this:

"We'll have a little farm,
A pig, a horse, a cow,
And you will drive the wagon,
And I will drive the plow."

"Only in this case I guess it's me that'll do the plowin'," Billy
approved. "Say, Saxon, sing 'Harvest Days.' That's a farmer's
song, too."

After that she feared the coffee was growing cold and compelled
Billy to take it. In the helplessness of two broken arms, he had
to be fed like a baby, and as she fed him they talked.

"I'll tell you one thing," Billy said, between mouthfuls. "Once
we get settled down in the country you'll have that horse you've
been wishin' for all your life. An' it'll be all your own, to
ride, drive, sell, or do anything you want with."

And, again, he ruminated: "One thing that'll come handy in the
country is that I know horses; that's a big start. I can always
get a job at that--if it ain't at union wages. An' the other
things about farmin' I can learn fast enough.--Say, d'ye remember
that day you first told me about wantin' a horse to ride all your
life?"

Saxon remembered, and it was only by a severe struggle that she
was able to keep the tears from welling into her eyes. She seemed
bursting with happiness, and she was remembering many things--all
the warm promise of life with Billy that had been hers in the
days before hard times. And now the promise was renewed again.
Since its fulfillment had not come to them, they were going away
to fulfill it for themselves and make the moving pictures come
true.

Impelled by a half-feigned fear, she stole away into the kitchen
bedroom where Bert had died, to study her face in the bureau
mirror. No, she decided; she was little changed. She was still
equipped for the battlefield of love. Beautiful she was not. She
knew that. But had not Mercedes said that the great women of
history who had won men had not been beautiful? And yet, Saxon
insisted, as she gazed at her reflection, she was anything but
unlovely. She studied her wide gray eyes that were so very gray,
that were always alive with light and vivacities, where, in the
surface and depths, always swam thoughts unuttered, thoughts that
sank down and dissolved to give place to other thoughts. The
brows were excellent--she realized that. Slenderly penciled, a
little darker than her light brown hair, they just fitted her
irregular nose that was feminine but not weak, that if anything
was piquant and that picturesquely might be declared impudent.

She could see that her face was slightly thin, that the red of
her lips was not quite so red, and that she had lost some of her
quick coloring. But all that would come back again. Her mouth was
not of the rosebud type she saw in the magazines. She paid
particular attention to it. A pleasant mouth it was, a mouth to
be joyous with, a mouth for laughter and to make laughter in
others. She deliberately experimented with it, smiled till the
corners dented deeper. And she knew that when she smiled her
smile was provocative of smiles. She laughed with her eyes
alone--a trick of hers. She threw back her head and laughed with
eyes and mouth together, between her spread lips showing the even
rows of strong white teeth.

And she remembered Billy's praise of her teeth, the night at
Germanic Hall after he had told Charley Long he was standing on
his foot. "Not big, and not little dinky baby's teeth either,"
Billy had said, ".. . just right, and they fit you." Also, he had
said that to look at them made him hungry, and that they were
good enough to eat.

She recollected all the compliments he had ever paid her. Beyond
all treasures, these were treasures to her--the love phrases,
praises, and admirations. He had said her skin was cool--soft as
velvet, too, and smooth as silk. She rolled up her sleeve to the
shoulder, brushed her cheek with the white skin for a test, with
deep scrutiny examined the fineness of its texture. And he had
told her that she was sweet; that he hadn't known what it meant
when they said a girl was sweet, not until he had known her. And
he had told her that her voice was cool, that it gave him the
feeling her hand did when it rested on his forehead. Her voice
went all through him, he had said, cool and fine, like a wind of
coolness. And he had likened it to the first of the sea breeze
setting in the afternoon after a scorching hot morning. And,
also, when she talked low, that it was round and sweet, like the
'cello in the Macdonough Theater orchestra.

He had called her his Tonic Kid. He had called her a
thoroughbred, clean-cut and spirited, all fine nerves and
delicate and sensitive. He had liked the way she carried her
clothes. She carried them like a dream, had been his way of
putting it. They were part of her, just as much as the cool of
her voice and skin and the scent of her hair.

And her figure! She got upon a chair and tilted the mirror so
that she could see herself from hips to feet. She drew her skirt
back and up. The slender ankle was just as slender. The calf had
lost none of its delicately mature swell. She studied her hips,
her waist, her bosom, her neck, the poise of her head, and sighed
contentedly. Billy must be right, and he had said that she was
built like a French woman, and that in the matter of lines and
form she could give Annette Kellerman cards and spades.

He had said so many things, now that she recalled them all at one
time. Her lips! The Sunday he proposed he had said: "I like to
watch your lips talking. It's funny, but every move they make
looks like a tickly kiss." And afterward, that same day: "You
looked good to me from the first moment I spotted you." He had
praised her housekeeping. He had said he fed better, lived more
comfortably, held up his end with the fellows, and saved money.
And she remembered that day when he had crushed her in his arms
and declared she was the greatest little bit of a woman that had
ever come down the pike.

She ran her eyes over all herself in the mirror again, gathered
herself together into a whole, compact and good to look
upon--delicious, she knew. Yes, she would do. Magnificent as
Billy was in his man way, in her own way she was a match for him.
Yes, she had done well by Billy. She deserved much--all he could
give her, the best he could give her. But she made no blunder of
egotism. Frankly valuing herself, she as frankly valued him. When
he was himself, his real self, not harassed by trouble, not
pinched by the trap, not maddened by drink, her man-boy and
lover, he was well worth all she gave him or could give him.

Saxon gave herself a farewell look. No. She was not dead, any
more than was Billy's love dead, than was her love dead. All that
was needed was the proper soil, and their love would grow and
blossom. And they were turning their backs upon Oakland to go and
seek that proper soil.

"Oh, Billy!" she called through the partition, still standing on
the chair, one hand tipping the mirror forward and back, so that
she was able to run her eyes from the reflection of her ankles
and calves to her face, warm with color and roguishly alive.

"Yes?" she heard him answer.

"I'm loving myself," she called back.

"What's the game?" came his puzzled query. "What are you so stuck
on yourself for!"

"Because you love me," she answered. "I love every bit of me,
Billy, because. .. because. .. well, because you love every bit
of me."



CHAPTER XIX

Between feeding and caring for Billy, doing the housework, making
plans, and selling her store of pretty needlework, the days flew
happily for Saxon. Billy's consent to sell her pretties had been
hard to get, but at last she succeeded in coaxing it out of him.

"It's only the ones I haven't used," she urged; "and I can always
make more when we get settled somewhere."

What she did not sell, along with the household linen and hers
and Billy's spare clothing, she arranged to store with Tom.

"Go ahead," Billy said. "This is your picnic. What you say goes.
You're Robinson Crusoe an' I'm your man Friday. Make up your mind
yet which way you're goin' to travel?"

Saxon shook her head.

"Or how?"

She held up one foot and then the other, encased in stout walking
shoes which she had begun that morning to break in about the
house. Shank's mare, eh?"

"It's the way our people came into the West," she said proudly.

"It'll be regular trampin', though," he argued. "An' I never
heard of a woman tramp."

"Then here's one. Why, Billy, there's no shame in tramping. My
mother tramped most of the way across the Plains. And 'most
everybody else's mother tramped across in those days. I don't
care what people will think. I guess our race has been on the
tramp since the beginning of creation, just like we'll be,
looking for a piece of land that looked good to settle down on."

After a few days, when his scalp was sufficiently healed and the
bone-knitting was nicely in process, Billy was able to be up and
about. He was still quite helpless, however, with both his arms
in splints.

Doctor Hentley not only agreed, but himself suggested, that his
bill should wait against better times for settlement. Of
government land, in response to Saxon's eager questioning, he
knew nothing, except that he had a hazy idea that the days of
government land were over.

Tom, on the contrary, was confident that there was plenty of
government hand. He talked of Honey Lake, of Shasta County, and
of Humboldt.

"But you can't tackle it at this time of year, with winter comin'
on," he advised Saxon. "The thing for you to do is head south for
warmer weather--say along the coast. It don't snow down there. I
tell you what you do. Go down by San Jose and Salinas an' come
out on the coast at Monterey. South of that you'll find
government land mixed up with forest reserves and Mexican
rancheros. It's pretty wild, without any roads to speak of. All
they do is handle cattle. But there's some fine redwood canyons,
with good patches of farming ground that run right down to the
ocean. I was talkin' last year with a fellow that's been all
through there. An' I'd a-gone, like you an' Billy, only Sarah
wouldn't hear of it. There's gold down there, too. Quite a bunch
is in there prospectin', an' two or three good mines have opened.
But that's farther along and in a ways from the coast. You might
take a look."

Saxon shook her head. "We're not looking for gold but for
chickens and a place to grow vegetables. Our folks had all the
chance for gold in the early days, and what have they got to show
for it?"

"I guess you're right," Tom conceded. "They always played too big
a game, an' missed the thousand little chances right under their
nose. Look at your pa. I've heard him tell of selling three
Market street lots in San Francisco for fifty dollars each.
They're worth five  hundred thousand right now. An' look at Uncle
Will. He had ranches till the cows come home. Satisfied? No. He
wanted to be a cattle king, a regular Miller and Lux. An' when he
died he was a night watchman in Los Angeles at forty dollars a
month. There's a spirit of the times, an' the spirit of the times
has changed. It's all big business now, an' we're the small
potatoes. Why, I've heard our folks talk of livin' in the Western
Reserve. That was all around what's Ohio now. Anybody could get a
farm them days. All they had to do was yoke their oxen an' go
after it, an' the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles to the west,
an' all them thousands of miles an' millions of farms just
waitin' to be took up. A hundred an' sixty acres? Shucks. In the
early days in Oregon they talked six hundred an' forty acres.
That was the spirit of them times--free land, an' plenty of it.
But when we reached the Pacific Ocean them times was ended. Big
business begun; an' big business means big business men; an'
every big business man means thousands of little men without any
business at all except to work for the big ones. They're the
losers, don't you see? An' if they don't like it they can lump
it, but it won't do them no good. They can't yoke up their oxen
an' pull on. There's no place to pull on. China's over there, an'
in between's a mighty lot of salt water that's no good for
farmin' purposes."

"That's all clear enough," Saxon commented.

"Yes," her brother went on. "We can all see it after it's
happened, when it's too late."

"But the big men were smarter," Saxon remarked.

"They were luckier," Tom contended. "Some won, but most lost, an'
just as good men lost. It was almost like a lot of boys
scramblin' on the sidewalk for a handful of small change. Not
that some didn't have far-seein'. But just take your pa, for
example. He come of good Down East stock that's got business
instinct an' can add to what it's got. Now suppose your pa had
developed a weak heart, or got kidney disease, or caught
rheumatism, so he couldn't go gallivantin' an' rainbow chasin',
an' fightin' an' explorin' all over the West. Why, most likely
he'd a settled down in San Francisco--he'd a-had to--an' held
onto them three Market street lots, an' bought more lots, of
course, an' gone into steamboat companies, an' stock gamblin',
an' railroad buildin', an' Comstock-tunnelin'.

"Why, he'd a-become big business himself. I know 'm. He was the
most energetic man I ever saw, think quick as a wink, as cool as
an icicle an' as wild as a Comanche. Why, he'd a-cut a swath
through the free an' easy big business gamblers an' pirates of
them days; just as he cut a swath through the hearts of the
ladies when he went gallopin' past on that big horse of his,
sword clatterin', spurs jinglin', his long hair fiyin', straight
as an Indian, clean-built an' graceful as a blue-eyed prince out
of a fairy book an' a Mexican caballero all rolled into one; just
as he cut a swath through the Johnny Rebs in Civil War days,
chargin' with his men all the way through an' back again, an'
yellin' like a wild Indian for more. Cady, that helped raise you,
told me about that. Cady rode with your pa.

"Why, if your pa'd only got laid up in San Francisco, he would
a-ben one of the big men of the West. An' in that case, right
now, you'd be a rich young woman, travelin' in Europe, with a
mansion on Nob Hill along with the Floods and Crockers, an'
holdin' majority stock most likely in the Fairmount Hotel an' a
few little concerns like it. An' why ain't you? Because your pa
wasn't smart? No. His mind was like a steel trap. It's because he
was filled to burstin' an' spillin' over with the spirit of the
times; because he was full of fire an' vinegar an' couldn't set
down in one place. That's all the difference between you an' the
young women right now in the Flood and Crocker families. Your
father didn't catch rheumatism at the right time, that's all."

Saxon sighed, then smiled.

"Just the same, I've got them beaten," she said. "The Miss Floods
and Miss Crockers can't marry prize-fighters, and I did."

Tom looked at her, taken aback for the moment, with admiration,
slowly at first, growing in his face.

"Well, all I got to say," he enunciated solemnly, "is that
Billy's so lucky he don't know how lucky he is."


Not until Doctor Hentley gave the word did the splints come off
Billy's arms, and Saxon insisted upon an additional two weeks'
delay so that no risk would be run. These two weeks would
complete another month's rent, and the landlord had agreed to
wait payment for the last two months until Billy was on his feet
again.

Salinger's awaited the day set by Saxon for taking back their
furniture. Also, they had returned to Billy seventy-five dollars.

"The rest you've paid will be rent," the collector told Saxon.
"And the furniture's second hand now, too. The deal will be a
loss to Salinger's' and they didn't have to do it, either; you
know that. So just remember they've been pretty square with you,
and if you start over again don't forget them."

Out of this sum, and out of what was realized from Saxon's
pretties, they were able to pay all their small bills and yet
have a few dollars remaining in pocket.

"I hate owin' things worse 'n poison," Billy said to Saxon. "An'
now we don't owe a soul in this world except the landlord an' Doc
Hentley."

"And neither of them can afford to wait longer than they have
to," she said.

"And they won't," Billy answered quietly.

She smiled her approval, for she shared with Billy his horror of
debt, just as both shared it with that early tide of pioneers
with a Puritan ethic, which had settled the West.

Saxon timed her opportunity when Billy was out of the house to
pack the chest of drawers which had crossed the Atlantic by
sailing ship and the Plains by ox team. She kissed the bullet
hole in it, made in the fight at Little Meadow, as she kissed her
father's sword, the while she visioned him, as she always did,
astride his roan warhorse. With the old religious awe, she pored
over her mother's poems in the scrap-book, and clasped her
mother's red satin Spanish girdle about her in a farewell
embrace. She unpacked the scrap-book in order to gaze a last time
at the wood engraving of the Vikings, sword in hand, leaping upon
the English sands. Again she identified Billy as one of the
Vikings, and pondered for a space on the strange wanderings of
the seed from which she sprang. Always had her race been
land-hungry, and she took delight in believing she had bred true;
for had not she, despite her life passed in a city, found this
same land-hunger in her? And was she not going forth to satisfy
that hunger, just as her people of old time had done, as her
father and mother before her? She remembered her mother's tale of
how the promised land looked to them as their battered wagons and
weary oxen dropped down through the early winter snows of the
Sierras to the vast and flowering sun-land of California: In
fancy, herself a child of nine, she looked down from the snowy
heights as her mother must have looked down. She recalled and
repeated aloud one of her mother's stanzas:

"'Sweet as a wind-lute's airy strains
Your gentle muse has learned to sing
And California's boundless plains
Prolong the soft notes echoing.'"

She sighed happily and dried her eyes. Perhaps the hard times
were past. Perhaps they had constituted HER Plains, and she and
Billy had won safely across and were even then climbing the
Sierras ere they dropped down into the pleasant valley land.

Salinger's wagon was at the house, taking out the furniture, the
morning they left. The landlord, standing at the gate, received
the keys, shook hands with them, and wished them luck. "You're
goin' at it right," he congratulated them. "Sure an' wasn't it
under me roll of blankets I tramped into Oakland meself forty
year ago! Buy land, like me, when it's cheap. It'll keep you from
the poorhouse in your old age. There's plenty of new towns
springin' up. Get in on the ground floor. The work of your
hands'll keep you in food an' under a roof, an' the lend 'll make
you well to do. An' you know me address. When you can spare send
me along that small bit of rent. An' good luck. An' don't mind
what people think. 'Tis them that looks that finds."

Curious neighbors peeped from behind the blinds as Billy and
Saxon strode up the street, while the children gazed at them in
gaping astonishment. On Billy's back, inside a painted canvas
tarpaulin, was slung the roll of bedding. Inside the roll were
changes of underclothing and odds and ends of necessaries.
Outside, from the lashings, depended a frying pan and cooking
pail. In his hand he carried the coffee pot. Saxon carried a
small telescope basket protected by black oilcloth, and across
her back was the tiny ukulele case.

"We must look like holy frights," Billy grumbled, shrinking from
every gaze that was bent upon him.

"It'd be all right, if we were going camping," Saxon consoled.
"Only we're not."

"But they don't know that," she continued. "It's only you know
that, and what you think they're thinking isn't what they're
thinking at all. Most probably they think we're going camping.
And the best of it is we are going camping. We are! We are!"

At this Billy cheered up, though he muttered his firm intention
to knock the block off of any guy that got fresh. He stole a
glance at Saxon. Her cheeks were red, her eyes glowing.

"Say," he said suddenly. "I seen an opera once, where fellows
wandered over the country with guitars slung on their backs just
like you with that strummy-strum. You made me think of them. They
was always singin' songs."

"That's what I brought it along for," Saxon answered.

"And when we go down country roads we'll sing as we go along, and
we'll sing by the campfires, too. We're going camping, that's
all. Taking a vacation and seeing the country. So why shouldn't
we have a good time? Why, we don't even know where we're going to
sleep to-night, or any night. Think of the fun!"

"It's a sporting proposition all right, all right," Billy
considered. "But, just the same, let's turn off an' go around the
block. There's some fellows I know, standin' up there on the next
corner, an' I don't want to knock THEIR blocks off."



BOOK III

CHAPTER I

The car ran as far as Hayward's, but at Saxon's suggestion they
got off at San Leandro.

"It doesn't matter where we start walking," she said, "for start
to walk somewhere we must. And as we're looking for land and
finding out about land, the quicker we begin to investigate the
better. Besides, we want to know all about all kinds of land,
close to the big cities as well as back in the mountains."

"Gee!--this must be the Porchugeeze headquarters," was Billy's
reiterated comment, as they walked through San Leandro.

"It looks as though they'd crowd our kind out," Saxon adjudged.

"Some tall crowdin', I guess," Billy grumbled. "It looks like the
free-born American ain't got no room left in his own land."

"Then it's his own fault," Saxon said, with vague asperity,
resenting conditions she was just beginning to grasp.

"Oh, I don't know about that. I reckon the American could do what
the Porchugeeze do if he wanted to. Only he don't want to, thank
God. He ain't much given to livin' like a pig often leavin's."

"Not in the country, maybe," Saxon controverted. "But I've seen
an awful lot of Americans living like pigs in the cities."

Billy grunted unwilling assent. "I guess they quit the farms an'
go to the city for something better, an' get it in the neck."

"Look at all the children!" Saxon cried. "School's letting out.
And nearly all are Portuguese, Billy, NOT Porchugeeze. Mercedes
taught me the right way."

"They never wore glad rags like them in the old country," Billy
sneered. "They had to come over here to get decent clothes and
decent grub. They're as fat as butterballs."

Saxon nodded affirmation, and a great light seemed suddenly to
kindle in her understanding.

"That's the very point, Billy. They're doing it--doing it
farming, too. Strikes don't bother THEM."

"You don't call that dinky gardening farming," he objected,
pointing to a piece of land barely the size of an acre, which
they were passing.

"Oh, your ideas are still big," she laughed. "You're like Uncle
Will, who owned thousands of acres and wanted to own a million,
and who wound up as night watchman. That's what was the trouble
with all us Americans. Everything large scale. Anything less than
one hundred and sixty acres was small scale."

"Just the same," Billy held stubbornly, "large scale's a whole
lot better'n small scale like all these dinky gardens."

Saxon sighed. "I don't know which is the dinkier," she observed
finally, "--owning a few little acres and the team you're
driving, or not owning any acres and driving a team somebody else
owns for wages."

Billy winced.

"Go on, Robinson Crusoe," he growled good naturedly. "Rub it in
good an' plenty. An' the worst of it is it's correct. A hell of a
free-born American I've been, adrivin' other folkses' teams for a
livin', a-strikin' and a-sluggin' scabs, an' not bein' able to
keep up with the installments for a few sticks of furniture. Just
the same I was sorry for one thing. I hated worse in Sam Hill to
see that Morris chair go back--you liked it so. We did a lot of
honeymoonin' in that chair."

They were well out of San Leandro, walking through a region of
tiny holdings--"farmlets," Billy called them; and Saxon got out
her ukulele to cheer him with a song.

First, it was "Treat my daughter kind-i-ly," and then she swung
into old-fashioned darky camp-meeting hymns, beginning with:

"Oh! de Judgmen' Day am rollin' roan',
Rollin', yes, a-rollin',
I hear the trumpets' awful soun',
Rollin', yes, a-rollin'."

A big touring car, dashing past, threw a dusty pause in her
singing, and Saxon delivered herself of her latest wisdom.

"Now, Billy, remember we're not going to take up with the first
piece of land we see. We've got to go into this with our eyes
open--"

"An' they ain't open yet," he agreed.

"And we've got to get them open. ''Tis them that looks that
finds.' There's lots of time to learn things. We don't care if it
takes months and months. We're footloose. A good start is better
than a dozen bad ones. We've got to talk and find out. We'll talk
with everybody we meet. Ask questions. Ask everybody. It's the
only way to find out."

"I ain't much of a hand at askin' questions," Billy demurred.

"Then I'll ask," she cried. "We've got to win out at this game,
and the way is to know. Look at all these Portuguese. Where are
all the Americans? They owned the land first, after the Mexicans.
What made the Americans clear out? How do the Portuguese make it
go? Don't you see, We've got to ask millions of questions."

She strummed a few chords, and then her clear sweet voice rang
out gaily:

"I's g'wine back to Dixie,
I's g'wine back to Dixie,
I's g'wine where de orange blossoms grow,
For I hear de chillun eallin',
I see de sad tears fallin'--
My heart's turned back to Dixie,
An' I mus'go."

She broke off to exclaim: "Oh! What a lovely place! See that
arbor--just covered with grapes!"

Again and again she was attracted by the small places they
passed. Now it was: "Look at the flowers!" or: "My! those
vegetables!" or: "See! They've got a cow!"

Men--Americans--driving along in buggies or runabouts looked at
Saxon and Billy curiously. This Saxon could brook far easier than
could Billy, who would mutter and grumble deep in his throat.

Beside the road they came upon a lineman eating his lunch.

"Stop and talk," Saxon whispered.

"Aw, what's the good? He's a lineman. What'd he know about
farmin'?"

"You never can tell. He's our kind. Go ahead, Billy. You just
speak to him. He isn't working now anyway, and he'll be more
likely to talk. See that tree in there, just inside the gate, and
the way the branches are grown together. It's a curiosity. Ask
him about it. That's a good way to get started."

Billy stopped, when they were alongside.

"How do you do," he said gruffly.

The lineman, a young fellow, paused in the cracking of a
hard-boiled egg to stare up at the couple.

"How do you do," he said.

Billy swung his pack from his shoulders to the ground, and Saxon
rested her telescope basket.

"Peddlin'?" the young man asked, too discreet to put his question
directly to Saxon, yet dividing it between her and Billy, and
cocking his eye at the covered basket.

"No," she spoke up quickly. "We're looking for land. Do you know
of any around here?"

Again he desisted from the egg, studying them with sharp eyes as
if to fathom their financial status.

"Do you know what land sells for around here?" he asked.

"No," Saxon answered. "Do you?"

"I guess I ought to. I was born here. And land like this all
around you runs at from two to three hundred to four an' five
hundred dollars an acre."

"Whew!" Billy whistled. "I guess we don't want none of it."

"But what makes it that high? Town lots?" Saxon wanted to know.

"Nope. The Porchugeeze make it that high, I guess."

"I thought it was pretty good land that fetched a hundred an
acre," Billy said.

"Oh, them times is past. They used to give away land once, an' if
you was good, throw in all the cattle runnin' on it."

"How about government land around here?" was Billy'a next query.

"Ain't none, an' never was. This was old Mexican grants. My
grandfather bought sixteen hundred of the best acres around here
for fifteen hundred dollars--five hundred down an' the balance in
five years without interest. But that was in the early days. He
come West in '48, tryin' to find a country without chills an'
fever."

"He found it all right," said Billy.

"You bet he did. An' if him an' father 'd held onto the land it'd
been better than a gold mine, an' I wouldn't be workin' for a
livin'. What's your business?"

"Teamster."

"Ben in the strike in Oakland?"

"Sure thing. I've teamed there most of my life."

Here the two men wandered off into a discussion of union affairs
and the strike situation; but Saxon refused to be balked, and
brought back the talk to the land.

"How was it the Portuguese ran up the price of lend?" she asked.

The young fellow broke away from union matters with an effort,
and for a moment regarded her with lack luster eyes, until the
question sank into his consciousness.

"Because they worked the land overtime. Because they worked
mornin', noon, an' night, all hands, women an' kids. Because they
could get more out of twenty acres than we could out of a hundred
an' sixty. Look at old Silva--Antonio Silva. I've known him ever
since I was a shaver. He didn't have the price of a square meal
when he hit this section and begun leasin' land from my folks.
Look at him now--worth two hundred an' fifty thousan' cold, an' I
bet he's got credit for a million, an' there's no tellin' what
the rest of his family owns."

"And he made all that out of your folks' land?" Saxon demanded.

The young man nodded his head with evident reluctance.

"Then why didn't your folks do it?" she pursued.

The lineman shrugged his shoulders.

"Search me," he said.

"But the money was in the land," she persisted.

"Blamed if it was," came the retort, tinged slightly with color.
"We never saw it stickin' out so as you could notice it. The
money was in the hands of the Porchugeeze, I guess. They knew a
few more 'n we did, that's all."

Saxon showed such dissatisfaction with his explanation that he
was stung to action. He got up wrathfully. "Come on, an' I'll
show you," he said. "I'll show you why I'm workin' for wages when
I might a-ben a millionaire if my folks hadn't been mutts. That's
what we old Americans are, Mutts, with a capital M."

He led them inside the gate, to the fruit tree that had first
attracted Saxon's attention. From the main crotch diverged the
four main branches of the tree. Two feet above the crotch the
branches were connected, each to the ones on both sides, by
braces of living wood.

"You think it growed that way, eh? Well, it did. But it was old
Silva that made it just the same--caught two sprouts, when the
tree was young, an' twisted 'em together. Pretty slick, eh? You
bet. That tree'll never blow down. It's a natural, springy brace,
an' beats iron braces stiff. Look along all the rows. Every
tree's that way. See? An' that's just one trick of the
Porchugeeze. They got a million like it.

"Figure it out for yourself. They don't need props when the
crop's heavy. Why, when we had a heavy crop, we used to use five
props to a tree. Now take ten acres of trees. That'd be some
several thousan' props. Which cost money, an' labor to put in an'
take out every year. These here natural braces don't have to have
a thing done. They're Johnny-on-the-spot all the time. Why, the
Porchugeeze has got us skinned a mile. Come on, I'll show you."

Billy, with city notions of trespass, betrayed perturbation at
the freedom they were making of the little farm.

"Oh, it's all right, as long as you don't step on nothin'," the
lineman reassured him. "Besides, my grandfather used to own this.
They know me. Forty years ago old Silva come from the Azores.
Went sheep-herdin' in the mountains for a couple of years, then
blew in to San Leandro. These five acres was the first land he
leased. That was the beginnin'. Then he began leasin' by the,
hundreds of acres, an' by the hundred-an'-sixties. An' his
sisters an' his uncles an' his aunts begun pourin' in from the
Azores--they're all related there, you know; an' pretty soon San
Leandro was a regular Porchugeeze settlement.

"An' old Silva wound up by buyin' these five acres from
grandfather. Pretty soon--an' father by that time was in the hole
to the neck--he was buyin' father's land by the
hundred-an'-sixties. An' all the rest of his relations was coin'
the same thing. Eather was always gettin' rich quick, an' he
wound up by dyin' in debt. But old Silva never overlooked a bet,
no matter how dinky. An' all the rest are just like him. You see
outside the fence there, clear to the wheel-tracks in the
road--horse-beans. We'd a-scorned to do a picayune thing like
that. Not Silva. Why he's got a town house in San Leandro now.
An' he rides around in a four-thousan'-dollar tourin' car. An'
just the same his front door yard grows onions clear to the
sidewalk. He clears three hundred a year on that patch alone. I
know ten acres of land he bought last year,--a thousan' an acre
they asked'm, an' he never batted an eye. He knew it was worth
it, that's all. He knew he could make it pay. Back in the hills,
there, he's got a ranch of five hundred an' eighty acres, bought
it dirt cheap, too; an' I want to tell you I could travel around
in a different tourin' car every day in the week just outa the
profits he makes on that ranch from the horses all the way from
heavy draughts to fancy steppers.

"But how?--how?--how did he get it all?" Saxon clamored.

"By bein' wise to farmin'. Why, the whole blame family works.
They ain't ashamed to roll up their sleeves an' dig--sons an'
daughters an' daughter-in-laws, old man, old woman, an' the
babies. They have a sayin' that a kid four years old that can't
pasture one cow on the county road an' keep it fat ain't worth
his salt. Why, the Silvas, the whole tribe of 'em, works a
hundred acres in peas, eighty in tomatoes, thirty in asparagus,
ten in pie-plant, forty in cucumbers, an'--oh, stacks of other
things."

"But how do they do it?" Saxon continued to demand. "We've never
been ashamed to work. We've worked hard all our lives. I can
out-work any Portuguese woman ever born. And I've done it, too,
in the jute mills. There were lots of Portuguese girls working at
the looms all around me, and I could out-weave them, every day,
and I did, too. It isn't a case of work. What is it?"

The lineman looked at her in a troubled way.

"Many's the time I've asked myself that same question. 'We're
better'n these cheap emigrants,' I'd say to myself. 'We was here
first, an' owned the land. I can lick any Dago that ever hatched
in the Azores. I got a better education. Then how in thunder do
they put it all over us, get our land, an' start accounts in the
banks?' An' the only answer I know is that we ain't got the sabe.
We don't use our head-pieces right. Something's wrong with us.
Anyway, we wasn't wised up to farming. We played at it. Show you?
That's what I brung you in for--the way old Silva an' all his
tribe farms. Book at this place. Some cousin of his, just out
from the Azores, is makin' a start on it, an' payin' good rent to
Silva. Pretty soon he'll be up to snuff an' buyin' land for
himself from some perishin' American farmer.

"Look at that--though you ought to see it in summer. Not an inch
wasted. Where we got one thin crop, they get four fat crops. An'
look at the way they crowd it--currants between the tree rows,
beans between the currant rows, a row of beans close on each side
of the trees, an' rows of beans along the ends of the tree rows.
Why, Silva wouldn't sell these five acres for five hundred an
acre cash down. He gave grandfather fifty an acre for it on long
time, an' here am I, workin' for the telephone company an'
putting' in a telephone for old Silva's cousin from the Azores
that can't speak American yet. Horse-beans along the road--say,
when Silva swung that trick he made more outa fattenin' hogs with
'em than grandfather made with all his farmin'. Grandfather stuck
up his nose at horse-beans. He died with it stuck up, an' with
more mortgages on the land he had left than you could shake a
stick at. Plantin' tomatoes wrapped up in wrappin' paper--ever
heard of that? Father snorted when he first seen the Porchugeeze
doin' it. An' he went on snortin'. Just the same they got bumper
crops, an' father's house-patch of tomatoes was eaten by the
black beetles. We ain't got the sabe, or the knack, or something
or other. Just look at this piece of ground--four crops a year,
an' every inch of soil workin' over time. Why, back in town
there, there's single acres that earns more than fifty of ours in
the old days. The Porchugeeze is natural-born farmers, that's
all, an' we don't know nothin' about farmin' an' never did."

Saxon talked with the lineman, following him about, till one
o'clock, when he looked at his watch, said good bye, and returned
to his task of putting in a telephone for the latest immigrant
from the Azores.

When in town, Saxon carried her oilcloth-wrapped telescope in her
hand; but it was so arranged with loops, that, once on the road,
she could thrust her arms through the loops and carry it on her
back. When she did this, the tiny ukulele case was shifted so
that it hung under her left arm.

A mile on from the lineman, they stopped where a small creek,
fringed with brush, crossed the county road. Billy was for the
cold lunch, which was the last meal Saxon had prepared in the
Pine street cottage; but she was determined upon building a fire
and boiling coffee. Not that she desired it for herself, but that
she was impressed with the idea that everything at the starting
of their strange wandering must be as comfortable as possible for
Billy's sake. Bent on inspiring him with enthusiasm equal to her
own, she declined to dampen what sparks he had caught by anything
so uncheerful as a cold meal.

"Now one thing we want to get out of our heads right at the
start, Billy, is that we're in a hurry. We're not in a hurry, and
we don't care whether school keeps or not. We're out to have a
good time, a regular adventure like you read about in books.--My!
I wish that boy that took me fishing to Goat Island could see me
now. Oakland was just a place to start from, he said. And, well,
we've started, haven't we? And right here's where we stop and
boil coffee. You get the fire going, Billy, and I'll get the
water and the things ready to spread out."

"Say," Billy remarked, while they waited for the water to boil,
"d'ye know what this reminds me of?"

Saxon was certain she did know, but she shook her head. She
wanted to hear him say it.

"Why, the second Sunday I knew you, when we drove out to Moraga
Valley behind Prince and King. You spread the lunch that day."

"Only it was a more scrumptious lunch," she added, with a happy
smile.

"But I wonder why we didn't have coffee that day," he went on.

"Perhaps it would have been too much like housekeeping," she
laughed; "kind of what Mary would call indelicate--"

"Or raw," Billy interpolated. "She was always springin' that
word."

"And yet look what became of her."

"That's the way with all of them," Billy growled somberly. "I've
always noticed it's the fastidious, la-de-da ones that turn out
the rottenest. They're like some horses I know, a-shyin' at the
things they're the least afraid of."

Saxon was silent, oppressed by a sadness, vague and remote, which
the mention of Bert's widow had served to bring on.

"I know something else that happened that day which you'd never
guess," Billy reminisced. "I bet you couldn't.

"I wonder," Saxon murmured, and guessed it with her eyes.

Billy's eyes answered, and quite spontaneously he reached over,
caught her hand, and pressed it caressingly to his cheek.

"It's little, but oh my," he said, addressing the imprisoned
hand. Then he gazed at Saxon, and she warmed with his words.
"We're beginnin' courtin' all over again, ain't we?"

Both ate heartily, and Billy was guilty of three cups of coffee.

"Say, this country air gives some appetite," he mumbled, as he
sank his teeth into his fifth bread-and-meat sandwich. "I could
eat a horse, an' drown his head off in coffee afterward."

Saxon's mind had reverted to all the young lineman had told her,
and she completed a sort of general resume of the information.
"My!" she exclaimed, "but we've learned a lot!"

"An' we've sure learned one thing," Billy said. "An' that is that
this is no place for us, with land a thousan' an acre an' only
twenty dollars in our pockets."

"Oh, we're not going to stop here," she hastened to say.

"But just the same it's the Portuguese that gave it its price,
and they make things go on it--send their children to school...
and have them; and, as you said yourself, they're as fat as
butterballs."

"An' I take my hat off to them," Billy responded.

"But all the same, I'd sooner have forty acres at a hundred an
acre than four at a thousan' an acre. Somehow, you know, I'd be
scared stiff on four acres--scared of fallin' off, you know."

She was in full sympathy with him. In her heart of hearts the
forty acres tugged much the harder. In her way, allowing for the
difference of a generation, her desire for spaciousness was as
strong as her Uncle Will's.

"Well, we're not going to stop here," she assured Billy. "We're
going in, not for forty acres, but for a hundred and sixty acres
free from the government."

"An' I guess the government owes it to us for what our fathers
an' mothers done. I tell you, Saxon, when a woman walks across
the plains like your mother done, an' a man an' wife gets
massacred by the Indians like my grandfather an' mother done, the
government does owe them something."

"Well, it's up to us to collect."

"An' we'll collect all right, all right, somewhere down in them
redwood mountains south of Monterey."



CHAPTER II

It was a good afternoon's tramp to Niles, passing through the
town of Haywards; yet Saxon and Billy found time to diverge from
the main county road and take the parallel roads through acres of
intense cultivation where the land was farmed to the
wheel-tracks. Saxon looked with amazement at these small,
brown-skinned immigrants who came to the soil with nothing and
yet made the soil pay for itself to the tune of two hundred, of
five hundred, and of a thousand dollars an acre.

On every hand was activity. Women and children were in the fields
as well as men. The land was turned endlessly over and over. They
seemed never to let it rest. And it rewarded them. It must reward
them, or their children would not be able to go to school, nor
would so many of them be able to drive by in rattletrap,
second-hand buggies or in stout light wagons.

"Look at their faces," Saxon said. "They are happy and contented.
They haven't faces like the people in our neighborhood after the
strikes began."

"Oh, sure, they got a good thing," Billy agreed. "You can see it
stickin' out all over them. But they needn't get chesty with ME,
I can tell you that much--just because they've jiggerrooed us out
of our land an' everything."

"But they're not showing any signs of chestiness," Saxon
demurred.

"No, they're not, come to think of it. All the same, they ain't
so wise. I bet I could tell 'em a few about horses."

It was sunset when they entered the little town of Niles. Billy,
who had been silent for the last half mile, hesitantly ventured a
suggestion.

"Say. .. I could put up for a room in the hotel just as well as
not. What d 'ye think?"

But Saxon shook her head emphatically.

"How long do you think our twenty dollars will last at that rate?
Besides, the only way to begin is to begin at the beginning. We
didn't plan sleeping in hotels."

"All right," he gave in. "I'm game. I was just thinkin' about
you."

"Then you'd better think I'm game, too," she flashed forgivingly.
"And now we'll have to see about getting things for supper."

They bought a round steak, potatoes, onions, and a dozen eating
apples, then went out from the town to the fringe of trees and
brush that advertised a creek. Beside the trees, on a sand bank,
they pitched camp. Plenty of dry wood lay about, and Billy
whistled genially while he gathered and chopped. Saxon, keen to
follow his every mood, was cheered by the atrocious discord on
his lips. She smiled to herself as she spread the blankets, with
the tarpaulin underneath, for a table, having first removed all
twigs from the sand. She had much to learn in the matter of
cooking over a camp-fire, and made fair progress, discovering,
first of all, that control of the fire meant far more than the
size of it. When the coffee was boiled, she settled the grounds
with a part-cup of cold water and placed the pot on the edge of
the coals where it would keep hot and yet not boil. She fried
potato dollars and onions in the same pan, but separately, and
set them on top of the coffee pot in the tin plate she was to eat
from, covering it with Billy's inverted plate. On the dry hot
pan, in the way that delighted Billy, she fried the steak. This
completed, and while Billy poured the coffee, she served the
steak, putting the dollars and onions back into the frying pan
for a moment to make them piping hot again.

"What more d'ye want than this?" Billy challenged with deep-toned
satisfaction, in the pause after his final cup of coffee, while
he rolled a cigarette. He lay on his side, full length, resting
on his elbow. The fire was burning brightly, and Saxon's color
was heightened by the flickering flames. "Now our folks, when
they was on the move, had to be afraid for Indians, and wild
animals and all sorts of things; an' here we are, as safe as bugs
in a rug. Take this sand. What better bed could you ask? Soft as
feathers. Say--you look good to me, heap little squaw. I bet you
don't look an inch over sixteen right now, Mrs.
Babe-in-the-Woods."

"Don't I?" she glowed, with a flirt of the head sideward and a
white flash of teeth. "If you weren't smoking a cigarette I'd ask
you if your mother knew you're out, Mr. Babe-in-the-Sandbank."

"Say," he began, with transparently feigned seriousness. "I want
to ask you something, if you don't mind. Now, of course, I don't
want to hurt your feelin's or nothin', but just the same there's
something important I'd like to know."

"Well, what is it?" she inquired, after a fruitless wait.

"Well, it's just this, Saxon. I like you like anything an' all
that, but here's night come on, an' we're a thousand miles from
anywhere, and--well, what I wanta know is: are we really an'
truly married, you an' me?"

"Really and truly," she assured him. "Why?"

"Oh, nothing; but I'd kind a-forgotten, an' I was gettin'
embarrassed, you know, because if we wasn't, seein' the way I was
brought up, this'd be no place--"

"That will do you," she said severely. "And this is just the time
and place for you to get in the firewood for morning while I wash
up the dishes and put the kitchen in order."

He started to obey, but paused to throw his arm about her and
draw her close. Neither spoke, but when he went his way Saxon's
breast was fluttering and a song of thanksgiving breathed on her
lips.

The night had come on, dim with the light of faint stars. But
these had disappeared behind clouds that seemed to have arisen
from nowhere. It was the beginning of California Indian summer.
The air was warm, with just the first hint of evening chill, and
there was no wind.

"I've a feeling as if we've just started to live," Saxon said,
when Billy, his firewood collected, joined her on the blankets
before the fire. "I've learned more to-day than ten years in
Oakland." She drew a long breath and braced her shoulders.
"Farming's a bigger subject than I thought."

Billy said nothing. With steady eyes he was staring into the
fire, and she knew he was turning something over in his mind.

"What is it," she asked, when she saw he had reached a
conclusion, at the same time resting her hand on the back of his.

"Just been framin' up that ranch of ourn," he answered. "It's all
well enough, these dinky farmlets. They'll do for foreigners. But
we Americans just gotta have room. I want to be able to look at a
hilltop an' know it's my land, and know it's my land down the
other side an' up the next hilltop, an' know that over beyond
that, down alongside some creek, my mares are most likely
grazin', an' their little colts grazin' with 'em or kickin' up
their heels. You know, there's money in raisin'
horses--especially the big workhorses that run to eighteen
hundred an' two thousand pounds. They're payin' for 'em, in the
cities, every day in the year, seven an' eight hundred a pair,
matched geldings, four years old. Good pasture an' plenty of it,
in this kind of a climate, is all they need, along with some sort
of shelter an' a little hay in long spells of bad weather. I
never thought of it before, but let me tell you that this ranch
proposition is beginnin' to look good to ME."

Saxon was all excitement. Here was new information on the
cherished subject, and, best of all, Billy was the authority.
Still better, he was taking an interest himself.

"There'll be room for that and for everything on a quarter
section," she encouraged.

"Sure thing. Around the house we'll have vegetables an' fruit and
chickens an' everything, just like the Porchugeeze, an' plenty of
room beside to walk around an' range the horses."

"But won't the colts cost money, Billy?"

"Not much. The cobblestones eat horses up fast. That's where I'll
get my brood mares, from the ones knocked out by the city. I know
THAT end of it. They sell 'em at auction, an' they're good for
years an' years, only no good on the cobbles any more."

There ensued a long pause. In the dying fire both were busy
visioning the farm to be.

"It's pretty still, ain't it?" Billy said, rousing himself at
last. He gazed about him. "An' black as a stack of black cats."
He shivered, buttoned his coat, and tossed several sticks on the
fire. "Just the same, it's the best kind of a climate in the
world. Many's the time, when I was a little kid, I've heard my
father brag about California's bein' a blanket climate. He went
East, once, an' staid a summer an' a winter, an' got all he
wanted. Never again for him."

"My mother said there never was such a land for climate. How
wonderful it must have seemed to them after crossing the deserts
and mountains. They called it the land of milk and honey. The
ground was so rich that all they needed to do was scratch it,
Cady used to say."

"And wild game everywhere," Billy contributed. "Mr. Roberts, the
one that adopted my father, he drove cattle from the San Josquin
to the Columbia river. He had forty men helpin' him, an' all they
took along was powder an' salt. They lived off the game they
shot."

"The hills were full of deer, and my mother saw whole herds of
elk around Santa Rosa. Some time we'll go there, Billy. I've
always wanted to."

"And when my father was a young man, somewhere up north of
Sacramento, in a creek called Cache Slough, the tules was full of
grizzliest He used to go in an' shoot 'em. An' when they caught
'em in the open, he an' the Mexicans used to ride up an' rope
them--catch them with lariats, you know. He said a horse that
wasn't afraid of grizzlies fetched ten times as much as any other
horse An' panthers!--all the old folks called 'em painters an'
catamounts an' varmints. Yes, we'll go to Santa Rosa some time.
Maybe we won't like that land down the coast, an' have to keep on
hikin'."

By this time the fire had died down, and Saxon had finished
brushing and braiding her hair. Their bed-going preliminaries
were simple, and in a few minutes they were side by side under
the blankets. Saxon closed her eyes, but could not sleep. On the
contrary, she had never been more wide awake. She had never slept
out of doors in her life, and by no exertion of will could she
overcome the strangeness of it. In addition, she was stiffened
from the long trudge, and the sand, to her surprise, was anything
but soft. An hour passed. She tried to believe that Billy was
asleep, but felt certain he was not. The sharp crackle of a dying
ember startled her. She was confident that Billy had moved
slightly.

"Billy," she whispered, "are you awake?"

"Yep," came his low answer, "--an' thinkin' this sand is harder'n
a cement floor. It's one on me, all right. But who'd a-thought
it?"

Both shifted their postures slightly, but vain was the attempt to
escape from the dull, aching contact of the sand.

An abrupt, metallic, whirring noise of some nearby cricket gave
Saxon another startle. She endured the sound for some minutes,
until Billy broke forth.

"Say, that gets my goat whatever it is."

"Do you think it's a rattlesnake?" she asked, maintaining a
calmness she did not feel.

"Just what I've been thinkin'."

"I saw two, in the window of Bowman's Drug Store An' you know,
Billy, they've got a hollow fang, and when they stick it into you
the poison runs down the hollow."

"Br-r-r-r," Billy shivered, in fear that was not altogether
mockery. "Certain death, everybody says, unless you're a Bosco.
Remember him7"

"He eats 'em alive! He eats 'em alive! Bosco! Bosco!" Saxon
responded, mimicking the cry of a side-show barker. Just the
same, all Bosco's rattlers had the poison-sacs cut outa them.
They must a-had. Gee! It's funny I can't get asleep. I wish that
damned thing'd close its trap. I wonder if it is a rattlesnake."

"No; it can't be," Saxon decided. "All the rattlesnakes are
killed off long ago."

"Then where did Bosco get his?" Billy demanded with unimpeachable
logic. "An' why don't you get to sleep?"

"Because it's all new, I guess," was her reply. "You see, I never
camped out in my life."

"Neither did I. An' until now I always thought it was a lark." He
changed his position on the maddening sand and sighed heavily.
"But we'll get used to it in time, I guess. What other folks can
do, we can, an' a mighty lot of 'em has camped out. It's all
right. Here we are, free an' independent, no rent to pay, our own
bosses"

He stopped abruptly. From somewhere in the brush came an
intermittent rustling. When they tried to locate it, it
mysteriously ceased, and when the first hint of drowsiness stole
upon them the rustling as mysteriously recommenced.

"It sounds like something creeping up on us," Saxon suggested,
snuggling closer to Billy.

"Well, it ain't a wild Indian, at all events," was the best he
could offer in the way of comfort. He yawned deliberately. "Aw,
shucks! What's there to be scared of? Think of what all the
pioneers went through."

Several minutes later his shoulders began to shake, and Saxon
knew he was giggling.

"I was just thinkin' of a yarn my father used to tell about," he
explained. "It was about old Susan Kleghorn, one of the Oregon
pioneer women. Wall-Eyed Susan, they used to call her; but she
could shoot to beat the band. Once, on the Plains, the wagon
train she was in, was attacked by Indians. They got all the
wagons in a circle, an' all hands an' the oxen inside, an' drove
the Indians off, killin' a lot of 'em. They was too strong that
way, so what'd the Indians do, to draw 'em out into the open, but
take two white girls, captured from some other train, an' begin
to torture 'em. They done it just out of gunshot, but so
everybody could see. The idea was that the white men couldn't
stand it, an' would rush out, an' then the Indians'd have 'em
where they wanted 'em.

"The white men couldn't do a thing. If they rushed out to save
the girls, they'd be finished, an' then the Indians'd rush the
train. It meant death to everybody. But what does old Susan do,
but get out an old, long-barreled Kentucky rifle. She rams down
about three times the regular load of powder, takes aim at a big
buck that's pretty busy at the torturin', an' bangs away. It
knocked her clean over backward, an' her shoulder was lame all
the rest of the way to Oregon, but she dropped the big Indian
deado. He never knew what struck 'm.

"But that wasn't the yarn I wanted to tell. It seems old Susan
liked John Barleycorn. She'd souse herself to the ears every
chance she got. An' her sons an' daughters an' the old man had to
be mighty careful not to leave any around where she could get
hands on it."

"On what?" asked Saxon.

"On John Barleycorn.--Oh, you ain't on to that. It's the old
fashioned name for whisky. Well, one day all the folks was goin'
away--that was over somewhere at a place called Bodega, where
they'd settled after comin' down from Oregon. An' old Susan
claimed her rheumatics was hurtin' her an' so she couldn't go.
But the family was on. There was a two-gallon demijohn of whisky
in the house. They said all right, but before they left they sent
one of the grandsons to climb a big tree in the barnyard, where
he tied the demijohn sixty feet from the ground. Just the same,
when they come home that night they found Susan on the kitchen
floor dead to the world."

"And she'd climbed the tree after all," Saxon hazarded, when
Billy had shown no inclination of going on.

"Not on your life," he laughed jubilantly. "All she'd done was to
put a washtub on the ground square under the demijohn. Then she
got out her old rifle an' shot the demijohn to smithereens, an'
all she had to do was lap the whisky outa the tub."

Again Saxon was drowsing, when the rustling sound was heard, this
time closer. To her excited apprehension there was something
stealthy about it, and she imagined a beast of prey creeping upon
them. "Billy," she whispered.

"Yes, I'm a-listenin' to it," came his wide awake answer.

"Mightn't that be a panther, or maybe ... a wildcat?"

"It can't be. All the varmints was killed off long ago. This is
peaceable farmin' country."

A vagrant breeze sighed through the trees and made Saxon shiver.
The mysterious cricket-noise ceased with suspicious abruptness.
Then, from the rustling noise, enslled a dull but heavy thump
that caused both Saxon and Billy to sit up in the blankets. There
were no further sounds, and they lay down again, though the very
silence now seemed ominous.

"Huh," Billy muttered with relief. "As though I don't know what
it was. It was a rabbit. I've heard tame ones bang their hind
feet down on the floor that way."

In vain Saxon tried to win sleep. The sand grew harder with the
passage of time. Her flesh and her bones ached from contact with
it. And, though her reason flouted any possibility of wild
dangers, her fancy went on picturing them with unflagging zeal.

A new sound commenced. It was neither a rustling nor a rattling,
and it tokened some large body passing through the brush.
Sometimes twigs crackled and broke, and, once, they heard
bush-branches press aside and spring back into place.

"If that other thing was a panther, this is an elephant," was
Billy's uncheering opinion. "It's got weight. Listen to that. An'
it's comin' nearer."

There were frequent stoppages, then the sounds would begin again,
always louder, always closer. Billy sat up in the blankets once
more, passing one arm around Saxon, who had also sat up.

"I ain't slept a wink," he complained. "--There it goes again. I
wish I could see."

"It makes a noise big enough for a grizzly," Saxon chattered,
partly from nervousness, partly from the chill of the night.

"It ain't no grasshopper, that's sure."

Billy started to leave the blankets, but Saxon caught his arm.

"What are you going to do?"

"Oh, I ain't scairt none," he answered. "But, honest to God, this
is gettin' on my nerves. If I don't find what that thing is,
it'll give me the willies. I'm just goin' to reconnoiter. I won't
go close."

So intensely dark was the night, that the moment Billy crawled
beyond the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and
waited. The sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy's
progress by the cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few
moments he returned and crawled under the blankets.

"I scared it away, I guess. It's got better ears, an' when it
heard me comin' it skinned out most likely. I did my dangdest,
too, not to make a sound.--O Lord, there it goes again."

They sat up. Saxon nudged Billy.

"There," she warned, in the faintest of whispers. "I can hear it
breathing. It almost made a snort."

A dead branch cracked loudly, and so near at hand, that both of
them jumped shamelessly.

"I ain't goin' to stand any more of its foolin'," Billy declared
wrathfully. "It'll be on top of us if I don't."

"What are you going to do?" she queried anxiously.

"Yell the top of my head off. I'll get a fall outa whatever it
is."

He drew a deep breath and emitted a wild yell.

The result far exceeded any expectation he could have
entertained, and Saxon's heart leaped up in sheer panic. On the
instant the darkness erupted into terrible sound and movement.
There were trashings of underbrush and lunges and plunges of
heavy bodies in different directions. Fortunately for their ease
of mind, all these sounds receded and died away.

"An' what d'ye think of that?" Billy broke the silence.

"Gee! all the fight fans used to say I was scairt of nothin'.
Just the same I'm glad they ain't seein' me to-night."

He groaned. "I've got all I want of that blamed sand. I'm goin'
to get up and start the fire."

This was easy. Under the ashes were live embers which quickly
ignited the wood he threw on. A few stars were peeping out in the
misty zenith. He looked up at them, deliberated, and started to
move away.

"Where are you going now?" Saxon called.

"Oh, I've got an idea," he replied noncommittally, and walked
boldly away beyond the circle of the firelight.

Saxon sat with the blankets drawn closely under her chin, and
admired his courage. He had not even taken the hatchet, and he
was going in the direction in which the disturbance had died
away.

Ten minutes later he came back chuckling.

"The sons-of-guns, they got my goat all right. I'll be scairt of
my own shadow next.--What was they? Huh! You couldn't guess in a
thousand years. A bunch of half-grown calves, an' they was worse
scairt than us."

He smoked a cigarette by the fire, then rejoined Saxon under the
blankets.

"A hell of a farmer I'll make,', he chafed, "when a lot of little
calves can scare the stuffin' outa me. I bet your father or mine
wouldn't a-batted an eye. The stock has gone to seed, that's what
it has."

"No, it hasn't," Saxon defended. "The stock is all right. We're
just as able as our folks ever were, and we're healthier on top
of it. We've been brought up different, that's all. We've lived
in cities all our lives. We know the city sounds and thugs, but
we don't know the country ones. Our training has been unnatural,
that's the whole thing in a nutshell. Now we're going in for
natural training. Give us a little time, and we'll sleep as sound
out of doors as ever your father or mine did."

"But not on sand, " Billy groaned.

"We won't try. That's one thing, for good and all, we've learned
the very first time. And now hush up and go to sleep."

Their fears had vanished, but the sand, receiving now their
undivided attention, multiplied its unyieldingness. Billy dozed
off first, and roosters were crowing somewhere in the distance
when Saxon's eyes closed. But they could not escape the sand, and
their sleep was fitful.

At the first gray of dawn, Billy crawled out and built a roaring
fire. Saxon drew up to it shiveringly. They were hollow-eyed and
weary. Saxon began to laugh. Billy joined sulkily, then
brightened up as his eyes chanced upon the coffee pot, which he
immediately put on to boil.



CHAPTER III

It is forty miles from Oakland to San Jose, and Saxon and Billy
accomplished it in three easy days. No more obliging and angrily
garrulous linemen were encountered, and few were the
opportunities for conversation with chance wayfarers. Numbers of
tramps, carrying rolls of blankets, were met, traveling both
north and south on the county road; and from talks with them
Saxon quickly learned that they knew little or nothing about
farming. They were mostly old men, feeble or besotted, and all
they knew was work--where jobs might be good, where jobs had been
good; but the places they mentioned were always a long way off.
One thing she did glean from them, and that was that the district
she and Billy were passing through was "small-farmer" country in
which labor was rarely hired, and that when it was it generally
was Portuguese.

The farmers themselves were unfriendly. They drove by Billy and
Saxon, often with empty wagons, but never invited them to ride.
When chance offered and Saxon did ask questions, they looked her
over curiously, or suspiciously, and gave ambiguous and
facetious answers.

"They ain't Americans, damn them," Billy fretted. "Why, in the
old days everybody was friendly to everybody."

But Saxon remembered her last talk with her brother.

"It's the spirit of the times, Billy. The spirit has changed.
Besides, these people are too near. Wait till we get farther away
from the cities, then we'll find them more friendly."

"A measly lot these ones are," he sneered.

"Maybe they've a right to be," she laughed. "For all you know,
more than one of the scabs you've slugged were sons of theirs."

"If I could only hope so," Billy said fervently. "But I don't
care if I owned ten thousand acres, any man hikin' with his
blankets might be just as good a man as me, an' maybe better, for
all I'd know. I'd give 'm the benefit of the doubt, anyway."

Billy asked for work, at first, indiscriminately, later, only at
the larger farms. The unvarying reply was that there was no work.
A few said there would be plowing after the first rains. Here and
there, in a small way, dry plowing was going on. But in the main
the farmers were waiting.

"But do you know how to plow?" Saxon asked Billy.

"No; but I guess it ain't much of a trick to turn. Besides, next
man I see plowing I'm goin' to get a lesson from."

In the mid-afternoon of the second day his opportunity came. He
climbed on top of the fence of a small field and watched an old
man plow round and round it.

"Aw, shucks, just as easy as easy," Billy commented scornfully.
"If an old codger like that can handle one plow, I can handle
two."

"Go on and try it," Saxon urged.

"What's the good?"

"Cold feet," she jeered, but with a smiling face. "All you have
to do is ask him. All he can do is say no. And what if he does?
You faced the Chicago Terror twenty rounds without flinching."

"Aw, but it's different," he demurred, then dropped to the ground
inside the fence. "Two to one the old geezer turns me down."

"No, he won't. Just tell him you want to learn, and ask him if
he'll let you drive around a few times. Tell him it won't cost
him anything."

"Huh! If he gets chesty I'll take his blamed plow away from
him."

From the top of the fence, but too far away to hear, Saxon
watched the colloquy. After several minutes, the lines were
transferred to Billy's neck, the handles to his hands. Then the
team started, and the old man, delivering a rapid fire of
instructions, walked alongside of Billy. When a few turns had
been made, the farmer crossed the plowed strip to Saxon, and
joined her on the rail.

"He's plowed before, a little mite, ain't he?"

Saxon shook her head.

"Never in his life. But he knows how to drive horses."

"He showed he wasn't all greenhorn, an' he learns pretty quick."
Here the farmer chuckled and cut himself a chew from a plug of
tobacco. "I reckon he won't tire me out a-settin' here."

The unplowed area grew smaller and smaller, but Billy evinced no
intention of quitting, and his audience on the fence was deep in
conversation. Saxon's questions flew fast and furious, and she
was not long in concluding that the old man bore a striking
resemblance to the description the lineman had given of his
father.

Billy persisted till the field was finished, and the old man
invited him and Saxon to stop for the night. There was a disused
outbuilding where they would find a small cook stove, he said,
and also he would give them fresh milk. Further, if Saxon wanted
to test HER desire for farming, she could try her hand on the
cow.

The milking lesson did not prove as successful as Billy's
plowing; but when he had mocked sufficiently, Saxon challenged
him to try, and he failed as grievously as she. Saxon had eyes
and questions for everything, and it did not take her long to
realize that she was looking upon the other side of the farming
shield. Farm and farmer were old-fashioned. There was no
intensive cultivation. There was too much land too little farmed.
Everything was slipshod. House and barn and outbuildings were
fast falling into ruin. The front yard was weed-grown. There was
no vegetable garden. The small orchard was old, sickly, and
neglected. The trees were twisted, spindling, and overgrown with
a gray moss. The sons and daughters were away in the cities,
Saxon found out. One daughter had married a doctor, the other was
a teacher in the state normal school; one son was a locomotive
engineer, the second was an architect, and the third was a police
court reporter in San Francisco. On occasion, the father said,
they helped out the old folks.

"What do you think?" Saxon asked Billy as he smoked his
after-supper cigarette.

His shoulders went up in a comprehensive shrug.

"Huh! That's easy. The old geezer's like his orchard--covered
with moss. It's plain as the nose on your face, after San
Leandro, that he don't know the first thing. An' them horses.
It'd be a charity to him, an' a savin' of money for him, to take
'em out an' shoot 'em both. You bet you don't see the Porchugeeze
with horses like them. An' it ain't a case of bein' proud, or
puttin' on side, to have good horses. It's brass tacks an'
business. It pays. That's the game. Old horses eat more in young
ones to keep in condition an' they can't do the same amount of
work. But you bet it costs just as much to shoe them. An' his is
scrub on top of it. Every minute he has them horses he's losin'
money. You oughta see the way they work an' figure horses in the
city."

They slept soundly, and, after an early breakfast, prepared to
start.

"I'd like to give you a couple of days' work," the old man
regretted, at parting, "but I can't see it. The ranch just about
keeps me and the old woman, now that the children are gone. An'
then it don't always. Seems times have been bad for a long spell
now. Ain't never been the same since Grover Cleveland."

Early in the afternoon, on the outskirts of San Jose, Saxon
called a halt.

"I'm going right in there and talk," she declared, "unless they
set the dogs on me. That's the prettiest place yet, isn't it?"

Billy, who was always visioning hills and spacious ranges for his
horses, mumbled unenthusiastic assent.

"And the vegetables! Look at them! And the flowers growing along
the borders! That beats tomato plants in wrapping paper."

"Don't see the sense of it," Billy objected. "Where's the money
come in from flowers that take up the ground that good vegetables
might be growin' on?"

"And that's what I'm going to find out." She pointed to a woman,
stooped to the ground and working with a trowel; in front of the
tiny bungalow. "I don't know what she's like, but at the worst
she can only be mean. See! She's looking at us now. Drop your
load alongside of mine, and come on in."

Billy slung the blankets from his shoulder to the ground, but
elected to wait. As Saxon went up the narrow, flower-bordered
walk, she noted two men at work among the vegetables--one an old
Chinese, the other old and of some dark-eyed foreign breed. Here
were neatness, efficiency, and intensive cultivation with a
vengeance--even her untrained eye could see that. The woman stood
up and turned from her flowers, and Saxon saw that she was
middle-aged, slender, and simply but nicely dressed. She wore
glasses, and Saxon's reading of her face was that it was kind but
nervous looking.

"I don't want anything to-day," she said, before Saxon could
speak, administering the rebuff with a pleasant smile.

Saxon groaned inwardly over the black-covered telescope basket.
Evidently the woman had seen her put it down.

"We're not peddling," she explained quickly.

"Oh, I am sorry for the mistake."

This time the woman's smile was even pleasanter, and she waited
for Saxon to state her errand.

Nothing loath, Saxon took it at a plunge.

"We're looking for land. We want to be farmers, you know, and
before we get the land we want to find out what kind of land we
want. And seeing your pretty place has just filled me up with
questions. You see, we don't know anything about farming. We've
lived in the city all our life, and now we've given it up and are
going to live in the country and be happy."

She paused. The woman's face seemed to grow quizzical, though the
pleasantness did not abate.

"But how do you know you will be happy in the country?" she
asked.

"I don't know. All I do know is that poor people can't be happy
in the city where they have labor troubles all the time. If they
can't be happy in the country, then there's no happiness
anywhere, and that doesn't seem fair, does it?"

"It is sound reasoning, my dear, as far as it goes. But you must
remember that there are many poor people in the country and many
unhappy people."

"You look neither poor nor unhappy," Saxon challenged.

"You ARE a dear."

Saxon saw the pleased flush in the other's face, which lingered
as she went on.

"But still, I may be peculiarly qualified to live and succeed in
the country. As you say yourself, you've spent your life in the
city. You don't know the first thing about the country. It might
even break your heart."

Saxon's mind went back to the terrible months in the Pine street
cottage.

"I know already that the city will break my heart. Maybe the
country will, too, but just the same it's my only chance, don't
you see. It's that or nothing. Besides, our folks before us
were all of the country. It seems the more natural way. And
better, here I am, which proves that 'way down inside I must want
the country, must, as you call it, be peculiarly qualified for
the country, or else I wouldn't be here."

The other nodded approval, and looked at her with growing
interest.

"That young man--" she began.

"Is my husband. He was a teamster until the big strike came. My
name is Roberts, Saxon Roberts, and my husband is William
Roberts."

"And I am Mrs. Mortimer," the other said, with a bow of
acknowledgment. "I am a widow. And now, if you will ask your
husband in, I shall try to answer some of your many questions.
Tell him to put the bundles inside the gate.... And now what are
all the questions you are filled with?"

"Oh, all kinds. How does it pay? How did you manage it all? How
much did the land cost? Did you build that beautiful house? How
much do you pay the men1 How did you learn all the different
kinds of things, and which grew best and which paid best? What is
the best way to sell them? How do you sell them?" Saxon paused
and laughed. "Oh, I haven't begun yet. Why do you have flowers on
the borders everywhere? I looked over the Portuguese farms around
San Leandro, but they never mixed flowers and vegetables."

Mrs. Mortimer held up her hand. "Let me answer the last first.
It is the key to almost everything."

But Billy arrived, and the explanation was deferred until after
his introduction.

"The flowers caught your eyes, didn't they, my dear?" Mrs.
Mortimer resumed. "And brought you in through my gate and right
up to me. And that's the very reason they were planted with the
vegetables--to catch eyes. You can't imagine how many eyes they
have caught, nor how many owners of eyes they have lured inside
my gate. This is a good road, and is a very popular short country
drive for townsfolk. Oh, no; I've never had any luck with
automobiles. They can't see anything for dust. But I began when
nearly everybody still used carriages. The townswomen would drive
by. My flowers, and then my place, would catch their eyes. They
would tell their drivers to stop. And--well, somehow, I managed
to be in the front within speaking distance. Usually I succeeded
in invitlng them in to see my flowers... and vegetables, of
course. Everything was sweet, clean, pretty. It all appealed.
And--" Mrs. Mortimer shrugged her shoulders. "It is well known
that the stomach sees through the eyes. The thought of vegetables
growing among flowers pleased their fancy. They wanted my
vegetables. They must have them. And they did, at double the
market price, which they were only too glad to pay. You see, I
became the fashion, or a fad, in a small way. Nobody lost. The
vegetables were certainly good, as good as any on the market and
often fresher. And, besides, my customers killed two birds with
one stone; for they were pleased with themselves for
philanthropic reasons. Not only did they obtain the finest and
freshest possible vegetables, but at the same time they were
happy with the knowledge that they were helping a deserving
widow-woman. Yes, and it gave a certain tone to their
establishments to be able to say they bought Mrs. Mortimer's
vegetables. But that's too big a side to go into. In short, my
little place became a show place--anywhere to go, for a drive or
anything, you know, when time has to be killed. And it became
noised about who I was, and who my husband had been, what I had
been. Some of the townsladies I had known personally in the old
days. They actually worked for my success. And then, too, I used
to serve tea. My patrons became my guests for the time being. I
still serve it, when they drive out to show me off to their
friends. So you see, the flowers are one of the ways I
succeeded."

Saxon was glowing with appreciation, but Mrs. Mortimer, glancing
at Billy, noted not entire approval. His blue eyes were clouded.

"Well, out with it," she encouraged. "What are you thinking?"

To Saxon's surprise, he answered directly, and to her double
surprise, his criticism was of a nature which had never entered
her head.

"It's just a trick," Billy expounded. "That's what I was gettin'
at--"

"But a paying trick," Mrs. Mortimer interrupted, her eyes dancing
and vivacious behind the glasses.

"Yes, and no," Billy said stubbornly, speaking in his slow,
deliberate fashion. "If every farmer was to mix flowers an'
vegetables, then every farmer would get double the market price,
an' then there wouldn't be any double market price. Everything'd
be as it was before."

"You are opposing a theory to a fact," Mrs. Mortimer stated. "The
fact is that all the farmers do not do it. The fact is that I do
receive double the price. You can't get away from that."

Billy was unconvinced, though unable to reply.

"Just the same," he muttered, with a slow shake of the head, "I
don't get the hang of it. There's something wrong so far as we're
concerned--my wife an' me, I mean. Maybe I'll get hold of it
after a while."

"And in the meantime, we'll look around," Mrs. Mortimer invited.
"I want to show you everything, and tell you how I make it go.
Afterward, we'll sit down, and I'll tell you about the beginning.
You see--" she bent her gaze on Saxon--"I want you thoroughly to
understand that you can succeed in the country if you go about it
right. I didn't know a thing about it when I began, and I didn't
have a fine big man like yours. I was all alone. But I'll tell
you about that."


For the next hour, among vegetables, berry-bushes and fruit
trees, Saxon stored her brain with a huge mass of information to
be digested at her leisure. Billy, too, was interested, but he
left the talking to Saxon, himself rarely asking a question. At
the rear of the bungalow, where everything was as clean and
orderly as the front, they were shown through the chicken yard.
Here, in different runs, were kept several hundred small and
snow-white hens.

"White Leghorns," said Mrs. Mortimer. "You have no idea what they
netted me this year. I never keep a hen a moment past the prime
of her laying period--"

"Just what I was tellin' you, Saxon, about horses," Billy broke
in.

"And by the simplest method of hatching them at the right time,
which not one farmer in ten thousand ever dreams of doing, I have
them laying in the winter when most hens stop laying and when
eggs are highest. Another thing: I have my special customers.
They pay me ten cents a dozen more than the market price, because
my specialty is one-day eggs."

Here she chanced to glance at Billy, and guessed that he was
still wrestling with his problem.

"Same old thing?" she queried.

He nodded. "Same old thing. If every farmer delivered day-old
eggs, there wouldn't be no ten cents higher 'n the top price.
They'd be no better off than they was before."

"But the eggs would be one-day eggs, all the eggs would be
one-day eggs, you mustn't forget that," Mrs. Mortimer pointed
out.

"But that don't butter no toast for my wife an' me," he objected.
"An' that's what I've been tryin' to get the hang of, an' now I
got it. You talk about theory an' fact. Ten cents higher than top
price is a theory to Saxon an' me. The fact is, we ain't got no
eggs, no chickens, an' no land for the chickens to run an' lay
eggs on."

Their hostess nodded sympathetically.

"An' there's something else about this outfit of yourn that I
don't get the hang of," he pursued. "I can't just put my finger
on it, but it's there all right."

They were shown over the cattery, the piggery, the milkers, and
the kennelry, as Mrs. Mortimer called her live stock departments.
None was large. All were moneymakers, she assured them, and
rattled off her profits glibly. She took their breaths away by
the prices given and received for pedigreed Persians, pedigreed
Ohio Improved Chesters, pedigreed Scotch collies, and pedigreed
Jerseys. For the milk of the last she also had a special private
market, receiving five cents more a quart than was fetched by the
best dairy milk. Billy was quick to point out the difference
between the look of her orchard and the look of the orchard they
had inspected the previous afternoon, and Mrs. Mortimer showed
him scores of other differences, many of which he was compelled
to accept on faith.

Then she told them of another industry, her home-made jams and
jellies, always contracted for in advance, and at prices
dizzyingly beyond the regular market. They sat in comfortable
rattan chairs on the veranda, while she told the story of how she
had drummed up the jam and jelly trade, dealing only with the one
best restaurant and one best club in San Jose. To the proprietor
and the steward she had gone with her samples, in long
discussions beaten down their opposition, overcome their
reluctance, and persuaded the proprietor, in particular, to make
a "special" of her wares, to boom them quietly with his patrons,
and, above all, to charge stiffly for dishes and courses in which
they appeared.

Throughout the recital Billy's eyes were moody with
dissatisfaction. Mrs. Mortimer saw, and waited.

"And now, begin at the beginning," Saxon begged.

But Mrs. Mortimer refused unless they agreed to stop for supper.
Saxon frowned Billy's reluctance away, and accepted for both of
them.

"Well, then," Mrs. Mortimer took up her tale, "in the beginning I
was a greenhorn, city born and bred. All I knew of the country
was that it was a place to go to for vacations, and I always went
to springs and mountain and seaside resorts. I had lived among
books almost all my life. I was head librarian of the Doncaster
Library for years. Then I married Mr. Mortimer. He was a book
man, a professor in San Miguel University. He had a long
sickness, and when he died there was nothing left. Even his life
insurance was eaten into before I could be free of creditors. As
for myself, I was worn out, on the verge of nervous prostration,
fit for nothing. I had five thousand dollars left, however, and,
without going into the details, I decided to go farming. I found
this place, in a delightful climate, close to San Jose--the end
of the electric line is only a quarter of a mile on--and I bought
it. I paid two thousand cash, and gave a mortgage for two
thousand. It cost two hundred an acre, you see."

"Twenty acres!" Saxon cried.

"Wasn't that pretty small?" Billy ventured.

"Too large, oceans too large. I leased ten acres of it the first
thing. And it's still leased after all this time. Even the ten
I'd retained was much too large for a long, long time. It's only
now that I'm beginning to feel a tiny mite crowded."

"And ten acres has supported you an' two hired men?" Billy
demanded, amazed.

Mrs. Mortimer clapped her hands delightedly.

"Listen. I had been a librarian. I knew my way among books. First
of all I'd read everything written on the subject, and subscribed
to some of the best farm magazines and papers. And you ask if my
ten acres have supported me and two hired men. Let me tell you. I
have four hired men. The ten acres certainly must support them,
as it supports Hannah--she's a Swedish widow who runs the house
and who is a perfect Trojan during the jam and jelly season--and
Hannah's daughter, who goes to school and lends a hand, and my
nephew whom I have taken to raise and educate. Also, the ten
acres have come pretty close to paying for the whole twenty, as
well as for this house, and all the outbuildings, and all the
pedigreed stock."

Saxon remembered what the young lineman had said about the
Portuguese.

"The ten acres didn't do a bit of it," she cried. "It was your
head that did it all, and you know it."

"And that's the point, my dear. It shows the right kind of person
can succeed in the country. Remember, the soil is generous. But
it must be treated generously, and that is something the old
style American farmer can't get into his head. So it IS head that
counts. Even when his starving acres have convinced him of the
need for fertilizing, he can't see the difference between cheap
fertilizer and good fertilizer."

"And that's something I want to know about," Saxon exclaimed. And
I'll tell you all I know, but, first, you must be very tired. I
noticed you were limping. Let me take you in--never mind your
bundles; I'll send Chang for them."

To Saxon, with her innate love of beauty and charm in all
personal things, the interior of the bungalow was a revelation.
Never before had she been inside a middle class home, and what
she saw not only far exceeded anything she had imagined, but was
vastly different from her imaginings. Mrs. Mortimer noted her
sparkling glances which took in everything, and went out of her
way to show Saxon around, doing it under the guise of gleeful
boastings, stating the costs of the different materials,
explaining how she had done things with her own hands, such as
staining the doors, weathering the bookcases, and putting
together the big Mission Morris chair. Billy stepped gingerly
behind, and though it never entered his mind to ape to the manner
born, he succeeded in escaping conspicuous awkwardness, even at
the table where he and Saxon had the unique experience of being
waited on in a private house by a servant.

"If you'd only come along next year," Mrs. Mortimer mourned;
"then I should have had the spare room I had planned--"

"That's all right," Billy spoke up; "thank you just the same. But
we'll catch the electric cars into San Jose an' get a room."

Mrs. Mortimer was still disturbed at her inability to put them up
for the night, and Saxon changed the conversation by pleading to
be told more.

"You remember, I told you I'd paid only two thousand down on the
land," Mrs. Mortimer complied. "That left me three thousand to
experiment with. Of course, all my friends and relatives
prophesied failure. And, of course, I made my mistakes, plenty of
them, but I was saved from still more by the thorough study I had
made and continued to make." She indicated shelves of farm books
and files of farm magazines that lined the walls. "And I
continued to study. I was resolved to be up to date, and I sent
for all the experiment station reports. I went almost entirely on
the basis that whatever the old type farmer did was wrong, and,
do you know, in doing that I was not so far wrong myself. It's
almost unthinkable, the stupidity of the old-fashioned farmers.
Oh, I consulted with them, talked things over with them,
challenged their stereotyped ways, demanded demonstration of
their dogmatic and prejudiced beliefs, and quite succeeded in
convincing the last of them that I was a fool and doomed to come
to grief."

"But you didn't! You didn't!"

Mrs. Mortimer smiled gratefully.

"Sometimes, even now, I'm amazed that I didn't. But I came of a
hard-headed stock which had been away from the soil long enough
to gain a new perspective. When a thing satisfied my judgment, I
did it forthwith and downright, no matter how extravagant it
seemed. Take the old orchard. Worthless! Worse than worthless!
Old Calkins nearly died of heart disease when he saw the
devastation I had wreaked upon it. And look at it now. There was
an old rattletrap ruin where the bungalow now stands. I put up
with it, but I immediately pulled down the cow barn, the
pigsties, the chicken houses, everything--made a clean sweep.
They shook their heads and groaned when they saw such wanton
waste by a widow struggling to make a living. But worse was to
come. They were paralyzed when I told them the price of the three
beautiful O.I.C.'s--pigs, you know, Chesters--which I bought,
sixty dollars for the three, and only just weaned. Then I hustled
the nondescript chickens to market, replacing them with the White
Leghorns. The two scrub cows that came with the place I sold to
the butcher for thirty dollars each, paying two hundred and fifty
for two blue-blooded Jersey heifers .. . and coined money on the
exchange, while Calkins and the rest went right on with their
scrubs that couldn't give enough milk to pay for their board."

Billy nodded approval.

"Remember what I told you about horses," he reiterated to Saxon;
and, assisted by his hostess, he gave a very creditable
disquisition on horseflesh and its management from a business
point of view.

When he went out to smoke Mrs. Mortimer led Saxon into talking
about herself and Billy, and betrayed not the slightest shock
when she learned of his prizefighting and scab-slugging
proclivities.

"He's a splendid young man, and good," she assured Saxon. "His
face shows that. And, best of all, he loves you and is proud of
you. You can't imagine how I have enjoyed watching the way he
looks at you, especially when you are talking. He respects your
judgment. Why, he must, for here he is with you on this
pilgrimage which is wholly your idea." Mrs. Mortimer sighed. "You
are very fortunate, dear child, very fortunate. And you don't yet
know what a man's brain is. Wait till he is quite fired with
enthusiasm for your project. You will be astounded by the way he
takes hold. You will have to exert yourself to keep up with him.
In the meantime, you must lead. Remember, he is city bred. It
will be a struggle to wean him from the only life he's known."

"Oh, but he's disgusted with the city, too--" Saxon began.

"But not as you are. Love is not the whole of man, as it is of
woman. The city hurt you more than it hurt him. It was you who
lost the dear little babe. His interest, his connection, was no
more than casual and incidental compared with the depth and
vividness of yours."

Mrs. Mortimer turned her head to Billy, who was just entering.

"Have you got the hang of what was bothering you?" she asked.

"Pretty close to it," he answered, taking the indicated big
Morris chair. "It's this--"

"One moment," Mrs. Mortimer checked him. "That is a beautiful,
big, strong chair, and so are you, at any rate big and strong,
and your little wife is very weary--no, no; sit down, it's your
strength she needs. Yes, I insist. Open your arms."

And to him she led Saxon, and into his arms placed her. "Now,
sir--and you look delicious, the pair of you--register your
objections to my way of earning a living."

"It ain't your way," Billy repudiated quickly. "Your way's all
right. It's great. What I'm trying to get at is that your way
don't fit us. We couldn't make a go of it your way. Why you had
pull--well-to-do acquaintances, people that knew you'd been a
librarian an' your husband a professor. An' you had..." Here he
floundered a moment, seeking definiteness for the idea he still
vaguely grasped. "Well, you had a way we couldn't have. You were
educated, an'... an'--I don't know, I guess you knew society
ways an' business ways we couldn't know."

"But, my dear boy, you could learn what was neeessary," she
contended.

Billy shook his head.

"No. You don't quite get me. Let's take it this way. Just suppose
it's me, with jam an' jelly, a-wadin' into that swell restaurant
like you did to talk with the top guy. Why, I'd be outa place the
moment I stepped into his office. Worse'n that, I'd feel outa
place. That'd make me have a chip on my shoulder an' lookin' for
trouble, which is a poor way to do business. Then, too, I'd be
thinkin' he was thinkin' I was a whole lot of a husky to be
peddlin' jam. What'd happen, I'd be chesty at the drop of the
hat. I'd be thinkin' he was thinkin' I was standin' on my foot,
an' I'd beat him to it in tellin' him he was standin' on HIS
foot. Don't you see? It's because I was raised that way. It'd be
take it or leave it with me, an' no jam sold."

"What you say is true, " Mrs. Mortimer took up brightly. "But
there is your wife. Just look at her. She'd make an impression on
any business man. He'd be only too willing to listen to her."

Billy stiffened, a forbidding expression springing into his eyes.

"What have I done now?" their hostess laughed.

"I ain't got around yet to tradin' on my wife's looks," he
rumbled gruffly.

"Right you are. The only trouble is that you, both of you, are
fifty years behind the times. You're old Ameriean. How you ever
got here in the thick of modern conditions is a miracle. You're
Rip Van Winkles. Who ever heard, in these degenerate times, of a
young man and woman of the city putting their blankets on their
backs and starting out in search of land? Why, it's the old
Argonaut spirit. You're as like as peas in a pod to those who
yoked their oxen and held west to the lands beyond the sunset.
I'll wager your fathers and mothers, or grandfathers and
grandmothers, were that very stock."

Saxon's eyes were glistening, and Billy's were friendly once
more. Both nodded their heads.

"I'm of the old stock myself," Mrs. Mortimer went on proudly. "My
grandmother was one of the survivors of the Donner Party. My
grandfather, Jason Whitney, came around the Horn and took part in
the raising of the Bear Flag at Sonoma. He was at Monterey when
John Marshall discovered gold in Sutter's mill-race. One of the
streets in San Francisco is named after him."

"I know it," Billy put in. "Whitney Street. It's near Russian
Hill. Saxon's mother walked across the Plains."

"And Billy's grandfather and grandmother were massacred by the
Indians," Saxon contributed. "His father was a little baby boy,
and lived with the Indians, until captured by the whites. He
didn't even know his name and was adopted by a Mr. Roberts."

"Why, you two dear children, we're almost like relatives," Mrs.
Mortimer beamed. "It's a breath of old times, alas! all forgotten
in these fly-away days. I am especially interested, because I've
catalogued and read everything covering those times. You--" she
indicated Billy, "you are historical, or at least your father is.
I remember about him. The whole thing is in Bancroft's History.
It was the Modoc Indians. There were eighteen wagons. Your father
was the only survivor, a mere baby at the time, with no knowledge
of what happened. He was adopted by the leader of the whites."

"That's right," said Billy. "It was the Modocs. His train must
have ben bound for Oregon. It was all wiped out. I wonder if you
know anything about Saxon's mother. She used to write poetry in
the early days."

"Was any of it printed?"

"Yes," Saxon answered. "In the old San Jose papers."

"And do you know any of it?"

"Yes, there's one beginning:

'Sweet as the wind-lute's airy strains
Your gentle muse has learned to sing,
And California's boundless plains
Prolong the soft notes echoing.'"

"It sounds familiar," Mrs. Mortimer said, pondering.

"And there was another I remember that began:

'I've stolen away from the crowd in the groves,
Where the nude statues stand, and the leaves point and shiver,'--

"And it run on like that. I don't understand it all. It was
written to my father--"

"A love poem!" Mrs. Mortimer broke in. "I remember it. Wait a
minute... Da-da-dah, da-da-dah, da-da-dah, da-da--STANDS--

"'In the spray of a fountain, whose seed-amethysts
Tremble lightly a moment on bosom and hands,
Then drip in their basin from bosom and wrists.'

"I've never forgotten the drip of the seed-amethysts, though I
don't remember your mother's name."

"It was Daisy--" Saxon began.

"No; Dayelle," Mrs. Mortimer corrected with quickening
recollection.

"Oh, but nobody called her that."

"But she signed it that way. What is the rest?"

"Daisy Wiley Brown."

Mrs. Mortimer went to the bookshelves and quickly returned with a
large, soberly-bound volume.

"It's 'The Story of the Files,'" she explained. "Among other
things, all the good fugitive verse was gathered here from the
old newspaper files." Her eyes running down the index suddenly
stopped. "I was right. Dayelle Wiley Brown. There it is. Ten of
her poems, too: 'The Viking's Quest'; 'Days of Gold';
'Constancy'; 'The Caballero'; 'Graves at Little Meadow'--"

"We fought off the Indians there," Saxon interrupted in her
excitement. "And mother, who was only a little girl, went out and
got water for the wounded. And the Indians wouldn't shoot at her.
Everybody said it was a miracle." She sprang out of Billy's arms,
reaching for the book and crying: "Oh, let me see it! Let me see
it! It's all new to me. I don't know these poems. Can I copy
them? I'll learn them by heart. Just to think, my mother's!"

Mrs. Mortimer's glasses required repolishing; and for half an
hour she and Billy remained silent while Saxon devoured her
mother's lines. At the end, staring at the book which she had
closed on her finger, she could only repeat in wondering awe:

"And I never knew, I never knew."

But during that half hour Mrs. Mortimer's mind had not been idle.
A little later, she broached her plan. She believed in intensive
dairying as well as intensive farming, and intended, as soon as
the lease expired, to establish a Jersey dairy on the other ten
acres. This, like everything she had done, would be model, and it
meant that she would require more help. Billy and Saxon were just
the two. By next summer she could have them installed in the
cottage she intended building. In the meantime she could arrange,
one way and another, to get work for Billy through the winter.
She would guarantee this work, and she knew a small house they
could rent just at the end of the car-line. Under her supervision
Billy could take charge from the very beginning of the building.
In this way they would be earning money, preparing themselves for
independent farming life, and have opportunity to look about
them.

But her persuasions were in vain. In the end Saxon succinctly
epitomized their point of view.

"We can't stop at the first place, even if it is as beautiful and
kind as yours and as nice as this valley is. We don't even know
what we want. We've got to go farther, and see all kinds of
places and all kinds of ways, in order to find out. We're not in
a hurry to make up our minds. We want to make, oh, so very sure!
And besides..." She hesitated. "Besides, we don't like
altogether flat land. Billy wants some hills in his. And so do
I."

When they were ready to leave Mrs. Mortimer offered to present
Saxon with "The Story of the Files"; but Saxon shook her head and
got some money from Billy.

"It says it costs two dollars," she said. "Will you buy me one,
and keep it till we get settled? Then I'll write, and you can
send it to me."

"Oh, you Americans," Mrs. Mortimer chided, accepting the money.
"But you must promise to write from time to time before you're
settled."

She saw them to the county road.

"You are brave young things," she said at parting. "I only wish I
were going with you, my pack upon my back. You're perfectly
glorious, the pair of you. If ever I can do anything for you,
just let me know. You're bound to succeed, and I want a hand in
it myself. Let me know how that government land turns out,
though I warn you I haven't much faith in its feasibility. It's
sure to be too far away from markets."

She shook hands with Billy. Saxon she caught into her arms and
kissed.

"Be brave," she said, with low earnestness, in Saxon's ear.
"You'll win. You are starting with the right ideas. And you were
right not to accept my proposition. But remember, it, or better,
will always be open to you. You're young yet, both of you. Don't
be in a hurry. Any time you stop anywhere for a while, let me
know, and I'll mail you heaps of agricultural reports and farm
publications. Good-bye. Heaps and heaps and heaps of luck."



CHAPTER IV

Bill sat motionless on the edge of the bed in their little room
in San Jose that night, a musing expression in his eyes.

"Well," he remarked at last, with a long-drawn breath, "all I've
got to say is there's some pretty nice people in this world after
all. Take Mrs. Mortimer. Now she's the real goods--regular old
American."

"A fine, educated lady," Saxon agreed, "and not a bit ashamed to
work at farming herself. And she made it go, too."

"On twenty acres--no, ten; and paid for 'em, an' all
improvements, an' supported herself, four hired men, a Swede
woman an' daughter, an' her own nephew. It gets me. Ten acres!
Why, my father never talked less'n one hundred an' sixty acres.
Even your brother Tom still talks in quarter sections.--An' she
was only a woman, too. We was lucky in meetin' her."

"Wasn't it an adventure!" Saxon cried. "That's what comes of
traveling. You never know what's going to happen next. It jumped
right out at us, just when we were tired and wondering how much
farther to San Jose. We weren't expecting it at all. And she
didn't treat us as if we were tramping. And that house--so clean
and beautiful. You could eat off the floor. I never dreamed of
anything so sweet and lovely as the inside of that house."

"It smelt good," Billy supplied.

"That's the very thing. It's what the women's pages call
atmosphere. I didn't know what they meant before. That house has
beautiful, sweet atmosphere--"

"Like all your nice underthings," said Billy.

"And that's the next step after keeping your body sweet and clean
and beautiful. It's to have your house sweet and clean and
beautiful."

"But it can't be a rented one, Saxon. You've got to own it.
Landlords don't build houses like that. Just the same, one thing
stuck out plain: that house was not expensive. It wasn't the
cost. It was the way. The wood was ordinary wood you can buy in
any lumber yard. Why, our house on Pine street was made out of
the same kind of wood. But the way it was made was different. I
can't explain, but you can see what I'm drivin' at."

Saxon, revisioning the little bungalow they had just left,
repeated absently: "That's it--the way."

The next morning they were early afoot, seeking through the
suburbs of San Jose the road to San Juan and Monterey. Saxon's
limp had increased. Beginning with a burst blister, her heel was
skinning rapidly. Billy remembered his father's talks about care
of the feet, and stopped at a butcher shop to buy five cents'
worth of mutton tallow.

"That's the stuff," he told Saxon. "Clean foot-gear and the feet
well greased. We'll put some on as soon as we're clear of town.
An' we might as well go easy for a couple of days. Now, if I
could get a little work so as you could rest up several days it'd
be just the thing. I '11 keep my eye peeled."

Almost on the outskirts of town he left Saxon on the county road
and went up a long driveway to what appeared a large farm. He
came back beaming.

"It's all hunkydory," he called as he approached. "We'll just go
down to that clump of trees by the creek an' pitch camp. I start
work in the mornin', two dollars a day an' board myself. It'd
been a dollar an' a half if he furnished the board. I told 'm I
liked the other way best, an' that I had my camp with me. The
weather's fine, an' we can make out a few days till your foot's
in shape. Come on. We'll pitch a regular, decent camp."

"How did you get the job," Saxon asked, as they cast about,
determining their camp-site.

"Wait till we get fixed an' I'll tell you all about it. It was a
dream, a cinch."

Not until the bed was spread, the fire built, and a pot of
beans boiling did Billy throw down the last armful of wood and
begin.

"In the first place, Benson's no old-fashioned geezer. You
wouldn't think he was a farmer to look at 'm. He's up to date,
sharp as tacks, talks an' acts like a business man. I could see
that, just by lookin' at his place, before I seen HIM. He took
about fifteen seconds to size me up.

"'Can you plow?' says he.

"'Sure thing,' I told 'm.

"'Know horses?'

"'I was hatched in a box-stall,' says I.

"An' just then--you remember that four-horse load of machinery
that come in after me?--just then it drove up.

"'How about four horses?' he asks, casual-like.

"'Right to home. I can drive 'm to a plow, a sewin' machine, or a
merry-go-round.'

"'Jump up an' take them lines, then,' he says, quick an' sharp,
not wastin' seconds. 'See that shed. Go 'round the barn to the
right an' back in for unloadin'.'

"An' right here I wanta tell you it was some nifty drivin' he was
askin'. I could see by the tracks the wagons'd all ben goin'
around the barn to the left. What he was askin' was too close
work for comfort--a double turn, like an S, between a corner of a
paddock an' around the corner of the barn to the last swing. An',
to eat into the little room there was, there was piles of manure
just thrown outa the barn an' not hauled away yet. But I wasn't
lettin' on nothin'. The driver gave me the lines, an' I could see
he was grinnin', sure I'd make a mess of it. I bet he couldn't
a-done it himself. I never let on, an away we went, me not even
knowin' the horses--but, say, if you'd seen me throw them leaders
clean to the top of the manure till the nigh horse was scrapin'
the side of the barn to make it, an' the off hind hub was cuttin'
the corner post of the paddock to miss by six inches. It was the
only way. An' them horses was sure beauts. The leaders slacked
back an' darn near sat down on their singletrees when I threw the
back into the wheelers an' slammed on the brake an' stopped on
the very precise spot.

"'You'll do,' Benson says. 'That was good
work.'

"'Aw, shucks,' I says, indifferent as hell. 'Gimme something real
hard.'

"He smiles an' understands.

"'You done that well,' he says. 'An' I'm particular about who
handles my horses. The road ain't no place for you. You must be a
good man gone wrong. Just the same you can plow with my horses,
startin' in to-morrow mornin'.'

"Which shows how wise he wasn't. I hadn't showed I could plow."

When Saxon had served the beans, and Billy the coffee, she stood
still a moment and surveyed the spread meal on the blankets--the
canister of sugar, the condensed milk tin, the sliced corned
beef, the lettuce salad and sliced tomatoes, the slices of fresh
French bread, and the steaming plates of beans and mugs of
coffee.

"What a difference from last night!" Saxon exclaimed, clapping
her hands. "It's like an adventure out of a book. Oh, that boy I
went fishing with! Think of that beautiful table and that
beautiful house last night, and then look at this. Why, we could
have lived a thousand years on end in Oakland and never met a
woman like Mrs. Mortimer nor dreamed a house like hers existed.
And, Billy, just to think, we've only just started."

Billy worked for three days, and while insisting that he was
doing very well, he freely admitted that there was more in
plowing than he had thought. Saxon experienced quiet satisfaction
when she learned he was enjoying it.

"I never thought I'd like plowin'--much," he observed. "But it's
fine. It's good for the leg-muscles, too. They don't get exercise
enough in teamin'. If ever I trained for another fight, you bet
I'd take a whack at plowin'. An', you know, the ground has a
regular good smell to it, a-turnin' over an' turnin' over. Gosh,
it's good enough to eat, that smell. An' it just goes on, turnin'
up an' over, fresh an' thick an' good, all day long. An' the
horses are Joe-dandies. They know their business as well as a
man. That's one thing, Benson ain't got a scrub horse on the
place."

The last day Billy worked, the sky clouded over, the air grew
damp, a strong wind began to blow from the southeast, and all the
signs were present of the first winter rain. Billy came back in
the evening with a small roll of old canvas he had borrowed,
which he proceeded to arrange over their bed on a framework so as
to shed rain. Several times he complained about the little finger
of his left hand. It had been bothering him all day he told
Saxon, for several days slightly, in fact, and it was as tender
as a boil--most likely a splinter, but he had been unable to
locate it.

He went ahead with storm preparations, elevating the bed on old
boards which he lugged from a disused barn falling to decay on
the opposite bank of the creek. Upon the boards he heaped dry
leaves for a mattress. He concluded by reinforcing the canvas
with additional guys of odd pieces of rope and bailing-wire.

When the first splashes of rain arrived Saxon was delighted.
Billy betrayed little interest. His finger was hurting too much,
he said. Neither he nor Saxon could make anything of it, and both
scoffed at the idea of a felon.

"It might be a run-around," Saxon hazarded.

"What's that?"

"I don't know. I remember Mrs. Cady had one once, but I was too
small. It was the little finger, too. She poulticed it, I think.
And I remember she dressed it with some kind of salve. It got
awful bad, and finished by her losing the nail. After that it got
well quick, and a new nail grew out. Suppose I make a hot bread
poultice for yours."

Billy declined, being of the opinion that it would be better in
the morning. Saxon was troubled, and as she dozed off she knew
that he was lying restlessly wide awake. A few minutes afterward,
roused by a heavy blast of wind and rain on the canvas, she heard
Billy softly groaning. She raised herself on her elbow and with
her free hand, in the way she knew, manipulating his forehead and
the surfaces around his eyes, soothed him off to sleep.

Again she slept. And again she was aroused, this time not by the
storm, but by Billy. She could not see, but by feeling she
ascertained his strange position. He was outside the blankets and
on his knees, his forehead resting on the boards, his shoulders
writhing with suppressed anguish.

"She's pulsin' to beat the band," he said, when she spoke. "It's
worsen a thousand toothaches. But it ain't nothin'... if only
the canvas don't blow down. Think what our folks had to stand,"
he gritted out between groans. "Why, my father was out in the
mountains, an' the man with 'm got mauled by a grizzly--clean
clawed to the bones all over. An' they was outa grub an' had to
travel. Two times outa three, when my father put 'm on the horse,
he'd faint away. Had to be tied on. An' that lasted five weeks,
an' HE pulled through. Then there was Jack Quigley. He blowed off
his whole right hand with the burstin' of his shotgun, an' the
huntin' dog pup he had with 'm ate up three of the fingers. An'
he was all alone in the marsh, an'--"

But Saxon heard no more of the adventures of Jack Quigley. A
terrific blast of wind parted several of the guys, collapsed the
framework, and for a moment buried them under the canvas. The
next moment canvas, framework, and trailing guys were whisked
away into the darkness, and Saxon and Billy were deluged with
rain.

"Only one thing to do," he yelled in her ear. "--Gather up the
things an' get into that old barn."

They accomplished this in the drenching darkness, making two
trips across the stepping stones of the shallow creek and soaking
themselves to the knees. The old barn leaked like a sieve, but
they managed to find a dry space on which to spread their
anything but dry bedding. Billy's pain was heart-rending to
Saxon. An hour was required to subdue him to a doze, and only by
continuously stroking his forehead could she keep him asleep.
Shivering and miserable, she accepted a night of wakefulness
gladly with the knowledge that she kept him from knowing the
worst of his pain.

At the time when she had decided it must be past midnight, there
was an interruption. From the open doorway came a flash of
electric light, like a tiny searchlight, which quested about the
barn and came to rest on her and Billy. From the source of light
a harsh voice said:

"Ah! ha! I've got you! Come out of that!"

Billy sat up, his eyes dazzled by the light. The voice behind the
light was approaching and reiterating its demand that they come
out of that.

"What's up?" Billy asked.

"Me," was the answer; "an' wide awake, you bet."

The voice was now beside them, scarcely a yard away, yet they
eoald see nothing on account of the light, which was
intermittent, frequently going out for an instant as the
operator's thumb tired on the switch.

"Come on, get a move on," the voice went on. "Roll up your
blankets an' trot along. I want you."

"Who in hell are you?" Billy demanded.

"I'm the constable. Come on."

"Well, what do you want?"

"You, of course, the pair of you."

"What for?"

"Vagrancy. Now hustle. I ain't goin' to loaf here all night."

"Aw, chase yourself," Billy advised. "I ain't a vag. I'm a
workingman."

"Maybe you are an' maybe you ain't," said the constable; "but you
can tell all that to Judge Neusbaumer in the mornin'."

"Why you. .. you stinkin', dirty cur, you think you're goin' to
pull me," Billy began. "Turn the light on yourself. I want to see
what kind of an ugly mug you got. Pull me, eh? Pull me? For two
cents I'd get up there an' beat you to a jelly, you--"

"No, no, Billy," Saxon pleaded. "Don't make trouble. It would
mean jail."

"That's right," the constable approved, "listen to your woman."

"She's my wife, an' see you speak of her as such," Billy warned.
"Now get out, if you know what's good for yourself."

"I've seen your kind before," the constable retorted. "An' I've
got my little persuader with me. Take a squint."

The shaft of light shifted, and out of the darkness, illuminated
with ghastly brilliance, they saw thrust a hand holding a
revolver. This hand seemed a thing apart, self-existent, with no
corporeal attachment, and it appeared and disappeared like an
apparition as the thumb-pressure wavered on the switch. One
moment they were staring at the hand and revolver, the next
moment at impenetrable darkness, and the next moment again at the
hand and revolver.

"Now, I guess you'll come," the constable gloated.

"You got another guess comin'," Billy began.

But at that moment the light went out. They heard a quick
movement on the officer's part and the thud of the light-stick on
the ground. Both Billy and the constable fumbled for it, but
Billy found it and flashed it on the other. They saw a
gray-bearded man clad in streaming oilskins. He was an old man,
and reminded Saxon of the sort she had been used to see in Grand
Army processions on Decoration Day.

"Give me that stick," he bullied.

Billy sneered a refusal.

"Then I'll put a hole through you, by criminy."

He leveled the revolver directly at Billy, whose thumb on the
switch did not waver, and they could see the gleaming bullet-tips
in the chambers of the cylinder.

"Why, you whiskery old skunk, you ain't got the grit to shoot
sour apples," was Billy's answer. "I know your kind--brave as
lions when it comes to pullin' miserable, broken-spirited bindle
stiffs, but as leery as a yellow dog when you face a man. Pull
that trigger! Why, you pusillanimous piece of dirt, you'd run
with your tail between your legs if I said boo!"

Suiting action to the word, Billy let out an explosive "BOO!" and
Saxon giggled involuntarily at the startle it caused in the
constable.

"I'll give you a last chance," the latter grated through his
teeth. "Turn over that light-stick an' come along peaceable, or
I'll lay you out."

Saxon was frightened for Billy's sake, and yet only half
frightened. She had a faith that the man dared not fire, and she
felt the old familiar thrills of admiration for Billy's courage.
She could not see his face, but she knew in all certitude that it
was bleak and passionless in the terrifying way she had seen it
when he fought the three Irishmen.

"You ain't the first man I killed," the constable threatened.
"I'm an old soldier, an' I ain't squeamish over blood--"

"And you ought to be ashamed of yourself," Saxon broke in,
"trying to shame and disgrace peaceable people who've done no
wrong."

"You've done wrong sleepin' here," was his vindication. "This
ain't your property. It's agin the law. An' folks that go agin
the law go to jail, as the two of you'll go. I've sent many a
tramp up for thirty days for sleepin' in this very shack. Why,
it's a regular trap for 'em. I got a good glimpse of your faces
an' could see you was tough characters." He turned on Billy.
"I've fooled enough with you. Are you goin' to give in an' come
peaceable?"

"I'm goin' to tell you a couple of things, old boss," Billy
answered. "Number one: you ain't goin' to pull us. Number two:
we're goin' to sleep the night out here."

"Gimme that light-stick," the constable demanded peremptorily.

"G'wan, Whiskers. You're standin' on your foot. Beat it. Pull
your freight. As for your torch you'll find it outside in the
mud."

Billy shifted the light until it illuminated the doorway, and
then threw the stick as he would pitch a baseball. They were now
in total darkness, and they could hear the intruder gritting his
teeth in rage.

"Now start your shootin' an' see what'll happen to you," Billy
advised menacingly.

Saxon felt for Billy's hand and squeezed it proudly. The
constable grumbled some threat.

"What's that?" Billy demanded sharply. "Ain't you gone yet? Now
listen to me, Whiskers. I've put up with all your shenanigan I'm
goin' to. Now get out or I'll throw you out. An' if you come
monkeyin, around here again you'll get yours. Now get!"

So great was the roar of the storm that they could hear nothing.
Billy rolled a cigarette. When he lighted it, they saw the barn
was empty. Billy chuckled.

"Say, I was so mad I clean forgot my run-around. It's only just
beginnin' to tune up again."

Saxon made him lie down and receive her soothing ministrations.

"There is no use moving till morning, " she said. "Then, just as
soon as it's light, we'll catch a car into San Jose, rent a
room, get a hot breakfast, and go to a drug store for the proper
stuff for poulticing or whatever treatment's needed."

"But Benson," Billy demurred.

"I'll telephone him from town. It will only cost five cents. I
saw he had, a wire. And you couldn't plow on account of the rain,
even if your finger was well. Besides, we'll both be mending
together. My heel will be all right by the time it clears up and
we can start traveling.



CHAPTER V

Early on Monday morning, three days later, Saxon and Billy took
an electric car to the end of the line, and started a second time
for San Juan. Puddles were standing in the road, but the sun
shone from a blue sky, and everywhere, on the ground, was a faint
hint of budding green. At Benson's Saxon waited while Billy went
in to get his six dollars for the three days' plowing.

"Kicked like a steer because I was quittin'," he told her when he
came back. "He wouldn't listen at first. Said he'd put me to
drivin' in a few days, an' that there wasn't enough good
four-horse men to let one go easily."

"And what did you say?"

"Oh, I just told 'm I had to be movin' along. An' when he tried
to argue I told 'm my wife was with me, an' she was blamed
anxious to get along."

"But so are you, Billy."

"Sure, Pete; but just the same I wasn't as keen as you. Doggone
it, I was gettin' to like that plowin'. I'll never be scairt to
ask for a job at it again. I've got to where I savvy the burro,
an' you bet I can plow against most of 'm right now."

An hour afterward, with a good three miles to their credit, they
edged to the side of the road at the sound of an automobile
behind them. But the machine did not pass. Benson was alone in
it, and he came to a stop alongside.

"Where are you bound?" he inquired of Billy, with a quick,
measuring glance at Saxon.

"Monterey--if you're goin' that far," Billy answered with a
chuckle.

"I can give you a lift as far as Watsonville. It would take you
several days on shank's mare with those loads. Climb in." He
addressed Saxon directly. "Do you want to ride in front?"

Saxon glanced to Billy.

"Go on," he approved. "It's fine in front.--This is my wife, Mr.
Benson--Mrs. Roberts."

"Oh, ho, so you're the one that took your husband away from me,"
Benson accused good humoredly, as he tucked the robe around her.

Saxon shouldered the responsibility and became absorbed in
watching him start the car.

"I'd be a mighty poor farmer if I owned no more land than you'd
plowed before you came to me," Benson, with a twinkling eye,
jerked over his shoulder to Billy.

"I'd never had my hands on a plow but once before," Billy
confessed. "But a fellow has to learn some time."

"At two dollars a day?"

"If he can get some alfalfa artist to put up for it," Billy met
him complacently.

Benson laughed heartily.

"You're a quick learner," he complimented. "I could see that you
and plows weren't on speaking acquaintance. But you took hold
right. There isn't one man in ten I could hire off the county
road that could do as well as you were doing on the third day.
But your big asset is that you know horses. It was half a joke
when I told you to take the lines that morning. You're a trained
horseman and a born horseman as well."

"He's very gentle with horses," Saxon said.

"But there's more than that to it," Benson took her up. "Your
husband's got the WAY with him. It's hard to explain. But that's
what it is--the WAY. It's an instinct almost. Kindness is
necessary. But GRIP is more so. Your husband grips his horses.
Take the test I gave him with the four-horse load. It was too
complicated and severe. Kindness couldn't have done it. It took
grip. I could see it the moment he started. There wasn't any
doubt in his mind. There wasn't any doubt in the horses. They got
the feel of him. They just knew the thing was going to be done
and that it was up to them to do it. They didn't have any fear,
but just the same they knew the boss was in the seat. When he
took hold of those lines, he took hold of the horses. He gripped
them, don't you see. He picked them up and put them where he
wanted them, swung them up and down and right and left, made
them pull, and slack, and back--and they knew everything was
going to come out right. Oh, horses may be stupid, but they're
not altogether fools. They know when the proper horseman has hold
of them, though how they know it so quickly is beyond me."

Benson paused, half vexed at his volubility, and gazed keenly at
Saxon to see if she had followed him. What he saw in her face
and eyes satisfied him, and he added, with a short laugh:

"Horseflesh is a hobby of mine. Don't think otherwise because I
am running a stink engine. I'd rather be streaking along here
behind a pair of fast-steppers. But I'd lose time on them, and,
worse than that, I'd be too anxious about them all the time. As
for this thing, why, it has no nerves, no delicate joints nor
tendons; it's a case of let her rip."

The miles flew past and Saxon was soon deep in talk with her
host. Here again, she discerned immediately, was a type of the
new farmer. The knowledge she had picked up enabled her to talk
to advantage, and when Benson talked she was amazed that she
could understand so much. In response to his direct querying, she
told him her and Billy's plans, sketching the Oakland life
vaguely, and dwelling on their future intentions.

Almost as in a dream, when they passed the nurseries at Morgan
Hill, she learned they had come twenty miles, and realized that
it was a longer stretch than they had planned to walk that day.
And still the machine hummed on, eating up the distance as ever
it flashed into view.

"I wondered what so good a man as your husband was doing on the
road," Benson told her.

"Yes," she smiled. "He said you said he must be a good man gone
wrong."

"But you see, I didn't know about YOU. Now I understand. Though I
must say it's extraordinary in these days for a young couple like
you to pack your blankets in search of land. And, before I forget
it, I want to tell you one thing." He turned to Billy. "I am just
telling your wife that there's an all-the-year job waiting for
you on my ranch. And there's a tight little cottage of three
rooms the two of you can housekeep in. Don't forget."

Among other things Saxon discovered that Benson had gone through
the College of Agriculture at the University of California--a
branch of learning she had not known existed. He gave her small
hope in her search for government land.

"The only government land left," he informed her, "is what is not
good enough to take up for one reason or another. If it's good
land down there where you're going, then the market is
inaccessible. I know no railroads tap in there."

"Wait till we strike Pajaro Valley," he said, when they had
passed Gilroy and were booming on toward Sargent's. "I'll show
you what can be done with the soil--and not by cow-college
graduates but by uneducated foreigners that the high and mighty
American has always sneered at. I'll show you. It's one of the
most wonderful demonstrations in the state."

At Sargent's he left them in the machine a few minutes while he
transacted business.

"Whew! It beats hikin'," Billy said. "The day's young yet and
when he drops us we'll be fresh for a few miles on our own. Just
the same, when we get settled an' well off, I guess I'll stick by
horses. They'll always be good enough for me."

"A machine's only good to get somewhere in a hurry," Saxon
agreed. "Of course, if we got very, very rich--"

"Say, Saxon," Billy broke in, suddenly struck with an idea. "I've
learned one thing. I ain't afraid any more of not gettin' work in
the country. I was at first, but I didn't tell you. Just the same
I was dead leery when we pulled out on the San Leandro pike. An'
here, already, is two places open--Mrs. Mortimer's an' Benson's;
an' steady jobs, too. Yep, a man can get work in the country."

"Ah," Saxon amended, with a proud little smile, "you haven't said
it right. Any GOOD man can get work in the country. The big
farmers don't hire men out of charity."

"Sure; they ain't in it for their health," he grinned.

"And they jump at you. That's because you are a good man. They
can see it with half an eye. Why, Billy, take all the working
tramps we've met on the road already. There wasn't one to compare
with you. I looked them over. They're all weak--weak in their
bodies, weak in their heads, weak both ways."

"Yep, they are a pretty measly bunch," Billy admitted modestly.

"It's the wrong time of the year to see Pajaro Valley," Benson
said, when he again sat beside Saxon and Sargent's was a thing of
the past. "Just the same, it's worth seeing any time. Think of
it--twelve thousand acres of apples! Do you know what they call
Pajaro Valley now? New Dalmatia. We're being squeezed out. We
Yankees thought we were smart. Well, the Dalmatians came along
and showed they were smarter. They were miserable
immigrants--poorer than Job's turkey. First, they worked at day's
labor in the fruit harvest. Next they began, in a small way,
buying the apples on the trees. The more money they made the
bigger became their deals. Pretty soon they were renting the
orchards on long leases. And now, they are beginning to buy the
land. It won't be long before they own the whole valley, and the
last American will be gone.

"Oh, our smart Yankees! Why, those first ragged Slavs in their
first little deals with us only made something like two and three
thousand per cent. profits. And now they're satisfied to make a
hundred per cent. It's a calamity if their profits sink to
twenty-five or fifty per cent."

"It's like San Leandro," Saxon said. "The original owners of the
land are about all gone already. It's intensive cultivation." She
liked that phrase. "It isn't a ease of having a lot of acres, but
of how much they can get out of one acre."

"Yes, and more than that," Benson answered, nodding his head
emphatically. "Lots of them, like Luke Scurich, are in it on a
large scale. Several of them are worth a quarter of a million
already. I know ten of them who will average one hundred and
fifty thousand each. They have a WAY with apples. It's almost a
gift. They KNOW trees in much the same way your husband knows
horses. Each tree is just as much an individual to them as a
horse is to me. They know each tree, its whole history,
everything that ever happened to it, its every idiosyncrasy. They
have their fingers on its pulse. They can tell if it's feeling as
well to-day as it felt yesterday. And if it isn't, they know why
and proceed to remedy matters for it. They can look at a tree in
bloom and tell how many boxes of apples it will pack, and not
only that--they'll know. what the quality and grades of those
apples are going to be. Why, they know each individual apple, and
they pick it tenderly, with love, never hurting it, and pack it
and ship it tenderly and with love, and when it arrives at
market, it isn't bruised nor rotten, and it fetches top price.

"Yes, it's more than intensive. These Adriatic Slavs are
long-headed in business. Not only can they grow apples, but they
can sell apples. No market? What does it matter? Make a market.
That's their way, while our kind let the crops rot knee-deep
under the trees. Look at Peter Mengol. Every year he goes to
England, and he takes a hundred carloads of yellow Newton pippins
with him. Why, those Dalmatians are showing Pajaro apples on the
South African market right now, and coining money out of it hand
over fist."

"What do they do with all the money?" Saxon queried.

"Buy the Americans of Pajaro Valley out, of course, as they are
already doing."

"And then?" she questioned.

Benson looked at her quickly.

"Then they'll start buying the Americans out of some other
valley. And the Americans will spend the money and by the second
generation start rotting in the cities, as you and your husband
would have rotted if you hadn't got out."

Saxon could not repress a shudder.--As Mary had rotted, she
thought; as Bert and all the rest had rotted; as Tom and all the
rest were rotting.

"Oh, it's a great country," Benson was continuing. "But we're not
a great people. Kipling is right. We're crowded out and sitting
on the stoop. And the worst of it is there's no reason we
shouldn't know better. We're teaching it in all our agricultural
colleges, experiment stations, and demonstration trains. But the
people won't take hold, and the immigrant, who has learned in a
hard school, beats them out. Why, after I graduated, and before
my father died--he was of the old school and laughed at what he
called my theories--I traveled for a couple of years. I wanted to
see how the old countries farmed. Oh, I saw.

"We'll soon enter the valley. You bet I saw. First thing, in
Japan, the terraced hillsides. Take a hill so steep you couldn't
drive a horse up it. No bother to them. They terraced it--a stone
wall, and good masonry, six feet high, a level terrace six feet
wide; up and up, walls and terraces, the same thing all the way,
straight into the air, walls upon walls, terraces upon terraces,
until I've seen ten-foot walls built to make three-foot terraces,
and twenty-foot walls for four or five feet of soil they could
grow things on. And that soil, packed up the mountainsides in
baskets on their backs!

"Same thing everywhere I went, in Greece, in Ireland, in
Dalmatia--I went there, too. They went around and gathered every
bit of soil they could find, gleaned it and even stole it by the
shovelful or handful, and carried it up the mountains on their
backs and built farms--BUILT them, MADE them, on the naked rock.
Why, in France, I've seen hill peasants mining their stream-beds
for soil as our fathers mined the streams of California for gold.
Only our gold's gone, and the peasants' soil remains, turning
over and over, doing something, growing something, all the time.
Now, I guess I'll hush."

"My God!" Billy muttered in awe-stricken tones. "Our folks never
done that. No wonder they lost out."

"There's the valley now," Benson said. "Look at those trees! Look
at those hillsides! That's New Dalmatia. Look at it! An apple
paradise! Look at that soil! Look at the way it's worked!"

It was not a large valley that Saxon saw. But everywhere, across
the flat-lands and up the low rolling hills, the industry of the
Dalmatians was evident. As she looked she listened to Benson.

"Do you know what the old settlers did with this beautiful soil?
Planted the flats in grain and pastured cattle on the hills. And
now twelve thousand acres of it are in apples. It's a regular
show place for the Eastern guests at Del Monte, who run out here
in their machines to see the trees in bloom or fruit. Take Matteo
Lettunich--he's one of the originals. Entered through Castle
Garden and became a dish-washer. When he laid eyes on this
valley he knew it was his Klondike. To-day he leases seven
hundred acres and owns a hundred and thirty of his own--the
finest orchard in the valley, and he packs from forty to fifty
thousand boxes of export apples from it every year. And he won't
let a soul but a Dalmatian pick a single apple of all those
apples. One day, in a banter, I asked him what he'd sell his
hundred and thirty acres for. He answered seriously. He told me
what it had netted him, year by year, and struck an average. He
told me to calculate the principal from that at six per cent. I
did. It came to over three thousand dollars an acre."

"What are all the Chinks doin' in the Valley?" Billy asked.
"Growin' apples, too?"

Benson shook his head.

"But that's another point where we Americans lose out. There
isn't anything wasted in this valley, not a core nor a paring;
and it isn't the Americans who do the saving. There are
fifty-seven apple-evaporating furnaces, to say nothing of the
apple canneries and cider and vinegar factories. And Mr. John
Chinaman owns them. They ship fifteen thousand barrels of cider
and vinegar each year."

"It was our folks that made this country," Billy reflected.
"Fought for it, opened it up, did everything--"

"But develop it," Benson caught him up. "We did our best to
destroy it, as we destroyed the soil of New England." He waved
his hand, indicating some place beyond the hills. "Salinas lies
over that way. If you went through there you'd think you were in
Japan. And more than one fat little fruit valley in California
has been taken over by the Japanese. Their method is somewhat
different from the Dalmatians'. First they drift in fruit picking
at day's wages. They give better satisfaction than the American
fruit-pickers, too, and the Yankee grower is glad to get them.
Next, as they get stronger, they form in Japanese unions and
proceed to run the American labor out. Still the fruit-growers
are satisfied. The next step is when the Japs won't pick. The
American labor is gone. The fruit-grower is helpless. The crop
perishes. Then in step the Jap labor bosses. They're the masters
already. They contract for the crop. The fruit-growers are at
their mercy, you see. Pretty soon the Japs are running the
valley. The fruit-growers have become absentee landlords and are
busy learning higher standards of living in the cities or making
trips to Europe. Remains only one more step. The Japs buy them
out. They've got to sell, for the Japs control the labor market
and could bankrupt them at will."

"But if this goes on, what is left for us?" asked Saxon.

"What is happening. Those of us who haven't anything rot in the
cities. Those of us who have land, sell it and go to the cities.
Some become larger capitalists; some go into the professions; the
rest spend the money and start rotting when it's gone, and if it
lasts their life-time their children do the rotting for them."

Their long ride was soon over, and at parting Benson reminded
Billy of the steady job that awaited him any time he gave the
word.

"I guess we'll take a peep at that government land first," Billy
answered. "Don't know what we'll settle down to, but there's one
thing sure we won't tackle."

"What's that?"

"Start in apple-growin' at three thousan' dollars an acre."

Billy and Saxon, their packs upon the* backs, trudged along a
hundred yards. He was the first to break silence.

"An' I tell you another thing, Saxon. We'll never be goin' around
smellin' out an' swipin' bits of soil an' carryin' it up a hill
in a basket. The United States is big yet. I don't care what
Benson or any of 'em says, the United States ain't played out.
There's millions of acres untouched an' waitin', an' it's up to
us to find 'em."

"And I'll tell you one thing," Saxon said. "We're getting an
education. Tom was raised on a ranch, yet he doesn't know right
now as much about farming conditions as we do. And I'll tell you
another thing. The more I think of it, the more it seems we are
going to be disappointed about that government land."

"Ain't no use believin' what everybody tells you," he protested.

"Oh, it isn't that. It's what I think. I leave it to you. If this
land around here is worth three thousand an acre, why is it that
government land, if it's any good, is waiting there, only a short
way off, to be taken for the asking."

Billy pondered this for a quarter of a mile, but could come to no
conclusion. At last he cleared his throat and remarked:

"Well, we can wait till we see it first, can't we?"

"All right," Saxon agreed. "We'll wait till we see it."



CHAPTER VI

They had taken the direct county road across the hills from
Monterey, instead of the Seventeen Mile Drive around by the
coast, so that Carmel Bay came upon them without any
fore-glimmerings of its beauty. Dropping down through the pungent
pines, they passed woods-embowered cottages, quaint and rustic,
of artists and writers, and went on across wind-blown rolling
sandhills held to place by sturdy lupine and nodding with pale
California poppies. Saxon screamed in sudden wonder of delight,
then caught her breath and gazed at the amazing peacock-blue of a
breaker, shot through with golden sunlight, overfalling in a
mile-long sweep and thundering into white ruin of foam on a
crescent beach of sand scarcely less white.

How long they stood and watched the stately procession of
breakers, rising from out the deep and wind-capped sea to froth
and thunder at their feet, Saxon did not know. She was recalled
to herself when Billy, laughing, tried to remove the telescope
basket from her shoulders.

"You kind of look as though you was goin' to stop a while," he
said. "So we might as well get comfortable."

"I never dreamed it, I never dreamed it," she repeated, with
passionately clasped hands. "I. .. I thought the surf at the
Cliff House was wonderful, but it gave no idea of this.--Oh!
Look! LOOK! Did you ever see such an unspeakable color? And the
sunlight flashing right through it! Oh! Oh! Oh!"

At last she was able to take her eyes from the surf and gaze at
the sea-horizon of deepest peacock-blue and piled with
cloud-masses, at the curve of the beach south to the jagged point
of rocks, and at the rugged blue mountains seen across soft low
hills, landward, up Carmel Valley.

"Might as well sit down an' take it easy," Billy indulged her.
"This is too good to want to run away from all at once."

Saxon assented, but began immediately to unlace her shoes.

"You ain't a-goin' to?" Billy asked in surprised delight, then
began unlacing his own.

But before they were ready to run barefooted on the perilous
fringe of cream-wet sand where land and ocean met, a new and
wonderful thing attracted their attention. Down from the dark
pines and across the sandhills ran a man, naked save for narrow
trunks. He was smooth and rosy-skinned, cherubic-faced, with a
thatch of curly yellow hair, but his body was hugely thewed as a
Hercules'.

"Gee!--must be Sandow, " Billy muttered low to Saxon.

But she was thinking of the engraving in her mother's scrapbook
and of the Vikings on the wet sands of England.

The runner passed them a dozen feet away, crossed the wet sand,
never parsing, till the froth wash was to his knees while above
him, ten feet at least, upreared a was of overtopping water. Huge
and powerful as his body had seemed, it was now white and fragile
in the face of that imminent, great-handed buffet of the sea.
Saxon gasped with anxiety, and she stole a look at Billy to note
that he was tense with watching.

But the stranger sprang to meet the blow, and, just when it
seemed he must be crushed, he dived into the face of the breaker
and disappeared. The mighty mass of water fell in thunder on the
beach, but beyond appeared a yellow head, one arm out-reaching,
and a portion of a shoulder. Only a few strokes was he able to
make are he was come pelted to dye through another breaker. This
was the battle--to win seaward against the Creep of the shoreward
hastening sea. Each time he dived and was lost to view Saxon
caught her breath and clenched her hands. Sometimes, after the
passage of a breaker, they enfold not find him, and when they did
he would be scores of feet away, flung there like a chip by a
smoke-bearded breaker. Often it seemed he must fail and be thrown
upon the beach, but at the end of half an hour he was beyond the
outer edge of the surf and swimming strong, no longer diving, but
topping the waves. Soon he was so far away that only at intervals
could they find the speck of him. That, too, vanished, and Saxon
and Billy looked at each other, she with amazement at the
swimmer's valor, Billy with blue eyes flashing.

"Some swimmer, that boy, some swimmer," he praised. "Nothing
chicken-hearted about him.--Say, I only know tank-swimmin', an'
bay-swimmin', but now I'm goin' to learn ocean-swimmin'. If I
could do that I'd be so proud you couldn't come within forty feet
of me. Why, Saxon, honest to God, I'd sooner do what he done than
own a thousan' farms. Oh, I can swim, too, I'm tellin' you,like a
fish--I swum, one Sunday, from the Narrow Gauge Pier to Sessions'
Basin, an' that's miles--but I never seen anything like that guy
in the swimmin' line. An' I'm not goin' to leave this beach until
he comes back.--All by his lonely out there in a mountain sea,
think of it! He's got his nerve all right, all right."

Saxon and Billy ran barefooted up and down the beach, pursuing
each other with brandished snakes of seaweed and playing like
children for an hour. It was not until they were putting on their
shoes that they sighted the yellow head bearing shoreward. Billy
was at the edge of the surf to meet him, emerging, not
white-skinned as he had entered, but red from the pounding he had
received at the hands of the sea.

"You're a wonder, and I just got to hand it to you," Billy
greeted him in outspoken admiration.

"It was a big surf to-day," the young man replied, with a nod of
acknowledgment.

"It don't happen that you are a fighter I never heard of?" Billy
queried, striving to get some inkling of the identity of the
physical prodigy.

The other laughed and shook his head, and Billy could

not guess that he was an ex-captain of a 'Varsity Eleven, and
incidentally the father of a family and the author of many books.
He looked Billy over with an eye trained in measuring freshmen
aspirants for the gridiron.

"You're some body of a man," he appreciated. "You'd strip with
the best of them. Am I right in guessing that you know your way
about in the ring?"

Billy nodded. "My name's Roberts."

The swimmer scowled with a futile effort at recollection.

"Bill--Bill Roberts," Billy supplemented.

"Oh, ho!--Not BIG Bill Roberts? Why, I saw you fight, before the
earthquake, in the Mechanic's Pavilion. It was a preliminary to
Eddie Hanlon and some other fellow. You're a two-handed fighter,
I remember that, with an awful wallop, but slow. Yes, I remember,
you were slow that night, but you got your man." He put out a wet
hand. "My name's Hazard-- Jim Hazard."

"An' if you're the football coach that was, a couple of years
ago, I've read about you in the papers. Am I right?"

They shook hands heartily, and Saxon was introduced. She felt
very small beside the two young giants, and very proud,
withal, that she belonged to the race that gave them birth. She
could only listen to them talk.

"I'd like to put on the gloves with you every day for half an
hour," Hazard said. "You could teach me a lot. Are you going to
stay around here?"

"No. We're goin' on down the coast, lookin' for land. Just the
same, I could teach you a few, and there's one thing you could
teach me--surf swimmin'."

"I'll swap lessons with you any time," Hazard offered. He turned
to Saxon. "Why don't you stop in Carmel for a while, It isn't so
bad."

"It's beautiful," she acknowledged, with a grateful smile,
"but--" She turned and pointed to their packs on the edge of the
lupine. "We're on the tramp, and lookin' for government land."

"If you're looking down past the Sur for it, it will keep," he
laughed. "Well, I've got to run along and get some clothes on. If
you come back this way, look me up. Anybody will tell you where I
live. So long."

And, as he had first arrived, he departed, crossing the sandhills
on the run.

Billy followed him with admiring eyes.

"Some boy, some boy," he murmured. "Why, Saxon, he's famous. If
I've seen his face in the papers once, I've seen it a thousand
times. An' he ain't a bit stuck on himself. Just man to man.
Say!--I'm beginnin' to have faith in the old stock again."

They turned their backs on the beach and in the tiny main street
bought meat, vegetables, and half a dozen eggs. Billy had to drag
Saxon away from the window of a fascinating shop where were
iridescent pearls of abalone, set and unset.

"Abalones grow here, all along the coast," Billy assured her;
"an' I'll get you all you want. Low tide's the time."

"My father had a set of cuff-buttons made of abalone shell," she
said. "They were set in pure, soft gold. I haven't thought about
them for years, and I wonder who has them now."

They turned south. Everywhere from among the pines peeped the
quaint pretty houses of the artist folk, and they were not
prepared, where the road dipped to Carmel River, for the building
that met their eyes.

"I know what it is," Saxon almost whispered. "It's an old Spanish
Mission. It's the Carmel Mission, of course. That's the way the
Spaniards came up from Mexico, building missions as they came and
converting the Indians"

"Until we chased them out, Spaniards an' Indians, whole kit an'
caboodle," Billy observed with calm satisfaction.

"Just the same, it's wonderful," Saxon mused, gazing at the big,
half-ruined adobe structure. "There is the Mission Dolores, in
San Francisco, but it's smaller than this and not as old."

Hidden from the sea by low hillocks, forsaken by human being and
human habitation, the church of sun-baked clay and straw and
chalk-rock stood hushed and breathless in the midst of the adobe
ruins which once had housed its worshiping thousands. The spirit
of the place descended upon Saxon and Billy, and they walked
softly, speaking in whispers, almost afraid to go in through the
open ports. There was neither priest nor worshiper, yet they
found all the evidences of use, by a congregation which Billy
judged must be small from the number of the benches. Inter they
climbed the earthquake~racked belfry, noting the hand-hewn
timbers; and in the gallery, discovering the pure quality of
their voices, Saxon, trembling at her own temerity, softly sang
the opening bars of "Jesus Lover of My Soul." Delighted with the
result, she leaned over the railing, gradually increasing her
voice to its full strength as she sang:

"Jesus, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is nigh.
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide
And receive my soul at last."

Billy leaned against the ancient wall and loved her with his
eyes, and, when she had finished, he murmured, almost in a
whisper:

"That was beautiful--just beautiful. An' you ought to a-seen your
face when you sang. It was as beautiful as your voice. Ain't it
funny?--I never think of religion except when I think of you."

They camped in the willow bottom, cooked dinner, and spent the
afternoon on the point of low rocks north of the mouth of the
river. They had not intended to spend the afternoon, but found
themselves too fascinated to turn away from the breakers bursting
upon the rocks and from the many kinds of colorful sea life
starfish, crabs, mussels, sea anemones, and, once, in a
rock-pool, a small devilfish that chilled their blood when it
cast the hooded net of its body around the small crabs they
tossed to it. As the tide grew lower, they gathered a mess of
mussels--huge fellows, five and six inches long and bearded like
patriarchs. Then, while Billy wandered in a vain search for
abalones, Saxon lay and dabbled in the crystal-clear water of a
roak-pool, dipping up handfuls of glistening jewels--ground bits
of shell and pebble of flashing rose and blue and green and
violet. Billy came back and lay beside her, lazying in the
sea-cool sunshine, and together they watched the sun sink into
the horizon where the ocean was deepest peacock-blue.

She reached out her hand to Billy's and sighed with sheer
repletion of content. It seemed she had never lived such a
wonderful day. It was as if all old dreams were coming true. Such
beauty of the world she had never guessed in her fondest
imagining. Billy pressed her hand tenderly.

"What was you thinkin' of?" he asked, as they arose finally to
go.

"Oh, I don't know, Billy. Perhaps that it was better, one day
like this, than ten thousand years in Oakland."



CHAPTER VII

They left Carme1 River and Carmel Valley behind, and with a
rising sun went south across the hills between the mountains and
the sea. The road was badly washed and gullied and showed little
sign of travel.

"It peters out altogether farther down," Billy said. "From there
on it's only horse trails. But I don't see much signs of timber,
an' this soil's none so good. It's only used for pasture--no
farmin' to speak of."

The hills were bare and grassy. Only the canyons were wooded,
while the higher and more distant hills were furry with
chaparral. Once they saw a coyote slide into the brush, and
once Billy wished for a gun when a large wildcat stared at
them malignantly and declined to run until routed by a clod of
earth that burst about its ears like shrapnel.

Several miles along Saxon complained of thirst. Where the road
dipped nearly at sea level to cross a small gulch Billy looked
for water. The bed of the gulch was damp with hill-drip, and he
left her to rest while he sought a spring.

"Say," he hailed a few minutes afterward. "Come on down. You just
gotta see this. It'll 'most take your breath away."

Saxon followed the faint path that led steeply down through the
thicket. Midway along, where a barbed wire fence was strung high
across the mouth of the gulch and weighted down with big rocks,
she caught her first glimpse of the tiny beach. Only from the sea
could one guess its existence, so completely was it tucked away
on three precipitous sides by the land, and screened by the
thicket. Furthermore, the beach was the head of a narrow rock
cove, a quarter of a mile long, up which pent way the sea roared
and was subdued at the last to a gentle pulse of surf. Beyond the
mouth many detached rocks, meeting the full force of the
breakers, spouted foam and spray high in the air. The knees of
these rocks, seen between the surges, were black with mussels. On
their tops sprawled huge sea-lions tawny-wet and roaring in the
sun, while overhead, uttering shrill cries, darted and wheeled a
multitude of sea birds.

The last of the descent, from the barbed wire fence, was a
sliding fall of a dozen feet, and Saxon arrived on the soft dry
sand in a sitting posture.

"Oh, I tell you it's just great," Billy bubbled. "Look at it for
a camping spot. In among the trees there is the prettiest spring
you ever saw. An' look at all the good firewood, an'. .." He
gazed about and seaward with eyes that saw what no rush of words
could compass. "... An', an' everything. We could live here.
Look at the mussels out there. An' I bet you we could catch fish.
What d'ye say we stop a few days?--It's vacation anyway--an' I
could go back to Carmel for hooks an' lines."

Saxon, keenly appraising his glowing face, realized that he was
indeed being won from the city.

"An' there ain't no wind here," he was recommending. "Not a
breath. An' look how wild it is. Just as if we was a thousand
miles from anywhere."

The wind, which had been fresh and raw across the bare hills,
gained no entrance to the cove; and the beach was warm and balmy,
the air sweetly pungent with the thicket odors. Here and there,
in the midst of the thicket, severe small oak trees and other
small trees of which Saxon did not know the names. Her enthusiasm
now vied with Billy's, and, hand in hand, they started to
explore.

"Here's where we can play real Robinson Crusoe, " Billy
cried, as they crossed the hard sand from highwater mark to the
edge of the water. "Come on, Robinson. Let's stop over. Of
course, I'm your Man Friday, an' what you say goes."

"But what shall we do with Man Saturday!" She pointed in mock
consternation to a fresh footprint in the sand. "He may be a
savage cannibal, you know."

"No chance. It's not a bare foot but a tennis shoe."

"But a savage could get a tennis shoe from a drowned or eaten
sailor, couldn't hey" she contended.

"But sailors don't wear tennis shoes," was Billy's prompt
refutation.

"You know too much for Man Friday," she chided; "but, just the
same; if you'll fetch the packs we'll make camp. Besides, it
mightn't have been a sailor that was eaten. It might have been a
passenger."

By the end of an hour a snug camp was completed. The blankets
were spread, a supply of firewood was chopped from the seasoned
driftwood, and over a fire the coffee pot had begun to sing.
Saxon called to Billy, who was improvising a table from a
wave-washed plank. She pointed seaward. On the far point of
rocks, naked except for swimming trunks, stood a man. He was
gazing toward them, and they could see his long mop of dark hair
blown by the wind. As he started to climb the rocks landward
Billy eaUed Saxon's attention to the fact that the stranger wore
tennis shoes. In a few minutes he dropped down from the rock to
the beach and walked up to them.

"Gosh!" Billy whispered to Saxon. "He's lean enough, but look at
his muscles. Everybody down here seems to go in for physical
culture."

As the newcomer approached, Saxon glimpsed sufflcient of his face
to be reminded of the old pioneers and of a certain type of face
seen frequently among the old soldiers: Young though he was--not
more than thirty, she decided--this man had the same long and
narrow face, with the high cheekbones, high and slender forehead,
and nose high, lean, and almost beaked. The lips were thin and
sensitive; but the eyes were different from any she had ever seen
in pioneer or veteran or any man. They were so dark a gray that
they seemed brown, and there were a farness and alertness of
vision in them as of bright questing through profounds of space.
In a misty way Saxon felt that she had seen him before.

"Hello," he greeted. "You ought to be comfortable here." He threw
down a partly filled sack. "Mussels. All I could get. The tide's
not low enough yet."

Saxon heard Billy muffle an ejaculation, and saw painted on his
face the extremest astonishment.

"Well, honest to God, it does me proud to meet you," he blurted
out. "Shake hands. I always said if I laid eyes on you I'd
shake.--Say!"

But Billy's feelings mastered him, and, beginning with a choking
giggle, he roared into helpless mirth.

The stranger looked at him curiously across their clasped hands,
and glanced inquiringly to Saxon.

"You gotta excuse me," Billy gurgled, pumping the other's hand up
and down. "But I just gotta laugh. Why, honest to God, I've woke
up nights an' laughed an' gone to sleep again. Don't you
recognize 'm, Saxon? He's the same identical dude say, friend,
you're some punkins at a hundred yards dash, ain't you7"

And then, in a sudden rush, Saxon placed him. He it was who had
stood with Roy Blanchard alongside the automobile on the day she
had wandered, sick and unwitting, into strange neighborhoods. Nor
had that day been the first time she had seen him.

"Remember the Bricklayers' Picnic at Weasel Park7" Billy was
asking. "An' the foot race? Why, I'd know that nose of yours
anywhere among a million. You was the guy that stuck your cane
between Timothy McManus's legs an' started the grandest
roughhouse Weasel Park or any other park ever seen."

The visitor now commenced to laugh. He stood on one leg as he
laughed harder, then stood on the other leg. Finally he sat down
on a log of driftwood.

"And you were there," he managed to gasp to Billy at last. "You
saw it. You saw it." He turned to Saxon. "--And you?"

She nodded.

"Say," Billy began again, as their laughter eased down, "what I
wants know is what'd you wanta do it for. Say, what'd you wants
do it for? I've been askin' that to myeelf ever since."

"So have I," was the answer.

"You didn't know Timothy McManus, did you7"

"No; I'd never seen him before, and I've never seen him since."

"But what'd you wanta do it for?" Billy persisted.

The young man laughed, then controlled himself.

"To save my life, I don't know. I have one friend, a most
intelligent chap that writes sober, scientific books, and he's
always aching to throw an egg into an electric fan to see what
will happen.  Perhaps that's the way it was with me, except that
there was no aching. When I saw those legs flying past, I merely
stuck my stick in between. I didn't know I was going to do it. I
just did it. Timothy McManus was no more surprised than I was."

"Did they catch you?" Billy asked.

"Do I look as if they did? I was never so scared in my life.
Timothy McManus himself couldn't have caught me that day. But
what happened afterward? I heard they had a fearful roughhouse,
but I couldn't stop to see."

It was not until a quarter of an hour had passed, during which
Billy described the fight, that introductions took place. Mark
Hall was their visitor's name, and he lived in a bungalow among
the Carmel pines.

"But how did you ever find your way to Bierce's Cove?" he was
curious to know. "Nobody ever dreams of it from the road."

"So that's its name?" Saxon said.

"It's the name we gave it. One of our crowd camped here one
summer, and we named it after him. I'll take a cup of that
coffee, if you don't mind."--This to Saxon. "And then I'll show
your husband around. We're pretty proud of this cove. Nobody ever
comes here but ourselves."

"You didn't get all that muscle from bein' chased by McManus,"
Billy observed over the coffee.

"Massage under tension," was the cryptic reply.

"Yes," Billy said, pondering vacantly. "Do you eat it with a
spoon?"

Hall laughed.

"I'll show you. Take any muscle you want, tense it, then
manipulate it with your fingers, so, and so."

"An' that done all that'" Billy asked skeptically.

"All that!" the other scorned proudly. "For one muscle you see,
there's five tucked away but under command. Touch your finger to
any part of me and see."

Billy complied, touching the right breast.

"You know something about anatomy, picking a muscleless spot,"
scolded Hall.

Billy grinned triumphantly, then, to his amazement, saw a muscle
grow up under his finger. He prodded it, and found it hard and
honest.

"Massage under tension!" Hall exulted. "Go on--anywhere you
want."

And anywhere and everywhere Billy touched, muscles large and
small rose up, quivered, and sank down, till the whole body was a
ripple of willed quick.

"Never saw anything like it," Billy marveled at the end; "an'
I've seen some few good men stripped in my time. Why, you're all
living silk."

"Massage under tension did it, my friend. The doctors gave me up.
My friends called me the sick rat, and the mangy poet, and all
that. Then I quit the city, came down to Carmel, and went in for
the open air--and massage under tension."

"Jim Hazard didn't get his muscles that way," Billy challenged.

"Certainly not, the lucky skunk; he was born with them. Mine's
made. That's the difference. I'm a work of art. He's a cave bear.
Come along. I'll show you around now. You'd better get your
clothes off. Keep on only your shoes and pants, unless you've got
a pair of trunks."

"My mother was a poet," Saxon said, while Billy was getting
himself ready in the thicket. She had noted Hall's reference to
himself.

He seemed incurious, and she ventured further.

"Some of it was printed."

"What was her name?" he asked idly.

"Dayelle Wiley Brown. She wrote: 'The Viking's Quest';
'Days of Gold'; 'Constancy'; 'The Caballero'; 'Graves at
Little Meadow'; and a lot more. Ten of them are in 'The
Story of the Files.'"

"I've the book at home," he remarked, for the first time showing
real interest. "She was a pioneer, of course--before my time.
I'll look her up when I get back to the house. My people were
pioneers. They came by Panama, in the Fifties, from Long Island.
My father was a doctor, but he went into business in San
Francisco and robbed his fellow men out of enough to keep me and
the rest of a large family going ever since.--Say, where are you
and your husband bound?"

When Saxon had told him of their attempt to get away from Oakland
and of their quest for land, he sympathized with the first and
shook his head over the second.

"It's beautiful down beyond the Sur," he told her. "I've been all
over those redwood canyons, and the place is alive with game. The
government land is there, too. But you'd be foolish to settle.
It's too remote. And it isn't good farming land, except in
patches in the canyons. I know a Mexican there who is wild to
sell his five hundred acres for fifteen hundred dollars. Three
dollars an acre! And what does that mean? That it isn't worth
more. That it isn't worth so much; because he can find no takers.
Land, you know, is worth what they buy and sell it for."

Billy, emerging from the thicket, only in shoes and in pants
rolled to the knees, put an end to the conversation; and Saxon
watched the two men, physically so dissimilar, climb the rocks
and start out the south side of the cove. At first her eyes
followed them lazily, but soon she grew interested and
worried. Hall was leading Billy up what seemed a perpendicular
wall in order to gain the backbone of the rock. Billy went
slowly, displaying extreme caution; but twice she saw him slip,
the weather-eaten stone crumbling away in his hand and rattling
beneath him into the cove. When Hall reached the top, a hundred
feet above the sea, she saw him stand upright and sway easily on
the knife-edge which she knew fell away as abruptly on the other
side. Billy, once on top, contented himself with crouching on
hands and knees. The leader went on, upright, walking as easily
as on a level floor. Billy abandoned the hands and knees
position, but crouched closely and often helped himself with his
hands.

The knife-edge backbone was deeply serrated, and into one of the
notches both men disappeared. Saxon could not keep down her
anxiety, and climbed out on the north side of the cove, which was
less rugged and far less difficult to travel. Even so, the
unaccustomed height, the crumbling surface, and the fierce
buffets of the wind tried her nerve. Soon she was opposite the
men. They had leaped a narrow chasm and were scaling another
tooth. Already Billy was going more nimbly, but his leader often
paused and waited for him. The way grew severer, and several
times the clefts they essayed extended down to the ocean level
and spouted spray from the growling breakers that burst through.
At other times, standing erect, they would fall forward across
deep and narrow clefts until their palms met the opposing side;
then, clinging with their fingers, their bodies would be drawn
across and up.

Near the end, Hall and Billy went out of sight over the south
side of the backbone, and when Saxon saw them again they were
rounding the extreme point of rock and coming back on the cove
side. Here the way seemed barred. A wide fissure, with hopelessly
vertical sides, yawned skywards from a foam-white vortex where
the mad waters shot their level a dozen feet upward and dropped
it as abruptly to the black depths of battered rock and
writhing weed.

Clinging precariously, the men descended their side till the
spray was flying about them. Here they paused. Saxon could see
Hall pointing down across the fissure and imagined he was showing
some curious thing to Billy. She was not prepared for what
followed. The surf-level sucked and sank away, and across and
down Hall jumped to a narrow foothold where the wash had roared
yards deep the moment before. Without pause, as the returning sea
rushed up, he was around the sharp corner and clawing upward hand
and foot to escape being caught. Billy was now left alone. He
could not even see Hall, much less be further advised by him, and
so tensely did Saxon watch, that the pain in her finger-tips,
crushed to the rock by which she held, warned her to relax. Billy
waited his chance, twice made tentative preparations to leap and
sank back, then leaped across and down to the momentarily exposed
foothold, doubled the corner, and as he clawed up to join Hall
was washed to the waist but not torn away.

Saxon did not breathe easily till they rejoined her at the fire.
One glance at Billy told her that he was exceedingly disgusted
with himself.

"You'll do, for a beginner," Hall cried, slapping him jovially on
the bare shoulder. "That climb is a stunt of mine. Many's the
brave lad that's started with me and broken down before we were
half way out. I've had a dozen balk at that big jump. Only the
athletes make it."

"I ain't ashamed of admittin' I was scairt," Billy growled.
"You're a regular goat, an' you sure got my goat half a dozen
times. But I'm mad now. It's mostly trainin', an' I'm goin' to
camp right here an' train till I can challenge you to a race out
an' around an' back to the beach."

"Done," said Hall, putting out his hand in ratification. "And
some time, when we get together in San Francisco, I'll lead you
up against Bierce--the one this cove is named after. His favorite
stunt, when he isn't collecting rattlesnakes, is to wait for a
forty-mile-an-hour breeze, and then get up and walk on the
parapet of a skyscraper--on the lee side, mind you, so that if he
blows off there's nothing to fetch him up but the street. He
sprang that on me once."

"Did you do it!" Billy asked eagerly.

"I wouldn't have if I hadn't been on. I'd been practicing it
secretly for a week. And I got twenty dollars out of him on the
bet."

The tide was now low enough for mussel gathering and Saxon
accompanied the men out the north wall. Hall had several sacks to
fill. A rig was coming for him in the afternoon, he explained, to
cart the mussels back to Carmel. When the sacks were full they
ventured further among the rock crevices and were rewarded with
three abalones, among the shells of which Saxon found one coveted
blister-pearl. Hall initiated them into the mysteries of pounding
and preparing the abalone meat for cooking.

By this time it seemed to Saxon that they had known him a long
time. It reminded her of the old times when Bert had been with
them, singing his songs or ranting about the last of the
Mohicans.

"Now, listen; I'm going to teach you something," Hall commanded,
a large round rock poised in his hand above the abalone meat.
"You must never, never pound abalone without singing this song.
Nor must you sing this song at any other time. It would be the
rankest sacrilege. Abalone is the food of the gods. Its
preparation is a religious function. Now listen, and follow, and
remember that it is a very solemn occasion."

The stone came down with a thump on the white meat, and
thereafter arose and fell in a sort of tom-tom accompaniment to
the poet's song:

"Oh! some folks boast of quail on toast,
Because they think it's tony;
But I'm content to owe my rent
And live on abalone.

"Oh! Mission Point's a friendly joint
Where every crab's a crony,
And true and kind you'll ever find
The clinging abalone.

"He wanders free beside the sea
Where 'er the coast is stony;
He flaps his wings and madly sings--
The plaintive abalone.

"Some stick to biz, some flirt with Liz
Down on the sands of Coney;
But we, by hell, stay in Carmel,
And whang the abalone."

He paused with his mouth open and stone upraised. There was a
rattle of wheels and a voice calling from above where the sacks
of mussels had been carried. He brought the stone down with a
final thump and stood up.

"There's a thousand more verses like those," he said. "Sorry I
hadn't time to teach you them." He held out his hand, palm
downward. "And now, children, bless you, you are now members of
the clan of Abalone Eaters, and I solemnly enjoin you, never, no
matter what the circumstances, pound abalone meat without
chanting the sacred words I have revealed unto you."

"But we can't remember the words from only one hearing," Saxon
expostulated.

"That shall be attended to. Next Sunday the Tribe of Abalone
Eaters will descend upon you here in Bierce's Cove, and you will
be able to see the rites, the writers and writeresses, down even
to the Iron Man with the basilisk eyes, vulgarly known as the
King of the Sacerdotal Lizards."

"Will Jim Hazard come?" Billy called, as Hall disappeared into
the thicket.

"He will certainly come. Is he not the Cave-Bear Pot-Walloper and
Gridironer, the most fearsome, and, next to me, the most exalted,
of all the Abalone Eaters?"

Saxon and Billy could only look at each other till they heard the
wheels rattle away.

"Well, I'll be doggoned," Billy let out. "He's some boy, that.
Nothing stuck up about him. Just like Jim Hazard, comes along and
makes himself at home, you're as good as he is an' he's as good
as you, an' we're all friends together, just like that, right off
the bat."

"He's old stock, too," Saxon said. "He told me while you were
undressing. His folks came by Panama before the railroad was
built, and from what he said I guess he's got plenty of money."

"He sure don't act like it."

"And isn't he full of fun!" Saxon cried.

"A regular josher. An' HIM!--a POET!"

"Oh, I don't know, Billy. I've heard that plenty of poets are
odd."

"That's right, come to think of it. There's Joaquin Miller, lives
out in the hills back of Fruitvale. He's certainly odd. It's
right near his place where I proposed to you. Just the same I
thought poets wore whiskers and eyeglasses, an' never tripped up
foot-racers at Sunday picnics, nor run around with as few clothes
on as the law allows, gatherin' mussels an' climbin' like goats."

That night, under the blankets, Saxon lay awake, looking at the
stars, pleasuring in the balmy thicket-scents, and listening to
the dull rumble of the outer surf and the whispering ripples on
the sheltered beach a few feet away. Billy stirred, and she knew
he was not yet asleep.

"Glad you left Oakland, Billy?" she snuggled.

"Huh!" came his answer. "Is a clam happy?"



CHAPTER VIII

Every half tide Billy raced out the south wall over the dangerous
course he and Hall had traveled, and each trial found him doing
it in faster time.

"Wait till Sunday," he said to Saxon. "I'll give that poet a run
for his money. Why, they ain't a place that bothers me now. I've
got the head confidence. I run where I went on hands an' knees. I
figured it out this way: Suppose you had a foot to fall on each
side, an' it was soft hay. They'd be nothing to stop you. You
wouldn't fall. You'd go like a streak. Then it's just the same if
it's a mile down on each side. That ain't your concern. Your
concern is to stay on top and go like a streak. An', d'ye know,
Saxon, when I went at it that way it never bothered me at all.
Wait till he comes with his crowd Sunday. I'm ready for him."

"I wonder what the crowd will be like," Saxon speculated.

"Like him, of course. Birds of a feather flock together. They
won't be stuck up, any of them, you'll see."

Hall had sent out fish-lines and a swimming suit by a Mexican
cowboy bound south to his ranch, and from the latter they learned
much of the government land and how to get it. The week flew by;
each day Saxon sighed a farewell of happiness to the sun; each
morning they greeted its return with laughter of joy in that
another happy day had begun. They made no plans, but fished,
gathered mussels and abalones, and climbed among the rocks as the
moment moved them. The abalone meat they pounded religiously to a
verse of doggerel improvised by Saxon. Billy prospered. Saxon had
never seen him at so keen a pitch of health. As for herself, she
scarcely needed the little hand-mirror to know that never, since
she was a young girl, had there been such color in her cheeks,
such spontaneity of vivacity.

"It's the first time in my life I ever had real play," Billy
said. "An' you an' me never played at all all the time we was
married. This beats bein' any kind of a millionaire."

"No seven o'clock whistle," Saxon exulted. "I'd lie abed in the
mornings on purpose, only everything is too good not to be up.
And now you just play at chopping some firewood and catching a
nice big perch, Man Friday, if you expect to get any dinner."

Billy got up, hatchet in hand, from where he had been lying
prone, digging holes in the sand with his bare toes.

"But it ain't goin' to last," he said, with a deep sigh of
regret. "The rains'll come any time now. The good weather's
hangin' on something wonderful."

On Saturday morning, returning from his run out the south wall,
he missed Saxon. After helloing for her without result, he
climbed to the road. Half a mile away, he saw her astride an
unsaddled, unbridled horse that moved unwillingly, at a slow
walk, across the pasture.

"Lucky for you it was an old mare that had been used to
ridin'--see them saddle marks," he grumbled, when she at last
drew to a halt beside him and allowed him to help her down.

"Oh, Billy," she sparkled, "I was never on a horse before. It was
glorious! I felt so helpless, too, and so brave."

"I'm proud of you, just the same," he said, in more grumbling
tones than before. " 'Tain't every married women'd tackle a
strange horse that way, especially if she'd never ben on one.
An' I ain't forgot that you're goin' to have a saddle animal all
to yourself some day--a regular Joe dandy."

The Abalone Eaters, in two rigs and on a number of horses,
descended in force on Bierce's Cove. There were half a score of
men and almost as many women. All were young, between the ages of
twenty-five and forty, and all seemed good friends. Most of them
were married. They arrived in a roar of good spirits, tripping
one another down the slippery trail and engulfing Saxon and Billy
in a comradeship as artless and warm as the sunshine itself.
Saxon was appropriated by the girls--she could not realize them
women; and they made much of her, praising her camping and
traveling equipment and insisting on hearing some of her tale.
They were experienced campers themselves, as she quickly
discovered when she saw the pots and pans and clothes-boilers for
the mussels which they had brought.

In the meantime Billy and the men had undressed and scattered out
after mussels and abalones. The girls lighted on Saxon's ukulele
and nothing would do but she must play and sing. Several of them
had been to Honolulu, and knew the instrument, confirming
Mercedes' definition of ukulele as "jumping flea." Also, they
knew Hawaiian songs she had learned from Mercedes, and soon, to
her accompaniment, all were singing: "Aloha Oe," "Honolulu
Tomboy," and "Sweet Lei Lehua." Saxon was genuinely shocked when
some of them, even the more matronly, danced hulas on the sand.

When the men returned, burdened with sacks of shellfish, Mark
Hall, as high priest, commanded the due and solemn rite of the
tribe. At a wave of his hand, the many poised stones came down in
unison on the white meat, and all voices were uplifted in the
Hymn to the Abalone. Old verses all sang, ocasionally some one
sang a fresh verse alone, whereupon it was repeated in chorus.
Billy betrayed Saxon by begging her in an undertone to sing the
verse she had made, and her pretty voice was timidly raised in:

"We sit around and gaily pound,
And bear no acrimony
Because our ob--ject is a gob
Of sizzling abalone."

"Great!" cried the poet, who had winced at ob--ject. "She speaks
the language of the tribe! Come on, children--now!"

And all chanted Saxon's lines. Then Jim Hazard had a new verse,
and one of the girls, and the Iron Man with the basilisk eyes of
greenish-gray, whom Saxon recognized from Hall's description. To
her it seemed he had the face of a priest.

"Oh! some like ham and some like lamb
And some like macaroni;
But bring me in a pail of gin
And a tub of abalone.

"Oh! some drink rain and some champagne
Or brandy by the pony;
But I will try a little rye
With a dash of abalone.

"Some live on hope and some on dope
And some on alimony.
But our tom-cat, he lives on fat
And tender abalone."

A black-haired, black-eyed man with the roguish face of a satyr,
who, Saxon learned, was an artist who sold his paintings at five
hundred apiece, brought on himself universa1 execration and
acclamation by singing:

"The more we take, the more they make
In deep sea matrimony;
Race suicide cannot betide
The fertile abalone."

And so it went, verses new and old, verses without end, all in
glorification of the succulent shellfish of Carmel. Saxon's
enjoyment was keen, almost ecstatic, and she had diffculty in
convincing herself of the reality of it all. It seemed like some
fairy tale or book story come true. Again, it seemed more like a
stage, and these the actors, she and Billy having blundered into
the scene in some incomprehensible way. Much of wit she sensed
which she did not understand. Much she did understand. And she
was aware that brains were playing as she had never seen brains
play before. The puritan streak in her training was astonished
and shocked by some of the broadness; but she refused to sit in
judgment. They SEEMED good, these light-hearted young people;
they certainly were not rough or gross as were many of the crowds
she had been with on Sunday picnics. None of the men got drunk,
although there were cocktails in vacuum bottles and red wine in a
huge demijohn.

What impressed Saxon most was their excessive jollity, their
childlike joy, and the childlike things they did. This effect was
heightened by the fact that they were novelists and painters,
poets and critics, sculptors and musicians. One man, with a
refined and delicate face--a dramatic critic on a great San
Francisco daily, she was told--introduced a feat which all the
men tried and failed at most ludicrously. On the beach, at
regular intervals, planks were placed as obstacles. Then the
dramatic critic, on all fours, galloped along the sand for all
the world like a horse, and for all the world like a horse taking
hurdles he jumped the planks to the end of the course.

Quoits had been brought along, and for a while these were pitched
with zest. Then jumping was started, and game slid into game.
Billy took part in everything, but did not win first place as
often as he had expected. An English writer beat him a dozen feet
at tossing the caber. Jim Hazard beat him in putting the heavy
"rock." Mark Hall out-jumped him standing and running. But at the
standing high back-jump Billy did come first. Despite the
handicap of his weight, this victory was due to his splendid back
and abdominal lifting muscles. Immediately after this, however,
he was brought to grief by Mark Hall's sister, a strapping young
amazon in cross-saddle riding costume, who three times tumbled
him ignominiously heels over head in a bout of Indian wrestling.

"You're easy," jeered the Iron Man, whose name they had learned
was Pete Bideaux. "I can put you down myself,
catch-as-catch-can."

Billy accepted the challenge, and found in all truth that the
other was rightly nicknamed. In the training camps Billy had
sparred and clinched with giant champions like Jim Jeffries and
Jack Johnson, and met the weight of their strength, but never had
he encountered strength like this of the Iron Man. Do what he
could, Billy was powerless, and twice his shoulders were ground
into the sand in defeat.

"You'll get a chance back at him," Hazard whispered to Billy, off
at one side. "I've brought the gloves along. Of course, you had
no chance with him at his own game. He's wrestled in the music
halls in London with Hackenschmidt. Now you keep quiet, and we'll
lead up to it in a casual sort of way. He doesn't know about
you."

Soon, the Englishman who had tossed the caber was sparring with
the dramatic critic, Hazard and Hall boxed in fantastic
burlesque, then, gloves in hand, looked for the next
appropriately matched couple. The choice of Bideaux and Billy was
obvious.

"He's liable to get nasty if he's hurt," Hazard warned Billy, as
he tied on the gloves for him. "He's old American French, and
he's got a devil of a temper. But just keep your head and tap
him--whatever you do, keep tapping him."

"Easy sparring now"; "No roughhouse, Bideaux"; "Just light
tapping, you know," were admonitions variously addressed to the
Iron Man.

"Hold on a second," he said to Billy, dropping his hands. "When I
get rapped I do get a bit hot. But don't mind me. I can't help
it, you know. It's only for the moment, and I don't mean it."

Saxon felt very nervous, visions of Billy's bloody fights and all
the scabs he had slugged rising in her brain; but she had never
seen her husband box, and but few seconds were required to put
her at ease. The Iron Man had no chance. Billy was too completely
the master, guarding every blow, himself continually and almost
at will tapping the other's face and body. There was no weight in
Billy's blows, only a light and snappy tingle; but their
incessant iteration told on the Iron Man's temper. In vain the
onlookers warned him to go easy. His face purpled with anger, and
his blows became savage. But Billy went on, tap, tap, tap,
calmly, gently, imperturbably. The Iron Man lost control, and
rushed and plunged, delivering great swings and upper-cuts of
man-killing quality. Billy ducked, side-stepped, blocked,
stalled, and escaped all damage. In the clinches, which were
unavoidable, he locked the Iron Man's arms, and in the clinches
the Iron Man invariably laughed and apologized, only to lose his
head with the first tap the instant they separated and be more
infuriated than ever.

And when it was over and Billy's identity had been divulged, the
Iron Man accepted the joke on himself with the best of humor. It
had been a splendid exhibition on Billy's part. His mastery of
the sport, coupled with his self-control, had most favorably
impressed the crowd, and Saxon, very proud of her man boy, could
not but see the admiration all had for him.

Nor did she prove in any way a social failure. When the tired and
sweating players lay down in the dry sand to cool off, she was
persuaded into accompanying their nonsense songs with the
ukulele. Nor was it long, catching their spirit, ere she was
singing to them and teaching them quaint songs of early days
which she had herself learned as a little girl from Cady--Cady,
the saloonkeeper, pioneer, and ax-cavalryman, who had been a
bull-whacker on the Salt Intake Trail in the days before the
railroad.

One song which became an immediate favorite was:

"Oh! times on Bitter Creek, they never can be beat,
Root hog or die is on every wagon sheet;
The sand within your throat, the dust within your eye,
Bend your back and stand it--root hog or die."

After the dozen verses of "Root Hog or Die," Mark Hall claimed
to be especially infatuated with:

"Obadier, he dreampt a dream,
Dreampt he was drivin' a ten-mule team,
But when he woke he heaved a sigh,
The lead-mule kicked e-o-wt the swing-mule's eye."

It was Mark Hall who brought up the matter of Billy's challenge
to race out the south wall of the cove, though he referred to the
test as lying somewhere in the future. Billy surprised him by
saying he was ready at any time. Forthwith the crowd clamored for
the race. Hall offered to bet on himself, but there were no
takers. He offered two to one to Jim Hazard, who shook his head
and said he would accept three to one as a sporting proposition.
Billy heard and gritted his teeth.

"I'll take you for five dollars," he said to Hall, "but not at
those odds. I'll back myself even."

"It isn't your money I want; it's Hazard's," Hall demurred.
"Though I'll give either of you three to one."

"Even or nothing," Billy held out obstinately.

Hall finally closed both bets--even with Billy, and three to one
with Hazard.

The path along the knife-edge was so narorw that it was
impossible for runners to pass each other, so it was arranged to
time the men, Hall to go first and Billy to follow after an
interval of half a minute.

Hall toed the mark and at the word was off with the form of a
sprinter. Saxon's heart sank. She knew Billy had never crossed
the stretch of sand at that speed. Billy darted forward thirty
seconds later, and reached the foot of the rock when Hall was
half way up. When both were on top and racing from notch to
notch, the Iron Man announced that they had scaled the wall in
the same time to a second.

"My money still looks good," Hazard remarked, "though I hope
neither of them breaks a neck. I wouldn't take that run that way
for all the gold that would fill the cove."

"But you'll take bigger chances swimming in a storm on Carmel
Beach," his wife chided.

"Oh, I don't know," he retorted. "You haven't so far to fall when
swimming."

Billy and Hall had disappeared and were making the circle around
the end. Those on the beach were certain that the poet had gained
in the dizzy spurts of flight along the knife-edge. Even Hazard
admitted it.

"What price for my money now?" he cried excitedly, dancing up and
down.

Hall had reappeared, the great jump accomplished, and was running
shoreward. But there was no gap. Billy was on his heels, and on
his heels he stayed, in to shore, down the wall, and to the mark
on the beach. Billy had won by half a minute.

"Only by the watch," he panted. "Hall was over half a minute
ahead of me out to the end. I'm not slower than I thought, but
he's faster. He's a wooz of a sprinter. He could beat me ten
times outa ten, except for accident. He was hung up at the jump
by a big sea. That's where I caught 'm. I jumped right after 'm
on the same sea, then he set the pace home, and all I had to do
was take it."

"That's all right," said Hall. "You did better than beat me.
That's the first time in the history of Bierce's Cove that two
men made that jump on the same sea. And all the risk was yours,
coming last."

"It was a fluke," Billy insisted.

And at that point Saxon settled the dispute of modesty and raised
a general laugh by rippling chords on the ukulele and parodying
an old hymn in negro minstrel fashion:

"De Lawd move in er mischievous way
His blunders to perform."

In the afternoon Jim Hazard and Hall dived into the breakers and
swam to the outlying rocks, routing the protesting sea-lions and
taking possession of their surf-battered stronghold. Billy
followed the swimmers with his eyes, yearning after them so
undisguisedly that Mrs. Hazard said to him:

"Why don't you stop in Carmel this winter? Jim will teach you all
he knows about the surf. And he's wild to box with you. He works
long hours at his desk, and he really needs exercise."


Not until sunset did the merry crowd carry their pots and pans
and trove of mussels up to the road and depart. Saxon and Billy
watched them disappear, on horses and behind horses, over the top
of the first hill, and then descended hand in hand through the
thicket to the camp. Billy threw himself on the sand and
stretched out.

"I don't know when I've been so tired," he yawned. "An' there's
one thing sure: I never had such a day. It's worth livin'twenty
years for an' then some."

He reached out his hand to Saxon, who lay beside him.

"And, oh, I was so proud of you, Billy," she said. "I never saw
you box before. I didn't know it was like that. The Iron Man was
at your mercy all the time, and you kept it from being violent or
terrible. Everybody could look on and enjoy--and they did, too."

"Huh, I want to say you was goin' some yourself. They just took
to you. Why, honest to God, Saxon, in the singin' you was the
whole show, along with the ukulele. All the women liked you, too,
an' that's what counts."

It was their first social triumph, and the taste of it was sweet:

"Mr. Hall said he'd looked up the 'Story of the Files,'" Saxon
recounted. "And he said mother was a true poet. He said it was
astonishing the fine stock that had crossed the Plains. He told
me a lot about those times and the people I didn't know. And he's
read all about the fight at Little Meadow. He says he's got it in
a book at home, and if we come back to Carmel he'll show it to
me."

"He wants us to come back all right. D'ye know what he said to
me, Saxon t He gave me a letter to some guy that's down on the
government land--some poet that's holdin' down a quarter of a
section--so we'll be able to stop there, which'll come in handy
if the big rains catch us. An'--Oh! that's what I was drivin' at.
He said he had a little shack he lived in while the house was
buildin'. The Iron Man's livin' in it now, but he's goin' away to
some Catholic college to study to be a priest, an' Hall said the
shack'd be ours as long as we wanted to use it. An' he said I
could do what the Iron Man was doin' to make a livin'. Hall was
kind of bashful when he was offerin' me work. Said it'd be only
odd jobs, but that we'd make out. I could help'm plant potatoes,
he said; an' he got half savage when he said I couldn't chop
wood. That was his job, he said; an' you could see he was
actually jealous over it."

"And Mrs. Hall said just about the same to me, Billy. Carmel
wouldn't be so bad to pass the rainy season in. And then, too,
you could go swimming with Mr. Hazard."

"Seems as if we could settle down wherever we've a mind to,"
Billy assented. "Carmel's the third place now that's offered.
Well, after this, no man need be afraid of makin' a go in the
country."

"No good man," Saxon corrected.

"I guess you're right." Billy thought for a moment. "Just the
same a dub, too, has a better chance in the country than in the
city."

"Who'd have ever thought that such fine people existed?" Saxon
pondered. "It's just wonderful, when you come to think of it."

"It's only what you'd expect from a rich poet that'd trip up a
foot-racer at an Irish picnic," Billy exposited.

"The only crowd such a guy'd run with would be like himself, or
he'd make a crowd that was. I wouldn't wonder that he'd make
this crowd. Say, he's got some sister, if anybody'd ride up on a
sea-lion an' ask you. She's got that Indian wrestlin' down pat,
an' she's built for it. An' say, ain't his wife a beaut?"

A little longer they lay in the warm sand. It was Billy who broke
the silence, and what he said seemed to proceed out of profound
meditation.

"Say, Saxon, d'ye know I don't care if I never see movie pictures
again."



CHAPTER IX

Saxon and Billy were gone weeks on the trip south, but in the end
they came back to Carmel. They had stopped with Hafler, the poets
in the Marble House, which he had built with his own hands. This
queer dwelling was all in one room, built almost entirely of
white marble. Hailer cooked, as over a campfire, in the huge
marble fireplace, which he used in all ways as a kitchen. There
were divers shelves of books, and the massive furniture he had
made from redwood, as he had made the shakes for the roof. A
blanket, stretched across a corner, gave Saxon privacy. The poet
was on the verge of departing for San Francisco and New York, but
remained a day over with them to explain the country and run over
the government land with Billy. Saxon had wanted to go along that
morning, but Hafler scornfully rejected her, telling her that her
legs were too short. That night, when the men returned, Billy was
played out to exhaustion. He frankly acknowledged that Hafler had
walked him into the ground, and that his tongue had been hanging
out from the first hour. Hafler estimated that they had covered
fifty-five miles.

"But such miles!" Billy enlarged. "Half the time up or down, an'
'most all the time without trails. An' such a pace. He was dead
right about your short legs, Saxon. You wouldn't a-lasted the
first mile. An' such country! We ain't seen anything like it
yet."

Hafler left the next day to catch the train at Monterey. He gave
them the freedom of the Marble House, and told them to stay the
whole winter if they wanted. Billy elected to loaf around and
rest up that day. He was stiff and sore. Moreover, he was stunned
by the exhibition of walking prowess on the part of the poet.

"Everybody can do something top-notch down in this country," he
marveled. "Now take that Hafler. He's a bigger man than me, an' a
heavier. An' weight's against walkin', too. But not with him.
He's done eighty miles inside twenty-four hours, he told me, an'
once a hundred an' seventy in three days. Why, he made a show
outa me. I felt ashamed as a little kid."

"Remember, Billy," Saxon soothed him, "every man to his own game.
And down here you're a top-notcher at your own game. There isn't
one you're not the master of with the gloves."

"I guess that's right," he conceded. "But just the same it goes
against the grain to be walked off my legs by a poet--by a poet,
mind you."

They spent days in going over the government land, and in the end
reluctantly decided against taking it up. The redwood canyons and
great cliffs of the Santa Lucia Mountains fascinated Saxon; but
she remembered what Hafler had told her of the summer fogs which
hid the sun sometimes for a week or two at a time, and which
lingered for months. Then, too, there was no access to market.
It was many miles to where the nearest wagon road began, at
Post's, and from there on, past Point Sur to Carmel, it was a
weary and perilous way. Billy, with his teamster judgment,
admitted that for heavy hauling it was anything but a picnic.
There was the quarry of perfect marble on Hafler's quarter
section. He had said that it would be worth a fortune if near a
railroad; but, as it was, he'd make them a present of it if they
wanted it.

Billy visioned the grassy slopes pastured with his horses and
cattle, and found it hard to turn his back; but he listened with
a willing ear to Saxon's argument in favor of a farm-home like
the one they had seen in the moving pictures in Oakland. Yes, he
agreed, what they wanted was an all-around farm, and an
all-around farm they would have if they hiked forty years to find
it.

"But it must have redwoods on it," Saxon hastened to stipulate.
"I've fallen in love with them. And we can get along without fog.
And there must be good wagon-roads, and a railroad not more than
a thousand miles away."

Heavy winter rains held them prisoners for two weeks in the
Marble House. Saxon browsed among Hafler's books, though most of
them were depressingly beyond her, while Billy hunted with
Hafler's guns. But he was a poor shot and a worse hunter. His
only success was with rabbits, which he managed to kill on
occasions when they stood still. With the rifle he got nothing,
although he fired at half a dozen different deer, and, once, at a
huge cat-creature with a long tail which he was certain was a
mountain lion. Despite the way he grumbled at himself, Saxon
could see the keen joy he was taking. This belated arousal of
the hunting instinct seemed to make almost another man of him. He
was out early and late, compassing prodigious climbs and
tramps--once reaching as far as the gold mines Tom had spoken of,
and being away two days.

"Talk about pluggin' away at a job in the city, an' goin' to
movie' pictures and Sunday picnics for amusement!" he would burst
out. "I can't see what was eatin' me that I ever put up with such
truck. Here's where I oughta ben all the time, or some place
like it."

He was filled with this new mode of life, and was continually
recalling old hunting tales of his father and telling them to
Saxon.

"Say, I don't get stiffened any more after an all-day tramp," he
exulted. "I'm broke in. An' some day, if I meet up with that
Hafler, I'll challenge'm to a tramp that'll break his heart."

"Foolish boy, always wanting to play everybody's game and beat
them at it," Saxon laughed delightedly.

"Aw, I guess you're right," he growled. "Hafler can always
out-walk me. He's made that way. But some day, just the same, if
I ever see 'm again, I'll invite 'm to put on the gloves....
though I won't be mean enough to make 'm as sore as he made me."

After they left Post's on the way back to Carmel, the condition
of the road proved the wisdom of their rejection of the
government land. They passed a rancher's wagon overturned, a
second wagon with a broken axle, and the stage a hundred yards
down the mountainside, where it had fallen, passengers, horses,
road, and all.

"I guess they just about quit tryin' to use this road in the
winter," Billy said. "It's horse-killin' an' man-killin', an' I
can just see 'm freightin' that marble out over it I don't
think."

Settling down at Carmel was an easy matter. The Iron Man had
already departed to his Catholic college, and the "shack" turned
out to be a three-roomed house comfortably furnished for
housekeeping. Hall put Billy to work on the potato patch--a
matter of three acres which the poet farmed erratically to the
huge delight of his crowd. He planted at all seasons, and it was
accepted by the community that what did not rot in the ground was
evenly divided between the gophers and trespassing cows. A plow
was borrowed, a team of horses hired, and Billy took hold. Also
he built a fence around the patch, and after that was set to
staining the shingled roof of the bungalow. Hall climbed to the
ridge-pole to repeat his warning that Billy must keep away from
his wood-pile. One morning Hall came over and watched Billy
chopping wood for Saxon. The poet looked on covetously as long as
he could restrain himself.

"It's plain you don't know how to use an axe," he sneered. "Here,
let me show you."

He worked away for an hour, all the while delivering an
exposition on the art of chopping wood.

"Here," Billy expostulated at last, taking hold of the axe. "I'll
have to chop a cord of yours now in order to make this up to
you."

Hall surrendered the axe reluctantly.

"Don't let me catch you around my wood-pile, that's all, " he
threatened. "My wood-pile is my castle, and you've got to
understand that."

From a financial standpoint, Saxon and Billy were putting aside
much money. They paid no rent, their simple living was cheap, and
Billy had all the work he cared to accept. The various members of
the crowd seemed in a conspiracy to keep him busy. It was all odd
jobs, but he preferred it so, for it enabled him to suit his time
to Jim Hazard's. Each day they boxed and took a long swim through
the surf. When Hazard finished his morning's writing, he would
whoop through the pines to Billy, who dropped whatever work he
was doing. After the swim, they would take a fresh shower at
Hazard's house, rub each other down in training camp style, and
be ready for the noon meal. In the afternoon Hazard returned to
his desk, and Billy to his outdoor work, although, still later,
they often met for a few miles' run over the hills. Training was
a matter of habit to both men. Hazard, when he had finished with
seven years of football, knowing the dire death that awaits the
big-muscled athlete who ceases training abruptly, had been
compelled to keep it up. Not only was it a necessity, but he had
grown to like it. Billy also liked it, for he took great delight
in the silk of his body.

Often, in the early morning, gun in hand, he was off with Mark
Hall, who taught him to shoot and hunt. Hall had dragged a
shotgun around from the days when he wore knee pants, and his
keen observing eyes and knowledge of the habits of wild life were
a revelation to Billy. This part of the country was too settled
for large game, but Billy kept Saxon supplied with squirrels and
quail, cottontails and jackrabbits, snipe and wild ducks. And
they learned to eat roasted mallard and canvasback in the
California style of sixteen minutes in a hot oven. As he became
expert with shotgun and rifle, he began to regret the deer and
the mountain lion he had missed down below the Sur; and to
the requirements of the farm he and Saxon sought he added plenty
of game.

But it was not all play in Carmel. That portion of the community
which Saxon and Billy came to know, "the crowd," was
hard-working. Some worked regularly, in the morning or late at
night. Others worked spasmodically, like the wild Irish
playwright, who would shut himself up for a week at a time, then
emerge, pale and drawn, to play like a madman against the time of
his next retirement. The pale and youthful father of a family,
with the face of Shelley, who wrote vaudeville turns for a living
and blank verse tragedies and sonnet cycles for the despair of
managers and publishers, hid himself in a concrete cell with
three-foot walls, so piped, that, by turning a lever, the whole
structure spouted water upon the impending intruder. But in the
main, they respected each other's work-time. They drifted into
one another's houses as the spirit prompted, but if they found a
man at work they went their way. This obtained to all except Mark
Hall, who did not have to work for a living; and he climbed trees
to get away from popularity and compose in peace.

The crowd was unique in its democracy and solidarity. It had
little intercourse with the sober and conventional part of
Carmel. This section constituted the aristocracy of art and
letters, and was sneered at as bourgeois. In return, it looked
askance at the crowd with its rampant bohemianism. The taboo
extended to Billy and Saxon. Billy took up the attitude of the
clan and sought no work from the other camp. Nor was work offered
him.

Hall kept open house. The big living room, with its huge
fireplace, divans, shelves and tables of books and magazines, was
the center of things. Here, Billy and Saxon were expected to be,
and in truth found themselves to be, as much at home as anybody.
Here, when wordy discussions on all subjects under the sun were
not being waged, Billy played at cut-throat Pedro, horrible
fives, bridge, and pinochle. Saxon, a favorite of the young
women, sewed with them, teaching them pretties and being taught
in fair measure in return.

It was Billy, before they had been in Carmel a week, who said
shyly to Saxon:

"Say, you can't guess how I'm missin' all your nice things.
What's the matter with writin' Tom to express 'm down? When we
start trampin' again, we'll express 'm back."

Saxon wrote the letter, and all that day her heart was singing.
Her man was still her lover. And there were in his eyes all the
old lights which had been blotted out during the nightmare period
of the strike.

"Some pretty nifty skirts around here, but you've got 'em all
beat, or I'm no judge," he told her. And again: "Oh, I love you
to death anyway. But if them things ain't shipped down there'll
be a funeral."

Hall and his wife owned a pair of saddle horses which were kept
at the livery stable, and here Billy naturally gravitated. The
stable operated the stage and carried the mails between Carmel
and Monterey. Also, it rented out carriages and mountain wagons
that seated nine persons. With carriages and wagons a driver was
furnished The stable often found itself short a driver, and Billy
was quickly called upon. He became an extra man at the stable. He
received three dollars a day at such times, and drove many
parties around the Seventeen Mile Drive, up Carmel Valley, and
down the coast to the various points and beaches.

"But they're a pretty uppish sort, most of 'em," he said to
Saxon, referring to the persons he drove. "A1ways MISTER Roberts
this, an' MISTER Roberts that--all kinds of ceremony so as to
make me not forget they consider themselves better 'n me. You
see, I ain't exactly a servant, an' yet I ain't good enough for
them. I'm the driver--something half way between a hired man and
a chauffeur. Huh! When they eat they give me my lunch off to one
side, or afterward. No family party like with Hall an' HIS kind.
An' that crowd to-day, why, they just naturally didn't have no
lunch for me at all. After this, always, you make me up my own
lunch. I won't be be holdin' to 'em for nothin', the damned
geezers. An' you'd a-died to seen one of 'em try to give me a
tip. I didn't say nothin'. I just looked at 'm like I didn't see
'm, an' turned away casual-like after a moment, leavin' him as
embarrassed as hell."

Nevertheless, Billy enjoyed the driving, never more so than when
he held the reins, not of four plodding workhorses, but of four
fast driving animals, his foot on the powerful brake, and swung
around curves and along dizzy cliff-rims to a frightened chorus
of women passengers. And when it came to horse judgment and
treatment of sick and injured horses even the owner of the stable
yielded place to Billy.

"I could get a regular job there any time," he boasted quietly to
Saxon. "Why, the country's just sproutin' with jobs for any so-so
sort of a fellow. I bet anything, right now, if I said to the
boss that I'd take sixty dollars an' work regular, he'd jump for
me. He's hinted as much.--And, say! Are you onta the fact that
yours truly has learnt a new trade, Well he has. He could take a
job stage-drivin' anywheres. They drive six on some of the stages
up in Lake County. If we ever get there, I'll get thick with some
driver, just to get the reins of six in my hands. An' I'll have
you on the box beside me. Some goin' that! Some goin'!"

Billy took little interest in the many discussions waged in
Hall's big living room. "Wind-chewin'," was his term for it. To
him it was so much good time wasted that might be employed at a
game of Pedro, or going swimming, or wrestling in the sand.
Saxon, on the contrary, delighted in the logomachy, though little
enough she understood of it, following mainly by feeling, and
once in a while catching a high light.

But what she could never comprehend was the pessimism that so
often cropped up. The wild Irish playwright had terrible spells
of depression. Shelley, who wrote vaudeville turns in the
concrete cell, was a chronic pessimist. St. John, a young
magazine writer, was an anarchic disciple of Nietzsche. Masson, a
painter, held to a doctrine of eternal recurrence that was
petrifying. And Hall, usually so merry, could outfoot them all
when he once got started on the cosmic pathos of religion and the
gibbering anthropomorphisms of those who loved not to die. At
such times Saxon was oppressed by these sad children of art. It
was inconceivable that they, of all people, should be so forlorn.

One night Hall turned suddenly upon Billy, who had been following
dimly and who only comprehended that to them everything in life
was rotten and wrong.

"Here, you pagan, you, you stolid and flesh-fettered ox, you
monstrosity of over-weening and perennial health and joy, what do
you think of it?" Hall demanded.

"Oh, I've had my troubles," Billy answered, speaking in his
wonted slow way. "I've had my hard times, an' fought a losin'
strike, an' soaked my watch, an' ben unable to pay my rent or
buy grub, an' slugged scabs, an' ben slugged, and ben thrown
into jail for makin' a fool of myself. If I get you, I'd be a
whole lot better to be a swell hog fattenin' for market an'
nothin' worryin', than to be a guy sick to his stomach from not
savvyin' how the world is made or from wonderin' what's the good
of anything."

"That's good, that prize hog," the poet laughed. "Least
irritation, least effort--a compromise of Nirvana and life.
Least irritation, least effort, the ideal existence: a jellyfish
floating in a tideless, tepid, twilight sea."

"But you're missin' all the good things," Billy objected.

"Name them," came the challenge.

Billy was silent a moment. To him life seemed a large and
generous thing. He felt as if his arms ached from inability to
compass it all, and he began, haltingly at first, to put his
feeling into speech.

"If you'd ever stood up in the ring an' out-gamed an' out-fought
a man as good as yourself for twenty rounds, you'd get what I'm
drivin' at. Jim Hazard an' I get it when we swim out through the
surf an' laugh in the teeth of the biggest breakers that ever
pounded the beach, an' when we come out from the shower, rubbed
down and dressed, our skin an' muscles like silk, our bodies an'
brains all a-tinglin' like silk...."

He paused and gave up from sheer inability to express ideas that
were nebulous at best and that in reality were remembered
sensations.

"Silk of the body, can you beat it?" he concluded lamely, feeling
that he had failed to make his point, embarrassed by the circle
of listeners.

"We know all that," Hall retorted. "The lies of the flesh.
Afterward come rheumatism and diabetes. The wine of life is
heady, but all too quickly it turns to--"

"Uric acid," interpolated the wild Irish playwright.

"They's plenty more of the good things," Billy took up with a
sudden rush of words. "Good things all the way up from juicy
porterhouse and the kind of coffee Mrs. Hall makes to..." He
hesitated at what he was about to say, then took it at a plunge.
"To a woman you can love an' that loves you. Just take a look at
Saxon there with the ukulele in her lap. There's where I got the
jellyfish in the dishwater an' the prize hog skinned to death."

A shout of applause and great hand-clapping went up from the
girls, and Billy looked painfully uncomfortable.

"But suppose the silk goes out of your body till you creak like a
rusty wheelbarrow?" Hall pursued. "Suppose, just suppose, Saxon
went away with another man. What then?"

Billy considered a space.

"Then it'd be me for the dishwater an' the jellyfish, I guess."
He straightened up in his chair and threw back his shoulders
unconsciously as he ran a hand over his biceps and swelled it.
Then he took another look at Saxon. "But thank the Lord I still
got a wallop in both my arms an' a wife to fill 'em with love."

Again the girls applauded, and Mrs. Hall cried:

"Look at Saxon! She blushing! What have you to say for yourself?"

"That no woman could be happier," she stammered, "and no queen as
proud. And that--"

She completed the thought by strumming on the ukulele and
singing:

"De Lawd move in or mischievous way
His blunders to perform."

"I give you best," Hall grinned to Billy.

"Oh, I don't know," Billy disclaimed modestly. "You've read so
much I guess you know more about everything than I do."

"Oh! Oh!" "Traitor!" "Taking it all back!" the girls cried
variously.

Billy took heart of courage, reassured them with a slow smile,
and said:

"Just the same I'd sooner be myself than have book indigestion.
An' as for Saxon, why, one kiss of her lips is worth more'n all
the libraries in the world."



CHAPTER X

"There be hills and valleys, and rich land, and streams of clear
water, good wagon roads and a railroad not too far away, plenty
of sunshine, and cold enough at night to need blankets, and not
only pines but plenty of other kinds of trees, with open spaces
to pasture Billy's horses and cattle, and deer and rabbits for
him to shoot, and lots and lots of redwood trees, and . . . and .
. . well, and no fog," Saxon concluded the description of the
farm she and Billy sought.

Mark Hall laughed delightedly.

"And nightingales roosting in all the trees," he cried; "flowers
that neither fail nor fade, bees without stings, honey dew every
morning, showers of manna betweenwhiles, fountains of youth and
quarries of philosopher's stones--why, I know the very place. Let
me show you."

She waited while he pored over road-maps of the state. Failing in
them, he got out a big atlas, and, though. all the countries of
the world were in it, he could not find what he was after.

"Never mind," he said. "Come over to-night and I'll be able to
show you."

That evening he led her out on the veranda to the telescope, and
she found herself looking through it at the full moon.

"Somewhere up there in some valley you'll find that farm," he
teased.

Mrs. Hall looked inquiringly at them as they returned inside.

"I've been showing her a valley in the moon where she expects to
go farming," he laughed.

"We started out prepared to go any distance," Saxon said. "And if
it's to the moon, I expect we can make it." 412

 THE VAI`I,EY OF THE MOON 413

"But my dear child, you can't expect to find such a paradise on
the earth," Hall continued. "For instance, you can't have
redwoods without fog. They go together. The redwoods grow only in
the fog belt."

Saxon debated a while.

"Well, we could put up with a little fog," she conceded, "--
almost anything to have redwoods. I don't know what a quarry of
philosopher's stones is like, but if it's anything like Mr.
Hafier's marble quarry, and there's a railroad handy, I guess we
could manage to worry along. And you don't have to go to the moon
for honey dew. They scrape it off of the leaves of the bushes up
in Nevada County. I know that for a fact, because my father told
my-mother about it, and she told me."

A little later in the evening, the subject of farming having
remained uppermost, Hall swept off into a diatribe against the
"gambler's paradise," which was his epithet for the United
States.

"When you think of the glorious chance," he said. "A new country,
bounded by the oceans, situated just right in latitude, with the
richest land and vastest natural resources of any country in the
world, settled by immigrants who had thrown off all the leading
strings of the Old World and were in the humor for democracy.
There was only one thing to stop them from perfecting the
democracy they started, and that thing was greediness.

"They started gobbling everything in sight like a lot of swine,
and while they gobbled democracy went to smash. Gobbling became
gambling. It was a nation of tin horns. Whenever a man lost his
stake, all he had to do was to chase the frontier west a few
miles and get another stake. They moved over the face of the land
like so many locusts. They destroyed everything--the Indians, the
soil, the forests, just as they destroyed the buffalo and the
passenger pigeon. Their morality in business and politics was
gambler morality. Their laws were gambling laws--how to play the
game. Everybody played. Therefore, hurrah for the game. Nobody
objected, because nobody was unable to play. As I said, the
losers chased the frontier for fresh stakes. The winner of
to-day, broke to-morrow, on the day following might be riding his
luck to royal flushes on five-card draws.

"So they gobbled and gambled from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
until they'd swined a whole continent. When they'd finished with
the lands and forests and mines, they turned back, gambling for
any little stakes they'd overlooked, gambling for franchises and
monopolies, using politics to protect their crooked deals and
brace games. And democracy gone clean to smash.

"And then was the funniest time of all. The losers couldn't get
any more stakes, while the winners went on gambling among
themselves. The losers could only stand around with their hands
in their pockets and look on. When they got hungry, they went,
hat in hand, and begged the successful gamblers for a job. The
losers went to work for the winners, and they've been working for
them ever since, and democracy side-tracked up Salt Creek. You,
Billy Roberts, have never had a hand in the game in your life.
That's because your people were among the also-rans. "

"How about yourself?" Billy asked. "I ain't seen you holdin' any
hands."

"I don't have to. I don't count. I am a parasite."

"What's that?"

"A flea, a woodtick, anything that gets something for nothing. I
batten on the mangy hides of the workingmen. I don't have to
gamble. I don't have to work. My father left me enough of his
winnings.--Oh, don't preen yourself, my boy. Your folks were just
as bad as mine. But yours lost, and mine won, and so you plow in
my potato patch. "

"I don't see it," Billy contended stoutly. "A man with gumption
can win out to-day--"

"On government land?" Hall asked quickly.

Billy swallowed and acknowledged the stab.

"Just the same he can win out," he reiterated.

"Surely--he can win a job from some other fellow? A young husky
with a good head like yours can win jobs anywhere. But think of
the handicaps on the fellows who lose. How many tramps have you
met along the road who could get a job driving four horses for
the Carmel Livery Stabler And some of them were as husky as you
when they were young. And on top of it all you've got no shout
coming. It's a mighty big come-down from gambling for a continent
to gambling for a job."

"Just the same--" Billy recommenced.

"Oh, you've got it in your blood," Hall cut him off cavalierly.
"And why not? Everybody in this country has been gambling for
generations. It was in the air when you were born. You've
breathed it all your life. You, who 've never had a white chip in
the game, still go on shouting for it and capping for it."

"But what are all of us losers to do?" Saxon inquired.

"Call in the police and stop the game," Hall recommended. "It's
crooked."

Saxon frowned.

"Do what your forefathers didn't do," he amplified. "Go ahead and
perfect democracy."

She remembered a remark of Mercedes.  "A friend of mine says that
democracy is an enchantment."

"It is--in a gambling joint. There are a million boys in our
public schools right now swallowing the gump of canal boy to
President, and millions of worthy citizens who sleep sound every
night in the belief that they have a say in running the country."

"You talk like my brother Tom," Saxon said, failing to
comprehend. "If we all get into politics and work hard for
something better maybe we'll get it after a thousand years or so.
But I want it now." She clenched her hands passionately. "I can't
wait; I want it now."

"But that is just what I've been telling you, my dear girl.
That's what's the trouble with all the losers. They can't wait.
They want it now--a stack of chips and a fling at the game. Well,
they won't get it now. That's what's the matter with you, chasing
a valley in the moon. That's what's the matter with Billy, aching
right now for a chance to win ten cents from me at Pedro cussing
wind-chewing under his breath."

"Gee! you'd make a good soap-boxer," commented Billy.

"And I'd be a soap-boxer if I didn't have the spending of my
father's ill-gotten gains. It's none of my affair. Islet them
rot. They'd be just as bad if they were on top. It's all a
mess--blind bats, hungry swine, and filthy buzzards--"

Here Mrs. Hall interferred.

"Now, Mark, you stop that, or you'll be getting the blues."

He tossed his mop of hair and laughed with an effort.

"No I won't," he denied. "I'm going to get ten cents from Billy
at a game of Pedro. He won't have a look in."

Saxon and Billy flourished in the genial human atmosphere of
Carmel. They appreciated in their own estimation. Saxon felt that
she was something more than a laundry girl and the wife of a
union teamster. She was no longer pent in the narrow working
class environment of a Pine street neighborhood. Life had grown
opulent. They fared better physically, materially, and
spiritually; and all this was reflected in their features, in the
carriage of their bodies. She knew Billy had never been handsomer
nor in more splendid bodily condition. He swore he had a harem,
and that she was his second wife-- twice as beautiful as the
first one he had married. And she demurely confessed to him that
Mrs. Hall and several others of the matrons had enthusiastically
admired her form one day when in for a cold dip in Carmel river.
They had got around her, and called her Venus, and made her
crouch and assume different poses.

Billy understood the Venus reference; for a marble one, with
broken arms, stood in Hall's living room, and the poet had told
him the world worshiped it as the perfection of female form.

"I always said you had Annette Kellerman beat a mile," Billy
said; and so proud was his air of possession that Saxon blushed
and trembled, and hid her hot face against his breast.

The men in the crowd were open in their admiration of Saxon, in
an above-board manner. But she made no mistake. She did not lose
her head. There was no chance of that, for her love for Billy
beat more strongly than ever. Nor was she guilty of
over-appraisal. She knew him for what he was, and loved him with
open eyes. He had no book learning, no art, like the other men.
His grammar was bad; she knew that, just as she knew that he
would never mend it. Yet she would not have exchanged him for any
of the others, not even for Mark Hall with the princely heart
whom she loved much in the same way that she loved his wife.

For that matter, she found in Billy a certain health and
rightness, a certain essential integrity, which she prized more
highly than all book learning and bank accounts. It was by virtue
of this health, and rightness, and integrity, that he had beaten
Hall in argument the night the poet was on the pessimistic
rampage. Billy had beaten him, not with the weapons of learning,
but just by being himself and by speaking out the truth that was
in him. Best of all, he had not even known that he had beaten,
and had taken the applause as good-natured banter. But Saxon
knew, though she could scarcely tell why; and she would always
remember how the wife of Shelley had whispered to her afterward
with shining eyes: "Oh, Saxon, you must be so happy."

Were Saxon driven to speech to attempt to express what Billy
meant to her, she would have done it with the simple word "man."
Always he was that to her. Always in glowing splendor, that was
his connotation--MAN. Sometimes, by herself, she would all but
weep with joy at recollection of his way of informing some
truculent male that he was standing on his foot. "Get off your
foot. You're standin' on it." It was Billy! It was magnificently
Billy. And it was this Billy who loved her. She knew it. She knew
it by the pulse that only a woman knows how to gauge. He loved
her less wildly, it was true; but more fondly, more maturely. It
was the love that lasted--if only they did not go back to the
city where the beautiful things of the spirit perished and the
beast bared its fangs.

In the early spring, Mark Hall and his wife went to New York, the
two Japanese servants of the bungalow were dismissed, and Saxon
and Billy were installed as caretakers. Jim Hazard, too, departed
on his yearly visit to Paris; and though Billy missed him, he
continued his long swims out through the breakers. Hall's two
saddle horses had been left in his charge, and Saxon made herself
a pretty cross-saddle riding costume of tawny-brown corduroy that
matched the glints in her hair. Billy no longer worked at odd
jobs. As extra driver at the stable he earned more than they
spent, and, in preference to cash, he taught Saxon to ride, and
was out and away with her over the country on all-day trips. A
favorite ride was around by the coast to Monterey, where he
taught her to swim in the big Del Monte tank. They would come
home in the evening across the hills. Also, she took to following
him on his early morning hunts, and life seemed one long
vacation.

"I'll tell you one thing," he said to Saxon, one day, as they
drew their horses to a halt and gazed down into Carmel Valley. "I
ain't never going to work steady for another man for wages as
long as I live."

"Work isn't everything," she acknowledged.

"I should guess not. Why, look here, Saxon, what'd it mean if I
worked teamin' in Oakland for a million dollars a day for a
million years and just had to go on stayin' there an' livin' the
way we used to? It'd mean work all day, three squares, an' movie'
pictures for recreation. Movin' pictures! Huh! We're livin'
movie' pictures these days. I'd sooner have one year like what
we're havin' here in Carmel and then die, than a thousan' million
years like on Pine street."

Saxon had warned the Halls by letter that she and Billy intended
starting on their search for the valley in the moon as soon as
the first of summer arrived. Fortunately, the poet was put to no
inconvenience, for Bideaux, the Iron Man with the basilisk eyes,
had abandoned his dreams of priesthood and decided to become an
actor. He arrived at Carmel from the Catholic college in time to
take charge of the bungalow.

Much to Saxon's gratification, the crowd was loth to see them
depart. The owner of the Carmel stable offered to put Billy in
charge at ninety dollars a month. Also, he received a similar
offer from the stable in Pacific Grove.

"Whither away," the wild Irish playwright hailed them on the
station platform at Monterey. He was just returning from New
York.

"To a valley in the moon," Saxon answered gaily.

He regarded their business-like packs.

"By George!" he cried. "I'll do it! By George! Let me come
along." Then his face fell. "And I've signed the contract," he
groaned. "Three acts! Say, you're lucky. And this time of year,
too."



CHAPTER XI

"We hiked into Monterey last winter, but we're ridin' out now, b
'gosh!" Billy said as the train pulled out and they leaned back
in their seats.

They had decided against retracing their steps over the ground
already traveled, and took the train to San Francisco. They had
been warned by Mark Hall of the enervation of the south, and were
bound north for their blanket climate. Their intention was to
cross the Bay to Sausalito and wander up through the coast
counties Here, Hall had told them, they would find the true home
of the redwood. But Billy, in the smoking car for a cigarette,
seated himself beside a man who was destined to deflect them from
their course. He was a keen-faced, dark-eyed man, undoubtedly a
Jew; and Billy, remembering Saxon's admonition always to ask
questions, watched his opportunity and started a conversation. It
took but a little while to learn that Gunston was a commission
merchant, and to realize that the content of his talk was too
valuable for Saxon to lose. Promptly, when he saw that the
other's cigar was finished, Billy invited him into the next car
to meet Saxon. Billy would have been incapable of such an act
prior to his sojourn in Carmel. That much at least he had
acquired of social facility.

"He's just teen tellin' me about the potato kings, and I wanted
him to tell you," Billy explained to Saxon after the
introduction. "Go on and tell her, Mr. Gunston, about that fan
tan sucker that made nineteen thousan' last year in celery an'
asparagus."

"I was just telling your husband about the way the Chinese make
things go up the San Joaquin river. It would be worth your while
to go up there and look around. It's the good season now--too
early for mosquitoes. You can get off the train at Black Diamond
or Antioch and travel around among the big farming islands on the
steamers and launches. The fares are cheap, and you'll find some
of those big gasoline boats, like the Duchess and Princess, more
like big steamboats."

"Tell her about Chow Lam," Billy urged.

The commission merchant leaned back and laughed.

"Chow Lam, several years ago, was a broken-down fan tan player.
He hadn't a cent, and his health was going back on him. He had
worn out his back with twenty years' work in the gold mines,
washing over the tailings of the early miners. And whatever he'd
made he'd lost at gambling. Also, he was in debt three hundred
dollars to the Six Companies--you know, they're Chinese affairs.
And, remember, this was only seven years ago--health breaking
down, three hundred in debt, and no trade. Chow Lam blew into
Stockton and got a job on the peat lands at day's wages. It was a
Chinese company, down on Middle River, that farmed celery and
asparagus. This was when he got onto himself and took stock of
himself. A quarter of a century in the United States, back not so
strong as it used to was, and not a penny laid by for his return
to China. He saw how the Chinese in the company had done
it--saved their wages and bought a share.

"He saved his wages for two years, and bought one share in a
thirty-share company. That was only five years ago. They leased
three hundred acres of peat land from a white man who preferred
traveling in Europe. Out of the profits of that one share in the
first year, he bought two shares in another company. And in a
year more, out of the three shares, he organized a company of his
own. One year of this, with bad luck, and he just broke even.
That brings it up to three years ago. The following year, bumper
crops, he netted four thousand. The next year it wan five
thousand. And last year he cleaned up nineteen thousand dollars.
Pretty good, eh, for old broken-down Chow Lam?"

"My!" was all Saxon could say.

Her eager interest, however, incited the commission merchant to
go on.

"Look at Sing Kee--the Potato King of Stockton. I know him well.
I've had more large deals with him and made less money than with
any man I know. He was only a coolie, and he smuggled himself
into the United States twenty years ago. Started at day's wages,
then peddled vegetables in a couple of baskets slung on a stick,
and after that opened up a store in Chinatown in San Francisco.
But he had a head on him, and he was soon onto the curves of the
Chinese farmers that dealt at his store. The store couldn't make
money fast enough to suit him. He headed up the San Joaquin.
Didn't do much for a couple of years except keep his eyes peeled.
Then he jumped in and leased twelve hundred acres at seven
dollars an acre "

"My God!" Billy said in an awe-struck voice. "Eight thousan',
four hundred dollars just for rent the first year. I know five
hundred acres I can buy for three dollars an acre."

"Will it grow potatoes?" Gunston asked.

Billy shook his head. "Nor nothin' else, I guess."

All three laughed heartily and the commission merchant resumed:

"That seven dollars was only for the land. Possibly you know what
it costs to plow twelve hundred acres?"

Billy nodded solemnly.

"And he got a hundred and sixty sacks to the acre that year,"
Gunston continued. "Potatoes were selling at fifty cents. My
father was at the head of our concern at the time, so I know for
a fact. And Sing Kee could have sold at fifty cents and made
money. But did he? Trust a Chinaman to know the market. They can
skin the commission merchants at it. Sing Kee held on. When 'most
everybody else had sold, potatoes began to climb. He laughed at
our buyers when we offered him sixty cents, seventy cents, a
dollar. Do you want to know what he finally did sell for? One
dollar and sixty-five a sack. Suppose they actually cost him
forty cents. A hundred and sixty times twelve hundred . . . let
me see . . . twelve times nought is nought and twelve times
sixteen is a hundred and ninety-two . . . a hundred and
ninety-two thousand sacks at a dollar and a quarter net...four
into a hundred and ninety-two is forty-eight, plus, is two
hundred and forty--there you are, two hundred and forty thousand
dollars clear profit on that year's deal."

"An' him a Chink," Billy mourned disconsolately. He turned to
Saxon. "They ought to be some new country for us white folks to
go to. Gosh!--we're settin' on the stoop all right, all right."

"But, of course, that was unusual," Glunston hastened to qualify.
"There was a failure of potatoes in other districts, and a
corner, and in some strange way Sing Kee was dead on. He never
made profits like that again. But he goes ahead steadily. Last
year he had four thousand acres in potatoes, a thousand in
asparagus, five hundred in celery and five hundred in beans. And
he's running six hundred acres in seeds. No matter what happens
to one or two crops, he can't lose on all of them."

"I've seen twelve thousand acres of apple trees," Saxon said.
"And I'd like to see four thousand acres in potatoes."

"And we will," Billy rejoined with great positiveness. "It's us
for the San Joaquin. We don't know what's in our country. No
wonder we're out on the stoop."

"You'll find lots of kings up there," Gunston related. "Yep Hong
Lee--they call him 'Big Jim,' and Ah Pock, and Ah Whang,
and--then there's Shima, the Japanese potato king. He's worth
several millions. Lives like a prince."

"Why don't Americans succeed like that?" asked Saxon.

"Because they won't, I guess. There's nothing to stop them except
themselves. I'll tell you one thing, though-- give me the Chinese
to deal with. He's honest. His word is as good as his bond. If he
says he'll do a thing, he'll do it. And, anyway, the white man
doesn't know how to farm. :EIven the up-to-date white farmer is
content with one crop at a time and rotation of crops. Mr. John
Chinaman goes him one better, and grows two crops at one time on
the same soil. I've seen it--radishes and carrots, two crops,
sown at one time."

"Which don't stand to reason," Billy objected. "They'd be only a
half crop of each."

"Another guess coming," Gunston jeered. "Carrots have to be
thinned when they're so far along. So do radishes. But carrots
grow slow. Radishes grow fast. The slow-going carrots serve the
purpose of thinning the radishes. And when the radishes are
pulled, ready for market, that thins the carrots, which come
along later. You can't beat the Chink."

"Don't see why a white man can't do what a Chink can," protested
Billy.

"That sounds all right," Gunston replied. "The only objection is
that the white man doesn't. The Chink is busy all the time, and
he keeps the ground just as busy. He has organization, system.
Who ever heard of white farmers keeping books? The Chink does. No
guess work with him. He knows just where he stands, to a cent, on
any crop at any moment. And he knows the market. He plays both
ends. How he does it is beyond me, but he knows the market better
than we commission merchants.

"Then, again, he's patient but not stubborn. Suppose he does make
a mistake, and gets in a crop, and then finds the market is
wrong. In such a situation the white man gets stubborn and hangs
on like a bulldog. But not the Chink. He's going to minimize the
losses of that mistake. That land has got to work, and make
money. Without a quiver or a regret, the moment he's learned his
error, he puts his plows into that crop, turns it under, and
plants something else. He has the savve. He can look at a sprout,
just poked up out of the ground, and tell how it's going to turn
out--whether it will head up or won't head up; or if it's going
to head up good, medium, or bad. That's one end. Take the other
end. He controls his crop. He forces it or holds it back. with an
eye on the market. And when the market is just right, there's his
crop, ready to deliver, timed to the minute."

The conversation with Gunston lasted hours, and the more he
talked of the Chinese and their farming ways the more Saxon
became aware of a growing dissatisfaction. She did not question
the facts. The trouble was that they were not alluring. Somehow,
she could not find place for them in her valley of the moon. It
was not until the genial Jew left the train that Billy gave
definite statement to what was vaguely bothering her.

"Huh! We ain't Chinks. We're white folks. Does a Chink ever want
to ride a horse, hell-bent for election an' havin' a good time of
it? Did you ever see a Chink go swimmin' out through the breakers
at Carmel?--or boxin', wrestlin', runnin' an' jumpin'for the
sport of it? Did you ever see a Chink take a shotgun on his arm,
tramp six miles, an' come back happy with one measly rabbit? What
does a Chink do? Work his damned head off. That's all he's good
for. To hell with work, if that's the whole of the game--an' I've
done my share of work, an' I can work alongside of any of 'em.
But what's the good? If they's one thing I've learned solid since
you an' me hit the road, Saxon, it is that work's the least part
of life. God!--if it was all of life I couldn't cut my throat
quick enough to get away from it. I want shotguns an' rifles, an'
a horse between my legs. I don't want to be so tired all the time
I can't love my wife. Who wants to be rich an' clear two hundred
an' forty thousand on a potato deal! Look at Rockefeller. Has to
live on milk. I want porterhouse and a stomach that can bite
sole-leather. An' I want you, an' plenty of time along with you,
an' fun for both of us. What's the good of life if they ain't no
fun?"

"Oh, Billy!" Saxon cried. "It's just what I've been trying to get
straightened out in my head. It's been worrying me for ever so
long. I was afraid there was something wrong with me- -that I
wasn't made for the country after all. All the time I didn't envy
the San Leandro Portuguese. I didn't want to be one, nor a Pajaro
Valley Dalmatian, nor even a Mrs. Mortimer. And you didn't
either. What we want is a valley of the moon, with not too much
work, and all the fun we want. And we'll just keep on looking
until we find it. And if we don't find it, we'll go on having the
fun just as we have ever since we left Oakland. And, Billy . . .
we're never, never going to work our damned heads off, are we?"

"Not on your life, " Billy growled in fierce affirmation.

They walked into Black Diamond with their packs on their backs.
It was a scattered village of shabby little cottages, with a main
street that was a wallow of black mud from the last late spring
rain. The sidewalks bumped up and down in uneven steps and
landings. Everything seemed un-American. The names on the strange
dingy shops were unspeakably foreign. The one dingy hotel was run
by a Greek. Greeks were everywhere--swarthy men in sea-boots and
tam-o'-shanters, hatless women in bright colors, hordes of sturdy
children, and all speaking in outlandish voices, crying shrilly
and vivaciously with the volubility of the Mediterranean.

"Huh!--this ain't the United States," Billy muttered. Down on the
water front they found a fish cannery and an asparagus cannery in
the height of the busy season, where they looked in vain among
the toilers for familiar American faces. Billy picked out the
bookkeepers and foremen for Americans. All the rest were Greeks,
Italians, and Chinese.

At the steamboat wharf, they watched the bright-painted Greek
boats arriving, discharging their loads of glorious salmon, and
departing. New York Cut-Off, as the slough was called, curved to
the west and north and flowed into a vast body of water which was
the united Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.

Beyond the steamboat wharf, the fishing wharves dwindled to
stages for the drying of nets; and here, away from the noise and
clatter of the alien town, Saxon and Billy took off their packs
and rested. The tall, rustling tules grew out of the deep water
close to the dilapidated boat-landing where they sat. Opposite
the town lay a long flat island, on which a row of ragged poplars
leaned against the sky.

"Just like in that Dutch windmill picture Mark Hall has," Saxon
said.

Billy pointed out the mouth of the slough and across the broad
reach of water to a cluster of tiny white buildings, behind
which, like a glimmering mirage, rolled the low Montezuma Hills.

"Those houses is Collinsville," he informed her. "The Sacramento
river comes in there, and you go up it to Rio Vista an' Isleton,
and Walnut Grove, and all those places Mr. Gunston was tellin' us
about. It's all islands and sloughs, connectin' clear across an'
back to the San Joaquin. "

"Isn't the sun good," Saxon yawned. "And how quiet it is here, so
short a distance away from those strange foreigners. And to
think! in the cities, right now, men are beating and killing each
other for jobs."

Now and again an overland passenger train rushed by in the
distance, echoing along the background of foothills of Mt.
Diablo, which bulked, twin-peaked, greencrinkled, against the
sky. Then the slumbrous quiet would fall, to be broken by the far
call of a foreign tongue or by a gasoline fishing boat chugging
in through the mouth of the slough.

Not a hundred feet away, anchored close in the tules, lay a
beautiful white yacht. Despite its tininess, it looked broad and
comfortable. Smoke was rising for'ard from its stovepipe. On its
stern, in gold letters, they read Roamer. On top of the cabin,
basking in the sunshine, lay a man and woman, the latter with a
pink scarf around her head. The man was reading aloud from a
book, while she sewed. Beside them sprawled a fox terrier.

"Gosh! they don't have to stick around cities to be happy," Billy
commented.

A Japanese came on deck from the cabin, sat down for'ard, and
began picking a chicken. The feathers floated away in a long line
toward the mouth of the slough.

"Oh! Look!" Saxon pointed in her excitement. "He's fishing! And
the line is fast to his toe!"

The man had dropped the book face-downward on the cabin and
reached for the line, while the woman looked up from her sewing,
and the terrier began to bark. In came the line, hand under hand,
and at the end a big catfish. When this was removed, and the line
rebaited and dropped overboard, the man took a turn around his
toe and went on reading.

A Japanese came down on the landing-stage beside Saxon and Billy,
and hailed the yacht. He carried parcels of meat and vegetables;
one coat pocket bulged with letters, the other with morning
papers. In response to his hail, the Japanese on the yacht stood
up with the part- plucked chicken. The man said something to him,
put aside the book, got into the white skiff lying astern, and
rowed to the landing. As he came alongside the stage, he pulled
in his oars, caught hold, and said good morning genially.

"Why, I know you," Saxon said impulsively, to Billy's amazement.
"You are...."

Here she broke off in confusion.

"Go on," the man said, smiling reassurance.

"You are Jack Hastings, I 'm sure of it. I used to see your
photograph in the papers all the time you were war correspondent
in the Japanese-Russian War. You've written lots of books, though
I've never read them."

 "Right you are," he ratified. "And what's your name?"

Saxon introduced herself and Billy, and, when she noted the
writer's observant eye on their packs, she sketched the
pilgrimage they were on. The farm in the valley of the moon
evidently caught his fancy, and, though the Japanese and his
parcels were safely in the skiff, Hastings still lingered. When
Saxon spoke of Carmel, he seemed to know everybody in Hall's
crowd, and when he heard they were intending to go to Rio Vista,
his invitation was immediate.

"Why, we're going that way ourselves, inside an hour, as soon as
slack water comes," he exclaimed. "It's just the thing. Come on
on board. We'll be there by four this afternoon if there's any
wind at all. Come on. My wife's on board, and Mrs. Hall is one of
her best chums. We've been away to South America--just got back;
or you'd have seen us in Carmel. Hal wrote to us about the pair
of you."

It was the second time in her life that Saxon had been in a small
boat, and the Roamer was the first yacht she had ever been on
board. The writer's wife, whom he called Clara, welcomed them
heartily, and Saxon lost no time in falling in love with her and
in being fallen in love with in return. So strikingly did they
resemble each other, that Hastings was not many minutes in
calling attention to it. He made them stand side by side, studied
their eyes and mouths and ears, compared their hands, their hair,
their ankles, and swore that his fondest dream was shattered--
namely, that when Clara had been made the mold was broken.

On Clara's suggestion that it might have been pretty much the
same mold, they compared histories. Both were of the pioneer
stock. Clara's mother, like Saxon's, had crossed the Plains with
ox-teams, and, like Saxon's, had wintered in Salt Intake City--in
fact, had, with her sisters, opened the first Gentile school in
that Mormon stronghold. And, if Saxon's father had helped raise
the Bear Flag rebellion at Sonoma, it was at Sonoma that Clara's
father had mustered in for the War of the Rebellion and ridden as
far east with his troop as Salt Lake City, of which place he had
been provost marshal when the Mormon trouble flared up. To
complete it all, Clara fetched from the cabin an ukulele of boa
wood that was the twin to Saxon's, and together they sang
"Honolulu Tomboy."

Hastings decided to eat dinner--he called the midday meal by its
old-fashioned name--before sailing; and down below Saxon was
surprised and delighted by the measure of comfort in so tiny a
cabin. There was just room for Billy to stand upright. A
centerboard-case divided the room in half longitudinally, and to
this was attached the hinged table from which they ate. Low bunks
that ran the full cabin length, upholstered in cheerful green,
served as seats. A curtain, easily attached by hooks between the
centerboard-case and the roof, at night screened Mrs. Hastings'
sleeping quarters. On the opposite side the two Japanese bunked,
while for'ard, under the deck, was the galley. So small was it
that there was just room beside it for the cook, who was
compelled by the low deck to squat on his hands. The other
Japanese, who had brought the parcels on board, waited on the
table.

"They are looking for a ranch in the valley of the moon,"
Hastings concluded his explanation of the pilgrimage to Clara.

"Oh!--don't you know--" she cried; but was silenced by her
husband.

"Hush," he said peremptorily, then turned to their guests.
"Listen. There's something in that valley of the moon idea, but I
won't tell you what. It is a secret. Now we've a ranch in Sonoma
Valley about eight miles from the very town of Sonoma where you
two girls' fathers took up soldiering; and if you ever come to
our ranch you'll learn the secret. Oh, believe me, it's connected
with your valley of the moon.--Isn't it, Mate?"

This last was the mutual name he and Clara had for each other.

She smiled and laughed and nodded her head.

"You might find our valley the very one you are looking for," she
said.

But Hastings shook his head at her to check further speech. She
turned to the fox terrier and made it speak for a piece of meat.

"Her name's Peggy," she told Saxon. "We had two Irish terriers
down in the South Seas, brother and sister, but they died. We
called them Peggy and Possum. So she's named after the original
Peggy."

Billy was impressed by the ease with which the Roamer was
operated. While they lingered at table, at a word from Hastings
the two Japanese had gone on deck. Billy could hear them throwing
down the halyards, casting off gaskets, and heaving the anchor
short on the tiny winch. In several minutes one called down that
everything was ready, and all went on deck. Hoisting mainsail and
jigger was a matter of minutes. Then the cook and cabin-boy broke
out anchor, and, while one hove it up, the other hoisted the jib.
Eastings, at the wheel, trimmed the sheet. The Roamer paid off,
filled her sails, slightly heeling, and slid across the smooth
water and out the mouth of New York Slough. The Japanese coiled
the halyards and went below for their own dinner.

"The flood is just beginning to make," said Hastings, pointing to
a striped spar-buoy that was slightly tipping up-stream on the
edge of the channel.

The tiny white houses of Collinsville, which they were nearing,
disappeared behind a low island, though the Montezuma Hills, with
their long, low, restful lines, slumbered on the horizon
apparently as far away as ever.

As the Roamer passed the mouth of Montezuma Slough and entered
the Sacramento, they came upon Collinsville close at hand. Saxon
clapped her hands.

"It's like a lot of toy houses," she said, "cut out of cardboard.
And those hilly fields are just painted up behind."

They passed many arks and houseboats of fishermen moored among
the tules, and the women and children, like the men in the boats,
were dark-skinned, black-eyed, foreign. As they proceeded up the
river, they began to encounter dredges at work, biting out
mouthfuls of the sandy river bottom and heaping it on top of the
huge levees. Great mats of willow brush, hundreds of yards in
length, were laid on top of the river-slope of the levees and
held in place by steel cables and thousands of cubes of cement.
The willows soon sprouted, Hastings told them, and by the time
the mats were rotted away the sand was held in place by the roots
of the trees.

"It must cost like Sam Hill," Billy observed.

"But the land is worth it," Hastings explained. "This island land
is the most productive in the world. This section of California
is like Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're
sailing on is higher than the surface of the islands. They're
like leaky boats--calking, patching, pumping, night and day and
all the time. But it pays. It pays."

Except for the dredgers, the fresh-piled sand, the dense willow
thickets, and always Mt. Diablo to the south, nothing was to be
seen. Occasionally a river steamboat passed, and blue herons flew
into the trees.

"It must be very lonely," Saxon remarked.

Hastings laughed and told her she would change her mind later.
Much he related to them of the river lands, and after a while he
got on the subject of tenant farming. Saxon had started him by
speaking of the land-hungry Anglo-Saxons.

"Land-hogs," he snapped. "That's our record in this country. As
one old Reuben told a professor of an agricultural experiment
station: 'They ain't no sense in tryin' to teach me farmin'. I
know all about it. Ain't I worked out three farms?' It was his
kind that destroyed New England. Back there great sections are
relapsing to wilderness. In one state, at least, the deer have
increased until they are a nuisance. There are abandoned farms by
the tens of thousands. I've gone over the lists of them--farms in
New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut. Offered for
sale on easy pay nent. The prices asked wouldn't pay for the
improvements, while the land, of course, is thrown in for
nothing.

"And the same thing is going on, in one way or another, the same
land-robbing and hogging, over the rest of the country--down in
Texas, in Missouri, and Kansas, out here in California. Take
tenant farming. I know a ranch in my county where the land was
worth a hundred and twenty-five an acre. And it gave its return
at that valuation. When the old man died, the son leased it to a
Portuguese and went to live in the city. In five years the
Portuguese skimmed the cream and dried up the udder. The second
lease, with another Portuguese for three years, gave one-quarter
the former return. No third Portuguese appeared to offer to lease
it. There wasn't anything left. That ranch was worth fifty
thousand when the old man died. In the end the son got eleven
thousand for it. Why, I've seen land that paid twelve per cent.,
that, after the skimming of a five-years' lease, paid only one
and a quarter per cent."

"It's the same in our valley," Mrs. Hastings supplemented. "All
the old farms are dropping into ruin. Take the Ebell Place,
Mate." Her husband nodded emphatic indorsement. "When we used to
know it, it was a perfect paradise of a farm. There were dams and
lakes, beautiful meadows, lush hayfields, red hills of
grape-lands, hundreds of acres of good pasture, heavenly groves
of pines and oaks, a stone winery, stone barns, grounds--oh, I
couldn't describe it in hours. When Mrs. Bell died, the family
scattered, and the leasing began. It's a ruin to-day. The trees
have been cut and sold for firewood. There's only a little bit of
the vineyard that isn't abandoned-- just enough to make wine for
the present Italian lessees, who are running a poverty-stricken
milk ranch on the leavings of the soil. I rode over it last year,
and cried. The beautiful orchard is a horror. The grounds have
gone back to the wild. Just because they didn't keep the gutters
cleaned out, the rain trickled down and dry-rotted the timbers,
and the big stone barn is caved in. The same with part of the
winery--the other part is used for stabling the cows. And the
house!--words can't describe!"

"It's become a profession," Hastings went on. "The 'movers.' They
lease, clean out and gut a place in several years, and then move
on. They're not like the foreigners, the Chinese, and Japanese,
and the rest. In the main they're a lazy, vagabond, poor-white
sort, who do nothing else but skin the soil and move, skin the
soil and move. Now take the Portuguese and Italians in our
country. They are different. They arrive in the country without a
penny and work for others of their countrymen until they've
learned the language and their way about. Now they're not movers.
What they are after is land of their own, which they will love
and care for and conserve. But, in the meantime, how to get it?
Saving wages is slow. There is a quicker way. They lease. In
three years they can gut enough out of somebody else's land to
set themselves up for life. It is sacrilege, a veritable rape of
the land; but what of it, It's the way of the United States."

He turned suddenly on Billy.

"Look here, Roberts. You and your wife are looking for your bit
of land. You want it bad. Now take my advice. It's cold, hard
advice. Become a tenant farmer. Lease some place, where the old
folks have died and the country isn't good enough for the sons
and daughters. Then gut it. Wring the last dollar out of the
soil, repair nothing, and in three years you'll have your own
place paid for. Then turn over a new leaf, and love your soil.
Nourish it. Every dollar you feed it will return you two. lend
have nothing scrub about the place. If it's a horse, a cow, a
pig, a chicken, or a blackberry vine, see that it's
thoroughbred."

"But it's wicked!" Saxon wrung out. "It's wicked advice."

"We live in a wicked age," Hastings countered, smiling grimly.
"This wholesale land-skinning is the national crime of the United
States to-day. Nor would I give your husband such advice if I
weren't absolutely certain that the land he skins would be
skinned by some Portuguese or Italian if he refused. As fast as
they arrive and settle down, they send for their sisters and
their cousins and their aunts. If you were thirsty, if a
warehouse were burning and beautiful Rhine wine were running to
waste, would you stay your hand from scooping a drink?Well, the
national warehouse is afire in many places, and no end of the
good things are running to waste. Help yourself. If you don't,
the immigrants will."

"Oh, you don't know him," Mrs. Hastings hurried to explain. "He
spends all his time on the ranch in conserving the soil. There
are over a thousand acres of woods alone, and, though he thins
and forests like a surgeon, he won't let a tree be chopped
without his permission. He's even planted a hundred thousand
trees. He's always draining and ditching to stop erosion, and
experimenting with pasture grasses. And every little while he
buys some exhausted adjoining ranch and starts building up the
soil."

"Wherefore I know what I 'm talking about," Hastings broke in.
"And my advice holds. I love the soil, yet tomorrow, things being
as they are and if I were poor, I'd gut five hundred acres in
order to buy twenty-five for myself. When you get into Sonoma
Valley, look me up, and I'll put you onto the whole game, and
both ends of it. I'll show you construction as well as
destruction. When you find a farm doomed to be gutted anyway, why
jump in and do it yourself."

"Yes, and he mortgaged himself to the eyes," laughed Mrs.
Hastings, "to keep five hundred acres of woods out of the hands
of the charcoal burners."

Ahead, on the left bank of the Sacramento, just at the fading end
of the Montezuma Hills, Rio Vista appeared. The Roamer slipped
through the smooth water, past steamboat wharves, landing stages,
and warehouses. The two Japanese went for'ard on deck. At command
of Hastings, the jib ran down, and he shot the Roomer into the
wind, losing way, until he called, "Let go the hook!" The anchor
went down, and the yacht swung to it, so close to shore that the
skiff lay under overhanging willows.

"Farther up the river we tie to the bank," Mrs. Hastings said,
"so that when you wake in the morning you find the branches of
trees sticking down into the cabin."

"Ooh!" Saxon murmured, pointing to a lump on her wrist. "Look at
that. A mosquito."

"Pretty early for them," Hastings said. "But later on they're
terrible. I've seen them so thick I couldn't back the jib against
them."

Saxon was not nautical enough to appreciate his hyperbole, though
Billy grinned.

"There are no mosquitoes in the valley of the moon," she said.

"No, never," said Mrs. Hastings, whose husband began immediately
to regret the smallness of the cabin which prevented him from
offering sleeping accommodations.

An automobile bumped along on top of the levee, and the young
boys and girls in it cried, "Oh, you kid!" to Saxon and Billy,
and Hastings, who was rowing them ashore in the skiff. Hastings
called, "Oh, you kid!" back to them; and Saxon, pleasuring in the
boyishness of his sunburned face, was reminded of the boyishness
of Mark Hall and his Carmel crowd.



CHAPTER XII

Crossing the Sacramento on an old-fashioned ferry a short
distance above Rio Vista, Saxon and Billy entered the river
country. From the top of the levee she got her revelation.
Beneath, lower than the river, stretched broad, flat land, far as
the eye could see. Roads ran in every direction, and she saw
countless farmhouses of which she had never dreamed when sailing
on the lonely river a few feet the other side of the willowy
fringe.

Three weeks they spent among the rich farm islands, which heaped
up levees and pumped day and night to keep afloat. It was a
monotonous land, with an unvarying richness of soil and with only
one landmark--Mt. Diablo, ever to be seen, sleeping in the midday
azure, limping its crinkled mass against the sunset sky, or
forming like a dream out of the silver dawn. Sometimes on foot,
often by launch, they cries-crossed and threaded the river region
as far as the peat lands of the Middle River, down the San
Joaquin to Antioch, and up Georgiana Slough to Walnut Grove on
the Sacramento. And it proved a foreign land. The workers of the
soil teemed by thousands, yet Saxon and Billy knew what it was to
go a whole day without finding any one who spoke English. They
encountered --sometimes in whole villages--Chinese, Japanese,
Italians, Portuguese, Swiss, Hindus, Koreans, Norwegians, Danes,
French, Armenians, Slavs, almost every nationality save American.
One American they found on the lower reaches of Georgiana who
eked an illicit existence by fishing with traps. Another
American, who spouted blood and destruction on all political
subjects, was an itinerant bee-farmer. At Walnut Grove, bustling
with life, the few Americane consisted of the storekeeper, the
saloonkeeper, the butcher, the keeper of the drawbridge, and the
ferryman. Yet two thriving towns were in Walnut Grove, one
Chinese, one Japanese. Most of the land was owned by Americans,
who lived away from it and were continually selling it to the
foreigners.

A riot, or a merry-making--they could not tell which --was taking
place in the Japanese town, as Saxon and Billy steamed out on the
Apache, bound for Sacramento.

"We're settin' on the stoop," Billy railed. "Pretty soon they'll
crowd us off of that."

"There won't be any stoop in the valley of the moon," Saxon
cheered him.

But he was inconsolable, remarking bitterly:

"An' they ain't one of them damn foreigners that can handle four
horses like me.

"But they can everlastingly farm," he added.

And Saxon, looking at his moody face, was suddenly reminded of a
lithograph she had seen in her childhood It was of a Plains
Indian, in paint and feathers, astride his horse and gazing with
wondering eye at a railroad train rushing along a fresh-made
track. The Indian had passed, she remembered, before the tide of
new life that brought the railroad. And were Billy and his kind
doomed to pass, she pondered, before this new tide of life,
amazingly industrious, that was flooding in from Asia and Europe?

At Sacramento they stopped two weeks, where Billy drove team and
earned the money to put them along on their travels. Also, life
in Oakland and Carmel, close to the salt edge of the coast, had
spoiled them for the interior. Too warm, was their verdict of
Sacramento and they followed the railroad west, through a region
of swamp-land, to Davisville. Here they were lured aside and to
the north to pretty Woodland, where Billy drove team for a fruit
farm, and where Saxon wrung from him a reluctant consent for her
to work a few days in the fruit harvest. She made an important
and mystifying secret of what she intended doing with her
earnings, and Billy teased her about it until the matter passed
from his mind. Nor did she tell him of a money order inclosed
with a certain blue slip of paper in a letter to Bud Strothers.

They began to suffer from the heat. Billy declared they had
strayed out of the blanket climate.

"There are no redwoods here," Saxon said. "We must go west toward
the coast. It is there we'll find the valley of the moon."

From Woodland they swung west and south along the county roads to
the fruit paradise of Vacaville. Here Billy picked fruit, then
drove team; and here Saxon received a letter and a tiny express
package from Bud Strothers. When Billy came into camp from the
day's work, she bade him stand still and shut his eyes. For a few
seconds she fumbled and did something to the breast of his cotton
work-shirt. Once, he felt a slight prick, as of a pin point, and
grunted, while she laughed and bullied him to continue keeping
his eyes shut.

"Close your eyes and give me a kiss," she sang, "and then I'll
show you what iss."

She kissed him and when he looked down he saw, pinned to his
shirt, the gold medals he had pawned the day they had gone to the
moving picture show and received their inspiration to return to
the land.

"You darned kid!" he exclaimed, as he caught her to him. "So
that's what you blew your fruit money in on? An' I never
guessed!--Come here to you."

And thereupon she suffered the pleasant mastery of his brawn, and
was hugged and wrestled with until the coffee pot boiled over and
she darted from him to the rescue.

"I kinda always been a mite proud of 'em," he confessed, as he
rolled his after-supper cigarette. "They take me back to my kid
days when I amateured it to beat the band. I was some kid in them
days, believe muh.--But say, d'ye know, they'd clean slipped my
recollection. Oakland's a thousan' years away from you an' me,
an' ten thousan' miles."

"Then this will bring you back to it," Saxon said, opening Bud's
letter and reading it aloud.

Bud had taken it for granted that Billy knew the wind-up of the
strike; so he devoted himself to the details as to which men had
got back their jobs, and which had been blacklisted. To his own
amazement he had been taken back, and was now driving Billy's
horses. Still more amazing was the further information he had to
impart. The old foreman of the West Oakland stables had died, and
since then two other foremen had done nothing but make messes of
everything. The point of all which was that the Boss had spoken
that day to Bud, regretting the disappearance of Billy.

"Don't make no mistake," Bud wrote. "The Boss is onto all your
curves. I bet he knows every scab you slugged. Just the same he
says to me--Strothers, if you ain't at liberty to give me his
address, just write yourself and tell him for me to come a
running. I'll give him a hundred and twenty-five a month to take
hold the stables."

Saxon waited with well-concealed anxiety when the letter was
finished. Billy, stretched out, leaning on one elbow, blew a
meditative ring of smoke. His cheap workshirt, incongruously
brilliant with the gold of the medals that flashed in the
firelight, was open in front, showing the smooth skin and
splendid swell of chest. He glanced around--at the blankets
bowered in a green screen and waiting, at the campfire and the
blackened, battered coffee pot, at the well-worn hatchet, half
buried in a tree trunk, and lastly at Saxon. His eyes embraced
her; then into them came a slow expression of inquiry. But she
offered no help.

"Well," he uttered finally, "all you gotta do is write Bud
Strothers, an' tell 'm not on the Boss's ugly tintype. --An'
while you're about it, I'll send 'm the money to get my watch
out. You work out the interest. The overcoat can stay there an'
rot."

But they did not prosper in the interior heat. They lost weight.
The resilience went out of their minds and bodies. As Billy
expressed it, their silk was frazzled. So they shouldered their
packs and headed west across the wild mountains. In the Berryessa
Valley, the shimmering heat waves made their eyes ache, and their
heads; so that they traveled on in the early morning and late
afternoon. Still west they headed, over more mountains, to
beautiful Napa Valley. The next valley beyond was Sonoma, where
Hastings had invited them to his ranch. And here they would have
gone, had not Billy chanced upon a newspaper item which told of
the writer's departure to cover some revolution that was breaking
out somewhere in Mexico.

"We'll see 'm later on," Billy said, as they turned northwest,
through the vineyards and orchards of Napa Valley. "We're like
that millionaire Bert used to sing about, except it's time that
we've got to burn. Any direction is as good as any other, only
west is best."

Three times in the Napa Valley Billy refused work. Past St.
Helena, Saxon hailed with joy the unmistakable redwoods they
could see growing up the small canyons that penetrated the
western wall of the valley. At Calistoga, at the end of the
railroad, they saw the six-horse stages leaving for Middletown
and Lower Lake. They debated their route. That way led to Lake
County and not toward the coast, so Saxon and Billy swung west
through the mountains to the valley of the Russian River, coming
out at Healdsburg. They lingered in the hop-fields on the rich
bottoms, where Billy scorned to pick hops alongside of Indians,
Japanese, and Chinese.

"I couldn't work alongside of 'em an hour before I'd be knockin'
their blocks off," he explained. "Besides, this Russian River's
some nifty. Let's pitch camp and go swimmin'. "

So they idled their way north up the broad, fertile valley, so
happy that they forgot that work was ever necessary, while the
valley of the moon was a golden dream, remote, but sure, some day
of realization. At Cloverdale, Billy fell into luck. A
combination of sickness and mischance found the stage stables
short a driver. Each day the train disgorged passengers for the
Geysers, and Billy, as if accustomed to it all his life, took the
reins of six horses and drove a full load over the mountains in
stage time. The second trip he had Saxon beside him on the high
boxseat. By the end of two weeks the regular driver was back.
Billy declined a stable-job, took his wages, and continued north.

Saxon had adopted a fox terrier puppy and named him Possum, after
the dog Mrs. Hastings had told them about. So young was he that
he quickly became footsore, and she carried him until Billy
perched him on top of his pack and grumbled that Possum was
chewing his back hair to a frazzle.

They passed through the painted vineyards of Asti at the end of
the grape-picking, and entered Ukiah drenched to the skin by the
first winter rain.

"Say," Billy said, "you remember the way the Roamer just skated
along. Well, this summer's done the same thing--gone by on
wheels. An' now it's up to us to find some place to winter. This
Ukiah looks like a pretty good burg. We'll get a room to-night
an' dry out. An' to-morrow I'll hustle around to the stables, an'
if I locate anything we can rent a shack an' have all winter to
think about where we'll go next year."



CHAPTER XIII

The winter proved much less exciting than the one spent in
Carmel, and keenly as Saxon had appreciated the Carmel folk, she
now appreciated them more keenly than ever. In Ukiah she formed
nothing more than superficial acquaintances. Here people were
more like those of the working class she had known in Oakland, or
else they were merely wealthy and herded together in automobiles.
There was no democratic artist-colony that pursued fellowship
disregardful of the caste of wealth.

Yet it was a more enjoyable winter than any she had spent in
Oakland. Billy had failed to get regular employment; so she saw
much of him, and they lived a prosperous and happy hand-to-mouth
existence in the tiny cottage they rented. As extra man at the
biggest livery stable, Billy's spare time was so great that he
drifted into horse-trading. It was hazardous, and more than once
he was broke, but the table never wanted for the best of steak
and coffee, nor did they stint themselves for clothes.

"Them blamed farmers--I gotta pass it to 'em," Billy grinned one
day, when he had been particularly bested in a horse deal. "They
won't tear under the wings, the sons of guns. In the summer they
take in boarders, an' in the winter they make a good livin' coin'
each other up at tradin' horses. An' I just want to tell YOU,
Saxon, they've sure shown me a few. An' I 'm gettin' tough under
the wings myself. I'll never tear again so as you can notice it.
Which means one more trade learned for yours truly. I can make a
livin' anywhere now tradin' horses."

Often Billy had Saxon out on spare saddle horses from the stable,
and his horse deals took them on many trips into the surrounding
country. Likewise she was with him when he was driving horses to
sell on commission; and in both their minds, independently, arose
a new idea concerning their pilgrimage. Billy was the first to
broach it.

"I run into an outfit the other day, that's stored in town," he
said, "an' it's kept me thinkin' ever since. Ain't no use tryin'
to get you to guess it, because you can't. I'll tell you--the
swellest wagon-campin' outfit; anybody ever heard of. First of
all, the wagon's a peacherino. Strong as they make 'em. It was
made to order, upon Puget Sound, an' it was tested out all the
way down here. No load an' no road can strain it. The guy had
consumption that had it built. A doctor an' a cook traveled with
'm till he passed in his checks here in Ukiah two years ago. But
say--if you could see it. Every kind of a contrivance--a place
for everything--a regular home on wheels. Now, if we could get
that, an' a couple of plugs, we could travel like kings, an'
laugh at the weather."

"Oh! Billy! it's just what I've been dreamin' all winter. It
would be ideal. And . . . well, sometimes on the road I 'm sure
you can't help forgetting what a nice little wife you've got . .
. and with a wagon I could have all kinds of pretty clothes
along."

Billy's blue eyes glowed a caress, cloudy and warm; as he said
quietly:

"I've ben thinkin' about that."

"And you can carry a rifle and shotgun and fishing poles and
everything," she rushed along. "And a good big axe, man-size,
instead of that hatchet you're always complaining about. And
Possum can lift up his legs and rest. And--but suppose you can't
buy it? How much do they want?"

"One hundred an' fifty big bucks," he answered. "But dirt cheap
at that. It's givin' it away. I tell you that rig wasn't built
for a cent less than four hundred, an' I know wagon-work in the
dark. Now, if I can put through that dicker with Caswell's six
horses--say, I just got onto that horse-buyer to-day. If he buys
'em, who d'ye think he'll ship 'em to? To the Boss, right to the
West Oakland stables. I 'm goin' to get you to write to him.
Travelin', as we're goin' to, I can pick up bargains. An' if the
Boss'll talk, I can make the regular horse-buyer's commissions.
He'll have to trust me with a lot of money, though, which most
likely he won't, knowin' all his scabs I beat up."

"If he could trust you to run his stable, I guess he isn't afraid
to let you handle his money," Saxon said.

Billy shrugged his shoulders in modest dubiousness.

"Well, anyway, as I was sayin' if I can sell Caswell's six
horses, why, we can stand off this month's bills an' buy the
wagon."

"But horses!" Saxon queried anxiously.

"They'll come later--if I have to take a regular job for two or
three months. The only trouble with that 'd be that it'd run us
pretty well along into summer before we could pull out. But come
on down town an' I'll show you the outfit right now. "

Saxon saw the wagon and was so infatuated with it that she lost a
night's sleep from sheer insomnia of anticipation. Then Caswell's
six horses were sold, the month's bills held over, and the wagon
became theirs. One rainy morning, two weeks later, Billy had
scarcely left the house, to be gone on an all-day trip into the
country after horses, when he was back again.

"Come on!" he called to Saxon from the street. "Get your things
on an' come along. I want to show you something."

He drove down town to a board stable, and took her through to a
large, roofed inclosure in the rear. There he led to her a span
of sturdy dappled chestnuts, with cream-colored manes and tails.

"Oh, the beauties! the beauties!" Saxon cried, resting her cheek
against the velvet muzzle of one, while the other roguishly
nuzzled for a share.

"Ain't they, though?" Billy reveled, leading them up and down
before her admiring gaze. "Thirteen hundred an' fifty each, an'
they don't look the weight, they're that slick put together. I
couldn't believe it myself, till I put 'em on the scales.
Twenty-seven hundred an' seven pounds, the two of 'em. An' I
tried 'em out--that was two days ago. Good dispositions, no
faults, an' true-pullers, automobile broke an' all the rest. I'd
back 'em to out-pull any team of their weight I ever seen.--Say,
how'd they look hooked up to that wagon of ourn?"

Saxon visioned the picture, and shook her head slowly in a
reaction of regret.

"Three hundred spot cash buys 'em," Billy went on. "An' that's
bed-rock. The owner wants the money so bad he's droolin' for it.
Just gotta sell, an' sell quick. An' Saxon, honest to God, that
pair'd fetch five hundred at auction down in the city. Both
mares, full sisters, five an' six years old, registered Belgian
sire, out of a heavy standard-bred mare that I know. Three
hundred takes 'em, an' I got the refusal for three days."

Saxon's regret changed to indignation.

"Oh, why did you show them to me? We haven't any three hundred,
and you know it. All I've got in the house is six dollars, and
you haven't that much."

"Maybe you think that's all I brought you down town for," he
replied enigmatically. "Well, it ain't."

He paused, licked his lips, and shifted his weight uneasily from
one leg to the other.

"Now you listen till I get all done before you say anything.
Ready?"

She nodded.

"Won't open your mouth?"

This time she obediently shook her head.

"Well, it's this way," he began haltingly. "They's a youngster
come up from Frisco, Young Sandow they call 'm, an' the Pride of
Telegraph Hill. He's the real goods of a heavyweight, an' he was
to fight Montana Red Saturday night, only Montana Red, just in a
little trainin' bout, snapped his forearm yesterday. The managers
has kept it quiet. Now here's the proposition. Lots of tickets
sold, an' they'll be a big crowd Saturday night. At the last
moment, so as not to disappoint 'em, they'll spring me to take
Montana's place. I 'm the dark horse. Nobody knows me--not even
Young Sandow. He's come up since my time. I'll be a rube fighter.
I can fight as Horse Roberts.

"Now, wait a minute. The winner'll pull down three hundred big
round iron dollars. Wait, I 'm tellin' you! It's a lead-pipe
cinch. It's like robbin' a corpse. Sandow's got all the heart in
the world--regular knock~down-an'-drag-out-an'-hang-on fighter.
I've followed 'm in the papers. But he ain't clever. I 'm slow,
all right, all right, but I 'm clever, an' I got a hay-maker in
each arm. I got Sandow's number an' I know it.

"Now, you got the say-so in this. If you say yes, the nags is
ourn. If you say no, then it's all bets off, an' everything all
right, an' I'll take to harness-washin' at the stable so as to
buy a couple of plugs. Remember, they'll only be plugs, though.
But don't look at me while you're makin' up your mind. Keep your
lamps on the horses."

It was with painful indecision that she looked at the beautiful
animals.

"Their names is Hazel an' Hattie," Billy put in a sly wedge. "If
we get 'em we could call it the 'Double H' outfit."

But Saxon forgot the team and could only see Billy's frightfully
bruised body the night he fought the Chicago Terror. She was
about to speak, when Billy, who had been hanging on her lips,
broke in:

"Just hitch 'em up to our wagon in your mind an' look at the
outfit. You got to go some to beat it."

"But you're not in training, Billy," she said suddenly and
without having intended to say it.

"Huh!" he snorted. "I've been in half trainin' for the last year.
My legs is like iron. They'll hold me up as long as I've got a
punch left in my arms, and I always have that. Besides, I won't
let 'm make a long fight. He's a man-eater, an' man-eaters is my
meat. I eat 'm alive. It's the clever boys with the stamina an'
endurance that I can't put away. But this young Sandow's my meat.
I'll get 'm maybe in the third or fourth round--you know, time 'm
in a rush an' hand it to 'm just as easy. It's a lead-pipe cinch,
I tell you. Honest to God, Saxon, it's a shame to take the
money."

"But I hate to think of you all battered up," she temporized. "If
I didn't love you so, it might be different. And then, too, you
might get hurt."

Billy laughed in contemptuous pride of youth and brawn.

"You won't know I've been in a fight, except that we'll own Hazel
an' Hattie there. An' besides, Saxon, I just gotta stick my fist
in somebody's face once in a while. You know I can go for months
peaceable an' gentle as a lamb, an' then my knuckles actually
begin to itch to land on something. Now, it's a whole lot
sensibler to land on Young Sandow an' get three hundred for it,
than to land on some hayseed an' get hauled up an' fined before
some justice of the peace. Now take another squint at Hazel an'
Hattie. They're regular farm furniture, good to breed from when
we get to that valley of the moon. An' they're heavy enough to
turn right into the plowin', .too."


The evening of the fight at quarter past eight, Saxon parted from
Billy. At quarter past nine, with hot water, ice, and everything
ready in anticipation, she heard the gate click and Billy's step
come up the porch. She had agreed to the fight much against her
better judgment, and had regretted her consent every minute of
the hour she had just waited; so that, as she opened the front
door, she was expectant of any sort of a terrible husband-wreck.
But the Billy she saw was precisely the Billy she had parted
from.

"There was no fights" she cried, in so evident disappointment
that he laughed.

"They was all yellin' 'Fake! Fake!' when I left, an' wantin'
their money back."

"Well, I've got YOU," she laughed, leading him in, though
secretly she sighed farewell to Hazel and Hattie.

"I stopped by the way to get something for you that you've been
wantin' some time," Billy said casually. "Shut your eyes an' open
your hand; an' when you open your eyes you'll find it grand," he
chanted.

Into her hand something was laid that was very heavy and very
cold, and when her eyes opened she saw it was a stack of fifteen
twenty-dollar gold pieces.

"I told you it was like takin' money from a corpse," he exulted,
as he emerged grinning from the whirlwind of punches, whacks, and
hugs in which she had enveloped him. "They wasn't no fight at
all. D 'ye want to know how long it lasted? Just twenty-seven
seconds--less 'n half a minute. An' how many blows struck? One.
An' it was me that done it. Here, I'll show you. It was just like
this--a regular scream."

Billy had taken his place in the middle of the room, slightly
crouching, chin tucked against the sheltering left shoulder,
fists closed, elbows in so as to guard left side and abdomen, and
forearms close to the body.

"It's the first round," he pictured. "Gong's sounded, an' we've
shook hands. Of course, seein' as it's a long fight an' we've
never seen each other in action, we ain't in no rush. We're just
feelin' each other out an' fiddlin' around. Seventeen seconds
like that. Not a blow struck. Nothin'. An' then it's all off with
the big Swede. It takes some time to tell it, but it happened in
a jiffy, in fess In a tenth of a second. I wasn't expectin' it
myself. We're awful close together. His left glove ain't a foot
from my jaw, an' my left glove ain't a foot from hisn. He feints
with his right, an' I know it's a feint, an' just hunch up my
left shoulder a bit an' feint with my right. That draws his guard
over just about an inch, an' I see my openin'. My left ain't got
a foot to travel. I don't draw it back none. I start it from
where it is, corkscrewin' around his right guard an' pivotin' at
the waist to put the weight of my shoulder into the punch. An' it
connects!-- Square on the point of the chin, sideways. He drops
deado. I walk back to my corner, an', honest to God, Saxon, I
can't help gigglin' a little, it was that easy. The referee
stands over 'm an' counts 'm out. He never quivers. The audience
don't know what to make of it an' sits paralyzed. His seconds
carry 'm to his corner an' set 'm on the stool. But they gotta
hold 'm up. Five minutes afterward he opens his eyes--but he
ain't seein' nothing. They're glassy. Five minutes more, an' he
stands up. They got to help hold 'm, his legs givin' under 'm
like they was sausages. An' the seconds has to help 'm through
the ropes, an' they go down the aisle to his dressin' room
a-helpin' 'm. An' the crowd beginning to yell fake an' want its
money back. Twenty-seven seconds--one punch --n' a spankin' pair
of horses for the best wife Billy Roberts ever had in his long
experience."

All of Saxon's old physical worship of her husband revived and
doubled on itself many times. He was in all truth a hero, worthy
to be of that wing-helmeted company leaping from the beaked boats
upon the bloody English sands. The next morning he was awakened
by her lips pressed on his left hand.

"Hey!--what are you doin'?'" he demanded.

"Kissing Hazel and Hattie good morning," she answered demurely.
"And now I 'm going to kiss you good morning.... And just where
did your punch land? Show me."

Billy complied, touching the point of her chin with his knuckles.
With both her hands on his arm, she shored it back and tried to
draw it forward sharply in similitude of a punch. But Billy
withstrained her.

"Wait," he said. "You don't want to knock your jaw off. I'll show
you. A quarter of an inch will do."

And at a distance of a quarter of an inch from her chin he
administered the slightest flick of a tap.

On the instant Saxon's brain snapped with a white flash of light,
while her whole body relaxed, numb and weak, volitionless, sad
her vision reeled and blurred. The next instant she was herself
again, in her eyes terror and understanding.

"And it was at a foot that you struck him," she murmured in a
voice of awe.

"Yes, and with the weight of my shoulders behind it," Billy
laughed. "Oh, that's nothing.--Here, let me show you something
else."

He searched out her solar plexus, and did no more than snap his
middle finger against it. This time she experienced a simple
paralysis, accompanied by a stoppage of breath, but with a brain
and vision that remained perfectly clear. In a moment, however,
all the unwonted sensations were gone.

"Solar Plexus," Billy elucidated. "Imagine what it's like when
the other fellow lifts a wallop to it all the way from his knees.
That's the punch that won the championship of the world for Bob
Fitzsimmons."

Saxon shuddered, then resigned herself to Billy's playful
demonstration of the weak points in the human anatomy. He pressed
the tip of a finger into the middle of her forearm, and she knew
excruciating agony. On either side of her neck, at the base, he
dented gently with his thumbs, and she felt herself quickly
growing unconscious.

"That's one of the death touches of the Japs," he told her, and
went on, accompanying grips and holds with a running exposition.
"Here's the toe-hold that Notch defeated Hackenschmidt with. I
learned it from Farmer Burns.--An' here's a half-Nelson.--An'
here's you makin' roughhouse at a dance, an' I 'm the floor
manager, an' I gotta put you out."

One hand grasped her wrist, the other hand passed around and
under her forearm and grasped his own wrist. And at the first
hint of pressure she felt that her arm was a pipe-stem about to
break.

"That's called the 'come along.'--An' here's the strong arm. A
boy can down a man with it. An' if you ever get into a scrap an'
the other fellow gets your nose between his teeth--you don't want
to lose your nose, do you? Well, this is what you do, quick as a
flash."

Involuntarily she closed her eyes as Billy's thumb-ends pressed
into them. She could feel the fore-running ache of a dull and
terrible hurt.

"If he don't let go, you just press real hard, an' out pop his
eyes, an' he's blind as a bat for the rest of his life. Oh, he'll
let go all right all right."

He released her and lay back laughing.

"How d'ye feel?" he asked. "Those ain't boxin' tricks, but
they're all in the game of a roughhouse."

"I feel like revenge," she said, trying to apply the "come along"
to his arm.

When she exerted the pressure she cried out with pain, for she
had succeeded only in hurting herself. Billy grinned at her
futility. She dug her thumbs into his neck in imitation of the
Japanese death touch, then gazed ruefully at the bent ends of her
nails. She punched him smartly on the point of the chin, and
again cried out, this time to the bruise of her knuckles.

"Well, this can't hurt me," she gritted through her teeth, as she
assailed his solar plexus with her doubled fists.

By this time he was in a roar of laughter. Under the sheaths of
muscles that were as armor, the fatal nerve center remained
impervious.

"Go on, do it some more," he urged, when she had given up,
breathing heavily. "It feels fine, like you was ticklin' me with
a feather."

"All right, Mister Man," she threatened balefully. "You can talk
about your grips and death touches and all the rest, but that's
all man's game. I know something that will beat them all, that
will make a strong man as helpless as a baby. Wait a minute till
I get it. There. Shut your eyes. Ready? I won't be a second."

He waited with closed eyes, and then, softly as rose petals
fluttering down, he felt her lips on his mouth.

"You win," he said in solemn ecstasy, and passed his arms around
her.



CHAPTER XIV

In the morning Billy went down town to pay for Hazel and Hattie.
It was due to Saxon's impatient desire to see them, that he
seemed to take a remarkably long time about so simple a
transaction. But she forgave him when he arrived with the two
horses hitched to the camping wagon.

"Had to borrow the harness," he said. "Pass Possum up and climb
in, an' I'll show you the Double H Outfit, which is some outfit,
I'm tellin' you."

Saxon's delight was unbounded and almost speechless as they drove
out into the country behind the dappled chestnuts with the
cream-colored tails and manes. The seat was upholstered,
high-backed, and comfortable; and Billy raved about the wonders
of the efficient brake. He trotted the team along the hard county
road to show the standard-going in them, and put them up a steep
earthroad, almost hub-deep with mud, to prove that the light
Belgian sire was not wanting in their make-up.

When Saxon at last lapsed into complete silence, he studied her
anxiously, with quick sidelong glances. She sighed and asked:

"When do you think we'll be able to start?"

"Maybe in two weeks . . . or, maybe in two or three months. " He
sighed with solemn deliberation. "We're like the Irishman with
the trunk an' nothin' to put in it. Here's the wagon, here's the
horses, an' nothin' to pull. I know a peach of a shotgun I can
get, second-hand, eighteen dollars; but look at the bills we owe.
Then there's a new '22 Automatic rifle I want for you. An' a
30-30 I've had my eye on for deer. An' you want a good jointed
pole as well as me. An' tackle costs like Sam Hill. An' harness
like I want will cost fifty bucks cold. An' the wagon ought to be
painted. Then there's pasture ropes, an' nose-bags, an' a harness
punch, an' all such things. An' Hazel an' Hattie eatin' their
heads off all the time we're waitin'. An' I 'm just itchin' to be
started myself."

He stopped abruptly and confusedly.

"Now, Billy, what have you got up your sleeve?--I can see it in
your eyes," Saxon demanded and indicted in mixed metaphors.

"Well, Saxon, you see, it's like this. Sandow ain't satisfied.
He's madder 'n a hatter. Never got one punch at me. Never had a
chance to make a showin', an' he wants a return match. He's
blattin' around town that he can lick me with one hand tied
behind 'm, an' all that kind of hot air. Which ain't the point.
The point is, the fight-fans is wild to see a return-match. They
didn't get a run for their money last time. They'll fill the
house. The managers has seen me already. That was why I was so
long. They's three hundred more waitin' on the tree for me to
pick two weeks from last night if you'll say the word. It's just
the same as I told you before. He's my meat. He still thinks I 'm
a rube, an' that it was a fluke punch."

"But, Billy, you told me long ago that fighting took the silk out
of you. That was why you'd quit it and stayed by teaming."

"Not this kind of fightin'," he answered. "I got this one all
doped out. I'll let 'm last till about the seventh. Not that
it'll be necessary, but just to give the audience a run for its
money. Of course, I'll get a lump or two, an' lose some skin.
Then I'll time 'm to that glass jaw of his an' drop 'm for the
count. An' we'll be all packed up, an' next mornin' we'll pull
out. What d'ye say? Aw, come on."


Saturday night, two weeks later, Saxon ran to the door when the
gate clicked. Billy looked tired. His hair was wet, his nose
swollen, one cheek was puffed, there was skin missing from his
ears, and both eyes were slightly bloodshot.

"I 'm darned if that boy didn't fool me," he said, as he placed
the roll of gold pieces in her hand and sat down with her on his
knees. "He's some boy when he gets extended. Instead of stoppin'
'm at the seventh, he kept me hustlin' till the fourteenth. Then
I got 'm the way I said. It's too bad he's got a glass jaw. He's
quicker'n I thought, an' he's got a wallop that made me mighty
respectful from the second round--an' the prettiest little chop
an' come-again I ever saw. But that glass jaw! He kept it in
cotton wool till the fourteenth an' then I connected.

"--An', say. I 'm mighty glad it did last fourteen rounds. I
still got all my silk. I could see that easy. I wasn't breathin'
much, an' every round was fast. An' my legs was like iron. I
could a-fought forty rounds. You see, I never said nothin', but
I've been suspicious all the time after that beatin' the Chicago
Terror gave me."

"Nonsense!--you would have known it long before now," Saxon
cried. "Look at all your boxing, and wrestling, and running at
Carmel."

"Nope." Billy shok his head with the conviction of utter
knowledge. "That's different. It don't take it outa you. You
gotta be up against the real thing, fightin' for life, round
after round, with a husky you know ain't lost a thread of his
silk yet--then, if you don't blow up, if your legs is steady, an'
your heart ain't burstin', an' you ain't wobbly at all, an' no
signs of queer street in your head--why, then you know you still
got all your silk. An' I got it, I got all mine, d'ye hear me,
an' I ain't goin' to risk it on no more fights. That's straight.
Easy money's hardest in the end. From now on it's horsebuyin' on
commish, an' you an' me on the road till we find that valley of
the moon."

Next morning, early, they drove out of Ukiah. Possum sat on the
seat between them, his rosy mouth agape with excitement. They had
originally planned to cross over to the coast from Ukiah, but it
was too early in the season for the soft earth-roads to be in
shape after the winter rains; so they turned east, for Lake
County, their route to extend north through the upper Sacramento
Valley and across the mountains into Oregon. Then they would
circle west to the coast, where the roads by that time would be
in condition, and come down its length to the Golden Gate.

All the land was green and flower-sprinkled, and each tiny
valley, as they entered the hills, was a garden.

"Huh!" Billy remarked scornfully to the general landscape. "They
say a rollin' stone gathers no moss. Just the same this looks
like some outfit we've gathered. Never had so much actual
property in my life at one time--an' them was the days when I
wasn't rollin'. Hell--even the furniture wasn't ourn. Only the
clothes we stood up in, an' some old socks an' things."

Saxon reached out and touched his hand, and he knew that it was a
hand that loved his hand.

"I've only one regret," she said. "You've earned it all yourself.
I've had nothing to do with it."

"Huh!--you've had everything to do with it. You're like my second
in a fight. You keep me happy an' in condition. A man can't fight
without a good second to take care of him. Hell, I wouldn't a-ben
here if it wasn't for you. You made me pull up stakes an' head
out. Why, if it hadn't been for you I'd a-drunk myself dead an'
rotten by this time, or had my neck stretched at San Quentin over
hittin' some scab too hard or something or other. An' look at me
now. Look at that roll of greenbacks"-- he tapped his breast--"to
buy the Boss some horses. Why, we're takin' an unendin' vacation,
an' makin' a good livin' at the same time. An' one more trade I
got--horse-buyin' for Oakland. If I show I've got the savve, an'
I have, all the Frisco firms'll be after me to buy for them. An'
it's all your fault. You're my Tonic Kid all right, all right,
an' if Possum wasn't lookin', I'd--well, who cares if he does
look?"

And Billy leaned toward her sidewise and kissed her.

The way grew hard and rocky as they began to climb, but the
divide was an easy one, and they soon dropped down the canyon of
the Blue Lakes among lush fields of golden poppies. In the bottom
of the canyon lay a wandering sheet of water of intensest blue.
Ahead, the folds of hills interlaced the distance, with a remote
blue mountain rising in the center of the picture.

They asked questions of a handsome, black-eyed man with curly
gray hair, who talked to them in a German accent, while a
cheery-faced woman smiled down at them out of a trellised high
window of the Swiss cottage perched on the bank. Billy watered
the horses at a pretty hotel farther on, where the proprietor
came out and talked and told him he had built it himself,
according to the plans of the black-eyed man with the curly gray
hair, who was a San Francisco architect.

"Goin' up, goin' up," Billy chortled, as they drove on through
the winding hills past another lake of intensest blue. "D'ye
notice the difference in our treatment already between ridin' an'
walkin' with packs on our backs? With Hazel an' Hattie an' Saxon
an' Possum, an' yours truly, an' this high-toned wagon, folks
most likely take us for millionaires out on a lark."

The way widened. Broad, oak-studded pastures with grazing
livestock lay on either hand. Then Clear Lake opened before them
like an inland sea, flecked with little squalls and flaws of wind
from the high mountains on the northern slopes of which still
glistened white snow patches.

"I've heard Mrs. Hazard rave about Lake Geneva," Saxon recalled;
"but I wonder if it is more beautiful than this."

"That architect fellow called this the California Alps, you
remember," Billy confirmed. "An' if I don't mistake, that's
Lakeport showin' up ahead. An' all wild country, an' no
railroads."

"And no moon valleys here," Saxon criticized. "But it is
beautiful, oh, so beautiful."

"Hotter'n hell in the dead of summer, I'll bet," was Billy's
opinion. "Nope, the country we're lookin' for lies nearer the
coast. Just the same it is beautiful . . . like a picture on the
wall. What d'ye say we stop off an' go for a swim this
afternoon?"

Ten days later they drove into Williams, in Colusa County, and
for the first time again encountered a railroad. Billy was
looking for it, for the reason that at the rear of the wagon
walked two magnificent work-horses which he had picked up for
shipment to Oakland.

"Too hot," was Saxon's verdict, as she gazed across the
shimmering level of the vast Sacramento Valley. "No redwoods. No
hills. No forests. No manzanita. No madronos. Lonely, and sad--"

"An' like the river islands," Billy interpolated. "Richer in
hell, but looks too much like hard work. It'll do for those
that's stuck on hard work--God knows, they's nothin' here to
induce a fellow to knock off ever for a bit of play. No fishin',
no huntin', nothin' but work. I'd work myself, if I had to live
here."

North they drove, through days of heat and dust, across the
California plains, and everywhere was manifest the "new"
farming--great irrigation ditches, dug and being dug, the land
threaded by power-lines from the mountains, and many new
farmhouses on small holdings newly fenced. The bonanza farms were
being broken up. However, many of the great estates remained,
five to ten thousand acres in extent, running from the Sacramento
bank to the horizon dancing in the heat waves, and studded with
great valley oaks.

"It takes rich soil to make trees like those," a ten-acre farmer
told them.

They had driven off the road a hundred feet to his tiny barn in
order to water Hazel and Hattie. A sturdy young orchard covered
most of his ten acres, though a goodly portion was devoted to
whitewashed henhouses and wired runways wherein hundreds of
chickens were to be seen. He had just begun work on a small frame
dwelling.

"I took a vacation when I bought," he explained, "and planted the
trees. Then I went back to work an' stayed with it till the place
was cleared. Now I 'm here for keeps, an' soon as the house is
finished I'll send for the wife. She's not very well, and it will
do her good. We've been planning and working for years to get
away from- the city." He stopped in order to give a happy sigh.
"And now we're free."

The water in the trough was warm from the sun.

"Hold on," the man said. "Don't let them drink that. I'll give it
to them cool."

Stepping into a small shed, he turned an electric switch, and a
motor the size of a fruit box hummed into action. A five-inch
stream of sparkling water splashed into the shallow main ditch of
his irrigation system and flowed away across the orchard through
many laterals.

"Isn' tit beautiful, eh?--beautiful! beautiful!" the man chanted
in an ecstasy. "It's bud and fruit. It's blood and life. Look at
it! It makes a gold mine laughable, and a saloon a nightmare. I
know. I . . . I used to be a barkeeper. In fact, I've been a
barkeeper most of my life. That's how I paid for this place. And
I've hated the business all the time. I was a farm boy, and all
my life I've been wanting to get back to it. And here I am at
last."

He wiped his glasses the better to behold his beloved water, then
seized a hoe and strode down the main ditch to open more
laterals.

"He's the funniest barkeeper I ever seen," Billy commented. "I
took him for a business man of some sort. Must a-ben in some kind
of a quiet hotel."

"Don't drive on right away," Saxon requested. "I want to talk
with him."

He came back, polishing his glasses, his face beaming, watching
the water as if fascinated by it. It required no more exertion on
Saxon's part to start him than had been required on his part to
start the motor.

"The pioneers settled all this in the early fifties," he said.
"The Mexicans never got this far, so it was government land.
Everybody got a hundred and sixty acres. And such acres! The
stories they tell about how much wheat they got to the acre are
almost unbelievable. Then several things happened. The sharpest
and steadiest of the pioneers held what they had and added to it
from the other fellows. It takes a great many quarter sections to
make a bonanza farm. It wasn't long before it was 'most all
bonanza farms."

"They were the successful gamblers," Saxon put in, remembering
Mark Hall's words.

The man nodded appreciatively and continued.

"The old folks schemed and gathered and added the land into the
big holdings, and built the great barns and mansions, and planted
the house orchards and flower gardens. The young folks were
spoiled by so much wealth and went away to the cities to spend
it. And old folks and young united in one thing: in impoverishing
the soil. Year after year they scratched it and took out bonanza
crops. They put nothing back. All they left was plow-sole and
exhausted land. Why, there's big sections they exhausted and left
almost desert.

"The bonanza farmers are all gone now, thank the Lord, and here's
where we small farmers come into our own. It won't be many years
before the whole valley will be farmed in patches like mine. Look
at what we're doing! Worked-out land that had ceased to grow
wheat, and we turn the water on, treat the soil decently, and see
our orchards!

"We've got the water--from the mountains, and from under the
ground. I was reading an account the other day. All life depends
on food. All food depends on water. It takes a thousand pounds of
water to produce one pound of food; ten thousand pounds to
produce one pound of meat. How much water do you drink in a year?
About a ton. But you eat about two hundred pounds of vegetables
and two hundred pounds of meat a year--which means you consume
one hundred tons of water in the vegetables and one thousand tons
in the meat--which means that it takes eleven hundred and one
tons of water each year to keep a small woman like you going."

"Gee!" was all Billy could say.

"You see how population depends upon water," the ax-barkeeper
went on. "Well, we've got the water, immense subterranean
supplies, and in not many years this valley will be populated as
thick as Belgium."

Fascinated by the five-inch stream, sluiced out of the earth and
back to the earth by the droning motor, he forgot his discourse
and stood and gazed, rapt and unheeding, while his visitors drove
on.

"An' him a drink-slinger!" Billy marveled. "He can sure sling the
temperance dope if anybody should ask you."

"It's lovely to think about--all that water, and all the happy
people that will come here to live--"

"But it ain't the valley of the moon!" Billy laughed.

"No," she responded. "They don't have to irrigate in the valley
of the moon, unless for alfalfa and such crops. What we want is
the water bubbling naturally from the ground, and crossing the
farm in little brooks, and on the boundary a fine big creek--"

"With trout in it!" Billy took her up. "An' willows and trees of
all kinds growing along the edges, and here a riffle where you
can flip out trout, and there a deep pool where you can swim and
high-dive. An' kingfishers, an' rabbits comin' down to drink,
an', maybe, a deer."

"And meadowlarks in the pasture," Saxon added. "And mourning
doves in the trees. We must have mourning doves--and the big,
gray tree-squirrels."

"Gee!--that valley of the moon's goin' to be some valley," Billy
meditated, flicking a fly away with his whip from Hattie's side.
"Think we'll ever find it?"

Saxon nodded her head with great certitude.

"Just as the Jews found the promised land, and the Mormons Utah,
and the Pioneers California. You remember the last advice we got
when we left Oakland' ''Tis them that looks that finds.'"



CHAPTER XV

Ever north, through a fat and flourishing rejuvenated land,
stopping at the towns of Willows, Red Bluff and Redding, crossing
the counties of Colusa, Glenn, Tehama, and Shasta, went the
spruce wagon drawn by the dappled chestnuts with cream-colored
manes and tails. Billy picked up only three horses for shipment,
although he visited many farms; and Saxon talked with the women
while he looked over the stock with the men. And Saxon grew the
more convinced that the valley she sought lay not there.

At Redding they crossed the Sacramento on a cable ferry, and made
a day's scorching traverse through rol}ing foot-hills and flat
tablelands. The heat grew more insupportable, and the trees and
shrubs were blasted and dead. Then they came again to the
Sacramento, where the great smelters of Kennett explained the
destruction of the vegetation.

They climbed out of the smelting town, where eyrie houses perched
insecurely on a precipitous landscape. It was a broad,
well-engineered road that took them up a grade miles long and
plunged down into the Canyon of the Sacramento. The road,
rock-surfaced and easy-graded, hewn out of the canyon wall, grew
so narrow that Billy worried for fear of meeting opposite-bound
teams. Far below, the river frothed and flowed over pebbly
shallows, or broke tumultuously over boulders and cascades, in
its race for the great valley they had left behind.

Sometimes, on the wider stretches of road, Saxon drove and Billy
walked to lighten the load. She insisted on taking her turns at
walking, and when he breathed the panting mares on the steep, and
Saxon stood by their heads caressing them and cheering them,
Billy's joy was too deep for any turn of speech as he gazed at
his beautiful horses and his glowing girl, trim and colorful in
her golden brown corduroy, the brown corduroy calves swelling
sweetly under the abbreviated slim skirt. And when her answering
look of happiness came to him--a sudden dimness in her straight
gray eyes--he was overmastered by the knowledge that he must say
something or burst.

"O. you kid!" he cried.

And with radiant face she answered, "O, you kid!"

They camped one night in a deep dent in the canyon, where was
snuggled a box-factory village, and where a toothless ancient,
gazing with faded eyes at their traveling outfit, asked: "Be you
showin'?"

They passed Castle Crags, mighty-bastioned and glowing red
against the palpitating blue sky. They caught their first glimpse
of Mt. Shasta, a rose-tinted snow-peak rising, a sunset dream,
between and beyond green interlacing walls of canyon--a landmark
destined to be with them for many days. At unexpected turns,
after mounting some steep grade, Shasta would appear again, still
distant, now showing two peaks and glacial fields of shimmering
white. Miles and miles and days and days they climbed, with
Shasta ever developing new forms and phases in her summer snows.

"A moving picture in the sky," said Billy at last.

"Oh,--it is all so beautiful," sighed Saxon. "But there are no
moon-valleys here."

They encountered a plague of butterflies, and for days drove
through untold millions of the fluttering beauties that covered
the road with uniform velvet-brown. And ever the road seemed to
rise under the noses of the snorting mares, filling the air with
noiseless flight, drifting down the breeze in clouds of brown and
yellow soft-flaked as snow, and piling in mounds against the
fences, ever driven to float helplessly on the irrigation ditches
along the roadside. Hazel and Hattie soon grew used to them
though Possum never ceased being made frantic.

"Huh!--who ever heard of butterfly-broke horses?" Billy chaffed.
"That's worth fifty bucks more on their price."

"Wait till you get across the Oregon line into the Rogue River
Valley," they were told. "There's God's Paradise --climate,
scenery, and fruit-farming; fruit ranches that yield two hundred
per cent. on a valuation of five hundred dollars an acre."

"Gee!" Billy said, when he had driven on out of hearing; "that's
too rich for our digestion."

And Saxon said, "I don't know about apples in the valley of the
moon, but I do know that the yield is ten thousand per cent. of
happiness on a valuation of one Billy, one Saxon, a Hazel, a
Hattie, and a Possum."

Through Siskiyou County and across high mountains, they came to
Ashland and Medford and camped beside the wild Rogue River.

"This is wonderful and glorious," pronounced Saxon; "but it is
not the valley of the moon."

"Nope, it ain't the valley of the moon," agreed Billy, and he
said it on the evening of the day he hooked a monster steelhead,
standing to his neck in the ice-cold water of the Rogue and
fighting for forty minutes, with screaming reel, ere he drew his
finny prize to the bank and with the scalp-yell of a Comanche
jumped and clutched it by the gills.

"'Them that looks finds,'" predicted Saxon, as they drew north
out of Grant's Pass, and held north across the mountains and
fruitful Oregon valleys.

One day, in camp by the Umpqua River, Billy bent over to begin
skinning the first deer he had ever shot. He raised his eyes to
Saxon and remarked:

"If I didn't know California, I guess Oregon'd suit me from the
ground up."

In the evening, replete with deer meat, resting on his elbow and
smoking his after-supper cigarette, he said:

"Maybe they ain't no valley of the moon. An' if they ain't, what
of it? We could keep on this way forever. I don't ask nothing
better."

"There is a valley of the moon," Saxon answered BOberly. "And we
are going to find it. We've got to. Why Billy, it would never do,
never to settle down. There would be no little Hazels and little
Hatties, nor little . . . Billies--"

"Nor little Saxons," Billy interjected.

"Nor little Possums," she hurried on, nodding her head and
reaching out a caressing hand to where the fox terrier was
ecstatically gnawing a deer-rib. A vicious snarl and a wicked
snap that barely missed her fingers were her reward.

"Possum!" she cried in sharp reproof, again extending her hand.

"Don't, " Billy warned. "He can't help it, and he's likely to get
you next time."

Even more compelling was the menacing threat that Possum growled,
his jaws close-guarding the bone, eyes blazing insanely, the hair
rising stiffly on his neck.

"It's a good dog that sticks up for its bone," Billy championed.
"I wouldn't care to own one that didn't."

"But it's my Possum," Saxon protested. "And he loves me. Besides,
he must love me more than an old bone. And he must mind
me.--Here, you, Possum, give me that bone! Give me that bone,
sir!"

Her hand went out gingerly, and the growl rose in volume and key
till it culminated in a snap.

"I tell you it's instinct," Billy repeated. "He does love you,
but he just can't help doin' it. "

"He's got a right to defend his bones from strangers but not from
his mother," Saxon argued. "I shall make him give up that bone to
me."

"Fox terriers is awful highstrung, Saxon. You'll likely get him
hysterical."

But she was obstinately set in her purpose. She picked up a short
stick of firewood.

"Now, sir, give me that bone."

She threatened with the stick, and the dog's growling became
ferocious. Again he snapped, then crouched back over his bone.
Saxon raised the stick as if to strike him, and he suddenly
abandoned the bone, rolled over on his back at her feet, four
legs in the air, his ears lying meekly back, his eyes swimming
and eloquent with submission and appeal.

"My God!" Billy breathed in solemn awe. "Look at it!--presenting
his solar plexus to you, his vitals an' his life, all defense
down, as much as sayin': 'Here I am" Stamp on me. Kick the life
outa me. I love you, I am your slave, but I just can't help
defendin' my bone. My instinct's stronger'n me. Kill me, but I
can't help it."

Saxon was melted. Tears were in her eyes as she stooped and
gathered the mite of an animal in her arms. Possum was in a
frenzy of agitation, whining, trembling, writhing, twisting,
licking her face, all for forgiveness.

"Heart of gold with a rose in his mouth," Saxon crooned, burying
her face in the soft and quivering bundle of sensibilities.
"Mother is sorry. She'll never bother you again that way. There,
there, little love. See? There's your bone. Take it."

She put him down, but he hesitated between her and the bone,
patently looking to her for surety of permission, yet continuing
to tremble in the terrible struggle between duty and desire that
seemed tearing him asunder. Not until she repeated that it was
all right and nodded her head consentingly did he go to the bone.
And once, a minute later, he raised his head with a sudden
startle and gazed inquiringly at her. She nodded and smiled, and
Possum, with a happy sigh of satisfaction, dropped his head down
to the precious deer-rib.

"That Mercedes was right when she said men fought over jobs like
dogs over bones," Billy enunciated slowly. "It's instinct. Why, I
couldn't no more help reaching my fist to the point of a scab's
jaw than could Possum from snappin' at you. They's no explainin'
it. What a man has to he has to. The fact that he does a thing
shows he had to do it whether he can explain it or not. You
remember Hall couldn't explain why he stuck that stick between
Timothy McManus's legs in the foot race. What a man has to, he
has to. That's all I know about it. I never had no earthly reason
to beat up that lodger we had, Jimmy Harmon. He was a good guy,
square an' all right. But I just had to, with the strike goin' to
smash, an' everything so bitter inside me that I could taste it.
I never told you, but I saw 'm once after I got out--when my arms
was mendin'. I went down to the roundhouse an' waited for 'm to
come in off a run, an' apologized to 'm. Now why did I apologize?
I don't know, except for the same reason I punched 'm--I just had
to."

And so Billy expounded the why of like in terms of realism, in
the camp by the Umpqua River, while Possum expounded it, in
similar terms of fang and appetite, on the rib of deer.



CHAPTER XVI

With Possum on the seat beside her, Saxon drove into the town of
Roseburg. She drove at a walk. At the back of the wagon were tied
two heavy young work-horses. Behind, half a dozen more marched
free, and the rear was brought up by Billy, astride a ninth
horse. All these he shipped from Roseburg to the West Oakland
stables.

It was in the Umpqua Valley that they heard the parable of the
white sparrow. The farmer who told it was elderly and
flourishing. His farm was a model of orderliness and system.
Afterwards, Billy heard neighbors estimate his wealth at a
quarter of a million.

"You've heard the story of the farmer and the white sparrow'" he
asked Billy, at dinner.

"Never heard of a white sparrow even," Billy answered.

"I must say they're pretty rare," the farmer owned. "But here's
the story: Once there was a farmer who wasn't making much of a
success. Things just didn't seem to go right, till at last, one
day, he heard about the wonderful white sparrow. It seems that
the white sparrow comes out only just at daybreak with the first
light of dawn, and that it brings all kinds of good luck to the
farmer that is fortunate enough to catch it. Next morning our
farmer was up at daybreak, and before, looking for it. And, do
you know, he sought for it continually, for months and months,
and never caught even a glimpse of it." Their host shook his
head. "No; he never found it, but he found so many things about
the farm needing attention, and which he attended to before
breakfast, that before he knew it the farm was prospering, and it
wasn't long before the mortgage was paid off and he was starting
a bank account."

That afternoon, as they drove along, Billy was plunged in a deep
reverie.

"Oh, I got the point all right," he said finally. "An' yet I
ain't satisfied. Of course, they wasn't a white sparrow, but by
getting up early an' attendin' to things he'd been slack about
before--oh, I got it all right. An' yet, Saxon, if that's what a
farmer's life means, I don't want to find no moon valley. Life
ain't hard work. Daylight to dark, hard at it--might just as well
be in the city. What's the difference? A1' the time you've got to
yourself is for sleepin', an' when you're sleepin' you're not
enjoyin' yourself. An' what's it matter where you sleep, you're
deado. Might as well be dead an' done with it as work your head
off that way. I'd sooner stick to the road, an' shoot a deer an'
catch a trout once in a while, an' lie on my back in the shade,
an' laugh with you an' have fun with you, an' . . . an' go
swimmin'. An' I 'm a willin' worker, too. But they's all the
difference in the world between a decent amount of work an'
workin' your head off."

Saxon was in full accord. She looked back on her years of toil
and contrasted them with the joyous life she had lived on the
road.

"We don't want to be rich," she said. "Let them hunt their white
sparrows in the Sacramento islands and the irrigation valleys.
When we get up early in the valley of the moon, it will be to
hear the birds sing and sing with them. And if we work hard at
times, it will be only so that we'll have more time to play. And
when you go swimming I 'm going with you. And we'll play so hard
that we'll be glad to work for relaxation."


"I 'm gettin' plumb dried out," Billy announced, mopping the
sweat from his sunburned forehead. "What d'ye say we head for the
coast?"

West they turned, dropping down wild mountain gorges from the
height of land of the interior valleys. So fearful was the road,
that, on one stretch of seven miles, they passed ten broken-down
automobiles. Billy would not force the mares and promptly camped
beside a brawling stream from which he whipped two trout at a
time. Here, Saxon caught her first big trout. She had been
accustomed to landing them up to nine and ten inches, and the
screech of the reel when the big one was hooked caused her to cry
out in startled surprise. Billy came up the riffle to her and
gave counsel. Several minutes later, cheeks flushed and eyes
dancing with excitement, Saxon dragged the big fellow carefully
from the water's edge into the dry sand. Here it threw the hook
out and flopped tremendously until she fell upon it and captured
it in her hands.

"Sixteen inches," Billy said, as she held it up proudly for
inspection. "--Hey!--what are you goin' to do?"

"Wash off the sand, of course," was her answer.

"Better put it in the basket," he advised, then closed his mouth
and grimly watched.

She stooped by the side of the stream and dipped in the splendid
fish. It flopped, there was a convulsive movement on her part,
and it was gone.

"Oh!" Saxon cried in chagrin.

"Them that finds should hold," quoth Billy.

"I don't care," she replied. "It was a bigger one than you ever
caught anyway."

"Oh, I 'm not denyin' you're a peach at fishin'," he drawled.
"You caught me, didn't you?"

"I don't know about that," she retorted. "Maybe it was like the
man who was arrested for catching trout out of season. His
defense was self defense."

Billy pondered, but did not see.

"The trout attacked him," she explained.

Billy grinned. Fifteen minutes later he said:

"You sure handed me a hot one."


The sky was overcast, and, as they drove along the bank of the
Coquille River, the fog suddenly enveloped them.

"Whoof!" Billy exhaled joyfully. "Ain't it great! I can feel
myself moppin' it up like a dry sponge. I never appreciated fog
before."

Saxon held out her arms to receive it, making motions as if she
were bathing in the gray mist.

"I never thought I'd grow tired of the sun," she said; "but we've
had more than our share the last few weeks."

"Ever since we hit the Sacramento Valley," Billy affirmed. "Too
much sun ain't good. I've worked that out. Sunshine is like
liquor. Did you ever notice how good you felt when the sun come
out after a week of cloudy weather, Well, that sunshine was just
like a jolt of whiskey. Had the same effect. Made you feel good
all over. Now, when you're swimmin', an' come out an' lay in the
sun, how good you feel. That's because you're lappin' up a
sun-cocktail. But suppose you lay there in the sand a couple of
hours. You don't feel so good. You're so slow-movin' it takes you
a long time to dress. You go home draggin' your legs an' feelin'
rotten, with all the life sapped outa you. What's that? It's the
katzenjammer. You've been soused to the ears in sunshine, like so
much whiskey, an' now you're payin' for it. That's straight.
That's why fog in the climate is best."

"Then we've been drunk for months, " Saxon said. "And now we're
going to sober up."

"You bet. Why, Saxon, I can do two days' work in one in this
climate.--Look at the mares. Blame me if they ain't perkin' up
already."

Vainly Saxon's eye roved the pine forest in search of her beloved
redwoods. They would find them down in California, they were told
in the town of Bandon.

"Then we're too far north," said Saxon. "We must go south to find
our valley of the moon."

And south they went, along roads that steadily grew worse,
through the dairy country of Langlois and through thick pine
forests to Port Orford, where Saxon picked jeweled agates on the
beach while Billy caught enormous rockcod. No railroads had yet
penetrated this wild region, and the way south grew wilder and
wilder. At Gold Beach they encountered their old friend, the
Rogue River, which they ferried across where it entered the
Pacific. Still wilder became the country, still more terrible the
road, still farther apart the isolated farms and clearings.

And here were neither Asiatics nor Europeans. The scant
population consisted of the original settlers and their
descendants. More than one old man or woman Saxon talked with,
who could remember the trip across the Plains with the plodding
oxen. West they had fared until the Pacific itself had stopped
them, and here they had made their clearings, built their rude
houses, and settled. In them Farthest West had been reached. Old
customs had changed little. There were no railways. No automobile
as yet had ventured their perilous roads. Eastward, between them
and the populous interior valleys, lay the wilderness of the
Coast Range--a game paradise, Billy heard; though he declared
that the very road he traveled was game paradise enough for him.
Had he not halted the horses, turned the reins over to Saxon, and
shot an eight-pronged buck from the wagon-seat?

South of Gold Beach, climbing a narrow road through the virgin
forest, they heard from far above the jingle of bells. A hundred
yards farther on Billy found a place wide enough to turn out.
Here he waited, while the merry bells, descending the mountain,
rapidly came near. They heard the grind of brakes, the soft thud
of horses' hoofs, once a sharp cry of the driver, and once a
woman's laughter.

"Some driver, some driver," Billy muttered. "I take my hat off to
'm whoever he is, hittin' a pace like that on a road like
this.--Listen to that! He's got powerful brakes.-- Zocie! That
WAS a chuck-hole! Some springs, Saxon, some springs!"

Where the road zigzagged above, they glimpsed through the trees
four sorrel horses trotting swiftly, and the flying wheels of a
small, tan-painted trap.

At the bend of the road the leaders appeared again, swinging wide
on the curve, the wheelers flashed into view, and the light
two-seated rig; then the whole affair straightened out and
thundered down upon them across a narrow plank-bridge. In the
front seat were a man and woman; in the rear seat a Japanese was
squeezed in among suit cases, rods, guns, saddles, and a
typewriter case, while above him and all about him, fastened most
intricately, sprouted a prodigious crop of deer- and elk-horns.

"It's Mr. and Mrs. Hastings," Saxon cried.

"Whoa!" Hastings yelled, putting on the brake and gathering his
horses in to a stop alongside. Greetings flew back and forth, in
which the Japanese, whom they had last seen on the Roamer at Rio
Vista, gave and reeeived his share.

"Different from the Sacramento islands, eh?" Hastings said to
Saxon. "Nothing but old American stock in these mountains. And
they haven't changed any. As John Fox, Jr., said, they're our
contemporary ancestors. Our old folks were just like them."

Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, between them, told of their long drive.
They were out two months then, and intended to continue north
through Oregon and Washington to the Canadian boundary.

"Then we'll ship our horses and come home by train," concluded
Hastings.

"But the way you drive you oughta be a whole lot further along
than this," Billy criticized.

"But we keep stopping off everywhere," Mrs. Hastings explained.

"We went in to the Hoopa Reservation," said Mr. Elastings, " and
canoed down the Trinity and Klamath Rivers to the ocean. And just
now we've come out from two weeks in the real wilds of Curry
County."

"You must go in," Hastings advised. "You'll get to Mountain Ranch
to-night. And you can turn in from there. No roads, though.
You'll have to pack your horses. But it's full of game. I shot
five mountain lions and two bear, to say nothing of deer. And
there are small herds of elk, too.--No; I didn't shoot any.
They're protected. These horns I got from the old hunters. I'll
tell you all about it."

And while the men talked, Saxon and Mrs. Hastings were not idle.

"Found your valley of the moon yet?" the writer's wife asked, as
they were saying good-by.

Saxon shook her head.

"You will find it if you go far enough; and be sure you go as far
as Sonoma Valley and our ranch. Then, if you haven't found it
yet, we'll see what we can do."

Three weeks later, with a bigger record of mountain lions and
bear than Hastings' to his credit, Billy emerged from Curry
County and drove across the line into California. At once Saxon
found herself among the redwoods. But they were redwoods
unbelievable. Billy stopped the wagon, got out, and paced around
one.

"Forty-five feet," he announced. "That's fifteen in diameter. And
they're all like it only bigger. No; there's a runt. It's only
about nine feet through. An' they're hundreds of feet tall."

"When I die, Billy, you must bury me in a redwood grove," Saxon
adjured.

"I ain't goin' to let you die before I do," he assured her. "An'
then we'll leave it in our wills for us both to be buried that
way."



CHAPTER XVII

South they held along the coast, hunting, fishing, swimming, and
horse-buying. Billy shipped his purchases on the coasting
steamers. Through Del Norte and Humboldt counties they went, and
through Mendocino into Sonoma --counties larger than Eastern
states--threading the giant woods, whipping innumerable
trout-streams, and crossing countless rich valleys. Ever Saxon
sought the valley of the moon. Sometimes, when all seemed fair,
the lack was a railroad, sometimes madrono and manzanita trees,
and, usually, there was too much fog.

"We do want a sun-cocktail once in a while," she told Billy.

"Yep," was his answer. "Too much fog might make us soggy. What
we're after is betwixt an' between, an' we'll have to get back
from the coast a ways to find it."

This was in the fall of the year, and they turned their backs on
the Pacific at old Fort Ross and entered the Russian River
Valley, far below Ukiah, by way of Cazadero and Guerneville. At
Santa Rosa Billy was delayed with the shipping of several horses,
so that it was not until afternoon that he drove south and east
for Sonoma Valley.

"I guess we'll no more than make Sonoma Valley when it'll be time
to camp," he said, measuring the sun with his eye. "This is
called Bennett Valley. You cross a divide from it and come out at
Glen Ellen. Now this is a mighty pretty valley, if anybody should
ask you. An' that's some nifty mountain over there."

"The mountain is all right," Saxon adjudged. "But all the rest of
the hills are too bare. And I don't see any big trees. It takes
rich soil to make big trees."

"Oh, I ain't sayin' it's the valley of the moon by a long ways.
All the same, Saxon, that's some mountain. Look at the timber on
it. I bet they's deer there."

"I wonder where we'll spend this winter," Saxon remarked.

"D'ye know, I've just been thinkin' the same thing. Let's winter
at Carmel. Mark Hall's back, an' so is Jim Hazard. What d'ye
say?"

Saxon nodded.

"Only you won't be the odd-job man this time."

"Nope. We can make trips in good weather horse-buyin'," Billy
confirmed, his face beaming with self-satisfaction. "An' if that
walkin' poet of the Marble House is around, I'll sure get the
gloves on with 'm just in memory of the time he walked me off my
legs--"

"Oh! Oh!" Saxon cried. "Look, Billy! Look!"

Around a bend in the road came a man in a sulky, driving a heavy
stallion. The animal was a bright chestnut-sorrel, with
cream-colored mane and tail. The tail almost swept the ground,
while the mane was so thick that it crested out of the neck and
flowed down, long and wavy. He scented the mares and stopped
short, head flung up and armfuls of creamy mane tossing in the
breeze. He bent his head until flaring nostrils brushed impatient
knees, and between the fine-pointed ears could be seen a mighty
and incredible curve of neck. Again he tossed his head, fretting
against the bit as the driver turned widely aside for safety in
passing. They could see the blue glaze like a sheen on the
surface of the horse's bright, wild eyes, and Billy closed a wary
thumb on his reins and himself turned widely. He held up his hand
in signal, and the driver of the stallion stopped when well past,
and over his shoulder talked draught-horses with Billy.

Among other things, Billy learned that the stallion's name was
Barbarossa, that the driver was the owner, and that Santa Rosa
was his headquarters.

"There are two ways to Sonoma Valley from here," the man
directed. "When you come to the crossroads the turn to the left
will take you to Glen Ellen by Bennett Peak-- that's it there."

Rising from rolling stubble fields, Bennett Peak towered hot in
the sun, a row of bastion hills leaning against its base. But
hills and mountains on that side showed bare and heated, though
beautiful with the sunburnt tawniness of California.

"The turn to the right will take you to Glen Ellen, too, only
it's longer and steeper grades. But your mares don't look as
though it'd bother them."

"Which is the prettiest way?" Saxon asked.

"Oh, the right hand road, by all means," said the man. "That's
Sonoma Mountain there, and the road skirts it pretty well up, and
goes through Cooper's Grove."

Billy did not start immediately after they had said good-by, and
he and Saxon, heads over shoulders, watched the roused Barbarossa
plunging mutinously on toward Santa Rosa.

"Gee!" Billy said. "I'd like to be up here next spring.

At the crossroads Billy hesitated and looked at Saxon.

"What if it is longer?" she said. "Look how beautiful it is--all
covered with green woods; and I just know those are redwoods in
the canyons. You never can tell. The valley of the moon might be
right up there somewhere. And it would never do to miss it just
in order to save half an hour."

They took the turn to the right and began crossing a series of
steep foothills. As they approached the mountain there were signs
of a greater abundance of water. They drove beside a running
stream, and, though the vineyards on the hills were summer-dry,
the farmhouses in the hollows and on the levels were grouped
about with splendid trees.

"Maybe it sounds funny," Saxon observed; "but I 'm beginning to
love that mountain already. It almost seems as if I d seen it
before, somehow, it's so all-around satisfying--oh!"

Crossing a bridge and rounding a sharp turn, they were suddenly
enveloped in a mysterious coolness and gloom. All about them
arose stately trunks of redwood. The forest floor was a rosy
carpet of autumn fronds. Occasional shafts of sunlight,
penetrating the deep shade, warmed the somberness of the grove.
Alluring paths led off among the trees and into cozy nooks made
by circles of red columns growing around the dust of vanished
ancestors--witnessing the titantic dimensions of those ancestors
by the girth of the circles in which they stood.

Out of the grove they pulled to the steep divide, which was no
more than a buttress of Sonoma Mountain. The way led on through
rolling uplands and across small dips and canyons, all well
wooded and a-drip with water. In places the road was muddy from
wayside springs.

"The mountain's a sponge," said Billy. "Here it is, the tail-end
of dry summer, an' the ground's just leakin' everywhere."

"I know I've never been here before," Saxon communed aloud. "But
it's all so familiar! So I must have dreamed it. And there's
madronos!--a whole grove! And manzanita! Why, I feel just as if I
was coming home.... Oh, Billy, if it should turn out to be our
valley."

"Plastered against the side of a mountain?" he queried, with a
skeptical laugh.

"No; I don't mean that. I mean on the way to our valley. Because
the way--all ways--to our valley must be beautiful. And this;
I've seen it all before, dreamed it."

"It's great," he said sympathetically. "I wouldn't trade a square
mile of this kind of country for the whole Sacramento Valley,
with the river islands thrown in and Middle River for good
measure. If they ain't deer up there, I miss my guess. An' where
they's springs they's streams, an' streams means trout."

They passed a large and comfortable farmhouse, surrounded by
wandering barns and cow-sheds, went on under forest arches, and
emerged beside a field with which Saxon was instantly enchanted.
It flowed in a gentle concave from the road up the mountain, its
farther boundary an unbroken line of timber. The field glowed
like rough gold in the approaching sunset, and near the middle of
it stood a solitary great redwood, with blasted top suggesting a
nesting eyrie for eagles. The timber beyond clothed the mountain
in solid green to what they took to be the top. But, as they
drove on, Saxon, looking back upon what she called her field, saw
the real summit of Sonoma towering beyond, the mountain behind
her field a mere spur upon the side of the larger mass.

Ahead and toward the right, across sheer ridges of the mountains,
separated by deep green canyons and broadening lower down into
rolling orchards and vineyards, they caught their first sight of
Sonoma Valley and the wild mountains that rimmed its eastern
side. To the left they gazed across a golden land of small hills
and valleys. Beyond, to the north, they glimpsed another portion
of the valley, and, still beyond, the opposing wall of the
valley-- a range of mountains, the highest of which reared its
red and battered ancient crater against a rosy and mellowing sky.
From north to southeast, the mountain rim curved in the
brightness of the sun, while Saxon and Billy were already in the
shadow of evening. He looked at Saxon, noted the ravished ecstasy
of her face, and stopped the horses. All the eastern sky was
blushing to rose, which descended upon the mountains, touching
them with wine and ruby. Sonoma Valley began to fill with a
purple flood, laying the mountain bases, rising, inundating,
drowning them in its purple. Saxon pointed in silence, indicating
that the purple flood was the sunset shadow of Sonoma Mountain.
Billy nodded, then chirruped to the mares, and the descent began
through a warm and colorful twilight.

On the elevated sections of the road they felt the cool,
delicious breeze from the Pacific forty miles away; while from
each little dip and hollow came warm breaths of autumn earth,
spicy with sunburnt grass and fallen leaves and passing flowers.

They came to the rim of a deep canyon that seemed to penetrate to
the heart of Sonoma Mountain. Again, with no word spoken, merely
from watching Saxon, Billy stopped the wagon. The canyon was
wildly beautiful. Tall redwoods lined its entire length. On its
farther rim stood three rugged knolls covered with dense woods of
spruce and oak. From between the knolls, a feeder to the main
canyon and likewise fringed with redwoods, emerged a smaller
canyon. Billy pointed to a stubble field that lay at the feet of
the knolls.

"It's in fields like that I've seen my mares a-pasturing," he
said.

They dropped down into the canyon, the road following a stream
that sang under maples and alders. The sunset fires, refracted
from the cloud-driftage of the autumn sky, bathed the canyon with
crimson, in which ruddy-limbed mandronos and wine-wooded
manzanitas burned and smoldered. The air was aromatic with
laurel. Wild grape vines bridged the stream from tree to tree.
Oaks of many sorts were veiled in lacy Spanish moss. Ferns and
brakes grew lush beside the stream. From somewhere came the
plaint of a mourning dove. Fifty feet above the ground, almost
over their heads, a Douglas squirrel crossed the road--a flash of
gray between two trees; and they marked the continuance of its
aerial passage by the bending of the boughs.

"I've got a hunch," said Billy.

"Let me say it first," Saxon begged.

He waited, his eyes on her face as she gazed about her in
rapture.

"We've found our valley," she whispered. "Was that it?"

He nodded, but checked speech at sight of a small boy driving a
cow up the road, a preposterously big shotgun in one hand, in the
other as preposterously big a jackrabbit.  "How far to Glen
Ellen?" Billy asked.

"Mile an' a half," was the answer.

"What creek is this?" inquired Saxon.

"Wild Water. It empties into Sonoma Creek half a mile down."

"Trout?"--this from Billy.

"If you know how to catch 'em," grinned the boy.

"Deer up the mountain?"

"It ain't open season," the boy evaded.

"I guess you never shot a deer," Billy slyly baited, and was
rewarded with:

"I got the horns to show."

"Deer shed their horns," Billy teased on. "Anybody can find 'em."

"I got the meat on mine. It ain't dry yet--"

The boy broke off, gazing with shocked eyes into the pit Billy
had dug for him.

"It's all right, sonny," Billy laughed, as he drove on. "I ain't
the game warden. I 'm buyin' horses."

More leaping tree squirrels, more ruddy madronos and majestic
oaks, more fairy circles of redwoods, and, still beside the
singing stream, they passed a gate by the roadside. Before it
stood a rural mail box, on which was lettered "Edmund Hale."
Standing under the rustic arch, leaning upon the gate, a man and
woman composed a pieture so arresting and beautiful that Saxon
caught her breath. They were side by side, the delicate hand of
the woman curled in the hand of the man, which looked as if made
to confer benedictions. His face bore out this impression--a
beautiful-browed countenance, with large, benevolent gray eyes
under a wealth of white hair that shone like spun glass. He was
fair and large; the little woman beside him was daintily wrought.
She was saffron-brown, as a woman of the white race can well be,
with smiling eyes of bluest blue. In quaint sage-green draperies,
she seemed a flower, with her small vivid face irresistibly
reminding Saxon of a springtime wake-robin.

Perhaps the picture made by Saxon and Billy was equally arresting
and beautiful, as they drove down through the golden end of day.
The two couples had eyes only for each other. The little woman
beamed joyously. The man's face glowed into the benediction that
had trembled there. To Saxon, like the field up the mountain,
like the mountain itself, it seemed that she had always known
this adorable pair. She knew that she loved them.

"How d'ye do," said Billy.

"You blessed children," said the man. "I wonder if you know how
dear you look sitting there."

That was all. The wagon had passed by, rustling down the road,
which was carpeted with fallen leaves of maple, oak, and alder.
Then they came to the meeting of the two creeks.

"Oh, what a place for a home," Saxon cried, pointing across Wild
Water. "See, Billy, on that bench there above the meadow."

"It's a rich bottom, Saxon; and so is the bench rich. Look at the
big trees on it. An' they's sure to be springs."

"Drive over," she said.

Forsaking the main road, they crossed Wild Water on a narrow
bridge and continued along an ancient, rutted road that ran
beside an equally ancient worm-fence of split redwood rails. They
came to a gate, open and off its hinges, through which the road
led out on the bench.

"This is it--I know it," Saxon said with conviction. "Drive in,
Billy."

A small, whitewashed farmhouse with broken windows showed through
the trees.

"Talk about your madronos--"

Billy pointed to the father of all madronos, six feet in diameter
at its base, sturdy and sound, which stood before the house.

They spoke in low tones as they passed around the house under
great oak trees and came to a stop before a small barn. They did
not wait to unharness. Tying the horses, they started to explore.
The pitch from the bench to the meadow was steep yet thickly
wooded with oaks and manzanita. As they crashed through the
underbrush they startled a score of quail into flight.

"How about game?" Saxon queried.

Billy grinned, and fell to examining a spring which bubbled a
clear stream into the meadow. Here the ground was sunbaked and
wide open in a multitude of cracks.

Disappointment leaped into Saxon's face, but Billy, crumbling a
clod between his fingers, had not made up his mind.

"It's rich," he pronounced; "--the cream of the soil that's been
washin' down from the hills for ten thousan' years. But--"

He broke off, stared all about, studying the configuration of the
meadow, crossed it to the redwood trees beyond, then came back.

"It's no good as it is," he said. "But it's the best ever if it's
handled right. All it needs is a little common sense an' a lot of
drainage. This meadow's a natural basin not yet filled level.
They's a sharp slope through the redwoods to the creek. Come on,
I'll show you."

They went through the redwoods and came out on Sonoma Creek. At
this spot was no singing. The stream poured into a quiet pool.
The willows on their side brushed the water. The opposite side
was a steep bank. Billy measured the height of the bank with his
eye, the depth of the water with a driftwood pole.

"Fifteen feet," he announced. "That allows all kinds of
high-divin' from the bank. An' it's a hundred yards of a swim up
an' down."

They followed down the pool. It emptied in a riffle, across
exposed bedrock, into another pool. As they looked, a trout
flashed into the air and back, leaving a widening ripple on the
quiet surface.

"I guess we won't winter in Carmel," Billy said. "This place was
specially manufactured for us. In the morning I'll find out who
owns it."

Half an hour later, feeding the horses, he called Saxon's
attention to a locomotive whistle.

"You've got your railroad," he said. "That's a train pulling into
Glen Ellen, an' it's only a mile from here."

Saxon was dozing off to sleep under the blankets when Billy
aroused her.

"Suppose the guy that owns it won't sell?"

"There isn't the slightest doubt," Saxon answered with unruffled
certainty. "This is our place. I know it."



CHAPTER XVIII

They were awakened by Possum, who was indignantly reproaching a
tree squirrel for not coming down to be killed. The squirrel
chattered garrulous remarks that drove Possum into a mad attempt
to climb the tree. Billy and Saxon giggled and hugged each other
at the terrier's frenzy.

"If this is goin' to be our place, they'll be no shootin' of tree
squirrels," Billy said.

Saxon pressed his hand and sat up. From beneath the bench came
the cry of a meadow lark.

"There isn't anything left to be desired," she sighed happily.

"Except the deed," Billy corrected.

After a hasty breakfast, they started to explore, running the
irregular boundaries of the place and repeatedly crossing it from
rail fence to creek and back again. Seven springs they found
along the foot of the bench on the edge of the meadow.

"There's your water supply," Billy said. "Drain the meadow, work
the soil up, and with fertilizer and all that water you can grow
crops the year round. There must be five acres of it, an' I
wouldn't trade it for Mrs. Mortimer's."

They were standing in the old orchard, on the bench where they
had counted twenty-seven trees, neglected but of generous girth.

"And on top the bench, back of the house, we can grow berries."
Saxon paused, considering a new thought "If only Mrs. Mortimer
would come up and advise us!--Do you think she would, Billy?"

"Sure she would. It ain't more 'n four hours' run from San Jose.
But first we'll get our hooks into the place. Then you can write
to her."

Sonoma Creek gave the long boundary to the little farm, two sides
were worm fenced, and the fourth side was Wild Water.

"Why, we'll have that beautiful man and woman for neighbors,"
Saxon recollected. "Wild Water will be the dividing line between
their place and ours."

"It ain't ours yet," Billy commented. "Let's go and call on 'em.
They'll be able to tell us all about it."

"It's just as good as," she replied. "The big thing has been the
finding. And whoever owns it doesn't care much for it. It hasn't
been lived in for a long time. And --Oh, Billy--are you
satisfied!"

"With every bit of it," he answered frankly, "as far as it goes.
But the trouble is, it don't go far enough."

The disappointment in her face spurred him to renunciation of his
particular dream.

"We'll buy it--that's settled," he said. "But outside the meadow,
they's so much woods that they's little pasture--not more 'n
enough for a couple of horses an' a cow. But I don't care. We
can't have everything, an' what they is is almighty good."

"Let us call it a starter," she consoled. "Later on we can add to
it--maybe the land alongside that runs up the Wild Water to the
three knolls we saw yesterday "

"Where I seen my horses pasturin'," he remembered, with a flash
of eye. "Why not? So much has come true since we hit the road,
maybe that'll come true, too.

"We'll work for it, Billy."

"We'll work like hell for it," he said grimly.


They passed through the rustic gate and along a path that wound
through wild woods. There was no sign of the house until they
came abruptly upon it, bowered among the trees. It was
eight-sided, and so justly proportioned that its two stories made
no show of height. The house belonged there. It might have sprung
from the soil just as the trees had. There were no formal
grounds. The wild grew to the doors. The low porch of the main
entrance was raised only a step from the ground. "Trillium
Covert," they read, in quaint carved letters under the eave of
the porch.

"Come right upstairs, you dears," a voice called from above, in
response to Saxon's knock.

Stepping back and looking up, she beheld the little lady smiling
down from a sleeping-porch. Clad in a rosy-tissued and flowing
house gown, she again reminded Saxon of a flower.

"Just push the front door open and find your way," was the
direction.

Saxon led, with Billy at her heels. They came into a room bright
with windows, where a big log smoldered in a rough-stone
fireplace. On the stone slab above stood a huge Mexican jar,
filled with autumn branches and trailing fluffy smoke-vine. The
walls were finished in warm natural woods, stained but without
polish. The air was aromatic with clean wood odors. A walnut
organ loomed in a shallow corner of the room. All corners were
shallow in this octagonal dwelling. In another corner were many
rows of books. Through the windows, across a low couch
indubitably made for use, could be seen a restful picture of
autumn trees and yellow grasses, threaded by wellworn paths that
ran here and there over the tiny estate. A delightful little
stairway wound past more windows to the upper story. Here the
little lady greeted them and led them into what Saxon knew at
once was her room. The two octagonal sides of the house which
showed in this wide room were given wholly to windows. Under the
long sill, to the floor, were shelves of books. Books lay here
and there, in the disorder of use, on work table, couch and desk.
On a sill by an open window, a jar of autumn leaves breathed the
charm of the sweet brown wife, who seated herself in a tiny
rattan chair, enameled a cheery red, such as children delight to
rock in.

"A queer house," Mrs. Hale laughed girlishly and contentedly.
"But we love it. Edmund made it with his own hands even to the
plumbing, though he did have a terrible time with that before he
succeeded."

"How about that hardwood floor downstairs?--an' the fireplace?"
Billy inquired.

"All, all," she replied proudly. "And half the furniture. That
cedar desk there, the table--with his own hands."

"They are such gentle hands," Saxon was moved to say.

Mrs. Hale looked at her quickly, her vivid face alive with a
grateful light.

"They are gentle, the gentlest hands I have ever known, " she
said softly. "And you are a dear to have noticed it, for you only
saw them yesterday in passing."

"I couldn't help it," Saxon said simply.

Her gaze slipped past Mrs. Hale, attracted by the wall beyond,
which was done in a bewitching honeycomb pattern dotted with
golden bees. The walls were hung with a few, a very few, framed
pictures.

"They are all of people," Saxon said, remembering the beautiful
paintings in Mark Hall's bungalow.

"My windows frame my landscape paintings," Mrs. Hale answered,
pointing out of doors. "Inside I want only the faces of my dear
ones whom I cannot have with me always. Some of them are dreadful
rovers."

"Oh!" Saxon was on her feet and looking at a photograph. "You
know Clara Hastings!"

"I ought to. I did everything but nurse her at my breast. She
came to me when she was a little baby. Her mother was my sister.
Do you know how greatly you resemble her? I remarked it to Edmund
yesterday. He had already seen it. It wasn't a bit strange that
his heart leaped out to you two as you came drilling down behind
those beautiful horses."

So Mrs. Hale was Clara's aunt--old stock that had crossed the
Plains. Saxon knew now why she had reminded her so strongly of
her own mother.

The talk whipped quite away from Billy, who could only admire the
detailed work of the cedar desk while he listened. Saxon told of
meeting Clara and Jack Hastings on their yacht and on their
driving trip in Oregon. They were off again, Mrs. Eale said,
having shipped their horses home from Vancouver and taken the
Canadian Pacific on their way to England. Mrs. Hale knew Saxon's
mother or, rather, her poems; and produced, not only "The Story
of the Files," but a ponderous scrapbook which contained many of
her mother's poems which Saxon had never seen. A sweet singer,
Mrs. Hale said; but so many had sung in the days of gold and been
forgotten. There had been no army of magazines then, and the
poems had perished in local newspapers.

Jack Hastings had fallen in love with Clara, the talk ran on;
then, visiting at Trillium Covert, he had fallen in love with
Sonoma Valley and bought a magnificent home ranch, though little
enough he saw of it, being away over the world so much of the
time. Mrs. Hale talked of her own Journey across the Plains, a
little girl, in the late Fifties, and, like Mrs. Mortimer, knew
all about the fight at Little Meadow, and the tale of the
massacre of the emigrant train of which Billy's father had been
the sole survivor.

"And so," Saxon concluded, an hour later, "we've been three years
searching for our valley of the moon, and now we've found it."

"Valley of the Moon?" Mrs. Hale queried. "Then you knew about it
all the time. What kept you so long?"

"No; we didn't know. We just started on a blind search for it.
Mark Hall called it a pilgrimage, and was always teasing us to
carry long staffs. He said when we found the spot we'd know,
because then the staffs would burst into blossom. He laughed at
all the good things we wanted in our valley, and one night he
took me out and showed me the moon through a telescope. He said
that was the only place we could find such a wonderful valley. He
meant it was moonshine, but we adopted the name and went on
looking for it."

"What a coincidence!" Mrs. Hale exclaimed. "For this is the
Valley of the Moon."

"I know it," Saxon said with quiet confidence. "It has everything
we wanted."

"But you don't understand, my dear. This is the Valley of the
Moon. This is Sonoma Valley. Sonoma is an Indian word, and means
the Valley of the Moon. That was what the Indians called it for
untold ages before the first white men came. We, who love it,
still so call it."

And then Saxon recalled the mysterious references Jack Hastings
and his wife had made to it, and the talk tripped along until
Billy grew restless. He cleared his throat significantly and
interrupted.

"We want to find out about that ranch acrost the creek--who owns
it, if they'll sell, where we'll find 'em, an' such things."

Mrs. Hale stood up.

"We'll go and see Edmund," she said, catching Saxon by the hand
and leading the way.

"My!" Billy ejaculated, towering above her. "I used to think
Saxon was small. But she'd make two of you."

"And you're pretty big," the little woman smiled; "but Edmund is
taller than you, and broader-shouldered."

They crossed a bright hall, and found the big beautiful husband
lying back reading in a huge Mission rocker. Beside it was
another tiny child's chair of red-enameled rattan. Along the
length of his thigh, the head on his knee and directed toward a
smoldering log in a fireplace, clung an incredibly large striped
cat. Like its master, it turned its head to greet the newcomers.
Again Saxon felt the loving benediction that abided in his face,
his eyes, his hands--toward which she involuntarily dropped her
eyes. Again she was impressed by the gentleness of them. They
were hands of love. They were the hands of a type of man she had
never dreamed existed. No one in that merry crowd of Carmel had
prefigured him. They were artists. This was the scholar, the
philosopher. In place of the passion of youth and all youth's mad
revolt, was the benignance of wisdom. Those gentle hands had
passed all the bitter by and plucked only the sweet of life.
Dearly as she loved them, she shuddered to think what some of
those Carmelites would be like when they were as old as
he--especially the dramatic critic and the Iron Man.

"Here are the dear children, Edmund," Mrs. Hale said. "What do
you think! They want to buy the Madrono Ranch. They've been three
years searching for it--I forgot to tell them we had searched ten
years for Trillium Covert. Tell them all about it. Surely Mr.
Naismith is still of a mind to sell!"

They seated themselves in simple massive chairs, and Mrs. Hale
took the tiny rattan beside the big Mission rocker, her slender
hand curled like a tendril in Edmund's. And while Saxon listened
to the talk, her eyes took in the grave rooms lined with books.
She began to realize how a mere structure of wood and stone may
express the spirit of him who conceives and makes it. Those
gentle hands had made all this--the very furniture, she guessed
as her eyes roved from desk to chair, from work table to reading
stand beside the bed in the other room, where stood a
green-shaded lamp and orderly piles of magazines and books.

As for the matter of Madrono Ranch, it was easy enough he was
saying. Naismith would sell. Had desired to sell for the past
five years, ever since he had engaged in the enterprise of
bottling mineral water at the springs lower down the valley. It
was fortunate that he was the owner, for about all the rest of
the surrounding land was owned by a Erenchman--an early settler.
He would not part with a foot of it. He was a peasant, with all
the peasant's love of the soil, which, in him, had become an
obsession, a disease. He was a land-miser. With no business
capacity, old and opinionated, he was land poor, and it was an
open question which would arrive first, his death or bankruptcy.

As for Madrono Ranch, Naismith owned it and had set the price at
fifty dollars an acre. That would be one thousand dollars, for
there were twenty acres. As a farming investment, using
old-fashioned methods, it was not worth it. As a business
investment, yes; for the virtues of the valley were on the eve of
being discovered by the outside world, and no better location for
a summer home could be found. As a happiness investment in joy of
beauty and climate, it was worth a thousand times the price
asked. And he knew Naismith would allow time on most of the
amount. Edmund's suggestion was that they take a two years'
lease, with option to buy, the rent to apply to the purchase if
they took it up. Naismith had done that once with a Swiss, who
had paid a monthly rental of ten dollars. But the man's wife had
died, and he had gone away.

Edmund soon divined Billy's renunciation, though not the nature
of it; and several questions brought it forth-- the old pioneer
dream of land spaciousness; of cattle on a hundred hills; one
hundred and sixty acres of land the smallest thinkable division.

"But you don't need all that land, dear lad," Edmund said softly.
"I see you understand intensive farming. Have you thought about
intensive horse-raising?"

Billy's jaw dropped at the smashing newness of the idea. He
considered it, but could see no similarity in the two processes.
Unbelief leaped into his eyes.

"You gotta show me!" he cried.

The elder man smiled gently.

"Let us see. In the first place, you don't need those twenty
acres except for beauty. There are five acres in the meadow. You
don't need more than two of them to make your living at selling
vegetables. In fact, you and your wife, working from daylight to
dark, cannot properly farm those two acres. Remains three acres.
You have plenty of water for it from the springs. Don't be
satisfied with one crop a year, like the rest of the
old-fashioned farmers in this valley. Farm it like your vegetable
plot, intensively, all the year, in crops that make horse-feed,
irrigating, fertilizing, rotating your crops. Those three acres
will feed as many horses as heaven knows how huge an area of
unseeded, uncared for, wasted pasture would feed. Think it over.
I'll lend you books on the subject. I don't know how large your
crops will be, nor do I know how much a horse eats; that's your
business. But I am certain, with a hired man to take your place
helping your wife on her two acres of vegetables, that by the
time you own the horses your three acres will feed, you will have
all you can attend to. Then it will be time to get more land, for
more horses, for more riches, if that way happiness lie."

Billy understood. In his enthusiasm he dashed out:

"You're some farmer."

Edmund smiled and glanced toward his wife.

"Give him your opinion of that, Annette."

Her blue eyes twinkled as she complied.

"Why, the dear, he never farms. He has never farmed. But he
knows." She waved her hand about the book1ined walls. "He is a
student of good. He studies all good things done by good men
under the sun. His pleasure is in books and wood-working."

"Don't forget Dulcie," Edmund gently protested.

"Yes, and Dulcie." Annette laughed. "Dulcie is our cow. It is a
great question with Jack Hastings whether Edmund dotes more on
Dulcie, or Dulcie dotes more on Edmund. When he goes to San
Francisco Dulcie is miserable. So is Edmund, until he hastens
back. Oh, Dulcie has given me no few jealous pangs. But I have to
confess he understands her as no one else does."

"That is the one practical subject I know by experience," Edmund
confirmed. "I am an authority on Jersey cows. Call upon me any
time for counsel."

He stood up and went toward his book-shelves; and they saw how
magnificently large a man he was. He paused a book in his hand,
to answer a question from Saxon. No; there were no mosquitoes,
although, one summer when the south wind blew for ten days--an
unprecedented thing--a few mosquitoes had been carried up from
San Pablo Bay. As for fog, it was the making of the valley. And
where they were situated, sheltered behind Sonoma Mountain, the
fogs were almost invariably high fogs. Sweeping in from the ocean
forty miles away, they were deflected by Sonoma Mountain and
shunted high into the air. Another thing, Trillium Covert and
Madrono Ranch were happily situated in a narrow thermal belt, so
that in the frosty mornings of winter the temperature was always
several degrees higher than in the rest of the valley. In fact,
frost was very rare in the thermal belt, as was proved by the
successful cultivation of certain orange and lemon trees.

Edmund continued reading titles and selecting books until he had
drawn out quite a number. He opened the top one, Bolton Hall's
"Three Acres and Liberty," and read to them of a man who walked
six hundred and fifty miles a year in cultivating, by
old-fashioned methods, twenty acres, from which he harvested
three thousand bushels of poor potatoes; and of another man, a
"new" farmer, who cultivated only five acres, walked two hundred
miles, and produced three thousand bushels of potatoes, early and
choice, which he sold at many times the price received by the
first man.

Saxon receded the books from Edmund, and, as she heaped them in
Billy's arms, read the titles. They were: Wickson's "California
Fruits," Wickson's "California Vegetables," Brooks'
"Fertilizers," Watson's "Farm Poultry," King's "Irrigation and
Drainage," Kropotkin's "Fields, Factories and Workshops," and
Farmer's Bulletin No. 22 on "The Feeding of Farm Animals."

"Come for more any time you want them," Edmund invited. "I have
hundreds of volumes on farming, and all the Agricultural
Bulletins.... And you must come and get acquainted with Dulcie
your first spare time," he called after them out the door.



CHAPTER XIX

Mrs. Mortimer arrived with seed catalogs and farm books, to find
Saxon immersed in the farm books borrowed from Edmund. Saxon
showed her around, and she was delighted with everything,
including the terms of the lease and its option to buy.

"And now," she said. "What is to be done? Sit down, both of you.
This is a council of war, and I am the one person in the world to
tell you what to do. I ought to be. Anybody who has reorganized
and recatalogued a great city library should be able to start you
young people on in short order. Now, where shall we begin?"

She paused for breath of consideration.

"First, Madrono Ranch is a bargain. I know soil, I know beauty, I
know climate. Madrono Ranch is a gold mine. There is a fortune in
that meadow. Tilth--I'll tell you about that later. First, here's
the land. Second, what are you going to do with it? Make a
living? Yes. Vegetables? Of course. What are you going to do with
them after you have grown them? Sell. Where?--Now listen. You
must do as I did. Cut out the middle man. Sell directly to the
consumer. Drum up your own market. Do you know what I saw from
the car windows coming up the valley, only several miles from
here? Hotels, springs, summer resorts, winter
resorts--population, mouths, market. How is that market supplied?
I looked in vain for truck gardens.--Billy, harness up your
horses and be ready directly after dinner to take Saxon and me
driving. Never mind everything else. Let things stand. What's the
use of starting for a place of which you haven't the address.
We'll look for the address this afternoon. Then we'll know where
we are--at." --The last syllable a smiling concession to Billy.

But Saxon did not accompany them. There was too much to be done
in cleaning the long-abandoned house and in preparing an
arrangement for Mrs. Mortimer to sleep. And it was long after
supper time when Mrs. Mortimer and Billy returned.

"You lucky, lucky children," she began immediately. "This valley
is just waking up. Here's your market. There isn't a competitor
in the valley. I thought those resorts looked new--Caliente,
Boyes Hot Springs, E1 Verano, and all along the line. Then there
are three little hotels in Glen Ellen, right next door. Oh, I've
talked with all the owners and managers."

"She's a wooz," Billy admired. "She'd brace up to God on a
business proposition. You oughta seen her."

Mrs. Mortimer acknowledged the compliment and dashed on.

"And where do all the vegetables come from? Wagons drive down
twelve to fifteen miles from Santa Rosa, and up from Sonoma.
Those are the nearest truck farms, and when they fail, as they
often do, I am told, to supply the increasing needs, the managers
have to express vegetables all the way from San Francisco. I've
introduced Billy. They've agreed to patronize home industry.
Besides, it is better for them. You'll deliver just as good
vegetables just as cheap; you will make it a point to deliver
better, fresher vegetables; and don't forget that delivery for
you will be cheaper by virtue of the shorter haul.

"No day-old egg stunt here. No jams nor jellies. But you've got
lots of space up on the bench here on which you can't grow
vegetables. To-morrow morning I'll help you lay out the chicken
runs and houses. Besides, there is the matter of capons for the
San Francisco market. You'll start small. It will be a side line
at first. I'll tell you all about that, too, and send you the
literature. You must use your head. Let others do the work. You
must understand that thoroughly. The wages of superintendence are
always larger than the wages of the laborers. You must keep
books. You must know where you stand. You must know what pays and
what doesn't and what pays best. Your books will tell that. I'll
show you all in good time. "

"An' think of it--all that on two acres!" Billy murmured.

Mrs. Mortimer looked at him sharply.

"Two acres your granny," she said with asperity. "Five acres. And
then you won't be able to supply your market. And you, my boy, as
soon as the first rains come will have your hands full and your
horses weary draining that meadow. We'll work those plans out
to-morrow Also, there is the matter of berries on the bench
here--and trellised table grapes, the choicest. They bring the
fancy prices. There will be blackberries--Burbank's, he lives at
Santa Rosa--Loganberries, Mammoth berries. But don't fool with
strawberries. That's a whole occupation in itself. They're not
vines, you know. I've examined the orchard. It's a good
foundation. We'll settle the pruning and grafts later."

"But Billy wanted three acres of the meadow," Saxon explained at
the first chance.

"What for?"

"To grow hay and other kinds of food for the horses he's going to
raise."

"Buy it out of a portion of the profits from those three acres,"
Mrs. Mortimer decided on the instant.

Billy swallowed, and again achieved renunciation.

"All right," he said, with a brave show of cheerfulness. "Let her
go. Us for the greens."

During the several days of Mrs. Mortimer's visit, Billy let the
two women settle things for themselves. Oakland had entered upon
a boom, and from the West Oakland stables had come an urgent
letter for more horses. So Billy was out, early and late,
scouring the surrounding country for young work animals. In this
way, at the start, he learned his valley thoroughly. There was
also a clearing out at the West Oakland stables of mares whose
feet had been knocked out on the hard city pave meets, and he was
offered first choice at bargain prices. They were good animals.
He knew what they were because he knew them of old time. The soft
earth of the country, with a preliminary rest in pasture with
their shoes pulled off, would put them in shape. They would never
do again on hard-paved streets, but there were years of farm work
in them. And then there was the breeding. But he could not
undertake to buy them. He fought out the battle in secret and
said nothing to Saxon.

At night, he would sit in the kitchen and smoke, listening to all
that the two women had done and planned in the day. The right
kind of horses was hard to buy, and, as he put it, it was like
pulling a tooth to get a farmer to part with one, despite the
fact that he had been authorized to increase the buying sum by as
much as fifty dollars. Despite the coming of the automobile, the
price of heavy draught animals continued to rise. From as early
as Billy could remember, the price of the big work horses had
increased steadily. After the great earthquake, the price had
jumped; yet it had never gone back.

"Billy, you make more money as a horse-buyer than a common
laborer, don't you?" Mrs. Mortimer asked. "Very well, then. You
won't have to drain the meadow, or plow it, or anything. You keep
right on buying horses. Work with your head. But out of what you
make you will please pay the wages of one laborer for Saxon's
vegetables. It will be a good investment, with quick returns."

"Sure," he agreed. "That's all anybody hires any body for--to
make money outa 'm. But how Saxon an' one man are goin' to work
them five acres, when Mr. Hale says two of us couldn't do what's
needed on two acres, is beyond me."

"Saxon isn't going to work," Mrs. Mortimer retorted.

"Did you see me working at San Jose? Saxon is going to use her
head. It's about time you woke up to that. A dollar and a half a
day is what is earned by persons who don't use their heads. And
she isn't going to be satisfied with a dollar and a half a day.
Now listen. I had a long talk with Mr. Hale this afternoon. He
says there are practically no efficient laborers to be hired in
the valley."

"I know that," Billy interjected. "All the good men go to the
cities. It's only the leavin's that's left. The good ones that
stay behind ain't workin' for wages."

"Which is perfectly true, every word. Now listen, children. I
knew about it, and I spoke to Mr. Hale. He is prepared to make
the arrangements for you. He knows all about it himself, and is
in touch with the Warden. In short, you will parole two
good-conduct prisoners from San Quentin; and they will be
gardeners. There are plenty of Chinese and Italians there, and
they are the best truck-farmers. You kill two birds with one
stone. You serve the poor convicts, and you serve yourselves."

Saxon hesitated, shocked; while Billy gravely considered the
question.

"You know John," Mrs. Mortimer went on, "Mr. Hale's man about the
place? How do you like him?"

"Oh, I was wishing only to-day that we could find somebody like
him," Saxon said eagerly. "He's such a dear, faithful soul. Mrs.
Hale told me a lot of fine things about him."

"There's one thing she didn't tell you," smiled Mrs. Mortimer.
"John is a paroled convict. Twenty-eight years ago, in hot blood,
he killed a man in a quarrel over sixty-five cents. He's been out
of prison with the Hales three years now. You remember Louis, the
old Frenchman, on my place? He's another. So that's settled. When
your two come--of course you will pay them fair wages--and we'll
make sure they're the same nationality, either Chinese or
Italians--well, when they come, John, with their help, and under
Mr. Hale's guidance, will knock together a small cabin for them
to live in. We'll select the spot. Even so, when your farm is in
full swing you'll have to have more outside help. So keep your
eyes open, Billy, while you're gallivanting over the valley."

The next night Billy failed to return, and at nine o'clock a Glen
Ellen boy on horseback delivered a telegram. Billy had sent it
from Lake County. He was after horses for Oakland.

Not until the third night did he arrive home, tired to
exhaustion, but with an ill concealed air of pride.

"Now what have you been doing these three days?" Mrs. Mortimer
demanded.

"Usin' my head," he boasted quietly. "Killin' two birds with one
stone; an', take it from me, I killed a whole flock. Huh! I got
word of it at Lawndale, an' I wanta tell you Hazel an' Hattie was
some tired when I stabled 'm at Calistoga an' pulled out on the
stage over St. Helena. I was Johnny-on-the-spot, an' I nailed
'm-- eight whoppers--the whole outfit of a mountain teamster.
Young animals, sound as a-dollar, and the lightest of 'em over
fifteen hundred. I shipped 'm last night from Calistoga. An',
well, that ain't all.

"Before that, first day, at Lawndale, I seen the fellow with the
teamin' contract for the pavin'-stone quarry. Sell horses! He
wanted to buy 'em. He wanted to buy 'em bad. He'd even rent 'em,
he said."

"And you sent him the eight you bought!" Saxon broke in.

"Guess again. I bought them eight with Oakland money, an' they
was shipped to Oakland. But I got the Lawndale contractor on long
distance, and he agreed to pay me half a dollar a day rent for
every work horse up to half a dozen. Then I telegraphed the Boss,
tellin' him to ship me six sore-footed mares, Bud Strothers to
make the choice, an' to charge to my commission. Bud knows what I
'm after. Soon as they come, off go their shoes. Two weeks in
pasture, an' then they go to Lawndale. They can do the work. It's
a down-hill haul to the railroad on a dirt road. Half a dollar
rent each--that's three dollars a day they'll bring me six days a
week. I don't feed 'em, shoe 'm, or nothin', an' I keep an eye on
'm to see they're treated right. Three bucks a day, eh! Well, I
guess that'll keep a couple of dollar-an '-a-half men goin' for
Saxon, unless she works 'em Sundays. Huh! The Valley of the Moon!
Why, we'll be wearin' diamonds before long. Gosh! A fellow could
live in the city a thousan' years an' not get such chances. It
beats China lottery."

He stood up.

"I 'm goin' out to water Hazel an' Hattie, feed 'm, an' bed 'm
down. I'll eat soon as I come back."

The two women were regarding each other with shining eyes, each
on the verge of speech when Billy returned to the door and stuck
his head in.

"They's one thing maybe you ain't got," he said. "I pull down
them three dollars every day; but the six mares is mine, too. I
own 'm. They're mine. Are you on?"



CHAPTER XX

"I'm not done with you children," had been Mrs. Mortimer's
parting words; and several times that winter she ran up to
advise, and to teach Saxon how to calculate her crops for the
small immediate market, for the increasing spring market, and for
the height of summer, at which time she would be able to sell all
she could possibly grow and then not supply the demand. In the
meantime, Hazel and Hattie were used every odd moment in hauling
manure from Glen Ellen, whose barnyards had never known such a
thorough cleaning. Also there were loads of commercial fertilizer
from the railroad station, bought under Mrs. Mortimer's
instructions.

The convicts paroled were Chinese. Both had served long in
prison, and were old men; but the day's work they were habitually
capable of won Mrs. Mortimer's approval. Gow Yum, twenty years
before, had had charge of the vegetable garden of one of the
great Menlo Park estates. His disaster had come in the form of a
fight over a game of fan tan in the Chinese quarter at Redwood
City. His companion, Chan Chi, had been a hatchet-man of note, in
the old fighting days of the San Franciseo tongs. But a quarter
of century of discipline in the prison vegetable gardens had
cooled his blood and turned his hand from hatchet to hoe. These
two assistants had arrived in Glen Ellen like precious goods in
bond and been receipted for by the local deputy sheriff, who, in
addition, reported on them to the prison authorities each month.
Saxon, too, made out a monthly report and sent it in.

As for the danger of their cutting her throat, she quickly got
over the idea of it. The mailed hand of the State hovered over
them. The taking of a single drink of liquor would provoke that
hand to close down and jerk them back to prison-cells. Nor had
they freedom of movement. When old Gow Yum needed to go to San
Francisco to sign certain papers before the Chinese Consul,
permission had first to be obtained from San Quentin. Then, too,
neither man was nasty tempered. Saxon had been apprehensive of
the task of bossing two desperate convicts; but when they came
she found it a pleasure to work with them. She could tell them
what to do, but it was they who knew how do. Prom them she
learned all the ten thousand tricks and quirks of artful
gardening, and she was not long in realizing how helpless she
would have been had she depended on local labor.

Still further, she had no fear, because she was not alone. She
had been using her head. It was quickly apparent to her that she
could not adequately oversee the outside work and at the same
time do the house work. She wrote to Ukiah to the energetic widow
who had lived in the adjoining house and taken in washing. She
had promptly closed with Saxon's offer. Mrs. Paul was forty,
short in stature, and weighed two hundred pounds, but never
wearied on her feet. Also she was devoid of fear, and, according
to Billy, could settle the hash of both Chinese with one of her
mighty arms. Mrs. Paul arrived with her son, a country lad of
sixteen who knew horses and could milk Hilda, the pretty Jersey
which had successfully passed Edmund's expert eye. Though Mrs.
Paul ably handled the house, there was one thing Saxon insisted
on doing--namely, washing her own pretty flimsies.

"When I 'm no longer able to do that," she told Billy, "you can
take a spade to that clump of redwoods beside Wild Water and dig
a hole. It will be time to bury me."

It was early in the days of Madrono Ranch, at the time of Mrs.
Mortimer's second visit, that Billy drove in with a load of pipe;
and house, chicken yards, and barn were piped from the
second-hand tank he installed below the house-spring.

"Huh ! I guess I can use my head," he said. "I watched a woman
over on the other side of the valley, packin' water two hundred
feet from the spring to the house; an' I did some figurin'. I put
it at three trips a day and on wash days a whole lot more; an'
you can't guess what I made out she traveled a year packin'
water. One hundred an' twenty-two miles. D'ye get that? One
hundred and twenty-two miles! I asked her how long she'd been
there. Thirty-one years. Multiply it for yourself. Three
thousan', seven hundred an' eighty-two miles--all for the sake of
two hundred feet of pipe. Wouldn't that jar you?"

"Oh, I ain't done yet. They's a bath-tub an' stationary tubs
a-comin' soon as I can see my way. An', say, Saxon, you know that
little clear flat just where Wild Water runs into Sonoma. They's
all of an acre of it. An' it's mine! Got that? An' no walkin' on
the grass for you. It'll be my grass. I 'm goin' up stream a ways
an' put in a ram. I got a big second-hand one staked out that I
can get for ten dollars, an' it'll pump more water'n I need. An'
you'll see alfalfa growin' that'll make your mouth water. I gotta
have another horse to travel around on. You're usin' Hazel an'
Hattie too much to give me a chance; an' I'll never see 'm as
soon as you start deliverin' vegetables. I guess that alfalfa'll
help some to keep another horse goin'."

But Billy was destined for a time to forget his alfalfa in the
excitement of bigger ventures. First, came trouble. The several
hundred dollars he had arrived with in Sonoma Valley, and all his
own commissions since earned, had gone into improvements and
living. The eighteen dollars a week rental for his six horses at
Lawndale went to pay wages. And he was unable to buy the needed
saddle-horse for his horse-buying expeditions. This, however, he
had got around by again using his head and killing two birds with
one stone. He began breaking colts to drive, and in the driving
drove them wherever he sought horses.

So far all was well. But a new administration in San Francisco,
pledged to economy, had stopped all street work. This meant the
shutting down of the Lawndale quarry, which was one of the
sources of supply for paving blocks. The six horses would not
only be back on his hands, but he would have to feed them. How
Mrs. Paul, Gow Yum, and Chan Chi were to be paid was beyond him.

"I guess we've bit off more'n we could chew," he admitted to
Saxon.

That night he was late in coming home, but brought with him a
radiant face. Saxon was no less radiant.

"It's all right," she greeted him, coming out to the barn where
he was unhitching a tired but fractious colt. "I've talked with
all three. They see the situation, and are perfectly willing to
let their wages stand a while. By another week I start Hazel and
Hattie delivering vegetables. Then the money will pour in from
the hotels and my books won't look so lopsided. And--oh,
Billy--you'd never guess. Old Gow Yum has a bank account. He came
to me afterward--I guess he was thinking it over-- and offered to
lend me four hundred dollars. What do you think of that?"

"That I ain't goin' to be too proud to borrow it off 'm, if he IS
a Chink. He's a white one, an' maybe I'll need it. Because, you
see--well, you can't guess what I've been up to since I seen you
this mornin'. I've been so busy I ain't had a bite to eat."

"Using your head?" She laughed.

"You can call it that," he joined in her laughter. "I've been
spendin' money like water."

"But you haven't got any to spend," she objected.

"I've got credit in this valley, I'll let you know," he replied.
" An' I sure strained it some this afternoon. Now guess."

"A saddle-horse?"

He roared with laughter, startling the colt, which tried to bolt
and lifted him half off the ground by his grip on its frightened
nose and neck.

"Oh, I mean real guessin'," he urged, when the animal had dropped
back to earth and stood regarding him with trembling suspicion.

"Two saddle-horses?"

"Aw, you ain't got imagination. I'll tell you. You know
Thiercroft. I bought his big wagon from 'm for sixty dollars. I
bought a wagon from the Kenwood blacksmith-- so-so, but it'll
do--for forty-five dollars. An' I bought Ping's wagon--a
peach--for sixty-five dollars. I could a-got it for fifty if he
hadn't seen I wanted it bad."

"But the money?" Saxon questioned faintly. "You hadn't a hundred
dollars left."

"Didn't I tell you I had credit? Well, I have. I stood 'm off for
them wagons. I ain't spent a cent of cash money to-day except for
a couple of long-distance switches. Then I bought three sets of
work-harness--they're chain harness an' second-hand--for twenty
dollars a set. I bought 'm from the fellow that's doin' the
haulin' for the quarry. He don't need 'm any more. An' I rented
four wagons from 'm, an' four span of horses, too, at half a
dollar a day for each horse, an' half a dollar a day for each
wagon--that's six dollars a day rent I gotta pay 'm. The three
sets of spare harness is for my six horses. Then . . .lemme see .
. . yep, I rented two barns in Glen Ellen, an' I ordered fifty
tons of hay an' a carload of bran an' barley from the store in
Glenwood-- you see, I gotta feed all them fourteen horses, an'
shoe 'm, an' everything.

"Oh, sure Pete, I've went some. I hired seven men to go drivin'
for me at two dollars a day, an'--ouch! Jehosaphat! What you
doin'!"

"No," Saxon said gravely, having pinched him, "you're not
dreaming." She felt his pulse and forehead. "Not a sign of
fever." She sniffed his breath. "And you've not been drinking. Go
on, tell me the rest of this...whatever it is."

"Ain't you satisfied?"

"No. I want more. I want all."

"All right. But I just want you to know, first, that the boss I
used to work for in Oakland ain't got nothin' on me. I 'm some
man of affairs, if anybody should ride up on a vegetable wagon
an' ask you. Now, I 'm goin' to tell you, though I can't see why
the Glen Ellen folks didn't beat me to it. I guess they was
asleep. Nobody'd a-overlooked a thing like it in the city. You
see, it was like this: you know that fancy brickyard they're
gettin' ready to start for makin' extra special fire brick for
inside walls? Well, here was I worryin' about the six horses
comin' back on my hands, earnin' me nothin' an' eatin' me into
the poorhouse. I had to get 'm work somehow, an' I remembered the
brickyard. I drove the colt down an' talked with that Jap chemist
who's been doin' the experimentin'. Gee! They was foremen lookin'
over the ground an' everything gettin' ready to hum. I looked
over the lay an' studied it. Then I drove up to where they're
openin' the clay pit--you know, that fine, white chalky stuff we
saw 'em borin' out just outside the hundred an' forty acres with
the three knolls. It's a down-hill haul, a mile, an' two horses
can do it easy. In fact, their hardest job'll be haulin' the
empty wagons up to the pit. Then I tied the colt an' went to
figurin'.

"The Jap professor'd told me the manager an' the other big guns
of the company was comin' up on the mornin' train. I wasn't
shoutin' things out to anybody, but I just made myself into a
committee of welcome; an', when the train pulled in, there I was,
extendin' the glad hand of the burg--likewise the glad hand of a
guy you used to know in Oakland once, a third-rate dub
prizefighter by the name of--lemme see--yep, I got it right--Big
Bill Roberts was the name he used to sport, but now he's known as
William Roberts, E. S. Q.

"Well, as I was sayin', I gave 'm the glad hand, an' trailed
along with 'em to the brickyard, an' from the talk I could see
things was doin'. Then I watched my chance an' sprung my
proposition. I was scared stiff all the time for maybe the
teamin' was already arranged. But I knew it wasn't when they
asked for my figures. I had 'm by heart, an' I rattled 'm off,
and the top-guy took 'm down in his note-book.

"'We're goin' into this big, an' at once,' he says, lookin' at me
sharp. 'What kind of an outfit you got, Mr. Roberts?'"

"Me!--with only Hazel an' Hattie, an' them too small for heavy
teamin'.

"'I can slap fourteen horses an' seven wagons onto the job at the
jump,' says I. 'An' if you want more, I'll get 'm, that's all.'

"'Give us fifteen minutes to consider, Mr. Roberts,' he says.

"'Sure,' says I, important as all hell--ahem--me!--'but a couple
of other things first. I want a two year contract, an' them
figures all depends on one thing. Otherwise they don't go.'

"'What's that,' he says.

"'The dump,' says I. 'Here we are on the ground, an' I might as
well show you.'

"An' I did. I showed 'm where I'd lose out if they stuck to their
plan, on account of the dip down an' pull up to the dump. 'All
you gotta do,' I says, 'is to build the bunkers fifty feet over,
throw the road around the rim of the hill, an' make about seventy
or eighty feet of elevated bridge.'

"Say, Saxon, that kind of talk got 'em. It was straight. Only
they'd been thinkin' about bricks, while I was only thinkin' of
teamin'.

"I guess they was all of half an hour considerin', an' I was
almost as miserable waitin' as when I waited for you to say yes
after I asked you. I went over the figures, calculatin' what I
could throw off if I had to. You see, I'd given it to 'em
stiff--regular city prices; an' I was prepared to trim down. Then
they come back.

"'Prices oughta be lower in the country,' says the top-guy.

"'Nope,' I says. 'This is a wine-grape valley. It don't raise
enough hay an' feed for its own animals. It has to be shipped in
from the San Joaquin Valley. Why, I can buy hay an' feed cheaper
in San Francisco, laid down, than I can here an' haul it myself.'

"An' that struck 'm hard. It was true, an' they knew it.
But--say! If they'd asked about wages for drivers, an' about
horse-shoein' prices, I'd a-had to come down; because, you see,
they ain't no teamsters' union in the country, an' no
horseshoers' union, an' rent is low, an' them two items come a
whole lot cheaper. Huh! This afternoon I got a word bargain with
the blacksmith across from the post office; an' he takes my whole
bunch an' throws off twenty-five cents on each shoein', though
it's on the Q. T. But they didn't think to ask, bein' too full of
bricks."

Billy felt in his breast pocket, drew out a legal-looking
document, and handed it to Saxon.

"There it is," he said, "the contract, full of all the
agreements, prices, an' penalties. I saw Mr. Hale down town an'
showed it to 'm. He says it's O.K. An' say, then I lit out. All
over town, Kenwood, I`awndale, everywhere, everybody, everything.
The quarry teamin' finishes Friday of this week. An' I take the
whole outfit an' start Wednesday of next week haulin' lumber for
the buildin's, an' bricks for the kilns, an' all the rest. An'
when they're ready for the clay I 'm the boy that'll give it to
them.

"But I ain't told you the best yet. I couldn't get the switch
right away from Kenwood to Lawndale, and while I waited I went
over my figures again. You couldn't guess it in a million years.
I'd made a mistake in addition somewhere, an' soaked 'm ten per
cent. more'n I'd expected. Talk about findin' money! Any time you
want them couple of extra men to help out with the vegetables,
say the word. Though we're goin' to have to pinch the next couple
of months. An' go ahead an' borrow that four hundred from Gow
Yum. An' tell him you'll pay eight per cent. interest, an' that
we won't want it more 'n three or four months."

When Billy got away from Saxon's arms, he started leading the
colt up and down to cool it off. He stopped so sbruptly that his
back collided with the colt's nose, and there was a lively minute
of rearing and plunging. Saxon waited, for she knew a fresh idea
had struck Billy.

"Say," he said, "do you know anything about bank accounts and
drawin' checks?"



CHAPTER XXI

It was on a bright June morning that Billy told Saxon to put on
her riding clothes to try out a saddle-horse.

"Not until after ten o'clock," she said "By that time I'll have
the wagon off on a second trip."

Despite the extent of the business she had developed, her
executive ability and system gave her much spare time. She could
call on the Hales, which was ever a delight, especially now that
the Hastings were back and that Clara was often at her aunt's. In
this congenial atmosphere Saxon Burgeoned. She had begun to read-
-to read with understanding; and she had time for her books, for
work on her pretties, and for Billy, whom she accompanied on many
expeditions.

Billy was even busier than she, his work being more scattered and
diverse. And, as well, he kept his eye on the home barn and
horses which Saxon used. In truth he had become a man of affairs,
though Mrs. Mortimer had gone over his accounts, with an eagle
eye on the expense column, discovering several minor leaks, and
finally, aided by Saxon, bullied him into keeping books. Each
night, after supper, he and Saxon posted their books. Afterward,
in the big morris chair he had insisted on buying early in the
days of his brickyard contract, Saxon would creep into his arms
and strum on the ukelele; or they would talk long about what they
were doing and planning to do. Now it would be:

"I'm mixin' up in politics, Saxon. It pays. You bet it pays. If
by next spring I ain't got a half a dozen teams workin' on the
roads an' pullin' down the county money, it's me back to Oakland
an' askin' the Boss for a job."

Or, Saxon: "They're really starting that new hotel between
Caliente and Eldridge. And there's some talk of a big sanitarium
back in the hills."

Or, it would be: "Billy, now that you've piped that acre, you've
just got to let me have it for my vegetables. I'll rent it from
you. I'll take your own estimate for all the alfalfa you can
raise on it, and pay you full market price less the cost of
growing it."

"It's all right, take it." Billy suppressed a sigh. "Besides, I
'm too busy to fool with it now. "

Which prevarication was bare-faced, by virtue of his having just
installed the ram and piped the land.

"It will be the wisest, Billy," she soothed, for she knew his
dream of land-spaciousness was stronger than ever. "You don't
want to fool with an acre. There's that hundred and forty. We'll
buy it yet if old Chavon ever dies. Besides, it really belongs to
Madrono Ranch. The two together were the original quarter
section."

"I don't wish no man's death," Billy grumbled. "But he ain't
gettin' no good out of it, over-pasturin' it with a lot of scrub
animals. I've sized it up every inch of it. They's at least forty
acres in the three cleared fields, with water in the hills behind
to beat the band. The horse feed I could raise on it'd take your
breath away. Then they's at least fifty acres I could run my
brood mares on, pasture mixed up with trees and steep places and
such. The other fifty's just thick woods, an' pretty places, an'
wild game. An' that old adobe barn's all right. With a new roof
it'd shelter any amount of animals in bad weather. Cook at me
now, rentin' that measly pasture back of Ping's just to run my
restin' animals. They could run in the hundred an' forty if I
only had it. I wonder if Chavon would lease it."

Or, less ambitious, Billy would say: "I gotta skin over to
Petaluma to-morrow, Saxon. They's an auction on the Atkinson
Ranch an' maybe I can pick up some bargains."

"More horses!"

"Ain't I got two teams haulin' lumber for the new winery? An'
Barney's got a bad shoulder-sprain. He'll have to lay off a long
time if he's to get it in shape. An' Bridget ain't ever goin' to
do a tap of work again. I can see that stickin' out. I've
doctored her an' doctored her. She's fooled the vet, too. An'
some of the other horses has gotta take a rest. That span of
grays is showin' the hard work. An' the big roan's goin' loco.
Everybody thought it was his teeth, but it ain't. It's straight
loco. It's money in pocket to take care of your animals, an'
horses is the delicatest things on four legs. Some time, if I can
ever see my way to it, I 'm goin' to ship a carload of mules from
Colusa County--big, heavy ones, you know. They'd sell like hot
cakes in the valley here--them I didn't want for myself."

Or, in lighter vein, Billy: "By the way, Saxon, talkin' of
accounts, what d'you think Hazel an' Hattie is worth?-- fair
market price,"

"Why?"

"I 'm askin' you."

"Well, say, what you paid for them--three hundred dollars."

"Hum." Billy considered deeply. "They're worth a whole lot more,
but let it go at that. An' now, gettin' back to accounts, suppose
you write me a check for three hundred dollars."

"Oh! Robber!"

"You can't show me. Why, Saxon, when I let you have grain an' hay
from my carloads, don't you give me a check for it? An' you know
how you're stuck on keepin' your accounts down to the penny," he
teased. "If you're any kind of a business woman you just gotta
charge your business with them two horses. I ain't had the use of
'em since I don't know when."

"But the colts will be yours," she argued. "Besides, I can't
afford brood mares in my business. In almost no time, now, Hazel
and Hattie will have to be taken off from the wagon--they're too
good for it anyway. And you keep your eyes open for a pair to
take their place. I'll give you a check for THAT pair, but no
commission."

"All right," Billy conceded. "Hazel an' Hattie come back to me;
but you can pay me rent for the time you did use 'em."

"If you make me, I'll charge you board," she threatened.

"An' if you charge me board, I'll charge you interest for the
money I've stuck into this shebang."

"You can't," Saxon laughed. "It's community property."

He grunted spasmodically, as if the breath had been knocked out
of him.

"Straight on the solar plexus," he said, "an' me down for the
count. But say, them's sweet words, ain't they.-- community
property." He rolled them over and off his tongue with keen
relish. "An' when we got married the top of our ambition was a
steady job an' some rags an' sticks of furniture all paid up an'
half-worn out. We wouldn't have had any community property only
for you."

"What nonsense! What could I have done by myself? You know very
well that you earned all the money that started us here. You paid
the wages of Gow Yum and Chan Chi, and old Hughie, and Mrs. Paul,
and--why, you've done it all."

She drew her two hands caressingly across his shoulders and down
along his great biceps muscles.

"That's what did it, Billy."

"Aw hell! It's your head that done it. What was my muscles good
for with no head to run 'em,--sluggin' scabs, beatin' up lodgers,
an' crookin' the elbow over a bar. The only sensible thing my
head ever done was when it run me into you. Honest to God, Saxon,
you've been the makin' of me."

"Aw hell, Billy," she mimicked in the way that delighted him,
"where would I have been if you hadn't taken me out of the
laundry? I couldn't take myself out. I was just a helpless girl.
I'd have been there yet if it hadn't been for you. Mrs. Mortimer
had five thousand dollars; but I had you."

"A woman ain't got the chance to help herself that a man has," he
generalized. "I'll tell you what: It took the two of us. It's
been team-work. We've run in span. If we'd a-run single, you
might still be in the laundry; an', if I was lucky, I'd be still
drivin' team by the day an' sportin' around to cheap dances."


Saxon stood under the father of all madronos, watching Hazel and
Hattie go out the gate, the full vegetable wagon behind them,
when she saw Billy ride in, leading a sorrel mare from whose
silken coat the sun flashed golden lights.

"Four-year-old, high-life, a handful, but no vicious tricks,"
Billy chanted, as he stopped beside Saxon. "Skin like tissue
paper, mouth like silk, but kill the toughest broncho ever
foaled--look at them lungs an' nostrils. They call her
Ramona--some Spanish name: sired by Morellita outa genuine Morgan
stock."

"And they will sell her?" Saxon gasped, standing with hands
clasped in inarticulate delight.

"That's what I brought her to show you for."

"But how much must they want for her?" was Saxon's next question,
so impossible did it seem that such an amazement of horse-flesh
could ever be hers.

"That ain't your business," Billy answered brusquely. "The
brickyard's payin' for her, not the vegetable ranch. She's yourn
at the word. What d'ye say?"


"I'll tell you in a minute."

Saxon was trying to mount, but the animal danced nervously away.

"Hold on till I tie," Billy said. "She ain't skirt-broke, that's
the trouble."

Saxon tightly gripped reins and mane, stepped with spurred foot
on Billy's hand, and was lifted lightly into the saddle.

"She's used to spurs," Billy called after. "Spanish broke, so
don't check her quick. Come in gentle. An' talk to her. She's
high-life, you know."

Saxon nodded, dashed out the gate and down the road, waved a hand
to Clara Hastings as she passed the gate of Trillium Covert, and
continued up Wild Water canyon.

When she came back, Ramona in a pleasant lather, Saxon rode to
the rear of the house, past the chicken houses and the
flourishing berry-rows, to join Billy on the rim of the bench,
where he sat on his horse in the shade, smoking a cigarette.
Together they looked down through an opening among the trees to
the meadow which was a meadow no longer. With mathematical
accuracy it was divided into squares, oblongs, and narrow strips,
which displayed sharply the thousand hues of green of a truck
garden. Gow Yum and Chan Chi, under enormous Chinese grass hats,
were planting green onions. Old Hughie, hoe in hand, plodded
along the main artery of running water, opening certain laterals,
closing others. From the work-shed beyond the barn the strokes of
a hammer told Saxon that Carlsen was wire-binding vegetable
boxes. Mrs. Paul's cheery soprano, lifted in a hymn, doated
through the trees, accompanied by the whirr of an egg-beater. A
sharp barking told where Possum still waged hysterical and
baffled war on the Douglass squirrels. Billy took a long draw
from his cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and continued to look down
at the meadow. Saxon divined trouble in his manner. His rein-hand
was on the pommel, and her free hand went out and softly rested
on his. Billy turned his slow gaze upon her mare's lather,
seeming not to note it, and continued on to Saxon's face.

"Huh!" he equivocated, as if waking up. "Them San Leandro
Porchugeeze ain't got nothin' on us when it comes to intensive
farmin'. Look at that water runnin'. You know, it seems so good
to me that sometimes I just wanta get down on hands an' knees an'
lap it all up myself."

"Oh, to have all the water you want in a climate like this!"
Saxon exclaimed.

"An' don't be scared of it ever goin' back on you. If the rains
fooled you, there's Sonoma Creek alongside. All we gotta do is
install a gasolene pump."

"But we'll never have to, Billy. I was talking with 'Redwood'
Thompson. He's lived in the valley since Fifty-three, and he says
there's never been a failure of crops on account of drought. We
always get our rain."

"Come on, let's go for a ride," he said abruptly. "You've got the
time."

"All right, if you'll tell me what's bothering you."

He looked at her quickly.

"Nothin'," he grunted. "Yes, there is, too. What's the
difference? You'd know it sooner or later. You ought to see old
Chavon. His face is that long he can't walk without bumpin' his
knee on his chin. His gold-mine's peterin' out."

"Gold mine!"

"His clay pit. It's the same thing. He's gettin' twenty cents a
yard for it from the brickyard."

"And that means the end of your teaming contract." Saxon saw the
disaster in all its hugeness. "What about the brickyard people?"

"Worried to death, though they've kept secret about it. They've
had men out punchin' holes all over the hills for a week, an'
that Jap chemist settin' up nights analyzin' the rubbish they've
brought in. It's peculiar stuff, that clay, for what they want it
for, an' you don't find it everywhere. Them experts that reported
on Chavon's pit made one hell of a mistake. Maybe they was lazy
with their borin's. Anyway, they slipped up on the amount of clay
they was in it. Now don't get to botherin'. It'd come out
somehow. You can't do nothin'."

"But I can, " Saxon insisted. "We won't buy Ramona."

"You ain't got a thing to do with that," he answered. "I 'm
buyin' her, an' her price don't cut any figure alongside the big
game I 'm playin'. Of course, I can always sell my horses. But
that puts a stop to their makin' money, an' that brickyard
contract was fat."

"But if you get some of them in on the road work for the county?"
she suggested.

"Oh, I got that in mind. An' I 'm keepin' my eyes open. They's a
chance the quarry will start again, an' the fellow that did that
teamin' has gone to Puget Sound. An' what if I have to sell out
most of the horses? Here's you and the vegetable business. That's
solid. We just don't go ahead so fast for a time, that's all. I
ain't scared of the country any more. I sized things up as we
went along. They ain't a jerk burg we hit all the time on the
road that I couldn't jump into an' make a go. An' now where d'you
want to ride?"



CHAPTER XXII

They cantered out the gate, thundered across the bridge, and
passed Trillium Covert before they pulled in on the grade of Wild
Water Canyon. Saxon had chosen her field on the big spur of
Sonoma Mountains as the objective of their ride.

"Say, I bumped into something big this mornin' when I was goin'
to fetch Ramona," Billy said, the clay pit trouble banished for
the time. "You know the hundred an' forty. I passed young Chavon
along the road, an'--I don't know why--just for ducks, I guess--I
up an' asked 'm if he thought the old man would lease the hundred
an' forty to me. An' what d 'you think! He said the old man
didn't own it. Was just leasin' it himself. That's how we was
always seein' his cattle on it. It's a gouge into his land, for
he owns everything on three sides of it.

"Next I met Ping. He said Hilyard owned it an' was willin' to
sell, only Chavon didn't have the price. Then, comin' back, I
looked in on Payne. He's quit blacksmithin'--his back's hurtin'
'm from a kick--an' just startin' in for real estate. Sure, he
said, Hilyard would sell, an' had already listed the land with
'm. Chavon's over-pastured it, an' Hilyard won't give 'm another
lease."

When they had climbed out of Wild Water Canyon they turned their
horses about and halted on the rim where they could look across
at the three densely wooded knolls in the midst of the desired
hundred and forty.

"We'll get it yet," Saxon said.

"Sure we will," Billy agreed with careless certitude. "I've ben
lookin' over the big adobe barn again. Just the thing for a raft
of horses, an' a new roof'll be cheaper 'n I thought. Though
neither Chavon or me'll be in the market to buy it right away,
with the clay pinchin' out."


When they reached Saxon's field, which they had learned was the
property of Redwood Thompson, they tied the horses and entered it
on foot. The hay, just cut, was being raked by Thompson, who
hallo'd a greeting to them. It was a cloudless, windless day, and
they sought refuge from the sun in the woods beyond. They
encountered a dim trail.

"It's a cow trail," Billy declared. "I bet they's a teeny pasture
tucked away somewhere in them trees. Let's follow it."

A quarter of an hour later, several hundred feet up the side of
the spur, they emerged on an open, grassy space of bare hillside.
Most of the hundred and forty, two miles away, lay beneath them,
while they were level with the tops of the three knolls. Billy
paused to gaze upon the much-desired land, and Saxon joined him.

"What is that?" she asked, pointing toward the knolls. "Up the
little canyon, to the left of it, there on the farthest knoll,
right under that spruce that's leaning over."

What Billy saw was a white scar on the canyon wall.

"It's one on me," he said, studying the scar. "I thought I knew
every inch of that land, but I never seen that before. Why, I was
right in there at the head of the canyon the first part of the
winter. It's awful wild. Walls of the canyon like the sides of a
steeple an' covered with thick woods."

"What is it?" she asked. "A slide?"

"Must be--brought down by the heavy rains. If I don't miss my
guess--" Billy broke off, forgetting in the intensity with which
he continued to look.

"Hilyard'll sell for thirty an acre," he began again,
disconnectedly. "Good land, bad land, an' all, just as it runs,
thirty an acre. That's forty-two hundred. Payne's new at real
estate, an' I'll make 'm split his commission an' get the easiest
terms ever. We can re-borrow that four hundred from Gow Yum, an'
I can borrow money on my horses an' wagons--"

"Are you going to buy it to-day?" Saxon teased.

She scarcely touched the edge of his thought. He looked at her,
as if he had heard, then forgot her the next moment.

"Head work," he mumbled. "Head work. If I don't put over a hot
one--"

He started back down the cow trail, recollected Saxon, and called
over his shoulder:

"Come on. Let's hustle. I wanta ride over an' look at that."

So rapidly did he go down the trail and across the field, that
Saxon had no time for questions. She was almost breathless from
her effort to keep up with him.

"What is it?" she begged, as he lifted her to the saddle.

"Maybe it's all a joke--I'll tell you about it afterward," he put
her off.

They galloped on the levels, trotted down the gentler slopes of
road, and not until on the steep descent of Wild Water canyon did
they rein to a walk. Billy's preoccupation was gone, and Saxon
took advantage to broach a subject which had been on her mind for
some time.

"Clara Hastings told me the other day that they're going to have
a house party. The Hazards are to be there, and the Halls, and
Roy Blanchard...."

She looked at Billy anxiously. At the mention of Blanchard his
head had tossed up as to a bugle call. Slowly a whimsical twinkle
began to glint up through the cloudy blue of his eyes.

"It's a long time since you told any man he was standing on his
foot," she ventured slyly

Billy began to grin sheepishly.

"Aw, that's all right," he said in mock-lordly fashion. "Roy
Blanchard can come. I'll let 'm. All that was a long time ago.
Besides, I 'm too busy to fool with such things."

He urged his horse on at a faster walk, and as soon as the slope
lessened broke into a trot. At Trillium Covert they were
galloping.

"You'll have to stop for dinner first," Saxon said, as they
neared the gate of Madrono Ranch.

"You stop," he answered. "I don't want no dinner."

"But I want to go with you," she pleaded. "What is it? "

"I don't dast tell you. You go on in an' get your dinner."

"Not after that," she said. "Nothing can keep me from coming
along now."

Half a mile farther on, they left the highway, passed through a
patent gate which Billy had installed, and crossed the fields on
a road which was coated thick with chalky dust. This was the road
that led to Chavon's clay pit. The hundred and forty lay to the
west. Two wagons, in a cloud of dust, came into sight.

"Your teams, Billy," cried Saxon. "Think of it! Just by the use
of the head, earning your money while you're riding around with
me."

"Makes me ashamed to think how much cash money each one of them
teams is bringin' me in every day," he acknowledged.

They were turning off from the road toward the bars which gave
entrance to the one hundred and forty, when the driver of the
foremost wagon hallo'd and waved his hand. They drew in their
horses and waited.

"The big roan's broke loose," the dryer said, as he stopped
beside them. "Clean crazy loco--bitin', squealin', strikin',
kickin'. Kicked clean out of the harness like it was paper. Bit a
chunk out of Baldy the size of a saucer, an' wound up by breakin'
his own hind leg. Liveliest fifteen minutes I ever seen."

"Sure it's broke?" Billy demanded sharply.

"Sure thing."

"Well, after you unload, drive around by the other barn and get
Ben. He's in the corral. Tell Matthews to be easy with 'm. An'
get a gun. Sammy's got one. You'll have to see to the briig roan.
I ain't got time now.--Why couldn't Matthews a-come along with
you for Ben? You'd save time."

"Oh, he's just stickin'around waitin'," the driver answered. "He
reckoned I could get Ben."

"An' lose time, eh? Well, get a move on."

"That's the way of it," Billy growled to Saxon as they rode on.
"No savve. No head. One man settin' down an' holdin his hands
while another team drives outa its way doin what he oughta done.
That's the trouble with two-dollar-a-day men."

"With two-dollar-a-day heads," Saxon said quickly."What kind of
heads do you expect for two dollars?"

"That's right, too," Billy acknowledged the hit. "If they had
better heads they'd be in the cities like all the rest of the
better men. An' the better men are a lot of dummies, too. They
don't know the big chances in the country, or you couldn't hold
'm from it."

Billy dismounted, took the three bars down, led his horse
through, then put up the bars.

"When I get this place, there'll be a gate here," he announced.
"Pay for itself in no time. It's the thousan' an' one little
things like this that count up big when you put 'm together." He
sighed contentedly. "I never used to think about such things, but
when we shook Oakland I began to wise up. It was them San Leandro
Porchugeeze that gave me my first eye-opener. I'd been asleep,
before that."

They skirted the lower of the three fields where the ripe hay
stood uncut. Billy pointed with eloquent disgust to a break in
the fence, slovenly repaired, and on to the standing grain
much-trampled by cattle.

"Them's the things," he criticized. "Old style. An' look how thin
that crop is, an' the shallow plowin'. Scrub cattle, scrub seed,
scrub farmin'. Chavon's worked it for eight years now, an' never
rested it once, never put anything in for what he took out,
except the cattle into the stubble the minute the hay was on."

In a pasture glade, farther on, they came upon a bunch of cattle.

"Look at that bull, Saxon. Scrub's no name for it. They oughta be
a state law against lettin' such animals exist. No wonder
Chavon's that land poor he's had to sink all his clay-pit
earnin's into taxes an' interest. He can't make his land pay.
Take this hundred an forty. Anybody with the savve can just rake
silver dollars offen it. I'll show 'm."

They passed the big adobe barn in the distance.

"A few dollars at the right time would a-saved hundreds on that
roof," Billy commented. "Well, anyway, I won't be payin' for any
improvements when I buy. An I'll tell you another thing. This
ranch is full of water, and if Glen Ellen ever grows they'll have
to come to see me for their water supply."

Billy knew the ranch thoroughly, and took short-cuts through the
woods by way of cattle paths. Once, he reined in abruptly, and
both stopped. Confronting them, a dozen paces away, was a
half-grown red fox. For half a minute, with beady eyes, the wild
thing studied them, with twitching sensitive nose reading the
messages of the air. Then, velvet-footed, it leapt aside and was
gone among the trees.

"The son-of-a-gun!" Billy ejaculated.

As they approached Wild Water; they rode out into a long narrow
meadow. In the middle was a pond.

"Natural reservoir, when Glen Ellen begins to buy water," Billy
said. "See, down at the lower end there?--wouldn't cost anything
hardly to throw a dam across. An' I can pipe in all kinds of
hill-drip. An' water's goin' to be money in this valley not a
thousan' years from now.--An' all the ginks, an' boobs, an' dubs,
an' gazabos poundin' their ear deado an' not seein' it
comin.--An' surveyors workin' up the valley for an electric road
from Sausalito with a branch up Napa Valley."

They came to the rim of Wild Water canyon. Leaning far back in
their saddles, they slid the horses down a steep declivity,
through big spruce woods, to an ancient and all but obliterated
trail.

"They cut this trail 'way back in the Fifties," Billy explained.
"I only found it by accident. Then I asked Poppe yesterday. He
was born in the valley. He said it was a fake minin' rush across
from Petaluma. The gamblers got it up, an' they must a-drawn a
thousan' suckers. You see that flat there, an' the old stumps.
That's where the camp was. They set the tables up under the
trees. The flat used to be bigger, but the creek's eaten into it.
Poppe said they was a couple of killin's an' one lynchin'."

Lying low against their horses' necks, they scrambled up a steep
cattle trail out of the canyon, and began to work across rough
country toward the knolls.

"Say, Saxon, you're always lookin' for something pretty. I'll
show you what'll make your hair stand up . . . soon as we get
through this manzanita."

Never, in all their travels, had Saxon seen so lovely a vista as
the one that greeted them when they emerged. The dim trail lay
like a rambling red shadow cast on the soft forest floor by the
great redwoods and over-arching oaks. It seemed as if all local
varieties of trees and vines had conspired to weave the leafy
roof--maples, big madronos and laurels, and lofty tan-bark oaks,
scaled and wrapped and interwound with wild grape and flaming
poison oak. Saxon drew Billy's eyes to a mossy bank of
five-finger ferns. All slopes seemed to meet to form this basin
and colossal forest bower. Underfoot the floor was spongy with
water. An invisible streamlet whispered under broad-fronded
brakes. On every hand opened tiny vistas of enchantment, where
young redwoods grouped still and stately about fallen giants,
shoulder-high to the horses, moss-covered and dissolving into
mold.

At last, after another quarter of an hour, they tied their horses
on the rim of the narrow canyon that penetrated the wilderness of
the knolls. Through a rift in the trees Billy pointed to the top
of the leaning spruce.

"It's right under that," he said. "We'll have to follow up the
bed of the creek. They ain't no trail, though you'll see plenty
of deer paths crossin' the creek. You'll get your feet wet."

Saxon laughed her joy and held on close to his heels, splashing
through pools, crawling hand and foot up the slippery faces of
water-worn rocks, and worming under trunks of old fallen trees.

"They ain't no real bed-rock in the whole mountain," Billy
elucidated, "so the stream cuts deeper'n deeper, an' that keeps
the sides cavin' in. They're as steep as they can be without
fallin' down. A little farther up, the canyon ain't much more'n a
crack in the ground--but a mighty deep one if anybody should ask
you. You can spit across it an' break your neck in it."

The climbing grew more difficult, and they were finally halted,
in a narrow cleft, by a drift-jam.

"You wait here," Billy directed, and, lying flat, squirmed on
through crashing brush.

Saxon waited till all sound had died away. She waited ten minutes
longer, then followed by the way Billy had broken. Where the bed
of the canyon became impossible, she came upon what she was sure
was a deer path that skirted the steep side and was a tunnel
through the close greenery. She caught a glimpse of the
overhanging spruce, almost above her head on the opposite side,
and emerged on a pool of clear water in a clay-like basin. This
basin was of recent origin, having been formed by a slide of
earth and trees. Across the pool arose an almost sheer wall of
white. She recognized it for what it was, and looked about for
Billy. She heard him whistle, and looked up. Two hundred feet
above, at the perilous top of the white wall, he was holding on
to a tree trunk. The overhanging spruce was nearby.

"I can see the little pasture back of your field," he called
down. "No wonder nobody ever piped this off. The only place they
could see it from is that speck of pasture. An' you saw it first.
Wait till I come down and tell you all about it. I didn't dast
before."

It required no shrewdness to guess the truth. Saxon knew this was
the precious clay required by the brickyard. Billy circled wide
of the slide and came down the canyon-wall, from tree to tree, as
descending a ladder.

"Ain't it a peach?" he exulted, as he dropped beside her. "Just
look at it--hidden away under four feet of soil where nobody
could see it, an' just waitin' for us to hit the Valley of the
Moon. Then it up an' slides a piece of the skin off so as we can
see it."

"Is it the real clay?" Saxon asked anxiously.

"You bet your sweet life. I've handled too much of it not to know
it in the dark. Just rub a piece between your fingers.--Like
that. Why, I could tell by the taste of it. I've eaten enough of
the dust of the teams. Here's where our fun begins. Why, you know
we've been workin' our heads off since we hit this valley. Now
we're on Easy street."

"But you don't own it," Saxon objected.

"Well, you won't be a hundred years old before I do. Straight
from here I hike to Payne an' bind the bargain --an option, you
know, while title's searchin' an' I 'm raisin' money. We'll
borrow that four hundred back again from Gow Yum, an' I'll borrow
all I can get on my horses an' wagons, an' Hazel and Hattie, an'
everything that's worth a cent. An' then I get the deed with a
mortgage on it to Hilyard for the balance. An' then--it's takin'
candy from a baby--I'll contract with the brickyard for twenty
cents a yard--maybe more. They'll be crazy with joy when they see
it. Don't need any borin's. They's nearly two hundred feet of it
exposed up an' down. The whole knoll's clay, with a skin of soil
over it."

"But you'll spoil all the beautiful canyon hauling out the clay,"
Saxon cried with alarm.

"Nope; only the knoll. The road'll come in from the other side.
It'll be only half a mile to Chavon's pit. I'll build the road
an' charge steeper teamin', or the brickyard can build it an'
I'll team for the same rate as before. An' twenty cents a yard
pourin' in, all profit, from the jump. I'll sure have to buy more
horses to do the work."

They sat hand in hand beside the pool and talked over the
details.

"Say, Saxon," Billy said, after a pause had fallen, "sing
'Harvest Days,' won't you?"

And, when she had complied: "The first time you sung that song
for me was comin' home from the picnic on the train--"

"The very first day we met each other," she broke in. "What did
you think about me that day?"

"Why, what I've thought ever since--that you was made for me.--I
thought that right at the jump, in the first waltz. An' what'd
you think of me?

"Oh, I wondered, and before the first waltz, too, when we were
introduced and shook hands--I wondered if you were the man. Those
were the very words that flashed into my mind.--IS HE THE MAN?"

"An' I kinda looked a little some good to you?" he queried.
"_I_thought so, and my eyesight has always been good."

"Say!" Billy went off at a tangent. "By next winter, with
everything hummin' an' shipshape, what's the matter with us
makin' a visit to Carmel? It'll be slack time for you with the
vegetables, an' I'll be able to afford a foreman."

Saxon's lack of enthusiasm surprised him.

"What's wrong?" he demanded quickly.

With downcast demurest eyes and hesitating speech, Saxon said:

"I did something yesterday without asking your advice, Billy."

He waited.

"I wrote to Tom," she added, with an air of timid confession.

Still he waited--for he knew not what.

"I asked him to ship up the old chest of drawers--my mother's,
you remember--that we stored with him."

"Huh! I don't see anything outa the way about that," Billy said
with relief. "We need the chest, don't we? An' we can afford to
pay the freight on it, can't we?"

"You are a dear stupid man, that's what you are. Don't you know
what is in the chest?"

He shook his head, and what she added was so soft that it was
almost a whisper:

"The baby clothes."

"No!" he exclaimed.

"True."

"Sure?"

She nodded her head, her cheeks flooding with quick color.

"It's what I wanted, Saxon, more'n anything else in the world.
I've been thinkin' a whole lot about it lately, ever since we hit
the valley," he went on, brokenly, and for the first time she saw
tears unmistakable in his eyes. "But after all I'd done, an' the
hell I'd raised, an' everything, I . . . I never urged you, or
said a word about it. But I wanted it . . . oh, I wanted it like
. . . like I want you now."

His open arms received her, and the pool in the heart of the
canyon knew a tender silence.

Saxon felt Billy's finger laid warningly on her lips. Guided by
his hand, she turned her head back, and together they gazed far
up the side of the knoll where a doe and a spotted fawn looked
down upon them from a tiny open space between the trees.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Valley of the Moon by Jack London