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Resin-3.0.18 (built Fri, 24 Feb :03 PST)The Valley Of The Moon Part 10
Jack London
The Valley Of The Moon
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
“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?
Al’ 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
“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,” “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, B 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
then the whole affair straightened out and thundered down upon them
across a narrow plank-bridge. In the front seat
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
received 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
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
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,” S “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
“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. A 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 Paci 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 madronos 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 gr 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
“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
“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. H
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, S 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
“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,” “—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
“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
“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
“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. Hale 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, 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. H 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, 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 “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
“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
Frenchman—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, 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
and several questions brought it forth—the old pioneer dream of land
of cattl 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 h 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 booklined 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- 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 bush 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
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, El
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 vege you will make it a point to
deliver better, 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
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 Q 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, 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
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
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
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 }