The Valley of the Moon Jack London

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 path? 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 the 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 along? 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