The Valley of the Moon Jack London

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