The Valley of the Moon Jack London

pan, in the way that delighted Billy, she fried the steak. This

  completed, and while Billy poured the coffee, she served the

  steak, putting the dollars and onions back into the frying pan

  for a moment to make them piping hot again.

  "What more d'ye want than this?" Billy challenged with deep-toned

  satisfaction, in the pause after his final cup of coffee, while

  he rolled a cigarette. He lay on his side, full length, resting

  on his elbow. The fire was burning brightly, and Saxon's color

  was heightened by the flickering flames. "Now our folks, when

  they was on the move, had to be afraid for Indians, and wild

  animals and all sorts of things; an' here we are, as safe as bugs

  in a rug. Take this sand. What better bed could you ask? Soft as

  feathers. Say--you look good to me, heap little squaw. I bet you

  don't look an inch over sixteen right now, Mrs.

  Babe-in-the-Woods."

  "Don't I?" she glowed, with a flirt of the head sideward and a

  white flash of teeth. "If you weren't smoking a cigarette I'd ask

  you if your mother knew you're out, Mr. Babe-in-the-Sandbank."

  "Say," he began, with transparently feigned seriousness. "I want

  to ask you something, if you don't mind. Now, of course, I don't

  want to hurt your feelin's or nothin', but just the same there's

  something important I'd like to know."

  "Well, what is it?" she inquired, after a fruitless wait.

  "Well, it's just this, Saxon. I like you like anything an' all

  that, but here's night come on, an' we're a thousand miles from

  anywhere, and--well, what I wanta know is: are we really an'

  truly married, you an' me?"

  "Really and truly," she assured him. "Why?"

  "Oh, nothing; but I'd kind a-forgotten, an' I was gettin'

  embarrassed, you know, because if we wasn't, seein' the way I was

  brought up, this'd be no place--"

  "That will do you," she said severely. "And this is just the time

  and place for you to get in the firewood for morning while I wash

  up the dishes and put the kitchen in order."

  He started to obey, but paused to throw his arm about her and

  draw her close. Neither spoke, but when he went his way Saxon's

  breast was fluttering and a song of thanksgiving breathed on her

  lips.

  The night had come on, dim with the light of faint stars. But

  these had disappeared behind clouds that seemed to have arisen

  from nowhere. It was the beginning of California Indian summer.

  The air was warm, with just the first hint of evening chill, and

  there was no wind.

  "I've a feeling as if we've just started to live," Saxon said,

  when Billy, his firewood collected, joined her on the blankets

  before the fire. "I've learned more to-day than ten years in

  Oakland." She drew a long breath and braced her shoulders.

  "Farming's a bigger subject than I thought."

  Billy said nothing. With steady eyes he was staring into the

  fire, and she knew he was turning something over in his mind.

  "What is it," she asked, when she saw he had reached a

  conclusion, at the same time resting her hand on the back of his.

  "Just been framin' up that ranch of ourn," he answered. "It's all

  well enough, these dinky farmlets. They'll do for foreigners. But

  we Americans just gotta have room. I want to be able to look at a

  hilltop an' know it's my land, and know it's my land down the

  other side an' up the next hilltop, an' know that over beyond

  that, down alongside some creek, my mares are most likely

  grazin', an' their little colts grazin' with 'em or kickin' up

  their heels. You know, there's money in raisin'

  horses--especially the big workhorses that run to eighteen

  hundred an' two thousand pounds. They're payin' for 'em, in the

  cities, every day in the year, seven an' eight hundred a pair,

  matched geldings, four years old. Good pasture an' plenty of it,

  in this kind of a climate, is all they need, along with some sort

  of shelter an' a little hay in long spells of bad weather. I

  never thought of it before, but let me tell you that this ranch

  proposition is beginnin' to look good to ME."

  Saxon was all excitement. Here was new information on the

  cherished subject, and, best of all, Billy was the authority.

  Still better, he was taking an interest himself.

  "There'll be room for that and for everything on a quarter

  section," she encouraged.

  "Sure thing. Around the house we'll have vegetables an' fruit and

  chickens an' everything, just like the Porchugeeze, an' plenty of

  room beside to walk around an' range the horses."

  "But won't the colts cost money, Billy?"

  "Not much. The cobblestones eat horses up fast. That's where I'll

  get my brood mares, from the ones knocked out by the city. I know

  THAT end of it. They sell 'em at auction, an' they're good for

  years an' years, only no good on the cobbles any more."

  There ensued a long pause. In the dying fire both were busy

  visioning the farm to be.

  "It's pretty still, ain't it?" Billy said, rousing himself at

  last. He gazed about him. "An' black as a stack of black cats."

  He shivered, buttoned his coat, and tossed several sticks on the

  fire. "Just the same, it's the best kind of a climate in the

  world. Many's the time, when I was a little kid, I've heard my

  father brag about California's bein' a blanket climate. He went

  East, once, an' staid a summer an' a winter, an' got all he

  wanted. Never again for him."

  "My mother said there never was such a land for climate. How

  wonderful it must have seemed to them after crossing the deserts

  and mountains. They called it the land of milk and honey. The

  ground was so rich that all they needed to do was scratch it,

  Cady used to say."

  "And wild game everywhere," Billy contributed. "Mr. Roberts, the

  one that adopted my father, he drove cattle from the San Josquin

  to the Columbia river. He had forty men helpin' him, an' all they

  took along was powder an' salt. They lived off the game they

  shot."

  "The hills were full of deer, and my mother saw whole herds of

  elk around Santa Rosa. Some time we'll go there, Billy. I've

  always wanted to."

  "And when my father was a young man, somewhere up north of

  Sacramento, in a creek called Cache Slough, the tules was full of

  grizzliest He used to go in an' shoot 'em. An' when they caught

  'em in the open, he an' the Mexicans used to ride up an' rope

  them--catch them with lariats, you know. He said a horse that

  wasn't afraid of grizzlies fetched ten times as much as any other

  horse An' panthers!--all the old folks called 'em painters an'

  catamounts an' varmints. Yes, we'll go to Santa Rosa some time.

  Maybe we won't like that land down the coast, an' have to keep on

  hikin'."

  By this time the fire had died down, and Saxon had finished

  brushing and braiding her hair. Their bed-going preliminaries

  were simple, and in a few minutes they were side by side under

  the blankets. Saxon closed her eyes, but could not sleep. On the

  contrary, she had never been
more wide awake. She had never slept

  out of doors in her life, and by no exertion of will could she

  overcome the strangeness of it. In addition, she was stiffened

  from the long trudge, and the sand, to her surprise, was anything

  but soft. An hour passed. She tried to believe that Billy was

  asleep, but felt certain he was not. The sharp crackle of a dying

  ember startled her. She was confident that Billy had moved

  slightly.

  "Billy," she whispered, "are you awake?"

  "Yep," came his low answer, "--an' thinkin' this sand is harder'n

  a cement floor. It's one on me, all right. But who'd a-thought

  it?"

  Both shifted their postures slightly, but vain was the attempt to

  escape from the dull, aching contact of the sand.

  An abrupt, metallic, whirring noise of some nearby cricket gave

  Saxon another startle. She endured the sound for some minutes,

  until Billy broke forth.

  "Say, that gets my goat whatever it is."

  "Do you think it's a rattlesnake?" she asked, maintaining a

  calmness she did not feel.

  "Just what I've been thinkin'."

  "I saw two, in the window of Bowman's Drug Store An' you know,

  Billy, they've got a hollow fang, and when they stick it into you

  the poison runs down the hollow."

  "Br-r-r-r," Billy shivered, in fear that was not altogether

  mockery. "Certain death, everybody says, unless you're a Bosco.

  Remember him?"

  "He eats 'em alive! He eats 'em alive! Bosco! Bosco!" Saxon

  responded, mimicking the cry of a side-show barker. Just the

  same, all Bosco's rattlers had the poison-sacs cut outa them.

  They must a-had. Gee! It's funny I can't get asleep. I wish that

  damned thing'd close its trap. I wonder if it is a rattlesnake."

  "No; it can't be," Saxon decided. "All the rattlesnakes are

  killed off long ago."

  "Then where did Bosco get his?" Billy demanded with unimpeachable

  logic. "An' why don't you get to sleep?"

  "Because it's all new, I guess," was her reply. "You see, I never

  camped out in my life."

  "Neither did I. An' until now I always thought it was a lark." He

  changed his position on the maddening sand and sighed heavily.

  "But we'll get used to it in time, I guess. What other folks can

  do, we can, an' a mighty lot of 'em has camped out. It's all

  right. Here we are, free an' independent, no rent to pay, our own

  bosses"

  He stopped abruptly. From somewhere in the brush came an

  intermittent rustling. When they tried to locate it, it

  mysteriously ceased, and when the first hint of drowsiness stole

  upon them the rustling as mysteriously recommenced.

  "It sounds like something creeping up on us," Saxon suggested,

  snuggling closer to Billy.

  "Well, it ain't a wild Indian, at all events," was the best he

  could offer in the way of comfort. He yawned deliberately. "Aw,

  shucks! What's there to be scared of? Think of what all the

  pioneers went through."

  Several minutes later his shoulders began to shake, and Saxon

  knew he was giggling.

  "I was just thinkin' of a yarn my father used to tell about," he

  explained. "It was about old Susan Kleghorn, one of the Oregon

  pioneer women. Wall-Eyed Susan, they used to call her; but she

  could shoot to beat the band. Once, on the Plains, the wagon

  train she was in, was attacked by Indians. They got all the

  wagons in a circle, an' all hands an' the oxen inside, an' drove

  the Indians off, killin' a lot of 'em. They was too strong that

  way, so what'd the Indians do, to draw 'em out into the open, but

  take two white girls, captured from some other train, an' begin

  to torture 'em. They done it just out of gunshot, but so

  everybody could see. The idea was that the white men couldn't

  stand it, an' would rush out, an' then the Indians'd have 'em

  where they wanted 'em.

  "The white men couldn't do a thing. If they rushed out to save

  the girls, they'd be finished, an' then the Indians'd rush the

  train. It meant death to everybody. But what does old Susan do,

  but get out an old, long-barreled Kentucky rifle. She rams down

  about three times the regular load of powder, takes aim at a big

  buck that's pretty busy at the torturin', an' bangs away. It

  knocked her clean over backward, an' her shoulder was lame all

  the rest of the way to Oregon, but she dropped the big Indian

  deado. He never knew what struck 'm.

  "But that wasn't the yarn I wanted to tell. It seems old Susan

  liked John Barleycorn. She'd souse herself to the ears every

  chance she got. An' her sons an' daughters an' the old man had to

  be mighty careful not to leave any around where she could get

  hands on it."

  "On what?" asked Saxon.

  "On John Barleycorn.--Oh, you ain't on to that. It's the old

  fashioned name for whisky. Well, one day all the folks was goin'

  away--that was over somewhere at a place called Bodega, where

  they'd settled after comin' down from Oregon. An' old Susan

  claimed her rheumatics was hurtin' her an' so she couldn't go.

  But the family was on. There was a two-gallon demijohn of whisky

  in the house. They said all right, but before they left they sent

  one of the grandsons to climb a big tree in the barnyard, where

  he tied the demijohn sixty feet from the ground. Just the same,

  when they come home that night they found Susan on the kitchen

  floor dead to the world."

  "And she'd climbed the tree after all," Saxon hazarded, when

  Billy had shown no inclination of going on.

  "Not on your life," he laughed jubilantly. "All she'd done was to

  put a washtub on the ground square under the demijohn. Then she

  got out her old rifle an' shot the demijohn to smithereens, an'

  all she had to do was lap the whisky outa the tub."

  Again Saxon was drowsing, when the rustling sound was heard, this

  time closer. To her excited apprehension there was something

  stealthy about it, and she imagined a beast of prey creeping upon

  them. "Billy," she whispered.

  "Yes, I'm a-listenin' to it," came his wide awake answer.

  "Mightn't that be a panther, or maybe . . . a wildcat?"

  "It can't be. All the varmints was killed off long ago. This is

  peaceable farmin' country."

  A vagrant breeze sighed through the trees and made Saxon shiver.

  The mysterious cricket-noise ceased with suspicious abruptness.

  Then, from the rustling noise, ensued a dull but heavy thump

  that caused both Saxon and Billy to sit up in the blankets. There

  were no further sounds, and they lay down again, though the very

  silence now seemed ominous.

  "Huh," Billy muttered with relief. "As though I don't know what

  it was. It was a rabbit. I've heard tame ones bang their hind

  feet down on the floor that way."

  In vain Saxon tried to win sleep. The sand grew harder with the

  passage of time. Her flesh and her bones ached from contact with

  it. And, though her reason flouted any possibility of wild

  dangers, her fancy went on picturing them with unflagging zeal.

  A new so
und commenced. It was neither a rustling nor a rattling,

  and it tokened some large body passing through the brush.

  Sometimes twigs crackled and broke, and, once, they heard

  bush-branches press aside and spring back into place.

  "If that other thing was a panther, this is an elephant," was

  Billy's uncheering opinion. "It's got weight. Listen to that. An'

  it's comin' nearer."

  There were frequent stoppages, then the sounds would begin again,

  always louder, always closer. Billy sat up in the blankets once

  more, passing one arm around Saxon, who had also sat up.

  "I ain't slept a wink," he complained. "--There it goes again. I

  wish I could see."

  "It makes a noise big enough for a grizzly," Saxon chattered,

  partly from nervousness, partly from the chill of the night.

  "It ain't no grasshopper, that's sure."

  Billy started to leave the blankets, but Saxon caught his arm.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Oh, I ain't scairt none," he answered. "But, honest to God, this

  is gettin' on my nerves. If I don't find what that thing is,

  it'll give me the willies. I'm just goin' to reconnoiter. I won't

  go close."

  So intensely dark was the night, that the moment Billy crawled

  beyond the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and

  waited. The sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy's

  progress by the cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few

  moments he returned and crawled under the blankets.

  "I scared it away, I guess. It's got better ears, an' when it

  heard me comin' it skinned out most likely. I did my dangdest,

  too, not to make a sound.--O Lord, there it goes again."

  They sat up. Saxon nudged Billy.

  "There," she warned, in the faintest of whispers. "I can hear it

  breathing. It almost made a snort."

  A dead branch cracked loudly, and so near at hand, that both of

  them jumped shamelessly.

  "I ain't goin' to stand any more of its foolin'," Billy declared

  wrathfully. "It'll be on top of us if I don't."

  "What are you going to do?" she queried anxiously.

  "Yell the top of my head off. I'll get a fall outa whatever it

  is."

  He drew a deep breath and emitted a wild yell.

  The result far exceeded any expectation he could have

  entertained, and Saxon's heart leaped up in sheer panic. On the

  instant the darkness erupted into terrible sound and movement.

  There were trashings of underbrush and lunges and plunges of

  heavy bodies in different directions. Fortunately for their ease

  of mind, all these sounds receded and died away.

  "An' what d'ye think of that?" Billy broke the silence.

  "Gee! all the fight fans used to say I was scairt of nothin'.

  Just the same I'm glad they ain't seein' me to-night."

  He groaned. "I've got all I want of that blamed sand. I'm goin'

  to get up and start the fire."

  This was easy. Under the ashes were live embers which quickly

  ignited the wood he threw on. A few stars were peeping out in the

  misty zenith. He looked up at them, deliberated, and started to

  move away.

  "Where are you going now?" Saxon called.

  "Oh, I've got an idea," he replied noncommittally, and walked

  boldly away beyond the circle of the firelight.

  Saxon sat with the blankets drawn closely under her chin, and

  admired his courage. He had not even taken the hatchet, and he

  was going in the direction in which the disturbance had died

  away.

  Ten minutes later he came back chuckling.

  "The sons-of-guns, they got my goat all right. I'll be scairt of

  my own shadow next.--What was they? Huh! You couldn't guess in a

  thousand years. A bunch of half-grown calves, an' they was worse

  scairt than us."

  He smoked a cigarette by the fire, then rejoined Saxon under the

  blankets.

  "A hell of a farmer I'll make," he chafed, "when a lot of little

  calves can scare the stuffin' outa me. I bet your father or mine