The Valley of the Moon Jack London

wouldn't a-batted an eye. The stock has gone to seed, that's what

  it has."

  "No, it hasn't," Saxon defended. "The stock is all right. We're

  just as able as our folks ever were, and we're healthier on top

  of it. We've been brought up different, that's all. We've lived

  in cities all our lives. We know the city sounds and thugs, but

  we don't know the country ones. Our training has been unnatural,

  that's the whole thing in a nutshell. Now we're going in for

  natural training. Give us a little time, and we'll sleep as sound

  out of doors as ever your father or mine did."

  "But not on sand," Billy groaned.

  "We won't try. That's one thing, for good and all, we've learned

  the very first time. And now hush up and go to sleep."

  Their fears had vanished, but the sand, receiving now their

  undivided attention, multiplied its unyieldingness. Billy dozed

  off first, and roosters were crowing somewhere in the distance

  when Saxon's eyes closed. But they could not escape the sand, and

  their sleep was fitful.

  At the first gray of dawn, Billy crawled out and built a roaring

  fire. Saxon drew up to it shiveringly. They were hollow-eyed and

  weary. Saxon began to laugh. Billy joined sulkily, then

  brightened up as his eyes chanced upon the coffee pot, which he

  immediately put on to boil.

  CHAPTER III

  It is forty miles from Oakland to San Jose, and Saxon and Billy

  accomplished it in three easy days. No more obliging and angrily

  garrulous linemen were encountered, and few were the

  opportunities for conversation with chance wayfarers. Numbers of

  tramps, carrying rolls of blankets, were met, traveling both

  north and south on the county road; and from talks with them

  Saxon quickly learned that they knew little or nothing about

  farming. They were mostly old men, feeble or besotted, and all

  they knew was work--where jobs might be good, where jobs had been

  good; but the places they mentioned were always a long way off.

  One thing she did glean from them, and that was that the district

  she and Billy were passing through was "small-farmer" country in

  which labor was rarely hired, and that when it was it generally

  was Portuguese.

  The farmers themselves were unfriendly. They drove by Billy and

  Saxon, often with empty wagons, but never invited them to ride.

  When chance offered and Saxon did ask questions, they looked her

  over curiously, or suspiciously, and gave ambiguous and

  facetious answers.

  "They ain't Americans, damn them," Billy fretted. "Why, in the

  old days everybody was friendly to everybody."

  But Saxon remembered her last talk with her brother.

  "It's the spirit of the times, Billy. The spirit has changed.

  Besides, these people are too near. Wait till we get farther away

  from the cities, then we'll find them more friendly."

  "A measly lot these ones are," he sneered.

  "Maybe they've a right to be," she laughed. "For all you know,

  more than one of the scabs you've slugged were sons of theirs."

  "If I could only hope so," Billy said fervently. "But I don't

  care if I owned ten thousand acres, any man hikin' with his

  blankets might be just as good a man as me, an' maybe better, for

  all I'd know. I'd give 'm the benefit of the doubt, anyway."

  Billy asked for work, at first, indiscriminately, later, only at

  the larger farms. The unvarying reply was that there was no work.

  A few said there would be plowing after the first rains. Here and

  there, in a small way, dry plowing was going on. But in the main

  the farmers were waiting.

  "But do you know how to plow?" Saxon asked Billy.

  "No; but I guess it ain't much of a trick to turn. Besides, next

  man I see plowing I'm goin' to get a lesson from."

  In the mid-afternoon of the second day his opportunity came. He

  climbed on top of the fence of a small field and watched an old

  man plow round and round it.

  "Aw, shucks, just as easy as easy," Billy commented scornfully.

  "If an old codger like that can handle one plow, I can handle

  two."

  "Go on and try it," Saxon urged.

  "What's the good?"

  "Cold feet," she jeered, but with a smiling face. "All you have

  to do is ask him. All he can do is say no. And what if he does?

  You faced the Chicago Terror twenty rounds without flinching."

  "Aw, but it's different," he demurred, then dropped to the ground

  inside the fence. "Two to one the old geezer turns me down."

  "No, he won't. Just tell him you want to learn, and ask him if

  he'll let you drive around a few times. Tell him it won't cost

  him anything."

  "Huh! If he gets chesty I'll take his blamed plow away from

  him."

  From the top of the fence, but too far away to hear, Saxon

  watched the colloquy. After several minutes, the lines were

  transferred to Billy's neck, the handles to his hands. Then the

  team started, and the old man, delivering a rapid fire of

  instructions, walked alongside of Billy. When a few turns had

  been made, the farmer crossed the plowed strip to Saxon, and

  joined her on the rail.

  "He's plowed before, a little mite, ain't he?"

  Saxon shook her head.

  "Never in his life. But he knows how to drive horses."

  "He showed he wasn't all greenhorn, an' he learns pretty quick."

  Here the farmer chuckled and cut himself a chew from a plug of

  tobacco. "I reckon he won't tire me out a-settin' here."

  The unplowed area grew smaller and smaller, but Billy evinced no

  intention of quitting, and his audience on the fence was deep in

  conversation. Saxon's questions flew fast and furious, and she

  was not long in concluding that the old man bore a striking

  resemblance to the description the lineman had given of his

  father.

  Billy persisted till the field was finished, and the old man

  invited him and Saxon to stop for the night. There was a disused

  outbuilding where they would find a small cook stove, he said,

  and also he would give them fresh milk. Further, if Saxon wanted

  to test HER desire for farming, she could try her hand on the

  cow.

  The milking lesson did not prove as successful as Billy's

  plowing; but when he had mocked sufficiently, Saxon challenged

  him to try, and he failed as grievously as she. Saxon had eyes

  and questions for everything, and it did not take her long to

  realize that she was looking upon the other side of the farming

  shield. Farm and farmer were old-fashioned. There was no

  intensive cultivation. There was too much land too little farmed.

  Everything was slipshod. House and barn and outbuildings were

  fast falling into ruin. The front yard was weed-grown. There was

  no vegetable garden. The small orchard was old, sickly, and

  neglected. The trees were twisted, spindling, and overgrown with

  a gray moss. The sons and daughters were away in the cities,

  Saxon found out. One daughter had married a doctor, the other was

  a teacher in the state normal school; one son was a locomotive

  engineer,
the second was an architect, and the third was a police

  court reporter in San Francisco. On occasion, the father said,

  they helped out the old folks.

  "What do you think?" Saxon asked Billy as he smoked his

  after-supper cigarette.

  His shoulders went up in a comprehensive shrug.

  "Huh! That's easy. The old geezer's like his orchard--covered

  with moss. It's plain as the nose on your face, after San

  Leandro, that he don't know the first thing. An' them horses.

  It'd be a charity to him, an' a savin' of money for him, to take

  'em out an' shoot 'em both. You bet you don't see the Porchugeeze

  with horses like them. An' it ain't a case of bein' proud, or

  puttin' on side, to have good horses. It's brass tacks an'

  business. It pays. That's the game. Old horses eat more in young

  ones to keep in condition an' they can't do the same amount of

  work. But you bet it costs just as much to shoe them. An' his is

  scrub on top of it. Every minute he has them horses he's losin'

  money. You oughta see the way they work an' figure horses in the

  city."

  They slept soundly, and, after an early breakfast, prepared to

  start.

  "I'd like to give you a couple of days' work," the old man

  regretted, at parting, "but I can't see it. The ranch just about

  keeps me and the old woman, now that the children are gone. An'

  then it don't always. Seems times have been bad for a long spell

  now. Ain't never been the same since Grover Cleveland."

  Early in the afternoon, on the outskirts of San Jose, Saxon

  called a halt.

  "I'm going right in there and talk," she declared, "unless they

  set the dogs on me. That's the prettiest place yet, isn't it?"

  Billy, who was always visioning hills and spacious ranges for his

  horses, mumbled unenthusiastic assent.

  "And the vegetables! Look at them! And the flowers growing along

  the borders! That beats tomato plants in wrapping paper."

  "Don't see the sense of it," Billy objected. "Where's the money

  come in from flowers that take up the ground that good vegetables

  might be growin' on?"

  "And that's what I'm going to find out." She pointed to a woman,

  stooped to the ground and working with a trowel; in front of the

  tiny bungalow. "I don't know what she's like, but at the worst

  she can only be mean. See! She's looking at us now. Drop your

  load alongside of mine, and come on in."

  Billy slung the blankets from his shoulder to the ground, but

  elected to wait. As Saxon went up the narrow, flower-bordered

  walk, she noted two men at work among the vegetables--one an old

  Chinese, the other old and of some dark-eyed foreign breed. Here

  were neatness, efficiency, and intensive cultivation with a

  vengeance--even her untrained eye could see that. The woman stood

  up and turned from her flowers, and Saxon saw that she was

  middle-aged, slender, and simply but nicely dressed. She wore

  glasses, and Saxon's reading of her face was that it was kind but

  nervous looking.

  "I don't want anything to-day," she said, before Saxon could

  speak, administering the rebuff with a pleasant smile.

  Saxon groaned inwardly over the black-covered telescope basket.

  Evidently the woman had seen her put it down.

  "We're not peddling," she explained quickly.

  "Oh, I am sorry for the mistake."

  This time the woman's smile was even pleasanter, and she waited

  for Saxon to state her errand.

  Nothing loath, Saxon took it at a plunge.

  "We're looking for land. We want to be farmers, you know, and

  before we get the land we want to find out what kind of land we

  want. And seeing your pretty place has just filled me up with

  questions. You see, we don't know anything about farming. We've

  lived in the city all our life, and now we've given it up and are

  going to live in the country and be happy."

  She paused. The woman's face seemed to grow quizzical, though the

  pleasantness did not abate.

  "But how do you know you will be happy in the country?" she

  asked.

  "I don't know. All I do know is that poor people can't be happy

  in the city where they have labor troubles all the time. If they

  can't be happy in the country, then there's no happiness

  anywhere, and that doesn't seem fair, does it?"

  "It is sound reasoning, my dear, as far as it goes. But you must

  remember that there are many poor people in the country and many

  unhappy people."

  "You look neither poor nor unhappy," Saxon challenged.

  "You ARE a dear."

  Saxon saw the pleased flush in the other's face, which lingered

  as she went on.

  "But still, I may be peculiarly qualified to live and succeed in

  the country. As you say yourself, you've spent your life in the

  city. You don't know the first thing about the country. It might

  even break your heart."

  Saxon's mind went back to the terrible months in the Pine street

  cottage.

  "I know already that the city will break my heart. Maybe the

  country will, too, but just the same it's my only chance, don't

  you see. It's that or nothing. Besides, our folks before us

  were all of the country. It seems the more natural way. And

  better, here I am, which proves that 'way down inside I must want

  the country, must, as you call it, be peculiarly qualified for

  the country, or else I wouldn't be here."

  The other nodded approval, and looked at her with growing

  interest.

  "That young man--" she began.

  "Is my husband. He was a teamster until the big strike came. My

  name is Roberts, Saxon Roberts, and my husband is William

  Roberts."

  "And I am Mrs. Mortimer," the other said, with a bow of

  acknowledgment. "I am a widow. And now, if you will ask your

  husband in, I shall try to answer some of your many questions.

  Tell him to put the bundles inside the gate. . . . And now what

  are all the questions you are filled with?"

  "Oh, all kinds. How does it pay? How did you manage it all? How

  much did the land cost? Did you build that beautiful house? How

  much do you pay the men? How did you learn all the different

  kinds of things, and which grew best and which paid best? What is

  the best way to sell them? How do you sell them?" Saxon paused

  and laughed. "Oh, I haven't begun yet. Why do you have flowers on

  the borders everywhere? I looked over the Portuguese farms around

  San Leandro, but they never mixed flowers and vegetables."

  Mrs. Mortimer held up her hand. "Let me answer the last first.

  It is the key to almost everything."

  But Billy arrived, and the explanation was deferred until after

  his introduction.

  "The flowers caught your eyes, didn't they, my dear?" Mrs.

  Mortimer resumed. "And brought you in through my gate and right

  up to me. And that's the very reason they were planted with the

  vegetables--to catch eyes. You can't imagine how many eyes they

  have caught, nor how many owners of eyes they have lured inside

  my gate. This is a good road, and is a very popul
ar short country

  drive for townsfolk. Oh, no; I've never had any luck with

  automobiles. They can't see anything for dust. But I began when

  nearly everybody still used carriages. The townswomen would drive

  by. My flowers, and then my place, would catch their eyes. They

  would tell their drivers to stop. And--well, somehow, I managed

  to be in the front within speaking distance. Usually I succeeded

  in inviting them in to see my flowers . . . and vegetables, of

  course. Everything was sweet, clean, pretty. It all appealed.

  And--" Mrs. Mortimer shrugged her shoulders. "It is well known

  that the stomach sees through the eyes. The thought of vegetables

  growing among flowers pleased their fancy. They wanted my

  vegetables. They must have them. And they did, at double the

  market price, which they were only too glad to pay. You see, I

  became the fashion, or a fad, in a small way. Nobody lost. The

  vegetables were certainly good, as good as any on the market and

  often fresher. And, besides, my customers killed two birds with

  one stone; for they were pleased with themselves for

  philanthropic reasons. Not only did they obtain the finest and

  freshest possible vegetables, but at the same time they were

  happy with the knowledge that they were helping a deserving

  widow-woman. Yes, and it gave a certain tone to their

  establishments to be able to say they bought Mrs. Mortimer's

  vegetables. But that's too big a side to go into. In short, my

  little place became a show place--anywhere to go, for a drive or

  anything, you know, when time has to be killed. And it became

  noised about who I was, and who my husband had been, what I had

  been. Some of the townsladies I had known personally in the old

  days. They actually worked for my success. And then, too, I used

  to serve tea. My patrons became my guests for the time being. I

  still serve it, when they drive out to show me off to their

  friends. So you see, the flowers are one of the ways I

  succeeded."

  Saxon was glowing with appreciation, but Mrs. Mortimer, glancing

  at Billy, noted not entire approval. His blue eyes were clouded.

  "Well, out with it," she encouraged. "What are you thinking?"

  To Saxon's surprise, he answered directly, and to her double

  surprise, his criticism was of a nature which had never entered

  her head.

  "It's just a trick," Billy expounded. "That's what I was gettin'

  at--"

  "But a paying trick," Mrs. Mortimer interrupted, her eyes dancing

  and vivacious behind the glasses.

  "Yes, and no," Billy said stubbornly, speaking in his slow,

  deliberate fashion. "If every farmer was to mix flowers an'

  vegetables, then every farmer would get double the market price,

  an' then there wouldn't be any double market price. Everything'd

  be as it was before."

  "You are opposing a theory to a fact," Mrs. Mortimer stated. "The

  fact is that all the farmers do not do it. The fact is that I do

  receive double the price. You can't get away from that."

  Billy was unconvinced, though unable to reply.

  "Just the same," he muttered, with a slow shake of the head, "I

  don't get the hang of it. There's something wrong so far as we're

  concerned--my wife an' me, I mean. Maybe I'll get hold of it

  after a while."

  "And in the meantime, we'll look around," Mrs. Mortimer invited.

  "I want to show you everything, and tell you how I make it go.

  Afterward, we'll sit down, and I'll tell you about the beginning.

  You see--" she bent her gaze on Saxon--"I want you thoroughly to

  understand that you can succeed in the country if you go about it

  right. I didn't know a thing about it when I began, and I didn't

  have a fine big man like yours. I was all alone. But I'll tell

  you about that."

  For the next hour, among vegetables, berry-bushes and fruit

  trees, Saxon stored her brain with a huge mass of information to