The Valley of the Moon Jack London

shouldn't know better. We're teaching it in all our agricultural

  colleges, experiment stations, and demonstration trains. But the

  people won't take hold, and the immigrant, who has learned in a

  hard school, beats them out. Why, after I graduated, and before

  my father died--he was of the old school and laughed at what he

  called my theories--I traveled for a couple of years. I wanted to

  see how the old countries farmed. Oh, I saw.

  "We'll soon enter the valley. You bet I saw. First thing, in

  Japan, the terraced hillsides. Take a hill so steep you couldn't

  drive a horse up it. No bother to them. They terraced it--a stone

  wall, and good masonry, six feet high, a level terrace six feet

  wide; up and up, walls and terraces, the same thing all the way,

  straight into the air, walls upon walls, terraces upon terraces,

  until I've seen ten-foot walls built to make three-foot terraces,

  and twenty-foot walls for four or five feet of soil they could

  grow things on. And that soil, packed up the mountainsides in

  baskets on their backs!

  "Same thing everywhere I went, in Greece, in Ireland, in

  Dalmatia--I went there, too. They went around and gathered every

  bit of soil they could find, gleaned it and even stole it by the

  shovelful or handful, and carried it up the mountains on their

  backs and built farms--BUILT them, MADE them, on the naked rock.

  Why, in France, I've seen hill peasants mining their stream-beds

  for soil as our fathers mined the streams of California for gold.

  Only our gold's gone, and the peasants' soil remains, turning

  over and over, doing something, growing something, all the time.

  Now, I guess I'll hush."

  "My God!" Billy muttered in awe-stricken tones. "Our folks never

  done that. No wonder they lost out."

  "There's the valley now," Benson said. "Look at those trees! Look

  at those hillsides! That's New Dalmatia. Look at it! An apple

  paradise! Look at that soil! Look at the way it's worked!"

  It was not a large valley that Saxon saw. But everywhere, across

  the flat-lands and up the low rolling hills, the industry of the

  Dalmatians was evident. As she looked she listened to Benson.

  "Do you know what the old settlers did with this beautiful soil?

  Planted the flats in grain and pastured cattle on the hills. And

  now twelve thousand acres of it are in apples. It's a regular

  show place for the Eastern guests at Del Monte, who run out here

  in their machines to see the trees in bloom or fruit. Take Matteo

  Lettunich--he's one of the originals. Entered through Castle

  Garden and became a dish-washer. When he laid eyes on this

  valley he knew it was his Klondike. To-day he leases seven

  hundred acres and owns a hundred and thirty of his own--the

  finest orchard in the valley, and he packs from forty to fifty

  thousand boxes of export apples from it every year. And he won't

  let a soul but a Dalmatian pick a single apple of all those

  apples. One day, in a banter, I asked him what he'd sell his

  hundred and thirty acres for. He answered seriously. He told me

  what it had netted him, year by year, and struck an average. He

  told me to calculate the principal from that at six per cent. I

  did. It came to over three thousand dollars an acre."

  "What are all the Chinks doin' in the Valley?" Billy asked.

  "Growin' apples, too?"

  Benson shook his head.

  "But that's another point where we Americans lose out. There

  isn't anything wasted in this valley, not a core nor a paring;

  and it isn't the Americans who do the saving. There are

  fifty-seven apple-evaporating furnaces, to say nothing of the

  apple canneries and cider and vinegar factories. And Mr. John

  Chinaman owns them. They ship fifteen thousand barrels of cider

  and vinegar each year."

  "It was our folks that made this country," Billy reflected.

  "Fought for it, opened it up, did everything--"

  "But develop it," Benson caught him up. "We did our best to

  destroy it, as we destroyed the soil of New England." He waved

  his hand, indicating some place beyond the hills. "Salinas lies

  over that way. If you went through there you'd think you were in

  Japan. And more than one fat little fruit valley in California

  has been taken over by the Japanese. Their method is somewhat

  different from the Dalmatians'. First they drift in fruit picking

  at day's wages. They give better satisfaction than the American

  fruit-pickers, too, and the Yankee grower is glad to get them.

  Next, as they get stronger, they form in Japanese unions and

  proceed to run the American labor out. Still the fruit-growers

  are satisfied. The next step is when the Japs won't pick. The

  American labor is gone. The fruit-grower is helpless. The crop

  perishes. Then in step the Jap labor bosses. They're the masters

  already. They contract for the crop. The fruit-growers are at

  their mercy, you see. Pretty soon the Japs are running the

  valley. The fruit-growers have become absentee landlords and are

  busy learning higher standards of living in the cities or making

  trips to Europe. Remains only one more step. The Japs buy them

  out. They've got to sell, for the Japs control the labor market

  and could bankrupt them at will."

  "But if this goes on, what is left for us?" asked Saxon.

  "What is happening. Those of us who haven't anything rot in the

  cities. Those of us who have land, sell it and go to the cities.

  Some become larger capitalists; some go into the professions; the

  rest spend the money and start rotting when it's gone, and if it

  lasts their life-time their children do the rotting for them."

  Their long ride was soon over, and at parting Benson reminded

  Billy of the steady job that awaited him any time he gave the

  word.

  "I guess we'll take a peep at that government land first," Billy

  answered. "Don't know what we'll settle down to, but there's one

  thing sure we won't tackle."

  "What's that?"

  "Start in apple-growin' at three thousan' dollars an acre."

  Billy and Saxon, their packs upon the backs, trudged along a

  hundred yards. He was the first to break silence.

  "An' I tell you another thing, Saxon. We'll never be goin' around

  smellin' out an' swipin' bits of soil an' carryin' it up a hill

  in a basket. The United States is big yet. I don't care what

  Benson or any of 'em says, the United States ain't played out.

  There's millions of acres untouched an' waitin', an' it's up to

  us to find 'em."

  "And I'll tell you one thing," Saxon said. "We're getting an

  education. Tom was raised on a ranch, yet he doesn't know right

  now as much about farming conditions as we do. And I'll tell you

  another thing. The more I think of it, the more it seems we are

  going to be disappointed about that government land."

  "Ain't no use believin' what everybody tells you," he protested.

  "Oh, it isn't that. It's what I think. I leave it to you. If this

  land around here is worth three thousand an acre, why is it that

  government land, if it's any good, is waiting the
re, only a short

  way off, to be taken for the asking."

  Billy pondered this for a quarter of a mile, but could come to no

  conclusion. At last he cleared his throat and remarked:

  "Well, we can wait till we see it first, can't we?"

  "All right," Saxon agreed. "We'll wait till we see it."

  CHAPTER VI

  They had taken the direct county road across the hills from

  Monterey, instead of the Seventeen Mile Drive around by the

  coast, so that Carmel Bay came upon them without any

  fore-glimmerings of its beauty. Dropping down through the pungent

  pines, they passed woods-embowered cottages, quaint and rustic,

  of artists and writers, and went on across wind-blown rolling

  sandhills held to place by sturdy lupine and nodding with pale

  California poppies. Saxon screamed in sudden wonder of delight,

  then caught her breath and gazed at the amazing peacock-blue of a

  breaker, shot through with golden sunlight, overfalling in a

  mile-long sweep and thundering into white ruin of foam on a

  crescent beach of sand scarcely less white.

  How long they stood and watched the stately procession of

  breakers, rising from out the deep and wind-capped sea to froth

  and thunder at their feet, Saxon did not know. She was recalled

  to herself when Billy, laughing, tried to remove the telescope

  basket from her shoulders.

  "You kind of look as though you was goin' to stop a while," he

  said. "So we might as well get comfortable."

  "I never dreamed it, I never dreamed it," she repeated, with

  passionately clasped hands. "I. .. I thought the surf at the

  Cliff House was wonderful, but it gave no idea of this.--Oh!

  Look! LOOK! Did you ever see such an unspeakable color? And the

  sunlight flashing right through it! Oh! Oh! Oh!"

  At last she was able to take her eyes from the surf and gaze at

  the sea-horizon of deepest peacock-blue and piled with

  cloud-masses, at the curve of the beach south to the jagged point

  of rocks, and at the rugged blue mountains seen across soft low

  hills, landward, up Carmel Valley.

  "Might as well sit down an' take it easy," Billy indulged her.

  "This is too good to want to run away from all at once."

  Saxon assented, but began immediately to unlace her shoes.

  "You ain't a-goin' to?" Billy asked in surprised delight, then

  began unlacing his own.

  But before they were ready to run barefooted on the perilous

  fringe of cream-wet sand where land and ocean met, a new and

  wonderful thing attracted their attention. Down from the dark

  pines and across the sandhills ran a man, naked save for narrow

  trunks. He was smooth and rosy-skinned, cherubic-faced, with a

  thatch of curly yellow hair, but his body was hugely thewed as a

  Hercules'.

  "Gee!--must be Sandow," Billy muttered low to Saxon.

  But she was thinking of the engraving in her mother's scrapbook

  and of the Vikings on the wet sands of England.

  The runner passed them a dozen feet away, crossed the wet sand,

  never parsing, till the froth wash was to his knees while above

  him, ten feet at least, upreared a was of overtopping water. Huge

  and powerful as his body had seemed, it was now white and fragile

  in the face of that imminent, great-handed buffet of the sea.

  Saxon gasped with anxiety, and she stole a look at Billy to note

  that he was tense with watching.

  But the stranger sprang to meet the blow, and, just when it

  seemed he must be crushed, he dived into the face of the breaker

  and disappeared. The mighty mass of water fell in thunder on the

  beach, but beyond appeared a yellow head, one arm out-reaching,

  and a portion of a shoulder. Only a few strokes was he able to

  make are he was come pelted to dye through another breaker. This

  was the battle--to win seaward against the Creep of the shoreward

  hastening sea. Each time he dived and was lost to view Saxon

  caught her breath and clenched her hands. Sometimes, after the

  passage of a breaker, they enfold not find him, and when they did

  he would be scores of feet away, flung there like a chip by a

  smoke-bearded breaker. Often it seemed he must fail and be thrown

  upon the beach, but at the end of half an hour he was beyond the

  outer edge of the surf and swimming strong, no longer diving, but

  topping the waves. Soon he was so far away that only at intervals

  could they find the speck of him. That, too, vanished, and Saxon

  and Billy looked at each other, she with amazement at the

  swimmer's valor, Billy with blue eyes flashing.

  "Some swimmer, that boy, some swimmer," he praised. "Nothing

  chicken-hearted about him.--Say, I only know tank-swimmin', an'

  bay-swimmin', but now I'm goin' to learn ocean-swimmin'. If I

  could do that I'd be so proud you couldn't come within forty feet

  of me. Why, Saxon, honest to God, I'd sooner do what he done than

  own a thousan' farms. Oh, I can swim, too, I'm tellin' you, like a

  fish--I swum, one Sunday, from the Narrow Gauge Pier to Sessions'

  Basin, an' that's miles--but I never seen anything like that guy

  in the swimmin' line. An' I'm not goin' to leave this beach until

  he comes back.--All by his lonely out there in a mountain sea,

  think of it! He's got his nerve all right, all right."

  Saxon and Billy ran barefooted up and down the beach, pursuing

  each other with brandished snakes of seaweed and playing like

  children for an hour. It was not until they were putting on their

  shoes that they sighted the yellow head bearing shoreward. Billy

  was at the edge of the surf to meet him, emerging, not

  white-skinned as he had entered, but red from the pounding he had

  received at the hands of the sea.

  "You're a wonder, and I just got to hand it to you," Billy

  greeted him in outspoken admiration.

  "It was a big surf to-day," the young man replied, with a nod of

  acknowledgment.

  "It don't happen that you are a fighter I never heard of?" Billy

  queried, striving to get some inkling of the identity of the

  physical prodigy.

  The other laughed and shook his head, and Billy could

  not guess that he was an ex-captain of a 'Varsity Eleven, and

  incidentally the father of a family and the author of many books.

  He looked Billy over with an eye trained in measuring freshmen

  aspirants for the gridiron.

  "You're some body of a man," he appreciated. "You'd strip with

  the best of them. Am I right in guessing that you know your way

  about in the ring?"

  Billy nodded. "My name's Roberts."

  The swimmer scowled with a futile effort at recollection.

  "Bill--Bill Roberts," Billy supplemented.

  "Oh, ho!--Not BIG Bill Roberts? Why, I saw you fight, before the

  earthquake, in the Mechanic's Pavilion. It was a preliminary to

  Eddie Hanlon and some other fellow. You're a two-handed fighter,

  I remember that, with an awful wallop, but slow. Yes, I remember,

  you were slow that night, but you got your man." He put out a wet

  hand. "My name's Hazard--Jim Hazard."

  "An' if you're the football coach that was, a coupl
e of years

  ago, I've read about you in the papers. Am I right?"

  They shook hands heartily, and Saxon was introduced. She felt

  very small beside the two young giants, and very proud,

  withal, that she belonged to the race that gave them birth. She

  could only listen to them talk.

  "I'd like to put on the gloves with you every day for half an

  hour," Hazard said. "You could teach me a lot. Are you going to

  stay around here?"

  "No. We're goin' on down the coast, lookin' for land. Just the

  same, I could teach you a few, and there's one thing you could

  teach me--surf swimmin'."

  "I'll swap lessons with you any time," Hazard offered. He turned

  to Saxon. "Why don't you stop in Carmel for a while? It isn't so

  bad."

  "It's beautiful," she acknowledged, with a grateful smile,

  "but--" She turned and pointed to their packs on the edge of the

  lupine. "We're on the tramp, and lookin' for government land."

  "If you're looking down past the Sur for it, it will keep," he

  laughed. "Well, I've got to run along and get some clothes on. If

  you come back this way, look me up. Anybody will tell you where I

  live. So long."

  And, as he had first arrived, he departed, crossing the sandhills

  on the run.

  Billy followed him with admiring eyes.

  "Some boy, some boy," he murmured. "Why, Saxon, he's famous. If

  I've seen his face in the papers once, I've seen it a thousand

  times. An' he ain't a bit stuck on himself. Just man to man.

  Say!--I'm beginnin' to have faith in the old stock again."

  They turned their backs on the beach and in the tiny main street

  bought meat, vegetables, and half a dozen eggs. Billy had to drag

  Saxon away from the window of a fascinating shop where were

  iridescent pearls of abalone, set and unset.

  "Abalones grow here, all along the coast," Billy assured her;

  "an' I'll get you all you want. Low tide's the time."

  "My father had a set of cuff-buttons made of abalone shell," she

  said. "They were set in pure, soft gold. I haven't thought about

  them for years, and I wonder who has them now."

  They turned south. Everywhere from among the pines peeped the

  quaint pretty houses of the artist folk, and they were not

  prepared, where the road dipped to Carmel River, for the building

  that met their eyes.

  "I know what it is," Saxon almost whispered. "It's an old Spanish

  Mission. It's the Carmel Mission, of course. That's the way the

  Spaniards came up from Mexico, building missions as they came and

  converting the Indians"

  "Until we chased them out, Spaniards an' Indians, whole kit an'

  caboodle," Billy observed with calm satisfaction.

  "Just the same, it's wonderful," Saxon mused, gazing at the big,

  half-ruined adobe structure. "There is the Mission Dolores, in

  San Francisco, but it's smaller than this and not as old."

  Hidden from the sea by low hillocks, forsaken by human being and

  human habitation, the church of sun-baked clay and straw and

  chalk-rock stood hushed and breathless in the midst of the adobe

  ruins which once had housed its worshiping thousands. The spirit

  of the place descended upon Saxon and Billy, and they walked

  softly, speaking in whispers, almost afraid to go in through the

  open ports. There was neither priest nor worshiper, yet they

  found all the evidences of use, by a congregation which Billy

  judged must be small from the number of the benches. Inter they

  climbed the earthquake-racked belfry, noting the hand-hewn

  timbers; and in the gallery, discovering the pure quality of

  their voices, Saxon, trembling at her own temerity, softly sang

  the opening bars of "Jesus Lover of My Soul." Delighted with the

  result, she leaned over the railing, gradually increasing her

  voice to its full strength as she sang:

  "Jesus, Lover of my soul,

  Let me to Thy bosom fly,

  While the nearer waters roll,