impervious.
"Go on, do it some more," he urged, when she had given up,
breathing heavily. "It feels fine, like you was ticklin' me with
a feather."
"All right, Mister Man," she threatened balefully. "You can talk
about your grips and death touches and all the rest, but that's
all man's game. I know something that will beat them all, that
will make a strong man as helpless as a baby. Wait a minute till
I get it. There. Shut your eyes. Ready? I won't be a second."
He waited with closed eyes, and then, softly as rose petals
fluttering down, he felt her lips on his mouth.
"You win," he said in solemn ecstasy, and passed his arms around
her.
CHAPTER XIV
In the morning Billy went down town to pay for Hazel and Hattie.
It was due to Saxon's impatient desire to see them, that he
seemed to take a remarkably long time about so simple a
transaction. But she forgave him when he arrived with the two
horses hitched to the camping wagon.
"Had to borrow the harness," he said. "Pass Possum up and climb
in, an' I'll show you the Double H Outfit, which is some outfit,
I'm tellin' you."
Saxon's delight was unbounded and almost speechless as they drove
out into the country behind the dappled chestnuts with the
cream-colored tails and manes. The seat was upholstered,
high-backed, and comfortable; and Billy raved about the wonders
of the efficient brake. He trotted the team along the hard county
road to show the standard-going in them, and put them up a steep
earthroad, almost hub-deep with mud, to prove that the light
Belgian sire was not wanting in their make-up.
When Saxon at last lapsed into complete silence, he studied her
anxiously, with quick sidelong glances. She sighed and asked:
"When do you think we'll be able to start?"
"Maybe in two weeks . . . or, maybe in two or three months." He
sighed with solemn deliberation. "We're like the Irishman with
the trunk an' nothin' to put in it. Here's the wagon, here's the
horses, an' nothin' to pull. I know a peach of a shotgun I can
get, second-hand, eighteen dollars; but look at the bills we owe.
Then there's a new '22 Automatic rifle I want for you. An' a
30-30 I've had my eye on for deer. An' you want a good jointed
pole as well as me. An' tackle costs like Sam Hill. An' harness
like I want will cost fifty bucks cold. An' the wagon ought to be
painted. Then there's pasture ropes, an' nose-bags, an' a harness
punch, an' all such things. An' Hazel an' Hattie eatin' their
heads off all the time we're waitin'. An' I 'm just itchin' to be
started myself."
He stopped abruptly and confusedly.
"Now, Billy, what have you got up your sleeve?--I can see it in
your eyes," Saxon demanded and indicted in mixed metaphors.
"Well, Saxon, you see, it's like this. Sandow ain't satisfied.
He's madder 'n a hatter. Never got one punch at me. Never had a
chance to make a showin', an' he wants a return match. He's
blattin' around town that he can lick me with one hand tied
behind 'm, an' all that kind of hot air. Which ain't the point.
The point is, the fight-fans is wild to see a return-match. They
didn't get a run for their money last time. They'll fill the
house. The managers has seen me already. That was why I was so
long. They's three hundred more waitin' on the tree for me to
pick two weeks from last night if you'll say the word. It's just
the same as I told you before. He's my meat. He still thinks I 'm
a rube, an' that it was a fluke punch."
"But, Billy, you told me long ago that fighting took the silk out
of you. That was why you'd quit it and stayed by teaming."
"Not this kind of fightin'," he answered. "I got this one all
doped out. I'll let 'm last till about the seventh. Not that
it'll be necessary, but just to give the audience a run for its
money. Of course, I'll get a lump or two, an' lose some skin.
Then I'll time 'm to that glass jaw of his an' drop 'm for the
count. An' we'll be all packed up, an' next mornin' we'll pull
out. What d'ye say? Aw, come on."
Saturday night, two weeks later, Saxon ran to the door when the
gate clicked. Billy looked tired. His hair was wet, his nose
swollen, one cheek was puffed, there was skin missing from his
ears, and both eyes were slightly bloodshot.
"I 'm darned if that boy didn't fool me," he said, as he placed
the roll of gold pieces in her hand and sat down with her on his
knees. "He's some boy when he gets extended. Instead of stoppin'
'm at the seventh, he kept me hustlin' till the fourteenth. Then
I got 'm the way I said. It's too bad he's got a glass jaw. He's
quicker'n I thought, an' he's got a wallop that made me mighty
respectful from the second round--an' the prettiest little chop
an' come-again I ever saw. But that glass jaw! He kept it in
cotton wool till the fourteenth an' then I connected.
"--An', say. I 'm mighty glad it did last fourteen rounds. I
still got all my silk. I could see that easy. I wasn't breathin'
much, an' every round was fast. An' my legs was like iron. I
could a-fought forty rounds. You see, I never said nothin', but
I've been suspicious all the time after that beatin' the Chicago
Terror gave me."
"Nonsense!--you would have known it long before now," Saxon
cried. "Look at all your boxing, and wrestling, and running at
Carmel."
"Nope." Billy shook his head with the conviction of utter
knowledge. "That's different. It don't take it outa you. You
gotta be up against the real thing, fightin' for life, round
after round, with a husky you know ain't lost a thread of his
silk yet--then, if you don't blow up, if your legs is steady, an'
your heart ain't burstin', an' you ain't wobbly at all, an' no
signs of queer street in your head--why, then you know you still
got all your silk. An' I got it, I got all mine, d'ye hear me,
an' I ain't goin' to risk it on no more fights. That's straight.
Easy money's hardest in the end. From now on it's horsebuyin' on
commish, an' you an' me on the road till we find that valley of
the moon."
Next morning, early, they drove out of Ukiah. Possum sat on the
seat between them, his rosy mouth agape with excitement. They had
originally planned to cross over to the coast from Ukiah, but it
was too early in the season for the soft earth-roads to be in
shape after the winter rains; so they turned east, for Lake
County, their route to extend north through the upper Sacramento
Valley and across the mountains into Oregon. Then they would
circle west to the coast, where the roads by that time would be
in condition, and come down its length to the Golden Gate.
All the land was green and flower-sprinkled, and each tiny
valley, as they entered the hills, was a garden.
"Huh!" Billy remarked scornfully to the general landscape. "They
say a rollin' stone gathers no moss. Just the same this looks
like some outfit we've gathered. Never had so much actua
l
property in my life at one time--an' them was the days when I
wasn't rollin'. Hell--even the furniture wasn't ourn. Only the
clothes we stood up in, an' some old socks an' things."
Saxon reached out and touched his hand, and he knew that it was a
hand that loved his hand.
"I've only one regret," she said. "You've earned it all yourself.
I've had nothing to do with it."
"Huh!--you've had everything to do with it. You're like my second
in a fight. You keep me happy an' in condition. A man can't fight
without a good second to take care of him. Hell, I wouldn't a-ben
here if it wasn't for you. You made me pull up stakes an' head
out. Why, if it hadn't been for you I'd a-drunk myself dead an'
rotten by this time, or had my neck stretched at San Quentin over
hittin' some scab too hard or something or other. An' look at me
now. Look at that roll of greenbacks"--he tapped his breast--"to
buy the Boss some horses. Why, we're takin' an unendin' vacation,
an' makin' a good livin' at the same time. An' one more trade I
got--horse-buyin' for Oakland. If I show I've got the savve, an'
I have, all the Frisco firms'll be after me to buy for them. An'
it's all your fault. You're my Tonic Kid all right, all right,
an' if Possum wasn't lookin', I'd--well, who cares if he does
look?"
And Billy leaned toward her sidewise and kissed her.
The way grew hard and rocky as they began to climb, but the
divide was an easy one, and they soon dropped down the canyon of
the Blue Lakes among lush fields of golden poppies. In the bottom
of the canyon lay a wandering sheet of water of intensest blue.
Ahead, the folds of hills interlaced the distance, with a remote
blue mountain rising in the center of the picture.
They asked questions of a handsome, black-eyed man with curly
gray hair, who talked to them in a German accent, while a
cheery-faced woman smiled down at them out of a trellised high
window of the Swiss cottage perched on the bank. Billy watered
the horses at a pretty hotel farther on, where the proprietor
came out and talked and told him he had built it himself,
according to the plans of the black-eyed man with the curly gray
hair, who was a San Francisco architect.
"Goin' up, goin' up," Billy chortled, as they drove on through
the winding hills past another lake of intensest blue. "D'ye
notice the difference in our treatment already between ridin' an'
walkin' with packs on our backs? With Hazel an' Hattie an' Saxon
an' Possum, an' yours truly, an' this high-toned wagon, folks
most likely take us for millionaires out on a lark."
The way widened. Broad, oak-studded pastures with grazing
livestock lay on either hand. Then Clear Lake opened before them
like an inland sea, flecked with little squalls and flaws of wind
from the high mountains on the northern slopes of which still
glistened white snow patches.
"I've heard Mrs. Hazard rave about Lake Geneva," Saxon recalled;
"but I wonder if it is more beautiful than this."
"That architect fellow called this the California Alps, you
remember," Billy confirmed. "An' if I don't mistake, that's
Lakeport showin' up ahead. An' all wild country, an' no
railroads."
"And no moon valleys here," Saxon criticized. "But it is
beautiful, oh, so beautiful."
"Hotter'n hell in the dead of summer, I'll bet," was Billy's
opinion. "Nope, the country we're lookin' for lies nearer the
coast. Just the same it is beautiful . . . like a picture on the
wall. What d'ye say we stop off an' go for a swim this
afternoon?"
Ten days later they drove into Williams, in Colusa County, and
for the first time again encountered a railroad. Billy was
looking for it, for the reason that at the rear of the wagon
walked two magnificent work-horses which he had picked up for
shipment to Oakland.
"Too hot," was Saxon's verdict, as she gazed across the
shimmering level of the vast Sacramento Valley. "No redwoods. No
hills. No forests. No manzanita. No madronos. Lonely, and sad--"
"An' like the river islands," Billy interpolated. "Richer in
hell, but looks too much like hard work. It'll do for those
that's stuck on hard work--God knows, they's nothin' here to
induce a fellow to knock off ever for a bit of play. No fishin',
no huntin', nothin' but work. I'd work myself, if I had to live
here."
North they drove, through days of heat and dust, across the
California plains, and everywhere was manifest the "new"
farming--great irrigation ditches, dug and being dug, the land
threaded by power-lines from the mountains, and many new
farmhouses on small holdings newly fenced. The bonanza farms were
being broken up. However, many of the great estates remained,
five to ten thousand acres in extent, running from the Sacramento
bank to the horizon dancing in the heat waves, and studded with
great valley oaks.
"It takes rich soil to make trees like those," a ten-acre farmer
told them.
They had driven off the road a hundred feet to his tiny barn in
order to water Hazel and Hattie. A sturdy young orchard covered
most of his ten acres, though a goodly portion was devoted to
whitewashed henhouses and wired runways wherein hundreds of
chickens were to be seen. He had just begun work on a small frame
dwelling.
"I took a vacation when I bought," he explained, "and planted the
trees. Then I went back to work an' stayed with it till the place
was cleared. Now I 'm here for keeps, an' soon as the house is
finished I'll send for the wife. She's not very well, and it will
do her good. We've been planning and working for years to get
away from the city." He stopped in order to give a happy sigh.
"And now we're free."
The water in the trough was warm from the sun.
"Hold on," the man said. "Don't let them drink that. I'll give it
to them cool."
Stepping into a small shed, he turned an electric switch, and a
motor the size of a fruit box hummed into action. A five-inch
stream of sparkling water splashed into the shallow main ditch of
his irrigation system and flowed away across the orchard through
many laterals.
"Isn' tit beautiful, eh?--beautiful! beautiful!" the man chanted
in an ecstasy. "It's bud and fruit. It's blood and life. Look at
it! It makes a gold mine laughable, and a saloon a nightmare. I
know. I . . . I used to be a barkeeper. In fact, I've been a
barkeeper most of my life. That's how I paid for this place. And
I've hated the business all the time. I was a farm boy, and all
my life I've been wanting to get back to it. And here I am at
last."
He wiped his glasses the better to behold his beloved water, then
seized a hoe and strode down the main ditch to open more
laterals.
"He's the funniest barkeeper I ever seen," Billy commented. "I
took him for a business man of some sort. Must a-ben in some kind
of a quiet ho
tel."
"Don't drive on right away," Saxon requested. "I want to talk
with him."
He came back, polishing his glasses, his face beaming, watching
the water as if fascinated by it. It required no more exertion on
Saxon's part to start him than had been required on his part to
start the motor.
"The pioneers settled all this in the early fifties," he said.
"The Mexicans never got this far, so it was government land.
Everybody got a hundred and sixty acres. And such acres! The
stories they tell about how much wheat they got to the acre are
almost unbelievable. Then several things happened. The sharpest
and steadiest of the pioneers held what they had and added to it
from the other fellows. It takes a great many quarter sections to
make a bonanza farm. It wasn't long before it was 'most all
bonanza farms."
"They were the successful gamblers," Saxon put in, remembering
Mark Hall's words.
The man nodded appreciatively and continued.
"The old folks schemed and gathered and added the land into the
big holdings, and built the great barns and mansions, and planted
the house orchards and flower gardens. The young folks were
spoiled by so much wealth and went away to the cities to spend
it. And old folks and young united in one thing: in impoverishing
the soil. Year after year they scratched it and took out bonanza
crops. They put nothing back. All they left was plow-sole and
exhausted land. Why, there's big sections they exhausted and left
almost desert.
"The bonanza farmers are all gone now, thank the Lord, and here's
where we small farmers come into our own. It won't be many years
before the whole valley will be farmed in patches like mine. Look
at what we're doing! Worked-out land that had ceased to grow
wheat, and we turn the water on, treat the soil decently, and see
our orchards!
"We've got the water--from the mountains, and from under the
ground. I was reading an account the other day. All life depends
on food. All food depends on water. It takes a thousand pounds of
water to produce one pound of food; ten thousand pounds to
produce one pound of meat. How much water do you drink in a year?
About a ton. But you eat about two hundred pounds of vegetables
and two hundred pounds of meat a year--which means you consume
one hundred tons of water in the vegetables and one thousand tons
in the meat--which means that it takes eleven hundred and one
tons of water each year to keep a small woman like you going."
"Gee!" was all Billy could say.
"You see how population depends upon water," the ax-barkeeper
went on. "Well, we've got the water, immense subterranean
supplies, and in not many years this valley will be populated as
thick as Belgium."
Fascinated by the five-inch stream, sluiced out of the earth and
back to the earth by the droning motor, he forgot his discourse
and stood and gazed, rapt and unheeding, while his visitors drove
on.
"An' him a drink-slinger!" Billy marveled. "He can sure sling the
temperance dope if anybody should ask you."
"It's lovely to think about--all that water, and all the happy
people that will come here to live--"
"But it ain't the valley of the moon!" Billy laughed.
"No," she responded. "They don't have to irrigate in the valley
of the moon, unless for alfalfa and such crops. What we want is
the water bubbling naturally from the ground, and crossing the
farm in little brooks, and on the boundary a fine big creek--"
"With trout in it!" Billy took her up. "An' willows and trees of
all kinds growing along the edges, and here a riffle where you
can flip out trout, and there a deep pool where you can swim and
high-dive. An' kingfishers, an' rabbits comin' down to drink,
an', maybe, a deer."
"And meadowlarks in the pasture," Saxon added. "And mourning
doves in the trees. We must have mourning doves--and the big,
gray tree-squirrels."