night, after supper, he and Saxon posted their books. Afterward,
in the big morris chair he had insisted on buying early in the
days of his brickyard contract, Saxon would creep into his arms
and strum on the ukelele; or they would talk long about what they
were doing and planning to do. Now it would be:
"I'm mixin' up in politics, Saxon. It pays. You bet it pays. If
by next spring I ain't got a half a dozen teams workin' on the
roads an' pullin' down the county money, it's me back to Oakland
an' askin' the Boss for a job."
Or, Saxon: "They're really starting that new hotel between
Caliente and Eldridge. And there's some talk of a big sanitarium
back in the hills."
Or, it would be: "Billy, now that you've piped that acre, you've
just got to let me have it for my vegetables. I'll rent it from
you. I'll take your own estimate for all the alfalfa you can
raise on it, and pay you full market price less the cost of
growing it."
"It's all right, take it." Billy suppressed a sigh. "Besides, I
'm too busy to fool with it now."
Which prevarication was bare-faced, by virtue of his having just
installed the ram and piped the land.
"It will be the wisest, Billy," she soothed, for she knew his
dream of land-spaciousness was stronger than ever. "You don't
want to fool with an acre. There's that hundred and forty. We'll
buy it yet if old Chavon ever dies. Besides, it really belongs to
Madrono Ranch. The two together were the original quarter
section."
"I don't wish no man's death," Billy grumbled. "But he ain't
gettin' no good out of it, over-pasturin' it with a lot of scrub
animals. I've sized it up every inch of it. They's at least forty
acres in the three cleared fields, with water in the hills behind
to beat the band. The horse feed I could raise on it'd take your
breath away. Then they's at least fifty acres I could run my
brood mares on, pasture mixed up with trees and steep places and
such. The other fifty's just thick woods, an' pretty places, an'
wild game. An' that old adobe barn's all right. With a new roof
it'd shelter any amount of animals in bad weather. Cook at me
now, rentin' that measly pasture back of Ping's just to run my
restin' animals. They could run in the hundred an' forty if I
only had it. I wonder if Chavon would lease it."
Or, less ambitious, Billy would say: "I gotta skin over to
Petaluma to-morrow, Saxon. They's an auction on the Atkinson
Ranch an' maybe I can pick up some bargains."
"More horses!"
"Ain't I got two teams haulin' lumber for the new winery? An'
Barney's got a bad shoulder-sprain. He'll have to lay off a long
time if he's to get it in shape. An' Bridget ain't ever goin' to
do a tap of work again. I can see that stickin' out. I've
doctored her an' doctored her. She's fooled the vet, too. An'
some of the other horses has gotta take a rest. That span of
grays is showin' the hard work. An' the big roan's goin' loco.
Everybody thought it was his teeth, but it ain't. It's straight
loco. It's money in pocket to take care of your animals, an'
horses is the delicatest things on four legs. Some time, if I can
ever see my way to it, I 'm goin' to ship a carload of mules from
Colusa County--big, heavy ones, you know. They'd sell like hot
cakes in the valley here--them I didn't want for myself."
Or, in lighter vein, Billy: "By the way, Saxon, talkin' of
accounts, what d'you think Hazel an' Hattie is worth?--fair
market price,"
"Why?"
"I 'm askin' you."
"Well, say, what you paid for them--three hundred dollars."
"Hum." Billy considered deeply. "They're worth a whole lot more,
but let it go at that. An' now, gettin' back to accounts, suppose
you write me a check for three hundred dollars."
"Oh! Robber!"
"You can't show me. Why, Saxon, when I let you have grain an' hay
from my carloads, don't you give me a check for it? An' you know
how you're stuck on keepin' your accounts down to the penny," he
teased. "If you're any kind of a business woman you just gotta
charge your business with them two horses. I ain't had the use of
'em since I don't know when."
"But the colts will be yours," she argued. "Besides, I can't
afford brood mares in my business. In almost no time, now, Hazel
and Hattie will have to be taken off from the wagon--they're too
good for it anyway. And you keep your eyes open for a pair to
take their place. I'll give you a check for THAT pair, but no
commission."
"All right," Billy conceded. "Hazel an' Hattie come back to me;
but you can pay me rent for the time you did use 'em."
"If you make me, I'll charge you board," she threatened.
"An' if you charge me board, I'll charge you interest for the
money I've stuck into this shebang."
"You can't," Saxon laughed. "It's community property."
He grunted spasmodically, as if the breath had been knocked out
of him.
"Straight on the solar plexus," he said, "an' me down for the
count. But say, them's sweet words, ain't they--community
property." He rolled them over and off his tongue with keen
relish. "An' when we got married the top of our ambition was a
steady job an' some rags an' sticks of furniture all paid up an'
half-worn out. We wouldn't have had any community property only
for you."
"What nonsense! What could I have done by myself? You know very
well that you earned all the money that started us here. You paid
the wages of Gow Yum and Chan Chi, and old Hughie, and Mrs. Paul,
and--why, you've done it all."
She drew her two hands caressingly across his shoulders and down
along his great biceps muscles.
"That's what did it, Billy."
"Aw hell! It's your head that done it. What was my muscles good
for with no head to run 'em,--sluggin' scabs, beatin' up lodgers,
an' crookin' the elbow over a bar. The only sensible thing my
head ever done was when it run me into you. Honest to God, Saxon,
you've been the makin' of me."
"Aw hell, Billy," she mimicked in the way that delighted him,
"where would I have been if you hadn't taken me out of the
laundry? I couldn't take myself out. I was just a helpless girl.
I'd have been there yet if it hadn't been for you. Mrs. Mortimer
had five thousand dollars; but I had you."
"A woman ain't got the chance to help herself that a man has," he
generalized. "I'll tell you what: It took the two of us. It's
been team-work. We've run in span. If we'd a-run single, you
might still be in the laundry; an', if I was lucky, I'd be still
drivin' team by the day an' sportin' around to cheap dances."
Saxon stood under the father of all madronos, watching Hazel and
Hattie go out the gate, the full vegetable wagon behind them,
when she saw Billy ride in, leading a sorrel mare from whose
silken coat the sun flashed golden lights.
"Four-year-old, high-life, a handful, but no vicious tricks,"
Billy
chanted, as he stopped beside Saxon. "Skin like tissue
paper, mouth like silk, but kill the toughest broncho ever
foaled--look at them lungs an' nostrils. They call her
Ramona--some Spanish name: sired by Morellita outa genuine Morgan
stock."
"And they will sell her?" Saxon gasped, standing with hands
clasped in inarticulate delight.
"That's what I brought her to show you for."
"But how much must they want for her?" was Saxon's next question,
so impossible did it seem that such an amazement of horse-flesh
could ever be hers.
"That ain't your business," Billy answered brusquely. "The
brickyard's payin' for her, not the vegetable ranch. She's yourn
at the word. What d'ye say?"
"I'll tell you in a minute."
Saxon was trying to mount, but the animal danced nervously away.
"Hold on till I tie," Billy said. "She ain't skirt-broke, that's
the trouble."
Saxon tightly gripped reins and mane, stepped with spurred foot
on Billy's hand, and was lifted lightly into the saddle.
"She's used to spurs," Billy called after. "Spanish broke, so
don't check her quick. Come in gentle. An' talk to her. She's
high-life, you know."
Saxon nodded, dashed out the gate and down the road, waved a hand
to Clara Hastings as she passed the gate of Trillium Covert, and
continued up Wild Water canyon.
When she came back, Ramona in a pleasant lather, Saxon rode to
the rear of the house, past the chicken houses and the
flourishing berry-rows, to join Billy on the rim of the bench,
where he sat on his horse in the shade, smoking a cigarette.
Together they looked down through an opening among the trees to
the meadow which was a meadow no longer. With mathematical
accuracy it was divided into squares, oblongs, and narrow strips,
which displayed sharply the thousand hues of green of a truck
garden. Gow Yum and Chan Chi, under enormous Chinese grass hats,
were planting green onions. Old Hughie, hoe in hand, plodded
along the main artery of running water, opening certain laterals,
closing others. From the work-shed beyond the barn the strokes of
a hammer told Saxon that Carlsen was wire-binding vegetable
boxes. Mrs. Paul's cheery soprano, lifted in a hymn, doated
through the trees, accompanied by the whirr of an egg-beater. A
sharp barking told where Possum still waged hysterical and
baffled war on the Douglass squirrels. Billy took a long draw
from his cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and continued to look down
at the meadow. Saxon divined trouble in his manner. His rein-hand
was on the pommel, and her free hand went out and softly rested
on his. Billy turned his slow gaze upon her mare's lather,
seeming not to note it, and continued on to Saxon's face.
"Huh!" he equivocated, as if waking up. "Them San Leandro
Porchugeeze ain't got nothin' on us when it comes to intensive
farmin'. Look at that water runnin'. You know, it seems so good
to me that sometimes I just wanta get down on hands an' knees an'
lap it all up myself."
"Oh, to have all the water you want in a climate like this!"
Saxon exclaimed.
"An' don't be scared of it ever goin' back on you. If the rains
fooled you, there's Sonoma Creek alongside. All we gotta do is
install a gasolene pump."
"But we'll never have to, Billy. I was talking with 'Redwood'
Thompson. He's lived in the valley since Fifty-three, and he says
there's never been a failure of crops on account of drought. We
always get our rain."
"Come on, let's go for a ride," he said abruptly. "You've got the
time."
"All right, if you'll tell me what's bothering you."
He looked at her quickly.
"Nothin'," he grunted. "Yes, there is, too. What's the
difference? You'd know it sooner or later. You ought to see old
Chavon. His face is that long he can't walk without bumpin' his
knee on his chin. His gold-mine's peterin' out."
"Gold mine!"
"His clay pit. It's the same thing. He's gettin' twenty cents a
yard for it from the brickyard."
"And that means the end of your teaming contract." Saxon saw the
disaster in all its hugeness. "What about the brickyard people?"
"Worried to death, though they've kept secret about it. They've
had men out punchin' holes all over the hills for a week, an'
that Jap chemist settin' up nights analyzin' the rubbish they've
brought in. It's peculiar stuff, that clay, for what they want it
for, an' you don't find it everywhere. Them experts that reported
on Chavon's pit made one hell of a mistake. Maybe they was lazy
with their borin's. Anyway, they slipped up on the amount of clay
they was in it. Now don't get to botherin'. It'd come out
somehow. You can't do nothin'."
"But I can," Saxon insisted. "We won't buy Ramona."
"You ain't got a thing to do with that," he answered. "I 'm
buyin' her, an' her price don't cut any figure alongside the big
game I 'm playin'. Of course, I can always sell my horses. But
that puts a stop to their makin' money, an' that brickyard
contract was fat."
"But if you get some of them in on the road work for the county?"
she suggested.
"Oh, I got that in mind. An' I 'm keepin' my eyes open. They's a
chance the quarry will start again, an' the fellow that did that
teamin' has gone to Puget Sound. An' what if I have to sell out
most of the horses? Here's you and the vegetable business. That's
solid. We just don't go ahead so fast for a time, that's all. I
ain't scared of the country any more. I sized things up as we
went along. They ain't a jerk burg we hit all the time on the
road that I couldn't jump into an' make a go. An' now where d'you
want to ride?"
CHAPTER XXII
They cantered out the gate, thundered across the bridge, and
passed Trillium Covert before they pulled in on the grade of Wild
Water Canyon. Saxon had chosen her field on the big spur of
Sonoma Mountains as the objective of their ride.
"Say, I bumped into something big this mornin' when I was goin'
to fetch Ramona," Billy said, the clay pit trouble banished for
the time. "You know the hundred an' forty. I passed young Chavon
along the road, an'--I don't know why--just for ducks, I guess--I
up an' asked 'm if he thought the old man would lease the hundred
an' forty to me. An' what d 'you think! He said the old man
didn't own it. Was just leasin' it himself. That's how we was
always seein' his cattle on it. It's a gouge into his land, for
he owns everything on three sides of it.
"Next I met Ping. He said Hilyard owned it an' was willin' to
sell, only Chavon didn't have the price. Then, comin' back, I
looked in on Payne. He's quit blacksmithin'--his back's hurtin'
'm from a kick--an' just startin' in for real estate. Sure, he
said, Hilyard would sell, an' had already listed the land with
'm. Chavon's over-pastured it, an' Hilyard won't give 'm another
lease."
When they had climbed o
ut of Wild Water Canyon they turned their
horses about and halted on the rim where they could look across
at the three densely wooded knolls in the midst of the desired
hundred and forty.
"We'll get it yet," Saxon said.
"Sure we will," Billy agreed with careless certitude. "I've ben
lookin' over the big adobe barn again. Just the thing for a raft
of horses, an' a new roof'll be cheaper 'n I thought. Though
neither Chavon or me'll be in the market to buy it right away,
with the clay pinchin' out."
When they reached Saxon's field, which they had learned was the
property of Redwood Thompson, they tied the horses and entered it
on foot. The hay, just cut, was being raked by Thompson, who
hallo'd a greeting to them. It was a cloudless, windless day, and
they sought refuge from the sun in the woods beyond. They
encountered a dim trail.
"It's a cow trail," Billy declared. "I bet they's a teeny pasture
tucked away somewhere in them trees. Let's follow it."
A quarter of an hour later, several hundred feet up the side of
the spur, they emerged on an open, grassy space of bare hillside.
Most of the hundred and forty, two miles away, lay beneath them,
while they were level with the tops of the three knolls. Billy
paused to gaze upon the much-desired land, and Saxon joined him.
"What is that?" she asked, pointing toward the knolls. "Up the
little canyon, to the left of it, there on the farthest knoll,
right under that spruce that's leaning over."
What Billy saw was a white scar on the canyon wall.
"It's one on me," he said, studying the scar. "I thought I knew
every inch of that land, but I never seen that before. Why, I was
right in there at the head of the canyon the first part of the
winter. It's awful wild. Walls of the canyon like the sides of a
steeple an' covered with thick woods."
"What is it?" she asked. "A slide?"
"Must be--brought down by the heavy rains. If I don't miss my
guess--" Billy broke off, forgetting in the intensity with which
he continued to look.
"Hilyard'll sell for thirty an acre," he began again,
disconnectedly. "Good land, bad land, an' all, just as it runs,
thirty an acre. That's forty-two hundred. Payne's new at real
estate, an' I'll make 'm split his commission an' get the easiest
terms ever. We can re-borrow that four hundred from Gow Yum, an'
I can borrow money on my horses an' wagons--"
"Are you going to buy it to-day?" Saxon teased.
She scarcely touched the edge of his thought. He looked at her,
as if he had heard, then forgot her the next moment.
"Head work," he mumbled. "Head work. If I don't put over a hot
one--"
He started back down the cow trail, recollected Saxon, and called
over his shoulder:
"Come on. Let's hustle. I wanta ride over an' look at that."
So rapidly did he go down the trail and across the field, that
Saxon had no time for questions. She was almost breathless from
her effort to keep up with him.
"What is it?" she begged, as he lifted her to the saddle.
"Maybe it's all a joke--I'll tell you about it afterward," he put
her off.
They galloped on the levels, trotted down the gentler slopes of
road, and not until on the steep descent of Wild Water canyon did
they rein to a walk. Billy's preoccupation was gone, and Saxon
took advantage to broach a subject which had been on her mind for
some time.
"Clara Hastings told me the other day that they're going to have
a house party. The Hazards are to be there, and the Halls, and
Roy Blanchard. . . ."
She looked at Billy anxiously. At the mention of Blanchard his
head had tossed up as to a bugle call. Slowly a whimsical twinkle
began to glint up through the cloudy blue of his eyes.
"It's a long time since you told any man he was standing on his
foot," she ventured slyly.