On every hand was activity. Women and children were in the fields as well as men. The land was turned endlessly over and over. They seemed never to let it rest. And it rewarded them. It must reward them, or their children would not be able to go to school, nor would so many of them be able to drive by in rattletrap, buggies or in light .
“Look at their faces,” Saxon said. “They are happy and . They haven't faces like the people in our neighborhood after the strikes began.”
“Oh, sure, they got a good thing,” Billy agreed. “You can see it stickin' out all over them. But they needn't get chesty with ME, I can tell you that much—just because they've jiggerooed us out of our land an' everything.”
“But they're not showing any signs of chestiness,” Saxon .
“No, they're not, come to think of it. All the same, they ain't so wise. I bet I could tell 'em a few about horses.”
It was sunset when they entered the little town of Niles. Billy, who had been silent for the last half mile, hesitantly ventured a suggestion.
“Say... I could put up for a room in the hotel just as well as not. What d 'ye think?”
But Saxon shook her head emphatically.
“How long do you think our twenty dollars will last at that rate? Besides, the only way to begin is to begin at the beginning. We didn't plan sleeping in hotels.”
“All right,” he gave in. “I'm game. I was just thinkin' about you.”
“Then you'd better think I'm game, too,” she flashed forgivingly. “And now we'll have to see about getting things for supper.”
They bought a round steak, potatoes, onions, and a dozen eating apples, then went out from the town to the fringe of trees and brush that advertised a . Beside the trees, on a sand bank, they pitched camp. Plenty of dry wood lay about, and Billy whistled while he gathered and chopped. Saxon, keen to follow his every mood, was cheered by the atrocious on his lips. She smiled to herself as she spread the blankets, with the , for a table, having first removed all from the sand. She had much to learn in the matter of cooking over a camp-fire, and made fair progress, discovering, first of all, that control of the fire meant far more than the size of it. When the coffee was boiled, she settled the grounds with a part-cup of cold water and placed the pot on the edge of the coals where it would keep hot and yet not boil. She fried potato dollars and onions in the same pan, but separately, and set them on top of the coffee pot in the tin plate she was to eat from, covering it with Billy's plate. On the dry hot 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 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 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 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 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 . “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 , 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 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 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 ' 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 , 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 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 Joaquin 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 of 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 , the tules was full of . 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 of will could she overcome the strangeness of it. In addition, she was from the long , 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 slightly, but vain was the attempt to escape from the dull, aching contact of the sand.
An , , whirring noise of some nearby cricket gave Saxon another startle. She endured the sound for some minutes, until Billy broke .
“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
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