by Jack London
she saw, head-shawled or bareheaded, squat, ungainly and swarthy,
who carried great loads of driftwood on their heads up from the
beach. Then she laughed at her foolishness, remembered Billy and
the four-roomed cottage on Pine Street, and went to bed with her
mind filled for the hundredth time with the details of the
furniture.
CHAPTER XIII
"Our cattle were all played out," Saxon was saying, "and winter
was so near that we couldn't dare try to cross the Great American
Desert, so our train stopped in Salt Lake City that winter. The
Mormons hadn't got bad yet, and they were good to us."
"You talk as though you were there," Bert commented.
"My mother was," Saxon answered proudly. "She was nine years old
that winter."
They were seated around the table in the kitchen of the little
Pine Street cottage, making a cold lunch of sandwiches, tamales,
and bottled beer. It being Sunday, the four were free from work,
and they had come early, to work harder than on any week day,
washing walls and windows, scrubbing floors, laying carpets and
linoleum, hanging curtains, setting up the stove, putting the
kitchen utensils and dishes away, and placing the furniture.
"Go on with the story, Saxon," Mary begged. "I'm just dyin' to
hear. And Bert, you just shut up and listen."
"Well, that winter was when Del Hancock showed up. He was
Kentucky born, but he'd been in the West for years. He was a
scout, like Kit Carson, and he knew him well. Many's a time Kit
Carson and he slept under the same blankets. They were together
to California and Oregon with General Fremont. Well, Del Hancock
was passing on his way through Salt Lake, going I don't know
where to raise a company of Rocky Mountain trappers to go after
beaver some new place he knew about. Ha was a handsome man. He
wore his hair long like in pictures, and had a silk sash around
his waist he'd learned to wear in California from the Spanish,
and two revolvers in his belt. Any woman 'd fall in love with him
first sight. Well, he saw Sadie, who was my mother's oldest
sister, and I guess she looked good to him, for he stopped right
there in Salt Lake and didn't go a step. He was a great Indian
fighter, too, and I heard my Aunt Villa say, when I was a little
girl, that he had the blackest, brightest eyes, and that the way
he looked was like an eagle. He'd fought duels, too, the way they
did in those days, and he wasn't afraid of anything.
"Sadie was a beauty, and she flirted with him and drove him
crazy. Maybe she wasn't sure of her own mind, I don't know. But I
do know that she didn't give in as easy as I did to Billy.
Finally, he couldn't stand it any more. Ha rode up that night on
horseback, wild as could be. 'Sadie,' he said, 'if you don't
promise to marry me to-morrow, I'll shoot myself to-night right
back of the corral.' And he'd have done it, too, and Sadie knew
it, and said she would. Didn't they make love fast in those
days?"
"Oh, I don't know," Mary sniffed. "A week after you first laid
eyes on Billy you was engaged. Did Billy say he was going to
shoot himself back of the laundry if you turned him down?"
"I didn't give him a chance," Saxon confessed. "Anyway Del
Hancock and Aunt Sadie got married next day. And they were very
happy afterward, only she died. And after that he was killed,
with General Custer and all the rest, by the Indians. He was an
old man by then, but I guess he got his share of Indians before
they got him. Men like him always died fighting, and they took
their dead with them. I used to know Al Stanley when I was a
little girl. He was a gambler, but he was game. A railroad man
shot him in the back when he was sitting at a table. That shot
killed him, too. He died in about two seconds. But before he died
he'd pulled his gun and put three bullets into the man that
killed him."
"I don't like fightin'," Mary protested. "It makes me nervous.
Bert gives me the willies the way he's always lookin' for
trouble. There ain't no sense in it."
"And I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for a man without
fighting spirit," Saxon answered. "Why, we wouldn't be here
to-day if it wasn't for the fighting spirit of our people before
us."
"You've got the real goods of a fighter in Billy," Bert assured
her; "a yard long and a yard wide and genuine A Number One,
long-fleeced wool. Billy's a Mohegan with a scalp-lock, that's
what he is. And when he gets his mad up it's a case of get out
from under or something will fall on you--hard."
"Just like that," Mary added.
Billy, who had taken no part in the conversation, got up, glanced
into the bedroom off the kitchen, went into the parlor and the
bedroom off the parlor, then returned and stood gazing with
puzzled brows into the kitchen bedroom.
"What's eatin' you, old man," Bert queried. "You look as though
you'd lost something or was markin' a three-way ticket. What you
got on your chest? Cough it up."
"Why, I'm just thinkin' where in Sam Hill's the bed an' stuff for
the back bedroom."
"There isn't any," Saxon explained. "We didn't order any."
"Then I'll see about it to-morrow."
"What d'ye want another bed for?" asked Bert. "Ain't one bed
enough for the two of you?"
"You shut up, Bert!" Mary cried. "Don't get raw."
"Whoa, Mary!" Bert grinned. "Back up. You're in the wrong stall
as usual."
"We don't need that room," Saxon was saying to Billy. "And so I
didn't plan any furniture. That money went to buy better carpets
and a better stove."
Billy came over to her, lifted her from the chair, and seated
himself with her on his knees.
"That's right, little girl. I'm glad you did. The best for us
every time. And to-morrow night I want you to run up with me to
Salinger's an' pick out a good bedroom set an' carpet for that
room. And it must be good. Nothin' snide."
"It will cost fifty dollars," she objected.
"That's right," he nodded. "Make it cost fifty dollars and not a
cent less. We're goin' to have the best. And what's the good of
an empty room? It'd make the house look cheap. Why, I go around
now, seein' this little nest just as it grows an' softens, day by
day, from the day we paid the cash money down an' nailed the
keys. Why, almost every moment I'm drivin' the horses, all day
long, I just keep on seein' this nest. And when we're married,
I'll go on seein' it. And I want to see it complete. If that
room'd he bare-floored an' empty, I'd see nothin' but it and its
bare floor all day long. I'd be cheated. The house'd be a lie.
Look at them curtains you put up in it, Saxon. That's to make
believe to the neighbors that it's furnished. Saxon, them
curtains are lyin' about that room, makin' a noise for every one
to hear that that room's furnished. Nitsky for us. I'm goin' to
see that them curtains tell the truth."
"You might rent it," Bert suggested.
"You're close to the
railroad yards, and it's only two blocks to a restaurant."
"Not on your life. I ain't marryin' Saxon to take in lodgers. If
I can't take care of her, d'ye know what I'll do? Go down to
Long Wharf, say 'Here goes nothin',' an' jump into the bay with a
stone tied to my neck. Ain't I right, Saxon?"
It was contrary to her prudent judgment, but it fanned her pride.
She threw her arms around her lover's neck, and said, ere she
kissed him:
"You're the boss, Billy. What you say goes, and always will go."
"Listen to that!" Bert gibed to Mary. "That's the stuff. Saxon's
onto her job."
"I guess we'll talk things over together first before ever I do
anything," Billy was saying to Saxon.
"Listen to that," Mary triumphed. "You bet the man that marries
me'll have to talk things over first."
"Billy's only givin' her hot air," Bert plagued. "They all do it
before they're married."
Mary sniffed contemptuously.
"I'll bet Saxon leads him around by the nose. And I'm goin' to
say, loud an' strong, that I'll lead the man around by the nose
that marries me."
"Not if you love him," Saxon interposed.
"All the more reason," Mary pursued.
Bert assumed an expression and attitude of mournful dejection.
"Now you see why me an' Mary don't get married," he said. "I'm
some big Indian myself, an' I'll be everlastingly jiggerooed if I
put up for a wigwam I can't be boss of."
"And I'm no squaw," Mary retaliated, "an' I wouldn't marry a big
buck Indian if all the rest of the men in the world was dead."
"Well this big buck Indian ain't asked you yet."
"He knows what he'd get if he did."
"And after that maybe he'll think twice before he does ask you."
Saxon, intent on diverting the conversation into pleasanter
channels, clapped her hands as if with sudden recollection.
"Oh! I forgot! I want to show you something." From her purse she
drew a slender ring of plain gold and passed it around. "My
mother's wedding ring. I've worn it around my neck always, like a
locket. I cried for it so in the orphan asylum that the matron
gave it back for me to wear. And now, just to think, after next
Tuesday I'll be wearing it on my finger. Look, Billy, see the
engraving on the inside."
"C to D, 1879," he read.
"Carlton to Daisy--Carlton was my father's first name. And now,
Billy, you've got to get it engraved for you and me."
Mary was all eagerness and delight.
"Oh, it's fine," she cried. "W to S, 1907."
Billy considered a moment.
"No, that wouldn't be right, because I'm not giving it to Saxon."
"I'll tell you what," Saxon said. "W and S."
"Nope." Billy shook his head. "S and W, because you come first
with me."
"If I come first with you, you come first with us. Billy, dear, I
insist on W and S."
"You see," Mary said to Bert. "Having her own way and leading him
by the nose already."
Saxon acknowledged the sting.
"Anyway you want, Billy," she surrendered. His arms tightened
about her.
"We'll talk it over first, I guess."
CHAPTER XIV
Sarah was conservative. Worse, she had crystallized at the end of
her love-time with the coming of her first child. After that she
was as set in her ways as plaster in a mold. Her mold was the
prejudices and notions of her girlhood and the house she lived
in. So habitual was she that any change in the customary round
assumed the proportions of a revolution. Tom had gone through
many of these revolutions, three of them when he moved house.
Then his stamina broke, and he never moved house again.
So it was that Saxon had held back the announcement of her
approaching marriage until it was unavoidable. She expected a
scene, and she got it.
"A prizefighter, a hoodlum, a plug-ugly," Sarah sneered, after
she had exhausted herself of all calamitous forecasts of her own
future and the future of her children in the absence of Saxon's
weekly four dollars and a half. "I don't know what your mother'd
thought if she lived to see the day when you took up with a tough
like Bill Roberts. Bill! Why, your mother was too refined to
associate with a man that was called Bill. And all I can say is
you can say good-bye to silk stockings and your three pair of
shoes. It won't be long before you'll think yourself lucky to go
sloppin' around in Congress gaiters and cotton stockin's two pair
for a quarter."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of Billy not being able to keep me in all
kinds of shoes," Saxon retorted with a proud toss of her head.
"You don't know what you're talkin' about." Sarah paused to laugh
in mirthless discordance. "Watch for the babies to come. They
come faster than wages raise these days."
"But we're not going to have any babies . . . that is, at first.
Not until after the furniture is all paid for anyway."
"Wise in your generation, eh? In my days girls were more modest
than to know anything about disgraceful subjects."
"As babies?" Saxon queried, with a touch of gentle malice.
"Yes, as babies."
"The first I knew that babies were disgraceful. Why, Sarah, you,
with your five, how disgraceful you have been. Billy and I have
decided not to be half as disgraceful. We're only going to have
two--a boy and a girl."
Tom chuckled, but held the peace by hiding his face in his coffee
cup. Sarah, though checked by this flank attack, was herself an
old hand in the art. So temporary was the setback that she
scarcely paused ere hurling her assault from a new angle.
"An' marryin' so quick, all of a sudden, eh? If that ain't
suspicious, nothin' is. I don't know what young women's comin'
to. They ain't decent, I tell you. They ain't decent. That's what
comes of Sunday dancin' an' all the rest. Young women nowadays
are like a lot of animals. Such fast an' looseness I never saw. . . ."
Saxon was white with anger, but while Sarah wandered on in her
diatribe, Tom managed to wink privily and prodigiously at his
sister and to implore her to help in keeping the peace.
"It's all right, kid sister," he comforted Saxon when they were
alone. "There's no use talkin' to Sarah. Bill Roberts is a good
boy. I know a lot about him. It does you proud to get him for a
husband. You're bound to be happy with him . . ." His voice sank,
and his face seemed suddenly to be very old and tired as he went
on anxiously. "Take warning from Sarah. Don't nag. Whatever you
do, don't nag. Don't give him a perpetual-motion line of chin.
Kind of let him talk once in a while. Men have some horse sense,
though Sarah don't know it. Why, Sarah actually loves me, though
she don't make a noise like it. The thing for you is to love your
husband, and, by thunder, to make a noise of lovin' him, too. And
then you can kid him into doing 'most anything you want. Let him
have his way once in a while, and he'll let you have yourn. But
y
ou just go on lovin' him, and leanin' on his judgement--he's no
fool--and you'll be all hunky-dory. I'm scared from goin' wrong,
what of Sarah. But I'd sooner be loved into not going wrong."
"Oh, I'll do it, Tom," Saxon nodded, smiling through the tears
his sympathy had brought into her eyes. "And on top of it I'm
going to do something else, I'm going to make Billy love me and
just keep on loving me. And then I won't have to kid him into
doing some of the things I want. He'll do them because he loves
me, you see."
"You got the right idea, Saxon. Stick with it, an' you'll win
out."
Later, when she had put on her hat to start for the laundry, she
found Tom waiting for her at the corner.
"An', Saxon," he said, hastily and haltingly, "you won't take
anything I've said . . . you know . . . --about Sarah . . . as bein'
in any way disloyal to her? She's a good woman, an' faithful. An'
her life ain't so easy by a long shot. I'd bite out my tongue
before I'd say anything against her. I guess all folks have their
troubles. It's hell to be poor, ain't it?"
"You've been awful good to me, Tom. I can never forget it. And I
know Sarah means right. She does do her best."
"I won't be able to give you a wedding present," her brother
ventured apologetically. "Sarah won't hear of it. Says we didn't
get none from my folks when we got married. But I got something
for you just the same. A surprise. You'd never guess it."
Saxon waited.
"When you told me you was goin' to get married, I just happened
to think of it, an' I wrote to brother George, askin' him for it
for you. An' by thunder he sent it by express. I didn't tell you
because I didn't know but maybe he'd sold it. He did sell the
silver spurs. He needed the money, I guess. But the other, I had
it sent to the shop so as not to bother Sarah, an' I sneaked it
in last night an' hid it in the woodshed."
"Oh, it is something of my father's! What is it? Oh, what is it?"
"His army sword."
"The one he wore on his roan war horse! Oh, Tom, you couldn't
give me a better present. Let's go back now. I want to see it. We
can slip in the back way. Sarah's washing in the kitchen, and she
won't begin hanging out for an hour."
"I spoke to Sarah about lettin' you take the old chest of drawers
that was your mother's," Tom whispered, as they stole along the
narrow alley between the houses. "Only she got on her high horse.
Said that Daisy was as much my mother as yourn, even if we did
have different fathers, and that the chest had always belonged in
Daisy's family and not Captain Kit's, an' that it was mine, an'
what was mine she had some say-so about."
"It's all right," Saxon reassured him. "She sold it to me last
night. She was waiting up for me when I got home with fire in her
eye."
"Yep, she was on the warpath all day after I mentioned it. How
much did you give her for it?"
"Six dollars."
"Robbery--it ain't worth it," Tom groaned. "It's all cracked at
one end and as old as the hills."
"I'd have given ten dollars for it. I'd have given 'most anything
for it, Tom. It was mother's, you know. I remember it in her room
when she was still alive."
In the woodshed Tom resurrected the hidden treasure and took off
the wrapping paper. Appeared a rusty, steel-scabbarded saber of
the heavy type carried by cavalry officers in Civil War days. It
was attached to a moth-eaten sash of thick-woven crimson silk
from which hung heavy silk tassels. Saxon almost seized it from
her brother in her eagerness. She drew forth the blade and
pressed her lips to the steel.
It was her last day at the laundry. She was to quit work that
evening for good. And the next afternoon, at five, she and Billy