by Jack London
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 flickering 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 bugs
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 flirt 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 transparently feigned 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 severely. "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 spoke, 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 braced 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 ranch 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 raisin'
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 auction, 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 brag 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 Josquin
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 herds of
elk 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 Slough, the tules was full of
grizzliest 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 exertion of will could she
overcome the strangeness of it. In addition, she was stiffened
from the long trudge, 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 postures slightly, but vain was the attempt to
escape from the dull, aching contact of the sand.
An abrupt, metallic, whirring noise of some nearby cricket gave
Saxon another startle. She endured the sound for some minutes,
until Billy broke forth.
"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 fang, and when they stick it into you
the poison runs down the hollow."
"Br-r-r-r," Billy shivered, in fear that was not altogether
mockery. "Certain death, everybody says, unless you're a Bosco.
Remember him?"
"He eats 'em alive! He eats 'em alive! Bosco! Bosco!" Saxon
responded, mimicking the cry of a side-show barker. Just the
same, all Bosco's rattlers had the poison-sacs cut outa them.
They must a-had. Gee! It's funny I can't get asleep. I wish that
damned thing'd close its trap. I wonder if it is a rattlesnake."
"No; it can't be," Saxon decided. "All the rattlesnakes are
killed off long ago."
"Then where did Bosco get his?" Billy demanded with unimpeachable
logic. "An' why don't you get to sleep?"
"Because it's all new, I guess," was her reply. "You see, I never
camped out in my life."
"Neither did I. An' until now I always thought it was a lark." He
changed his position on the maddening sand and sighed heavily.
"But we'll get used to it in time, I guess. What other folks can
do, we can, an' a mighty lot of 'em has camped out. It's all
right. Here we are, free an' independent, no rent to pay, our own
bosses"
He stopped abruptly. From somewhere in the brush came an
intermittent rustling. When they tried to locate it, it
mysteriously ceased, and when the first hint of drowsiness stole
upon them the rustling as mysteriously recommenced.
"It sounds like something creeping up on us," Saxon suggested,
snuggling closer to Billy.
"Well, it ain't a wild Indian, at all events," was the best he
could offer in the way of comfort. He yawned deliberately. "Aw,
shucks! What's there to be scared of? Think of what all the
pioneers went through."
Several minutes later his shoulders began to shake, and Saxon
knew he was giggling.
"I was just thinkin' of a yarn my father used to tell about," he
explained. "It was about old Susan Kleghorn, one of the Oregon
pioneer women. Wall-Eyed Susan, they used to call her; but she
could shoot to beat the band. Once, on the Plains, the wagon
train she was in, was attacked by Indians. They got all the
wagons in a circle, an' all hands an' the oxen inside, an' drove
the Indians off, killin' a lot of 'em. They was too strong that
way, so what'd the Indians do, to draw 'em out into the open, but
take two white girls, captured from some other train, an' begin
to torture 'em. They done it just out of gunshot, but so
everybody could see. The idea was that the white men couldn't
stand it, an' would rush out, an' then the Indians'd have 'em
where they wanted 'em.
"The white men couldn't do a thing. If they rushed out to save
the girls, they'd be finished, an' then the Indians'd rush the
train. It meant death to everybody. But what does old Susan do,
but get out an old, long-barreled Kentucky rifle. She rams down
about three times the regular load of powder, takes aim at a big
buck that's pretty busy at the torturin', an' bangs away. It
knocked her clean over backward, an' her shoulder was lame all
the rest of the way to Oregon, but she dropped the big Indian
deado. He never knew what struck 'm.
"But that wasn't the yarn I wanted to tell. It seems old Susan
liked John Barleycorn. She'd souse herself to the ears every
chance she got. An' her sons an' daughters an' the old man had to
be mighty careful not to leave any around where she could get
hands on it."
"On what?" asked Saxon.
"On John Barleycorn.--Oh, you ain't on to that. It's the old
fashioned name for whisky. Well, one day all the folks was goin'
away--that was over somewhere at a place called Bodega, where
they'd settled after comin' down from Oregon. An' old Susan
claimed her rheumatics was hurtin' her an' so she couldn't go.
But the family was on. There was a two-gallon demijohn of whisky
in the house. They said all right, but before they left they sent
one of the grandsons to climb a big tree in the barnyard, where
he tied the demijohn sixty feet from the ground. Just the same,
when they come home that night they found Susan on the kitchen
floor dead to the world."
"And she'd climbed the tree after all," Saxon hazarded, when
Billy had shown no inclination of going on.
"Not on your life," he laughed jubilantly. "All she'd done was to
put a washtub on the ground square under the demijohn. Then she
got out her old rifle an' shot the demijohn to smithereens, an'
all she had to do was lap the whisky outa the tub."
Again Saxon was drowsing, when the rustling sound was heard, this
time closer. To her excited apprehension there was something
stealthy about it, and she imagined a beast of prey creeping upon
them. "Billy," she whispered.
"Yes, I'm a-listenin' to it," came his wide awake answer.
"Mightn't that be a panther, or maybe . . . a wildcat?"
"It can't be. All the varmints was killed off long ago. This is
peaceable farmin' country."
A vagrant breeze sighed through the trees and made Saxon shiver.
The mysterious cricket-noise ceased with suspicious abruptness.
Then, from the rustling noise, ensued a dull but heavy thump
that caused both Saxon and Billy to sit up in the blankets. There
were no further sounds, and they lay down again, though the very
silence now seemed ominous.
"Huh," Billy muttered with relief. "As though I don't know what
it was. It was a rabbit. I've heard tame ones bang their hind
feet down on the floor that way."
In vain Saxon tried to win sleep. The sand grew harder with the
passage of time. Her flesh and her bones ached from contact with
it. And, though her reason flouted any possibility of wild
dangers, her fancy went on picturing them with unflagging zeal.
A new so
und commenced. It was neither a rustling nor a rattling,
and it tokened some large body passing through the brush.
Sometimes twigs crackled and broke, and, once, they heard
bush-branches press aside and spring back into place.
"If that other thing was a panther, this is an elephant," was
Billy's uncheering opinion. "It's got weight. Listen to that. An'
it's comin' nearer."
There were frequent stoppages, then the sounds would begin again,
always louder, always closer. Billy sat up in the blankets once
more, passing one arm around Saxon, who had also sat up.
"I ain't slept a wink," he complained. "--There it goes again. I
wish I could see."
"It makes a noise big enough for a grizzly," Saxon chattered,
partly from nervousness, partly from the chill of the night.
"It ain't no grasshopper, that's sure."
Billy started to leave the blankets, but Saxon caught his arm.
"What are you going to do?"
"Oh, I ain't scairt none," he answered. "But, honest to God, this
is gettin' on my nerves. If I don't find what that thing is,
it'll give me the willies. I'm just goin' to reconnoiter. I won't
go close."
So intensely dark was the night, that the moment Billy crawled
beyond the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and
waited. The sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy's
progress by the cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few
moments he returned and crawled under the blankets.
"I scared it away, I guess. It's got better ears, an' when it
heard me comin' it skinned out most likely. I did my dangdest,
too, not to make a sound.--O Lord, there it goes again."
They sat up. Saxon nudged Billy.
"There," she warned, in the faintest of whispers. "I can hear it
breathing. It almost made a snort."
A dead branch cracked loudly, and so near at hand, that both of
them jumped shamelessly.
"I ain't goin' to stand any more of its foolin'," Billy declared
wrathfully. "It'll be on top of us if I don't."
"What are you going to do?" she queried anxiously.
"Yell the top of my head off. I'll get a fall outa whatever it
is."
He drew a deep breath and emitted a wild yell.
The result far exceeded any expectation he could have
entertained, and Saxon's heart leaped up in sheer panic. On the
instant the darkness erupted into terrible sound and movement.
There were trashings of underbrush and lunges and plunges of
heavy bodies in different directions. Fortunately for their ease
of mind, all these sounds receded and died away.
"An' what d'ye think of that?" Billy broke the silence.
"Gee! all the fight fans used to say I was scairt of nothin'.
Just the same I'm glad they ain't seein' me to-night."
He groaned. "I've got all I want of that blamed sand. I'm goin'
to get up and start the fire."
This was easy. Under the ashes were live embers which quickly
ignited the wood he threw on. A few stars were peeping out in the
misty zenith. He looked up at them, deliberated, and started to
move away.
"Where are you going now?" Saxon called.
"Oh, I've got an idea," he replied noncommittally, and walked
boldly away beyond the circle of the firelight.
Saxon sat with the blankets drawn closely under her chin, and
admired his courage. He had not even taken the hatchet, and he
was going in the direction in which the disturbance had died
away.
Ten minutes later he came back chuckling.
"The sons-of-guns, they got my goat all right. I'll be scairt of
my own shadow next.--What was they? Huh! You couldn't guess in a
thousand years. A bunch of half-grown calves, an' they was worse
scairt than us."
He smoked a cigarette by the fire, then rejoined Saxon under the
blankets.
"A hell of a farmer I'll make," he chafed, "when a lot of little
calves can scare the stuffin' outa me. I bet your father or mine