The Valley of the Moon Jack London

by Jack London

onlookers warned him to go easy. His face purpled with anger, and

  his blows became savage. But Billy went on, tap, tap, tap,

  calmly, gently, imperturbably. The Iron Man lost control, and

  rushed and plunged, delivering great swings and upper-cuts of

  man-killing quality. Billy ducked, side-stepped, blocked,

  stalled, and escaped all damage. In the clinches, which were

  unavoidable, he locked the Iron Man's arms, and in the clinches

  the Iron Man invariably laughed and apologized, only to lose his

  head with the first tap the instant they separated and be more

  infuriated than ever.

  And when it was over and Billy's identity had been divulged, the

  Iron Man accepted the joke on himself with the best of humor. It

  had been a splendid exhibition on Billy's part. His mastery of

  the sport, coupled with his self-control, had most favorably

  impressed the crowd, and Saxon, very proud of her man boy, could

  not but see the admiration all had for him.

  Nor did she prove in any way a social failure. When the tired and

  sweating players lay down in the dry sand to cool off, she was

  persuaded into accompanying their nonsense songs with the

  ukulele. Nor was it long, catching their spirit, ere she was

  singing to them and teaching them quaint songs of early days

  which she had herself learned as a little girl from Cady--Cady,

  the saloonkeeper, pioneer, and ax-cavalryman, who had been a

  bull-whacker on the Salt Intake Trail in the days before the

  railroad.

  One song which became an immediate favorite was:

  "Oh! times on Bitter Creek, they never can be beat,

  Root hog or die is on every wagon sheet;

  The sand within your throat, the dust within your eye,

  Bend your back and stand it--root hog or die."

  After the dozen verses of "Root Hog or Die," Mark Hall claimed

  to be especially infatuated with:

  "Obadier, he dreampt a dream,

  Dreampt he was drivin' a ten-mule team,

  But when he woke he heaved a sigh,

  The lead-mule kicked e-o-wt the swing-mule's eye."

  It was Mark Hall who brought up the matter of Billy's challenge

  to race out the south wall of the cove, though he referred to the

  test as lying somewhere in the future. Billy surprised him by

  saying he was ready at any time. Forthwith the crowd clamored for

  the race. Hall offered to bet on himself, but there were no

  takers. He offered two to one to Jim Hazard, who shook his head

  and said he would accept three to one as a sporting proposition.

  Billy heard and gritted his teeth.

  "I'll take you for five dollars," he said to Hall, "but not at

  those odds. I'll back myself even."

  "It isn't your money I want; it's Hazard's," Hall demurred.

  "Though I'll give either of you three to one."

  "Even or nothing," Billy held out obstinately.

  Hall finally closed both bets--even with Billy, and three to one

  with Hazard.

  The path along the knife-edge was so narrow that it was

  impossible for runners to pass each other, so it was arranged to

  time the men, Hall to go first and Billy to follow after an

  interval of half a minute.

  Hall toed the mark and at the word was off with the form of a

  sprinter. Saxon's heart sank. She knew Billy had never crossed

  the stretch of sand at that speed. Billy darted forward thirty

  seconds later, and reached the foot of the rock when Hall was

  half way up. When both were on top and racing from notch to

  notch, the Iron Man announced that they had scaled the wall in

  the same time to a second.

  "My money still looks good," Hazard remarked, "though I hope

  neither of them breaks a neck. I wouldn't take that run that way

  for all the gold that would fill the cove."

  "But you'll take bigger chances swimming in a storm on Carmel

  Beach," his wife chided.

  "Oh, I don't know," he retorted. "You haven't so far to fall when

  swimming."

  Billy and Hall had disappeared and were making the circle around

  the end. Those on the beach were certain that the poet had gained

  in the dizzy spurts of flight along the knife-edge. Even Hazard

  admitted it.

  "What price for my money now?" he cried excitedly, dancing up and

  down.

  Hall had reappeared, the great jump accomplished, and was running

  shoreward. But there was no gap. Billy was on his heels, and on

  his heels he stayed, in to shore, down the wall, and to the mark

  on the beach. Billy had won by half a minute.

  "Only by the watch," he panted. "Hall was over half a minute

  ahead of me out to the end. I'm not slower than I thought, but

  he's faster. He's a wooz of a sprinter. He could beat me ten

  times outa ten, except for accident. He was hung up at the jump

  by a big sea. That's where I caught 'm. I jumped right after 'm

  on the same sea, then he set the pace home, and all I had to do

  was take it."

  "That's all right," said Hall. "You did better than beat me.

  That's the first time in the history of Bierce's Cove that two

  men made that jump on the same sea. And all the risk was yours,

  coming last."

  "It was a fluke," Billy insisted.

  And at that point Saxon settled the dispute of modesty and raised

  a general laugh by rippling chords on the ukulele and parodying

  an old hymn in negro minstrel fashion:

  "De Lawd move in er mischievous way

  His blunders to perform."

  In the afternoon Jim Hazard and Hall dived into the breakers and

  swam to the outlying rocks, routing the protesting sea-lions and

  taking possession of their surf-battered stronghold. Billy

  followed the swimmers with his eyes, yearning after them so

  undisguisedly that Mrs. Hazard said to him:

  "Why don't you stop in Carmel this winter? Jim will teach you all

  he knows about the surf. And he's wild to box with you. He works

  long hours at his desk, and he really needs exercise."

  Not until sunset did the merry crowd carry their pots and pans

  and trove of mussels up to the road and depart. Saxon and Billy

  watched them disappear, on horses and behind horses, over the top

  of the first hill, and then descended hand in hand through the

  thicket to the camp. Billy threw himself on the sand and

  stretched out.

  "I don't know when I've been so tired," he yawned. "An' there's

  one thing sure: I never had such a day. It's worth livin' twenty

  years for an' then some."

  He reached out his hand to Saxon, who lay beside him.

  "And, oh, I was so proud of you, Billy," she said. "I never saw

  you box before. I didn't know it was like that. The Iron Man was

  at your mercy all the time, and you kept it from being violent or

  terrible. Everybody could look on and enjoy--and they did, too."

  "Huh, I want to say you was goin' some yourself. They just took

  to you. Why, honest to God, Saxon, in the singin' you was the

  whole show, along with the ukulele. All the women liked you, too,

  an' that's what counts."

  It was their first social triumph, and the taste of it was sweet:

  "Mr. Hall said he'd loo
ked up the 'Story of the Files,'" Saxon

  recounted. "And he said mother was a true poet. He said it was

  astonishing the fine stock that had crossed the Plains. He told

  me a lot about those times and the people I didn't know. And he's

  read all about the fight at Little Meadow. He says he's got it in

  a book at home, and if we come back to Carmel he'll show it to

  me."

  "He wants us to come back all right. D'ye know what he said to

  me, Saxon t He gave me a letter to some guy that's down on the

  government land--some poet that's holdin' down a quarter of a

  section--so we'll be able to stop there, which'll come in handy

  if the big rains catch us. An'--Oh! that's what I was drivin' at.

  He said he had a little shack he lived in while the house was

  buildin'. The Iron Man's livin' in it now, but he's goin' away to

  some Catholic college to study to be a priest, an' Hall said the

  shack'd be ours as long as we wanted to use it. An' he said I

  could do what the Iron Man was doin' to make a livin'. Hall was

  kind of bashful when he was offerin' me work. Said it'd be only

  odd jobs, but that we'd make out. I could help'm plant potatoes,

  he said; an' he got half savage when he said I couldn't chop

  wood. That was his job, he said; an' you could see he was

  actually jealous over it."

  "And Mrs. Hall said just about the same to me, Billy. Carmel

  wouldn't be so bad to pass the rainy season in. And then, too,

  you could go swimming with Mr. Hazard."

  "Seems as if we could settle down wherever we've a mind to,"

  Billy assented. "Carmel's the third place now that's offered.

  Well, after this, no man need be afraid of makin' a go in the

  country."

  "No good man," Saxon corrected.

  "I guess you're right." Billy thought for a moment. "Just the

  same a dub, too, has a better chance in the country than in the

  city."

  "Who'd have ever thought that such fine people existed?" Saxon

  pondered. "It's just wonderful, when you come to think of it."

  "It's only what you'd expect from a rich poet that'd trip up a

  foot-racer at an Irish picnic," Billy exposited.

  "The only crowd such a guy'd run with would be like himself, or

  he'd make a crowd that was. I wouldn't wonder that he'd make

  this crowd. Say, he's got some sister, if anybody'd ride up on a

  sea-lion an' ask you. She's got that Indian wrestlin' down pat,

  an' she's built for it. An' say, ain't his wife a beaut?"

  A little longer they lay in the warm sand. It was Billy who broke

  the silence, and what he said seemed to proceed out of profound

  meditation.

  "Say, Saxon, d'ye know I don't care if I never see movie pictures

  again."

  CHAPTER IX

  Saxon and Billy were gone weeks on the trip south, but in the end

  they came back to Carmel. They had stopped with Hafler, the poets

  in the Marble House, which he had built with his own hands. This

  queer dwelling was all in one room, built almost entirely of

  white marble. Hailer cooked, as over a campfire, in the huge

  marble fireplace, which he used in all ways as a kitchen. There

  were divers shelves of books, and the massive furniture he had

  made from redwood, as he had made the shakes for the roof. A

  blanket, stretched across a corner, gave Saxon privacy. The poet

  was on the verge of departing for San Francisco and New York, but

  remained a day over with them to explain the country and run over

  the government land with Billy. Saxon had wanted to go along that

  morning, but Hafler scornfully rejected her, telling her that her

  legs were too short. That night, when the men returned, Billy was

  played out to exhaustion. He frankly acknowledged that Hafler had

  walked him into the ground, and that his tongue had been hanging

  out from the first hour. Hafler estimated that they had covered

  fifty-five miles.

  "But such miles!" Billy enlarged. "Half the time up or down, an'

  'most all the time without trails. An' such a pace. He was dead

  right about your short legs, Saxon. You wouldn't a-lasted the

  first mile. An' such country! We ain't seen anything like it

  yet."

  Hafler left the next day to catch the train at Monterey. He gave

  them the freedom of the Marble House, and told them to stay the

  whole winter if they wanted. Billy elected to loaf around and

  rest up that day. He was stiff and sore. Moreover, he was stunned

  by the exhibition of walking prowess on the part of the poet.

  "Everybody can do something top-notch down in this country," he

  marveled. "Now take that Hafler. He's a bigger man than me, an' a

  heavier. An' weight's against walkin', too. But not with him.

  He's done eighty miles inside twenty-four hours, he told me, an'

  once a hundred an' seventy in three days. Why, he made a show

  outa me. I felt ashamed as a little kid."

  "Remember, Billy," Saxon soothed him, "every man to his own game.

  And down here you're a top-notcher at your own game. There isn't

  one you're not the master of with the gloves."

  "I guess that's right," he conceded. "But just the same it goes

  against the grain to be walked off my legs by a poet--by a poet,

  mind you."

  They spent days in going over the government land, and in the end

  reluctantly decided against taking it up. The redwood canyons and

  great cliffs of the Santa Lucia Mountains fascinated Saxon; but

  she remembered what Hafler had told her of the summer fogs which

  hid the sun sometimes for a week or two at a time, and which

  lingered for months. Then, too, there was no access to market.

  It was many miles to where the nearest wagon road began, at

  Post's, and from there on, past Point Sur to Carmel, it was a

  weary and perilous way. Billy, with his teamster judgment,

  admitted that for heavy hauling it was anything but a picnic.

  There was the quarry of perfect marble on Hafler's quarter

  section. He had said that it would be worth a fortune if near a

  railroad; but, as it was, he'd make them a present of it if they

  wanted it.

  Billy visioned the grassy slopes pastured with his horses and

  cattle, and found it hard to turn his back; but he listened with

  a willing ear to Saxon's argument in favor of a farm-home like

  the one they had seen in the moving pictures in Oakland. Yes, he

  agreed, what they wanted was an all-around farm, and an

  all-around farm they would have if they hiked forty years to find

  it.

  "But it must have redwoods on it," Saxon hastened to stipulate.

  "I've fallen in love with them. And we can get along without fog.

  And there must be good wagon-roads, and a railroad not more than

  a thousand miles away."

  Heavy winter rains held them prisoners for two weeks in the

  Marble House. Saxon browsed among Hafler's books, though most of

  them were depressingly beyond her, while Billy hunted with

  Hafler's guns. But he was a poor shot and a worse hunter. His

  only success was with rabbits, which he managed to kill on

  occasions when they stood still. With the rifle he got nothing,


  although he fired at half a dozen different deer, and, once, at a

  huge cat-creature with a long tail which he was certain was a

  mountain lion. Despite the way he grumbled at himself, Saxon

  could see the keen joy he was taking. This belated arousal of

  the hunting instinct seemed to make almost another man of him. He

  was out early and late, compassing prodigious climbs and

  tramps--once reaching as far as the gold mines Tom had spoken of,

  and being away two days.

  "Talk about pluggin' away at a job in the city, an' goin' to

  movie' pictures and Sunday picnics for amusement!" he would burst

  out. "I can't see what was eatin' me that I ever put up with such

  truck. Here's where I oughta ben all the time, or some place

  like it."

  He was filled with this new mode of life, and was continually

  recalling old hunting tales of his father and telling them to

  Saxon.

  "Say, I don't get stiffened any more after an all-day tramp," he

  exulted. "I'm broke in. An' some day, if I meet up with that

  Hafler, I'll challenge'm to a tramp that'll break his heart."

  "Foolish boy, always wanting to play everybody's game and beat

  them at it," Saxon laughed delightedly.

  "Aw, I guess you're right," he growled. "Hafler can always

  out-walk me. He's made that way. But some day, just the same, if

  I ever see 'm again, I'll invite 'm to put on the gloves. . . .

  though I won't be mean enough to make 'm as sore as he made me."

  After they left Post's on the way back to Carmel, the condition

  of the road proved the wisdom of their rejection of the

  government land. They passed a rancher's wagon overturned, a

  second wagon with a broken axle, and the stage a hundred yards

  down the mountainside, where it had fallen, passengers, horses,

  road, and all.

  "I guess they just about quit tryin' to use this road in the

  winter," Billy said. "It's horse-killin' an' man-killin', an' I

  can just see 'm freightin' that marble out over it I don't

  think."

  Settling down at Carmel was an easy matter. The Iron Man had

  already departed to his Catholic college, and the "shack" turned

  out to be a three-roomed house comfortably furnished for

  housekeeping. Hall put Billy to work on the potato patch--a

  matter of three acres which the poet farmed erratically to the

  huge delight of his crowd. He planted at all seasons, and it was

  accepted by the community that what did not rot in the ground was

  evenly divided between the gophers and trespassing cows. A plow

  was borrowed, a team of horses hired, and Billy took hold. Also

  he built a fence around the patch, and after that was set to

  staining the shingled roof of the bungalow. Hall climbed to the

  ridge-pole to repeat his warning that Billy must keep away from

  his wood-pile. One morning Hall came over and watched Billy

  chopping wood for Saxon. The poet looked on covetously as long as

  he could restrain himself.

  "It's plain you don't know how to use an axe," he sneered. "Here,

  let me show you."

  He worked away for an hour, all the while delivering an

  exposition on the art of chopping wood.

  "Here," Billy expostulated at last, taking hold of the axe. "I'll

  have to chop a cord of yours now in order to make this up to

  you."

  Hall surrendered the axe reluctantly.

  "Don't let me catch you around my wood-pile, that's all," he

  threatened. "My wood-pile is my castle, and you've got to

  understand that."

  From a financial standpoint, Saxon and Billy were putting aside

  much money. They paid no rent, their simple living was cheap, and

  Billy had all the work he cared to accept. The various members of

  the crowd seemed in a conspiracy to keep him busy. It was all odd

  jobs, but he preferred it so, for it enabled him to suit his time

  to Jim Hazard's. Each day they boxed and took a long swim through

  the surf. When Hazard finished his morning's writing, he would

  whoop through the pines to Billy, who dropped whatever work he

  was doing. After the swim, they would take a fresh shower at