by Jack London
with a good head like yours can win jobs anywhere. But think of
the handicaps on the fellows who lose. How many tramps have you
met along the road who could get a job driving four horses for
the Carmel Livery Stabler And some of them were as husky as you
when they were young. And on top of it all you've got no shout
coming. It's a mighty big come-down from gambling for a continent
to gambling for a job."
"Just the same--" Billy recommenced.
"Oh, you've got it in your blood," Hall cut him off cavalierly.
"And why not? Everybody in this country has been gambling for
generations. It was in the air when you were born. You've
breathed it all your life. You, who 've never had a white chip in
the game, still go on shouting for it and capping for it."
"But what are all of us losers to do?" Saxon inquired.
"Call in the police and stop the game," Hall recommended. "It's
crooked."
Saxon frowned.
"Do what your forefathers didn't do," he amplified. "Go ahead and
perfect democracy."
She remembered a remark of Mercedes. "A friend of mine says that
democracy is an enchantment."
"It is--in a gambling joint. There are a million boys in our
public schools right now swallowing the gump of canal boy to
President, and millions of worthy citizens who sleep sound every
night in the belief that they have a say in running the country."
"You talk like my brother Tom," Saxon said, failing to
comprehend. "If we all get into politics and work hard for
something better maybe we'll get it after a thousand years or so.
But I want it now." She clenched her hands passionately. "I can't
wait; I want it now."
"But that is just what I've been telling you, my dear girl.
That's what's the trouble with all the losers. They can't wait.
They want it now--a stack of chips and a fling at the game. Well,
they won't get it now. That's what's the matter with you, chasing
a valley in the moon. That's what's the matter with Billy, aching
right now for a chance to win ten cents from me at Pedro cussing
wind-chewing under his breath."
"Gee! you'd make a good soap-boxer," commented Billy.
"And I'd be a soap-boxer if I didn't have the spending of my
father's ill-gotten gains. It's none of my affair. Islet them
rot. They'd be just as bad if they were on top. It's all a
mess--blind bats, hungry swine, and filthy buzzards--"
Here Mrs. Hall interferred.
"Now, Mark, you stop that, or you'll be getting the blues."
He tossed his mop of hair and laughed with an effort.
"No I won't," he denied. "I'm going to get ten cents from Billy
at a game of Pedro. He won't have a look in."
Saxon and Billy flourished in the genial human atmosphere of
Carmel. They appreciated in their own estimation. Saxon felt that
she was something more than a laundry girl and the wife of a
union teamster. She was no longer pent in the narrow working
class environment of a Pine street neighborhood. Life had grown
opulent. They fared better physically, materially, and
spiritually; and all this was reflected in their features, in the
carriage of their bodies. She knew Billy had never been handsomer
nor in more splendid bodily condition. He swore he had a harem,
and that she was his second wife--twice as beautiful as the
first one he had married. And she demurely confessed to him that
Mrs. Hall and several others of the matrons had enthusiastically
admired her form one day when in for a cold dip in Carmel river.
They had got around her, and called her Venus, and made her
crouch and assume different poses.
Billy understood the Venus reference; for a marble one, with
broken arms, stood in Hall's living room, and the poet had told
him the world worshiped it as the perfection of female form.
"I always said you had Annette Kellerman beat a mile," Billy
said; and so proud was his air of possession that Saxon blushed
and trembled, and hid her hot face against his breast.
The men in the crowd were open in their admiration of Saxon, in
an above-board manner. But she made no mistake. She did not lose
her head. There was no chance of that, for her love for Billy
beat more strongly than ever. Nor was she guilty of
over-appraisal. She knew him for what he was, and loved him with
open eyes. He had no book learning, no art, like the other men.
His grammar was bad; she knew that, just as she knew that he
would never mend it. Yet she would not have exchanged him for any
of the others, not even for Mark Hall with the princely heart
whom she loved much in the same way that she loved his wife.
For that matter, she found in Billy a certain health and
rightness, a certain essential integrity, which she prized more
highly than all book learning and bank accounts. It was by virtue
of this health, and rightness, and integrity, that he had beaten
Hall in argument the night the poet was on the pessimistic
rampage. Billy had beaten him, not with the weapons of learning,
but just by being himself and by speaking out the truth that was
in him. Best of all, he had not even known that he had beaten,
and had taken the applause as good-natured banter. But Saxon
knew, though she could scarcely tell why; and she would always
remember how the wife of Shelley had whispered to her afterward
with shining eyes: "Oh, Saxon, you must be so happy."
Were Saxon driven to speech to attempt to express what Billy
meant to her, she would have done it with the simple word "man."
Always he was that to her. Always in glowing splendor, that was
his connotation--MAN. Sometimes, by herself, she would all but
weep with joy at recollection of his way of informing some
truculent male that he was standing on his foot. "Get off your
foot. You're standin' on it." It was Billy! It was magnificently
Billy. And it was this Billy who loved her. She knew it. She knew
it by the pulse that only a woman knows how to gauge. He loved
her less wildly, it was true; but more fondly, more maturely. It
was the love that lasted--if only they did not go back to the
city where the beautiful things of the spirit perished and the
beast bared its fangs.
In the early spring, Mark Hall and his wife went to New York, the
two Japanese servants of the bungalow were dismissed, and Saxon
and Billy were installed as caretakers. Jim Hazard, too, departed
on his yearly visit to Paris; and though Billy missed him, he
continued his long swims out through the breakers. Hall's two
saddle horses had been left in his charge, and Saxon made herself
a pretty cross-saddle riding costume of tawny-brown corduroy that
matched the glints in her hair. Billy no longer worked at odd
jobs. As extra driver at the stable he earned more than they
spent, and, in preference to cash, he taught Saxon to ride, and
was out and away with her over the country on all-day trips. A
favorite ride was around by the coast to Monterey, where he
taught her to swim in the big Del Monte tank. They would come
home in the evening across the hills. Also, she took to following
him on his early morning hunts, and life seemed one long
vacation.
"I'll tell you one thing," he said to Saxon, one day, as they
drew their horses to a halt and gazed down into Carmel Valley. "I
ain't never going to work steady for another man for wages as
long as I live."
"Work isn't everything," she acknowledged.
"I should guess not. Why, look here, Saxon, what'd it mean if I
worked teamin' in Oakland for a million dollars a day for a
million years and just had to go on stayin' there an' livin' the
way we used to? It'd mean work all day, three squares, an' movie'
pictures for recreation. Movin' pictures! Huh! We're livin'
movie' pictures these days. I'd sooner have one year like what
we're havin' here in Carmel and then die, than a thousan' million
years like on Pine street."
Saxon had warned the Halls by letter that she and Billy intended
starting on their search for the valley in the moon as soon as
the first of summer arrived. Fortunately, the poet was put to no
inconvenience, for Bideaux, the Iron Man with the basilisk eyes,
had abandoned his dreams of priesthood and decided to become an
actor. He arrived at Carmel from the Catholic college in time to
take charge of the bungalow.
Much to Saxon's gratification, the crowd was loth to see them
depart. The owner of the Carmel stable offered to put Billy in
charge at ninety dollars a month. Also, he received a similar
offer from the stable in Pacific Grove.
"Whither away," the wild Irish playwright hailed them on the
station platform at Monterey. He was just returning from New
York.
"To a valley in the moon," Saxon answered gaily.
He regarded their business-like packs.
"By George!" he cried. "I'll do it! By George! Let me come
along." Then his face fell. "And I've signed the contract," he
groaned. "Three acts! Say, you're lucky. And this time of year,
too."
CHAPTER XI
"We hiked into Monterey last winter, but we're ridin' out now, b
'gosh!" Billy said as the train pulled out and they leaned back
in their seats.
They had decided against retracing their steps over the ground
already traveled, and took the train to San Francisco. They had
been warned by Mark Hall of the enervation of the south, and were
bound north for their blanket climate. Their intention was to
cross the Bay to Sausalito and wander up through the coast
counties Here, Hall had told them, they would find the true home
of the redwood. But Billy, in the smoking car for a cigarette,
seated himself beside a man who was destined to deflect them from
their course. He was a keen-faced, dark-eyed man, undoubtedly a
Jew; and Billy, remembering Saxon's admonition always to ask
questions, watched his opportunity and started a conversation. It
took but a little while to learn that Gunston was a commission
merchant, and to realize that the content of his talk was too
valuable for Saxon to lose. Promptly, when he saw that the
other's cigar was finished, Billy invited him into the next car
to meet Saxon. Billy would have been incapable of such an act
prior to his sojourn in Carmel. That much at least he had
acquired of social facility.
"He's just teen tellin' me about the potato kings, and I wanted
him to tell you," Billy explained to Saxon after the
introduction. "Go on and tell her, Mr. Gunston, about that fan
tan sucker that made nineteen thousan' last year in celery an'
asparagus."
"I was just telling your husband about the way the Chinese make
things go up the San Joaquin river. It would be worth your while
to go up there and look around. It's the good season now--too
early for mosquitoes. You can get off the train at Black Diamond
or Antioch and travel around among the big farming islands on the
steamers and launches. The fares are cheap, and you'll find some
of those big gasoline boats, like the Duchess and Princess, more
like big steamboats."
"Tell her about Chow Lam," Billy urged.
The commission merchant leaned back and laughed.
"Chow Lam, several years ago, was a broken-down fan tan player.
He hadn't a cent, and his health was going back on him. He had
worn out his back with twenty years' work in the gold mines,
washing over the tailings of the early miners. And whatever he'd
made he'd lost at gambling. Also, he was in debt three hundred
dollars to the Six Companies--you know, they're Chinese affairs.
And, remember, this was only seven years ago--health breaking
down, three hundred in debt, and no trade. Chow Lam blew into
Stockton and got a job on the peat lands at day's wages. It was a
Chinese company, down on Middle River, that farmed celery and
asparagus. This was when he got onto himself and took stock of
himself. A quarter of a century in the United States, back not so
strong as it used to was, and not a penny laid by for his return
to China. He saw how the Chinese in the company had done
it--saved their wages and bought a share.
"He saved his wages for two years, and bought one share in a
thirty-share company. That was only five years ago. They leased
three hundred acres of peat land from a white man who preferred
traveling in Europe. Out of the profits of that one share in the
first year, he bought two shares in another company. And in a
year more, out of the three shares, he organized a company of his
own. One year of this, with bad luck, and he just broke even.
That brings it up to three years ago. The following year, bumper
crops, he netted four thousand. The next year it wan five
thousand. And last year he cleaned up nineteen thousand dollars.
Pretty good, eh, for old broken-down Chow Lam?"
"My!" was all Saxon could say.
Her eager interest, however, incited the commission merchant to
go on.
"Look at Sing Kee--the Potato King of Stockton. I know him well.
I've had more large deals with him and made less money than with
any man I know. He was only a coolie, and he smuggled himself
into the United States twenty years ago. Started at day's wages,
then peddled vegetables in a couple of baskets slung on a stick,
and after that opened up a store in Chinatown in San Francisco.
But he had a head on him, and he was soon onto the curves of the
Chinese farmers that dealt at his store. The store couldn't make
money fast enough to suit him. He headed up the San Joaquin.
Didn't do much for a couple of years except keep his eyes peeled.
Then he jumped in and leased twelve hundred acres at seven
dollars an acre."
"My God!" Billy said in an awe-struck voice. "Eight thousan',
four hundred dollars just for rent the first year. I know five
hundred acres I can buy for three dollars an acre."
"Will it grow potatoes?" Gunston asked.
Billy shook his head. "Nor nothin' else, I guess."
All three laughed heartily and the commission m
erchant resumed:
"That seven dollars was only for the land. Possibly you know what
it costs to plow twelve hundred acres?"
Billy nodded solemnly.
"And he got a hundred and sixty sacks to the acre that year,"
Gunston continued. "Potatoes were selling at fifty cents. My
father was at the head of our concern at the time, so I know for
a fact. And Sing Kee could have sold at fifty cents and made
money. But did he? Trust a Chinaman to know the market. They can
skin the commission merchants at it. Sing Kee held on. When 'most
everybody else had sold, potatoes began to climb. He laughed at
our buyers when we offered him sixty cents, seventy cents, a
dollar. Do you want to know what he finally did sell for? One
dollar and sixty-five a sack. Suppose they actually cost him
forty cents. A hundred and sixty times twelve hundred . . . let
me see . . . twelve times nought is nought and twelve times
sixteen is a hundred and ninety-two . . . a hundred and
ninety-two thousand sacks at a dollar and a quarter net . . . four
into a hundred and ninety-two is forty-eight, plus, is two
hundred and forty--there you are, two hundred and forty thousand
dollars clear profit on that year's deal."
"An' him a Chink," Billy mourned disconsolately. He turned to
Saxon. "They ought to be some new country for us white folks to
go to. Gosh!--we're settin' on the stoop all right, all right."
"But, of course, that was unusual," Glunston hastened to qualify.
"There was a failure of potatoes in other districts, and a
corner, and in some strange way Sing Kee was dead on. He never
made profits like that again. But he goes ahead steadily. Last
year he had four thousand acres in potatoes, a thousand in
asparagus, five hundred in celery and five hundred in beans. And
he's running six hundred acres in seeds. No matter what happens
to one or two crops, he can't lose on all of them."
"I've seen twelve thousand acres of apple trees," Saxon said.
"And I'd like to see four thousand acres in potatoes."
"And we will," Billy rejoined with great positiveness. "It's us
for the San Joaquin. We don't know what's in our country. No
wonder we're out on the stoop."
"You'll find lots of kings up there," Gunston related. "Yep Hong
Lee--they call him 'Big Jim,' and Ah Pock, and Ah Whang,
and--then there's Shima, the Japanese potato king. He's worth
several millions. Lives like a prince."
"Why don't Americans succeed like that?" asked Saxon.
"Because they won't, I guess. There's nothing to stop them except
themselves. I'll tell you one thing, though--give me the Chinese
to deal with. He's honest. His word is as good as his bond. If he
says he'll do a thing, he'll do it. And, anyway, the white man
doesn't know how to farm. Even the up-to-date white farmer is
content with one crop at a time and rotation of crops. Mr. John
Chinaman goes him one better, and grows two crops at one time on
the same soil. I've seen it--radishes and carrots, two crops,
sown at one time."
"Which don't stand to reason," Billy objected. "They'd be only a
half crop of each."
"Another guess coming," Gunston jeered. "Carrots have to be
thinned when they're so far along. So do radishes. But carrots
grow slow. Radishes grow fast. The slow-going carrots serve the
purpose of thinning the radishes. And when the radishes are
pulled, ready for market, that thins the carrots, which come
along later. You can't beat the Chink."
"Don't see why a white man can't do what a Chink can," protested
Billy.
"That sounds all right," Gunston replied. "The only objection is
that the white man doesn't. The Chink is busy all the time, and
he keeps the ground just as busy. He has organization, system.
Who ever heard of white farmers keeping books? The Chink does. No
guess work with him. He knows just where he stands, to a cent, on
any crop at any moment. And he knows the market. He plays both