The Valley of the Moon Jack London

by Jack London

in the town of Bandon.

  "Then we're too far north," said Saxon. "We must go south to find

  our valley of the moon."

  And south they went, along roads that steadily grew worse,

  through the dairy country of Langlois and through thick pine

  forests to Port Orford, where Saxon picked jeweled agates on the

  beach while Billy caught enormous rockcod. No railroads had yet

  penetrated this wild region, and the way south grew wilder and

  wilder. At Gold Beach they encountered their old friend, the

  Rogue River, which they ferried across where it entered the

  Pacific. Still wilder became the country, still more terrible the

  road, still farther apart the isolated farms and clearings.

  And here were neither Asiatics nor Europeans. The scant

  population consisted of the original settlers and their

  descendants. More than one old man or woman Saxon talked with,

  who could remember the trip across the Plains with the plodding

  oxen. West they had fared until the Pacific itself had stopped

  them, and here they had made their clearings, built their rude

  houses, and settled. In them Farthest West had been reached. Old

  customs had changed little. There were no railways. No automobile

  as yet had ventured their perilous roads. Eastward, between them

  and the populous interior valleys, lay the wilderness of the

  Coast Range--a game paradise, Billy heard; though he declared

  that the very road he traveled was game paradise enough for him.

  Had he not halted the horses, turned the reins over to Saxon, and

  shot an eight-pronged buck from the wagon-seat?

  South of Gold Beach, climbing a narrow road through the virgin

  forest, they heard from far above the jingle of bells. A hundred

  yards farther on Billy found a place wide enough to turn out.

  Here he waited, while the merry bells, descending the mountain,

  rapidly came near. They heard the grind of brakes, the soft thud

  of horses' hoofs, once a sharp cry of the driver, and once a

  woman's laughter.

  "Some driver, some driver," Billy muttered. "I take my hat off to

  'm whoever he is, hittin' a pace like that on a road like

  this.--Listen to that! He's got powerful brakes.--Zocie! That

  WAS a chuck-hole! Some springs, Saxon, some springs!"

  Where the road zigzagged above, they glimpsed through the trees

  four sorrel horses trotting swiftly, and the flying wheels of a

  small, tan-painted trap.

  At the bend of the road the leaders appeared again, swinging wide

  on the curve, the wheelers flashed into view, and the light

  two-seated rig; then the whole affair straightened out and

  thundered down upon them across a narrow plank-bridge. In the

  front seat were a man and woman; in the rear seat a Japanese was

  squeezed in among suit cases, rods, guns, saddles, and a

  typewriter case, while above him and all about him, fastened most

  intricately, sprouted a prodigious crop of deer- and elk-horns.

  "It's Mr. and Mrs. Hastings," Saxon cried.

  "Whoa!" Hastings yelled, putting on the brake and gathering his

  horses in to a stop alongside. Greetings flew back and forth, in

  which the Japanese, whom they had last seen on the Roamer at Rio

  Vista, gave and received his share.

  "Different from the Sacramento islands, eh?" Hastings said to

  Saxon. "Nothing but old American stock in these mountains. And

  they haven't changed any. As John Fox, Jr., said, they're our

  contemporary ancestors. Our old folks were just like them."

  Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, between them, told of their long drive.

  They were out two months then, and intended to continue north

  through Oregon and Washington to the Canadian boundary.

  "Then we'll ship our horses and come home by train," concluded

  Hastings.

  "But the way you drive you oughta be a whole lot further along

  than this," Billy criticized.

  "But we keep stopping off everywhere," Mrs. Hastings explained.

  "We went in to the Hoopa Reservation," said Mr. Elastings, "and

  canoed down the Trinity and Klamath Rivers to the ocean. And just

  now we've come out from two weeks in the real wilds of Curry

  County."

  "You must go in," Hastings advised. "You'll get to Mountain Ranch

  to-night. And you can turn in from there. No roads, though.

  You'll have to pack your horses. But it's full of game. I shot

  five mountain lions and two bear, to say nothing of deer. And

  there are small herds of elk, too.--No; I didn't shoot any.

  They're protected. These horns I got from the old hunters. I'll

  tell you all about it."

  And while the men talked, Saxon and Mrs. Hastings were not idle.

  "Found your valley of the moon yet?" the writer's wife asked, as

  they were saying good-by.

  Saxon shook her head.

  "You will find it if you go far enough; and be sure you go as far

  as Sonoma Valley and our ranch. Then, if you haven't found it

  yet, we'll see what we can do."

  Three weeks later, with a bigger record of mountain lions and

  bear than Hastings' to his credit, Billy emerged from Curry

  County and drove across the line into California. At once Saxon

  found herself among the redwoods. But they were redwoods

  unbelievable. Billy stopped the wagon, got out, and paced around

  one.

  "Forty-five feet," he announced. "That's fifteen in diameter. And

  they're all like it only bigger. No; there's a runt. It's only

  about nine feet through. An' they're hundreds of feet tall."

  "When I die, Billy, you must bury me in a redwood grove," Saxon

  adjured.

  "I ain't goin' to let you die before I do," he assured her. "An'

  then we'll leave it in our wills for us both to be buried that

  way."

  CHAPTER XVII

  South they held along the coast, hunting, fishing, swimming, and

  horse-buying. Billy shipped his purchases on the coasting

  steamers. Through Del Norte and Humboldt counties they went, and

  through Mendocino into Sonoma--counties larger than Eastern

  states--threading the giant woods, whipping innumerable

  trout-streams, and crossing countless rich valleys. Ever Saxon

  sought the valley of the moon. Sometimes, when all seemed fair,

  the lack was a railroad, sometimes madrono and manzanita trees,

  and, usually, there was too much fog.

  "We do want a sun-cocktail once in a while," she told Billy.

  "Yep," was his answer. "Too much fog might make us soggy. What

  we're after is betwixt an' between, an' we'll have to get back

  from the coast a ways to find it."

  This was in the fall of the year, and they turned their backs on

  the Pacific at old Fort Ross and entered the Russian River

  Valley, far below Ukiah, by way of Cazadero and Guerneville. At

  Santa Rosa Billy was delayed with the shipping of several horses,

  so that it was not until afternoon that he drove south and east

  for Sonoma Valley.

  "I guess we'll no more than make Sonoma Valley when it'll be time

  to camp," he said, measuring the sun with his eye. "This is

  called Bennett Valley. You cross a divide from it and come out at

  Glen Ellen. Now thi
s is a mighty pretty valley, if anybody should

  ask you. An' that's some nifty mountain over there."

  "The mountain is all right," Saxon adjudged. "But all the rest of

  the hills are too bare. And I don't see any big trees. It takes

  rich soil to make big trees."

  "Oh, I ain't sayin' it's the valley of the moon by a long ways.

  All the same, Saxon, that's some mountain. Look at the timber on

  it. I bet they's deer there."

  "I wonder where we'll spend this winter," Saxon remarked.

  "D'ye know, I've just been thinkin' the same thing. Let's winter

  at Carmel. Mark Hall's back, an' so is Jim Hazard. What d'ye

  say?"

  Saxon nodded.

  "Only you won't be the odd-job man this time."

  "Nope. We can make trips in good weather horse-buyin'," Billy

  confirmed, his face beaming with self-satisfaction. "An' if that

  walkin' poet of the Marble House is around, I'll sure get the

  gloves on with 'm just in memory of the time he walked me off my

  legs--"

  "Oh! Oh!" Saxon cried. "Look, Billy! Look!"

  Around a bend in the road came a man in a sulky, driving a heavy

  stallion. The animal was a bright chestnut-sorrel, with

  cream-colored mane and tail. The tail almost swept the ground,

  while the mane was so thick that it crested out of the neck and

  flowed down, long and wavy. He scented the mares and stopped

  short, head flung up and armfuls of creamy mane tossing in the

  breeze. He bent his head until flaring nostrils brushed impatient

  knees, and between the fine-pointed ears could be seen a mighty

  and incredible curve of neck. Again he tossed his head, fretting

  against the bit as the driver turned widely aside for safety in

  passing. They could see the blue glaze like a sheen on the

  surface of the horse's bright, wild eyes, and Billy closed a wary

  thumb on his reins and himself turned widely. He held up his hand

  in signal, and the driver of the stallion stopped when well past,

  and over his shoulder talked draught-horses with Billy.

  Among other things, Billy learned that the stallion's name was

  Barbarossa, that the driver was the owner, and that Santa Rosa

  was his headquarters.

  "There are two ways to Sonoma Valley from here," the man

  directed. "When you come to the crossroads the turn to the left

  will take you to Glen Ellen by Bennett Peak--that's it there."

  Rising from rolling stubble fields, Bennett Peak towered hot in

  the sun, a row of bastion hills leaning against its base. But

  hills and mountains on that side showed bare and heated, though

  beautiful with the sunburnt tawniness of California.

  "The turn to the right will take you to Glen Ellen, too, only

  it's longer and steeper grades. But your mares don't look as

  though it'd bother them."

  "Which is the prettiest way?" Saxon asked.

  "Oh, the right hand road, by all means," said the man. "That's

  Sonoma Mountain there, and the road skirts it pretty well up, and

  goes through Cooper's Grove."

  Billy did not start immediately after they had said good-by, and

  he and Saxon, heads over shoulders, watched the roused Barbarossa

  plunging mutinously on toward Santa Rosa.

  "Gee!" Billy said. "I'd like to be up here next spring."

  At the crossroads Billy hesitated and looked at Saxon.

  "What if it is longer?" she said. "Look how beautiful it is--all

  covered with green woods; and I just know those are redwoods in

  the canyons. You never can tell. The valley of the moon might be

  right up there somewhere. And it would never do to miss it just

  in order to save half an hour."

  They took the turn to the right and began crossing a series of

  steep foothills. As they approached the mountain there were signs

  of a greater abundance of water. They drove beside a running

  stream, and, though the vineyards on the hills were summer-dry,

  the farmhouses in the hollows and on the levels were grouped

  about with splendid trees.

  "Maybe it sounds funny," Saxon observed; "but I 'm beginning to

  love that mountain already. It almost seems as if I d seen it

  before, somehow, it's so all-around satisfying--oh!"

  Crossing a bridge and rounding a sharp turn, they were suddenly

  enveloped in a mysterious coolness and gloom. All about them

  arose stately trunks of redwood. The forest floor was a rosy

  carpet of autumn fronds. Occasional shafts of sunlight,

  penetrating the deep shade, warmed the somberness of the grove.

  Alluring paths led off among the trees and into cozy nooks made

  by circles of red columns growing around the dust of vanished

  ancestors--witnessing the titantic dimensions of those ancestors

  by the girth of the circles in which they stood.

  Out of the grove they pulled to the steep divide, which was no

  more than a buttress of Sonoma Mountain. The way led on through

  rolling uplands and across small dips and canyons, all well

  wooded and a-drip with water. In places the road was muddy from

  wayside springs.

  "The mountain's a sponge," said Billy. "Here it is, the tail-end

  of dry summer, an' the ground's just leakin' everywhere."

  "I know I've never been here before," Saxon communed aloud. "But

  it's all so familiar! So I must have dreamed it. And there's

  madronos!--a whole grove! And manzanita! Why, I feel just as if I

  was coming home. . . . Oh, Billy, if it should turn out to be our

  valley."

  "Plastered against the side of a mountain?" he queried, with a

  skeptical laugh.

  "No; I don't mean that. I mean on the way to our valley. Because

  the way--all ways--to our valley must be beautiful. And this;

  I've seen it all before, dreamed it."

  "It's great," he said sympathetically. "I wouldn't trade a square

  mile of this kind of country for the whole Sacramento Valley,

  with the river islands thrown in and Middle River for good

  measure. If they ain't deer up there, I miss my guess. An' where

  they's springs they's streams, an' streams means trout."

  They passed a large and comfortable farmhouse, surrounded by

  wandering barns and cow-sheds, went on under forest arches, and

  emerged beside a field with which Saxon was instantly enchanted.

  It flowed in a gentle concave from the road up the mountain, its

  farther boundary an unbroken line of timber. The field glowed

  like rough gold in the approaching sunset, and near the middle of

  it stood a solitary great redwood, with blasted top suggesting a

  nesting eyrie for eagles. The timber beyond clothed the mountain

  in solid green to what they took to be the top. But, as they

  drove on, Saxon, looking back upon what she called her field, saw

  the real summit of Sonoma towering beyond, the mountain behind

  her field a mere spur upon the side of the larger mass.

  Ahead and toward the right, across sheer ridges of the mountains,

  separated by deep green canyons and broadening lower down into

  rolling orchards and vineyards, they caught their first sight of

  Sonoma Valley and the wild mountains that rimmed its eastern

  side. To the left they gazed across a golde
n land of small hills

  and valleys. Beyond, to the north, they glimpsed another portion

  of the valley, and, still beyond, the opposing wall of the

  valley--a range of mountains, the highest of which reared its

  red and battered ancient crater against a rosy and mellowing sky.

  From north to southeast, the mountain rim curved in the

  brightness of the sun, while Saxon and Billy were already in the

  shadow of evening. He looked at Saxon, noted the ravished ecstasy

  of her face, and stopped the horses. All the eastern sky was

  blushing to rose, which descended upon the mountains, touching

  them with wine and ruby. Sonoma Valley began to fill with a

  purple flood, laying the mountain bases, rising, inundating,

  drowning them in its purple. Saxon pointed in silence, indicating

  that the purple flood was the sunset shadow of Sonoma Mountain.

  Billy nodded, then chirruped to the mares, and the descent began

  through a warm and colorful twilight.

  On the elevated sections of the road they felt the cool,

  delicious breeze from the Pacific forty miles away; while from

  each little dip and hollow came warm breaths of autumn earth,

  spicy with sunburnt grass and fallen leaves and passing flowers.

  They came to the rim of a deep canyon that seemed to penetrate to

  the heart of Sonoma Mountain. Again, with no word spoken, merely

  from watching Saxon, Billy stopped the wagon. The canyon was

  wildly beautiful. Tall redwoods lined its entire length. On its

  farther rim stood three rugged knolls covered with dense woods of

  spruce and oak. From between the knolls, a feeder to the main

  canyon and likewise fringed with redwoods, emerged a smaller

  canyon. Billy pointed to a stubble field that lay at the feet of

  the knolls.

  "It's in fields like that I've seen my mares a-pasturing," he

  said.

  They dropped down into the canyon, the road following a stream

  that sang under maples and alders. The sunset fires, refracted

  from the cloud-driftage of the autumn sky, bathed the canyon with

  crimson, in which ruddy-limbed madronos and wine-wooded

  manzanitas burned and smoldered. The air was aromatic with

  laurel. Wild grape vines bridged the stream from tree to tree.

  Oaks of many sorts were veiled in lacy Spanish moss. Ferns and

  brakes grew lush beside the stream. From somewhere came the

  plaint of a mourning dove. Fifty feet above the ground, almost

  over their heads, a Douglas squirrel crossed the road--a flash of

  gray between two trees; and they marked the continuance of its

  aerial passage by the bending of the boughs.

  "I've got a hunch," said Billy.

  "Let me say it first," Saxon begged.

  He waited, his eyes on her face as she gazed about her in

  rapture.

  "We've found our valley," she whispered. "Was that it?"

  He nodded, but checked speech at sight of a small boy driving a

  cow up the road, a preposterously big shotgun in one hand, in the

  other as preposterously big a jackrabbit. "How far to Glen

  Ellen?" Billy asked.

  "Mile an' a half," was the answer.

  "What creek is this?" inquired Saxon.

  "Wild Water. It empties into Sonoma Creek half a mile down."

  "Trout?"--this from Billy.

  "If you know how to catch 'em," grinned the boy.

  "Deer up the mountain?"

  "It ain't open season," the boy evaded.

  "I guess you never shot a deer," Billy slyly baited, and was

  rewarded with:

  "I got the horns to show."

  "Deer shed their horns," Billy teased on. "Anybody can find 'em."

  "I got the meat on mine. It ain't dry yet--"

  The boy broke off, gazing with shocked eyes into the pit Billy

  had dug for him.

  "It's all right, sonny," Billy laughed, as he drove on. "I ain't

  the game warden. I 'm buyin' horses."

  More leaping tree squirrels, more ruddy madronos and majestic