The Valley of the Moon Jack London

by Jack London

  Billy began to grin sheepishly.

  "Aw, that's all right," he said in mock-lordly fashion. "Roy

  Blanchard can come. I'll let 'm. All that was a long time ago.

  Besides, I 'm too busy to fool with such things."

  He urged his horse on at a faster walk, and as soon as the slope

  lessened broke into a trot. At Trillium Covert they were

  galloping.

  "You'll have to stop for dinner first," Saxon said, as they

  neared the gate of Madrono Ranch.

  "You stop," he answered. "I don't want no dinner."

  "But I want to go with you," she pleaded. "What is it?"

  "I don't dast tell you. You go on in an' get your dinner."

  "Not after that," she said. "Nothing can keep me from coming

  along now."

  Half a mile farther on, they left the highway, passed through a

  patent gate which Billy had installed, and crossed the fields on

  a road which was coated thick with chalky dust. This was the road

  that led to Chavon's clay pit. The hundred and forty lay to the

  west. Two wagons, in a cloud of dust, came into sight.

  "Your teams, Billy," cried Saxon. "Think of it! Just by the use

  of the head, earning your money while you're riding around with

  me."

  "Makes me ashamed to think how much cash money each one of them

  teams is bringin' me in every day," he acknowledged.

  They were turning off from the road toward the bars which gave

  entrance to the one hundred and forty, when the driver of the

  foremost wagon hallo'd and waved his hand. They drew in their

  horses and waited.

  "The big roan's broke loose," the dryer said, as he stopped

  beside them. "Clean crazy loco--bitin', squealin', strikin',

  kickin'. Kicked clean out of the harness like it was paper. Bit a

  chunk out of Baldy the size of a saucer, an' wound up by breakin'

  his own hind leg. Liveliest fifteen minutes I ever seen."

  "Sure it's broke?" Billy demanded sharply.

  "Sure thing."

  "Well, after you unload, drive around by the other barn and get

  Ben. He's in the corral. Tell Matthews to be easy with 'm. An'

  get a gun. Sammy's got one. You'll have to see to the big roan.

  I ain't got time now.--Why couldn't Matthews a-come along with

  you for Ben? You'd save time."

  "Oh, he's just stickin' around waitin'," the driver answered. "He

  reckoned I could get Ben."

  "An' lose time, eh? Well, get a move on."

  "That's the way of it," Billy growled to Saxon as they rode on.

  "No savve. No head. One man settin' down an' holdin his hands

  while another team drives outa its way doin what he oughta done.

  That's the trouble with two-dollar-a-day men."

  "With two-dollar-a-day heads," Saxon said quickly. "What kind of

  heads do you expect for two dollars?"

  "That's right, too," Billy acknowledged the hit. "If they had

  better heads they'd be in the cities like all the rest of the

  better men. An' the better men are a lot of dummies, too. They

  don't know the big chances in the country, or you couldn't hold

  'm from it."

  Billy dismounted, took the three bars down, led his horse

  through, then put up the bars.

  "When I get this place, there'll be a gate here," he announced.

  "Pay for itself in no time. It's the thousan' an' one little

  things like this that count up big when you put 'm together." He

  sighed contentedly. "I never used to think about such things, but

  when we shook Oakland I began to wise up. It was them San Leandro

  Porchugeeze that gave me my first eye-opener. I'd been asleep,

  before that."

  They skirted the lower of the three fields where the ripe hay

  stood uncut. Billy pointed with eloquent disgust to a break in

  the fence, slovenly repaired, and on to the standing grain

  much-trampled by cattle.

  "Them's the things," he criticized. "Old style. An' look how thin

  that crop is, an' the shallow plowin'. Scrub cattle, scrub seed,

  scrub farmin'. Chavon's worked it for eight years now, an' never

  rested it once, never put anything in for what he took out,

  except the cattle into the stubble the minute the hay was on."

  In a pasture glade, farther on, they came upon a bunch of cattle.

  "Look at that bull, Saxon. Scrub's no name for it. They oughta be

  a state law against lettin' such animals exist. No wonder

  Chavon's that land poor he's had to sink all his clay-pit

  earnin's into taxes an' interest. He can't make his land pay.

  Take this hundred an forty. Anybody with the savve can just rake

  silver dollars offen it. I'll show 'm."

  They passed the big adobe barn in the distance.

  "A few dollars at the right time would a-saved hundreds on that

  roof," Billy commented. "Well, anyway, I won't be payin' for any

  improvements when I buy. An I'll tell you another thing. This

  ranch is full of water, and if Glen Ellen ever grows they'll have

  to come to see me for their water supply."

  Billy knew the ranch thoroughly, and took short-cuts through the

  woods by way of cattle paths. Once, he reined in abruptly, and

  both stopped. Confronting them, a dozen paces away, was a

  half-grown red fox. For half a minute, with beady eyes, the wild

  thing studied them, with twitching sensitive nose reading the

  messages of the air. Then, velvet-footed, it leapt aside and was

  gone among the trees.

  "The son-of-a-gun!" Billy ejaculated.

  As they approached Wild Water; they rode out into a long narrow

  meadow. In the middle was a pond.

  "Natural reservoir, when Glen Ellen begins to buy water," Billy

  said. "See, down at the lower end there?--wouldn't cost anything

  hardly to throw a dam across. An' I can pipe in all kinds of

  hill-drip. An' water's goin' to be money in this valley not a

  thousan' years from now.--An' all the ginks, an' boobs, an' dubs,

  an' gazabos poundin' their ear deado an' not seein' it

  comin.--An' surveyors workin' up the valley for an electric road

  from Sausalito with a branch up Napa Valley."

  They came to the rim of Wild Water canyon. Leaning far back in

  their saddles, they slid the horses down a steep declivity,

  through big spruce woods, to an ancient and all but obliterated

  trail.

  "They cut this trail 'way back in the Fifties," Billy explained.

  "I only found it by accident. Then I asked Poppe yesterday. He

  was born in the valley. He said it was a fake minin' rush across

  from Petaluma. The gamblers got it up, an' they must a-drawn a

  thousan' suckers. You see that flat there, an' the old stumps.

  That's where the camp was. They set the tables up under the

  trees. The flat used to be bigger, but the creek's eaten into it.

  Poppe said they was a couple of killin's an' one lynchin'."

  Lying low against their horses' necks, they scrambled up a steep

  cattle trail out of the canyon, and began to work across rough

  country toward the knolls.

  "Say, Saxon, you're always lookin' for something pretty. I'll

  show you what'll make your hair stand up . . . soon as we get

  through this manzanita."

  Never, in all their travels, had Saxon seen
so lovely a vista as

  the one that greeted them when they emerged. The dim trail lay

  like a rambling red shadow cast on the soft forest floor by the

  great redwoods and over-arching oaks. It seemed as if all local

  varieties of trees and vines had conspired to weave the leafy

  roof--maples, big madronos and laurels, and lofty tan-bark oaks,

  scaled and wrapped and interwound with wild grape and flaming

  poison oak. Saxon drew Billy's eyes to a mossy bank of

  five-finger ferns. All slopes seemed to meet to form this basin

  and colossal forest bower. Underfoot the floor was spongy with

  water. An invisible streamlet whispered under broad-fronded

  brakes. On every hand opened tiny vistas of enchantment, where

  young redwoods grouped still and stately about fallen giants,

  shoulder-high to the horses, moss-covered and dissolving into

  mold.

  At last, after another quarter of an hour, they tied their horses

  on the rim of the narrow canyon that penetrated the wilderness of

  the knolls. Through a rift in the trees Billy pointed to the top

  of the leaning spruce.

  "It's right under that," he said. "We'll have to follow up the

  bed of the creek. They ain't no trail, though you'll see plenty

  of deer paths crossin' the creek. You'll get your feet wet."

  Saxon laughed her joy and held on close to his heels, splashing

  through pools, crawling hand and foot up the slippery faces of

  water-worn rocks, and worming under trunks of old fallen trees.

  "They ain't no real bed-rock in the whole mountain," Billy

  elucidated, "so the stream cuts deeper'n deeper, an' that keeps

  the sides cavin' in. They're as steep as they can be without

  fallin' down. A little farther up, the canyon ain't much more'n a

  crack in the ground--but a mighty deep one if anybody should ask

  you. You can spit across it an' break your neck in it."

  The climbing grew more difficult, and they were finally halted,

  in a narrow cleft, by a drift-jam.

  "You wait here," Billy directed, and, lying flat, squirmed on

  through crashing brush.

  Saxon waited till all sound had died away. She waited ten minutes

  longer, then followed by the way Billy had broken. Where the bed

  of the canyon became impossible, she came upon what she was sure

  was a deer path that skirted the steep side and was a tunnel

  through the close greenery. She caught a glimpse of the

  overhanging spruce, almost above her head on the opposite side,

  and emerged on a pool of clear water in a clay-like basin. This

  basin was of recent origin, having been formed by a slide of

  earth and trees. Across the pool arose an almost sheer wall of

  white. She recognized it for what it was, and looked about for

  Billy. She heard him whistle, and looked up. Two hundred feet

  above, at the perilous top of the white wall, he was holding on

  to a tree trunk. The overhanging spruce was nearby.

  "I can see the little pasture back of your field," he called

  down. "No wonder nobody ever piped this off. The only place they

  could see it from is that speck of pasture. An' you saw it first.

  Wait till I come down and tell you all about it. I didn't dast

  before."

  It required no shrewdness to guess the truth. Saxon knew this was

  the precious clay required by the brickyard. Billy circled wide

  of the slide and came down the canyon-wall, from tree to tree, as

  descending a ladder.

  "Ain't it a peach?" he exulted, as he dropped beside her. "Just

  look at it--hidden away under four feet of soil where nobody

  could see it, an' just waitin' for us to hit the Valley of the

  Moon. Then it up an' slides a piece of the skin off so as we can

  see it."

  "Is it the real clay?" Saxon asked anxiously.

  "You bet your sweet life. I've handled too much of it not to know

  it in the dark. Just rub a piece between your fingers.--Like

  that. Why, I could tell by the taste of it. I've eaten enough of

  the dust of the teams. Here's where our fun begins. Why, you know

  we've been workin' our heads off since we hit this valley. Now

  we're on Easy street."

  "But you don't own it," Saxon objected.

  "Well, you won't be a hundred years old before I do. Straight

  from here I hike to Payne an' bind the bargain--an option, you

  know, while title's searchin' an' I 'm raisin' money. We'll

  borrow that four hundred back again from Gow Yum, an' I'll borrow

  all I can get on my horses an' wagons, an' Hazel and Hattie, an'

  everything that's worth a cent. An' then I get the deed with a

  mortgage on it to Hilyard for the balance. An' then--it's takin'

  candy from a baby--I'll contract with the brickyard for twenty

  cents a yard--maybe more. They'll be crazy with joy when they see

  it. Don't need any borin's. They's nearly two hundred feet of it

  exposed up an' down. The whole knoll's clay, with a skin of soil

  over it."

  "But you'll spoil all the beautiful canyon hauling out the clay,"

  Saxon cried with alarm.

  "Nope; only the knoll. The road'll come in from the other side.

  It'll be only half a mile to Chavon's pit. I'll build the road

  an' charge steeper teamin', or the brickyard can build it an'

  I'll team for the same rate as before. An' twenty cents a yard

  pourin' in, all profit, from the jump. I'll sure have to buy more

  horses to do the work."

  They sat hand in hand beside the pool and talked over the

  details.

  "Say, Saxon," Billy said, after a pause had fallen, "sing

  'Harvest Days,' won't you?"

  And, when she had complied: "The first time you sung that song

  for me was comin' home from the picnic on the train--"

  "The very first day we met each other," she broke in. "What did

  you think about me that day?"

  "Why, what I've thought ever since--that you was made for me.--I

  thought that right at the jump, in the first waltz. An' what'd

  you think of me?

  "Oh, I wondered, and before the first waltz, too, when we were

  introduced and shook hands--I wondered if you were the man. Those

  were the very words that flashed into my mind.--IS HE THE MAN?"

  "An' I kinda looked a little some good to you?" he queried.

  "_I_ thought so, and my eyesight has always been good."

  "Say!" Billy went off at a tangent. "By next winter, with

  everything hummin' an' shipshape, what's the matter with us

  makin' a visit to Carmel? It'll be slack time for you with the

  vegetables, an' I'll be able to afford a foreman."

  Saxon's lack of enthusiasm surprised him.

  "What's wrong?" he demanded quickly.

  With downcast demurest eyes and hesitating speech, Saxon said:

  "I did something yesterday without asking your advice, Billy."

  He waited.

  "I wrote to Tom," she added, with an air of timid confession.

  Still he waited--for he knew not what.

  "I asked him to ship up the old chest of drawers--my mother's,

  you remember--that we stored with him."

  "Huh! I don't see anything outa the way about that," Billy said

  with relief. "We need the chest, don't we? An' we can afford to
<
br />   pay the freight on it, can't we?"

  "You are a dear stupid man, that's what you are. Don't you know

  what is in the chest?"

  He shook his head, and what she added was so soft that it was

  almost a whisper:

  "The baby clothes."

  "No!" he exclaimed.

  "True."

  "Sure?"

  She nodded her head, her cheeks flooding with quick color.

  "It's what I wanted, Saxon, more'n anything else in the world.

  I've been thinkin' a whole lot about it lately, ever since we hit

  the valley," he went on, brokenly, and for the first time she saw

  tears unmistakable in his eyes. "But after all I'd done, an' the

  hell I'd raised, an' everything, I . . . I never urged you, or

  said a word about it. But I wanted it . . . oh, I wanted it like

  . . . like I want you now."

  His open arms received her, and the pool in the heart of the

  canyon knew a tender silence.

  Saxon felt Billy's finger laid warningly on her lips. Guided by

  his hand, she turned her head back, and together they gazed far

  up the side of the knoll where a doe and a spotted fawn looked

  down upon them from a tiny open space between the trees.

  End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Valley of the Moon by Jack London