Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER XXV

  Many persons, themselves city-bred and city-reared, have fled to thesoil and succeeded in winning great happiness. In such cases they havesucceeded only by going through a process of savage disillusionment.But with Dede and Daylight it was different. They had both been born onthe soil, and they knew its naked simplicities and rawer ways. Theywere like two persons, after far wandering, who had merely come homeagain. There was less of the unexpected in their dealings with nature,while theirs was all the delight of reminiscence. What might appearsordid and squalid to the fastidiously reared, was to them eminentlywholesome and natural. The commerce of nature was to them no unknownand untried trade. They made fewer mistakes. They already knew, andit was a joy to remember what they had forgotten.

  And another thing they learned was that it was easier for one who hasgorged at the flesh-pots to content himself with the meagerness of acrust, than for one who has known only the crust.

  Not that their life was meagre. It was that they found keener delightsand deeper satisfactions in little things. Daylight, who had playedthe game in its biggest and most fantastic aspects, found that here, onthe slopes of Sonoma Mountain, it was still the same old game. Man hadstill work to perform, forces to combat, obstacles to overcome. Whenhe experimented in a small way at raising a few pigeons for market, hefound no less zest in calculating in squabs than formerly when he hadcalculated in millions. Achievement was no less achievement, while theprocess of it seemed more rational and received the sanction of hisreason.

  The domestic cat that had gone wild and that preyed on his pigeons, hefound, by the comparative standard, to be of no less paramount menacethan a Charles Klinkner in the field of finance, trying to raid him forseveral millions. The hawks and weasels and 'coons were so manyDowsetts, Lettons, and Guggenhammers that struck at him secretly. Thesea of wild vegetation that tossed its surf against the boundaries ofall his clearings and that sometimes crept in and flooded in a singleweek was no mean enemy to contend with and subdue. His fat-soiledvegetable-garden in the nook of hills that failed of its best was aproblem of engrossing importance, and when he had solved it by puttingin drain-tile, the joy of the achievement was ever with him. He neverworked in it and found the soil unpacked and tractable withoutexperiencing the thrill of accomplishment.

  There was the matter of the plumbing. He was enabled to purchase thematerials through a lucky sale of a number of his hair bridles. Thework he did himself, though more than once he was forced to call inDede to hold tight with a pipe-wrench. And in the end, when thebath-tub and the stationary tubs were installed and in working order,he could scarcely tear himself away from the contemplation of what hishands had wrought. The first evening, missing him, Dede sought andfound him, lamp in hand, staring with silent glee at the tubs. Herubbed his hand over their smooth wooden lips and laughed aloud, andwas as shamefaced as any boy when she caught him thus secretly exultingin his own prowess.

  It was this adventure in wood-working and plumbing that brought aboutthe building of the little workshop, where he slowly gathered acollection of loved tools. And he, who in the old days, out of hismillions, could purchase immediately whatever he might desire, learnedthe new joy of the possession that follows upon rigid economy anddesire long delayed. He waited three months before daring theextravagance of a Yankee screw-driver, and his glee in the marvelouslittle mechanism was so keen that Dede conceived forthright a greatidea. For six months she saved her egg-money, which was hers by rightof allotment, and on his birthday presented him with a turning-lathe ofwonderful simplicity and multifarious efficiencies. And their mutualdelight in the tool, which was his, was only equalled by their delightin Mab's first foal, which was Dede's special private property.

  It was not until the second summer that Daylight built the hugefireplace that outrivalled Ferguson's across the valley. For all thesethings took time, and Dede and Daylight were not in a hurry. Theirswas not the mistake of the average city-dweller who flees inultra-modern innocence to the soil. They did not essay too much.Neither did they have a mortgage to clear, nor did they desire wealth.They wanted little in the way of food, and they had no rent to pay. Sothey planned unambiguously, reserving their lives for each other andfor the compensations of country-dwelling from which the averagecountry-dweller is barred. From Ferguson's example, too, they profitedmuch. Here was a man who asked for but the plainest fare; whoministered to his own simple needs with his own hands; who worked outas a laborer only when he needed money to buy books and magazines; andwho saw to it that the major portion of his waking time was forenjoyment. He loved to loaf long afternoons in the shade with hisbooks or to be up with the dawn and away over the hills.

  On occasion he accompanied Dede and Daylight on deer hunts through thewild canons and over the rugged steeps of Hood Mountain, though moreoften Dede and Daylight were out alone. This riding was one of theirchief joys. Every wrinkle and crease in the hills they explored, andthey came to know every secret spring and hidden dell in the wholesurrounding wall of the valley. They learned all the trails andcow-paths; but nothing delighted them more than to essay the roughestand most impossible rides, where they were glad to crouch and crawlalong the narrowest deer-runs, Bob and Mab struggling and forcing theirway along behind. Back from their rides they brought the seeds andbulbs of wild flowers to plant in favoring nooks on the ranch. Alongthe foot trail which led down the side of the big canon to the intakeof the water-pipe, they established their fernery. It was not a formalaffair, and the ferns were left to themselves. Dede and Daylightmerely introduced new ones from time to time, changing them from onewild habitat to another. It was the same with the wild lilac, whichDaylight had sent to him from Mendocino County. It became part of thewildness of the ranch, and, after being helped for a season, was leftto its own devices they used to gather the seeds of the Californiapoppy and scatter them over their own acres, so that the orange-coloredblossoms spangled the fields of mountain hay and prospered in flamingdrifts in the fence corners and along the edges of the clearings.

  Dede, who had a fondness for cattails, established a fringe of themalong the meadow stream, where they were left to fight it out with thewater-cress. And when the latter was threatened with extinction,Daylight developed one of the shaded springs into his water-cressgarden and declared war upon any invading cattail. On her wedding dayDede had discovered a long dog-tooth violet by the zigzag trail abovethe redwood spring, and here she continued to plant more and more. Theopen hillside above the tiny meadow became a colony of Mariposa lilies.This was due mainly to her efforts, while Daylight, who rode with ashort-handled ax on his saddle-bow, cleared the little manzanita woodon the rocky hill of all its dead and dying and overcrowded weaklings.

  They did not labor at these tasks. Nor were they tasks. Merely inpassing, they paused, from time to time, and lent a hand to nature.These flowers and shrubs grew of themselves, and their presence was noviolation of the natural environment. The man and the woman made noeffort to introduce a flower or shrub that did not of its own rightbelong. Nor did they protect them from their enemies. The horses andthe colts and the cows and the calves ran at pasture among them or overthem, and flower or shrub had to take its chance. But the beasts werenot noticeably destructive, for they were few in number and the ranchwas large.

  On the other hand, Daylight could have taken in fully a dozen horses topasture, which would have earned him a dollar and a half per head permonth. But this he refused to do, because of the devastation suchclose pasturing would produce.

  Ferguson came over to celebrate the housewarming that followed theachievement of the great stone fireplace. Daylight had ridden acrossthe valley more than once to confer with him about the undertaking, andhe was the only other present at the sacred function of lighting thefirst fire. By removing a partition, Daylight had thrown two roomsinto one, and this was the big living-room where Dede's treasures wereplaced--her books, and paintings and photographs, her piano, theCrouched Venus, the
chafing-dish and all its glittering accessories.Already, in addition to her own wild-animal skins, were those of deerand coyote and one mountain-lion which Daylight had killed. Thetanning he had done himself, slowly and laboriously, in frontierfashion.

  He handed the match to Dede, who struck it and lighted the fire. Thecrisp manzanita wood crackled as the flames leaped up and assailed thedry bark of the larger logs. Then she leaned in the shelter of herhusband's arm, and the three stood and looked in breathless suspense.When Ferguson gave judgment, it was with beaming face and extended hand.

  "She draws! By crickey, she draws!" he cried.

  He shook Daylight's hand ecstatically, and Daylight shook his withequal fervor, and, bending, kissed Dede on the lips. They were asexultant over the success of their simple handiwork as any greatcaptain at astonishing victory. In Ferguson's eyes was actually asuspicious moisture while the woman pressed even more closely againstthe man whose achievement it was. He caught her up suddenly in hisarms and whirled her away to the piano, crying out: "Come on, Dede! TheGloria! The Gloria!"

  And while the flames in the fireplace that worked, the triumphantstrains of the Twelfth Mass rolled forth.