They left Carmel River and Carmel Valley behind, and with a rising sun
went south across the hills between the mountains and the sea. The road
was badly washed and gullied and showed little sign of travel.
“It peters out altogether farther down,” Billy said. “From there on it's
only horse trails. But I don't see much signs of timber, an' this soil's
none so good. It's only used for pasture--no farmin' to speak of.”
The hills were bare and grassy. Only the canyons were wooded, while the
higher and more distant hills were furry with chaparral. Once they saw
a coyote slide into the brush, and once Billy wished for a gun when
a large wildcat stared at them malignantly and declined to run until
routed by a clod of earth that burst about its ears like shrapnel.
Several miles along Saxon complained of thirst. Where the road dipped
nearly at sea level to cross a small gulch Billy looked for water. The
bed of the gulch was damp with hill-drip, and he left her to rest while
he sought a spring.
“Say,” he hailed a few minutes afterward. “Come on down. You just gotta
see this. It'll 'most take your breath away.”
Saxon followed the faint path that led steeply down through the thicket.
Midway along, where a barbed wire fence was strung high across the mouth
of the gulch and weighted down with big rocks, she caught her first
glimpse of the tiny beach. Only from the sea could one guess its
existence, so completely was it tucked away on three precipitous sides
by the land, and screened by the thicket. Furthermore, the beach was the
head of a narrow rock cove, a quarter of a mile long, up which pent way
the sea roared and was subdued at the last to a gentle pulse of surf.
Beyond the mouth many detached rocks, meeting the full force of the
breakers, spouted foam and spray high in the air. The knees of these
rocks, seen between the surges, were black with mussels. On their
tops sprawled huge sea-lions tawny-wet and roaring in the sun, while
overhead, uttering shrill cries, darted and wheeled a multitude of sea
birds.
The last of the descent, from the barbed wire fence, was a sliding fall
of a dozen feet, and Saxon arrived on the soft dry sand in a sitting
posture.
“Oh, I tell you it's just great,” Billy bubbled. “Look at it for a
camping spot. In among the trees there is the prettiest spring you
ever saw. An' look at all the good firewood, an'...” He gazed about and
seaward with eyes that saw what no rush of words could compass. “...
An', an' everything. We could live here. Look at the mussels out
there. An' I bet you we could catch fish. What d'ye say we stop a few
days?--It's vacation anyway--an' I could go back to Carmel for hooks an'
lines.”
Saxon, keenly appraising his glowing face, realized that he was indeed
being won from the city.
“An' there ain't no wind here,” he was recommending. “Not a breath. An'
look how wild it is. Just as if we was a thousand miles from anywhere.”
The wind, which had been fresh and raw across the bare hills, gained no
entrance to the cove; and the beach was warm and balmy, the air sweetly
pungent with the thicket odors. Here and there, in the midst of the
thicket, severe small oak trees and other small trees of which Saxon did
not know the names. Her enthusiasm now vied with Billy's, and, hand in
hand, they started to explore.
“Here's where we can play real Robinson Crusoe,” Billy cried, as they
crossed the hard sand from highwater mark to the edge of the water.
“Come on, Robinson. Let's stop over. Of course, I'm your Man Friday, an'
what you say goes.”
“But what shall we do with Man Saturday!” She pointed in mock
consternation to a fresh footprint in the sand. “He may be a savage
cannibal, you know.”
“No chance. It's not a bare foot but a tennis shoe.”
“But a savage could get a tennis shoe from a drowned or eaten sailor,
couldn't he?” she contended.
“But sailors don't wear tennis shoes,” was Billy's prompt refutation.
“You know too much for Man Friday,” she chided; “but, just the same; if
you'll fetch the packs we'll make camp. Besides, it mightn't have been a
sailor that was eaten. It might have been a passenger.”
By the end of an hour a snug camp was completed. The blankets were
spread, a supply of firewood was chopped from the seasoned driftwood,
and over a fire the coffee pot had begun to sing. Saxon called to
Billy, who was improvising a table from a wave-washed plank. She pointed
seaward. On the far point of rocks, naked except for swimming trunks,
stood a man. He was gazing toward them, and they could see his long
mop of dark hair blown by the wind. As he started to climb the rocks
landward Billy called Saxon's attention to the fact that the stranger
wore tennis shoes. In a few minutes he dropped down from the rock to the
beach and walked up to them.
“Gosh!” Billy whispered to Saxon. “He's lean enough, but look at his
muscles. Everybody down here seems to go in for physical culture.”
As the newcomer approached, Saxon glimpsed sufficient of his face to
be reminded of the old pioneers and of a certain type of face seen
frequently among the old soldiers: Young though he was--not more than
thirty, she decided--this man had the same long and narrow face, with
the high cheekbones, high and slender forehead, and nose high, lean,
and almost beaked. The lips were thin and sensitive; but the eyes were
different from any she had ever seen in pioneer or veteran or any
man. They were so dark a gray that they seemed brown, and there were a
farness and alertness of vision in them as of bright questing through
profounds of space. In a misty way Saxon felt that she had seen him
before.
“Hello,” he greeted. “You ought to be comfortable here.” He threw down a
partly filled sack. “Mussels. All I could get. The tide's not low enough
yet.”
Saxon heard Billy muffle an ejaculation, and saw painted on his face the
extremest astonishment.
“Well, honest to God, it does me proud to meet you,” he blurted out.
“Shake hands. I always said if I laid eyes on you I'd shake.--Say!”
But Billy's feelings mastered him, and, beginning with a choking giggle,
he roared into helpless mirth.
The stranger looked at him curiously across their clasped hands, and
glanced inquiringly to Saxon.
“You gotta excuse me,” Billy gurgled, pumping the other's hand up and
down. “But I just gotta laugh. Why, honest to God, I've woke up nights
an' laughed an' gone to sleep again. Don't you recognize 'm, Saxon? He's
the same identical dude -- say, friend, you're some punkins at a hundred
yards dash, ain't you?”
And then, in a sudden rush, Saxon placed him. He it was who had stood
with Roy Blanchard alongside the automobile on the day she had wandered,
sick and unwitting, into strange neighborhoods. Nor had that day been
the first time she had seen him.
“Remember the Bricklayers' Picnic at Weasel Park?” Billy was asking.
“An' the foot race? Why, I'd know that nose of yours anywhere among a
million. You was the guy that stuck your cane between Timothy McManus's
legs an' started the grandest roughhouse Weasel Park or any other park
ever seen.”
The visitor now commenced to laugh. He stood on one leg as he laughed
harder, then stood on the other leg. Finally he sat down on a log of
driftwood.
“And you were there,” he managed to gasp to Billy at last. “You saw it.
You saw it.” He turned to Saxon. “--And you?”
She nodded.
“Say,” Billy began again, as their laughter eased down, “what I wanta
know is what'd you wanta do it for. Say, what'd you wanta do it for?
I've been askin' that to myself ever since.”
“So have I,” was the answer.
“You didn't know Timothy McManus, did you?”
“No; I'd never seen him before, and I've never seen him since.”
“But what'd you wanta do it for?” Billy persisted.
The young man laughed, then controlled himself.
“To save my life, I don't know. I have one friend, a most intelligent
chap that writes sober, scientific books, and he's always aching to
throw an egg into an electric fan to see what will happen. Perhaps
that's the way it was with me, except that there was no aching. When I
saw those legs flying past, I merely stuck my stick in between. I didn't
know I was going to do it. I just did it. Timothy McManus was no more
surprised than I was.”
“Did they catch you?” Billy asked.
“Do I look as if they did? I was never so scared in my life. Timothy
McManus himself couldn't have caught me that day. But what happened
afterward? I heard they had a fearful roughhouse, but I couldn't stop to
see.”
It was not until a quarter of an hour had passed, during which Billy
described the fight, that introductions took place. Mark Hall was their
visitor's name, and he lived in a bungalow among the Carmel pines.
“But how did you ever find your way to Bierce's Cove?” he was curious to
know. “Nobody ever dreams of it from the road.”
“So that's its name?” Saxon said.
“It's the name we gave it. One of our crowd camped here one summer,
and we named it after him. I'll take a cup of that coffee, if you don't
mind.”--This to Saxon. “And then I'll show your husband around. We're
pretty proud of this cove. Nobody ever comes here but ourselves.”
“You didn't get all that muscle from bein' chased by McManus,” Billy
observed over the coffee.
“Massage under tension,” was the cryptic reply.
“Yes,” Billy said, pondering vacantly. “Do you eat it with a spoon?”
Hall laughed.
“I'll show you. Take any muscle you want, tense it, then manipulate it
with your fingers, so, and so.”
“An' that done all that?” Billy asked skeptically.
“All that!” the other scorned proudly. “For one muscle you see, there's
five tucked away but under command. Touch your finger to any part of me
and see.”
Billy complied, touching the right breast.
“You know something about anatomy, picking a muscleless spot,” scolded
Hall.
Billy grinned triumphantly, then, to his amazement, saw a muscle grow up
under his finger. He prodded it, and found it hard and honest.
“Massage under tension!” Hall exulted. “Go on--anywhere you want.”
And anywhere and everywhere Billy touched, muscles large and small rose
up, quivered, and sank down, till the whole body was a ripple of willed
quick.
“Never saw anything like it,” Billy marveled at the end; “an' I've seen
some few good men stripped in my time. Why, you're all living silk.”
“Massage under tension did it, my friend. The doctors gave me up. My
friends called me the sick rat, and the mangy poet, and all that. Then
I quit the city, came down to Carmel, and went in for the open air--and
massage under tension.”
“Jim Hazard didn't get his muscles that way,” Billy challenged.
“Certainly not, the lucky skunk; he was born with them. Mine's made.
That's the difference. I'm a work of art. He's a cave bear. Come along.
I'll show you around now. You'd better get your clothes off. Keep on
only your shoes and pants, unless you've got a pair of trunks.”
“My mother was a poet,” Saxon said, while Billy was getting himself
ready in the thicket. She had noted Hall's reference to himself.
He seemed incurious, and she ventured further.
“Some of it was printed.”
“What was her name?” he asked idly.
“Dayelle Wiley Brown. She wrote: 'The Viking's Quest'; 'Days of Gold';
'Constancy'; 'The Caballero'; 'Graves at Little Meadow'; and a lot more.
Ten of them are in 'The Story of the Files.'”
“I've the book at home,” he remarked, for the first time showing real
interest. “She was a pioneer, of course--before my time. I'll look her
up when I get back to the house. My people were pioneers. They came by
Panama, in the Fifties, from Long Island. My father was a doctor, but
he went into business in San Francisco and robbed his fellow men out of
enough to keep me and the rest of a large family going ever since.--Say,
where are you and your husband bound?”
When Saxon had told him of their attempt to get away from Oakland and of
their quest for land, he sympathized with the first and shook his head
over the second.
“It's beautiful down beyond the Sur,” he told her. “I've been all over
those redwood canyons, and the place is alive with game. The government
land is there, too. But you'd be foolish to settle. It's too remote. And
it isn't good farming land, except in patches in the canyons. I know
a Mexican there who is wild to sell his five hundred acres for fifteen
hundred dollars. Three dollars an acre! And what does that mean? That
it isn't worth more. That it isn't worth so much; because he can find no
takers. Land, you know, is worth what they buy and sell it for.”
Billy, emerging from the thicket, only in shoes and in pants rolled to
the knees, put an end to the conversation; and Saxon watched the two
men, physically so dissimilar, climb the rocks and start out the south
side of the cove. At first her eyes followed them lazily, but soon she
grew interested and worried. Hall was leading Billy up what seemed a
perpendicular wall in order to gain the backbone of the rock. Billy
went slowly, displaying extreme caution; but twice she saw him slip, the
weather-eaten stone crumbling away in his hand and rattling beneath him
into the cove. When Hall reached the top, a hundred feet above the sea,
she saw him stand upright and sway easily on the knife-edge which
she knew fell away as abruptly on the other side. Billy, once on top,
contented himself with crouching on hands and knees. The leader went
on, upright, walking as easily as on a level floor. Billy abandoned the
hands and knees position, but crouched closely and often helped himself
with his hands.
The knife-edge backbone was deeply serrated, and into one of the notches
both men disappeared. Saxon could not keep down her anxiety, and climbed
out on the north side of the cove, which was less rugged and far less
difficult to travel. Even so, the unaccustomed height, the crumbling
surface, and the fierce buffets of the wind tried her nerve. Soon she
was opposite the men. They had leaped a narrow chasm and were scaling
another tooth. Already Billy was going more nimbly, but his leader often
paused and waited for him. The way grew severer, and several times the
clefts they essayed extended down to the ocean level and spouted spray
from the growling breakers that burst through. At other times, standing
erect, they would fall forward across deep and narrow clefts until their
palms met the opposing side; then, clinging with their fingers, their
bodies would be drawn across and up.
Near the end, Hall and Billy went out of sight over the south side
of the backbone, and when Saxon saw them again they were rounding the
extreme point of rock and coming back on the cove side. Here the way
seemed barred. A wide fissure, with hopelessly vertical sides, yawned
skywards from a foam-white vortex where the mad waters shot their level
a dozen feet upward and dropped it as abruptly to the black depths of
battered rock and writhing weed.
Clinging precariously, the men descended their side till the spray was
flying about them. Here they paused. Saxon could see Hall pointing down
across the fissure and imagined he was showing some curious thing to
Billy. She was not prepared for what followed. The surf-level sucked and
sank away, and across and down Hall jumped to a narrow foothold where
the wash had roared yards deep the moment before. Without pause, as
the returning sea rushed up, he was around the sharp corner and clawing
upward hand and foot to escape being caught. Billy was now left alone.
He could not even see Hall, much less be further advised by him, and so
tensely did Saxon watch, that the pain in her finger-tips, crushed
to the rock by which she held, warned her to relax. Billy waited his
chance, twice made tentative preparations to leap and sank back, then
leaped across and down to the momentarily exposed foothold, doubled the
corner, and as he clawed up to join Hall was washed to the waist but not
torn away.
Saxon did not breathe easily till they rejoined her at the fire. One
glance at Billy told her that he was exceedingly disgusted with himself.
“You'll do, for a beginner,” Hall cried, slapping him jovially on the
bare shoulder. “That climb is a stunt of mine. Many's the brave lad
that's started with me and broken down before we were half way out. I've
had a dozen balk at that big jump. Only the athletes make it.”
“I ain't ashamed of admittin' I was scairt,” Billy growled. “You're a
regular goat, an' you sure got my goat half a dozen times. But I'm mad
now. It's mostly trainin', an' I'm goin' to camp right here an' train
till I can challenge you to a race out an' around an' back to the
beach.”
“Done,” said Hall, putting out his hand in ratification. “And some
time, when we get together in San Francisco, I'll lead you up against
Bierce--the one this cove is named after. His favorite stunt, when
he isn't collecting rattlesnakes, is to wait for a forty-mile-an-hour
breeze, and then get up and walk on the parapet of a skyscraper--on the
lee side, mind you, so that if he blows off there's nothing to fetch him
up but the street. He sprang that on me once.”
“Did you do it?” Billy asked eagerly.
“I wouldn't have if I hadn't been on. I'd been practicing it secretly
for a week. And I got twenty dollars out of him on the bet.”
The tide was now low enough for mussel gathering and Saxon accompanied
the men out the north wall. Hall had several sacks to fill. A rig was
coming for him in the afternoon, he explained, to cart the mussels back
to Carmel. When the sacks were full they ventured further among the
rock crevices and were rewarded with three abalones, among the shells
of which Saxon found one coveted blister-pearl. Hall initiated them into
the mysteries of pounding and preparing the abalone meat for cooking.
By this time it seemed to Saxon that they had known him a long time. It
reminded her of the old times when Bert had been with them, singing his
songs or ranting about the last of the Mohicans.
“Now, listen; I'm going to teach you something,” Hall commanded, a large
round rock poised in his hand above the abalone meat. “You must never,
never pound abalone without singing this song. Nor must you sing this
song at any other time. It would be the rankest sacrilege. Abalone
is the food of the gods. Its preparation is a religious function. Now
listen, and follow, and remember that it is a very solemn occasion.”
The stone came down with a thump on the white meat, and thereafter arose
and fell in a sort of tom-tom accompaniment to the poet's song:
“Oh! some folks boast of quail on toast, Because they think it's tony;
But I'm content to owe my rent And live on abalone.
“Oh! Mission Point's a friendly joint Where every crab's a crony, And
true and kind you'll ever find The clinging abalone.
“He wanders free beside the sea Where 'er the coast is stony; He flaps
his wings and madly sings--The plaintive abalone.
“Some stick to biz, some flirt with Liz Down on the sands of Coney; But
we, by hell, stay in Carmel, And whang the abalone.”
He paused with his mouth open and stone upraised. There was a rattle
of wheels and a voice calling from above where the sacks of mussels had
been carried. He brought the stone down with a final thump and stood up.
“There's a thousand more verses like those,” he said. “Sorry I hadn't
time to teach you them.” He held out his hand, palm downward. “And now,
children, bless you, you are now members of the clan of Abalone Eaters,
and I solemnly enjoin you, never, no matter what the circumstances,
pound abalone meat without chanting the sacred words I have revealed
unto you.”
“But we can't remember the words from only one hearing,” Saxon
expostulated.
“That shall be attended to. Next Sunday the Tribe of Abalone Eaters will
descend upon you here in Bierce's Cove, and you will be able to see the
rites, the writers and writeresses, down even to the Iron Man with the
basilisk eyes, vulgarly known as the King of the Sacerdotal Lizards.”
“Will Jim Hazard come?” Billy called, as Hall disappeared into the
thicket.
“He will certainly come. Is he not the Cave-Bear Pot-Walloper and
Gridironer, the most fearsome, and, next to me, the most exalted, of all
the Abalone Eaters?”
Saxon and Billy could only look at each other till they heard the wheels
rattle away.
“Well, I'll be doggoned,” Billy let out. “He's some boy, that. Nothing
stuck up about him. Just like Jim Hazard, comes along and makes himself
at home, you're as good as he is an' he's as good as you, an' we're all
friends together, just like that, right off the bat.”
“He's old stock, too,” Saxon said. “He told me while you were
undressing. His folks came by Panama before the railroad was built, and
from what he said I guess he's got plenty of money.”
“He sure don't act like it.”
“And isn't he full of fun!” Saxon cried.
“A regular josher. An' HIM!--a POET!”
“Oh, I don't know, Billy. I've heard that plenty of poets are odd.”
“That's right, come to think of it. There's Joaquin Miller, lives out
in the hills back of Fruitvale. He's certainly odd. It's right near
his place where I proposed to you. Just the same I thought poets wore
whiskers and eyeglasses, an' never tripped up foot-racers at Sunday
picnics, nor run around with as few clothes on as the law allows,
gatherin' mussels an' climbin' like goats.”
That night, under the blankets, Saxon lay awake, looking at the stars,
pleasuring in the balmy thicket-scents, and listening to the dull rumble
of the outer surf and the whispering ripples on the sheltered beach a
few feet away. Billy stirred, and she knew he was not yet asleep.
“Glad you left Oakland, Billy?” she snuggled.
“Huh!” came his answer. “Is a clam happy?”