“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 ben 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 was 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 merchant 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,” Gunston 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 ends. How he does it is beyond me, but
he knows the market better than we commission merchants.
“Then, again, he's patient but not stubborn. Suppose he does make a
mistake, and gets in a crop, and then finds the market is wrong. In such
a situation the white man gets stubborn and hangs on like a bulldog. But
not the Chink. He's going to minimize the losses of that mistake. That
land has got to work, and make money. Without a quiver or a regret, the
moment he's learned his error, he puts his plows into that crop, turns
it under, and plants something else. He has the savve. He can look at a
sprout, just poked up out of the ground, and tell how it's going to turn
out--whether it will head up or won't head up; or if it's going to head
up good, medium, or bad. That's one end. Take the other end. He controls
his crop. He forces it or holds it back with an eye on the market. And
when the market is just right, there's his crop, ready to deliver, timed
to the minute.”
The conversation with Gunston lasted hours, and the more he talked of
the Chinese and their farming ways the more Saxon became aware of a
growing dissatisfaction. She did not question the facts. The trouble was
that they were not alluring. Somehow, she could not find place for them
in her valley of the moon. It was not until the genial Jew left the
train that Billy gave definite statement to what was vaguely bothering
her.
“Huh! We ain't Chinks. We're white folks. Does a Chink ever want to ride
a horse, hell-bent for election an' havin' a good time of it? Did you
ever see a Chink go swimmin' out through the breakers at Carmel?--or
boxin', wrestlin', runnin' an' jumpin' for the sport of it? Did you ever
see a Chink take a shotgun on his arm, tramp six miles, an' come back
happy with one measly rabbit? What does a Chink do? Work his damned head
off. That's all he's good for. To hell with work, if that's the whole
of the game--an' I've done my share of work, an' I can work alongside of
any of 'em. But what's the good? If they's one thing I've learned solid
since you an' me hit the road, Saxon, it is that work's the least part
of life. God!--if it was all of life I couldn't cut my throat quick
enough to get away from it. I want shotguns an' rifles, an' a horse
between my legs. I don't want to be so tired all the time I can't love
my wife. Who wants to be rich an' clear two hundred an' forty thousand
on a potato deal! Look at Rockefeller. Has to live on milk. I want
porterhouse and a stomach that can bite sole-leather. An' I want you,
an' plenty of time along with you, an' fun for both of us. What's the
good of life if they ain't no fun?”
“Oh, Billy!” Saxon cried. “It's just what I've been trying to get
straightened out in my head. It's been worrying me for ever so long. I
was afraid there was something wrong with me--that I wasn't made for
the country after all. All the time I didn't envy the San Leandro
Portuguese. I didn't want to be one, nor a Pajaro Valley Dalmatian, nor
even a Mrs. Mortimer. And you didn't either. What we want is a valley
of the moon, with not too much work, and all the fun we want. And we'll
just keep on looking until we find it. And if we don't find it, we'll
go on having the fun just as we have ever since we left Oakland. And,
Billy... we're never, never going to work our damned heads off, are we?”
“Not on your life,” Billy growled in fierce affirmation.
They walked into Black Diamond with their packs on their backs. It was a
scattered village of shabby little cottages, with a main street that
was a wallow of black mud from the last late spring rain. The sidewalks
bumped up and down in uneven steps and landings. Everything seemed
un-American. The names on the strange dingy shops were unspeakably
foreign. The one dingy hotel was run by a Greek. Greeks were
everywhere--swarthy men in sea-boots and tam-o'-shanters, hatless
women in bright colors, hordes of sturdy children, and all speaking in
outlandish voices, crying shrilly and vivaciously with the volubility of
the Mediterranean.
“Huh!--this ain't the United States,” Billy muttered. Down on the water
front they found a fish cannery and an asparagus cannery in the height
of the busy season, where they looked in vain among the toilers for
familiar American faces. Billy picked out the bookkeepers and foremen
for Americans. All the rest were Greeks, Italians, and Chinese.
At the steamboat wharf, they watched the bright-painted Greek boats
arriving, discharging their loads of glorious salmon, and departing. New
York Cut-Off, as the slough was called, curved to the west and north and
flowed into a vast body of water which was the united Sacramento and San
Joaquin rivers.
Beyond the steamboat wharf, the fishing wharves dwindled to stages for
the drying of nets; and here, away from the noise and clatter of the
alien town, Saxon and Billy took off their packs and rested. The tall,
rustling tules grew out of the deep water close to the dilapidated
boat-landing where they sat. Opposite the town lay a long flat island,
on which a row of ragged poplars leaned against the sky.
“Just like in that Dutch windmill picture Mark Hall has,” Saxon said.
Billy pointed out the mouth of the slough and across the broad reach
of water to a cluster of tiny white buildings, behind which, like a
glimmering mirage, rolled the low Montezuma Hills.
“Those houses is Collinsville,” he informed her. “The Sacramento river
comes in there, and you go up it to Rio Vista an' Isleton, and Walnut
Grove, and all those places Mr. Gunston was tellin' us about. It's
all islands and sloughs, connectin' clear across an' back to the San
Joaquin.”
“Isn't the sun good,” Saxon yawned. “And how quiet it is here, so short
a distance away from those strange foreigners. And to think! in the
cities, right now, men are beating and killing each other for jobs.”
Now and again an overland passenger train rushed by in the distance,
echoing along the background of foothills of Mt. Diablo, which bulked,
twin-peaked, greencrinkled, against the sky. Then the slumbrous quiet
would fall, to be broken by the far call of a foreign tongue or by a
gasoline fishing boat chugging in through the mouth of the slough.
Not a hundred feet away, anchored close in the tules, lay a beautiful
white yacht. Despite its tininess, it looked broad and comfortable.
Smoke was rising for'ard from its stovepipe. On its stern, in gold
letters, they read Roamer. On top of the cabin, basking in the sunshine,
lay a man and woman, the latter with a pink scarf around her head. The
man was reading aloud from a book, while she sewed. Beside them sprawled
a fox terrier.
“Gosh! they don't have to stick around cities to be happy,” Billy
commented.
A Japanese came on deck from the cabin, sat down for'ard, and began
picking a chicken. The feathers floated away in a long line toward the
mouth of the slough.
“Oh! Look!” Saxon pointed in her excitement. “He's fishing! And the line
is fast to his toe!”
The man had dropped the book face-downward on the cabin and reached for
the line, while the woman looked up from her sewing, and the terrier
began to bark. In came the line, hand under hand, and at the end a
big catfish. When this was removed, and the line rebaited and dropped
overboard, the man took a turn around his toe and went on reading.
A Japanese came down on the landing-stage beside Saxon and Billy, and
hailed the yacht. He carried parcels of meat and vegetables; one coat
pocket bulged with letters, the other with morning papers. In response
to his hail, the Japanese on the yacht stood up with the part-plucked
chicken. The man said something to him, put aside the book, got into the
white skiff lying astern, and rowed to the landing. As he came alongside
the stage, he pulled in his oars, caught hold, and said good morning
genially.
“Why, I know you,” Saxon said impulsively, to Billy's amazement. “You
are.. ..”
Here she broke off in confusion.
“Go on,” the man said, smiling reassurance.
“You are Jack Hastings, I 'm sure of it. I used to see your photograph
in the papers all the time you were war correspondent in the
Japanese-Russian War. You've written lots of books, though I've never
read them.”
“Right you are,” he ratified. “And what's your name?”
Saxon introduced herself and Billy, and, when she noted the writer's
observant eye on their packs, she sketched the pilgrimage they were
on. The farm in the valley of the moon evidently caught his fancy, and,
though the Japanese and his parcels were safely in the skiff, Hastings
still lingered. When Saxon spoke of Carmel, he seemed to know everybody
in Hall's crowd, and when he heard they were intending to go to Rio
Vista, his invitation was immediate.
“Why, we're going that way ourselves, inside an hour, as soon as slack
water comes,” he exclaimed. “It's just the thing. Come on on board.
We'll be there by four this afternoon if there's any wind at all. Come
on. My wife's on board, and Mrs. Hall is one of her best chums. We've
been away to South America--just got back; or you'd have seen us in
Carmel. Hal wrote to us about the pair of you.”
It was the second time in her life that Saxon had been in a small boat,
and the Roamer was the first yacht she had ever been on board. The
writer's wife, whom he called Clara, welcomed them heartily, and Saxon
lost no time in falling in love with her and in being fallen in love
with in return. So strikingly did they resemble each other, that
Hastings was not many minutes in calling attention to it. He made them
stand side by side, studied their eyes and mouths and ears, compared
their hands, their hair, their ankles, and swore that his fondest
dream was shattered--namely, that when Clara had been made the mold was
broken.
On Clara's suggestion that it might have been pretty much the same mold,
they compared histories. Both were of the pioneer stock. Clara's mother,
like Saxon's, had crossed the Plains with ox-teams, and, like Saxon's,
had wintered in Salt Intake City--in fact, had, with her sisters, opened
the first Gentile school in that Mormon stronghold. And, if Saxon's
father had helped raise the Bear Flag rebellion at Sonoma, it was at
Sonoma that Clara's father had mustered in for the War of the Rebellion
and ridden as far east with his troop as Salt Lake City, of which
place he had been provost marshal when the Mormon trouble flared up.
To complete it all, Clara fetched from the cabin an ukulele of boa wood
that was the twin to Saxon's, and together they sang “Honolulu Tomboy.”
Hastings decided to eat dinner--he called the midday meal by its
old-fashioned name--before sailing; and down below Saxon was surprised
and delighted by the measure of comfort in so tiny a cabin. There was
just room for Billy to stand upright. A centerboard-case divided the
room in half longitudinally, and to this was attached the hinged
table from which they ate. Low bunks that ran the full cabin length,
upholstered in cheerful green, served as seats. A curtain, easily
attached by hooks between the centerboard-case and the roof, at night
screened Mrs. Hastings' sleeping quarters. On the opposite side the two
Japanese bunked, while for'ard, under the deck, was the galley. So
small was it that there was just room beside it for the cook, who was
compelled by the low deck to squat on his hands. The other Japanese, who
had brought the parcels on board, waited on the table.
“They are looking for a ranch in the valley of the moon,” Hastings
concluded his explanation of the pilgrimage to Clara.
“Oh!--don't you know--” she cried; but was silenced by her husband.
“Hush,” he said peremptorily, then turned to their guests. “Listen.
There's something in that valley of the moon idea, but I won't tell you
what. It is a secret. Now we've a ranch in Sonoma Valley about eight
miles from the very town of Sonoma where you two girls' fathers took up
soldiering; and if you ever come to our ranch you'll learn the secret.
Oh, believe me, it's connected with your valley of the moon.--Isn't it,
Mate?”
This last was the mutual name he and Clara had for each other.
She smiled and laughed and nodded her head.
“You might find our valley the very one you are looking for,” she said.
But Hastings shook his head at her to check further speech. She turned
to the fox terrier and made it speak for a piece of meat.
“Her name's Peggy,” she told Saxon. “We had two Irish terriers down in
the South Seas, brother and sister, but they died. We called them Peggy
and Possum. So she's named after the original Peggy.”
Billy was impressed by the ease with which the Roamer was operated.
While they lingered at table, at a word from Hastings the two Japanese
had gone on deck. Billy could hear them throwing down the halyards,
casting off gaskets, and heaving the anchor short on the tiny winch. In
several minutes one called down that everything was ready, and all went
on deck. Hoisting mainsail and jigger was a matter of minutes. Then
the cook and cabin-boy broke out anchor, and, while one hove it up, the
other hoisted the jib. Hastings, at the wheel, trimmed the sheet. The
Roamer paid off, filled her sails, slightly heeling, and slid across the
smooth water and out the mouth of New York Slough. The Japanese coiled
the halyards and went below for their own dinner.
“The flood is just beginning to make,” said Hastings, pointing to a
striped spar-buoy that was slightly tipping up-stream on the edge of the
channel.
The tiny white houses of Collinsville, which they were nearing,
disappeared behind a low island, though the Montezuma Hills, with their
long, low, restful lines, slumbered on the horizon apparently as far
away as ever.
As the Roamer passed the mouth of Montezuma Slough and entered the
Sacramento, they came upon Collinsville close at hand. Saxon clapped her
hands.
“It's like a lot of toy houses,” she said, “cut out of cardboard. And
those hilly fields are just painted up behind.”
They passed many arks and houseboats of fishermen moored among the
tules, and the women and children, like the men in the boats, were
dark-skinned, black-eyed, foreign. As they proceeded up the river, they
began to encounter dredges at work, biting out mouthfuls of the sandy
river bottom and heaping it on top of the huge levees. Great mats of
willow brush, hundreds of yards in length, were laid on top of the
river-slope of the levees and held in place by steel cables and
thousands of cubes of cement. The willows soon sprouted, Hastings told
them, and by the time the mats were rotted away the sand was held in
place by the roots of the trees.
“It must cost like Sam Hill,” Billy observed.
“But the land is worth it,” Hastings explained. “This island land is
the most productive in the world. This section of California is like
Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on
is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky
boats--calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. But
it pays. It pays.”
Except for the dredgers, the fresh-piled sand, the dense willow
thickets, and always Mt. Diablo to the south, nothing was to be seen.
Occasionally a river steamboat passed, and blue herons flew into the
trees.
“It must be very lonely,” Saxon remarked.
Hastings laughed and told her she would change her mind later. Much
he related to them of the river lands, and after a while he got on the
subject of tenant farming. Saxon had started him by speaking of the
land-hungry Anglo-Saxons.
“Land-hogs,” he snapped. “That's our record in this country. As one old
Reuben told a professor of an agricultural experiment station: 'They
ain't no sense in tryin' to teach me farmin'. I know all about it. Ain't
I worked out three farms?' It was his kind that destroyed New England.
Back there great sections are relapsing to wilderness. In one state,
at least, the deer have increased until they are a nuisance. There are
abandoned farms by the tens of thousands. I've gone over the lists of
them--farms in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut.
Offered for sale on easy payment. The prices asked wouldn't pay for the
improvements, while the land, of course, is thrown in for nothing.
“And the same thing is going on, in one way or another, the same
land-robbing and hogging, over the rest of the country--down in Texas,
in Missouri, and Kansas, out here in California. Take tenant farming.
I know a ranch in my county where the land was worth a hundred and
twenty-five an acre. And it gave its return at that valuation. When the
old man died, the son leased it to a Portuguese and went to live in the
city. In five years the Portuguese skimmed the cream and dried up the
udder. The second lease, with another Portuguese for three years, gave
one-quarter the former return. No third Portuguese appeared to offer
to lease it. There wasn't anything left. That ranch was worth fifty
thousand when the old man died. In the end the son got eleven thousand
for it. Why, I've seen land that paid twelve per cent., that, after the
skimming of a five-years' lease, paid only one and a quarter per cent.”
“It's the same in our valley,” Mrs. Hastings supplemented. “All the old
farms are dropping into ruin. Take the Ebell Place, Mate.” Her husband
nodded emphatic indorsement. “When we used to know it, it was a perfect
paradise of a farm. There were dams and lakes, beautiful meadows, lush
hayfields, red hills of grape-lands, hundreds of acres of good pasture,
heavenly groves of pines and oaks, a stone winery, stone barns,
grounds--oh, I couldn't describe it in hours. When Mrs. Bell died, the
family scattered, and the leasing began. It's a ruin to-day. The trees
have been cut and sold for firewood. There's only a little bit of the
vineyard that isn't abandoned--just enough to make wine for the present
Italian lessees, who are running a poverty-stricken milk ranch on the
leavings of the soil. I rode over it last year, and cried. The beautiful
orchard is a horror. The grounds have gone back to the wild. Just
because they didn't keep the gutters cleaned out, the rain trickled down
and dry-rotted the timbers, and the big stone barn is caved in. The same
with part of the winery--the other part is used for stabling the cows.
And the house!--words can't describe!”
“It's become a profession,” Hastings went on. “The 'movers.' They lease,
clean out and gut a place in several years, and then move on. They're
not like the foreigners, the Chinese, and Japanese, and the rest. In the
main they're a lazy, vagabond, poor-white sort, who do nothing else but
skin the soil and move, skin the soil and move. Now take the Portuguese
and Italians in our country. They are different. They arrive in the
country without a penny and work for others of their countrymen until
they've learned the language and their way about. Now they're not
movers. What they are after is land of their own, which they will love
and care for and conserve. But, in the meantime, how to get it? Saving
wages is slow. There is a quicker way. They lease. In three years they
can gut enough out of somebody else's land to set themselves up for
life. It is sacrilege, a veritable rape of the land; but what of it?
It's the way of the United States.”
He turned suddenly on Billy.
“Look here, Roberts. You and your wife are looking for your bit of land.
You want it bad. Now take my advice. It's cold, hard advice. Become a
tenant farmer. Lease some place, where the old folks have died and the
country isn't good enough for the sons and daughters. Then gut it. Wring
the last dollar out of the soil, repair nothing, and in three years
you'll have your own place paid for. Then turn over a new leaf, and love
your soil. Nourish it. Every dollar you feed it will return you two.
And have nothing scrub about the place. If it's a horse, a cow, a pig,
a chicken, or a blackberry vine, see that it's thoroughbred.”
“But it's wicked!” Saxon wrung out. “It's wicked advice.”
“We live in a wicked age,” Hastings countered, smiling grimly. “This
wholesale land-skinning is the national crime of the United States
to-day. Nor would I give your husband such advice if I weren't
absolutely certain that the land he skins would be skinned by some
Portuguese or Italian if he refused. As fast as they arrive and settle
down, they send for their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. If
you were thirsty, if a warehouse were burning and beautiful Rhine wine
were running to waste, would you stay your hand from scooping a drink?
Well, the national warehouse is afire in many places, and no end of
the good things are running to waste. Help yourself. If you don't, the
immigrants will.”
“Oh, you don't know him,” Mrs. Hastings hurried to explain. “He spends
all his time on the ranch in conserving the soil. There are over a
thousand acres of woods alone, and, though he thins and forests like
a surgeon, he won't let a tree be chopped without his permission. He's
even planted a hundred thousand trees. He's always draining and ditching
to stop erosion, and experimenting with pasture grasses. And every
little while he buys some exhausted adjoining ranch and starts building
up the soil.”
“Wherefore I know what I 'm talking about,” Hastings broke in. “And my
advice holds. I love the soil, yet to-morrow, things being as they
are and if I were poor, I'd gut five hundred acres in order to buy
twenty-five for myself. When you get into Sonoma Valley, look me up,
and I'll put you onto the whole game, and both ends of it. I'll show you
construction as well as destruction. When you find a farm doomed to be
gutted anyway, why jump in and do it yourself.”
“Yes, and he mortgaged himself to the eyes,” laughed Mrs. Hastings,
“to keep five hundred acres of woods out of the hands of the charcoal
burners.”
Ahead, on the left bank of the Sacramento, just at the fading end of
the Montezuma Hills, Rio Vista appeared. The Roamer slipped through the
smooth water, past steamboat wharves, landing stages, and warehouses.
The two Japanese went for'ard on deck. At command of Hastings, the jib
ran down, and he shot the Roomer into the wind, losing way, until he
called, “Let go the hook!” The anchor went down, and the yacht swung to
it, so close to shore that the skiff lay under overhanging willows.
“Farther up the river we tie to the bank,” Mrs. Hastings said, “so that
when you wake in the morning you find the branches of trees sticking
down into the cabin.”
“Ooh!” Saxon murmured, pointing to a lump on her wrist. “Look at that. A
mosquito.”
“Pretty early for them,” Hastings said. “But later on they're terrible.
I've seen them so thick I couldn't back the jib against them.”
Saxon was not nautical enough to appreciate his hyperbole, though Billy
grinned.
“There are no mosquitoes in the valley of the moon,” she said.
“No, never,” said Mrs. Hastings, whose husband began immediately to
regret the smallness of the cabin which prevented him from offering
sleeping accommodations.
An automobile bumped along on top of the levee, and the young boys and
girls in it cried, “Oh, you kid!” to Saxon and Billy, and Hastings, who
was rowing them ashore in the skiff. Hastings called, “Oh, you kid!”
back to them; and Saxon, pleasuring in the boyishness of his sunburned
face, was reminded of the boyishness of Mark Hall and his Carmel crowd.