It was on a bright June morning that Billy told Saxon to put on her
riding clothes to try out a saddle-horse.
“Not until after ten o'clock,” she said. “By that time I'll have the
wagon off on a second trip.”
Despite the extent of the business she had developed, her executive
ability and system gave her much spare time. She could call on the
Hales, which was ever a delight, especially now that the Hastings
were back and that Clara was often at her aunt's. In this congenial
atmosphere Saxon burgeoned. She had begun to read--to read with
understanding; and she had time for her books, for work on her pretties,
and for Billy, whom she accompanied on many expeditions.
Billy was even busier than she, his work being more scattered and
diverse. And, as well, he kept his eye on the home barn and horses
which Saxon used. In truth he had become a man of affairs, though Mrs.
Mortimer had gone over his accounts, with an eagle eye on the expense
column, discovering several minor leaks, and finally, aided by Saxon,
bullied him into keeping books. Each night, after supper, he and Saxon
posted their books. Afterward, in the big morris chair he had insisted
on buying early in the days of his brickyard contract, Saxon would creep
into his arms and strum on the ukulele; or they would talk long about
what they were doing and planning to do. Now it would be:
“I'm mixin' up in politics, Saxon. It pays. You bet it pays. If by next
spring I ain't got a half a dozen teams workin' on the roads an' pullin'
down the county money, it's me back to Oakland an' askin' the Boss for a
job.”
Or, Saxon: “They're really starting that new hotel between Caliente and
Eldridge. And there's some talk of a big sanitarium back in the hills.”
Or, it would be: “Billy, now that you've piped that acre, you've just
got to let me have it for my vegetables. I'll rent it from you. I'll
take your own estimate for all the alfalfa you can raise on it, and pay
you full market price less the cost of growing it.”
“It's all right, take it.” Billy suppressed a sigh. “Besides, I 'm too
busy to fool with it now.”
Which prevarication was bare-faced, by virtue of his having just
installed the ram and piped the land.
“It will be the wisest, Billy,” she soothed, for she knew his dream of
land-spaciousness was stronger than ever. “You don't want to fool with
an acre. There's that hundred and forty. We'll buy it yet if old Chavon
ever dies. Besides, it really belongs to Madrono Ranch. The two together
were the original quarter section.”
“I don't wish no man's death,” Billy grumbled. “But he ain't gettin'
no good out of it, over-pasturin' it with a lot of scrub animals. I've
sized it up every inch of it. They's at least forty acres in the three
cleared fields, with water in the hills behind to beat the band. The
horse feed I could raise on it'd take your breath away. Then they's at
least fifty acres I could run my brood mares on, pasture mixed up with
trees and steep places and such. The other fifty's just thick woods, an'
pretty places, an' wild game. An' that old adobe barn's all right. With
a new roof it'd shelter any amount of animals in bad weather. Look at me
now, rentin' that measly pasture back of Ping's just to run my restin'
animals. They could run in the hundred an' forty if I only had it. I
wonder if Chavon would lease it.”
Or, less ambitious, Billy would say: “I gotta skin over to Petaluma
to-morrow, Saxon. They's an auction on the Atkinson Ranch an' maybe I
can pick up some bargains.”
“More horses!”
“Ain't I got two teams haulin' lumber for the new winery? An' Barney's
got a bad shoulder-sprain. He'll have to lay off a long time if he's to
get it in shape. An' Bridget ain't ever goin' to do a tap of work again.
I can see that stickin' out. I've doctored her an' doctored her. She's
fooled the vet, too. An' some of the other horses has gotta take a rest.
That span of grays is showin' the hard work. An' the big roan's goin'
loco. Everybody thought it was his teeth, but it ain't. It's straight
loco. It's money in pocket to take care of your animals, an' horses is
the delicatest things on four legs. Some time, if I can ever see my way
to it, I 'm goin' to ship a carload of mules from Colusa County--big,
heavy ones, you know. They'd sell like hot cakes in the valley
here--them I didn't want for myself.”
Or, in lighter vein, Billy: “By the way, Saxon, talkin' of accounts,
what d'you think Hazel an' Hattie is worth?--fair market price?”
“Why?”
“I 'm askin' you.”
“Well, say, what you paid for them--three hundred dollars.”
“Hum.” Billy considered deeply. “They're worth a whole lot more, but let
it go at that. An' now, gettin' back to accounts, suppose you write me a
check for three hundred dollars.”
“Oh! Robber!”
“You can't show me. Why, Saxon, when I let you have grain an' hay from
my carloads, don't you give me a check for it? An' you know how you're
stuck on keepin' your accounts down to the penny,” he teased. “If you're
any kind of a business woman you just gotta charge your business with
them two horses. I ain't had the use of 'em since I don't know when.”
“But the colts will be yours,” she argued. “Besides, I can't afford
brood mares in my business. In almost no time, now, Hazel and Hattie
will have to be taken off from the wagon--they're too good for it
anyway. And you keep your eyes open for a pair to take their place. I'll
give you a check for THAT pair, but no commission.”
“All right,” Billy conceded. “Hazel an' Hattie come back to me; but you
can pay me rent for the time you did use 'em.”
“If you make me, I'll charge you board,” she threatened.
“An' if you charge me board, I'll charge you interest for the money I've
stuck into this shebang.”
“You can't,” Saxon laughed. “It's community property.”
He grunted spasmodically, as if the breath had been knocked out of him.
“Straight on the solar plexus,” he said, “an' me down for the count. But
say, them's sweet words, ain't they--community property.” He rolled them
over and off his tongue with keen relish. “An' when we got married
the top of our ambition was a steady job an' some rags an' sticks
of furniture all paid up an' half-worn out. We wouldn't have had any
community property only for you.”
“What nonsense! What could I have done by myself? You know very well
that you earned all the money that started us here. You paid the wages
of Gow Yum and Chan Chi, and old Hughie, and Mrs. Paul, and--why, you've
done it all.”
She drew her two hands caressingly across his shoulders and down along
his great biceps muscles.
“That's what did it, Billy.”
“Aw hell! It's your head that done it. What was my muscles good for with
no head to run 'em,--sluggin' scabs, beatin' up lodgers, an' crookin'
the elbow over a bar. The only sensible thing my head ever done was when
it run me into you. Honest to God, Saxon, you've been the makin' of me.”
“Aw hell, Billy,” she mimicked in the way that delighted him, “where
would I have been if you hadn't taken me out of the laundry? I couldn't
take myself out. I was just a helpless girl. I'd have been there yet if
it hadn't been for you. Mrs. Mortimer had five thousand dollars; but I
had you.”
“A woman ain't got the chance to help herself that a man has,” he
generalized. “I'll tell you what: It took the two of us. It's been
team-work. We've run in span. If we'd a-run single, you might still be
in the laundry; an', if I was lucky, I'd be still drivin' team by the
day an' sportin' around to cheap dances.”
Saxon stood under the father of all madronos, watching Hazel and Hattie
go out the gate, the full vegetable wagon behind them, when she saw
Billy ride in, leading a sorrel mare from whose silken coat the sun
flashed golden lights.
“Four-year-old, high-life, a handful, but no vicious tricks,” Billy
chanted, as he stopped beside Saxon. “Skin like tissue paper, mouth like
silk, but kill the toughest broncho ever foaled--look at them lungs an'
nostrils. They call her Ramona--some Spanish name: sired by Morellita
outa genuine Morgan stock.”
“And they will sell her?” Saxon gasped, standing with hands clasped in
inarticulate delight.
“That's what I brought her to show you for.”
“But how much must they want for her?” was Saxon's next question, so
impossible did it seem that such an amazement of horse-flesh could ever
be hers.
“That ain't your business,” Billy answered brusquely. “The brickyard's
payin' for her, not the vegetable ranch. She's yourn at the word. What
d'ye say?”
“I'll tell you in a minute.”
Saxon was trying to mount, but the animal danced nervously away.
“Hold on till I tie,” Billy said. “She ain't skirt-broke, that's the
trouble.”
Saxon tightly gripped reins and mane, stepped with spurred foot on
Billy's hand, and was lifted lightly into the saddle.
“She's used to spurs,” Billy called after. “Spanish broke, so don't
check her quick. Come in gentle. An' talk to her. She's high-life, you
know.”
Saxon nodded, dashed out the gate and down the road, waved a hand to
Clara Hastings as she passed the gate of Trillium Covert, and continued
up Wild Water canyon.
When she came back, Ramona in a pleasant lather, Saxon rode to the rear
of the house, past the chicken houses and the flourishing berry-rows,
to join Billy on the rim of the bench, where he sat on his horse in the
shade, smoking a cigarette. Together they looked down through an
opening among the trees to the meadow which was a meadow no longer. With
mathematical accuracy it was divided into squares, oblongs, and narrow
strips, which displayed sharply the thousand hues of green of a truck
garden. Gow Yum and Chan Chi, under enormous Chinese grass hats, were
planting green onions. Old Hughie, hoe in hand, plodded along the main
artery of running water, opening certain laterals, closing others. From
the work-shed beyond the barn the strokes of a hammer told Saxon that
Carlsen was wire-binding vegetable boxes. Mrs. Paul's cheery soprano,
lifted in a hymn, floated through the trees, accompanied by the whirr of
an egg-beater. A sharp barking told where Possum still waged hysterical
and baffled war on the Douglass squirrels. Billy took a long draw from
his cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and continued to look down at the
meadow. Saxon divined trouble in his manner. His rein-hand was on the
pommel, and her free hand went out and softly rested on his. Billy
turned his slow gaze upon her mare's lather, seeming not to note it, and
continued on to Saxon's face.
“Huh!” he equivocated, as if waking up. “Them San Leandro Porchugeeze
ain't got nothin' on us when it comes to intensive farmin'. Look at that
water runnin'. You know, it seems so good to me that sometimes I just
wanta get down on hands an' knees an' lap it all up myself.”
“Oh, to have all the water you want in a climate like this!” Saxon
exclaimed.
“An' don't be scared of it ever goin' back on you. If the rains fooled
you, there's Sonoma Creek alongside. All we gotta do is install a
gasolene pump.”
“But we'll never have to, Billy. I was talking with 'Redwood' Thompson.
He's lived in the valley since Fifty-three, and he says there's never
been a failure of crops on account of drought. We always get our rain.”
“Come on, let's go for a ride,” he said abruptly. “You've got the time.”
“All right, if you'll tell me what's bothering you.”
He looked at her quickly.
“Nothin',” he grunted. “Yes, there is, too. What's the difference? You'd
know it sooner or later. You ought to see old Chavon. His face is that
long he can't walk without bumpin' his knee on his chin. His gold-mine's
peterin' out.”
“Gold mine!”
“His clay pit. It's the same thing. He's gettin' twenty cents a yard for
it from the brickyard.”
“And that means the end of your teaming contract.” Saxon saw the
disaster in all its hugeness. “What about the brickyard people?”
“Worried to death, though they've kept secret about it. They've had men
out punchin' holes all over the hills for a week, an' that Jap chemist
settin' up nights analyzin' the rubbish they've brought in. It's
peculiar stuff, that clay, for what they want it for, an' you don't find
it everywhere. Them experts that reported on Chavon's pit made one
hell of a mistake. Maybe they was lazy with their borin's. Anyway,
they slipped up on the amount of clay they was in it. Now don't get to
botherin'. It'd come out somehow. You can't do nothin'.”
“But I can,” Saxon insisted. “We won't buy Ramona.”
“You ain't got a thing to do with that,” he answered. “I 'm buyin' her,
an' her price don't cut any figure alongside the big game I 'm playin'.
Of course, I can always sell my horses. But that puts a stop to their
makin' money, an' that brickyard contract was fat.”
“But if you get some of them in on the road work for the county?” she
suggested.
“Oh, I got that in mind. An' I 'm keepin' my eyes open. They's a chance
the quarry will start again, an' the fellow that did that teamin' has
gone to Puget Sound. An' what if I have to sell out most of the horses?
Here's you and the vegetable business. That's solid. We just don't go
ahead so fast for a time, that's all. I ain't scared of the country any
more. I sized things up as we went along. They ain't a jerk burg we hit
all the time on the road that I couldn't jump into an' make a go. An'
now where d'you want to ride?”