Daylight had made no assertion of total abstinence though he had not
taken a drink for months after the day he resolved to let his business
go to smash. Soon he proved himself strong enough to dare to take a
drink without taking a second. On the other hand, with his coming to
live in the country, had passed all desire and need for drink. He felt
no yearning for it, and even forgot that it existed. Yet he refused to
be afraid of it, and in town, on occasion, when invited by the
storekeeper, would reply: "All right, son. If my taking a drink will
make you happy here goes. Whiskey for mine."
But such a drink began no desire for a second. It made no impression.
He was too profoundly strong to be affected by a thimbleful. As he had
prophesied to Dede, Burning Daylight, the city financier, had died a
quick death on the ranch, and his younger brother, the Daylight from
Alaska, had taken his place. The threatened inundation of fat had
subsided, and all his old-time Indian leanness and of muscle had
returned. So, likewise, did the old slight hollows in his cheeks come
back. For him they indicated the pink of physical condition. He became
the acknowledged strong man of Sonoma Valley, the heaviest lifter and
hardest winded among a husky race of farmer folk. And once a year he
celebrated his birthday in the old-fashioned frontier way, challenging
all the valley to come up the hill to the ranch and be put on its back.
And a fair portion of the valley responded, brought the women-folk and
children along, and picnicked for the day.
At first, when in need of ready cash, he had followed Ferguson's
example of working at day's labor; but he was not long in gravitating
to a form of work that was more stimulating and more satisfying, and
that allowed him even more time for Dede and the ranch and the
perpetual riding through the hills. Having been challenged by the
blacksmith, in a spirit of banter, to attempt the breaking of a certain
incorrigible colt, he succeeded so signally as to earn quite a
reputation as a horse-breaker. And soon he was able to earn whatever
money he desired at this, to him, agreeable work.
A sugar king, whose breeding farm and training stables were at
Caliente, three miles away, sent for him in time of need, and, before
the year was out, offered him the management of the stables. But
Daylight smiled and shook his head. Furthermore, he refused to
undertake the breaking of as many animals as were offered. "I'm sure
not going to die from overwork," he assured Dede; and he accepted such
work only when he had to have money. Later, he fenced off a small run
in the pasture, where, from time to time, he took in a limited number
of incorrigibles.
"We've got the ranch and each other," he told his wife, "and I'd sooner
ride with you to Hood Mountain any day than earn forty dollars. You
can't buy sunsets, and loving wives, and cool spring water, and such
folderols, with forty dollars; and forty million dollars can't buy back
for me one day that I didn't ride with you to Hood Mountain."
His life was eminently wholesome and natural. Early to bed, he slept
like an infant and was up with the dawn. Always with something to do,
and with a thousand little things that enticed but did not clamor, he
was himself never overdone. Nevertheless, there were times when both
he and Dede were not above confessing tiredness at bedtime after
seventy or eighty miles in the saddle.
Sometimes, when he had accumulated a little money, and when the season
favored, they would mount their horses, with saddle-bags behind, and
ride away over the wall of the valley and down into the other valleys.
When night fell, they put up at the first convenient farm or village,
and on the morrow they would ride on, without definite plan, merely
continuing to ride on, day after day, until their money gave out and
they were compelled to return. On such trips they would be gone
anywhere from a week to ten days or two weeks, and once they managed a
three weeks' trip.
They even planned ambitiously some day when they were disgracefully
prosperous, to ride all the way up to Daylight's boyhood home in
Eastern Oregon, stopping on the way at Dede's girlhood home in
Siskiyou. And all the joys of anticipation were theirs a thousand
times as they contemplated the detailed delights of this grand
adventure.
One day, stopping to mail a letter at the Glen Ellen post office, they
were hailed by the blacksmith.
"Say, Daylight," he said, "a young fellow named Slosson sends you his
regards. He came through in an auto, on the way to Santa Rosa. He
wanted to know if you didn't live hereabouts, but the crowd with him
was in a hurry. So he sent you his regards and said to tell you he'd
taken your advice and was still going on breaking his own record."
Daylight had long since told Dede of the incident.
"Slosson?" he meditated, "Slosson? That must be the hammer-thrower.
He put my hand down twice, the young scamp." He turned suddenly to
Dede. "Say, it's only twelve miles to Santa Rosa, and the horses are
fresh."
She divined what was in his mind, of which his twinkling eyes and
sheepish, boyish grin gave sufficient advertisement, and she smiled and
nodded acquiescence.
"We'll cut across by Bennett Valley," he said. "It's nearer that way."
There was little difficulty, once in Santa Rosa, of finding Slosson.
He and his party had registered at the Oberlin Hotel, and Daylight
encountered the young hammer-thrower himself in the office.
"Look here, son," Daylight announced, as soon as he had introduced
Dede, "I've come to go you another flutter at that hand game. Here's a
likely place."
Slosson smiled and accepted. The two men faced each other, the elbows
of their right arms on the counter, the hands clasped. Slosson's hand
quickly forced backward and down.
"You're the first man that ever succeeded in doing it," he said. "Let's
try it again."
"Sure," Daylight answered. "And don't forget, son, that you're the
first man that put mine down. That's why I lit out after you to-day."
Again they clasped hands, and again Slosson's hand went down. He was a
broad-shouldered, heavy-muscled young giant, at least half a head
taller than Daylight, and he frankly expressed his chagrin and asked
for a third trial. This time he steeled himself to the effort, and for
a moment the issue was in doubt. With flushed face and set teeth he
met the other's strength till his crackling muscles failed him. The
air exploded sharply from his tensed lungs, as he relaxed in surrender,
and the hand dropped limply down.
"You're too many for me," he confessed. "I only hope you'll keep out
of the hammer-throwing game."
Daylight laughed and shook his head.
"We might compromise, and each stay in his own class. You stick to
hammer-throwing, and I'll go on turning down hands."
But Slosson refused to accept defeat.
"Say," he called out, as Daylight and Dede, astride their horses, were
preparing to depart. "Say--do you mind if I look you up next year?
I'd like to tackle you again."
"Sure, son. You're welcome to a flutter any time. Though I give you
fair warning that you'll have to go some. You'll have to train up, for
I'm ploughing and chopping wood and breaking colts these days."
Now and again, on the way home, Dede could hear her big boy-husband
chuckling gleefully. As they halted their horses on the top of the
divide out of Bennett Valley, in order to watch the sunset, he ranged
alongside and slipped his arm around her waist.
"Little woman," he said, "you're sure responsible for it all. And I
leave it to you, if all the money in creation is worth as much as one
arm like that when it's got a sweet little woman like this to go
around."
For of all his delights in the new life, Dede was his greatest. As he
explained to her more than once, he had been afraid of love all his
life only in the end to come to find it the greatest thing in the
world. Not alone were the two well mated, but in coming to live on the
ranch they had selected the best soil in which their love would
prosper. In spite of her books and music, there was in her a wholesome
simplicity and love of the open and natural, while Daylight, in every
fiber of him, was essentially an open-air man.
Of one thing in Dede, Daylight never got over marveling about, and that
was her efficient hands--the hands that he had first seen taking down
flying shorthand notes and ticking away at the typewriter; the hands
that were firm to hold a magnificent brute like Bob, that wonderfully
flashed over the keys of the piano, that were unhesitant in household
tasks, and that were twin miracles to caress and to run rippling
fingers through his hair. But Daylight was not unduly uxorious. He
lived his man's life just as she lived her woman's life. There was
proper division of labor in the work they individually performed. But
the whole was entwined and woven into a fabric of mutual interest and
consideration. He was as deeply interested in her cooking and her
music as she was in his agricultural adventures in the vegetable
garden. And he, who resolutely declined to die of overwork, saw to it
that she should likewise escape so dire a risk.
In this connection, using his man's judgment and putting his man's foot
down, he refused to allow her to be burdened with the entertaining of
guests. For guests they had, especially in the warm, long summers, and
usually they were her friends from the city, who were put to camp in
tents which they cared for themselves, and where, like true campers,
they had also to cook for themselves. Perhaps only in California,
where everybody knows camp life, would such a program have been
possible. But Daylight's steadfast contention was that his wife should
not become cook, waitress, and chambermaid because she did not happen
to possess a household of servants. On the other hand, chafing-dish
suppers in the big living-room for their camping guests were a common
happening, at which times Daylight allotted them their chores and saw
that they were performed. For one who stopped only for the night it
was different. Likewise it was different with her brother, back from
Germany, and again able to sit a horse. On his vacations he became the
third in the family, and to him was given the building of the fires,
the sweeping, and the washing of the dishes.
Daylight devoted himself to the lightening of Dede's labors, and it was
her brother who incited him to utilize the splendid water-power of the
ranch that was running to waste. It required Daylight's breaking of
extra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a three
weeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Pelting
wheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe and grindstone,
Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph was
when he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a
washing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked and
really washed clothes.
Dede and Ferguson, between them, after a patient struggle, taught
Daylight poetry, so that in the end he might have been often seen,
sitting slack in the saddle and dropping down the mountain trails
through the sun-flecked woods, chanting aloud Kipling's "Tomlinson,"
or, when sharpening his ax, singing into the whirling grindstone
Henley's "Song of the Sword." Not that he ever became consummately
literary in the way his two teachers were. Beyond "Fra Lippo Lippi"
and "Caliban and Setebos," he found nothing in Browning, while George
Meredith was ever his despair. It was of his own initiative, however,
that he invested in a violin, and practised so assiduously that in time
he and Dede beguiled many a happy hour playing together after night had
fallen.
So all went well with this well-mated pair. Time never dragged. There
were always new wonderful mornings and still cool twilights at the end
of day; and ever a thousand interests claimed him, and his interests
were shared by her. More thoroughly than he knew, had he come to a
comprehension of the relativity of things. In this new game he played
he found in little things all the intensities of gratification and
desire that he had found in the frenzied big things when he was a power
and rocked half a continent with the fury of the blows he struck. With
head and hand, at risk of life and limb, to bit and break a wild colt
and win it to the service of man, was to him no less great an
achievement. And this new table on which he played the game was clean.
Neither lying, nor cheating, nor hypocrisy was here. The other game
had made for decay and death, while this new one made for clean
strength and life. And so he was content, with Dede at his side, to
watch the procession of the days and seasons from the farm-house
perched on the canon-lip; to ride through crisp frosty mornings or
under burning summer suns; and to shelter in the big room where blazed
the logs in the fireplace he had built, while outside the world
shuddered and struggled in the storm-clasp of a southeaster.
Once only Dede asked him if he ever regretted, and his answer was to
crush her in his arms and smother her lips with his. His answer, a
minute later, took speech.
"Little woman, even if you did cost thirty millions, you are sure the
cheapest necessity of life I ever indulged in." And then he added,
"Yes, I do have one regret, and a monstrous big one, too. I'd sure
like to have the winning of you all over again. I'd like to go sneaking
around the Piedmont hills looking for you. I'd like to meander into
those rooms of yours at Berkeley for the first time. And there's no
use talking, I'm plumb soaking with regret that I can't put my arms
around you again that time you leaned your head on my breast and cried
in the wind and rain."