But there came the day, one year, in early April, when Dede sat in an
easy chair on the porch, sewing on certain small garments, while
Daylight read aloud to her. It was in the afternoon, and a bright sun
was shining down on a world of new green. Along the irrigation
channels of the vegetable garden streams of water were flowing, and now
and again Daylight broke off from his reading to run out and change the
flow of water. Also, he was teasingly interested in the certain small
garments on which Dede worked, while she was radiantly happy over them,
though at times, when his tender fun was too insistent, she was rosily
confused or affectionately resentful.
From where they sat they could look out over the world. Like the curve
of a skirting blade, the Valley of the Moon stretched before them,
dotted with farm-houses and varied by pasture-lands, hay-fields, and
vineyards. Beyond rose the wall of the valley, every crease and
wrinkle of which Dede and Daylight knew, and at one place, where the
sun struck squarely, the white dump of the abandoned mine burned like a
jewel. In the foreground, in the paddock by the barn, was Mab, full of
pretty anxieties for the early spring foal that staggered about her on
tottery legs. The air shimmered with heat, and altogether it was a
lazy, basking day. Quail whistled to their young from the thicketed
hillside behind the house. There was a gentle cooing of pigeons, and
from the green depths of the big canon arose the sobbing wood note of a
mourning dove. Once, there was a warning chorus from the foraging hens
and a wild rush for cover, as a hawk, high in the blue, cast its
drifting shadow along the ground.
It was this, perhaps, that aroused old hunting memories in Wolf. At any
rate, Dede and Daylight became aware of excitement in the paddock, and
saw harmlessly reenacted a grim old tragedy of the Younger World.
Curiously eager, velvet-footed and silent as a ghost, sliding and
gliding and crouching, the dog that was mere domesticated wolf stalked
the enticing bit of young life that Mab had brought so recently into
the world. And the mare, her own ancient instincts aroused and
quivering, circled ever between the foal and this menace of the wild
young days when all her ancestry had known fear of him and his hunting
brethren. Once, she whirled and tried to kick him, but usually she
strove to strike him with her fore-hoofs, or rushed upon him with open
mouth and ears laid back in an effort to crunch his backbone between
her teeth. And the wolf-dog, with ears flattened down and crouching,
would slide silkily away, only to circle up to the foal from the other
side and give cause to the mare for new alarm. Then Daylight, urged on
by Dede's solicitude, uttered a low threatening cry; and Wolf, drooping
and sagging in all the body of him in token of his instant return to
man's allegiance, slunk off behind the barn.
It was a few minutes later that Daylight, breaking off from his reading
to change the streams of irrigation, found that the water had ceased
flowing. He shouldered a pick and shovel, took a hammer and a
pipe-wrench from the tool-house, and returned to Dede on the porch.
"I reckon I'll have to go down and dig the pipe out," he told her.
"It's that slide that's threatened all winter. I guess she's come down
at last."
"Don't you read ahead, now," he warned, as he passed around the house
and took the trail that led down the wall of the canon.
Halfway down the trail, he came upon the slide. It was a small affair,
only a few tons of earth and crumbling rock; but, starting from fifty
feet above, it had struck the water pipe with force sufficient to break
it at a connection. Before proceeding to work, he glanced up the path
of the slide, and he glanced with the eye of the earth-trained miner.
And he saw what made his eyes startle and cease for the moment from
questing farther.
"Hello," he communed aloud, "look who's here."
His glance moved on up the steep broken surface, and across it from
side to side. Here and there, in places, small twisted manzanitas were
rooted precariously, but in the main, save for weeds and grass, that
portion of the canon was bare. There were signs of a surface that had
shifted often as the rains poured a flow of rich eroded soil from above
over the lip of the canon.
"A true fissure vein, or I never saw one," he proclaimed softly.
And as the old hunting instincts had aroused that day in the wolf-dog,
so in him recrudesced all the old hot desire of gold-hunting. Dropping
the hammer and pipe-wrench, but retaining pick and shovel, he climbed
up the slide to where a vague line of outputting but mostly
soil-covered rock could be seen. It was all but indiscernible, but his
practised eye had sketched the hidden formation which it signified.
Here and there, along this wall of the vein, he attacked the crumbling
rock with the pick and shoveled the encumbering soil away. Several
times he examined this rock. So soft was some of it that he could
break it in his fingers. Shifting a dozen feet higher up, he again
attacked with pick and shovel. And this time, when he rubbed the soil
from a chunk of rock and looked, he straightened up suddenly, gasping
with delight. And then, like a deer at a drinking pool in fear of its
enemies, he flung a quick glance around to see if any eye were gazing
upon him. He grinned at his own foolishness and returned to his
examination of the chunk. A slant of sunlight fell on it, and it was
all aglitter with tiny specks of unmistakable free gold.
"From the grass roots down," he muttered in an awestricken voice, as he
swung his pick into the yielding surface.
He seemed to undergo a transformation. No quart of cocktails had ever
put such a flame in his cheeks nor such a fire in his eyes. As he
worked, he was caught up in the old passion that had ruled most of his
life. A frenzy seized him that markedly increased from moment to
moment. He worked like a madman, till he panted from his exertions and
the sweat dripped from his face to the ground. He quested across the
face of the slide to the opposite wall of the vein and back again.
And, midway, he dug down through the red volcanic earth that had washed
from the disintegrating hill above, until he uncovered quartz, rotten
quartz, that broke and crumbled in his hands and showed to be alive
with free gold.
Sometimes he started small slides of earth that covered up his work and
compelled him to dig again. Once, he was swept fifty feet down the
canon-side; but he floundered and scrambled up again without pausing
for breath. He hit upon quartz that was so rotten that it was almost
like clay, and here the gold was richer than ever. It was a veritable
treasure chamber. For a hundred feet up and down he traced the walls
of the vein. He even climbed over the canon-lip to look along the brow
of the hill for signs of the outcrop. But that could wait, and he
hurried back to his find.
He toiled on in the same mad haste, until exhaustion and an intolerable
ache in his back compelled him to pause. He straightened up with even
a richer piece of gold-laden quartz. Stooping, the sweat from his
forehead had fallen to the ground. It now ran into his eyes, blinding
him. He wiped it from him with the back of his hand and returned to a
scrutiny of the gold.
It would run thirty thousand to the ton, fifty thousand, anything--he
knew that. And as he gazed upon the yellow lure, and panted for air,
and wiped the sweat away, his quick vision leaped and set to work. He
saw the spur-track that must run up from the valley and across the
upland pastures, and he ran the grades and built the bridge that would
span the canon, until it was real before his eyes. Across the canon
was the place for the mill, and there he erected it; and he erected,
also, the endless chain of buckets, suspended from a cable and operated
by gravity, that would carry the ore across the canon to the
quartz-crusher. Likewise, the whole mine grew before him and beneath
him-tunnels, shafts, and galleries, and hoisting plants. The blasts of
the miners were in his ears, and from across the canon he could hear
the roar of the stamps. The hand that held the lump of quartz was
trembling, and there was a tired, nervous palpitation apparently in the
pit of his stomach. It came to him abruptly that what he wanted was a
drink--whiskey, cocktails, anything, a drink. And even then, with this
new hot yearning for the alcohol upon him, he heard, faint and far,
drifting down the green abyss of the canon, Dede's voice, crying:--
"Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here, chick, chick, chick!"
He was astounded at the lapse of time. She had left her sewing on the
porch and was feeding the chickens preparatory to getting supper. The
afternoon was gone. He could not conceive that he had been away that
long.
Again came the call: "Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here,
chick, chick, chick!"
It was the way she always called--first five, and then three. He had
long since noticed it. And from these thoughts of her arose other
thoughts that caused a great fear slowly to grow in his face. For it
seemed to him that he had almost lost her. Not once had he thought of
her in those frenzied hours, and for that much, at least, had she truly
been lost to him.
He dropped the piece of quartz, slid down the slide, and started up the
trail, running heavily. At the edge of the clearing he eased down and
almost crept to a point of vantage whence he could peer out, himself
unseen. She was feeding the chickens, tossing to them handfuls of
grain and laughing at their antics.
The sight of her seemed to relieve the panic fear into which he had
been flung, and he turned and ran back down the trail. Again he
climbed the slide, but this time he climbed higher, carrying the pick
and shovel with him. And again he toiled frenziedly, but this time
with a different purpose. He worked artfully, loosing slide after
slide of the red soil and sending it streaming down and covering up all
he had uncovered, hiding from the light of day the treasure he had
discovered. He even went into the woods and scooped armfuls of last
year's fallen leaves which he scattered over the slide. But this he
gave up as a vain task; and he sent more slides of soil down upon the
scene of his labor, until no sign remained of the out-jutting walls of
the vein.
Next he repaired the broken pipe, gathered his tools together, and
started up the trail. He walked slowly, feeling a great weariness, as
of a man who had passed through a frightful crisis.
He put the tools away, took a great drink of the water that again
flowed through the pipes, and sat down on the bench by the open kitchen
door. Dede was inside, preparing supper, and the sound of her
footsteps gave him a vast content.
He breathed the balmy mountain air in great gulps, like a diver
fresh-risen from the sea. And, as he drank in the air, he gazed with
all his eyes at the clouds and sky and valley, as if he were drinking
in that, too, along with the air.
Dede did not know he had come back, and at times he turned his head and
stole glances in at her--at her efficient hands, at the bronze of her
brown hair that smouldered with fire when she crossed the path of
sunshine that streamed through the window, at the promise of her figure
that shot through him a pang most strangely sweet and sweetly dear. He
heard her approaching the door, and kept his head turned resolutely
toward the valley. And next, he thrilled, as he had always thrilled,
when he felt the caressing gentleness of her fingers through his hair.
"I didn't know you were back," she said. "Was it serious?"
"Pretty bad, that slide," he answered, still gazing away and thrilling
to her touch. "More serious than I reckoned. But I've got the plan.
Do you know what I'm going to do?--I'm going to plant eucalyptus all
over it. They'll hold it. I'll plant them thick as grass, so that
even a hungry rabbit can't squeeze between them; and when they get
their roots agoing, nothing in creation will ever move that dirt again."
"Why, is it as bad as that?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing exciting. But I'd sure like to see any blamed old slide get
the best of me, that's all. I'm going to seal that slide down so that
it'll stay there for a million years. And when the last trump sounds,
and Sonoma Mountain and all the other mountains pass into nothingness,
that old slide will be still a-standing there, held up by the roots."
He passed his arm around her and pulled her down on his knees.
"Say, little woman, you sure miss a lot by living here on the
ranch--music, and theatres, and such things. Don't you ever have a
hankering to drop it all and go back?"
So great was his anxiety that he dared not look at her, and when she
laughed and shook her head he was aware of a great relief. Also, he
noted the undiminished youth that rang through that same old-time
boyish laugh of hers.
"Say," he said, with sudden fierceness, "don't you go fooling around
that slide until after I get the trees in and rooted. It's mighty
dangerous, and I sure can't afford to lose you now."
He drew her lips to his and kissed her hungrily and passionately.
"What a lover!" she said; and pride in him and in her own womanhood was
in her voice.
"Look at that, Dede." He removed one encircling arm and swept it in a
wide gesture over the valley and the mountains beyond. "The Valley of
the Moon--a good name, a good name. Do you know, when I look out over
it all, and think of you and of all it means, it kind of makes me ache
in the throat, and I have things in my heart I can't find the words to
say, and I have a feeling that I can almost understand Browning and
those other high-flying poet-fellows. Look at Hood Mountain there,
just where the sun's striking. It was down in that crease that we
found the spring."
"And that was the night you didn't milk the cows till ten o'clock," she
laughed. "And if you keep me here much longer, supper won't be any
earlier than it was that night."
Both arose from the bench, and Daylight caught up the milk-pail from
the nail by the door. He paused a moment longer to look out over the
valley.
"It's sure grand," he said.
"It's sure grand," she echoed, laughing joyously at him and with him
and herself and all the world, as she passed in through the door.
And Daylight, like the old man he once had met, himself went down the
hill through the fires of sunset with a milk pail on his arm.