The Valley of the Moon
by Jack London
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

BOOK I

CHAPTER 1

"You hear me, Saxon? Come on along. What if it is the
Bricklayers? I'll have gentlemen friends there, and so'll you.
The Al Vista band'll be along, an' you know it plays heavenly.
An' you just love dancin'---"

Twenty feet away, a stout, elderly woman interrupted the girl's
persuasions. The elderly woman's back was turned, and the
back-loose, bulging, and misshapen--began a convulsive heaving.

"Gawd!" she cried out. "O Gawd!"

She flung wild glances, like those of an entrapped animal, up and
down the big whitewashed room that panted with heat and that was
thickly humid with the steam that sizzled from the damp cloth
under the irons of the many ironers. From the girls and women
near her, all swinging irons steadily but at high pace, came
quick glances, and labor efficiency suffered to the extent of a
score of suspended or inadequate movements. The elderly woman's
cry had caused a tremor of money-loss to pass among the
piece-work ironers of fancy starch.

She gripped herself and her iron with a visible effort, and
dabbed futilely at the frail, frilled garment on the board under
her hand.

"I thought she'd got'em again--didn't you?" the girl said.

"It's a shame, a women of her age, and . . . condition," Saxon
answered, as she frilled a lace ruffle with a hot fluting-iron.
Her movements were delicate, safe, and swift, and though her face
was wan with fatigue and exhausting heat, there was no slackening
in her pace.

"An' her with seven, an' two of 'em in reform school," the girl
at the next board sniffed sympathetic agreement. "But you just
got to come to Weasel Park to-morrow, Saxon. The Bricklayers' is
always lively--tugs-of-war, fat-man races, real Irish jiggin',
an' . . . an' everything. An' The floor of the pavilion's swell."

But the elderly woman brought another interruption. She dropped
her iron on the shirtwaist, clutched at the board, fumbled it,
caved in at the knees and hips, and like a half-empty sack
collapsed on the floor, her long shriek rising in the pent room
to the acrid smell of scorching cloth. The women at the boards
near to her scrambled, first, to the hot iron to save the cloth,
and then to her, while the forewoman hurried belligerently down
the aisle. The women farther away continued unsteadily at their
work, losing movements to the extent of a minute's set-back to
the totality of the efficiency of the fancy-starch room.

"Enough to kill a dog," the girl muttered, thumping her iron down
on its rest with reckless determination. "Workin' girls' life
ain't what it's cracked up. Me to quit--that's what I'm comin'
to."

"Mary!" Saxon uttered the other's name with a reproach so
profound that she was compelled to rest her own iron for emphasis
and so lose a dozen movements.

Mary flashed a half-frightened look across.

"I didn't mean it, Saxon," she whimpered. "Honest, I didn't. I
wouldn't never go that way. But I leave it to you, if a day like
this don't get on anybody's nerves. Listen to that!"

The stricken woman, on her back, drumming her heels on the floor,
was shrieking persistently and monotonously, like a mechanical
siren. Two women, clutching her under the arms, were dragging her
down the aisle. She drummed and shrieked the length of it. The
door opened, and a vast, muffled roar of machinery burst in; and
in the roar of it the drumming and the shrieking were drowned ere
the door swung shut. Remained of the episode only the scorch of
cloth drifting ominously through the air.

"It's sickenin'," said Mary.

And thereafter, for a long time, the many irons rose and fell,
the pace of the room in no wise diminished; while the forewoman
strode the aisles with a threatening eye for incipient breakdown
and hysteria. Occasionally an ironer lost the stride for an
instant, gasped or sighed, then caught it up again with weary
determination. The long summer day waned, hut not the heat, and
under the raw flare of electric light the work went on.

By nine o'clock the first women began to go home. The mountain of
fancy starch had been demolished--all save the few remnants, here
and there, on the boards, where the ironers still labored.

Saxon finished ahead of Mary, at whose board she paused on the
way out.

"Saturday night an' another week gone," Mary said mournfully, her
young cheeks pallid and hollowed, her black eyes blue-shadowed
and tired. "What d'you think you've made, Saxon?"

"Twelve and a quarter," was the answer, just touched with pride
"And I'd a-made more if it wasn't for that fake bunch of
starchers."

"My! I got to pass it to you," Mary congratulated. "You're a sure
fierce hustler--just eat it up. Me--I've only ten an' a half, an'
for a hard week ... See you on the nine-forty. Sure now. We can
just fool around until the dancin' begins. A lot of my gentlemen
friends'll be there in the afternoon."

Two blocks from the laundry, where an arc-light showed a gang of
toughs on the corner, Saxon quickened her pace. Unconsciously her
face set and hardened as she passed. She did not catch the words
of the muttered comment, but the rough laughter it raised made
her guess and warmed her checks with resentful blood. Three
blocks more, turning once to left and once to right, she walked
on through the night that was already growing cool. On either
side were workingmen's houses, of weathered wood, the ancient
paint grimed with the dust of years, conspicuous only for
cheapness and ugliness.

Dark it was, but she made no mistake, the familiar sag and
screeching reproach of the front gate welcome under her hand. She
went along the narrow walk to the rear, avoided the missing step
without thinking about it, and entered the kitchen, where a
solitary gas-jet flickered. She turned it up to the best of its
flame. It was a small room, not disorderly, because of lack of
furnishings to disorder it. The plaster, discolored by the steam
of many wash-days, was crisscrossed with cracks from the big
earthquake of the previous spring. The floor was ridged,
wide-cracked, and uneven, and in front of the stove it was worn
through and repaired with a five-gallon oil-can hammered flat and
double. A sink, a dirty roller-towel, several chairs, and a
wooden table completed the picture.

An apple-core crunched under her foot as she drew a chair to the
table. On the frayed oilcloth, a supper waited. She attempted the
cold beans, thick with grease, but gave them up, and buttered a
slice of bread.

The rickety house shook to a heavy, prideless tread, and through
the inner door came Sarah, middle-aged, lop-breasted,
hair-tousled, her face lined with care and fat petulance.

"Huh, it's you," she grunted a greeting. "I just couldn't keep
things warm. Such a day! I near died of the heat. An' little
Henry cut his lip awful. The doctor had to put four stitches in
it."

Sarah came over and stood mountainously by the table.

"What's the matter with them beans?" she challenged.

"Nothing, only ..." Saxon caught her breath and avoided the
threatened outburst. "Only I'm not hungry. It's been so hot all
day. It was terrible in the laundry."

Recklessly she took a mouthful of the cold tea that had been
steeped so long that it was like acid in her mouth, and
recklessly, under the eye of her sister-in-law, she swallowed it
and the rest of the cupful. She wiped her mouth on her
handkerchief and got up.

"I guess I'll go to bed."

"Wonder you ain't out to a dance," Sarah sniffed. "Funny, ain't
it, you come home so dead tired every night, an' yet any night in
the week you can get out an' dance unearthly hours."

Saxon started to speak, suppressed herself with tightened lips,
then lost control and blazed out. "Wasn't you ever young?"

Without waiting for reply, she turned to her bedroom, which
opened directly off the kitchen. It was a small room, eight by
twelve, and the earthquake had left its marks upon the plaster. A
bed and chair of cheap pine and a very ancient chest of drawers
constituted the furniture. Saxon had known this chest of drawers
all her life. The vision of it was woven into her earliest
recollections. She knew it had crossed the plains with her people
in a prairie schooner. It was of solid mahogany. One end was
cracked and dented from the capsize of the wagon in Rock Canyon.
A bullet-hole, plugged, in the face of the top drawer, told of
the fight with the Indians at Little Meadow. Of these happenings
her mother had told her; also had she told that the chest had
come with the family originally from England in a day even
earlier than the day on which George Washington was born.

Above the chest of drawers, on the wall, hung a small
looking-glass. Thrust under the molding were photographs of young
men and women, and of picnic groups wherein the young men, with
hats rakishly on the backs of their heads, encircled the girls
with their arms. Farther along on the wall were a colored
calendar and numerous colored advertisements and sketches torn
out of magazines. Most of these sketches were of horses. From the
gas-fixture hung a tangled bunch of well-scribbled dance
programs.

Saxon started to take off her hat, but suddenly sat down on the
bed. She sobbed softly, with considered repression, but the
weak-latched door swung noiselessly open, and she was startled by
her sister-in-law's voice.

"NOW what's the matter with you? If you didn't like them beans--"

"No, no," Saxon explained hurriedly. "I'm just tired, that's all,
and my feet hurt. I wasn't hungry, Sarah. I'm just beat out."

"If you took care of this house," came the retort, "an' cooked
an' baked, an' washed, an' put up with what I put up, you'd have
something to be beat out about. You've got a snap, you have. But
just wait." Sarah broke off to cackle gloatingly. "Just wait,
that's all, an' you'll be fool enough to get married some day,
like me, an' then you'll get yours--an' it'll be brats, an'
brats, an' brats, an' no more dancin', an' silk stockin's, an'
three pairs of shoes at one time. You've got a cinch-nobody to
think of but your own precious self--an' a lot of young hoodlums
makin' eyes at you an' tellin' you how beautiful your eyes are.
Huh! Some fine day you'll tie up to one of 'em, an' then, mebbe,
on occasion, you'll wear black eyes for a change."

"Don't say that, Sarah," Saxon protested. "My brother never laid
hands on you. You know that."

"No more he didn't. He never had the gumption. Just the same,
he's better stock than that tough crowd you run with, if he can't
make a livin' an' keep his wife in three pairs of shoes. Just the
same he's oodles better'n your bunch of hoodlums that no decent
woman'd wipe her one pair of shoes on. How you've missed trouble
this long is beyond me. Mebbe the younger generation is wiser in
such thins--I don't know. But I do know that a young woman that
has three pairs of shoes ain't thinkin' of anything but her own
enjoyment, an' she's goin' to get hers, I can tell her that much.
When I was a girl there wasn't such doin's. My mother'd taken the
hide off me if I done the things you do. An' she was right, just
as everything in the world is wrong now. Look at your brother,
a-runnin' around to socialist meetin's, an' chewin' hot air, an'
diggin' up extra strike dues to the union that means so much
bread out of the mouths of his children, instead of makin' good
with his bosses. Why, the dues he pays would keep me in seventeen
pairs of shoes if I was nannygoat enough to want 'em. Some day,
mark my words, he'll get his time, an' then what'll we do?
What'll I do, with five mouths to feed an' nothin' comin' in?"

She stopped, out of breath but seething with the tirade yet to
come.

"Oh, Sarah, please won't you shut the door?" Saxon pleaded.

The door slammed violently, and Saxon, ere she fell to crying
again, could hear her sister-in-law lumbering about the kitchen
and talking loudly to herself.

CHAPTER II

Each bought her own ticket at the entrance to Weasel Park. And
each, as she laid her half-dollar down, was distinctly aware of
how many pieces of fancy starch were represented by the coin. It
was too early for the crowd, but bricklayers and their families,
laden with huge lunch-baskets and armfuls of babies, were already
going in--a healthy, husky race of workmen, well-paid and
robustly fed. And with them, here and there, undisguised by their
decent American clothing, smaller in bulk and stature, weazened
not alone by age but by the pinch of lean years and early
hardship, were grandfathers and mothers who had patently first
seen the light of day on old Irish soil. Their faces showed
content and pride as they limped along with this lusty progeny of
theirs that had fed on better food.

Not with these did Mary and Saxon belong. They knew them not, had
no acquaintances among them. It did not matter whether the
festival were Irish, German, or Slavonian; whether the picnic was
the Bricklayers', the Brewers', or the Butchers'. They, the
girls, were of the dancing crowd that swelled by a certain
constant percentage the gate receipts of all the picnics.

They strolled about among the booths where peanuts were grinding
and popcorn was roasting in preparation for the day, and went on
and inspected the dance floor of the pavilion. Saxon, clinging to
an imaginary partner, essayed a few steps of the dip-waltz. Mary
clapped her hands.

"My!" she cried. "You're just swell! An' them stockin's is
peaches."

Saxon smiled with appreciation, pointed out her foot,
velvet-slippered with high Cuban heels, and slightly lifted the
tight black skirt, exposing a trim ankle and delicate swell of
calf, the white flesh gleaming through the thinnest and flimsiest
of fifty-cent black silk stockings. She was slender, not tall,
yet the due round lines of womanhood were hers. On her white
shirtwaist was a pleated jabot of cheap lace, caught with a large
novelty pin of imitation coral. Over the shirtwaist was a natty
jacket, elbow-sleeved, and to the elbows she wore gloves of
imitation suede. The one essentially natural touch about her
appearance was the few curls, strangers to curling-irons, that
escaped from under the little naughty hat of black velvet pulled
low over the eyes.

Mary's dark eyes flashed with joy at the sight, and with a swift
little run she caught the other girl in her arms and kissed her
in a breast-crushing embrace. She released her, blushing at her
own extravagance.

"You look good to me," she cried, in extenuation. "If I was a man
I couldn't keep my hands off you. I'd eat you, I sure would."

They went out of the pavilion hand in hand, and on through the
sunshine they strolled, swinging hands gaily, reacting
exuberantly from the week of deadening toil. They hung over the
railing of the bear-pit, shivering at the huge and lonely
denizen, and passed quickly on to ten minutes of laughter at the
monkey cage. Crossing the grounds, they looked down into the
little race track on the bed of a natural amphitheater where the
early afternoon games were to take place. After that they
explored the woods, threaded by countless paths, ever opening out
in new surprises of green-painted rustic tables and benches in
leafy nooks, many of which were already pre-empted by family
parties. On a grassy slope, tree-surrounded, they spread a
newspaper and sat down on the short grass already tawny-dry under
the California sun. Half were they minded to do this because of
the grateful indolence after six days of insistent motion, half
in conservation for the hours of dancing to come.

"Bert Wanhope'll be sure to come," Mary chattered. "An' he said
he was going to bring Billy Roberts--'Big Bill,' all the fellows
call him. He's just a big boy, but he's awfully tough. He's a
prizefighter, an' all the girls run after him. I'm afraid of him.
He ain't quick in talkin'. He's more like that big bear we saw.
Brr-rf! Brr-rf!--bite your head off, just like that. He ain't
really a prize-fighter. He's a teamster--belongs to the union.
Drives for Coberly and Morrison. But sometimes he fights in the
clubs. Most of the fellows are scared of him. He's got a bad
temper, an' he'd just as soon hit a fellow as eat, just like
that. You won't like him, but he's a swell dancer. He's heavy,
you know, an' he just slides and glides around. You wanta have a
dance with'm anyway. He's a good spender, too. Never pinches. But
my!--he's got one temper."

The talk wandered on, a monologue on Mary's part, that centered
always on Bert Wanhope.

"You and he are pretty thick," Saxon ventured.

"I'd marry'm to-morrow," Mary flashed out impulsively. Then her
face went bleakly forlorn, hard almost in its helpless pathos.
"Only, he never asks me. He's ..." Her pause was broken by sudden
passion. "You watch out for him, Saxon, if he ever comes foolin'
around you. He's no good. Just the same, I'd marry him to-morrow.
He'll never get me any other way." Her mouth opened, but instead
of speaking she drew a long sigh. "It's a funny world, ain't it?"
she added. "More like a scream. And all the stars are worlds,
too. I wonder where God hides. Bert Wanhope says there ain't no
God. But he's just terrible. He says the most terrible things. I
believe in God. Don't you? What do you think about God, Saxon?"

Saxon shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

"But if we do wrong we get ours, don't we?" Mary persisted.
"That's what they all say, except Bert. He says he don't care
what he does, he'll never get his, because when he dies he's
dead, an' when he's dead he'd like to see any one put anything
across on him that'd wake him up. Ain't he terrible, though? But
it's all so funny. Sometimes I get scared when I think God's
keepin' an eye on me all the time. Do you think he knows what I'm
sayin' now? What do you think he looks like, anyway?"

"I don't know," Saxon answered. "He's just a funny proposition."

"Oh!" the other gasped.

"He IS, just the same, from what all people say of him," Saxon
went on stoutly. "My brother thinks he looks like Abraham
Lincoln. Sarah thinks he has whiskers."

"An' I never think of him with his hair parted," Mary confessed,
daring the thought and shivering with apprehension. "He just
couldn't have his hair parted. THAT'D be funny."

"You know that little, wrinkly Mexican that sells wire puzzles?"
Saxon queried. "Well, God somehow always reminds me of him."

Mary laughed outright.

"Now that IS funny. I never thought of him like that How do you
make it out?"

"Well, just like the little Mexican, he seems to spend his time
peddling puzzles. He passes a puzzle out to everybody, and they
spend all their lives tryin' to work it out They all get stuck. I
can't work mine out. I don't know where to start. And look at the
puzzle he passed Sarah. And she's part of Tom's puzzle, and she
only makes his worse. And they all, an' everybody I know--you,
too--are part of my puzzle."

"Mebbe the puzzles is all right," Mary considered. "But God don't
look like that yellow little Greaser. THAT I won't fall for. God
don't look like anybody. Don't you remember on the wall at the
Salvation Army it says 'God is a spirit'?"

"That's another one of his puzzles, I guess, because nobody knows
what a spirit looks like."

"That's right, too." Mary shuddered with reminiscent fear.
"Whenever I try to think of God as a spirit, I can see Hen Miller
all wrapped up in a sheet an' runnin' us girls. We didn't know,
an' it scared the life out of us. Little Maggie Murphy fainted
dead away, and Beatrice Peralta fell an' scratched her face
horrible. When I think of a spirit all I can see is a white sheet
runnin' in the dark. Just the same, God don't look like a
Mexican, an' he don't wear his hair parted."

A strain of music from the dancing pavilion brought both girls
scrambling to their feet.

"We can get a couple of dances in before we eat," Mary proposed.
"An' then it'll be afternoon an' all the fellows 'll be here.
Most of them are pinchers--that's why they don't come early, so
as to get out of taking the girls to dinner. But Bert's free with
his money, an' so is Billy. If we can beat the other girls to it,
they'll take us to the restaurant. Come on, hurry, Saxon."

There were few couples on the floor when they arrived at the
pavilion, and the two girls essayed the first waltz together.

"There's Bert now," Saxon whispered, as they came around the
second time.

"Don't take any notice of them," Mary whispered back. "We'll just
keep on goin'. They needn't think we're chasin' after them."

But Saxon noted the heightened color in the other's cheek, and
felt her quicker breathing.

"Did you see that other one?" Mary asked, as she backed Saxon in
a long slide across the far end of the pavilion. "That was Billy
Roberts. Bert said he'd come. He'll take you to dinner, and
Bert'll take me. It's goin' to be a swell day, you'll see. My! I
only wish the music'll hold out till we can get back to the other
end."

Down the floor they danced, on man-trapping and dinner-getting
intent, two fresh young things that undeniably danced well and
that were delightfully surprised when the music stranded them
perilously near to their desire.

Bert and Mary addressed each other by their given names, but to
Saxon Bert was "Mr. Wanhope," though he called her by her first
name. The only introduction was of Saxon and Billy Roberts. Mary
carried it off with a flurry of nervous carelessness.

"Mr. Robert--Miss Brown. She's my best friend. Her first name's
Saxon. Ain't it a scream of a name?"

"Sounds good to me," Billy retorted, hat off and hand extended.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Brown."

As their hands clasped and she felt the teamster callouses on his
palm, her quick eyes saw a score of things. About all that he saw
was her eyes, and then it was with a vague impression that they
were blue. Not till later in the day did he realize that they
were gray. She, on the contrary, saw his eyes as they really
were--deep blue, wide, and handsome in a sullen-boyish way. She
saw that they were straight-looking, and she liked them, as she
had liked the glimpse she had caught of his hand, and as she
liked the contact of his hand itself. Then, too, but not sharply,
she had perceived the short, square-set nose, the rosiness of
cheek, and the firm, short upper lip, ere delight centered her
flash of gaze on the well-modeled, large clean mouth where red
lips smiled clear of the white, enviable teeth. A BOY, A GREAT
BIG MAN-BOY, was her thought; and, as they smiled at each other
and their hands slipped apart, she was startled by a glimpse of
his hair--short and crisp and sandy, hinting almost of palest
gold save that it was too flaxen to hint of gold at all.

So blond was he that she was reminded of stage-types she had
seen, such as Ole Olson and Yon Yonson; but there resemblance
ceased. It was a matter of color only, for the eyes were
dark-lashed and -browed, and were cloudy with temperament rather
than staring a child-gaze of wonder, and the suit of smooth brown
cloth had been made by a tailor. Saxon appraised the suit on the
instant, and her secret judgment was NOT A CENT LESS THAN FIFTY
DOLLARS. Further, he had none of the awkwardness of the
Scandinavian immigrant. On the contrary, he was one of those rare
individuals that radiate muscular grace through the ungraceful
man-garments of civilization. Every movement was supple, slow,
and apparently considered. This she did not see nor analyze. She
saw only a clothed man with grace of carriage and movement. She
felt, rather than perceived, the calm and certitude of all the
muscular play of him, and she felt, too, the promise of easement
and rest that was especially grateful and craved-for by one who
had incessantly, for six days and at top-speed, ironed fancy
starch. As the touch of his hand had been good, so, to her, this
subtler feel of all of him, body and mind, was good.

As he took her program and skirmished and joked after the way of
young men, she realized the immediacy of delight she had taken in
him. Never in her life had she been so affected by any man. She
wondered to herself: IS THIS THE MAN?

He danced beautifully. The joy was hers that good dancers take
when they have found a good dancer for a partner. The grace of
those slow-moving, certain muscles of his accorded perfectly with
the rhythm of the music. There was never doubt, never a betrayal
of indecision. She glanced at Bert, dancing "tough" with Mary,
caroming down the long floor with more than one collision with
the increasing couples. Graceful himself in his slender, tall,
lean-stomached way, Bert was accounted a good dancer; yet Saxon
did not remember ever having danced with him with keen pleasure.
Just a hit of a jerk spoiled his dancing--a jerk that did not
occur, usually, but that always impended. There was something
spasmodic in his mind. He was too quick, or he continually
threatened to be too quick. He always seemed just on the verge of
overrunning the time. It was disquieting. He made for unrest.

"You're a dream of a dancer," Billy Roberts was saying. "I've
heard lots of the fellows talk about your dancing."

"I love it," she answered.

But from the way she said it he sensed her reluctance to speak,
and danced on in silence, while she warmed with the appreciation
of a woman for gentle consideration. Gentle consideration was a
thing rarely encountered in the life she lived. IS THIS THE MAN?
She remembered Mary's "I'd marry him to-morrow," and caught
herself speculating on marrying Billy Roberts by the next day--if
he asked her.

With eyes that dreamily desired to close, she moved on in the
arms of this masterful, guiding pressure. A PRIZE-FIGHTER! She
experienced a thrill of wickedness as she thought of what Sarah
would say could she see her now, Only he wasn't a prizefighter,
but a teamster.

Came an abrupt lengthening of step, the guiding pressure grew
more compelling, and she was caught up and carried along, though
her velvet-shod feet never left the floor. Then came the sudden
control down to the shorter step again, and she felt herself
being held slightly from him so that he might look into her face
and laugh with her in joy at the exploit. At the end, as the band
slowed in the last bars, they, too, slowed, their dance fading
with the music in a lengthening glide that ceased with the last
lingering tone.

"We're sure cut out for each other when it comes to dancin'," he
said, as they made their way to rejoin the other couple.

"It was a dream," she replied.

So low was her voice that he bent to hear, and saw the flush in
her cheeks that seemed communicated to her eyes, which were
softly warm and sensuous. He took the program from her and
gravely and gigantically wrote his name across all the length of
it.

"An' now it's no good," he dared. "Ain't no need for it."

He tore it across and tossed it aside.

"Me for you, Saxon, for the next," was Bert's greeting, as they
came up. "You take Mary for the next whirl, Bill."

"Nothin' doin', Bo," was the retort. "Me an' Saxon's framed up to
last the day."

"Watch out for him, Saxon," Mary warned facetiously. "He's liable
to get a crush ou you."

"I guess I know a good thing when I see it," Billy responded
gallantly.

"And so do I," Saxon aided and abetted.

"I'd 'a' known you if I'd seen you in the dark," Billy added.

Mary regarded them with mock alarm, and Bert said good-naturedly:

"All I got to say is you ain't wastin' any time gettin' together.
Just the same, if' you can spare a few minutes from each other
after a couple more whirls, Mary an' me'd be complimented to have
your presence at dinner."

"Just like that," chimed Mary.

"Quit your kiddin'," Billy laughed back, turning his head to look
into Saxon's eyes. "Don't listen to 'em. They're grouched because
they got to dance together. Bert's a rotten dancer, and Mary
ain't so much. Come on, there she goes. See you after two more
dances."

CHAPTER III

They had dinner in the open-air, tree-walled dining-room, and
Saxon noted that it was Billy who paid the reckoning for the
four. They knew many of the young men and women at the other
tables, and greetings and fun flew back and forth. Bert was very
possessive with Mary, almost roughly so, resting his hand on
hers, catching and holding it, and, once, forcibly slipping off
her two rings and refusing to return them for a long while. At
times, when he put his arm around her waist, Mary promptly
disengaged it; and at other times, with elaborate obliviousness
that deceived no one, she allowed it to remain.

And Saxon, talking little but studying Billy Roberts very
intently, was satisfied that there would be an utter difference
in the way he would do such things . . . if ever he would do
them. Anyway, he'd never paw a girl as Bert and lots of the other
fellows did. She measured the breadth of Billy's heavy shoulders.

"Why do they call you 'Big' Bill?" she asked. "You're not so very
tall."

"Nope," he agreed. "I'm only five feet eight an' three-quarters.
I guess it must be my weight."

"He fights at a hundred an' eighty," Bert interjected.

"Oh, out it," Billy said quickly, a cloud-rift of displeasure
showing in his eyes. "I ain't a fighter. I ain't fought in six
months. I've quit it. It don't pay."

"Yon got two hundred the night you put the Frisco Slasher to the
bad," Bert urged proudly.

"Cut it. Cut it now.--Say, Saxon, you ain't so big yourself, are
you? But you're built just right if anybody should ask you.
You're round an' slender at the same time. I bet I can guess your
weight."

"Everybody gnesses over it," she warned, while inwardly she was
puzzled that she should at the same time be glad and regretful
that he did not fight any more.

"Not me," he was saying. "I'm a wooz at weight-guessin'. Just you
watch me." He regarded her critically, and it was patent that
warm approval played its little rivalry with the judgment of his
gaze. "Wait a minute."

He reached over to her and felt her arm at the biceps. The
pressure of the encircling fingers was firm and honest, and Saxon
thrilled to it. There was magic in this man-boy. She would have
known only irritation had Bert or any other man felt her arm. But
this man! IS HE THE MAN? she was questioning, when he voiced his
conclusion.

"Your clothes don't weigh more'n seven pounds. And seven
from--hum--say one hundred an' twenty-three--one hundred an'
sixteen is your stripped weight."

But at the penultimate word, Mary cried out with sharp reproof:

"Why, Billy Roberts, people don't talk about such things."

He looked at her with slow-growing, uncomprehending surprise.

"What things?" he demanded finally.

"There you go again! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look!
You've got Saxon blushing!"

"I am not," Saxon denied indignantly.

"An' if you keep on, Mary, you'll have me blushing," Billy
growled. "I guess I know what's right an' what ain't. It ain't
what a guy says, but what he thinks. An' I'm thinkin' right, an'
Saxon knows it. An' she an' I ain't thinkin' what you're thinkin'
at all."

"Oh! Oh!" Mary cried. "You're gettin' worse an' worse. I never
think such things."

"Whoa, Mary! Backup!" Bert checked her peremptorily. "You're in
the wrong stall. Billy never makes mistakes like that."

"But he needn't be so raw," she persisted.

"Come on, Mary, an' be good, an' cut that stuff," was Billy's
dismissal of her, as he turned to Saxon. "How near did I come to
it?"

"One hundred and twenty-two," she answered, looking deliberately
at Mary. "One twenty two with my clothes."

Billy burst into hearty laughter, in which Bert joined.

"I don't care," Mary protested, "You're terrible, both of
you--an' you, too, Saxon. I'd never a-thought it of you."

"Listen to me, kid," Bert began soothingly, as his arm slipped
around her waist.

But in the false excitement she had worked herself into, Mary
rudely repulsed the arm, and then, fearing that she had wounded
her lover's feelings, she took advantage of the teasing and
banter to recover her good humor. His arm was permitted to
return, and with heads bent together, they talked in whispers.

Billy discreetly began to make conversation with Saxon.

"Say, you know, your name is a funny one. I never heard it tagged
on anybody before. But it's all right. I like it."

"My mother gave it to me. She was educated, and knew all kinds of
words. She was always reading books, almost until she died. And
she wrote lots and lots. I've got some of her poetry published in
a San Jose newspaper long ago. The Saxons were a race of
people--she told me all about them when I was a little girl. They
were wild, like Indians, only they were white. And they had blue
eyes, and yellow hair, and they were awful fighters."

As she talked, Billy followed her solemnly, his eyes steadily
turned on hers.

"Never heard of them," he confessed. "Did they live anywhere
around here?"

She laughed.

"No, They lived in England. They were the first English, and you
know the Americans came from the English. We're Saxons, you an'
me, an' Mary, an' Bert, and all the Americans that are real
Americans, you know, and not Dagoes and Japs and such."

"My folks lived in America a long time," Billy said slowly,
digesting the information she had given and relating himself to
it. "Anyway, my mother's folks did. They crossed to Maine
hundreds of years ago."

"My father was 'State of Maine," she broke in, with a little
gurgle of joy. "And my mother was horn in Ohio, or where Ohio is
now. She used to call it the Great Western Reserve. What was your
father?"

"Don't know." Billy shrugged his shoulders. "He didn't know
himself. Nobody ever knew, though he was American, all right, all
right."

"His name's regular old American," Saxon suggested. "There's a
big English general right now whose name is Roberts. I've read it
in the papers."

"But Roberts wasn't my father's name. He never knew what his name
was. Roberts was the name of a gold-miner who adopted him. You
see, it was this way. When they was Indian-fightin' up there with
the Modoc Indians, a lot of the miners an' settlers took a hand.
Roberts was captain of one outfit, and once, after a fight, they
took a lot of prisoners--squaws, an' kids an' babies. An' one of
the kids was my father. They figured he was about five years old.
He didn't know nothin' but Indian."

Saxon clapped her hands, and her eyes sparkled: "He'd been
captured on an Indian raid!"

"That's the way they figured it," Billy nodded. "They recollected
a wagon-train of Oregon settlers that'd been killed by the Modocs
four years before. Roberts adopted him, and that's why I don't
know his real name. But you can bank on it, he crossed the plains
just the same."

"So did my father," Saxon said proudly.

"An' my mother, too," Billy added, pride touching his own voice.
"Anyway, she came pretty close to crossin' the plains, because
she was born in a wagon on the River Platte on the way out."

"My mother, too," said Saxon. "She was eight years old, an' she
walked most of the way after the oxen began to give out."

Billy thrust out his hand.

"Put her there, kid," he said. "We're just like old friends, what
with the same kind of folks behind us."

With shining eyes, Saxon extended her hand to his, and gravely
they shook.

"Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "We're both old American
stock. And if you aren't a Saxon there never was one--your hair,
your eyes, your skin, everything. And you're a fighter, too."

"I guess all our old folks was fighters when it comes to that. It
come natural to 'em, an' dog-gone it, they just had to fight or
they'd never come through."

"What are you two talkin' about?" Mary broke in upon them.

"They're thicker'n mush in no time," Bert girded. "You'd think
they'd known each other a week already."

"Oh, we knew each other longer than that," Saxon returned.
"Before ever we were born our folks were walkin' across the
plains together."

"When your folks was waitin' for the railroad to be built an' all
the Indians killed off before they dasted to start for
California," was Billy's way of proclaiming the new alliance.
"We're the real goods,Saxon an'n me, if anybody should ride up on
a buzz-wagon an' ask you."

"Oh, I don't know," Mary boasted with quiet petulance. "My father
stayed behind to fight in the Civil War. He was a drummer-boy.
That's why he didn't come to California until afterward."

"And my father went back to fight in the Civil War," Saxon said.

"And mine, too," said Billy.

They looked at each other gleefully. Again they had found a new
contact

"Well, they're all dead, ain't they?" was Bert's saturnine
comment. "There ain't no difference dyin' in battle or in the
poorhouse. The thing is they're deado. I wouldn't care a rap if
my father'd been hanged. It's all the same in a thousand years.
This braggin' about folks makes me tired. Besides, my father
couldn't a-fought. He wasn't born till two years after the war.
Just the same, two of my uncles were killed at Gettysburg. Guess
we done our share."

"Just like that," Mary applauded.

Bert's arm went around her waist again.

"We're here, ain't we?" he said. "An' that's what counts. The
dead are dead, an' you can bet your sweet life they just keep on
stayin' dead."

Mary put her hand over his mouth and began to chide him for his
awfulness, whereupon he kissed the palm of her hand and put his
head closer to hers.

The merry clatter of dishes was increasing as the dining-room
filled up. Here and there voices were raised in snatches of song.
There were shrill squeals and screams and bursts of heavier male
laughter as the everlasting skirmishing between the young men and
girls played on. Among some of the men the signs of drink were
already manifest. At a near table girls were calling out to
Billy. And Saxon, the sense of temporary possession already
strong on her, noted with jealous eyes that he was a favorite and
desired object to them.

"Ain't they awful?" Mary voiced her disapproval. "They got a
nerve. I know who they are. No respectable girl 'd have a thing
to do with them. Listen to that!"

"Oh, you Bill, you," one of them, a buxom young brunette, was
calling. "Hope you ain't forgotten me, Bill."

"Oh, you chicken," he called back gallantly.

Saxon flattered herself that he showed vexation, and she
conceived an immense dislike for the brunette.

"Goin' to dance?" the latter called.

"Mebbe," he answered, and turned abruptly to Saxon. "Say, we old
Americans oughta stick together, don't you think? They ain't many
of us left. The country's fillin' up with all kinds of
foreigners."

He talked on steadily, in a low, confidential voice, head close
to hers, as advertisement to the other girl that he was occupied.

From the next table on the opposite side, a young man had singled
out Saxon. His dress was tough. His companions, male and female,
were tough. His face was inflamed, his eyes touched with
wildness.

"Hey, you!" he called. "You with the velvet slippers. Me for
you."

The girl beside him put her arm around his neck and tried to hush
him, and through the mufflement of her embrace they could hear
him gurgling:

"I tell you she's some goods. Watch me go across an' win her from
them cheap skates."

"Butchertown hoodlums," Mary sniffed.

Saxon's eyes encountered the eyes of the girl, who glared hatred
across at her. And in Billy's eyes she saw moody anger
smouldering. The eyes were more sullen, more handsome than ever,
and clouds and veils and lights and shadowe shifted and deepened
in the blue of them until they gave her a sense of unfathomable
depth. He had stopped talking, and he made no effort to talk.

"Don't start a rough house, Bill," Bert cautioned. "They're from
across the hay an' they don't know you, that's all."

Bert stood up suddenly, stepped over to the other table,
whispered briefly, and came back. Every face at the table was
turned on Billy. The offendor arose brokenly, shook off the
detaining hand of his girl, and came over. He was a large man,
with a hard, malignant face and bitter eyes. Also, he was a
subdued man.

"You're Big Bill Roberts," he said thickly, clinging to the table
as he reeled. "I take my hat off to you. I apologire. I admire
your taste in skirts, an' take it from me that's a compliment;
but I did'nt know who you was. If I'd knowed you was Bill Roberts
there wouldn't been a peep from my fly-trap. D'ye get me? I
apologize. Will you shake hands?"

Gruffly, Billy said, "It's all right--forget it, sport;" and
sullenly he shook hands and with a slow, massive movement thrust
the other back toward his own table.

Saxon was glowing. Here was a man, a protector, something to lean
against, of whom even the Butchertown toughs were afraid as soon
as his name was mentioned.

CHAPTER IV

After dinner there were two dances in the pavilion, and then the
band led the way to the race track for the games. The dancers
followed, and all through the grounds the picnic parties left
their tables to join in. Five thousand packed the grassy slopes
of the amphitheater and swarmed inside the race track. Here,
first of the events, the men were lining up for a tug of war. The
contest was between the Oakland Bricklayers and the San Francisco
Bricklayers, and the picked braves, huge and heavy, were taking
their positions along the rope. They kicked heel-holds in the
soft earth, rubbed their hands with the soil from underfoot, and
laughed and joked with the crowd that surged about them.

The judges and watchers struggled vainly to keep back this crowd
of relatives and friends. The Celtic blood was up, and the Celtic
faction spirit ran high. The air was filled with cries of cheer,
advice, warning, and threat. Many elected to leave the side of
their own team and go to the side of the other team with the
intention of circumventing foul play. There were as many women as
men among the jostling supporters. The dust from the trampling,
scuffling feet rose in the air, and Mary gasped and coughed and
begged Bert to take her away. But he, the imp in him elated with
the prospect of trouble, insisted on urging in closer. Saxon
clung to Billy, who slowly and methodically elbowed and
shouldered a way for her.

"No place for a girl," he grumbled, looking down at her with a
masked expression of absent-mindedness, while his elbow
powerfully crushed on the ribs of a big Irishman who gave room.
"Things'll break loose when they start pullin'. They's been too
much drink, an' you know what the Micks are for a rough house."

Saxon was very much out of place among these large-bodied men and
women. She seemed very small and childlike, delicate and fragile,
a creature from another race. Only Billy's skilled bulk and
muscle saved her. He was continually glancing from face to face
of the women and always returning to study her face, nor was she
unaware of the contrast he was making.

Some excitement occurred a score of feet away from them, and to
the sound of exclamations and blows a surge ran through the
crowd. A large man, wedged sidewise in the jam, was shoved
against Saxon, crushing her closely against Billy, who reached
across to the man's shoulder with a massive thrust that was not
so slow as usual. An involuntary grunt came from the victim, who
turned his head, showing sun-reddened blond skin and unmistakable
angry Irish eyes.

"What's eatin' yeh?" he snarled.

"Get off your foot; you're standin' on it," was Billy's
contemptuous reply, emphasized by an increase of thrust.

The Irishman grunted again and made a frantic struggle to twist
his body around, but the wedging bodies on either side held him
in a vise.

"I'll break yer ugly face for yeh in a minute," he announced in
wrath-thick tones.

Then his own face underwent transformation. The snarl left the
lips, and the angry eyes grew genial.

"An' sure an' it's yerself," he said. "I didn't know it was yeh
a-shovin'. I seen yeh lick the Terrible Swede, if yeh WAS robbed
on the decision."

"No, you didn't, Bo," Billy answered pleasantly. "You saw me take
a good beatin' that night. The decision was all right."

The Irishman was now beaming. He had endeavored to pay a
compliment with a lie, and the prompt repudiation of the lie
served only to increase his hero-worship.

"Sure, an' a bad beatin' it was," he acknowledged, "but yeh
showed the grit of a bunch of wildcats. Soon as I can get me arm
free I'm goin' to shake yeh by the hand an' help yeh aise yer
young lady."

Frustrated in the struggle to get the crowd back, the referee
fired his revolver in the air, and the tug-of-war was on.
Pandemonium broke loose. Saxon, protected by the two big men, was
near enough to the front to see much that ensued. The men on the
rope pulled and strained till their faces were red with effort
and their joints crackled. The rope was new, and, as their hands
slipped, their wives and daughters sprang in, scooping up the
earth in double handfuls and pouring it on the rope and the hands
of their men to give them better grip.

A stout, middle-aged woman, carried beyond herself by the passion
of the contest, seized the rope and pulled beside her husband,
encouraged him with loud cries. A watcher from the opposing team
dragged her screaming away and was dropped like a steer by an
ear-blow from a partisan from the woman's team. He, in turn, went
down, and brawny women joined with their men in the battle.
Vainly the judges and watchers begged, pleaded, yelled, and swung
with their fists. Men, as well as women, were springing in to thc
rope and pulling. No longer was it team against team, but all
Oakland against all San Francisco, festooned with a free-for-all
fight. Hands overlaid hands two and three deep in the struggle to
grasp the rope. And hands that found no holds, doubled into
bunches of knuckles that impacted on the jaws of the watchers who
strove to tear hand-holds from the rope.

Bert yelped with joy, while Mary clung to him, mad with fear.
Close to the rope the fighters were going down and being
trampled. The dust arose in clouds, while from beyond, all
around, unable to get into the battle, could be heard the shrill
and impotent rage-screams and rage-yells of women and men.

"Dirty work, dirty work," Billy muttered over and over; and,
though he saw much that occurred, assisted by the friendly
Irishman he was coolly and safely working Saxon back out of the
melee.

At last the break came. The losing team, accompanied by its host
of volunteers, was dragged in a rush over the ground and
disappeared under the avalanche of battling forms of the
onlookers.

Leaving Saxon under the protection of the Irishman in an outer
eddy of calm, Billy plunged back into the mix-up. Several minutes
later he emerged with the missing couple--Bert bleeding from a
blow on the ear, but hilarious, and Mary rumpled and hysterical.

"This ain't sport," she kept repeating. "It's a shame, a dirty
shame."

"We got to get outa this," Billy said. "The fun's only
commenced."

"Aw, wait," Bert begged. "It's worth eight dollars. It's cheap at
any price. I ain't seen so many black eyes and bloody noses in a
month of Sundays."

"Well, go on back an' enjoy yourself," Billy commended. "I'll
take the girls up there on the side hill where we can look on.
But I won't give much for your good looks if some of them Micks
lands on you."

The trouble was over in an amazingly short time, for from the
judges' stand beside the track the announcer was bellowing the
start of the boys' foot-race; and Bert, disappointed, joined
Billy and the two girls on the hillside looking down upon the
track.

There were boys' races and girls' races, races of young women and
old women, of fat men and fat women, sack races and three-legged
races, and the contestants strove around the small track through
a Bedlam of cheering supporters. The tug-of-war was already
forgotten, and good nature reigned again.

Five young men toed the mark, crouching with fingertips to the
ground and waiting the starter's revolver-shot. Three were in
their stocking-feet, and the remaining two wore spiked
running-shoes.

"Young men's race," Bert read from the program. "An' only one
prize--twenty-five dollars. See the red-head with the spikes--the
one next to the outside. San Francisco's set on him winning. He's
their crack, an' there's a lot of bets up."

"Who's goin' to win?" Mary deferred to Billy's superior athletic
knowledge.

"How can I tell!" he answered. "I never saw any of 'em before.
But they all look good to me. May the best one win, that's all."

The revolver was fired, and the five runners were off and away.
Three were outdistanced at the start. Redhead led, with a
black-haired young man at his shoulder, and it was plain that the
race lay between these two. Halfway around, the black-haired one
took the lead in a spurt that was intended to last to the finish.
Ten feet he gained, nor could Red-head cut it down an inch.

"The boy's a streak," Billy commented. "He ain't tryin' his
hardest, an' Red-head's just bustin' himself."

Still ten feet in the lead, the black-haired one breasted the
tape in a hubbub of cheers. Yet yells of disapproval could be
distinguished. Bert hugged himself with joy.

"Mm-mm," he gloated. "Ain't Frisco sore? Watch out for fireworks
now. See! He's bein' challenged. The judges ain't payin' him the
money. An' he's got a gang behind him. Oh! Oh! Oh! Ain't had so
much fun since my old woman broke her leg!"

"Why don't they pay him, Billy?" Saxon asked. "He won."

"The Frisco bunch is challengin' him for a professional," Billy
elucidated. "That's what they're all beefin' about. But it ain't
right. They all ran for that money, so they're all professional."

The crowd surged and argued and roared in front of the judges'
stand. The stand was a rickety, two-story affair, the second
story open at the front, and here the judges could be seen
debating as heatedly as the crowd beneath them.

"There she starts!" Bert cried. "Oh, you rough-house!"

The black-haired racer, backed by a dozen supporters, was
climbing the outside stairs to the judges.

"The purse-holder's his friend," Billy said. "See, he's paid him,
an' some of the judges is willin' an' some are beefin'. An' now
that other gang's going up--they're Redhead's." He turned to
Saxon with a reassuring smile. "We're well out of it this time.
There's goin' to be rough stuff down there in a minute."

"The judges are tryin' to make him give the money back," Bert
explained. "An' if he don't the other gang'll take it away from
him. See! They're reachin' for it now."

High above his head, the winner held the roll of paper containing
the twenty-five silver dollars. His gang, around him, was
shouldering back those who tried to seize the money. No blows had
been struck yet, but the struggle increased until the frail
structure shook and swayed. From the crowd beneath the winner was
variously addressed: "Give it baok, you dog!" "Hang on to it,
Tim!" "You won fair, Timmy!" "Give it back, you dirty robber!"
Abuse unprintable as well as friendly advice was hurled at him.

The struggle grew more violent. Tim's supporters strove to hold
him off the floor so that his hand would still be above the
grasping hands that shot up. Once, for an instant, his arm was
jerked down. Again it went up. But evidently the paper had
broken, and with a last desperate effort, before he went down,
Tim flung the coin out in a silvery shower upon the heads of the
crowd beneath. Then ensued a weary period of arguing and
quarreling.

"I wish they'd finish, so as we could get back to the dancin',"
Mary complained. "This ain't no fun."

Slowly and painfully the judges' stand was cleared, and an
announcer, stepping to the front of the stand, spread his arms
appealing for silence. The angiy clamor died down.

"The judges have decided," he shouted, "that this day of good
fellowship an' brotherhood--"

"Hear! Hear!" Many of the cooler heads applauded. "That's the
stuff!" "No fightin'!" "No hard feelin's!"

"An' therefore," the announcer became audible again, "the judges
have decided to put up another purse of twenty-five dollars an'
run the race over again!"

"An' Tim?" bellowed scores of throats. "What about Tim?" "He's
been robbed!" "The judges is rotten!"

Again the announcer stilled the tumult with his arm appeal.

"The judges have decided, for the sake of good feelin', that
Timothy McManus will also run. If he wins, the money's his."

"Now wouldn't that jar you?" Billy grumbled disgustedly. "If
Tim's eligible now, he was eligible the first time. An' if he was
eligible the first time, then the money was his."

"Red-head'll bust himself wide open this time," Bert jubilated.

"An' so will Tim," Billy rejoined. "You can bet he's mad clean
through, and he'll let out the links he was holdin' in last
time."

Another quarter of an hour was spent in clearing the track of the
excited crowd, and this time only Tim and Red-head toed the mark.
The other three young men had abandoned the contest.

The leap of Tim, at the report of the revolver, put him a clean
yard in the lead.

"I guess he's professional, all right, all right," Billy
remarked. "An' just look at him go!"

Half-way around, Tim led by fifty feet, and, running swiftly,
maintaining the same lead, he came down the homestretch an easy
winner. When directly beneath the group on the hillside, the
incredible and unthinkable happened. Standing close to the inside
edge of the track was a dapper young man with a light switch
cane. He was distinctly out of place in such a gathering, for
upon him was no ear-mark of the working class. Afterward, Bert
was of the opinion that he looked like a swell dancing master,
while Billy called him "the dude."

So far as Timothy McManus was concerned, the dapper young man was
destiny; for as Tim passed him, the young man, with utmost
deliberation, thrust his cane between Tim's flying legs. Tim
sailed through the air in a headlong pitch, struck spread-eagled
on his face, and plowed along in a cloud of dust.

There was an instant of vast and gasping silence. The young man,
too, seemed petrified by the ghastliness of his deed. It took an
approciable interval of time for him, as well as for the
onlookers, to realize what he had done. They recovered first, and
from a thousand throats the wild Irish yell went up. Red-head won
the race without a cheer. The storm center had shifted to the
young man with the cane. After the yell, he had one moment of
indecision; then he turned and darted up the track.

"Go it, sport!" Bert cheered, waving his hat in the air. "You're
the goods for me! Who'd a-thought it? Who'd a-thought it?
Say!--wouldn't it, now? Just wouldn't it?"

"Phew! He's a streak himself," Billy admired. "But what did he do
it for? He's no bricklayer."

Like a frightened rabbit, the mad roar at his heels, the young
man tore up the track to an open space on the hillside, up which
he clawed and disappeared among the trees. Behind him toiled a
hundred vengeful runners.

"It's too bad he's missing the rest of it," Billy said. "Look at
'em goin' to it."

Bert was beside himself. He leaped up and down and cried
continuously.

"Look at 'em! Look at 'em! Look at 'em!"

The Oakland faction was outraged. Twice had its favorite runner
been jobbed out of the race. This last was only another vile
trick of the Frisco faction. So Oakland doubled its brawny fists
and swung into San Francisco for blood. And San Francisco,
consciously innocent, was no less willing to join issues. To be
charged with such a crime was no less monstrous than the crime
itself. Besides, for too many tedious hours had the Irish
heroically suppressed themselves. Five thousands of them exploded
into joyous battle. The women joined with them. The whole
amphitheater was filled with the conflict. There were rallies,
retreats, charges, and counter-charges. Weaker groups were forced
fighting up the hillsides. Other groups, bested, fled among the
trees to carry on guerrilla warfare, emerging in sudden dashes to
overwhelm isolated enemies. Half a dozen special policemen, hired
by the Weasel Park management, received an impartial trouncing
from both sides.

"Nohody's the friend of a policeman," Bert chortled, dabbing his
handkerchief to his injured ear, which still bled.

The bushes crackled behind him, and he sprang aside to let the
locked forms of two men go by, rolling over and over down the
hill, each striking when uppermost, and followed by a screaming
woman who rained blows on the one who was patently not of her
clan.

The judges, in the second story of the stand, valiantly withstood
a fierce assault until the frail structure toppled to the ground
in splinters.

"What's that woman doing?" Saxon asked, calling attention to an
elderly woman beneath them on the track, who had sat down and was
pulling from her foot an elastic-sided shoe of generous
dimensions.

"Goin' swimming," Bert chuckled, as the stocking followed.

They watched, fascinated. The shoe was pulled on again over the
bare foot. Then the woman slipped a rock the size of her fist
into the stocking, and, brandishing this ancient and horrible
weapon, lumbered into the nearest fray.

"Oh!--Oh!--Oh!" Bert screamed, with every blow she struck "Hey,
old flannel-mouth! Watch out! You'll get yours in a second. Oh!
Oh! A peach! Did you see it? Hurray for the old lady! Look at her
tearin' into 'em! Watch out, old girl! ... Ah-h-h."

His voice died away regretfully, as the one with the stocking,
whose hair had been clutched from behind by another Amazon, was
whirled about in a dizzy semicircle.

Vainly Mary clung to his arm, shaking him back and forth and
remonstrating.

"Can't you be sensible?" she cried. "It's awful! I tell you it's
awful!"

But Bert was irrepressible.

"Go it, old girl!" he encouraged. "You win! Me for you every
time! Now's your chance! Swat! Oh! My! A peach! A peach!"

"It's the biggest rough-house I ever saw," Billy confided to
Saxon. "It sure takes the Micks to mix it. But what did that dude
wanta do it for? That's what gets me. He wasn't a bricklayer--not
even a workingman--just a regular sissy dude that didn't know a
livin' soul in the grounds. But if he wanted to raise a
rough-house he certainly done it. Look at 'em. They're fightin'
everywhere."

He broke into sudden laughter, so hearty that the tears came into
his eyes.

"What is it?" Saxon asked, anxious not to miss anything.

"It's that dude," Billy explained between gusts. "What did he
wanta do it for? That's what gets my goat. What'd he wanta do it
for?"

There was more crashing in the brush, and two women erupted upon
the scene, one in flight, the other pursuing. Almost ere they
could realize it, the little group found itself merged in the
astounding conflict that covered, if not the face of creation, at
least all the visible landscape of Weasel Park.

The fleeing woman stumbled in rounding the end of a picnic bench,
and would have been caught had she not seized Mary's arm to
recover balance, and then flung Mary full into the arms of the
woman who pursued. This woman, largely built, middle-aged, and
too irate to comprehend, clutched Mary's hair by one hand and
lifted the other to smack her. Before the blow could fall, Billy
had seized both the woman's wrists.

"Come on, old girl, cut it out," he said appeasingly. "You're in
wrong. She ain't done nothin'."

Then the woman did a strange thing. Making no resistance, but
maintaining her hold on the girl's hair, she stood still and
calmly began to scream. The scream was hideously compounded of
fright and fear. Yet in her face was neither fright nor fear. She
regarded Billy coolly and appraisingly, as if to see how he took
it--her scream merely the cry to the clan for help.

"Aw, shut up, you battleax!" Bert vociferated, trying to drag her
off by the shoulders.

The result was that The four rocked back and forth, while the
woman calmly went on screaming. The scream became touched with
triumph as more crashing was heard in the brush.

Saxon saw Billy's slow eyes glint suddenly to the hardness of
steel, and at the same time she saw him put pressure on his
wrist-holds. The woman released her grip on Mary and was shoved
back and free. Then the first man of the rescue was upon them. He
did not pause to inquire into the merits of the affair. It was
sufficient that he saw the woman reeling away from Billy and
screaming with pain that was largely feigned.

"It's all a mistake," Billy cried hurriedly. "We apologize,
sport--"

The Irishman swung ponderously. Billy ducked, cutting his apology
short, and as the sledge-like fist passed over his head, he drove
his left to the other's jaw. The big Irishman toppled over
sidewise and sprawled on the edge of the slope. Half-scrambled
back to his feet and out of balance, he was caught by Bert's
fist, and this time went clawing down the slope that was slippery
with short, dry grass.  Bert was redoubtable. "That for you, old
girl--my compliments," was his cry, as he shoved the woman over
the edge on to the treacherous slope. Three more men were
emerging from the brush.

In the meantime, Billy had put Saxon in behind the protection of
the picnic table. Mary, who was hysterical, had evinced a desire
to cling to him, and he had sent her sliding across the top of
the table to Saxon.

"Come on, you flannel-mouths!" Bert yelled at the newcomers,
himself swept away by passion, his black eyes flashing wildly,
his dark face inflamed by the too-ready blood. "Come on, you
cheap skates! Talk about Gettysburg. We'll show you all the
Americans ain't dead yet!"

"Shut your trap--we don't want a scrap with the girls here,"
Billy growled harshly, holding his position in front of the
table. He turned to the three rescuers, who were bewildered by
the lack of anything visible to rescue. "Go on, sports. We don't
want a row. You're in wrong. They ain't nothin' doin' in the
fight line. We don't wanta fight--d'ye get me?"

They still hesitated, and Billy might have succeeded in avoiding
trouble had not the man who had gone down the bank chosen that
unfortunate moment to reappear, crawling groggily on hands and
knees and showing a bleeding face. Again Bert reached him and
sent him downslope, and the other three, with wild yells, sprang
in on Billy, who punched, shifted position, ducked and punched,
and shifted again ere he struck the thiird time. His blows were
clean end hard, scientifically delivered, with the weight of his
body behind.

Saxon, looking on, saw his eyes and learned more about him. She
was frightened, but clear-seeing, and she was startled by the
disappearance of all depth of light and shadow in his eyes. They
showed surface only--a hard, bright surface, almost glazed,
devoid of all expression save deadly seriousness. Bert's eyes
showed madness. The eyes of the Irishmen were angry and serious,
and yet not all serious. There was a wayward gleam in them, as if
they enjoyed the fracas. But in Billy's eyes was no enjoyment. It
was as if he had certain work to do and had doggedly settled down
to do it.

Scarcely more expression did she note in the face, though there
was nothing in common between it and the one she had seen all
day. The boyishness had vanished. This face was mature in a
terrifying, ageless way. There was no anger in it, Nor was it
even pitiless. It seemed to have glazed as hard and passionlessly
as his eyes. Something came to her of her wonderful mother's
tales of the ancient Saxons, and he seemed to her one of those
Saxons, and she caught a glimpse, on the well of her
consciousness, of a long, dark boat, with a prow like the beak of
a bird of prey, and of huge, half-naked men, wing-helmeted, and
one of their faces, it seemed to her, was his face. She did not
reason this. She felt it, and visioned it as by an unthinkable
clairvoyance, and gasped, for the flurry of war was over. It had
lasted only seconds, Bert was dancing on the edge of the slippery
slope and mocking the vanquished who had slid impotently to the
bottom. But Billy took charge.

"Come on, you girls," he commanded. "Get onto yourself, Bert. We
got to get onta this. We can't fight an army."

He led the retreat, holding Saxon's arm, and Bert, giggling and
jubilant, brought up the rear with an indignant Mary who
protested vainly in his unheeding ears.

For a hundred yards they ran and twisted through the trees, and
then, no signs of pursuit appearing, they slowed down to a
dignified saunter. Bert, the trouble-seeker, pricked his ears to
the muffled sound of blows and sobs, and stepped aside to
investigate.

"Oh! look what I've found!" he called.

They joined him on the edge of a dry ditch and looked down. In
the bottom were two men, strays from the fight, grappled together
and still fighting. They were weeping out of sheer fatigue and
helplessness, and the blows they only occasionally struck were
open-handed and ineffectual.

"Hey, you, sport--throw sand in his eyes," Bert counseled.
"That's it, blind him an' he's your'n."

"Stop that!" Billy shouted at the man, who was following
instructions, "Or I'll come down there an' beat you up myself.
It's all over--d'ye get me? It's all over an' everybody's
friends. Shake an' make up. The drinks are on both of you. That's
right--here, gimme your hand an' I'll pull you out."

They left them shaking hands and brushing each other's clothes.

"It soon will be over," Billy grinned to Saxon. "I know 'em.
Fight's fun with them. An' this big scrap's made the days howlin'
success. what did I tell you!--look over at that table there."

A group of disheveled men and women, still breathing heavily,
were shaking hands all around.

"Come on, let's dance," Mary pleaded, urging them in the
direction of the pavilion.

All over the park the warring bricklayers were shaking hands and
making up, while the open-air bars were crowded with the
drinkers.

Saxon walked very close to Billy. She was proud of him. He could
fight, and he could avoid trouble. In all that had occurred he
had striven to avoid trouble. And, also, consideration for her
and Mary had been uppermost in his mind.

"You are brave," she said to him.

"It's like takin' candy from a baby," he disclaimed. "They only
rough-house. They don't know boxin'. They're wide open, an' all
you gotta do is hit 'em. It ain't real fightin', you know." With
a troubled, boyish look in his eyes, he stared at his bruised
knuckles. "An' I'll have to drive team to-morrow with 'em," he
lamented. "Which ain't fun, I'm tellin' you, when they stiffen
up."

CHAPTER V

At eight o'clock the Al Vista band played "Home, Sweet Home,"
and, following the hurried rush through the twilight to the
picnic train, the four managed to get double seats facing each
other. When the aisles and platforms were packed by the hilarious
crowd, the train pulled out for the short run from the suburbs
into Oakland. All the car was singing a score of songs at once,
and Bert, his head pillowed on Mary's breast with her arms around
him, started "On the Banks of the Wabash." And he sang the song
through, undeterred by the bedlam of two general fights, one on
the adjacent platform, the other at the opposite end of the car,
both of which were finally subdued by special policemen to the
screams of women and the crash of glass.

Billy sang a lugubrious song of many stanzas about a cowboy, the
refrain of which was, "Bury me out on the lone pr-rairie."

"That's one you never heard before; my father used to sing it,"
he told Saxon, who was glad that it was ended.

She had discovered the first flaw in him. He was tonedeaf. Not
once had he been on the key.

"I don't sing often," he added.

"You bet your sweet life he don't," Bert exclaimed. "His
friends'd kill him if he did."

"They all make fun of my singin'," he complained to Saxon.
"Honest, now, do you find it as rotten as all that?"

"It 's...it's maybe flat a bit," she admitted reluctantly.

"It don't sound flat to me," he protested. "It's a regular josh
on me. I'll bet Bert put you up to it. You sing something now,
Saxon. I bet you sing good. I can tell it from lookin' at you."

She began "When the Harvest Days Are Over." Bert and Mary joined
in; but when Billy attempted to add his voice he was dissuaded by
a shin-kick from Bert. Saxon sang in a clear, true soprano, thin
but sweet, and she was aware that she was singing to Billy.

"Now THAT is singing what is," he proclaimed, when she had
finished. "Sing it again. Aw, go on. You do it just right. It's
great."

His hand slipped to hers and gathered it in, and as she sang
again she felt the tide of his strength flood warmingly through
her.

"Look at 'em holdin' hands," Bert jeered. "Just a-holdin' hands
like they was afraid. Look at Mary an' me, Come on an' kick in,
you cold-feets. Get together. If you don't, it'll look
suspicious. I got my suspicions already. You're framin' somethin'
up."

Thers was no mistaking his innuendo, and Saxon felt her cheeks
flaming.

"Get onto yourself, Bert," Billy reproved.

"Shut up!" Mary added the weight of her indignation. "You're
awfully raw, Bert Wanhope, an' I won't have anything more to do
with you--there!"

She withdrew her arms and shoved him away, only to receive him
forgivingly half a dozen seconds afterward.

"Come on, the four of us," Bert went on irrepressibly. "The
night's young. Let's make a time of it--Pabst's Cafe first, and
then some. What you say, Bill? What you say, Saxon? Mary's game."

Saxon waited and wondered, half sick with apprehension of this
man beside her whom she had known so short a time.

"Nope," he said slowly. "I gotta get up to a hard day's work
to-morrow, and I guess the girls has got to, too."

Saxon forgave him his tone-deafness. Here was the kind of man she
always had known existed. It was for some such man that she had
waited. She was twenty-two, and her first marriage offer had come
when she was sixteen. The last had occurred only the month
before, from the foreman of the washing-room, and he had been
good and kind, but not young. But this one beside her--he was
strong and kind and good, and YOUNG. She was too young herself
not to desire youth. There would have been rest from fancy starch
with the foreman, but there would have been no warmth. But this
man beside her.... She caught herself on the verge involuntarily
of pressing his hand that held hers.

"No, Bert, don't tease he's right," Mary was saying. "We've got
to get some sleep. It's fancy starch to-morrow, and all day on
our feet."

It came to Saxon with a chill pang that she was surely older than
Billy. She stole glances at the smoothness of his face, and the
essential boyishness of him, so much desired, shocked her. Of
course he would marry some girl years younger than himself, than
herself. How old was he? Could it be that he was too young for
her? As he seemed to grow insecessible, she was drawn toward him
more compellingly. He was so strong, so gentle. She lived over
the events of the day. There was no flaw there. He had considered
her and Mary, always. And he had torn the program up and danced
only with her. Surely he had liked her, or he would not have done
it.

She slightly moved her hand in his and felt the harsh contact of
his teamster callouses. The sensation was exquisite. He, too,
moved his hand, to accommodate the shift of hers, and she waited
fearfully. She did not want him to prove like other men, and she
could have hated him had he dared to take advantage of that
slight movement of her fingers and put his arm around her. He did
not, and she flamed toward him. There was fineness in him. He was
neither rattle-brained, like Bert, nor coarse like other men she
had encountered. For she had had experiences, not nice, and she
had been made to suffer by the lack of what was termed chivalry,
though she, in turn, lacked that word to describe what she
divined and desired.

And he was a prizefighter. The thought of it almost made her
gasp. Yet he answered not at all to her conception of a
prizefighter. But, then, he wasn't a prizefighter. He had said he
was not. She resolved to ask him about it some time if . . . if
he took her out again. Yet there was little doubt of that, for
when a man danced with one girl a whole day he did not drop her
immediately. Almost she hoped that he was a prizefighter. There
was a delicious tickle of wickedness about it. Prizefighters were
such terrible and mysterious men. In so far as they were out of
the ordinary and were not mere common workingmen such as
carpenters and laundrymen, they represented romance. Power also
they represented. They did not work for bosses, but spectacularly
and magnificently, with their own might, grappled with the great
world and wrung splendid living from its reluctant hands. Some of
them even owned automobiles and traveled with a retinue of
trainers and servants. Perhaps it had been only Billy's modesty
that made him say he had quit fighting. And yet, there were the
callouses on his hands. That showed he had quit.

CHAPTER VI

They said good-bye at the gate. Billy betrayed awkwardness that
was sweet to Saxon. He was not one of the take-it-for-granted
young men. There was a pause, while she feigned desire to go into
the house, yet waited in secret eagerness for the words she
wanted him to say.

"When am I goin' to see you again?" he asked, holding her hand in
his.

She laughed consentingly.

"I live 'way up in East Oakland," he explained. "You know there's
where the stable is, an' most of our teaming is done in that
section, so I don't knock around down this way much. But, say--"
His hand tightened on hers. "We just gotta dance together some
more. I'll tell you, the Orindore Club has its dance Wednesday.
If you haven't a date--have you?"

"No," she said.

"Then Wednesday. What time'll I come for you?"

And when they had arranged the details, and he had agreed that
she should dance some of the dances with the other fellows, and
said good night again, his hand closed more tightly on hers and
drew her toward him. She resisted slightly, but honestly. It was
the custom, but she felt she ought not for fear he might
misunderstand. And yet she wanted to kiss him as she had never
wanted to kiss a man. When it came, her face upturned to his, she
realized that on his part it was an honest kiss. There hinted
nothing behind it. Rugged and kind as himself, it was virginal
almost, and betrayed no long practice in the art of saying
good-bye. All men were not brutes after all, was her thought.

"Good night," she murmured; the gate screeched under her hand;
and she hurried along the narrow walk that led around to the
corner of the house.

"Wednesday," he celled softly.

"Wednesday," she answered.

But in the shadow of the narrow alley between the two houses she
stood still and pleasured in the ring of his foot falls down the
cement sidewalk. Not until they had quite died away did she go
on. She crept up the back stairs and across the kitchen to her
room, registering her thanksgiving that Sarah was asleep.

She lighted the gas, and, as she removed the little velvet hat,
she felt her lips still tingling with the kiss. Yet it had meant
nothing. It was the way of the young men. They all did it. But
their good-night kisses had never tingled, while this one tingled
in her brain as wall as on her lip. What was it? What did it
mean? With a sudden impulse she looked at herself in the glass.
The eyes were happy and bright. The color that tinted her cheeks
so easily was in them and glowing. It was a pretty reflection,
and she smiled, partly in joy, partly in appreciation, and the
smile grew at sight of the even rows of strong white teeth. Why
shouldn't Billy like that face? was her unvoiced query. Other men
had liked it. Other men did like it. Even the other girls
admitted she was a good-looker. Charley Long certainly liked it
from the way he made life miserable for her.

She glanced aside to the rim of the looking-glass where his
photograph was wedged, shuddered, and made a moue of distaste.
There was cruelty in those eyes, and brutishness. He was a brute.
For a year, now, he had bullied her. Other fellows were afraid to
go with her. He warned them off. She had been forced into almost
slavery to his attentions. She remembered the young bookkeeper at
the laundry--not a workingman, but a soft-handed, soft-voiced
gentleman--whom Charley had beaten up at the corner because he
had been bold enough to come to take her to the theater. And she
had been helpless. For his own sake she had never dared accept
another invitation to go out with him.

And now, Wednesday night, she was going with Billy. Billy! Her
heart leaped. There would be trouble, but Billy would save her
from him. She'd like to see him try and beat Billy up.

With a quick movement, she jerked the photograph from its niche
and threw it face down upon the chest of drawers. It fell beside
a small square case of dark and tarnished leather. With a feeling
as of profanation she again seized the offending photograph and
flung it across the room into a corner. At the same time she
picked up the leather case. Springing it open, she gazed at the
daguerreotype of a worn little woman with steady gray eyes and a
hopeful, pathetic mouth. Opposite, on the velvet lining, done in
gold lettering, was, CARLTON FROM DAISY. She read it reverently,
for it represented the father she had never known, and the mother
she had so little known, though she could never forget that those
wise sad eyes were gray.

Despite lack of conventional religion, Saxon's nature was deeply
religious. Her thoughts of God were vague and nebulous, and there
she was frankly puzzled. She could not vision God. Here, in the
daguerreotype, was the concrete; much she had grasped from it,
and always there seemed an infinite more to grasp. She did not go
to church. This was her high altar and holy of holies. She came
to it in trouble, in loneliness, for counsel, divination, end
comfort. In so far as she found herself different from the girls
of her acquaintance, she quested here to try to identify her
characteristics in the pictured face. Her mother had been
different from other women, too. This, forsooth, meant to her
what God meant to others. To this she strove to be true, and not
to hurt nor vex. And how little she really knew of her mother,
and of how much was conjecture and surmise, she was unaware; for
it was through many years she had erected this mother-myth.

Yet was it all myth? She resented the doubt with quick jealousy,
and, opening the bottom drawer of the chest, drew forth a
battered portfolio. Out rolled manuscripts, faded and worn, and
arose a faint far scent of sweet-kept age. The writing was
delicate and curled, with the quaint fineness of half a century
before. She read a stanza to herself:

"Sweet as a wind-lute's airy strains
Your gentle muse has learned to sing,
And California's boundless plains
Prolong the soft notes echoing."

She wondered, for the thousandth time, what a windlute was; yet
much of beauty, much of beyondness, she sensed of this dimly
remembered beautiful mother of hers. She communed a while, then
unrolled a second manuscript. "To C. B.," it read. To Carlton
Brown, she knew, to her father, a love-poem from her mother.
Saxon pondered the opening lines:

"I have stolen away from the crowd in the groves,
Where the nude statues stand, and the leaves point and shiver
At ivy-crowned Bacchus, the Queen of the Loves,
Pandora and Psyche, struck voiceless forever."

This, too, was beyond her. But she breathed the beauty of it.
Bacchus, and Pandora and Psyche--talismans to conjure with! But
alas! the necromancy was her mother's. Strange, meaningless words
that meant so much! Her marvelous mother had known their meaning.
Saxon spelled the three words aloud, letter by letter, for she
did not dare their pronunciation; and in her consciousness
glimmered august connotations, profound and unthinkable. Her mind
stumbled and halted on the star-bright and dazzling boundaries of
a world beyond her world in which her mother had roamed at will.
Again and again, solemnly, she went over the four lines. They
were radiance and light to the world, haunted with phantoms of
pain and unrest, in which she had her being. There, hidden among
those cryptic singing lines, was the clue. If she could only
grasp it, all would be made clear. Of this she was sublimely
confident. She would understand Sarah's sharp tongue, her unhappy
brother, the cruelty of Charley Long, the justness of the
bookkeeper's beating, the day-long, month-long, year-long toil at
the ironing-board.

She skipped a stanza that she knew was hopelessly beyond her, and
tried again:

"The dusk of the greenhouse is luminous yet
With quivers of opal and tremors of gold;
For the sun is at rest, and the light from the west,
Like delicate wine that is mellow and old,

"Flushes faintly the brow of a naiad that stands
In the spray of a fountain, whose seed-amethysts
Tremble lightly a moment on bosom and hands,
Then dip in their basin from bosom and wrists."

"It's beautiful, just beautiful," she sighed. And then, appalled
at the length of all the poem, at the volume of the mystery, she
rolled the manuscript and put it away. Again she dipped in the
drawer, seeking the clue among the cherished fragments of her
mother's hidden soul.

This time it was a small package, wrapped in tissue paper and
tied with ribbon. She opened it carefully, with the deep gravity
and circumstance of a priest before an altar. Appeared a little
red-satin Spanish girdle, whale-boned like a tiny corset,
pointed, the pioneer finery of a frontier woman who had crossed
the plains. It was hand-made after the California-Spanish model
of forgotten days. The very whalebone had been home-shaped of the
raw material from the whaleships traded for in hides and tallow.
The black lace trimming her mother had made. The triple edging of
black velvet strips--her mother's hands had sewn the stitches.

Saxon dreamed over it in a maze of incoherent thought. This was
concrete. This she understood. This she worshiped as man-created
gods have been worshiped on less tangible evidence of their
sojourn on earth.

Twenty-two inches it measured around. She knew it out of many
verifications. She stood up and put it about her waist. This was
part of the ritual. It almost met. In places it did meet. Without
her dress it would meet everywhere as it had met on her mother.
Closest of all, this survival of old California-Ventura days
brought Saxon in touch. Hers was her mother's form. Physically,
she was like her mother. Her grit, her ability to turn off work
that was such an amazement to others, were her mother's. Just so
had her mother been an amazement to her generation--her mother,
the toy-like creature, the smallest and tha youngest of the
strapping pioneer brood, who nevertheless had mothered the brood.
Always it had been her wisdom that was sought, even by the
brothers and sisters a dozen years her senior. Daisy, it was, who
had put her tiny foot down and commanded the removal from the
fever flatlands of Colusa to the healthy mountains of Ventura;
who had backed the savage old Indian-fighter of a father into a
corner and fought the entire family that Vila might marry the man
of her choice; who had flown in the face of the family and of
community morality and demanded the divorce of Laura from her
criminally weak husband; and who on the other hand, had held the
branches of the family together when only misunderstanding and
weak humanness threatened to drive them apart.

The peacemaker and the warrior! All the old tales trooped before
Saxon's eyes. They were sharp with detail, for she had visioned
them many times, though their content was of things she had never
seen. So far as details were concerned, they were her own
creation, for she had never seen an ox, a wild Indian, nor a
prairie schooner. Yet, palpitating and real, shimmering in the
sun-flashed dust of ten thousand hoofs, she saw pass, from East
to West, across a continent, the great hegira of the land-hungry
Anglo-Saxon. It was part and fiber of her. She had been nursed on
its traditions and its facts from the lips of those who had taken
part. Clearly she saw the long wagon-train, the lean, gaunt men
who walked before, the youths goading the lowing oxen that fell
and were goaded to their feet to fall again. And through it all,
a flying shuttle, weaving the golden dazzling thread of
personality, moved the form of her little, indomitable mother,
eight years old, and nine ere the great traverse was ended, a
necromancer and a law-giver, willing her way, and the way and the
willing always good and right.

Saxon saw Punch, the little, rough-coated Skye-terrier with the
honest eyes (who had plodded for weary months), gone lame and
abandoned; she saw Daisy, the chit of a child, hide Punch in the
wagon. She saw the savage old worried father discover the added
burden of the several pounds to the dying oxen. She saw his
wrath, as he held Punch by the scruff of the neck. And she saw
Daisy, between the muzzle of the long-barreled rifle and the
little dog. And she saw Daisy thereafter, through days of alkali
and heat, walking, stumbling, in the dust of the wagons, the
little sick dog, like a baby, in her arms.

But most vivid of all, Saxon saw the fight at Little Meadow--and
Daisy, dressed as for a gala day, in white, a ribbon sash about
her waist, ribbons and a round-comb in her hair, in her hands
small water-pails, step forth into the sunshine on the
flower-grown open ground from the wagon circle, wheels
interlocked, where the wounded screamed their delirium and
babbled of flowing fountains, and go on, through the sunshine and
the wonder-inhibition of the bullet-dealing Indians, a hundred
yards to the waterhole and back again.

Saxon kissed the little, red satin Spanish girdle passionately,
and wrapped it up in haste, with dewy eyes, abandoning the
mystery and godhead of mother and all the strange enigma of
living.

In bed, she projected against her closed eyelids the few rich
scenes of her mother that her child-memory retained. It was her
favorite way of wooing sleep. She had done it all her life--sunk
into the death-blackness of sleep with her mother limned to the
last on her fading consciousness. But this mother was not the
Daisy of the plains nor of the daguerreotype. They had been
before Saxon's time. This that she saw nightly was an older
mother, broken with insomnia and brave with sorrow, who crept,
always crept, a pale, frail creature, gentle and unfaltering,
dying from lack of sleep, living by will, and by will refraining
from going mad, who, nevertheless, could not will sleep, and whom
not even the whole tribe of doctors could make sleep.
Crept--always she crept, about the house, from weary bed to weary
chair and back again through long days and weeks of torment,
never complaining, though her unfailing smile was twisted with
pain, and the wise gray eyes, still wise and gray, were grown
unutterably larger and profoundly deep.

But on this night Saxon did not win to sleep quickly; the little
creeping mother came and went; and in the intervals the face of
Billy, with the cloud-drifted, sullen, handsome eyes, burned
against her eyelids. And once again, as sleep welled up to
smother her, she put to herself the question IS THIS THE MAN?

CHAPTER VII

Tun work in the ironing-room slipped off, but the three days
until Wednesday night were very long. She hummed over the fancy
starch that flew under the iron at an astounding rate.

"I can't see how you do it," Mary admired. "You'll make thirteen
or fourteen this week at that rate."

Saxon laughed, and in the steam from the iron she saw dancing
golden letters that spelled WEDNESDAY.

"What do you think of Billy?" Mary asked.

"I like him," was the frank answer.

"Well, don't let it go farther than that."

"I will if I want to," Saxon retorted gaily.

"Better not," came the warning. "You'll only make trouble for
yourself. He ain't marryin'. Many a girl's found that out. They
just throw themselves at his head, too."

"I'm not going to throw myself at him, or any other man."

"Just thought I'd tell you," Mary concluded. "A word to the
wise."

Saxon had become grave.

"He's not . . . not . . ." she began, than looked the
significance of the question she could not complete.

"Oh, nothin' like that--though there's nothin' to stop him. He's
straight, all right, all right. But he just won't fall for
anything in skirts. He dances, an' runs around, an' has a good
time, an' beyond that--nitsky. A lot of 'em's got fooled on him.
I bet you there's a dozen girls in love with him right now. An'
he just goes on turnin' 'em down. There was Lily Sanderson--you
know her. You seen her at that Slavonic picnic last summer at
Shellmound--that tall, nice-lookin' blonde that was with Butch
Willows?"

"Yes, I remember her," Saxon sald. "What about her?"

"Well, she'd been runnin' with Butch Willows pretty steady, an'
just because she could dance, Billy dances a lot with her. Butch
ain't afraid of nothin'. He wades right in for a showdown, an'
nails Billy outside, before everybody, an' reads the riot act.
An' Billy listens in that slow, sleepy way of his, an' Butch gets
hotter an' hotter, an' everybody expects a scrap.

"An' then Billy says to Butch, 'Are you done?' 'Yes,' Butch says;
'I've said my say, an' what are you goin' to do about it?' An'
Billy says--an' what d'ye think he said, with everybody lookin'
on an' Butch with blood in his eye? Well, he said, 'I guess
nothin', Butch.' Just like that. Butch was that surprised you
could knocked him over with a feather. 'An' never dance with her
no more?' he says. 'Not if you say I can't, Butch,' Billy says.
Just like that.

"Well, you know, any other man to take water the way he did from
Butch--why, everybody'd despise him. But not Billy. You see, he
can afford to. He's got a rep as a fighter, an' when he just
stood back 'an' let Butch have his way, everybody knew he wasn't
scared, or backin' down, or anything. He didn't care a rap for
Lily Sanderson, that was all, an' anybody could see she was just
crazy after him."

The telling of this episode caused Saxon no little worry. Hers
was the average woman's pride, but in the matter of
man-conquering prowess she was not unduly conceited. Billy had
enjoyed her dancing, and she wondered if that were all. If
Charley Long bullied up to him would he let her go as he had let
Lily Sanderson go? He was not a marrying man; nor could Saxon
blind her eyes to the fact that he was eminently marriageable. No
wonder the girls ran after him. And he was a man-subduer as well
as a woman-subduer. Men liked him. Bert Wanhope seemed actually
to love him. She remembered the Butchertown tough in the
dining-room at Weasel Park who had come over to the table to
apologize, and the Irishman at the tug-of-war who had abandoned
all thought of fighting with him the moment he learned his
identity.

A very much spoiled young man was a thought that flitted
frequently through Saxon's mind; and eac