________________________________________________
_ "There be hills and valleys, and rich land, and streams of clear
water, good wagon roads and a railroad not too far away, plenty
of sunshine, and cold enough at night to need blankets, and not
only pines but plenty of other kinds of trees, with open spaces
to pasture Billy's horses and cattle, and deer and rabbits for
him to shoot, and lots and lots of redwood trees, and . . . and .
. . well, and no fog," Saxon concluded the description of the
farm she and Billy sought.
Mark Hall laughed delightedly.
"And nightingales roosting in all the trees," he cried; "flowers
that neither fail nor fade, bees without stings, honey dew every
morning, showers of manna betweenwhiles, fountains of youth and
quarries of philosopher's stones--why, I know the very place. Let
me show you."
She waited while he pored over road-maps of the state. Failing in
them, he got out a big atlas, and, though. all the countries of
the world were in it, he could not find what he was after.
"Never mind," he said. "Come over to-night and I'll be able to
show you."
That evening he led her out on the veranda to the telescope, and
she found herself looking through it at the full moon.
"Somewhere up there in some valley you'll find that farm," he
teased.
Mrs. Hall looked inquiringly at them as they returned inside.
"I've been showing her a valley in the moon where she expects to
go farming," he laughed.
"We started out prepared to go any distance," Saxon said. "And if
it's to the moon, I expect we can make it." 412
THE VAI`I,EY OF THE MOON 413
"But my dear child, you can't expect to find such a paradise on
the earth," Hall continued. "For instance, you can't have
redwoods without fog. They go together. The redwoods grow only in
the fog belt."
Saxon debated a while.
"Well, we could put up with a little fog," she conceded, "--
almost anything to have redwoods. I don't know what a quarry of
philosopher's stones is like, but if it's anything like Mr.
Hafier's marble quarry, and there's a railroad handy, I guess we
could manage to worry along. And you don't have to go to the moon
for honey dew. They scrape it off of the leaves of the bushes up
in Nevada County. I know that for a fact, because my father told
my-mother about it, and she told me."
A little later in the evening, the subject of farming having
remained uppermost, Hall swept off into a diatribe against the
"gambler's paradise," which was his epithet for the United
States.
"When you think of the glorious chance," he said. "A new country,
bounded by the oceans, situated just right in latitude, with the
richest land and vastest natural resources of any country in the
world, settled by immigrants who had thrown off all the leading
strings of the Old World and were in the humor for democracy.
There was only one thing to stop them from perfecting the
democracy they started, and that thing was greediness.
"They started gobbling everything in sight like a lot of swine,
and while they gobbled democracy went to smash. Gobbling became
gambling. It was a nation of tin horns. Whenever a man lost his
stake, all he had to do was to chase the frontier west a few
miles and get another stake. They moved over the face of the land
like so many locusts. They destroyed everything--the Indians, the
soil, the forests, just as they destroyed the buffalo and the
passenger pigeon. Their morality in business and politics was
gambler morality. Their laws were gambling laws--how to play the
game. Everybody played. Therefore, hurrah for the game. Nobody
objected, because nobody was unable to play. As I said, the
losers chased the frontier for fresh stakes. The winner of
to-day, broke to-morrow, on the day following might be riding his
luck to royal flushes on five-card draws.
"So they gobbled and gambled from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
until they'd swined a whole continent. When they'd finished with
the lands and forests and mines, they turned back, gambling for
any little stakes they'd overlooked, gambling for franchises and
monopolies, using politics to protect their crooked deals and
brace games. And democracy gone clean to smash.
"And then was the funniest time of all. The losers couldn't get
any more stakes, while the winners went on gambling among
themselves. The losers could only stand around with their hands
in their pockets and look on. When they got hungry, they went,
hat in hand, and begged the successful gamblers for a job. The
losers went to work for the winners, and they've been working for
them ever since, and democracy side-tracked up Salt Creek. You,
Billy Roberts, have never had a hand in the game in your life.
That's because your people were among the also-rans. "
"How about yourself?" Billy asked. "I ain't seen you holdin' any
hands."
"I don't have to. I don't count. I am a parasite."
"What's that?"
"A flea, a woodtick, anything that gets something for nothing. I
batten on the mangy hides of the workingmen. I don't have to
gamble. I don't have to work. My father left me enough of his
winnings.--Oh, don't preen yourself, my boy. Your folks were just
as bad as mine. But yours lost, and mine won, and so you plow in
my potato patch. "
"I don't see it," Billy contended stoutly. "A man with gumption
can win out to-day--"
"On government land?" Hall asked quickly.
Billy swallowed and acknowledged the stab.
"Just the same he can win out," he reiterated.
"Surely--he can win a job from some other fellow? A young husky
with a good head like yours can win jobs anywhere. But think of
the handicaps on the fellows who lose. How many tramps have you
met along the road who could get a job driving four horses for
the Carmel Livery Stabler And some of them were as husky as you
when they were young. And on top of it all you've got no shout
coming. It's a mighty big come-down from gambling for a continent
to gambling for a job."
"Just the same--" Billy recommenced.
"Oh, you've got it in your blood," Hall cut him off cavalierly.
"And why not? Everybody in this country has been gambling for
generations. It was in the air when you were born. You've
breathed it all your life. You, who 've never had a white chip in
the game, still go on shouting for it and capping for it."
"But what are all of us losers to do?" Saxon inquired.
"Call in the police and stop the game," Hall recommended. "It's
crooked."
Saxon frowned.
"Do what your forefathers didn't do," he amplified. "Go ahead and
perfect democracy."
She remembered a remark of Mercedes. "A friend of mine says that
democracy is an enchantment."
"It is--in a gambling joint. There are a million boys in our
public schools right now swallowing the gump of canal boy to
President, and millions of worthy citizens who sleep sound every
night in the belief that they have a say in running the country."
"You talk like my brother Tom," Saxon said, failing to
comprehend. "If we all get into politics and work hard for
something better maybe we'll get it after a thousand years or so.
But I want it now." She clenched her hands passionately. "I can't
wait; I want it now."
"But that is just what I've been telling you, my dear girl.
That's what's the trouble with all the losers. They can't wait.
They want it now--a stack of chips and a fling at the game. Well,
they won't get it now. That's what's the matter with you, chasing
a valley in the moon. That's what's the matter with Billy, aching
right now for a chance to win ten cents from me at Pedro cussing
wind-chewing under his breath."
"Gee! you'd make a good soap-boxer," commented Billy.
"And I'd be a soap-boxer if I didn't have the spending of my
father's ill-gotten gains. It's none of my affair. Islet them
rot. They'd be just as bad if they were on top. It's all a
mess--blind bats, hungry swine, and filthy buzzards--"
Here Mrs. Hall interferred.
"Now, Mark, you stop that, or you'll be getting the blues."
He tossed his mop of hair and laughed with an effort.
"No I won't," he denied. "I'm going to get ten cents from Billy
at a game of Pedro. He won't have a look in."
Saxon and Billy flourished in the genial human atmosphere of
Carmel. They appreciated in their own estimation. Saxon felt that
she was something more than a laundry girl and the wife of a
union teamster. She was no longer pent in the narrow working
class environment of a Pine street neighborhood. Life had grown
opulent. They fared better physically, materially, and
spiritually; and all this was reflected in their features, in the
carriage of their bodies. She knew Billy had never been handsomer
nor in more splendid bodily condition. He swore he had a harem,
and that she was his second wife-- twice as beautiful as the
first one he had married. And she demurely confessed to him that
Mrs. Hall and several others of the matrons had enthusiastically
admired her form one day when in for a cold dip in Carmel river.
They had got around her, and called her Venus, and made her
crouch and assume different poses.
Billy understood the Venus reference; for a marble one, with
broken arms, stood in Hall's living room, and the poet had told
him the world worshiped it as the perfection of female form.
"I always said you had Annette Kellerman beat a mile," Billy
said; and so proud was his air of possession that Saxon blushed
and trembled, and hid her hot face against his breast.
The men in the crowd were open in their admiration of Saxon, in
an above-board manner. But she made no mistake. She did not lose
her head. There was no chance of that, for her love for Billy
beat more strongly than ever. Nor was she guilty of
over-appraisal. She knew him for what he was, and loved him with
open eyes. He had no book learning, no art, like the other men.
His grammar was bad; she knew that, just as she knew that he
would never mend it. Yet she would not have exchanged him for any
of the others, not even for Mark Hall with the princely heart
whom she loved much in the same way that she loved his wife.
For that matter, she found in Billy a certain health and
rightness, a certain essential integrity, which she prized more
highly than all book learning and bank accounts. It was by virtue
of this health, and rightness, and integrity, that he had beaten
Hall in argument the night the poet was on the pessimistic
rampage. Billy had beaten him, not with the weapons of learning,
but just by being himself and by speaking out the truth that was
in him. Best of all, he had not even known that he had beaten,
and had taken the applause as good-natured banter. But Saxon
knew, though she could scarcely tell why; and she would always
remember how the wife of Shelley had whispered to her afterward
with shining eyes: "Oh, Saxon, you must be so happy."
Were Saxon driven to speech to attempt to express what Billy
meant to her, she would have done it with the simple word "man."
Always he was that to her. Always in glowing splendor, that was
his connotation--MAN. Sometimes, by herself, she would all but
weep with joy at recollection of his way of informing some
truculent male that he was standing on his foot. "Get off your
foot. You're standin' on it." It was Billy! It was magnificently
Billy. And it was this Billy who loved her. She knew it. She knew
it by the pulse that only a woman knows how to gauge. He loved
her less wildly, it was true; but more fondly, more maturely. It
was the love that lasted--if only they did not go back to the
city where the beautiful things of the spirit perished and the
beast bared its fangs.
In the early spring, Mark Hall and his wife went to New York, the
two Japanese servants of the bungalow were dismissed, and Saxon
and Billy were installed as caretakers. Jim Hazard, too, departed
on his yearly visit to Paris; and though Billy missed him, he
continued his long swims out through the breakers. Hall's two
saddle horses had been left in his charge, and Saxon made herself
a pretty cross-saddle riding costume of tawny-brown corduroy that
matched the glints in her hair. Billy no longer worked at odd
jobs. As extra driver at the stable he earned more than they
spent, and, in preference to cash, he taught Saxon to ride, and
was out and away with her over the country on all-day trips. A
favorite ride was around by the coast to Monterey, where he
taught her to swim in the big Del Monte tank. They would come
home in the evening across the hills. Also, she took to following
him on his early morning hunts, and life seemed one long
vacation.
"I'll tell you one thing," he said to Saxon, one day, as they
drew their horses to a halt and gazed down into Carmel Valley. "I
ain't never going to work steady for another man for wages as
long as I live."
"Work isn't everything," she acknowledged.
"I should guess not. Why, look here, Saxon, what'd it mean if I
worked teamin' in Oakland for a million dollars a day for a
million years and just had to go on stayin' there an' livin' the
way we used to? It'd mean work all day, three squares, an' movie'
pictures for recreation. Movin' pictures! Huh! We're livin'
movie' pictures these days. I'd sooner have one year like what
we're havin' here in Carmel and then die, than a thousan' million
years like on Pine street."
Saxon had warned the Halls by letter that she and Billy intended
starting on their search for the valley in the moon as soon as
the first of summer arrived. Fortunately, the poet was put to no
inconvenience, for Bideaux, the Iron Man with the basilisk eyes,
had abandoned his dreams of priesthood and decided to become an
actor. He arrived at Carmel from the Catholic college in time to
take charge of the bungalow.
Much to Saxon's gratification, the crowd was loth to see them
depart. The owner of the Carmel stable offered to put Billy in
charge at ninety dollars a month. Also, he received a similar
offer from the stable in Pacific Grove.
"Whither away," the wild Irish playwright hailed them on the
station platform at Monterey. He was just returning from New
York.
"To a valley in the moon," Saxon answered gaily.
He regarded their business-like packs.
"By George!" he cried. "I'll do it! By George! Let me come
along." Then his face fell. "And I've signed the contract," he
groaned. "Three acts! Say, you're lucky. And this time of year,
too." _
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