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_ South they held along the coast, hunting, fishing, swimming, and
horse-buying. Billy shipped his purchases on the coasting
steamers. Through Del Norte and Humboldt counties they went, and
through Mendocino into Sonoma --counties larger than Eastern
states--threading the giant woods, whipping innumerable
trout-streams, and crossing countless rich valleys. Ever Saxon
sought the valley of the moon. Sometimes, when all seemed fair,
the lack was a railroad, sometimes madrono and manzanita trees,
and, usually, there was too much fog.
"We do want a sun-cocktail once in a while," she told Billy.
"Yep," was his answer. "Too much fog might make us soggy. What
we're after is betwixt an' between, an' we'll have to get back
from the coast a ways to find it."
This was in the fall of the year, and they turned their backs on
the Pacific at old Fort Ross and entered the Russian River
Valley, far below Ukiah, by way of Cazadero and Guerneville. At
Santa Rosa Billy was delayed with the shipping of several horses,
so that it was not until afternoon that he drove south and east
for Sonoma Valley.
"I guess we'll no more than make Sonoma Valley when it'll be time
to camp," he said, measuring the sun with his eye. "This is
called Bennett Valley. You cross a divide from it and come out at
Glen Ellen. Now this is a mighty pretty valley, if anybody should
ask you. An' that's some nifty mountain over there."
"The mountain is all right," Saxon adjudged. "But all the rest of
the hills are too bare. And I don't see any big trees. It takes
rich soil to make big trees."
"Oh, I ain't sayin' it's the valley of the moon by a long ways.
All the same, Saxon, that's some mountain. Look at the timber on
it. I bet they's deer there."
"I wonder where we'll spend this winter," Saxon remarked.
"D'ye know, I've just been thinkin' the same thing. Let's winter
at Carmel. Mark Hall's back, an' so is Jim Hazard. What d'ye
say?"
Saxon nodded.
"Only you won't be the odd-job man this time."
"Nope. We can make trips in good weather horse-buyin'," Billy
confirmed, his face beaming with self-satisfaction. "An' if that
walkin' poet of the Marble House is around, I'll sure get the
gloves on with 'm just in memory of the time he walked me off my
legs--"
"Oh! Oh!" Saxon cried. "Look, Billy! Look!"
Around a bend in the road came a man in a sulky, driving a heavy
stallion. The animal was a bright chestnut-sorrel, with
cream-colored mane and tail. The tail almost swept the ground,
while the mane was so thick that it crested out of the neck and
flowed down, long and wavy. He scented the mares and stopped
short, head flung up and armfuls of creamy mane tossing in the
breeze. He bent his head until flaring nostrils brushed impatient
knees, and between the fine-pointed ears could be seen a mighty
and incredible curve of neck. Again he tossed his head, fretting
against the bit as the driver turned widely aside for safety in
passing. They could see the blue glaze like a sheen on the
surface of the horse's bright, wild eyes, and Billy closed a wary
thumb on his reins and himself turned widely. He held up his hand
in signal, and the driver of the stallion stopped when well past,
and over his shoulder talked draught-horses with Billy.
Among other things, Billy learned that the stallion's name was
Barbarossa, that the driver was the owner, and that Santa Rosa
was his headquarters.
"There are two ways to Sonoma Valley from here," the man
directed. "When you come to the crossroads the turn to the left
will take you to Glen Ellen by Bennett Peak-- that's it there."
Rising from rolling stubble fields, Bennett Peak towered hot in
the sun, a row of bastion hills leaning against its base. But
hills and mountains on that side showed bare and heated, though
beautiful with the sunburnt tawniness of California.
"The turn to the right will take you to Glen Ellen, too, only
it's longer and steeper grades. But your mares don't look as
though it'd bother them."
"Which is the prettiest way?" Saxon asked.
"Oh, the right hand road, by all means," said the man. "That's
Sonoma Mountain there, and the road skirts it pretty well up, and
goes through Cooper's Grove."
Billy did not start immediately after they had said good-by, and
he and Saxon, heads over shoulders, watched the roused Barbarossa
plunging mutinously on toward Santa Rosa.
"Gee!" Billy said. "I'd like to be up here next spring.
At the crossroads Billy hesitated and looked at Saxon.
"What if it is longer?" she said. "Look how beautiful it is--all
covered with green woods; and I just know those are redwoods in
the canyons. You never can tell. The valley of the moon might be
right up there somewhere. And it would never do to miss it just
in order to save half an hour."
They took the turn to the right and began crossing a series of
steep foothills. As they approached the mountain there were signs
of a greater abundance of water. They drove beside a running
stream, and, though the vineyards on the hills were summer-dry,
the farmhouses in the hollows and on the levels were grouped
about with splendid trees.
"Maybe it sounds funny," Saxon observed; "but I 'm beginning to
love that mountain already. It almost seems as if I d seen it
before, somehow, it's so all-around satisfying--oh!"
Crossing a bridge and rounding a sharp turn, they were suddenly
enveloped in a mysterious coolness and gloom. All about them
arose stately trunks of redwood. The forest floor was a rosy
carpet of autumn fronds. Occasional shafts of sunlight,
penetrating the deep shade, warmed the somberness of the grove.
Alluring paths led off among the trees and into cozy nooks made
by circles of red columns growing around the dust of vanished
ancestors--witnessing the titantic dimensions of those ancestors
by the girth of the circles in which they stood.
Out of the grove they pulled to the steep divide, which was no
more than a buttress of Sonoma Mountain. The way led on through
rolling uplands and across small dips and canyons, all well
wooded and a-drip with water. In places the road was muddy from
wayside springs.
"The mountain's a sponge," said Billy. "Here it is, the tail-end
of dry summer, an' the ground's just leakin' everywhere."
"I know I've never been here before," Saxon communed aloud. "But
it's all so familiar! So I must have dreamed it. And there's
madronos!--a whole grove! And manzanita! Why, I feel just as if I
was coming home.... Oh, Billy, if it should turn out to be our
valley."
"Plastered against the side of a mountain?" he queried, with a
skeptical laugh.
"No; I don't mean that. I mean on the way to our valley. Because
the way--all ways--to our valley must be beautiful. And this;
I've seen it all before, dreamed it."
"It's great," he said sympathetically. "I wouldn't trade a square
mile of this kind of country for the whole Sacramento Valley,
with the river islands thrown in and Middle River for good
measure. If they ain't deer up there, I miss my guess. An' where
they's springs they's streams, an' streams means trout."
They passed a large and comfortable farmhouse, surrounded by
wandering barns and cow-sheds, went on under forest arches, and
emerged beside a field with which Saxon was instantly enchanted.
It flowed in a gentle concave from the road up the mountain, its
farther boundary an unbroken line of timber. The field glowed
like rough gold in the approaching sunset, and near the middle of
it stood a solitary great redwood, with blasted top suggesting a
nesting eyrie for eagles. The timber beyond clothed the mountain
in solid green to what they took to be the top. But, as they
drove on, Saxon, looking back upon what she called her field, saw
the real summit of Sonoma towering beyond, the mountain behind
her field a mere spur upon the side of the larger mass.
Ahead and toward the right, across sheer ridges of the mountains,
separated by deep green canyons and broadening lower down into
rolling orchards and vineyards, they caught their first sight of
Sonoma Valley and the wild mountains that rimmed its eastern
side. To the left they gazed across a golden land of small hills
and valleys. Beyond, to the north, they glimpsed another portion
of the valley, and, still beyond, the opposing wall of the
valley-- a range of mountains, the highest of which reared its
red and battered ancient crater against a rosy and mellowing sky.
From north to southeast, the mountain rim curved in the
brightness of the sun, while Saxon and Billy were already in the
shadow of evening. He looked at Saxon, noted the ravished ecstasy
of her face, and stopped the horses. All the eastern sky was
blushing to rose, which descended upon the mountains, touching
them with wine and ruby. Sonoma Valley began to fill with a
purple flood, laying the mountain bases, rising, inundating,
drowning them in its purple. Saxon pointed in silence, indicating
that the purple flood was the sunset shadow of Sonoma Mountain.
Billy nodded, then chirruped to the mares, and the descent began
through a warm and colorful twilight.
On the elevated sections of the road they felt the cool,
delicious breeze from the Pacific forty miles away; while from
each little dip and hollow came warm breaths of autumn earth,
spicy with sunburnt grass and fallen leaves and passing flowers.
They came to the rim of a deep canyon that seemed to penetrate to
the heart of Sonoma Mountain. Again, with no word spoken, merely
from watching Saxon, Billy stopped the wagon. The canyon was
wildly beautiful. Tall redwoods lined its entire length. On its
farther rim stood three rugged knolls covered with dense woods of
spruce and oak. From between the knolls, a feeder to the main
canyon and likewise fringed with redwoods, emerged a smaller
canyon. Billy pointed to a stubble field that lay at the feet of
the knolls.
"It's in fields like that I've seen my mares a-pasturing," he
said.
They dropped down into the canyon, the road following a stream
that sang under maples and alders. The sunset fires, refracted
from the cloud-driftage of the autumn sky, bathed the canyon with
crimson, in which ruddy-limbed mandronos and wine-wooded
manzanitas burned and smoldered. The air was aromatic with
laurel. Wild grape vines bridged the stream from tree to tree.
Oaks of many sorts were veiled in lacy Spanish moss. Ferns and
brakes grew lush beside the stream. From somewhere came the
plaint of a mourning dove. Fifty feet above the ground, almost
over their heads, a Douglas squirrel crossed the road--a flash of
gray between two trees; and they marked the continuance of its
aerial passage by the bending of the boughs.
"I've got a hunch," said Billy.
"Let me say it first," Saxon begged.
He waited, his eyes on her face as she gazed about her in
rapture.
"We've found our valley," she whispered. "Was that it?"
He nodded, but checked speech at sight of a small boy driving a
cow up the road, a preposterously big shotgun in one hand, in the
other as preposterously big a jackrabbit. "How far to Glen
Ellen?" Billy asked.
"Mile an' a half," was the answer.
"What creek is this?" inquired Saxon.
"Wild Water. It empties into Sonoma Creek half a mile down."
"Trout?"--this from Billy.
"If you know how to catch 'em," grinned the boy.
"Deer up the mountain?"
"It ain't open season," the boy evaded.
"I guess you never shot a deer," Billy slyly baited, and was
rewarded with:
"I got the horns to show."
"Deer shed their horns," Billy teased on. "Anybody can find 'em."
"I got the meat on mine. It ain't dry yet--"
The boy broke off, gazing with shocked eyes into the pit Billy
had dug for him.
"It's all right, sonny," Billy laughed, as he drove on. "I ain't
the game warden. I 'm buyin' horses."
More leaping tree squirrels, more ruddy madronos and majestic
oaks, more fairy circles of redwoods, and, still beside the
singing stream, they passed a gate by the roadside. Before it
stood a rural mail box, on which was lettered "Edmund Hale."
Standing under the rustic arch, leaning upon the gate, a man and
woman composed a pieture so arresting and beautiful that Saxon
caught her breath. They were side by side, the delicate hand of
the woman curled in the hand of the man, which looked as if made
to confer benedictions. His face bore out this impression--a
beautiful-browed countenance, with large, benevolent gray eyes
under a wealth of white hair that shone like spun glass. He was
fair and large; the little woman beside him was daintily wrought.
She was saffron-brown, as a woman of the white race can well be,
with smiling eyes of bluest blue. In quaint sage-green draperies,
she seemed a flower, with her small vivid face irresistibly
reminding Saxon of a springtime wake-robin.
Perhaps the picture made by Saxon and Billy was equally arresting
and beautiful, as they drove down through the golden end of day.
The two couples had eyes only for each other. The little woman
beamed joyously. The man's face glowed into the benediction that
had trembled there. To Saxon, like the field up the mountain,
like the mountain itself, it seemed that she had always known
this adorable pair. She knew that she loved them.
"How d'ye do," said Billy.
"You blessed children," said the man. "I wonder if you know how
dear you look sitting there."
That was all. The wagon had passed by, rustling down the road,
which was carpeted with fallen leaves of maple, oak, and alder.
Then they came to the meeting of the two creeks.
"Oh, what a place for a home," Saxon cried, pointing across Wild
Water. "See, Billy, on that bench there above the meadow."
"It's a rich bottom, Saxon; and so is the bench rich. Look at the
big trees on it. An' they's sure to be springs."
"Drive over," she said.
Forsaking the main road, they crossed Wild Water on a narrow
bridge and continued along an ancient, rutted road that ran
beside an equally ancient worm-fence of split redwood rails. They
came to a gate, open and off its hinges, through which the road
led out on the bench.
"This is it--I know it," Saxon said with conviction. "Drive in,
Billy."
A small, whitewashed farmhouse with broken windows showed through
the trees.
"Talk about your madronos--"
Billy pointed to the father of all madronos, six feet in diameter
at its base, sturdy and sound, which stood before the house.
They spoke in low tones as they passed around the house under
great oak trees and came to a stop before a small barn. They did
not wait to unharness. Tying the horses, they started to explore.
The pitch from the bench to the meadow was steep yet thickly
wooded with oaks and manzanita. As they crashed through the
underbrush they startled a score of quail into flight.
"How about game?" Saxon queried.
Billy grinned, and fell to examining a spring which bubbled a
clear stream into the meadow. Here the ground was sunbaked and
wide open in a multitude of cracks.
Disappointment leaped into Saxon's face, but Billy, crumbling a
clod between his fingers, had not made up his mind.
"It's rich," he pronounced; "--the cream of the soil that's been
washin' down from the hills for ten thousan' years. But--"
He broke off, stared all about, studying the configuration of the
meadow, crossed it to the redwood trees beyond, then came back.
"It's no good as it is," he said. "But it's the best ever if it's
handled right. All it needs is a little common sense an' a lot of
drainage. This meadow's a natural basin not yet filled level.
They's a sharp slope through the redwoods to the creek. Come on,
I'll show you."
They went through the redwoods and came out on Sonoma Creek. At
this spot was no singing. The stream poured into a quiet pool.
The willows on their side brushed the water. The opposite side
was a steep bank. Billy measured the height of the bank with his
eye, the depth of the water with a driftwood pole.
"Fifteen feet," he announced. "That allows all kinds of
high-divin' from the bank. An' it's a hundred yards of a swim up
an' down."
They followed down the pool. It emptied in a riffle, across
exposed bedrock, into another pool. As they looked, a trout
flashed into the air and back, leaving a widening ripple on the
quiet surface.
"I guess we won't winter in Carmel," Billy said. "This place was
specially manufactured for us. In the morning I'll find out who
owns it."
Half an hour later, feeding the horses, he called Saxon's
attention to a locomotive whistle.
"You've got your railroad," he said. "That's a train pulling into
Glen Ellen, an' it's only a mile from here."
Saxon was dozing off to sleep under the blankets when Billy
aroused her.
"Suppose the guy that owns it won't sell?"
"There isn't the slightest doubt," Saxon answered with unruffled
certainty. "This is our place. I know it." _
Read next: BOOK III: CHAPTER XVIII
Read previous: BOOK III: CHAPTER XVI
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