________________________________________________
_ Daylight's coming to civilization had not improved him. True,
he wore better clothes, had learned slightly better manners, and
spoke better English. As a gambler and a man-trampler he had
developed remarkable efficiency. Also, he had become used to a
higher standard of living, and he had whetted his wits to razor
sharpness in the fierce, complicated struggle of fighting males.
But he had hardened, and at the expense of his old-time,
whole-souled geniality. Of the essential refinements of
civilization he knew nothing. He did not know they existed. He
had become cynical, bitter, and brutal. Power had its effect on
him that it had on all men. Suspicious of the big exploiters,
despising the fools of the exploited herd, he had faith only in
himself. This led to an undue and erroneous exaltation of his
ego, while kindly consideration of others--nay, even simple
respect--was destroyed, until naught was left for him but to
worship at the shrine of self. Physically, he was not the man of
iron muscles who had come down out of the Arctic. He did not
exercise sufficiently, ate more than was good for him, and drank
altogether too much. His muscles were getting flabby, and his
tailor called attention to his increasing waistband. In fact,
Daylight was developing a definite paunch. This physical
deterioration was manifest likewise in his face. The lean Indian
visage was suffering a city change. The slight hollows in the
cheeks under the high cheek-bones had filled out. The beginning
of puff-sacks under the eyes was faintly visible. The girth of
the neck had increased, and the first crease and fold of a double
chin were becoming plainly discernible. The old effect of
asceticism, bred of terrific hardships and toil, had vanished;
the features had become broader and heavier, betraying all the
stigmata of the life he lived, advertising the man's
self-indulgence, harshness, and brutality.
Even his human affiliations were descending. Playing a lone
hand, contemptuous of most of the men with whom he played,
lacking in sympathy or understanding of them, and certainly
independent of them, he found little in common with those to be
encountered, say at the Alta-Pacific. In point of fact, when the
battle with the steamship companies was at its height and his
raid was inflicting incalculable damage on all business
interests, he had been asked to resign from the Alta-Pacific.
The idea had been rather to his liking, and he had found new
quarters in clubs like the Riverside, organized and practically
maintained by the city bosses. He found that he really liked
such men better. They were more primitive and simple, and they
did not put on airs. They were honest buccaneers, frankly in the
game for what they could get out of it, on the surface more raw
and savage, but at least not glossed over with oily or graceful
hypocrisy. The Alta-Pacific had suggested that his resignation
be kept a private matter, and then had privily informed the
newspapers. The latter had made great capital out of the forced
resignation, but Daylight had grinned and silently gone his way,
though registering a black mark against more than one club member
who was destined to feel, in the days to come, the crushing
weight of the Klondiker's financial paw.
The storm-centre of a combined newspaper attack lasting for
months, Daylight's character had been torn to shreds. There was
no fact in his history that had not been distorted into a
criminality or a vice. This public making of him over into an
iniquitous monster had pretty well crushed any lingering hope he
had of getting acquainted with Dede Mason. He felt that there
was no chance for her ever to look kindly on a man of his
caliber, and, beyond increasing her salary to seventy-five
dollars a month, he proceeded gradually to forget about her. The
increase was made known to her through Morrison, and later she
thanked Daylight, and that was the end of it.
One week-end, feeling heavy and depressed and tired of the city
and its ways, he obeyed the impulse of a whim that was later to
play an important part in his life. The desire to get out of the
city for a whiff of country air and for a change of scene was the
cause. Yet, to himself, he made the excuse of going to Glen
Ellen for the purpose of inspecting the brickyard with which
Holdsworthy had goldbricked him.
He spent the night in the little country hotel, and on Sunday
morning, astride a saddle-horse rented from the Glen Ellen
butcher, rode out of the village. The brickyard was close at
hand on the flat beside the Sonoma Creek. The kilns were visible
among the trees, when he glanced to the left and caught sight of
a cluster of wooded knolls half a mile away, perched on the
rolling slopes of Sonoma Mountain. The mountain, itself wooded,
towered behind. The trees on the knolls seemed to beckon to him.
The dry, early-summer air, shot through with sunshine, was wine
to him. Unconsciously he drank it in deep breaths. The prospect
of the brickyard was uninviting. He was jaded with all things
business, and the wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse was
between his legs--a good horse, he decided; one that sent him
back
to the cayuses he had ridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood.
He
had been somewhat of a rider in those early days, and the champ
of
bit and creak of saddle-leather sounded good to him now.
Resolving to have his fun first, and to look over the brickyard
afterward, he rode on up the hill, prospecting for a way across
country to get to the knolls. He left the country road at the
first gate he came to and cantered through a hayfield. The grain
was waist-high on either side the wagon road, and he sniffed the
warm aroma of it with delighted nostrils. Larks flew up before
him, and from everywhere came mellow notes. From the appearance
of the road it was patent that it had been used for hauling clay
to the now idle brickyard. Salving his conscience with the idea
that this was part of the inspection, he rode on to the
clay-pit--a huge scar in a hillside. But he did not linger long,
swinging off again to the left and leaving the road. Not a
farm-house was in sight, and the change from the city crowding
was essentially satisfying. He rode now through open woods,
across little flower-scattered glades, till he came upon a
spring. Flat on the ground, he drank deeply of the clear water,
and, looking about him, felt with a shock the beauty of the
world. It came to him like a discovery; he had never realized it
before, he concluded, and also, he had forgotten much. One could
not sit in at high finance and keep track of such things. As he
drank in the air, the scene, and the distant song of larks, he
felt like a poker-player rising from a night-long table and
coming forth from the pent atmosphere to taste the freshness of
the morn.
At the base of the knolls he encountered a tumble-down
stake-and-rider fence. From the look of it he judged it must be
forty years old at least--the work of some first pioneer who had
taken up the land when the days of gold had ended. The woods
were very thick here, yet fairly clear of underbrush, so that,
while the blue sky was screened by the arched branches, he was
able to ride beneath. He now found himself in a nook of several
acres, where the oak and manzanita and madrono gave way to
clusters of stately redwoods. Against the foot of a steep-sloped
knoll he came upon a magnificent group of redwoods that seemed to
have gathered about a tiny gurgling spring.
He halted his horse, for beside the spring uprose a wild
California lily. It was a wonderful flower, growing there in the
cathedral nave of lofty trees. At least eight feet in height,
its stem rose straight and slender, green and bare for two-thirds
its length, and then burst into a shower of snow-white waxen
bells. There were hundreds of these blossoms, all from the one
stem, delicately poised and ethereally frail. Daylight had never
seen anything like it. Slowly his gaze wandered from it to all
that was about him. He took off his hat, with almost a vague
religious feeling. This was different. No room for contempt and
evil here. This was clean and fresh and beautiful-something he
could respect. It was like a church. The atmosphere was one of
holy calm. Here man felt the prompting of nobler things. Much
of this and more was in Daylight's heart as he looked about him.
But it was not a concept of his mind. He merely felt it without
thinking about it at all.
On the steep incline above the spring grew tiny maidenhair ferns,
while higher up were larger ferns and brakes. Great,
moss-covered trunks of fallen trees lay here and there, slowly
sinking back and merging into the level of the forest mould.
Beyond, in a slightly clearer space, wild grape and honeysuckle
swung in green riot from gnarled old oak trees. A gray Douglas
squirrel crept out on a branch and watched him. From somewhere
came the distant knocking of a woodpecker. This sound did not
disturb the hush and awe of the place. Quiet woods, noises
belonged there and made the solitude complete. The tiny bubbling
ripple of the spring and the gray flash of tree-squirrel were as
yardsticks with which to measure the silence and motionless
repose.
"Might be a million miles from anywhere," Daylight whispered to
himself.
But ever his gaze returned to the wonderful lily beside the
bubbling spring.
He tethered the horse and wandered on foot among the knolls.
Their tops were crowned with century-old spruce trees, and their
sides clothed with oaks and madronos and native holly. But to
the perfect redwoods belonged the small but deep canon that
threaded its way among the knolls. Here he found no passage out
for his horse, and he returned to the lily beside the spring. On
foot, tripping, stumbling, leading the animal, he forced his way
up the hillside. And ever the ferns carpeted the way of his
feet, ever the forest climbed with him and arched overhead, and
ever the clean joy and sweetness stole in upon his senses.
On the crest he came through an amazing thicket of velvet-trunked
young madronos, and emerged on an open hillside that led down
into
a tiny valley. The sunshine was at first dazzling in its
brightness, and he paused and rested, for he was panting from the
exertion. Not of old had he known shortness of breath such as
this, and muscles that so easily tired at a stiff climb. A tiny
stream ran down the tiny valley through a tiny meadow that was
carpeted knee-high with grass and blue and white nemophila. The
hillside was covered with Mariposa lilies and wild hyacinth, down
through which his horse dropped slowly, with circumspect feet and
reluctant gait.
Crossing the stream, Daylight followed a faint cattle trail over
a low, rocky hill and through a wine-wooded forest of manzanita,
and emerged upon another tiny valley, down which filtered another
spring-fed, meadow-bordered streamlet. A jack-rabbit bounded
from a bush under his horse's nose, leaped the stream, and
vanished up the opposite hillside of scrub-oak. Daylight watched
it admiringly as he rode on to the head of the meadow. Here he
startled up a many-pronged buck, that seemed to soar across the
meadow, and to soar over the stake-and-rider fence, and, still
soaring, disappeared in a friendly copse beyond.
Daylight's delight was unbounded. It seemed to him that he had
never been so happy. His old woods' training was aroused, and he
was keenly interested in everything in the moss on the trees and
branches; in the bunches of mistletoe hanging in the oaks; in the
nest of a wood-rat; in the water-cress growing in the sheltered
eddies of the little stream; in the butterflies drifting through
the rifted sunshine and shadow; in the blue jays that flashed in
splashes of gorgeous color across the forest aisles; in the tiny
birds, like wrens, that hopped among the bushes and imitated
certain minor quail-calls; and in the crimson-crested woodpecker
that ceased its knocking and cocked its head on one side to
survey him. Crossing the stream, he struck faint vestiges of a
wood-road, used, evidently, a generation back, when the meadow
had been cleared of its oaks. He found a hawk's nest on the
lightning-shattered tipmost top of a six-foot redwood. And to
complete it all his horse stumbled upon several large broods of
half-grown quail, and the air was filled with the thrum of their
flight. He halted and watched the young ones "petrifying" and
disappearing on the ground before his eyes, and listening to the
anxious calls of the old ones hidden in the thickets.
"It sure beats country places and bungalows at Menlo Park," he
communed aloud; "and if ever I get the hankering for country
life, it's me for this every time."
The old wood-road led him to a clearing, where a dozen acres of
grapes grew on wine-red soil. A cow-path, more trees and
thickets, and he dropped down a hillside to the southeast
exposure. Here, poised above a big forested canon, and looking
out upon Sonoma Valley, was a small farm-house. With its barn
and outhouses it snuggled into a nook in the hillside, which
protected it from west and north. It was the erosion from this
hillside, he judged, that had formed the little level stretch of
vegetable garden. The soil was fat and black, and there was
water in plenty, for he saw several faucets running wide open.
Forgotten was the brickyard. Nobody was at home, but Daylight
dismounted and ranged the vegetable garden, eating strawberries
and green peas, inspecting the old adobe barn and the rusty
plough and harrow, and rolling and smoking cigarettes while he
watched the antics of several broods of young chickens and the
mother hens. A foottrail that led down the wall of the big
canyon invited him, and he proceeded to follow it. A
water-pipe, usually above ground, paralleled the trail, which he
concluded led upstream to the bed of the creek. The wall of the
canon was several hundred feet from top to bottom, and
magnificent were the untouched trees that the place was plunged
in perpetual shade. He measured with his eye spruces five and
six feet in diameter and redwoods even larger. One such he
passed, a twister that was at least ten or eleven feet through.
The trail led straight to a small dam where was the intake for
the pipe that watered the vegetable garden. Here, beside the
stream, were alders and laurel trees, and he walked through
fern-brakes higher than his head. Velvety moss was everywhere,
out of which grew maiden-hair and gold-back ferns.
Save for the dam, it was a virgin wild. No ax had invaded, and
the trees died only of old age and stress of winter storm. The
huge trunks of those that had fallen lay moss-covered, slowly
resolving back into the soil from which they sprang. Some had
lain so long that they were quite gone, though their faint
outlines, level with the mould, could still be seen. Others
bridged the stream, and from beneath the bulk of one monster half
a dozen younger trees, overthrown and crushed by the fall,
growing out along the ground, still lived and prospered, their
roots bathed by the stream, their upshooting branches catching
the sunlight through the gap that had been made in the forest
roof.
Back at the farm-house, Daylight mounted and rode on away from
the ranch and into the wilder canons and steeper steeps beyond.
Nothing could satisfy his holiday spirit now but the ascent of
Sonoma Mountain. And here on the crest, three hours afterward,
he emerged, tired and sweaty, garments torn and face and hands
scratched, but with sparkling eyes and an unwonted zestfulness of
expression. He felt the illicit pleasure of a schoolboy playing
truant. The big gambling table of San Francisco seemed very far
away. But there was more than illicit pleasure in his mood. It
was as though he were going through a sort of cleansing bath. No
room here for all the sordidness, meanness, and viciousness that
filled the dirty pool of city existence. Without pondering in
detail upon the matter at all, his sensations were of
purification and uplift. Had he been asked to state how he felt,
he would merely have said that he was having a good time; for he
was unaware in his self-consciousness of the potent charm of
nature that was percolating through his city-rotted body and
brain--potent, in that he came of an abysmal past of wilderness
dwellers, while he was himself coated with but the thinnest rind
of crowded civilization.
There were no houses in the summit of Sonoma Mountain, and, all
alone under the azure California sky, he reined in on the
southern edge of the peak. He saw open pasture country,
intersected with wooded canons, descending to the south and west
from his feet, crease on crease and roll on roll, from lower
level to lower level, to the floor of Petaluma Valley, flat as a
billiard-table, a cardboard affair, all patches and squares of
geometrical regularity where the fat freeholds were farmed.
Beyond, to the west, rose range on range of mountains cuddling
purple mists of atmosphere in their valleys; and still beyond,
over the last range of all, he saw the silver sheen of the
Pacific. Swinging his horse, he surveyed the west and north,
from Santa Rosa to St. Helena, and on to the east, across Sonoma
to the chaparral-covered range that shut off the view of Napa
Valley. Here, part way up the eastern wall of Sonoma Valley, in
range of a line intersecting the little village of Glen Ellen, he
made out a scar upon a hillside. His first thought was that it
was the dump of a mine tunnel, but remembering that he was not in
gold-bearing country, he dismissed the scar from his mind and
continued the circle of his survey to the southeast, where,
across the waters of San Pablo Bay, he could see, sharp and
distant, the twin peaks of Mount Diablo. To the south was Mount
Tamalpais, and, yes, he was right, fifty miles away, where the
draughty winds of the Pacific blew in the Golden Gate, the smoke
of San Francisco made a low-lying haze against the sky.
"I ain't seen so much country all at once in many a day," he
thought aloud.
He was loath to depart, and it was not for an hour that he was
able to tear himself away and take the descent of the mountain.
Working out a new route just for the fun of it, late afternoon
was upon him when he arrived back at the wooded knolls. Here, on
the top of one of them, his keen eyes caught a glimpse of a shade
of green sharply differentiated from any he had seen all day.
Studying it for a minute, he concluded that it was composed of
three cypress trees, and he knew that nothing else than the hand
of man could have planted them there. Impelled by curiosity
purely boyish, he made up his mind to investigate. So densely
wooded was the knoll, and so steep, that he had to dismount and
go up on foot, at times even on hands and knees struggling hard
to force a way through the thicker underbrush. He came out
abruptly upon the cypresses. They were enclosed in a small
square of ancient fence; the pickets he could plainly see had
been hewn and sharpened by hand. Inside were the mounds of two
children's graves. Two wooden headboards, likewise hand-hewn,
told the state Little David, born 1855, died 1859; and Little
Roy, born 1853, died 1860.
"The poor little kids," Daylight muttered. The graves showed
signs of recent care. Withered bouquets of wild flowers were on
the mounds, and the lettering on the headboards was freshly
painted. Guided by these clews, Daylight cast about for a trail,
and found one leading down the side opposite to his ascent.
Circling the base of the knoll, he picked up with his horse and
rode on to the farm-house. Smoke was rising from the chimney and
he was quickly in conversation with a nervous, slender young man,
who, he learned, was only a tenant on the ranch. How large was
it? A matter of one hundred and eighty acres, though it seemed
much larger. This was because it was so irregularly shaped.
Yes, it included the clay-pit and all the knolls, and its
boundary that ran along the big canon was over a mile long.
"You see," the young man said, "it was so rough and broken that
when they began to farm this country the farmers bought in the
good land to the edge of it. That's why its boundaries are all
gouged and jagged."
"Oh, yes, he and his wife managed to scratch a living without
working too hard. They didn't have to pay much rent. Hillard,
the owner, depended on the income from the clay-pit. Hillard was
well off, and had big ranches and vineyards down on the flat of
the valley. The brickyard paid ten cents a cubic yard for the
clay. As for the rest of the ranch, the land was good in
patches, where it was cleared, like the vegetable garden and the
vineyard, but the rest of it was too much up-and-down.
"You're not a farmer," Daylight said. The young man laughed and
shook his head. "No; I'm a telegraph operator. But the wife and
I decided to take a two years' vacation, and... here we are
But the time's about up. I'm going back into the office this
fall after I get the grapes off."
Yes, there were about eleven acres in the vineyard--wine grapes.
The price was usually good. He grew most of what they ate. If
he owned the place, he'd clear a patch of land on the side-hill
above the vineyard and plant a small home orchard. The soil was
good. There was plenty of pasturage all over the ranch, and
there were several cleared patches, amounting to about fifteen
acres in all, where he grew as much mountain hay as could be
found. It sold for three to five dollars more a ton than the
rank-stalked valley hay.
Daylight listened, there came to him a sudden envy of this young
fellow living right in the midst of all this which Daylight had
travelled through the last few hours.
"What in thunder are you going back to the telegraph office for?"
he demanded.
The young man smiled with a certain wistfulness. "Because we
can't get ahead here..." (he hesitated an instant), "and
because there are added expenses coming. The rent, small as it
is, counts; and besides, I'm not strong enough to effectually
farm the place. If I owned it, or if I were a real husky like
you, I'd ask nothing better. Nor would the wife." Again the
wistful smile hovered on his face. "You see, we're country born,
and after bucking with cities for a few years, we kind of feel we
like the country best. We've planned to get ahead, though, and
then some day we'll buy a patch of land and stay with it."
The graves of the children? Yes, he had relettered them and hoed
the weeds out. It had become the custom. Whoever lived on the
ranch did that. For years, the story ran, the father and mother
had returned each summer to the graves. But there had come a
time when they came no more, and then old Hillard started the
custom. The scar across the valley? An old mine. It had never
paid. The men had worked on it, off and on, for years, for the
indications had been good. But that was years and years ago. No
paying mine had ever been struck in the valley, though there had
been no end of prospect-holes put down and there had been a sort
of rush there thirty years back.
A frail-looking young woman came to the door to call the young
man to supper. Daylight's first thought was that city living had
not agreed with her. And then he noted the slight tan and
healthy glow that seemed added to her face, and he decided that
the country was the place for her. Declining an invitation to
supper, he rode on for Glen Ellen sitting slack-kneed in the
saddle and softly humming forgotten songs. He dropped down the
rough, winding road through covered pasture, with here and
there thickets of manzanita and vistas of open glades. He
listened greedily to the quail calling, and laughed outright,
once, in sheer joy, at a tiny chipmunk that fled scolding up a
bank, slipping on the crumbly surface and falling down, then
dashing across the road under his horse's nose and, still
scolding, scrabbling up a protecting oak.
Daylight could not persuade himself to keep to the travelled
roads that day, and another cut across country to Glen Ellen
brought him upon a canon that so blocked his way that he was glad
to follow a friendly cow-path. This led him to a small frame
cabin. The doors and windows were open, and a cat was nursing a
litter of kittens in the doorway, but no one seemed at home. He
descended the trail that evidently crossed the canon. Part way
down, he met an old man coming up through the sunset. In his
hand he carried a pail of foamy milk. He wore no hat, and in his
face, framed with snow-white hair and beard, was the ruddy glow
and content of the passing summer day. Daylight thought that he
had never seen so contented-looking a being.
"How old are you, daddy?" he queried.
"Eighty-four," was the reply. "Yes, sirree, eighty-four,and
spryer
than most."
"You must a' taken good care of yourself," Daylight suggested.
"I don't know about that. I ain't loafed none. I walked across
the Plains with an ox-team and fit Injuns in '51, and I was a
family man then with seven youngsters. I reckon I was as old
then as you are now, or pretty nigh on to it."
"Don't you find it lonely here?"
The old man shifted the pail of milk and reflected. "That all
depends," he said oracularly. "I ain't never been lonely except
when the old wife died. Some fellers are lonely in a crowd, and
I'm one of them. That's the only time I'm lonely, is when I go
to 'Frisco. But I don't go no more, thank you 'most to death.
This is good enough for me. I've ben right here in this valley
since '54--one of the first settlers after the Spaniards."
Daylight started his horse, saying:-
"Well, good night, daddy. Stick with it. You got all the young
bloods skinned, and I guess you've sure buried a mighty sight of
them."
The old man chuckled, and Daylight rode on, singularly at peace
with himself and all the world. It seemed that the old
contentment of trail and camp he had known on the Yukon had come
back to him. He could not shake from his eyes the picture of the
old pioneer coming up the trail through the sunset light. He was
certainly going some for eighty-four. The thought of following
his example entered Daylight's mind, but the big game of San
Francisco vetoed the idea.
"Well, anyway," he decided, "when I get old and quit the game,
I'll settle down in a place something like this, and the city can
go to hell." _
Read next: PART II: CHAPTER IX
Read previous: PART II: CHAPTER VII
Table of content of Burning Daylight
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
