________________________________________________
_ Daylight had made no assertion of total abstinence though he had
not taken a drink for months after the day he resolved to let his
business go to smash. Soon he proved himself strong enough to
dare to take a drink without taking a second. On the other hand,
with his coming to live in the country, had passed all desire and
need for drink. He felt no yearning for it, and even forgot that
it existed. Yet he refused to be afraid of it, and in town, on
occasion, when invited by the storekeeper, would reply: "All
right, son. If my taking a drink will make you happy here goes.
Whiskey for mine."
But such a drink began no desire for a second. It made no
impression. He was too profoundly strong to be affected by a
thimbleful. As he had prophesied to Dede, Burning Daylight, the
city financier, had died a quick death on the ranch, and his
younger brother, the Daylight from Alaska, had taken his place.
The threatened inundation of fat had subsided, and all his
old-time Indian leanness and of muscle had returned. So,
likewise, did the old slight hollows in his cheeks come back.
For him they indicated the pink of physical condition. He became
the acknowledged strong man of Sonoma Valley, the heaviest lifter
and hardest winded among a husky race of farmer folk. And once a
year he celebrated his birthday in the old-fashioned frontier
way, challenging all the valley to come up the hill to the ranch
and be put on its back. And a fair portion of the valley
responded, brought the women-folk and children along, and
picnicked for the day.
At first, when in need of ready cash, he had followed Ferguson's
example of working at day's labor; but he was not long in
gravitating to a form of work that was more stimulating and more
satisfying, and that allowed him even more time for Dede and the
ranch and the perpetual riding through the hills. Having been
challenged by the blacksmith, in a spirit of banter, to attempt
the breaking of a certain incorrigible colt, he succeeded so
signally as to earn quite a reputation as a horse-breaker. And
soon he was able to earn whatever money he desired at this, to
him, agreeable work.
A sugar king, whose breeding farm and training stables were at
Caliente, three miles away, sent for him in time of need, and,
before the year was out, offered him the management of the
stables. But Daylight smiled and shook his head. Furthermore,
he refused to undertake the breaking of as many animals as were
offered. "I'm sure not going to die from overwork," he assured
Dede; and he accepted such work only when he had to have money.
Later, he fenced off a small run in the pasture, where, from time
to time, he took in a limited number of incorrigibles.
"We've got the ranch and each other," he told his wife, "and I'd
sooner ride with you to Hood Mountain any day than earn forty
dollars. You can't buy sunsets, and loving wives, and cool
spring water, and such folderols, with forty dollars; and forty
million dollars can't buy back for me one day that I didn't ride
with you to Hood Mountain."
His life was eminently wholesome and natural. Early to bed, he
slept like an infant and was up with the dawn. Always with
something to do, and with a thousand little things that enticed
but did not clamor, he was himself never overdone. Nevertheless,
there were times when both he and Dede were not above confessing
tiredness at bedtime after seventy or eighty miles in the saddle.
Sometimes, when he had accumulated a little money, and when the
season favored, they would mount their horses, with saddle-bags
behind, and ride away over the wall of the valley and down into
the other valleys. When night fell, they put up at the first
convenient farm or village, and on the morrow they would ride on,
without definite plan, merely continuing to ride on, day after
day, until their money gave out and they were compelled to
return. On such trips they would be gone anywhere from a week to
ten days or two weeks, and once they managed a three weeks' trip.
They even planned ambitiously some day when they were
disgracefully prosperous, to ride all the way up to Daylight's
boyhood home in Eastern Oregon, stopping on the way at Dede's
girlhood home in Siskiyou. And all the joys of anticipation were
theirs a thousand times as they contemplated the detailed
delights of this grand adventure.
One day, stopping to mail a letter at the Glen Ellen post office,
they were hailed by the blacksmith.
"Say, Daylight," he said, "a young fellow named Slosson sends you
his regards. He came through in an auto, on the way to Santa
Rosa. He wanted to know if you didn't live hereabouts, but the
crowd with him was in a hurry. So he sent you his regards and
said to tell you he'd taken your advice and was still going on
breaking his own record."
Daylight had long since told Dede of the incident.
"Slosson?" he meditated, "Slosson? That must be the
hammer-thrower. He put my hand down twice, the young scamp."
He turned suddenly to Dede. "Say, it's only twelve miles to
Santa Rosa, and the horses are fresh."
She divined what was in his mind, of which his twinkling eyes and
sheepish, boyish grin gave sufficient advertisement, and she
smiled and nodded acquiescence.
"We'll cut across by Bennett Valley," he said. "It's nearer that
way."
There was little difficulty, once in Santa Rosa, of finding
Slosson. He and his party had registered at the Oberlin Hotel,
and Daylight encountered the young hammer-thrower himself in the
office.
"Look here, son," Daylight announced, as soon as he had
introduced Dede, "I've come to go you another flutter at that
hand game. Here's a likely place."
Slosson smiled and accepted. The two men faced each other, the
elbows of their right arms on the counter, the hands clasped.
Slosson's hand quickly forced backward and down.
"You're the first man that ever succeeded in doing it," he said.
"Let's try it again."
"Sure," Daylight answered. "And don't forget, son, that you're
the first man that put mine down. That's why I lit out after you
to-day."
Again they clasped hands, and again Slosson's hand went down. He
was a broad-shouldered, heavy-muscled young giant, at least half
a head taller than Daylight, and he frankly expressed his chagrin
and asked for a third trial. This time he steeled himself to the
effort, and for a moment the issue was in doubt. With flushed
face and set teeth he met the other's strength till his crackling
muscles failed him. The air exploded sharply from his tensed
lungs, as he relaxed in surrender, and the hand dropped limply
down.
"You're too many for me," he confessed. "I only hope you'll keep
out of the hammer-throwing game."
Daylight laughed and shook his head.
"We might compromise, and each stay in his own class. You stick
to hammer-throwing, and I'll go on turning down hands."
But Slosson refused to accept defeat.
"Say," he called out, as Daylight and Dede, astride their horses,
were preparing to depart. "Say--do you mind if I look you up
next year? I'd like to tackle you again."
"Sure, son. You're welcome to a flutter any time. Though I give
you fair warning that you'll have to go some. You'll have to
train up, for I'm ploughing and chopping wood and breaking colts
these days."
Now and again, on the way home, Dede could hear her big
boy-husband chuckling gleefully. As they halted their horses on
the top of the divide out of Bennett Valley, in order to watch
the sunset, he ranged alongside and slipped his arm around her
waist.
"Little woman," he said, "you're sure responsible for it all.
And I leave it to you, if all the money in creation is worth as
much as one arm like that when it's got a sweet little woman like
this to go around."
For of all his delights in the new life, Dede was his greatest.
As he explained to her more than once, he had been afraid of love
all his life only in the end to come to find it the greatest
thing in the world. Not alone were the two well mated, but in
coming to live on the ranch they had selected the best soil in
which their love would prosper. In spite of her books and music,
there was in her a wholesome simplicity and love of the open and
natural, while Daylight, in every fiber of him, was essentially
an open-air man.
Of one thing in Dede, Daylight never got over marveling about,
and that was her efficient hands--the hands that he had first
seen
taking down flying shorthand notes and ticking away at the
typewriter; the hands that were firm to hold a magnificent brute
like Bob, that wonderfully flashed over the keys of the piano,
that were unhesitant in household tasks, and that were twin
miracles to caress and to run rippling fingers through his hair.
But Daylight was not unduly uxorious. He lived his man's life
just as she lived her woman's life. There was proper division of
labor in the work they individually performed. But the whole was
entwined and woven into a fabric of mutual interest and
consideration. He was as deeply interested in her cooking and
her music as she was in his agricultural adventures in the
vegetable garden. And he, who resolutely declined to die of
overwork, saw to it that she should likewise escape so dire a
risk.
In this connection, using his man's judgment and putting his
man's foot down, he refused to allow her to be burdened with the
entertaining of guests. For guests they had, especially in the
warm, long summers, and usually they were her friends from the
city, who were put to camp in tents which they cared for
themselves, and where, like true campers, they had also to cook
for themselves. Perhaps only in California, where everybody
knows camp life, would such a program have been possible. But
Daylight's steadfast contention was that his wife should not
become cook, waitress, and chambermaid because she did not happen
to possess a household of servants. On the other hand,
chafing-dish suppers in the big living-room for their camping
guests were a common happening, at which times Daylight allotted
them their chores and saw that they were performed. For one who
stopped only for the night it was different. Likewise it was
different with her brother, back from Germany, and again able to
sit a horse. On his vacations he became the third in the family,
and to him was given the building of the fires, the sweeping, and
the washing of the dishes.
Daylight devoted himself to the lightening of Dede's labors, and
it was her brother who incited him to utilize the splendid
water-power of the ranch that was running to waste. It required
Daylight's breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and
the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and
together they installed a Pelting wheel. Besides sawing wood and
turning his lathe and grindstone, Daylight connected the power
with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm
around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine,
run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked and really washed
clothes.
Dede and Ferguson, between them, after a patient struggle, taught
Daylight poetry, so that in the end he might have been often
seen, sitting slack in the saddle and dropping down the mountain
trails through the sun-flecked woods, chanting aloud Kipling's
"Tomlinson," or, when sharpening his ax, singing into the
whirling grindstone Henley's "Song of the Sword." Not that he
ever became consummately literary in the way his two teachers
were. Beyond "Fra Lippo Lippi" and "Caliban and Setebos," he
found nothing in Browning, while George Meredith was ever his
despair. It was of his own initiative, however, that he invested
in a violin, and practised so assiduously that in time he and
Dede beguiled many a happy hour playing together after night had
fallen.
So all went well with this well-mated pair. Time never dragged.
There were always new wonderful mornings and still cool twilights
at the end of day; and ever a thousand interests claimed him, and
his interests were shared by her. More thoroughly than he knew,
had he come to a comprehension of the relativity of things. In
this new game he played he found in little things all the
intensities of gratification and desire that he had found in the
frenzied big things when he was a power and rocked half a
continent with the fury of the blows he struck. With head and
hand, at risk of life and limb, to bit and break a wild colt and
win it to the service of man, was to him no less great an
achievement. And this new table on which he played the game was
clean. Neither lying, nor cheating, nor hypocrisy was here. The
other game had made for decay and death, while this new one made
for clean strength and life. And so he was content, with Dede at
his side, to watch the procession of the days and seasons from
the farm-house perched on the canon-lip; to ride through crisp
frosty mornings or under burning summer suns; and to shelter in
the big room where blazed the logs in the fireplace he had built,
while outside the world shuddered and struggled in the
storm-clasp of a southeaster.
Once only Dede asked him if he ever regretted, and his answer was
to crush her in his arms and smother her lips with his. His
answer, a minute later, took speech.
"Little woman, even if you did cost thirty millions, you are sure
the cheapest necessity of life I ever indulged in." And then
he added, "Yes, I do have one regret, and a monstrous big one,
too. I'd sure like to have the winning of you all over again.
I'd like to go sneaking around the Piedmont hills looking for
you. I'd like to meander into those rooms of yours at Berkeley
for the first time. And there's no use talking, I'm plumb
soaking with regret that I can't put my arms around you again
that time you leaned your head on my breast and cried in the wind
and rain." _
Read next: PART II: CHAPTER XXVII
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