Part 21 (1/2)

She leaned on her pitchfork, hitched her skirt in at the waist, and regarded him cheerfully. He saw that her toil-worn, weather-exposed hands were like a man's, callused, large-knuckled, and gnarled, and that her stockingless feet were thrust into heavy man's brogans.

”Nary a man,” she answered. ”And where be you from, and all the way up here? Won't you stop and hitch and have a gla.s.s of wine?”

Striding clumsily but efficiently, like a laboring-man, she led him into the largest building, where Daylight saw a hand-press and all the paraphernalia on a small scale for the making of wine. It was too far and too bad a road to haul the grapes to the valley wineries, she explained, and so they were compelled to do it themselves. ”They,” he learned, were she and her daughter, the latter a widow of forty-odd.

It had been easier before the grandson died and before he went away to fight savages in the Philippines. He had died out there in battle.

Daylight drank a full tumbler of excellent Riesling, talked a few minutes, and accounted for a second tumbler. Yes, they just managed not to starve. Her husband and she had taken up this government land in '57 and cleared it and farmed it ever since, until he died, when she had carried it on. It actually didn't pay for the toil, but what were they to do? There was the wine trust, and wine was down. That Riesling? She delivered it to the railroad down in the valley for twenty-two cents a gallon. And it was a long haul. It took a day for the round trip. Her daughter was gone now with a load.

Daylight knew that in the hotels, Riesling, not quite so good even, was charged for at from a dollar and a half to two dollars a quart. And she got twenty-two cents a gallon. That was the game. She was one of the stupid lowly, she and her people before her--the ones that did the work, drove their oxen across the Plains, cleared and broke the virgin land, toiled all days and all hours, paid their taxes, and sent their sons and grandsons out to fight and die for the flag that gave them such ample protection that they were able to sell their wine for twenty-two cents. The same wine was served to him at the St. Francis for two dollars a quart, or eight dollars a short gallon. That was it.

Between her and her hand-press on the mountain clearing and him ordering his wine in the hotel was a difference of seven dollars and seventy-eight cents. A clique of sleek men in the city got between her and him to just about that amount. And, besides them, there was a horde of others that took their whack. They called it railroading, high finance, banking, wholesaling, real estate, and such things, but the point was that they got it, while she got what was left,--twenty-two cents. Oh, well, a sucker was born every minute, he sighed to himself, and n.o.body was to blame; it was all a game, and only a few could win, but it was d.a.m.ned hard on the suckers.

”How old are you, mother?” he asked.

”Seventy-nine come next January.”

”Worked pretty hard, I suppose?”

”Sense I was seven. I was bound out in Michigan state until I was woman-grown. Then I married, and I reckon the work got harder and harder.”

”When are you going to take a rest?”

She looked at him, as though she chose to think his question facetious, and did not reply.

”Do you believe in G.o.d?”

She nodded her head.

”Then you get it all back,” he a.s.sured her; but in his heart he was wondering about G.o.d, that allowed so many suckers to be born and that did not break up the gambling game by which they were robbed from the cradle to the grave.

”How much of that Riesling you got?”

She ran her eyes over the casks and calculated. ”Just short of eight hundred gallons.”

He wondered what he could do with all of it, and speculated as to whom he could give it away.

”What would you do if you got a dollar a gallon for it?” he asked.

”Drop dead, I suppose.”

”No; speaking seriously.”

”Get me some false teeth, s.h.i.+ngle the house, and buy a new wagon. The road's mighty hard on wagons.”

”And after that?”

”Buy me a coffin.”

”Well, they're yours, mother, coffin and all.”

She looked her incredulity.