Part 48 (2/2)

”I can see myself becomin' a farmer an' plowin' with a pair of pipe-stems like these,” he persisted.

”Doctor Hentley says they'll be stronger at the break than ever before.

And you know yourself that's true of clean-broken bones. Now you close your eyes and go to sleep. You're all done up, and you need to keep your brain quiet and stop thinking.”

He closed his eyes obediently. She slipped a cool hand under the nape of his neck and let it rest.

”That feels good,” he murmured. ”You're so cool, Saxon. Your hand, and you, all of you. Bein' with you is like comin' out into the cool night after dancin' in a hot room.”

After several minutes of quiet, he began to giggle.

”What is it?” she asked.

”Oh, nothin'. I was just thinkin'--thinking of them mutts doin' me up--me, that's done up more scabs than I can remember.”

Next morning Billy awoke with his blues dissipated. From the kitchen Saxon heard him painfully wrestling strange vocal acrobatics.

”I got a new song you never heard,” he told her when she came in with a cup of coffee. ”I only remember the chorus though. It's the old man talkin' to some hobo of a hired man that wants to marry his daughter.

Mamie, that Billy Murphy used to run with before he got married, used to sing it. It's a kind of a sobby song. It used to always give Mamie the weeps. Here's the way the chorus goes--an' remember, it's the old man spielin'.”

And with great solemnity and excruciating flatting, Billy sang:

”O treat my daughter kind-i-ly; An' say you'll do no harm, An' when I die I'll will to you My little house an' farm--My horse, my plow, my sheep, my cow, An' all them little chickens in the ga-a-rden.

”It's them little chickens in the garden that gets me,” he explained.

”That's how I remembered it--from the chickens in the movin' pictures yesterday. An' some day we'll have little chickens in the garden, won't we, old girl?”

”And a daughter, too,” Saxon amplified.

”An' I'll be the old geezer sayin' them same words to the hired man,”

Billy carried the fancy along. ”It don't take long to raise a daughter if you ain't in a hurry.”

Saxon took her long-neglected ukulele from its case and strummed it into tune.

”And I've a song you never heard, Billy. Tom's always singing it. He's crazy about taking up government land and going farming, only Sarah won't think of it. He sings it something like this:

”We'll have a little farm, A pig, a horse, a cow, And you will drive the wagon, And I will drive the plow.”

”Only in this case I guess it's me that'll do the plowin',” Billy approved. ”Say, Saxon, sing 'Harvest Days.' That's a farmer's song, too.”

After that she feared the coffee was growing cold and compelled Billy to take it. In the helplessness of two broken arms, he had to be fed like a baby, and as she fed him they talked.

”I'll tell you one thing,” Billy said, between mouthfuls. ”Once we get settled down in the country you'll have that horse you've been wis.h.i.+n'

for all your life. An' it'll be all your own, to ride, drive, sell, or do anything you want with.”

And, again, he ruminated: ”One thing that'll come handy in the country is that I know horses; that's a big start. I can always get a job at that--if it ain't at union wages. An' the other things about farmin' I can learn fast enough.--Say, d'ye remember that day you first told me about wantin' a horse to ride all your life?”

Saxon remembered, and it was only by a severe struggle that she was able to keep the tears from welling into her eyes. She seemed bursting with happiness, and she was remembering many things--all the warm promise of life with Billy that had been hers in the days before hard times. And now the promise was renewed again. Since its fulfillment had not come to them, they were going away to fulfill it for themselves and make the moving pictures come true.

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