Part 53 (1/2)

”An' we've sure learned one thing,” Billy said. ”An' that is that this is no place for us, with land a thousan' an acre an' only twenty dollars in our pockets.”

”Oh, we're not going to stop here,” she hastened to say.

”But just the same it's the Portuguese that gave it its price, and they make things go on it--send their children to school... and have them; and, as you said yourself, they're as fat as b.u.t.terb.a.l.l.s.”

”An' I take my hat off to them,” Billy responded.

”But all the same, I'd sooner have forty acres at a hundred an acre than four at a thousan' an acre. Somehow, you know, I'd be scared stiff on four acres--scared of fallin' off, you know.”

She was in full sympathy with him. In her heart of hearts the forty acres tugged much the harder. In her way, allowing for the difference of a generation, her desire for s.p.a.ciousness was as strong as her Uncle Will's.

”Well, we're not going to stop here,” she a.s.sured Billy. ”We're going in, not for forty acres, but for a hundred and sixty acres free from the government.”

”An' I guess the government owes it to us for what our fathers an'

mothers done. I tell you, Saxon, when a woman walks across the plains like your mother done, an' a man an' wife gets ma.s.sacred by the Indians like my grandfather an' mother done, the government does owe them something.”

”Well, it's up to us to collect.”

”An' we'll collect all right, all right, somewhere down in them redwood mountains south of Monterey.”

CHAPTER II

It was a good afternoon's tramp to Niles, pa.s.sing through the town of Haywards; yet Saxon and Billy found time to diverge from the main county road and take the parallel roads through acres of intense cultivation where the land was farmed to the wheel-tracks. Saxon looked with amazement at these small, brown-skinned immigrants who came to the soil with nothing and yet made the soil pay for itself to the tune of two hundred, of five hundred, and of a thousand dollars an acre.

On every hand was activity. Women and children were in the fields as well as men. The land was turned endlessly over and over. They seemed never to let it rest. And it rewarded them. It must reward them, or their children would not be able to go to school, nor would so many of them be able to drive by in rattletrap, second-hand buggies or in stout light wagons.

”Look at their faces,” Saxon said. ”They are happy and contented. They haven't faces like the people in our neighborhood after the strikes began.”

”Oh, sure, they got a good thing,” Billy agreed. ”You can see it stickin' out all over them. But they needn't get chesty with ME, I can tell you that much--just because they've jiggerooed us out of our land an' everything.”

”But they're not showing any signs of chestiness,” Saxon demurred.

”No, they're not, come to think of it. All the same, they ain't so wise.

I bet I could tell 'em a few about horses.”

It was sunset when they entered the little town of Niles. Billy, who had been silent for the last half mile, hesitantly ventured a suggestion.

”Say... I could put up for a room in the hotel just as well as not. What d 'ye think?”

But Saxon shook her head emphatically.

”How long do you think our twenty dollars will last at that rate?

Besides, the only way to begin is to begin at the beginning. We didn't plan sleeping in hotels.”

”All right,” he gave in. ”I'm game. I was just thinkin' about you.”

”Then you'd better think I'm game, too,” she flashed forgivingly. ”And now we'll have to see about getting things for supper.”

They bought a round steak, potatoes, onions, and a dozen eating apples, then went out from the town to the fringe of trees and brush that advertised a creek. Beside the trees, on a sand bank, they pitched camp. Plenty of dry wood lay about, and Billy whistled genially while he gathered and chopped. Saxon, keen to follow his every mood, was cheered by the atrocious discord on his lips. She smiled to herself as she spread the blankets, with the tarpaulin underneath, for a table, having first removed all twigs from the sand. She had much to learn in the matter of cooking over a camp-fire, and made fair progress, discovering, first of all, that control of the fire meant far more than the size of it. When the coffee was boiled, she settled the grounds with a part-cup of cold water and placed the pot on the edge of the coals where it would keep hot and yet not boil. She fried potato dollars and onions in the same pan, but separately, and set them on top of the coffee pot in the tin plate she was to eat from, covering it with Billy's inverted plate.