Part 63 (1/2)
Their long ride was soon over, and at parting Benson reminded Billy of the steady job that awaited him any time he gave the word.
”I guess we'll take a peep at that government land first,” Billy answered. ”Don't know what we'll settle down to, but there's one thing sure we won't tackle.”
”What's that?”
”Start in apple-growin' at three thousan' dollars an acre.”
Billy and Saxon, their packs upon the backs, trudged along a hundred yards. He was the first to break silence.
”An' I tell you another thing, Saxon. We'll never be goin' around smellin' out an' swipin' bits of soil an' carryin' it up a hill in a basket. The United States is big yet. I don't care what Benson or any of 'em says, the United States ain't played out. There's millions of acres untouched an' waitin', an' it's up to us to find 'em.”
”And I'll tell you one thing,” Saxon said. ”We're getting an education.
Tom was raised on a ranch, yet he doesn't know right now as much about farming conditions as we do. And I'll tell you another thing. The more I think of it, the more it seems we are going to be disappointed about that government land.”
”Ain't no use believin' what everybody tells you,” he protested.
”Oh, it isn't that. It's what I think. I leave it to you. If this land around here is worth three thousand an acre, why is it that government land, if it's any good, is waiting there, only a short way off, to be taken for the asking.”
Billy pondered this for a quarter of a mile, but could come to no conclusion. At last he cleared his throat and remarked:
”Well, we can wait till we see it first, can't we?”
”All right,” Saxon agreed. ”We'll wait till we see it.”
CHAPTER VI
They had taken the direct county road across the hills from Monterey, instead of the Seventeen Mile Drive around by the coast, so that Carmel Bay came upon them without any fore-glimmerings of its beauty. Dropping down through the pungent pines, they pa.s.sed woods-embowered cottages, quaint and rustic, of artists and writers, and went on across wind-blown rolling sandhills held to place by st.u.r.dy lupine and nodding with pale California poppies. Saxon screamed in sudden wonder of delight, then caught her breath and gazed at the amazing peac.o.c.k-blue of a breaker, shot through with golden sunlight, overfalling in a mile-long sweep and thundering into white ruin of foam on a crescent beach of sand scarcely less white.
How long they stood and watched the stately procession of breakers, rising from out the deep and wind-capped sea to froth and thunder at their feet, Saxon did not know. She was recalled to herself when Billy, laughing, tried to remove the telescope basket from her shoulders.
”You kind of look as though you was goin' to stop a while,” he said. ”So we might as well get comfortable.”
”I never dreamed it, I never dreamed it,” she repeated, with pa.s.sionately clasped hands. ”I... I thought the surf at the Cliff House was wonderful, but it gave no idea of this.--Oh! Look! LOOK! Did you ever see such an unspeakable color? And the sunlight flas.h.i.+ng right through it! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
At last she was able to take her eyes from the surf and gaze at the sea-horizon of deepest peac.o.c.k-blue and piled with cloud-ma.s.ses, at the curve of the beach south to the jagged point of rocks, and at the rugged blue mountains seen across soft low hills, landward, up Carmel Valley.
”Might as well sit down an' take it easy,” Billy indulged her. ”This is too good to want to run away from all at once.”
Saxon a.s.sented, but began immediately to unlace her shoes.
”You ain't a-goin' to?” Billy asked in surprised delight, then began unlacing his own.
But before they were ready to run barefooted on the perilous fringe of cream-wet sand where land and ocean met, a new and wonderful thing attracted their attention. Down from the dark pines and across the sandhills ran a man, naked save for narrow trunks. He was smooth and rosy-skinned, cherubic-faced, with a thatch of curly yellow hair, but his body was hugely thewed as a Hercules'.
”Gee!--must be Sandow,” Billy muttered low to Saxon.
But she was thinking of the engraving in her mother's sc.r.a.pbook and of the Vikings on the wet sands of England.
The runner pa.s.sed them a dozen feet away, crossed the wet sand, never pausing, till the froth wash was to his knees while above him, ten feet at least, upreared a wall of overtopping water. Huge and powerful as his body had seemed, it was now white and fragile in the face of that imminent, great-handed buffet of the sea. Saxon gasped with anxiety, and she stole a look at Billy to note that he was tense with watching.
But the stranger sprang to meet the blow, and, just when it seemed he must be crushed, he dived into the face of the breaker and disappeared.