Part 64 (1/2)
Billy followed him with admiring eyes.
”Some boy, some boy,” he murmured. ”Why, Saxon, he's famous. If I've seen his face in the papers once, I've seen it a thousand times. An' he ain't a bit stuck on himself. Just man to man. Say!--I'm beginnin' to have faith in the old stock again.”
They turned their backs on the beach and in the tiny main street bought meat, vegetables, and half a dozen eggs. Billy had to drag Saxon away from the window of a fascinating shop where were iridescent pearls of abalone, set and unset.
”Abalones grow here, all along the coast,” Billy a.s.sured her; ”an' I'll get you all you want. Low tide's the time.”
”My father had a set of cuff-b.u.t.tons made of abalone sh.e.l.l,” she said.
”They were set in pure, soft gold. I haven't thought about them for years, and I wonder who has them now.”
They turned south. Everywhere from among the pines peeped the quaint pretty houses of the artist folk, and they were not prepared, where the road dipped to Carmel River, for the building that met their eyes.
”I know what it is,” Saxon almost whispered. ”It's an old Spanish Mission. It's the Carmel Mission, of course. That's the way the Spaniards came up from Mexico, building missions as they came and converting the Indians.”
”Until we chased them out, Spaniards an' Indians, whole kit an'
caboodle,” Billy observed with calm satisfaction.
”Just the same, it's wonderful,” Saxon mused, gazing at the big, half-ruined adobe structure. ”There is the Mission Dolores, in San Francisco, but it's smaller than this and not as old.”
Hidden from the sea by low hillocks, forsaken by human being and human habitation, the church of sun-baked clay and straw and chalk-rock stood hushed and breathless in the midst of the adobe ruins which once had housed its wors.h.i.+ping thousands. The spirit of the place descended upon Saxon and Billy, and they walked softly, speaking in whispers, almost afraid to go in through the open ports. There was neither priest nor wors.h.i.+per, yet they found all the evidences of use, by a congregation which Billy judged must be small from the number of the benches. Later they climbed the earthquake-racked belfry, noting the hand-hewn timbers; and in the gallery, discovering the pure quality of their voices, Saxon, trembling at her own temerity, softly sang the opening bars of ”Jesus Lover of My Soul.” Delighted with the result, she leaned over the railing, gradually increasing her voice to its full strength as she sang:
”Jesus, Lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly, While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is nigh. Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, Till the storm of life is past; Safe into the haven guide And receive my soul at last.”
Billy leaned against the ancient wall and loved her with his eyes, and, when she had finished, he murmured, almost in a whisper:
”That was beautiful--just beautiful. An' you ought to a-seen your face when you sang. It was as beautiful as your voice. Ain't it funny?--I never think of religion except when I think of you.”
They camped in the willow bottom, cooked dinner, and spent the afternoon on the point of low rocks north of the mouth of the river. They had not intended to spend the afternoon, but found themselves too fascinated to turn away from the breakers bursting upon the rocks and from the many kinds of colorful sea life -- starfish, crabs, mussels, sea anemones, and, once, in a rock-pool, a small devilfish that chilled their blood when it cast the hooded net of its body around the small crabs they tossed to it. As the tide grew lower, they gathered a mess of mussels--huge fellows, five and six inches long and bearded like patriarchs. Then, while Billy wandered in a vain search for abalones, Saxon lay and dabbled in the crystal-clear water of a rock-pool, dipping up handfuls of glistening jewels--ground bits of sh.e.l.l and pebble of flas.h.i.+ng rose and blue and green and violet. Billy came back and lay beside her, lazying in the sea-cool suns.h.i.+ne, and together they watched the sun sink into the horizon where the ocean was deepest peac.o.c.k-blue.
She reached out her hand to Billy's and sighed with sheer repletion of content. It seemed she had never lived such a wonderful day. It was as if all old dreams were coming true. Such beauty of the world she had never guessed in her fondest imagining. Billy pressed her hand tenderly.
”What was you thinkin' of?” he asked, as they arose finally to go.
”Oh, I don't know, Billy. Perhaps that it was better, one day like this, than ten thousand years in Oakland.”
CHAPTER VII
They left Carmel River and Carmel Valley behind, and with a rising sun went south across the hills between the mountains and the sea. The road was badly washed and gullied and showed little sign of travel.
”It peters out altogether farther down,” Billy said. ”From there on it's only horse trails. But I don't see much signs of timber, an' this soil's none so good. It's only used for pasture--no farmin' to speak of.”
The hills were bare and gra.s.sy. Only the canyons were wooded, while the higher and more distant hills were furry with chaparral. Once they saw a coyote slide into the brush, and once Billy wished for a gun when a large wildcat stared at them malignantly and declined to run until routed by a clod of earth that burst about its ears like shrapnel.
Several miles along Saxon complained of thirst. Where the road dipped nearly at sea level to cross a small gulch Billy looked for water. The bed of the gulch was damp with hill-drip, and he left her to rest while he sought a spring.
”Say,” he hailed a few minutes afterward. ”Come on down. You just gotta see this. It'll 'most take your breath away.”
Saxon followed the faint path that led steeply down through the thicket.
Midway along, where a barbed wire fence was strung high across the mouth of the gulch and weighted down with big rocks, she caught her first glimpse of the tiny beach. Only from the sea could one guess its existence, so completely was it tucked away on three precipitous sides by the land, and screened by the thicket. Furthermore, the beach was the head of a narrow rock cove, a quarter of a mile long, up which pent way the sea roared and was subdued at the last to a gentle pulse of surf.
Beyond the mouth many detached rocks, meeting the full force of the breakers, spouted foam and spray high in the air. The knees of these rocks, seen between the surges, were black with mussels. On their tops sprawled huge sea-lions tawny-wet and roaring in the sun, while overhead, uttering shrill cries, darted and wheeled a mult.i.tude of sea birds.