Part 66 (2/2)
”Oh, I don't know, Billy. I've heard that plenty of poets are odd.”
”That's right, come to think of it. There's Joaquin Miller, lives out in the hills back of Fruitvale. He's certainly odd. It's right near his place where I proposed to you. Just the same I thought poets wore whiskers and eyegla.s.ses, an' never tripped up foot-racers at Sunday picnics, nor run around with as few clothes on as the law allows, gatherin' mussels an' climbin' like goats.”
That night, under the blankets, Saxon lay awake, looking at the stars, pleasuring in the balmy thicket-scents, and listening to the dull rumble of the outer surf and the whispering ripples on the sheltered beach a few feet away. Billy stirred, and she knew he was not yet asleep.
”Glad you left Oakland, Billy?” she snuggled.
”Huh!” came his answer. ”Is a clam happy?”
CHAPTER VIII
Every half tide Billy raced out the south wall over the dangerous course he and Hall had traveled, and each trial found him doing it in faster time.
”Wait till Sunday,” he said to Saxon. ”I'll give that poet a run for his money. Why, they ain't a place that bothers me now. I've got the head confidence. I run where I went on hands an' knees. I figured it out this way: Suppose you had a foot to fall on each side, an' it was soft hay. They'd be nothing to stop you. You wouldn't fall. You'd go like a streak. Then it's just the same if it's a mile down on each side. That ain't your concern. Your concern is to stay on top and go like a streak.
An', d'ye know, Saxon, when I went at it that way it never bothered me at all. Wait till he comes with his crowd Sunday. I'm ready for him.”
”I wonder what the crowd will be like,” Saxon speculated.
”Like him, of course. Birds of a feather flock together. They won't be stuck up, any of them, you'll see.”
Hall had sent out fish-lines and a swimming suit by a Mexican cowboy bound south to his ranch, and from the latter they learned much of the government land and how to get it. The week flew by; each day Saxon sighed a farewell of happiness to the sun; each morning they greeted its return with laughter of joy in that another happy day had begun. They made no plans, but fished, gathered mussels and abalones, and climbed among the rocks as the moment moved them. The abalone meat they pounded religiously to a verse of doggerel improvised by Saxon. Billy prospered.
Saxon had never seen him at so keen a pitch of health. As for herself, she scarcely needed the little hand-mirror to know that never, since she was a young girl, had there been such color in her cheeks, such spontaneity of vivacity.
”It's the first time in my life I ever had real play,” Billy said. ”An'
you an' me never played at all all the time we was married. This beats bein' any kind of a millionaire.”
”No seven o'clock whistle,” Saxon exulted. ”I'd lie abed in the mornings on purpose, only everything is too good not to be up. And now you just play at chopping some firewood and catching a nice big perch, Man Friday, if you expect to get any dinner.”
Billy got up, hatchet in hand, from where he had been lying p.r.o.ne, digging holes in the sand with his bare toes.
”But it ain't goin' to last,” he said, with a deep sigh of regret. ”The rains'll come any time now. The good weather's hangin' on something wonderful.”
On Sat.u.r.day morning, returning from his run out the south wall, he missed Saxon. After h.e.l.loing for her without result, he climbed to the road. Half a mile away, he saw her astride an unsaddled, unbridled horse that moved unwillingly, at a slow walk, across the pasture.
”Lucky for you it was an old mare that had been used to ridin'--see them saddle marks,” he grumbled, when she at last drew to a halt beside him and allowed him to help her down.
”Oh, Billy,” she sparkled, ”I was never on a horse before. It was glorious! I felt so helpless, too, and so brave.”
”I'm proud of you, just the same,” he said, in more grumbling tones than before. ”'Tain't every married woman'd tackle a strange horse that way, especially if she'd never ben on one. An' I ain't forgot that you're goin' to have a saddle animal all to yourself some day--a regular Joe dandy.”
The Abalone Eaters, in two rigs and on a number of horses, descended in force on Bierce's Cove. There were half a score of men and almost as many women. All were young, between the ages of twenty-five and forty, and all seemed good friends. Most of them were married. They arrived in a roar of good spirits, tripping one another down the slippery trail and engulfing Saxon and Billy in a comrades.h.i.+p as artless and warm as the suns.h.i.+ne itself. Saxon was appropriated by the girls--she could not realize them women; and they made much of her, praising her camping and traveling equipment and insisting on hearing some of her tale. They were experienced campers themselves, as she quickly discovered when she saw the pots and pans and clothes-boilers for the mussels which they had brought.
In the meantime Billy and the men had undressed and scattered out after mussels and abalones. The girls lighted on Saxon's ukulele and nothing would do but she must play and sing. Several of them had been to Honolulu, and knew the instrument, confirming Mercedes' definition of ukulele as ”jumping flea.” Also, they knew Hawaiian songs she had learned from Mercedes, and soon, to her accompaniment, all were singing: ”Aloha Oe,” ”Honolulu Tomboy,” and ”Sweet Lei Lehua.” Saxon was genuinely shocked when some of them, even the more matronly, danced hulas on the sand.
When the men returned, burdened with sacks of sh.e.l.lfish, Mark Hall, as high priest, commanded the due and solemn rite of the tribe. At a wave of his hand, the many poised stones came down in unison on the white meat, and all voices were uplifted in the Hymn to the Abalone. Old verses all sang, occasionally some one sang a fresh verse alone, whereupon it was repeated in chorus. Billy betrayed Saxon by begging her in an undertone to sing the verse she had made, and her pretty voice was timidly raised in:
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