Part 68 (1/2)

”I don't know when I've been so tired,” he yawned. ”An' there's one thing sure: I never had such a day. It's worth livin' twenty years for an' then some.”

He reached out his hand to Saxon, who lay beside him.

”And, oh, I was so proud of you, Billy,” she said. ”I never saw you box before. I didn't know it was like that. The Iron Man was at your mercy all the time, and you kept it from being violent or terrible. Everybody could look on and enjoy--and they did, too.”

”Huh, I want to say you was goin' some yourself. They just took to you.

Why, honest to G.o.d, Saxon, in the singin' you was the whole show, along with the ukulele. All the women liked you, too, an' that's what counts.”

It was their first social triumph, and the taste of it was sweet:

”Mr. Hall said he'd looked up the 'Story of the Files,'” Saxon recounted. ”And he said mother was a true poet. He said it was astonis.h.i.+ng the fine stock that had crossed the Plains. He told me a lot about those times and the people I didn't know. And he's read all about the fight at Little Meadow. He says he's got it in a book at home, and if we come back to Carmel he'll show it to me.”

”He wants us to come back all right. D'ye know what he said to me, Saxon? He gave me a letter to some guy that's down on the government land--some poet that's holdin' down a quarter of a section--so we'll be able to stop there, which'll come in handy if the big rains catch us.

An'--Oh! that's what I was drivin' at. He said he had a little shack he lived in while the house was buildin'. The Iron Man's livin' in it now, but he's goin' away to some Catholic college to study to be a priest, an' Hall said the shack'd be ours as long as we wanted to use it. An' he said I could do what the Iron Man was doin' to make a livin'. Hall was kind of bashful when he was offerin' me work. Said it'd be only odd jobs, but that we'd make out. I could help'm plant potatoes, he said; an' he got half savage when he said I couldn't chop wood. That was his job, he said; an' you could see he was actually jealous over it.”

”And Mrs. Hall said just about the same to me, Billy. Carmel wouldn't be so bad to pa.s.s the rainy season in. And then, too, you could go swimming with Mr. Hazard.”

”Seems as if we could settle down wherever we've a mind to,” Billy a.s.sented. ”Carmel's the third place now that's offered. Well, after this, no man need be afraid of makin' a go in the country.”

”No good man,” Saxon corrected.

”I guess you're right.” Billy thought for a moment. ”Just the same a dub, too, has a better chance in the country than in the city.”

”Who'd have ever thought that such fine people existed?” Saxon pondered.

”It's just wonderful, when you come to think of it.”

”It's only what you'd expect from a rich poet that'd trip up a foot-racer at an Irish picnic,” Billy exposited.

”The only crowd such a guy'd run with would be like himself, or he'd make a crowd that was. I wouldn't wonder that he'd make this crowd. Say, he's got some sister, if anybody'd ride up on a sea-lion an' ask you.

She's got that Indian wrestlin' down pat, an' she's built for it. An'

say, ain't his wife a beaut?”

A little longer they lay in the warm sand. It was Billy who broke the silence, and what he said seemed to proceed out of profound meditation.

”Say, Saxon, d'ye know I don't care if I never see movie pictures again.”

CHAPTER IX

Saxon and Billy were gone weeks on the trip south, but in the end they came back to Carmel. They had stopped with Hafler, the poet in the Marble House, which he had built with his own hands. This queer dwelling was all in one room, built almost entirely of white marble. Hafler cooked, as over a campfire, in the huge marble fireplace, which he used in all ways as a kitchen. There were divers shelves of books, and the ma.s.sive furniture he had made from redwood, as he had made the shakes for the roof. A blanket, stretched across a corner, gave Saxon privacy.

The poet was on the verge of departing for San Francisco and New York, but remained a day over with them to explain the country and run over the government land with Billy. Saxon had wanted to go along that morning, but Hafler scornfully rejected her, telling her that her legs were too short. That night, when the men returned, Billy was played out to exhaustion. He frankly acknowledged that Hafler had walked him into the ground, and that his tongue had been hanging out from the first hour. Hafler estimated that they had covered fifty-five miles.

”But such miles!” Billy enlarged. ”Half the time up or down, an' 'most all the time without trails. An' such a pace. He was dead right about your short legs, Saxon. You wouldn't a-lasted the first mile. An' such country! We ain't seen anything like it yet.”

Hafler left the next day to catch the train at Monterey. He gave them the freedom of the Marble House, and told them to stay the whole winter if they wanted. Billy elected to loaf around and rest up that day.

He was stiff and sore. Moreover, he was stunned by the exhibition of walking prowess on the part of the poet.

”Everybody can do something top-notch down in this country,” he marveled. ”Now take that Hafler. He's a bigger man than me, an' a heavier. An' weight's against walkin', too. But not with him. He's done eighty miles inside twenty-four hours, he told me, an' once a hundred an' seventy in three days. Why, he made a show outa me. I felt ashamed as a little kid.”