Part 79 (1/2)

”Wash off the sand, of course,” was her answer.

”Better put it in the basket,” he advised, then closed his mouth and grimly watched.

She stooped by the side of the stream and dipped in the splendid fish.

It flopped, there was a convulsive movement on her part, and it was gone.

”Oh!” Saxon cried in chagrin.

”Them that finds should hold,” quoth Billy.

”I don't care,” she replied. ”It was a bigger one than you ever caught anyway.”

”Oh, I 'm not denyin' you're a peach at fis.h.i.+n',” he drawled. ”You caught me, didn't you?”

”I don't know about that,” she retorted. ”Maybe it was like the man who was arrested for catching trout out of season. His defense was self defense.”

Billy pondered, but did not see.

”The trout attacked him,” she explained.

Billy grinned. Fifteen minutes later he said:

”You sure handed me a hot one.”

The sky was overcast, and, as they drove along the bank of the Coquille River, the fog suddenly enveloped them.

”Whoof!” Billy exhaled joyfully. ”Ain't it great! I can feel myself moppin' it up like a dry sponge. I never appreciated fog before.”

Saxon held out her arms to receive it, making motions as if she were bathing in the gray mist.

”I never thought I'd grow tired of the sun,” she said; ”but we've had more than our share the last few weeks.”

”Ever since we hit the Sacramento Valley,” Billy affirmed. ”Too much sun ain't good. I've worked that out. Suns.h.i.+ne is like liquor. Did you ever notice how good you felt when the sun come out after a week of cloudy weather. Well, that suns.h.i.+ne was just like a jolt of whiskey. Had the same effect. Made you feel good all over. Now, when you're swimmin', an'

come out an' lay in the sun, how good you feel. That's because you're lappin' up a sun-c.o.c.ktail. But suppose you lay there in the sand a couple of hours. You don't feel so good. You're so slow-movin' it takes you a long time to dress. You go home draggin' your legs an' feelin'

rotten, with all the life sapped outa you. What's that? It's the katzenjammer. You've been soused to the ears in suns.h.i.+ne, like so much whiskey, an' now you're payin' for it. That's straight. That's why fog in the climate is best.”

”Then we've been drunk for months,” Saxon said. ”And now we're going to sober up.”

”You bet. Why, Saxon, I can do two days' work in one in this climate.--Look at the mares. Blame me if they ain't perkin' up already.”

Vainly Saxon's eye roved the pine forest in search of her beloved redwoods. They would find them down in California, they were told in the town of Bandon.

”Then we're too far north,” said Saxon. ”We must go south to find our valley of the moon.”

And south they went, along roads that steadily grew worse, through the dairy country of Langlois and through thick pine forests to Port Orford, where Saxon picked jeweled agates on the beach while Billy caught enormous rockcod. No railroads had yet penetrated this wild region, and the way south grew wilder and wilder. At Gold Beach they encountered their old friend, the Rogue River, which they ferried across where it entered the Pacific. Still wilder became the country, still more terrible the road, still farther apart the isolated farms and clearings.

And here were neither Asiatics nor Europeans. The scant population consisted of the original settlers and their descendants. More than one old man or woman Saxon talked with, who could remember the trip across the Plains with the plodding oxen. West they had fared until the Pacific itself had stopped them, and here they had made their clearings, built their rude houses, and settled. In them Farthest West had been reached.