Part 81 (1/2)

”Trout?”--this from Billy.

”If you know how to catch 'em,” grinned the boy.

”Deer up the mountain?”

”It ain't open season,” the boy evaded.

”I guess you never shot a deer,” Billy slyly baited, and was rewarded with:

”I got the horns to show.”

”Deer shed their horns,” Billy teased on. ”Anybody can find 'em.”

”I got the meat on mine. It ain't dry yet--”

The boy broke off, gazing with shocked eyes into the pit Billy had dug for him.

”It's all right, sonny,” Billy laughed, as he drove on. ”I ain't the game warden. I 'm buyin' horses.”

More leaping tree squirrels, more ruddy madronos and majestic oaks, more fairy circles of redwoods, and, still beside the singing stream, they pa.s.sed a gate by the roadside. Before it stood a rural mail box, on which was lettered ”Edmund Hale.” Standing under the rustic arch, leaning upon the gate, a man and woman composed a pieture so arresting and beautiful that Saxon caught her breath. They were side by side, the delicate hand of the woman curled in the hand of the man, which looked as if made to confer benedictions. His face bore out this impression--a beautiful-browed countenance, with large, benevolent gray eyes under a wealth of white hair that shone like spun gla.s.s. He was fair and large; the little woman beside him was daintily wrought. She was saffron-brown, as a woman of the white race can well be, with smiling eyes of bluest blue. In quaint sage-green draperies, she seemed a flower, with her small vivid face irresistibly reminding Saxon of a springtime wake-robin.

Perhaps the picture made by Saxon and Billy was equally arresting and beautiful, as they drove down through the golden end of day. The two couples had eyes only for each other. The little woman beamed joyously.

The man's face glowed into the benediction that had trembled there.

To Saxon, like the field up the mountain, like the mountain itself, it seemed that she had always known this adorable pair. She knew that she loved them.

”How d'ye do,” said Billy.

”You blessed children,” said the man. ”I wonder if you know how dear you look sitting there.”

That was all. The wagon had pa.s.sed by, rustling down the road, which was carpeted with fallen leaves of maple, oak, and alder. Then they came to the meeting of the two creeks.

”Oh, what a place for a home,” Saxon cried, pointing across Wild Water.

”See, Billy, on that bench there above the meadow.”

”It's a rich bottom, Saxon; and so is the bench rich. Look at the big trees on it. An' they's sure to be springs.”

”Drive over,” she said.

Forsaking the main road, they crossed Wild Water on a narrow bridge and continued along an ancient, rutted road that ran beside an equally ancient worm-fence of split redwood rails. They came to a gate, open and off its hinges, through which the road led out on the bench.

”This is it--I know it,” Saxon said with conviction. ”Drive in, Billy.”

A small, whitewashed farmhouse with broken windows showed through the trees.

”Talk about your madronos--”

Billy pointed to the father of all madronos, six feet in diameter at its base, st.u.r.dy and sound, which stood before the house.