The Valley of the Moon Jack London, Page 3

and apparently considered. This she did not see nor analyze. She

  saw only a clothed man with grace of carriage and movement. She

  felt, rather than perceived, the calm and certitude of all the

  muscular play of him, and she felt, too, the promise of easement

  and rest that was especially grateful and craved-for by one who

  had incessantly, for six days and at top-speed, ironed fancy

  starch. As the touch of his hand had been good, so, to her, this

  subtler feel of all of him, body and mind, was good.

  As he took her program and skirmished and joked after the way of

  young men, she realized the immediacy of delight she had taken in

  him. Never in her life had she been so affected by any man. She

  wondered to herself: IS THIS THE MAN?

  He danced beautifully. The joy was hers that good dancers take

  when they have found a good dancer for a partner. The grace of

  those slow-moving, certain muscles of his accorded perfectly with

  the rhythm of the music. There was never doubt, never a betrayal

  of indecision. She glanced at Bert, dancing "tough" with Mary,

  caroming down the long floor with more than one collision with

  the increasing couples. Graceful himself in his slender, tall,

  lean-stomached way, Bert was accounted a good dancer; yet Saxon

  did not remember ever having danced with him with keen pleasure.

  Just a hit of a jerk spoiled his dancing--a jerk that did not

  occur, usually, but that always impended. There was something

  spasmodic in his mind. He was too quick, or he continually

  threatened to be too quick. He always seemed just on the verge of

  overrunning the time. It was disquieting. He made for unrest.

  "You're a dream of a dancer," Billy Roberts was saying. "I've

  heard lots of the fellows talk about your dancing."

  "I love it," she answered.

  But from the way she said it he sensed her reluctance to speak,

  and danced on in silence, while she warmed with the appreciation

  of a woman for gentle consideration. Gentle consideration was a

  thing rarely encountered in the life she lived. IS THIS THE MAN?

  She remembered Mary's "I'd marry him to-morrow," and caught

  herself speculating on marrying Billy Roberts by the next day--if

  he asked her.

  With eyes that dreamily desired to close, she moved on in the

  arms of this masterful, guiding pressure. A PRIZE-FIGHTER! She

  experienced a thrill of wickedness as she thought of what Sarah

  would say could she see her now. Only he wasn't a prizefighter,

  but a teamster.

  Came an abrupt lengthening of step, the guiding pressure grew

  more compelling, and she was caught up and carried along, though

  her velvet-shod feet never left the floor. Then came the sudden

  control down to the shorter step again, and she felt herself

  being held slightly from him so that he might look into her face

  and laugh with her in joy at the exploit. At the end, as the band

  slowed in the last bars, they, too, slowed, their dance fading

  with the music in a lengthening glide that ceased with the last

  lingering tone.

  "We're sure cut out for each other when it comes to dancin'," he

  said, as they made their way to rejoin the other couple.

  "It was a dream," she replied.

  So low was her voice that he bent to hear, and saw the flush in

  her cheeks that seemed communicated to her eyes, which were

  softly warm and sensuous. He took the program from her and

  gravely and gigantically wrote his name across all the length of

  it.

  "An' now it's no good," he dared. "Ain't no need for it."

  He tore it across and tossed it aside.

  "Me for you, Saxon, for the next," was Bert's greeting, as they

  came up. "You take Mary for the next whirl, Bill."

  "Nothin' doin', Bo," was the retort. "Me an' Saxon's framed up to

  last the day."

  "Watch out for him, Saxon," Mary warned facetiously. "He's liable

  to get a crush on you."

  "I guess I know a good thing when I see it," Billy responded

  gallantly.

  "And so do I," Saxon aided and abetted.

  "I'd 'a' known you if I'd seen you in the dark," Billy added.

  Mary regarded them with mock alarm, and Bert said good-naturedly:

  "All I got to say is you ain't wastin' any time gettin' together.

  Just the same, if' you can spare a few minutes from each other

  after a couple more whirls, Mary an' me'd be complimented to have

  your presence at dinner."

  "Just like that," chimed Mary.

  "Quit your kiddin'," Billy laughed back, turning his head to look

  into Saxon's eyes. "Don't listen to 'em. They're grouched because

  they got to dance together. Bert's a rotten dancer, and Mary

  ain't so much. Come on, there she goes. See you after two more

  dances."

  CHAPTER III

  They had dinner in the open-air, tree-walled dining-room, and

  Saxon noted that it was Billy who paid the reckoning for the

  four. They knew many of the young men and women at the other

  tables, and greetings and fun flew back and forth. Bert was very

  possessive with Mary, almost roughly so, resting his hand on

  hers, catching and holding it, and, once, forcibly slipping off

  her two rings and refusing to return them for a long while. At

  times, when he put his arm around her waist, Mary promptly

  disengaged it; and at other times, with elaborate obliviousness

  that deceived no one, she allowed it to remain.

  And Saxon, talking little but studying Billy Roberts very

  intently, was satisfied that there would be an utter difference

  in the way he would do such things . . . if ever he would do

  them. Anyway, he'd never paw a girl as Bert and lots of the other

  fellows did. She measured the breadth of Billy's heavy shoulders.

  "Why do they call you 'Big' Bill?" she asked. "You're not so very

  tall."

  "Nope," he agreed. "I'm only five feet eight an' three-quarters.

  I guess it must be my weight."

  "He fights at a hundred an' eighty," Bert interjected.

  "Oh, out it," Billy said quickly, a cloud-rift of displeasure

  showing in his eyes. "I ain't a fighter. I ain't fought in six

  months. I've quit it. It don't pay."

  "Yon got two hundred the night you put the Frisco Slasher to the

  bad," Bert urged proudly.

  "Cut it. Cut it now.--Say, Saxon, you ain't so big yourself, are

  you? But you're built just right if anybody should ask you.

  You're round an' slender at the same time. I bet I can guess your

  weight."

  "Everybody guesses over it," she warned, while inwardly she was

  puzzled that she should at the same time be glad and regretful

  that he did not fight any more.

  "Not me," he was saying. "I'm a wooz at weight-guessin'. Just you

  watch me." He regarded her critically, and it was patent that

  warm approval played its little rivalry with the judgment of his

  gaze. "Wait a minute."

  He reached over to her and felt her arm at the biceps. The

  pressure of the encircling fingers was firm and honest, and Saxon

  thrilled to it. There was magic in this man-boy. She would have

  known only irritation had B
ert or any other man felt her arm. But

  this man! IS HE THE MAN? she was questioning, when he voiced his

  conclusion.

  "Your clothes don't weigh more'n seven pounds. And seven

  from--hum--say one hundred an' twenty-three--one hundred an'

  sixteen is your stripped weight."

  But at the penultimate word, Mary cried out with sharp reproof:

  "Why, Billy Roberts, people don't talk about such things."

  He looked at her with slow-growing, uncomprehending surprise.

  "What things?" he demanded finally.

  "There you go again! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look!

  You've got Saxon blushing!"

  "I am not," Saxon denied indignantly.

  "An' if you keep on, Mary, you'll have me blushing," Billy

  growled. "I guess I know what's right an' what ain't. It ain't

  what a guy says, but what he thinks. An' I'm thinkin' right, an'

  Saxon knows it. An' she an' I ain't thinkin' what you're thinkin'

  at all."

  "Oh! Oh!" Mary cried. "You're gettin' worse an' worse. I never

  think such things."

  "Whoa, Mary! Backup!" Bert checked her peremptorily. "You're in

  the wrong stall. Billy never makes mistakes like that."

  "But he needn't be so raw," she persisted.

  "Come on, Mary, an' be good, an' cut that stuff," was Billy's

  dismissal of her, as he turned to Saxon. "How near did I come to

  it?"

  "One hundred and twenty-two," she answered, looking deliberately

  at Mary. "One twenty two with my clothes."

  Billy burst into hearty laughter, in which Bert joined.

  "I don't care," Mary protested, "You're terrible, both of

  you--an' you, too, Saxon. I'd never a-thought it of you."

  "Listen to me, kid," Bert began soothingly, as his arm slipped

  around her waist.

  But in the false excitement she had worked herself into, Mary

  rudely repulsed the arm, and then, fearing that she had wounded

  her lover's feelings, she took advantage of the teasing and

  banter to recover her good humor. His arm was permitted to

  return, and with heads bent together, they talked in whispers.

  Billy discreetly began to make conversation with Saxon.

  "Say, you know, your name is a funny one. I never heard it tagged

  on anybody before. But it's all right. I like it."

  "My mother gave it to me. She was educated, and knew all kinds of

  words. She was always reading books, almost until she died. And

  she wrote lots and lots. I've got some of her poetry published in

  a San Jose newspaper long ago. The Saxons were a race of

  people--she told me all about them when I was a little girl. They

  were wild, like Indians, only they were white. And they had blue

  eyes, and yellow hair, and they were awful fighters."

  As she talked, Billy followed her solemnly, his eyes steadily

  turned on hers.

  "Never heard of them," he confessed. "Did they live anywhere

  around here?"

  She laughed.

  "No. They lived in England. They were the first English, and you

  know the Americans came from the English. We're Saxons, you an'

  me, an' Mary, an' Bert, and all the Americans that are real

  Americans, you know, and not Dagoes and Japs and such."

  "My folks lived in America a long time," Billy said slowly,

  digesting the information she had given and relating himself to

  it. "Anyway, my mother's folks did. They crossed to Maine

  hundreds of years ago."

  "My father was 'State of Maine," she broke in, with a little

  gurgle of joy. "And my mother was horn in Ohio, or where Ohio is

  now. She used to call it the Great Western Reserve. What was your

  father?"

  "Don't know." Billy shrugged his shoulders. "He didn't know

  himself. Nobody ever knew, though he was American, all right, all

  right."

  "His name's regular old American," Saxon suggested. "There's a

  big English general right now whose name is Roberts. I've read it

  in the papers."

  "But Roberts wasn't my father's name. He never knew what his name

  was. Roberts was the name of a gold-miner who adopted him. You

  see, it was this way. When they was Indian-fightin' up there with

  the Modoc Indians, a lot of the miners an' settlers took a hand.

  Roberts was captain of one outfit, and once, after a fight, they

  took a lot of prisoners--squaws, an' kids an' babies. An' one of

  the kids was my father. They figured he was about five years old.

  He didn't know nothin' but Indian."

  Saxon clapped her hands, and her eyes sparkled: "He'd been

  captured on an Indian raid!"

  "That's the way they figured it," Billy nodded. "They recollected

  a wagon-train of Oregon settlers that'd been killed by the Modocs

  four years before. Roberts adopted him, and that's why I don't

  know his real name. But you can bank on it, he crossed the plains

  just the same."

  "So did my father," Saxon said proudly.

  "An' my mother, too," Billy added, pride touching his own voice.

  "Anyway, she came pretty close to crossin' the plains, because

  she was born in a wagon on the River Platte on the way out."

  "My mother, too," said Saxon. "She was eight years old, an' she

  walked most of the way after the oxen began to give out."

  Billy thrust out his hand.

  "Put her there, kid," he said. "We're just like old friends, what

  with the same kind of folks behind us."

  With shining eyes, Saxon extended her hand to his, and gravely

  they shook.

  "Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "We're both old American

  stock. And if you aren't a Saxon there never was one--your hair,

  your eyes, your skin, everything. And you're a fighter, too."

  "I guess all our old folks was fighters when it comes to that. It

  come natural to 'em, an' dog-gone it, they just had to fight or

  they'd never come through."

  "What are you two talkin' about?" Mary broke in upon them.

  "They're thicker'n mush in no time," Bert girded. "You'd think

  they'd known each other a week already."

  "Oh, we knew each other longer than that," Saxon returned.

  "Before ever we were born our folks were walkin' across the

  plains together."

  "When your folks was waitin' for the railroad to be built an' all

  the Indians killed off before they dasted to start for

  California," was Billy's way of proclaiming the new alliance.

  "We're the real goods, Saxon an'n me, if anybody should ride up on

  a buzz-wagon an' ask you."

  "Oh, I don't know," Mary boasted with quiet petulance. "My father

  stayed behind to fight in the Civil War. He was a drummer-boy.

  That's why he didn't come to California until afterward."

  "And my father went back to fight in the Civil War," Saxon said.

  "And mine, too," said Billy.

  They looked at each other gleefully. Again they had found a new

  contact.

  "Well, they're all dead, ain't they?" was Bert's saturnine

  comment. "There ain't no difference dyin' in battle or in the

  poorhouse. The thing is they're deado. I wouldn't care a rap if

  my father'd been hanged. It's all the same in a thousand years.

  This braggin' about folks makes me tired. Besid
es, my father

  couldn't a-fought. He wasn't born till two years after the war.

  Just the same, two of my uncles were killed at Gettysburg. Guess

  we done our share."

  "Just like that," Mary applauded.

  Bert's arm went around her waist again.

  "We're here, ain't we?" he said. "An' that's what counts. The

  dead are dead, an' you can bet your sweet life they just keep on

  stayin' dead."

  Mary put her hand over his mouth and began to chide him for his

  awfulness, whereupon he kissed the palm of her hand and put his

  head closer to hers.

  The merry clatter of dishes was increasing as the dining-room

  filled up. Here and there voices were raised in snatches of song.

  There were shrill squeals and screams and bursts of heavier male

  laughter as the everlasting skirmishing between the young men and

  girls played on. Among some of the men the signs of drink were

  already manifest. At a near table girls were calling out to

  Billy. And Saxon, the sense of temporary possession already

  strong on her, noted with jealous eyes that he was a favorite and

  desired object to them.

  "Ain't they awful?" Mary voiced her disapproval. "They got a

  nerve. I know who they are. No respectable girl 'd have a thing

  to do with them. Listen to that!"

  "Oh, you Bill, you," one of them, a buxom young brunette, was

  calling. "Hope you ain't forgotten me, Bill."

  "Oh, you chicken," he called back gallantly.

  Saxon flattered herself that he showed vexation, and she

  conceived an immense dislike for the brunette.

  "Goin' to dance?" the latter called.

  "Mebbe," he answered, and turned abruptly to Saxon. "Say, we old

  Americans oughta stick together, don't you think? They ain't many

  of us left. The country's fillin' up with all kinds of

  foreigners."

  He talked on steadily, in a low, confidential voice, head close

  to hers, as advertisement to the other girl that he was occupied.

  From the next table on the opposite side, a young man had singled

  out Saxon. His dress was tough. His companions, male and female,

  were tough. His face was inflamed, his eyes touched with

  wildness.

  "Hey, you!" he called. "You with the velvet slippers. Me for

  you."

  The girl beside him put her arm around his neck and tried to hush

  him, and through the mufflement of her embrace they could hear

  him gurgling:

  "I tell you she's some goods. Watch me go across an' win her from

  them cheap skates."

  "Butchertown hoodlums," Mary sniffed.

  Saxon's eyes encountered the eyes of the girl, who glared hatred

  across at her. And in Billy's eyes she saw moody anger

  smouldering. The eyes were more sullen, more handsome than ever,

  and clouds and veils and lights and shadowe shifted and deepened

  in the blue of them until they gave her a sense of unfathomable

  depth. He had stopped talking, and he made no effort to talk.

  "Don't start a rough house, Bill," Bert cautioned. "They're from

  across the hay an' they don't know you, that's all."

  Bert stood up suddenly, stepped over to the other table,

  whispered briefly, and came back. Every face at the table was

  turned on Billy. The offender arose brokenly, shook off the

  detaining hand of his girl, and came over. He was a large man,

  with a hard, malignant face and bitter eyes. Also, he was a

  subdued man.

  "You're Big Bill Roberts," he said thickly, clinging to the table

  as he reeled. "I take my hat off to you. I apologize. I admire

  your taste in skirts, an' take it from me that's a compliment;

  but I did'nt know who you was. If I'd knowed you was Bill Roberts

  there wouldn't been a peep from my fly-trap. D'ye get me? I

  apologize. Will you shake hands?"

  Gruffly, Billy said, "It's all right--forget it, sport;" and

  sullenly he shook hands and with a slow, massive movement thrust