onlookers warned him to go easy. His face purpled with anger, and
his blows became savage. But Billy went on, tap, tap, tap,
calmly, gently, imperturbably. The Iron Man lost control, and
rushed and plunged, delivering great swings and upper-cuts of
man-killing quality. Billy ducked, side-stepped, blocked,
stalled, and escaped all damage. In the clinches, which were
unavoidable, he locked the Iron Man's arms, and in the clinches
the Iron Man invariably laughed and apologized, only to lose his
head with the first tap the instant they separated and be more
infuriated than ever.
And when it was over and Billy's identity had been divulged, the
Iron Man accepted the joke on himself with the best of humor. It
had been a splendid exhibition on Billy's part. His mastery of
the sport, coupled with his self-control, had most favorably
impressed the crowd, and Saxon, very proud of her man boy, could
not but see the admiration all had for him.
Nor did she prove in any way a social failure. When the tired and
sweating players lay down in the dry sand to cool off, she was
persuaded into accompanying their nonsense songs with the
ukulele. Nor was it long, catching their spirit, ere she was
singing to them and teaching them quaint songs of early days
which she had herself learned as a little girl from Cady--Cady,
the saloonkeeper, pioneer, and ax-cavalryman, who had been a
bull-whacker on the Salt Intake Trail in the days before the
railroad.
One song which became an immediate favorite was:
"Oh! times on Bitter Creek, they never can be beat,
Root hog or die is on every wagon sheet;
The sand within your throat, the dust within your eye,
Bend your back and stand it--root hog or die."
After the dozen verses of "Root Hog or Die," Mark Hall claimed
to be especially infatuated with:
"Obadier, he dreampt a dream,
Dreampt he was drivin' a ten-mule team,
But when he woke he heaved a sigh,
The lead-mule kicked e-o-wt the swing-mule's eye."
It was Mark Hall who brought up the matter of Billy's challenge
to race out the south wall of the cove, though he referred to the
test as lying somewhere in the future. Billy surprised him by
saying he was ready at any time. Forthwith the crowd clamored for
the race. Hall offered to bet on himself, but there were no
takers. He offered two to one to Jim Hazard, who shook his head
and said he would accept three to one as a sporting proposition.
Billy heard and gritted his teeth.
"I'll take you for five dollars," he said to Hall, "but not at
those odds. I'll back myself even."
"It isn't your money I want; it's Hazard's," Hall demurred.
"Though I'll give either of you three to one."
"Even or nothing," Billy held out obstinately.
Hall finally closed both bets--even with Billy, and three to one
with Hazard.
The path along the knife-edge was so narrow that it was
impossible for runners to pass each other, so it was arranged to
time the men, Hall to go first and Billy to follow after an
interval of half a minute.
Hall toed the mark and at the word was off with the form of a
sprinter. Saxon's heart sank. She knew Billy had never crossed
the stretch of sand at that speed. Billy darted forward thirty
seconds later, and reached the foot of the rock when Hall was
half way up. When both were on top and racing from notch to
notch, the Iron Man announced that they had scaled the wall in
the same time to a second.
"My money still looks good," Hazard remarked, "though I hope
neither of them breaks a neck. I wouldn't take that run that way
for all the gold that would fill the cove."
"But you'll take bigger chances swimming in a storm on Carmel
Beach," his wife chided.
"Oh, I don't know," he retorted. "You haven't so far to fall when
swimming."
Billy and Hall had disappeared and were making the circle around
the end. Those on the beach were certain that the poet had gained
in the dizzy spurts of flight along the knife-edge. Even Hazard
admitted it.
"What price for my money now?" he cried excitedly, dancing up and
down.
Hall had reappeared, the great jump accomplished, and was running
shoreward. But there was no gap. Billy was on his heels, and on
his heels he stayed, in to shore, down the wall, and to the mark
on the beach. Billy had won by half a minute.
ahead of me out to the end. I'm not slower than I thought, but
he's faster. He's a wooz of a sprinter. He could beat me ten
times outa ten, except for accident. He was hung up at the jump
by a big sea. That's where I caught 'm. I jumped right after 'm
on the same sea, then he set the pace home, and all I had to do
was take it."
"That's all right," said Hall. "You did better than beat me.
That's the first time in the history of Bierce's Cove that two
men made that jump on the same sea. And all the risk was yours,
coming last."
"It was a fluke," Billy insisted.
And at that point Saxon settled the dispute of modesty and raised
a general laugh by rippling chords on the ukulele and parodying
an old hymn in negro minstrel fashion:
"De Lawd move in er mischievous way
His blunders to perform."
In the afternoon Jim Hazard and Hall dived into the breakers and
swam to the outlying rocks, routing the protesting sea-lions and
taking possession of their surf-battered stronghold. Billy
followed the swimmers with his eyes, yearning after them so
undisguisedly that Mrs. Hazard said to him:
"Why don't you stop in Carmel this winter? Jim will teach you all
he knows about the surf. And he's wild to box with you. He works
long hours at his desk, and he really needs exercise."
Not until sunset did the merry crowd carry their pots and pans
and trove of mussels up to the road and depart. Saxon and Billy
watched them disappear, on horses and behind horses, over the top
of the first hill, and then descended hand in hand through the
thicket to the camp. Billy threw himself on the sand and
stretched out.
"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 God, 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 loo
ked up the 'Story of the Files,'" Saxon
recounted. "And he said mother was a true poet. He said it was
astonishing 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 t 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 pass 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 assented. "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
"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 poets
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. Hailer 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 massive 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."
"Remember, Billy," Saxon soothed him, "every man to his own game.
And down here you're a top-notcher at your own game. There isn't
one you're not the master of with the gloves."
"I guess that's right," he conceded. "But just the same it goes
against the grain to be walked off my legs by a poet--by a poet,
mind you."
They spent days in going over the government land, and in the end
reluctantly decided against taking it up. The redwood canyons and
great cliffs of the Santa Lucia Mountains fascinated Saxon; but
she remembered what Hafler had told her of the summer fogs which
hid the sun sometimes for a week or two at a time, and which
lingered for months. Then, too, there was no access to market.
It was many miles to where the nearest wagon road began, at
Post's, and from there on, past Point Sur to Carmel, it was a
weary and perilous way. Billy, with his teamster judgment,
admitted that for heavy hauling it was anything but a picnic.
There was the quarry of perfect marble on Hafler's quarter
section. He had said that it would be worth a fortune if near a
railroad; but, as it was, he'd make them a present of it if they
wanted it.
Billy visioned the grassy slopes pastured with his horses and
cattle, and found it hard to turn his back; but he listened with
a willing ear to Saxon's argument in favor of a farm-home like
the one they had seen in the moving pictures in Oakland. Yes, he
agreed, what they wanted was an all-around farm, and an
all-around farm they would have if they hiked forty years to find
it.
"But it must have redwoods on it," Saxon hastened to stipulate.
"I've fallen in love with them. And we can get along without fog.
And there must be good wagon-roads, and a railroad not more than
a thousand miles away."
Heavy winter rains held them prisoners for two weeks in the
Marble House. Saxon browsed among Hafler's books, though most of
them were depressingly beyond her, while Billy hunted with
Hafler's guns. But he was a poor shot and a worse hunter. His
only success was with rabbits, which he managed to kill on
occasions when they stood still. With the rifle he got nothing,
although he fired at half a dozen different deer, and, once, at a
huge cat-creature with a long tail which he was certain was a
mountain lion. Despite the way he grumbled at himself, Saxon
could see the keen joy he was taking. This belated arousal of
the hunting instinct seemed to make almost another man of him. He
was out early and late, compassing prodigious climbs and
tramps--once reaching as far as the gold mines Tom had spoken of,
and being away two days.
"Talk about pluggin' away at a job in the city, an' goin' to
movie' pictures and Sunday picnics for amusement!" he would burst
out. "I can't see what was eatin' me that I ever put up with such
truck. Here's where I oughta ben all the time, or some place
like it."
He was filled with this new mode of life, and was continually
recalling old hunting tales of his father and telling them to
Saxon.
"Say, I don't get stiffened any more after an all-day tramp," he
exulted. "I'm broke in. An' some day, if I meet up with that
Hafler, I'll challenge'm to a tramp that'll break his heart."
"Foolish boy, always wanting to play everybody's game and beat
them at it," Saxon laughed delightedly.
"Aw, I guess you're right," he growled. "Hafler can always
out-walk me. He's made that way. But some day, just the same, if
I ever see 'm again, I'll invite 'm to put on the gloves. . . .
though I won't be mean enough to make 'm as sore as he made me."
After they left Post's on the way back to Carmel, the condition
of the road proved the wisdom of their rejection of the
government land. They passed a rancher's wagon overturned, a
second wagon with a broken axle, and the stage a hundred yards
down the mountainside, where it had fallen, passengers, horses,
road, and all.
"I guess they just about quit tryin' to use this road in the
winter," Billy said. "It's horse-killin' an' man-killin', an' I
can just see 'm freightin' that marble out over it I don't
think."
Settling down at Carmel was an easy matter. The Iron Man had
already departed to his Catholic college, and the "shack" turned
out to be a three-roomed house comfortably furnished for
housekeeping. Hall put Billy to work on the potato patch--a
matter of three acres which the poet farmed erratically to the
huge delight of his crowd. He planted at all seasons, and it was
accepted by the community that what did not rot in the ground was
evenly divided between the gophers and trespassing cows. A plow
was borrowed, a team of horses hired, and Billy took hold. Also
he built a fence around the patch, and after that was set to
staining the shingled roof of the bungalow. Hall climbed to the
ridge-pole to repeat his warning that Billy must keep away from
his wood-pile. One morning Hall came over and watched Billy
chopping wood for Saxon. The poet looked on covetously as long as
he could restrain himself.
"It's plain you don't know how to use an axe," he sneered. "Here,
let me show you."
He worked away for an hour, all the while delivering an
exposition on the art of chopping wood.
"Here," Billy expostulated at last, taking hold of the axe. "I'll
have to chop a cord of yours now in order to make this up to
you."
Hall surrendered the axe reluctantly.
"Don't let me catch you around my wood-pile, that's all," he
threatened. "My wood-pile is my castle, and you've got to
understand that."
From a financial standpoint, Saxon and Billy were putting aside
much money. They paid no rent, their simple living was cheap, and
Billy had all the work he cared to accept. The various members of
the crowd seemed in a conspiracy to keep him busy. It was all odd
jobs, but he preferred it so, for it enabled him to suit his time
to Jim Hazard's. Each day they boxed and took a long swim through
the surf. When Hazard finished his morning's writing, he would
whoop through the pines to Billy, who dropped whatever work he
was doing. After the swim, they would take a fresh shower at