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. Old
customs had changed little. There were no railways. No automobile
as yet had ventured their perilous roads. Eastward, between them
and the populous interior valleys, lay the wilderness of the
Coast Range--a game paradise, Billy heard; though he declared
that the very road he traveled was game paradise enough for him.
Had he not halted the horses, turned the reins over to Saxon, and
shot an eight-pronged buck from the wagon-seat?
South of Gold Beach, climbing a narrow road through the virgin
forest, they heard from far above the jingle of bells. A hundred
yards farther on Billy found a place wide enough to turn out.
Here he waited, while the merry bells, descending the mountain,
rapidly came near. They heard the grind of brakes, the soft thud
of horses' hoofs, once a sharp cry of the driver, and once a
woman's laughter.
"Some driver, some driver," Billy muttered. "I take my hat off to
'm whoever he is, hittin' a pace like that on a road like
this.--Listen to that! He's got powerful brakes.--Zocie! That
WAS a chuck-hole! Some springs, Saxon, some springs!"
Where the road zigzagged above, they glimpsed through the trees
four sorrel horses trotting swiftly, and the flying wheels of a
small, tan-painted trap.
At the bend of the road the leaders appeared again, swinging wide
on the curve, the wheelers flashed into view, and the light
two-seated rig; then the whole affair straightened out and
thundered down upon them across a narrow plank-bridge. In the
front seat were a man and woman; in the rear seat a Japanese was
squeezed in among suit cases, rods, guns, saddles, and a
typewriter case, while above him and all about him, fastened most
intricately, sprouted a prodigious crop of deer- and elk-horns.
"It's Mr. and Mrs. Hastings," Saxon cried.
"Whoa!" Hastings yelled, putting on the brake and gathering his
horses in to a stop alongside. Greetings flew back and forth, in
which the Japanese, whom they had last seen on the Roamer at Rio
Vista, gave and received his share.
"Different from the Sacramento islands, eh?" Hastings said to
Saxon. "Nothing but old American stock in these mountains. And
they haven't changed any. As John Fox, Jr., said, they're our
contemporary ancestors. Our old folks were just like them."
Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, between them, told of their long drive.
They were out two months then, and intended to continue north
through Oregon and Washington to the Canadian boundary.
"Then we'll ship our horses and come home by train," concluded
Hastings.
"But the way you drive you oughta be a whole lot further along
than this," Billy criticized.
"But we keep stopping off everywhere," Mrs. Hastings explained.
"We went in to the Hoopa Reservation," said Mr. Elastings, "and
canoed down the Trinity and Klamath Rivers to the ocean. And just
now we've come out from two weeks in the real wilds of Curry
County."
"You must go in," Hastings advised. "You'll get to Mountain Ranch
to-night. And you can turn in from there. No roads, though.
You'll have to pack your horses. But it's full of game. I shot
five mountain lions and two bear, to say nothing of deer. And
there are small herds of elk, too.--No; I didn't shoot any.
They're protected. These horns I got from the old hunters. I'll
tell you all about it."
And while the men talked, Saxon and Mrs. Hastings were not idle.
"Found your valley of the moon yet?" the writer's wife asked, as
Saxon shook her head.
"You will find it if you go far enough; and be sure you go as far
as Sonoma Valley and our ranch. Then, if you haven't found it
yet, we'll see what we can do."
Three weeks later, with a bigger record of mountain lions and
bear than Hastings' to his credit, Billy emerged from Curry
County and drove across the line into California. At once Saxon
found herself among the redwoods. But they were redwoods
unbelievable. Billy stopped the wagon, got out, and paced around
one.
"Forty-five feet," he announced. "That's fifteen in diameter. And
they're all like it only bigger. No; there's a runt. It's only
about nine feet through. An' they're hundreds of feet tall."
"When I die, Billy, you must bury me in a redwood grove," Saxon
adjured.
"I ain't goin' to let you die before I do," he assured her. "An'
then we'll leave it in our wills for us both to be buried that
way."
CHAPTER XVII
South they held along the coast, hunting, fishing, swimming, and
horse-buying. Billy shipped his purchases on the coasting
steamers. Through Del Norte and Humboldt counties they went, and
through Mendocino into Sonoma--counties larger than Eastern
states--threading the giant woods, whipping innumerable
trout-streams, and crossing countless rich valleys. Ever Saxon
sought the valley of the moon. Sometimes, when all seemed fair,
the lack was a railroad, sometimes madrono and manzanita trees,
and, usually, there was too much fog.
"We do want a sun-cocktail once in a while," she told Billy.
"Yep," was his answer. "Too much fog might make us soggy. What
we're after is betwixt an' between, an' we'll have to get back
from the coast a ways to find it."
This was in the fall of the year, and they turned their backs on
the Pacific at old Fort Ross and entered the Russian River
Valley, far below Ukiah, by way of Cazadero and Guerneville. At
Santa Rosa Billy was delayed with the shipping of several horses,
so that it was not until afternoon that he drove south and east
for Sonoma Valley.
"I guess we'll no more than make Sonoma Valley when it'll be time
to camp," he said, measuring the sun with his eye. "This is
called Bennett Valley. You cross a divide from it and come out at
Glen Ellen. Now thi
s is a mighty pretty valley, if anybody should
ask you. An' that's some nifty mountain over there."
"The mountain is all right," Saxon adjudged. "But all the rest of
the hills are too bare. And I don't see any big trees. It takes
rich soil to make big trees."
"Oh, I ain't sayin' it's the valley of the moon by a long ways.
All the same, Saxon, that's some mountain. Look at the timber on
it. I bet they's deer there."
"I wonder where we'll spend this winter," Saxon remarked.
"D'ye know, I've just been thinkin' the same thing. Let's winter
at Carmel. Mark Hall's back, an' so is Jim Hazard. What d'ye
say?"
Saxon nodded.
"Only you won't be the odd-job man this time."
"Nope. We can make trips in good weather horse-buyin'," Billy
confirmed, his face beaming with self-satisfaction. "An' if that
walkin' poet of the Marble House is around, I'll sure get the
gloves on with 'm just in memory of the time he walked me off my
legs--"
"Oh! Oh!" Saxon cried. "Look, Billy! Look!"
Around a bend in the road came a man in a sulky, driving a heavy
stallion. The animal was a bright chestnut-sorrel, with
cream-colored mane and tail. The tail almost swept the ground,
while the mane was so thick that it crested out of the neck and
flowed down, long and wavy. He scented the mares and stopped
short, head flung up and armfuls of creamy mane tossing in the
breeze. He bent his head until flaring nostrils brushed impatient
knees, and between the fine-pointed ears could be seen a mighty
and incredible curve of neck. Again he tossed his head, fretting
against the bit as the driver turned widely aside for safety in
passing. They could see the blue glaze like a sheen on the
surface of the horse's bright, wild eyes, and Billy closed a wary
thumb on his reins and himself turned widely. He held up his hand
in signal, and the driver of the stallion stopped when well past,
and over his shoulder talked draught-horses with Billy.
Barbarossa, that the driver was the owner, and that Santa Rosa
was his headquarters.
"There are two ways to Sonoma Valley from here," the man
directed. "When you come to the crossroads the turn to the left
will take you to Glen Ellen by Bennett Peak--that's it there."
Rising from rolling stubble fields, Bennett Peak towered hot in
the sun, a row of bastion hills leaning against its base. But
hills and mountains on that side showed bare and heated, though
beautiful with the sunburnt tawniness of California.
"The turn to the right will take you to Glen Ellen, too, only
it's longer and steeper grades. But your mares don't look as
though it'd bother them."
"Which is the prettiest way?" Saxon asked.
"Oh, the right hand road, by all means," said the man. "That's
Sonoma Mountain there, and the road skirts it pretty well up, and
goes through Cooper's Grove."
Billy did not start immediately after they had said good-by, and
he and Saxon, heads over shoulders, watched the roused Barbarossa
plunging mutinously on toward Santa Rosa.
"Gee!" Billy said. "I'd like to be up here next spring."
At the crossroads Billy hesitated and looked at Saxon.
"What if it is longer?" she said. "Look how beautiful it is--all
covered with green woods; and I just know those are redwoods in
the canyons. You never can tell. The valley of the moon might be
right up there somewhere. And it would never do to miss it just
in order to save half an hour."
They took the turn to the right and began crossing a series of
steep foothills. As they approached the mountain there were signs
of a greater abundance of water. They drove beside a running
stream, and, though the vineyards on the hills were summer-dry,
the farmhouses in the hollows and on the levels were grouped
about with splendid trees.
"Maybe it sounds funny," Saxon observed; "but I 'm beginning to
love that mountain already. It almost seems as if I d seen it
before, somehow, it's so all-around satisfying--oh!"
Crossing a bridge and rounding a sharp turn, they were suddenly
enveloped in a mysterious coolness and gloom. All about them
arose stately trunks of redwood. The forest floor was a rosy
carpet of autumn fronds. Occasional shafts of sunlight,
penetrating the deep shade, warmed the somberness of the grove.
Alluring paths led off among the trees and into cozy nooks made
by circles of red columns growing around the dust of vanished
ancestors--witnessing the titantic dimensions of those ancestors
by the girth of the circles in which they stood.
Out of the grove they pulled to the steep divide, which was no
more than a buttress of Sonoma Mountain. The way led on through
rolling uplands and across small dips and canyons, all well
wooded and a-drip with water. In places the road was muddy from
wayside springs.
"The mountain's a sponge," said Billy. "Here it is, the tail-end
of dry summer, an' the ground's just leakin' everywhere."
"I know I've never been here before," Saxon communed aloud. "But
it's all so familiar! So I must have dreamed it. And there's
madronos!--a whole grove! And manzanita! Why, I feel just as if I
was coming home. . . . Oh, Billy, if it should turn out to be our
valley."
"Plastered against the side of a mountain?" he queried, with a
skeptical laugh.
"No; I don't mean that. I mean on the way to our valley. Because
the way--all ways--to our valley must be beautiful. And this;
I've seen it all before, dreamed it."
"It's great," he said sympathetically. "I wouldn't trade a square
mile of this kind of country for the whole Sacramento Valley,
with the river islands thrown in and Middle River for good
measure. If they ain't deer up there, I miss my guess. An' where
they's springs they's streams, an' streams means trout."
They passed a large and comfortable farmhouse, surrounded by
wandering barns and cow-sheds, went on under forest arches, and
emerged beside a field with which Saxon was instantly enchanted.
It flowed in a gentle concave from the road up the mountain, its
farther boundary an unbroken line of timber. The field glowed
like rough gold in the approaching sunset, and near the middle of
it stood a solitary great redwood, with blasted top suggesting a
nesting eyrie for eagles. The timber beyond clothed the mountain
in solid green to what they took to be the top. But, as they
drove on, Saxon, looking back upon what she called her field, saw
the real summit of Sonoma towering beyond, the mountain behind
her field a mere spur upon the side of the larger mass.
Ahead and toward the right, across sheer ridges of the mountains,
separated by deep green canyons and broadening lower down into
rolling orchards and vineyards, they caught their first sight of
Sonoma Valley and the wild mountains that rimmed its eastern
side. To the left they gazed across a golde
n land of small hills
and valleys. Beyond, to the north, they glimpsed another portion
of the valley, and, still beyond, the opposing wall of the
valley--a range of mountains, the highest of which reared its
red and battered ancient crater against a rosy and mellowing sky.
From north to southeast, the mountain rim curved in the
brightness of the sun, while Saxon and Billy were already in the
shadow of evening. He looked at Saxon, noted the ravished ecstasy
of her face, and stopped the horses. All the eastern sky was
blushing to rose, which descended upon the mountains, touching
them with wine and ruby. Sonoma Valley began to fill with a
purple flood, laying the mountain bases, rising, inundating,
drowning them in its purple. Saxon pointed in silence, indicating
that the purple flood was the sunset shadow of Sonoma Mountain.
Billy nodded, then chirruped to the mares, and the descent began
through a warm and colorful twilight.
On the elevated sections of the road they felt the cool,
delicious breeze from the Pacific forty miles away; while from
each little dip and hollow came warm breaths of autumn earth,
spicy with sunburnt grass and fallen leaves and passing flowers.
They came to the rim of a deep canyon that seemed to penetrate to
the heart of Sonoma Mountain. Again, with no word spoken, merely
from watching Saxon, Billy stopped the wagon. The canyon was
wildly beautiful. Tall redwoods lined its entire length. On its
farther rim stood three rugged knolls covered with dense woods of
spruce and oak. From between the knolls, a feeder to the main
canyon and likewise fringed with redwoods, emerged a smaller
canyon. Billy pointed to a stubble field that lay at the feet of
the knolls.
"It's in fields like that I've seen my mares a-pasturing," he
said.
They dropped down into the canyon, the road following a stream
that sang under maples and alders. The sunset fires, refracted
from the cloud-driftage of the autumn sky, bathed the canyon with
crimson, in which ruddy-limbed madronos and wine-wooded
manzanitas burned and smoldered. The air was aromatic with
laurel. Wild grape vines bridged the stream from tree to tree.
Oaks of many sorts were veiled in lacy Spanish moss. Ferns and
brakes grew lush beside the stream. From somewhere came the
plaint of a mourning dove. Fifty feet above the ground, almost
over their heads, a Douglas squirrel crossed the road--a flash of
gray between two trees; and they marked the continuance of its
aerial passage by the bending of the boughs.
"I've got a hunch," said Billy.
"Let me say it first," Saxon begged.
He waited, his eyes on her face as she gazed about her in
rapture.
"We've found our valley," she whispered. "Was that it?"
He nodded, but checked speech at sight of a small boy driving a
cow up the road, a preposterously big shotgun in one hand, in the
other as preposterously big a jackrabbit. "How far to Glen
Ellen?" Billy asked.
"Mile an' a half," was the answer.
"What creek is this?" inquired Saxon.
"Wild Water. It empties into Sonoma Creek half a mile down."
"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