The Valley of the Moon

'Look at that bull, Saxon. Scrub's no name for it. They oughta be a state law against lettin' such animals exist. No wonder Chavon's that land poor he's had to sink all his clay-pit earnin's into taxes an' interest. He can't make his land pay. Take this hundred an forty. Anybody with the savve can just rake silver dollars offen it. I'll show 'm.'

They passed the big adobe barn in the distance.

'A few dollars at the right time would a-saved hundreds on that roof,' Billy commented. 'Well, anyway, I won't be payin' for any improvements when I buy. An I'll tell you another thing. This ranch is full of water, and if Glen Ellen ever grows they'll have to come to see me for their water supply.'

Billy knew the ranch thoroughly, and took short-cuts through the woods by way of cattle paths. Once, he reined in abruptly, and both stopped. Confronting them, a dozen paces away, was a half-grown red fox. For half a minute, with beady eyes, the wild thing studied them, with twitching sensitive nose reading the messages of the air. Then, velvet-footed, it leapt aside and was gone among the trees.

'The son-of-a-gun!' Billy ejaculated.

As they approached Wild Water; they rode out into a long narrow meadow. In the middle was a pond.

'Natural reservoir, when Glen Ellen begins to buy water,' Billy said. 'See, down at the lower end there?- wouldn't cost anything hardly to throw a dam across. An' I can pipe in all kinds of hill-drip. An' water's goin' to be money in this valley not a thousan' years from now.-An' all the ginks, an' boobs, an' dubs, an' gazabos poundin' their ear deado an' not seein' it comin.-An' surveyors workin' up the valley for an electric road from Sausalito with a branch up Napa Valley.'

They came to the rim of Wild Water canyon. Leaning far back in their saddles, they slid the horses down a steep declivity, through big spruce woods, to an ancient and all but obliterated trail.

'They cut this trail 'way back in the Fifties,' Billy explained. 'I only found it by accident. Then I asked Poppe yesterday. He was born in the valley. He said it was a fake minin' rush across from Petaluma. The gamblers got it up, an' they must a-drawn a thousan' suckers. You see that flat there, an' the old stumps. That's where the camp was. They set the tables up under the trees. The flat used to be bigger, but the creek's eaten into it. Poppe said they was a couple of killin's an' one lynchin'.'

Lying low against their horses' necks, they scrambled up a steep cattle trail out of the canyon, and began to work across rough country toward the knolls.

'Say, Saxon, you're always lookin' for something pretty. I'll show you what'll make your hair stand up… soon as we get through this manzanita.'

Never, in all their travels, had Saxon seen so lovely a vista as the one that greeted them when they emerged. The dim trail lay like a rambling red shadow cast on the soft forest floor by the great redwoods and over- arching oaks. It seemed as if all local varieties of trees and vines had conspired to weave the leafy roof-maples, big madronos and laurels, and lofty tan-bark oaks, scaled and wrapped and interwound with wild grape and flaming poison oak. Saxon drew Billy's eyes to a mossy bank of five-finger ferns. All slopes seemed to meet to form this basin and colossal forest bower. Underfoot the floor was spongy with water. An invisible streamlet whispered under broad-fronded brakes. On every hand opened tiny vistas of enchantment, where young redwoods grouped still and stately about fallen giants, shoulder-high to the horses, moss-covered and dissolving into mold.

At last, after another quarter of an hour, they tied their horses on the rim of the narrow canyon that penetrated the wilderness of the knolls. Through a rift in the trees Billy pointed to the top of the leaning spruce.

'It's right under that,' he said. 'We'll have to follow up the bed of the creek. They ain't no trail, though you'll see plenty of deer paths crossin' the creek. You'll get your feet wet.'

Saxon laughed her joy and held on close to his heels, splashing through pools, crawling hand and foot up the slippery faces of water-worn rocks, and worming under trunks of old fallen trees.

'They ain't no real bed-rock in the whole mountain,' Billy elucidated, 'so the stream cuts deeper'n deeper, an' that keeps the sides cavin' in. They're as steep as they can be without fallin' down. A little farther up, the canyon ain't much more'n a crack in the ground-but a mighty deep one if anybody should ask you. You can spit across it an' break your neck in it.'

The climbing grew more difficult, and they were finally halted, in a narrow cleft, by a drift-jam.

'You wait here,' Billy directed, and, lying flat, squirmed on through crashing brush.

Saxon waited till all sound had died away. She waited ten minutes longer, then followed by the way Billy had broken. Where the bed of the canyon became impossible, she came upon what she was sure was a deer path that skirted the steep side and was a tunnel through the close greenery. She caught a glimpse of the overhanging spruce, almost above her head on the opposite side, and emerged on a pool of clear water in a clay-like basin. This basin was of recent origin, having been formed by a slide of earth and trees. Across the pool arose an almost sheer wall of white. She recognized it for what it was, and looked about for Billy. She heard him whistle, and looked up. Two hundred feet above, at the perilous top of the white wall, he was holding on to a tree trunk. The overhanging spruce was nearby.

'I can see the little pasture back of your field,' he called down. 'No wonder nobody ever piped this off. The only place they could see it from is that speck of pasture. An' you saw it first. Wait till I come down and tell you all about it. I didn't dast before.'

It required no shrewdness to guess the truth. Saxon knew this was the precious clay required by the brickyard. Billy circled wide of the slide and came down the canyon-wall, from tree to tree, as descending a ladder.

'Ain't it a peach?' he exulted, as he dropped beside her. 'Just look at it-hidden away under four feet of soil where nobody could see it, an' just waitin' for us to hit the Valley of the Moon. Then it up an' slides a piece of the skin off so as we can see it.'

'Is it the real clay?' Saxon asked anxiously.

'You bet your sweet life. I've handled too much of it not to know it in the dark. Just rub a piece between your fingers.-Like that. Why, I could tell by the taste of it. I've eaten enough of the dust of the teams. Here's where our fun begins. Why, you know we've been workin' our heads off since we hit this valley. Now we're on Easy street.'

'But you don't own it,' Saxon objected.

'Well, you won't be a hundred years old before I do. Straight from here I hike to Payne an' bind the bargain- an option, you know, while title's searchin' an' I 'm raisin' money. We'll borrow that four hundred back again from Gow Yum, an' I'll borrow all I can get on my horses an' wagons, an' Hazel and Hattie, an' everything that's worth a cent. An' then I get the deed with a mortgage on it to Hilyard for the balance. An' then-it's takin' candy from a baby-I'll contract with the brickyard for twenty cents a yard-maybe more. They'll be crazy with joy when they see it. Don't need any borin's. They's nearly two hundred feet of it exposed up an' down. The whole knoll's clay, with a skin of soil over it.'

'But you'll spoil all the beautiful canyon hauling out the clay,' Saxon cried with alarm.

'Nope; only the knoll. The road'll come in from the other side. It'll be only half a mile to Chavon's pit. I'll build the road an' charge steeper teamin', or the brickyard can build it an' I'll team for the same rate as before. An' twenty cents a yard pourin' in, all profit, from the jump. I'll sure have to buy more horses to do the work.'

They sat hand in hand beside the pool and talked over the details.

'Say, Saxon,' Billy said, after a pause had fallen, 'sing 'Harvest Days,' won't you?'

And, when she had complied: 'The first time you sung that song for me was comin' home from the picnic on the train-'

'The very first day we met each other,' she broke in. 'What did you think about me that day?'

'Why, what I've thought ever since-that you was made for me.-I thought that right at the jump, in the first waltz. An' what'd you think of me?

'Oh, I wondered, and before the first waltz, too, when we were introduced and shook hands-I wondered if you were the man. Those were the very words that flashed into my mind.-IS HE THE MAN?'

'An' I kinda looked a little some good to you?' he queried. 'I thought so, and my eyesight has always been good.'

'Say!' Billy went off at a tangent. 'By next winter, with everything hummin' an' shipshape, what's the matter with us makin' a visit to Carmel? It'll be slack time for you with the vegetables, an' I'll be able to afford a foreman.'