He shook his head stubbornly.
'What you don't want to stomach you ain't goin' to stomach. Let her go.'
'First,' she commenced, 'no more slugging of scabs.'
His mouth opened, but he checked the involuntary protest.
'And, second, no more Oakland.'
'I don't get that last.'
'No more Oakland. No more living in Oakland. I'll die if I have to. It's pull up stakes and get out.'
He digested this slowly.
'Where?' he asked finally.
'Anywhere. Everywhere. Smoke a cigarette and think it over.'
He shook his head and studied her.
'You mean that?' he asked at length.
'I do. I want to chuck Oakland just as hard as you wanted to chuck the beefsteak, the coffee, and the butter.'
She could see him brace himself. She could feel him brace his very body ere he answered.
'All right then, if that's what you want. We'll quit Oakland. We'll quit it cold. God damn it, anyway, it never done nothin' for me, an' I guess I'm husky enough to scratch for us both anywheres. An' now that's settled, just tell me what you got it in for Oakland for.'
And she told him all she had thought out, marshaled all the facts in her indictment of Oakland, omitting nothing, not even her last visit to Doctor Hentley's office nor Billy's drinking. He but drew her closer and proclaimed his resolves anew. The time passed. The fried potatoes grew cold, and the stove went out.
When a pause came, Billy stood up, still holding her. He glanced at the fried potatoes.
'Stone cold,' he said, then turned to her. 'Come on. Put on your prettiest. We're goin' up town for something to eat an' to celebrate. I guess we got a celebration comin', seein' as we're going to pull up stakes an' pull our freight from the old burg. An' we won't have to walk. I can borrow a dime from the barber, an' I got enough junk to hock for a blowout.'
His junk proved to be several gold medals won in his amateur days at boxing tournaments. Once up town and in the pawnshop, Uncle Sam seemed thoroughly versed in the value of the medals, and Billy jingled a handful of silver in his pocket as they walked out.
He was as hilarious as a boy, and she joined in his good spirits. When he stopped at a corner cigar store to buy a sack of Bull Durham, he changed his mind and bought Imperials.
'Oh, I'm a regular devil,' he laughed. 'Nothing's too good to-day-not even tailor-made smokes. An' no chop houses nor Jap joints for you an' me. It's Barnum's.'
They strolled to the restaurant at Seventh and Broadway where they had had their wedding supper.
'Let's make believed we're not married,' Saxon suggested.
'Sure,' he agreed, '-an' take a private room so as the waiter'll have to knock on the door each time he comes in.'
Saxon demurred at that.
'It will be too expensive, Billy. You'll have to tip him for the knocking. We'll take the regular dining room.'
'Order anything you want,' Billy said largely, when they were seated. 'Here's family porterhouse, a dollar an' a half. What d'ye say?'
'And hash-browned,' she abetted, 'and coffee extra special, and some oysters first-I want to compare them with the rock oysters.'
Billy nodded, and looked up from the bill of fare.
'Here's mussels bordelay. Try an order of them, too, an' see if they beat your Rock Wall ones.'
'Why not?' Saxon cried, her eyes dancing. 'The world is ours. We're just travelers through this town.'
'Yep, that's the stuff,' Billy muttered absently. He was looking at the theater column. He lifted his eyes from the paper. 'Matinee at Bell 's. We can get reserved seats for a quarter.-Doggone the luck anyway!'
His exclamation was so aggrieved and violent that it brought alarm into her eyes.
'If I'd only thought,' he regretted, 'we could a-gone to the Forum for grub. That's the swell joint where fellows like Roy Blanchard hangs out, blowin' the money we sweat for them.'
They bought reserved tickets at Bell 's Theater; but it was too early for the performance, and they went down Broadway and into the Electric Theater to while away the time on a moving picture show. A cowboy film was run off, and a French comic; then came a rural drama situated somewhere in the Middle West. It began with a farm yard scene. The sun blazed down on a corner of a barn and on a rail fence where the ground lay in the mottled shade of large trees overhead. There were chickens, ducks, and turkeys, scratching, waddling, moving about. A big sow, followed by a roly-poly litter of seven little ones, marched majestically through the chickens, rooting them out of the way. The hens, in turn, took it out on the little porkers, pecking them when they strayed too far from their mother. And over the top rail a horse looked drowsily on, ever and anon, at mathematically precise intervals, switching a lazy tail that flashed high lights in the sunshine.
'It's a warm day and there are flies-can't you just feel it?' Saxon whispered.
'Sure. An' that horse's tail! It's the most natural ever. Gee! I bet he knows the trick of clampin' it down over the reins. I wouldn't wonder if his name was Iron Tail.'
A dog ran upon the scene. The mother pig turned tail and with short ludicrous jumps, followed by her progeny and pursued by the dog, fled out of the film. A young girl came on, a sunbonnet hanging down her back, her apron caught up in front and filled with grain which she threw to the buttering fowls. Pigeons flew down from the top of the film and joined in the scrambling feast. The dog returned, wading scarcely noticed among the feathered creatures, to wag his tail and laugh up at the girl. And, behind, the horse nodded over the rail and switched on. A young man entered, his errand immediately known to an audience educated in moving pictures. But Saxon had no eyes for the love-making, the pleading forcefulness, the shy reluctance, of man and maid. Ever her gaze wandered back to the chickens, to the mottled shade under the trees, to the warm wall of the barn, to the sleepy horse with its ever recurrent whisk of tail.
She drew closer to Billy, and her hand, passed around his arm, sought his hand.
'Oh, Billy,' she sighed. 'I'd just die of happiness in a place like that.' And, when the film was ended. 'We got lots of time for Bell 's. Let's stay and see that one over again.'
They sat through a repetition of the performance, and when the farm yard scene appeared, the longer Saxon looked at it the more it affected her. And this time she took in further details. She saw fields beyond, rolling hills in the background, and a cloud-flecked sky. She identified some of the chickens, especially an obstreperous old hen who resented the thrust of the sow's muzzle, particularly pecked at the little pigs, and laid about her with a vengeance when the grain fell. Saxon looked back across the fields to the hills and sky, breathing the spaciousness of it, the freedom, the content. Tears welled into her eyes and she wept silently, happily.
'I know a trick that'd fix that old horse if he ever clamped his tail down on me,' Billy whispered.
'Now I know where we're going when we leave Oakland,' she informed him.
'Where?'
'There.'
He looked at her, and followed her gaze to the screen. 'Oh,' he said, and cogitated. 'An' why shouldn't we?' he added.
'Oh, Billy, will you?'
Her lips trembled in her eagerness, and her whisper broke and was almost inaudible 'Sure,' he said. It was his day of royal largess.
'What you want is yourn, an' I'll scratch my fingers off for it. An' I've always had a hankerin' for the country myself. Say! I've known horses like that to sell for half the price, an' I can sure cure 'em of the habit.'
CHAPTER XVIII
