were sons of theirs.'
'If I could only hope so,' Billy said fervently. 'But I don't care if I owned ten thousand acres, any man hikin' with his blankets might be just as good a man as me, an' maybe better, for all I'd know. I'd give 'm the benefit of the doubt, anyway.'
Billy asked for work, at first, indiscriminately, later, only at the larger farms. The unvarying reply was that there was no work. A few said there would be plowing after the first rains. Here and there, in a small way, dry plowing was going on. But in the main the farmers were waiting.
'But do you know how to plow?' Saxon asked Billy.
'No; but I guess it ain't much of a trick to turn. Besides, next man I see plowing I'm goin' to get a lesson from.'
In the mid-afternoon of the second day his opportunity came. He climbed on top of the fence of a small field and watched an old man plow round and round it.
'Aw, shucks, just as easy as easy,' Billy commented scornfully. 'If an old codger like that can handle one plow, I can handle two.'
'Go on and try it,' Saxon urged.
'What's the good?'
'Cold feet,' she jeered, but with a smiling face. 'All you have to do is ask him. All he can do is say no. And what if he does? You faced the Chicago Terror twenty rounds without flinching.'
'Aw, but it's different,' he demurred, then dropped to the ground inside the fence. 'Two to one the old geezer turns me down.'
'No, he won't. Just tell him you want to learn, and ask him if he'll let you drive around a few times. Tell him it won't cost him anything.'
'Huh! If he gets chesty I'll take his blamed plow away from him.'
From the top of the fence, but too far away to hear, Saxon watched the colloquy. After several minutes, the lines were transferred to Billy's neck, the handles to his hands. Then the team started, and the old man, delivering a rapid fire of instructions, walked alongside of Billy. When a few turns had been made, the farmer crossed the plowed strip to Saxon, and joined her on the rail.
'He's plowed before, a little mite, ain't he?'
Saxon shook her head.
'Never in his life. But he knows how to drive horses.'
'He showed he wasn't all greenhorn, an' he learns pretty quick.' Here the farmer chuckled and cut himself a chew from a plug of tobacco. 'I reckon he won't tire me out a-settin' here.'
The unplowed area grew smaller and smaller, but Billy evinced no intention of quitting, and his audience on the fence was deep in conversation. Saxon's questions flew fast and furious, and she was not long in concluding that the old man bore a striking resemblance to the description the lineman had given of his father.
Billy persisted till the field was finished, and the old man invited him and Saxon to stop for the night. There was a disused outbuilding where they would find a small cook stove, he said, and also he would give them fresh milk. Further, if Saxon wanted to test HER desire for farming, she could try her hand on the cow.
The milking lesson did not prove as successful as Billy's plowing; but when he had mocked sufficiently, Saxon challenged him to try, and he failed as grievously as she. Saxon had eyes and questions for everything, and it did not take her long to realize that she was looking upon the other side of the farming shield. Farm and farmer were old-fashioned. There was no intensive cultivation. There was too much land too little farmed. Everything was slipshod. House and barn and outbuildings were fast falling into ruin. The front yard was weed-grown. There was no vegetable garden. The small orchard was old, sickly, and neglected. The trees were twisted, spindling, and overgrown with a gray moss. The sons and daughters were away in the cities, Saxon found out. One daughter had married a doctor, the other was a teacher in the state normal school; one son was a locomotive engineer, the second was an architect, and the third was a police court reporter in San Francisco. On occasion, the father said, they helped out the old folks.
'What do you think?' Saxon asked Billy as he smoked his after-supper cigarette.
His shoulders went up in a comprehensive shrug.
'Huh! That's easy. The old geezer's like his orchard-covered with moss. It's plain as the nose on your face, after San Leandro, that he don't know the first thing. An' them horses. It'd be a charity to him, an' a savin' of money for him, to take 'em out an' shoot 'em both. You bet you don't see the Porchugeeze with horses like them. An' it ain't a case of bein' proud, or puttin' on side, to have good horses. It's brass tacks an' business. It pays. That's the game. Old horses eat more in young ones to keep in condition an' they can't do the same amount of work. But you bet it costs just as much to shoe them. An' his is scrub on top of it. Every minute he has them horses he's losin' money. You oughta see the way they work an' figure horses in the city.'
They slept soundly, and, after an early breakfast, prepared to start.
'I'd like to give you a couple of days' work,' the old man regretted, at parting, 'but I can't see it. The ranch just about keeps me and the old woman, now that the children are gone. An' then it don't always. Seems times have been bad for a long spell now. Ain't never been the same since Grover Cleveland.'
Early in the afternoon, on the outskirts of San Jose, Saxon called a halt.
'I'm going right in there and talk,' she declared, 'unless they set the dogs on me. That's the prettiest place yet, isn't it?'
Billy, who was always visioning hills and spacious ranges for his horses, mumbled unenthusiastic assent.
'And the vegetables! Look at them! And the flowers growing along the borders! That beats tomato plants in wrapping paper.'
'Don't see the sense of it,' Billy objected. 'Where's the money come in from flowers that take up the ground that good vegetables might be growin' on?'
'And that's what I'm going to find out.' She pointed to a woman, stooped to the ground and working with a trowel; in front of the tiny bungalow. 'I don't know what she's like, but at the worst she can only be mean. See! She's looking at us now. Drop your load alongside of mine, and come on in.'
Billy slung the blankets from his shoulder to the ground, but elected to wait. As Saxon went up the narrow, flower-bordered walk, she noted two men at work among the vegetables-one an old Chinese, the other old and of some dark-eyed foreign breed. Here were neatness, efficiency, and intensive cultivation with a vengeance-even her untrained eye could see that. The woman stood up and turned from her flowers, and Saxon saw that she was middle-aged, slender, and simply but nicely dressed. She wore glasses, and Saxon's reading of her face was that it was kind but nervous looking.
'I don't want anything to-day,' she said, before Saxon could speak, administering the rebuff with a pleasant smile.
Saxon groaned inwardly over the black-covered telescope basket. Evidently the woman had seen her put it down.
'We're not peddling,' she explained quickly.
'Oh, I am sorry for the mistake.'
This time the woman's smile was even pleasanter, and she waited for Saxon to state her errand.
Nothing loath, Saxon took it at a plunge.
'We're looking for land. We want to be farmers, you know, and before we get the land we want to find out what kind of land we want. And seeing your pretty place has just filled me up with questions. You see, we don't know anything about farming. We've lived in the city all our life, and now we've given it up and are going to live in the country and be happy.'
She paused. The woman's face seemed to grow quizzical, though the pleasantness did not abate.
'But how do you know you will be happy in the country?' she asked.
'I don't know. All I do know is that poor people can't be happy in the city where they have labor troubles all the time. If they can't be happy in the country, then there's no happiness anywhere, and that doesn't seem fair, does it?'
'It is sound reasoning, my dear, as far as it goes. But you must remember that there are many poor people in the country and many unhappy people.'
'You look neither poor nor unhappy,' Saxon challenged.
