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.
'Only by the watch,' he panted. 'Hall was over 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 looked 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 pondered. 'It's just wonderful, when you come to think of it.'
'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
