Burning daylight, p.40
Burning Daylight, page 40
CHAPTER XXVII
But there came the day, one year, in early April, when Dede sat in aneasy chair on the porch, sewing on certain small garments, whileDaylight read aloud to her. It was in the afternoon, and a bright sunwas shining down on a world of new green. Along the irrigationchannels of the vegetable garden streams of water were flowing, and nowand again Daylight broke off from his reading to run out and change theflow of water. Also, he was teasingly interested in the certain smallgarments on which Dede worked, while she was radiantly happy over them,though at times, when his tender fun was too insistent, she was rosilyconfused or affectionately resentful.
From where they sat they could look out over the world. Like the curveof a skirting blade, the Valley of the Moon stretched before them,dotted with farm-houses and varied by pasture-lands, hay-fields, andvineyards. Beyond rose the wall of the valley, every crease andwrinkle of which Dede and Daylight knew, and at one place, where thesun struck squarely, the white dump of the abandoned mine burned like ajewel. In the foreground, in the paddock by the barn, was Mab, full ofpretty anxieties for the early spring foal that staggered about her ontottery legs. The air shimmered with heat, and altogether it was alazy, basking day. Quail whistled to their young from the thicketedhillside behind the house. There was a gentle cooing of pigeons, andfrom the green depths of the big canon arose the sobbing wood note of amourning dove. Once, there was a warning chorus from the foraging hensand a wild rush for cover, as a hawk, high in the blue, cast itsdrifting shadow along the ground.
It was this, perhaps, that aroused old hunting memories in Wolf. At anyrate, Dede and Daylight became aware of excitement in the paddock, andsaw harmlessly reenacted a grim old tragedy of the Younger World.Curiously eager, velvet-footed and silent as a ghost, sliding andgliding and crouching, the dog that was mere domesticated wolf stalkedthe enticing bit of young life that Mab had brought so recently intothe world. And the mare, her own ancient instincts aroused andquivering, circled ever between the foal and this menace of the wildyoung days when all her ancestry had known fear of him and his huntingbrethren. Once, she whirled and tried to kick him, but usually shestrove to strike him with her fore-hoofs, or rushed upon him with openmouth and ears laid back in an effort to crunch his backbone betweenher teeth. And the wolf-dog, with ears flattened down and crouching,would slide silkily away, only to circle up to the foal from the otherside and give cause to the mare for new alarm. Then Daylight, urged onby Dede's solicitude, uttered a low threatening cry; and Wolf, droopingand sagging in all the body of him in token of his instant return toman's allegiance, slunk off behind the barn.
It was a few minutes later that Daylight, breaking off from his readingto change the streams of irrigation, found that the water had ceasedflowing. He shouldered a pick and shovel, took a hammer and apipe-wrench from the tool-house, and returned to Dede on the porch.
"I reckon I'll have to go down and dig the pipe out," he told her."It's that slide that's threatened all winter. I guess she's come downat last."
"Don't you read ahead, now," he warned, as he passed around the houseand took the trail that led down the wall of the canon.
Halfway down the trail, he came upon the slide. It was a small affair,only a few tons of earth and crumbling rock; but, starting from fiftyfeet above, it had struck the water pipe with force sufficient to breakit at a connection. Before proceeding to work, he glanced up the pathof the slide, and he glanced with the eye of the earth-trained miner.And he saw what made his eyes startle and cease for the moment fromquesting farther.
"Hello," he communed aloud, "look who's here."
His glance moved on up the steep broken surface, and across it fromside to side. Here and there, in places, small twisted manzanitas wererooted precariously, but in the main, save for weeds and grass, thatportion of the canon was bare. There were signs of a surface that hadshifted often as the rains poured a flow of rich eroded soil from aboveover the lip of the canon.
"A true fissure vein, or I never saw one," he proclaimed softly.
And as the old hunting instincts had aroused that day in the wolf-dog,so in him recrudesced all the old hot desire of gold-hunting. Droppingthe hammer and pipe-wrench, but retaining pick and shovel, he climbedup the slide to where a vague line of outputting but mostlysoil-covered rock could be seen. It was all but indiscernible, but hispractised eye had sketched the hidden formation which it signified.Here and there, along this wall of the vein, he attacked the crumblingrock with the pick and shoveled the encumbering soil away. Severaltimes he examined this rock. So soft was some of it that he couldbreak it in his fingers. Shifting a dozen feet higher up, he againattacked with pick and shovel. And this time, when he rubbed the soilfrom a chunk of rock and looked, he straightened up suddenly, gaspingwith delight. And then, like a deer at a drinking pool in fear of itsenemies, he flung a quick glance around to see if any eye were gazingupon him. He grinned at his own foolishness and returned to hisexamination of the chunk. A slant of sunlight fell on it, and it wasall aglitter with tiny specks of unmistakable free gold.
"From the grass roots down," he muttered in an awestricken voice, as heswung his pick into the yielding surface.
He seemed to undergo a transformation. No quart of cocktails had everput such a flame in his cheeks nor such a fire in his eyes. As heworked, he was caught up in the old passion that had ruled most of hislife. A frenzy seized him that markedly increased from moment tomoment. He worked like a madman, till he panted from his exertions andthe sweat dripped from his face to the ground. He quested across theface of the slide to the opposite wall of the vein and back again.And, midway, he dug down through the red volcanic earth that had washedfrom the disintegrating hill above, until he uncovered quartz, rottenquartz, that broke and crumbled in his hands and showed to be alivewith free gold.
Sometimes he started small slides of earth that covered up his work andcompelled him to dig again. Once, he was swept fifty feet down thecanon-side; but he floundered and scrambled up again without pausingfor breath. He hit upon quartz that was so rotten that it was almostlike clay, and here the gold was richer than ever. It was a veritabletreasure chamber. For a hundred feet up and down he traced the wallsof the vein. He even climbed over the canon-lip to look along the browof the hill for signs of the outcrop. But that could wait, and hehurried back to his find.
He toiled on in the same mad haste, until exhaustion and an intolerableache in his back compelled him to pause. He straightened up with evena richer piece of gold-laden quartz. Stooping, the sweat from hisforehead had fallen to the ground. It now ran into his eyes, blindinghim. He wiped it from him with the back of his hand and returned to ascrutiny of the gold.
It would run thirty thousand to the ton, fifty thousand, anything--heknew that. And as he gazed upon the yellow lure, and panted for air,and wiped the sweat away, his quick vision leaped and set to work. Hesaw the spur-track that must run up from the valley and across theupland pastures, and he ran the grades and built the bridge that wouldspan the canon, until it was real before his eyes. Across the canonwas the place for the mill, and there he erected it; and he erected,also, the endless chain of buckets, suspended from a cable and operatedby gravity, that would carry the ore across the canon to thequartz-crusher. Likewise, the whole mine grew before him and beneathhim-tunnels, shafts, and galleries, and hoisting plants. The blasts ofthe miners were in his ears, and from across the canon he could hearthe roar of the stamps. The hand that held the lump of quartz wastrembling, and there was a tired, nervous palpitation apparently in thepit of his stomach. It came to him abruptly that what he wanted was adrink--whiskey, cocktails, anything, a drink. And even then, with thisnew hot yearning for the alcohol upon him, he heard, faint and far,drifting down the green abyss of the canon, Dede's voice, crying:--
"Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here, chick, chick, chick!"
He was astounded at the lapse of time. She had left her sewing on theporch and was feeding the chickens preparatory to getting supper. Theafternoon was gone. He could not conceive that he had been away thatlong.
Again came the call: "Here, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Here,chick, chick, chick!"
It was the way she always called--first five, and then three. He hadlong since noticed it. And from these thoughts of her arose otherthoughts that caused a great fear slowly to grow in his face. For itseemed to him that he had almost lost her. Not once had he thought ofher in those frenzied hours, and for that much, at least, had she trulybeen lost to him.
He dropped the piece of quartz, slid down the slide, and started up thetrail, running heavily. At the edge of the clearing he eased down andalmost crept to a point of vantage whence he could peer out, himselfunseen. She was feeding the chickens, tossing to them handfuls ofgrain and laughing at their antics.
The sight of her seemed to relieve the panic fear into which he hadbeen flung, and he turned and ran back down the trail. Again heclimbed the slide, but this time he climbed higher, carrying the pickand shovel with him. And again he toiled frenziedly, but this timewith a different purpose. He worked artfully, loosing slide afterslide of the red soil and sending it streaming down and covering up allhe had uncovered, hiding from the light of day the treasure he haddiscovered. He even went into the woods and scooped armfuls of lastyear's fallen leaves which he scattered over the slide. But this hegave up as a vain task; and he sent more slides of soil down upon thescene of his labor, until no sign remained of the out-jutting walls ofthe vein.
Next he repaired the broken pipe, gathered his tools together, andstarted up the trail. He walked slowly, feeling a great weariness, asof a man who had passed through a frightful crisis.
He put the tools away, took a great drink of the water that againflowed through the pipes, and sat down on the bench by the open kitchendoor. Dede was inside, preparing supper, and the sound of herfootsteps gave him a vast content.
He breathed the balmy mountain air in great gulps, like a diverfresh-risen from the sea. And, as he drank in the air, he gazed withall his eyes at the clouds and sky and valley, as if he were drinkingin that, too, along with the air.
Dede did not know he had come back, and at times he turned his head andstole glances in at her--at her efficient hands, at the bronze of herbrown hair that smouldered with fire when she crossed the path ofsunshine that streamed through the window, at the promise of her figurethat shot through him a pang most strangely sweet and sweetly dear. Heheard her approaching the door, and kept his head turned resolutelytoward the valley. And next, he thrilled, as he had always thrilled,when he felt the caressing gentleness of her fingers through his hair.
"I didn't know you were back," she said. "Was it serious?"
"Pretty bad, that slide," he answered, still gazing away and thrillingto her touch. "More serious than I reckoned. But I've got the plan.Do you know what I'm going to do?--I'm going to plant eucalyptus allover it. They'll hold it. I'll plant them thick as grass, so thateven a hungry rabbit can't squeeze between them; and when they gettheir roots agoing, nothing in creation will ever move that dirt again."
"Why, is it as bad as that?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing exciting. But I'd sure like to see any blamed old slide getthe best of me, that's all. I'm going to seal that slide down so thatit'll stay there for a million years. And when the last trump sounds,and Sonoma Mountain and all the other mountains pass into nothingness,that old slide will be still a-standing there, held up by the roots."
He passed his arm around her and pulled her down on his knees.
"Say, little woman, you sure miss a lot by living here on theranch--music, and theatres, and such things. Don't you ever have ahankering to drop it all and go back?"
So great was his anxiety that he dared not look at her, and when shelaughed and shook her head he was aware of a great relief. Also, henoted the undiminished youth that rang through that same old-timeboyish laugh of hers.
"Say," he said, with sudden fierceness, "don't you go fooling aroundthat slide until after I get the trees in and rooted. It's mightydangerous, and I sure can't afford to lose you now."
He drew her lips to his and kissed her hungrily and passionately.
"What a lover!" she said; and pride in him and in her own womanhood wasin her voice.
"Look at that, Dede." He removed one encircling arm and swept it in awide gesture over the valley and the mountains beyond. "The Valley ofthe Moon--a good name, a good name. Do you know, when I look out overit all, and think of you and of all it means, it kind of makes me achein the throat, and I have things in my heart I can't find the words tosay, and I have a feeling that I can almost understand Browning andthose other high-flying poet-fellows. Look at Hood Mountain there,just where the sun's striking. It was down in that crease that wefound the spring."
"And that was the night you didn't milk the cows till ten o'clock," shelaughed. "And if you keep me here much longer, supper won't be anyearlier than it was that night."
Both arose from the bench, and Daylight caught up the milk-pail fromthe nail by the door. He paused a moment longer to look out over thevalley.
"It's sure grand," he said.
"It's sure grand," she echoed, laughing joyously at him and with himand herself and all the world, as she passed in through the door.
And Daylight, like the old man he once had met, himself went down thehill through the fires of sunset with a milk pail on his arm.
