by Jack London
and apparently considered. This she did not see nor analyze. She
saw only a clothed man with grace of carriage and movement. She
felt, rather than perceived, the calm and certitude of all the
muscular play of him, and she felt, too, the promise of easement
and rest that was especially grateful and craved-for by one who
had incessantly, for six days and at top-speed, ironed fancy
starch. As the touch of his hand had been good, so, to her, this
subtler feel of all of him, body and mind, was good.
As he took her program and skirmished and joked after the way of
young men, she realized the immediacy of delight she had taken in
him. Never in her life had she been so affected by any man. She
wondered to herself: IS THIS THE MAN?
He danced beautifully. The joy was hers that good dancers take
when they have found a good dancer for a partner. The grace of
those slow-moving, certain muscles of his accorded perfectly with
the rhythm of the music. There was never doubt, never a betrayal
of indecision. She glanced at Bert, dancing "tough" with Mary,
caroming down the long floor with more than one collision with
the increasing couples. Graceful himself in his slender, tall,
lean-stomached way, Bert was accounted a good dancer; yet Saxon
did not remember ever having danced with him with keen pleasure.
Just a hit of a jerk spoiled his dancing--a jerk that did not
occur, usually, but that always impended. There was something
spasmodic in his mind. He was too quick, or he continually
threatened to be too quick. He always seemed just on the verge of
overrunning the time. It was disquieting. He made for unrest.
"You're a dream of a dancer," Billy Roberts was saying. "I've
heard lots of the fellows talk about your dancing."
"I love it," she answered.
But from the way she said it he sensed her reluctance to speak,
and danced on in silence, while she warmed with the appreciation
of a woman for gentle consideration. Gentle consideration was a
thing rarely encountered in the life she lived. IS THIS THE MAN?
She remembered Mary's "I'd marry him to-morrow," and caught
herself speculating on marrying Billy Roberts by the next day--if
he asked her.
With eyes that dreamily desired to close, she moved on in the
arms of this masterful, guiding pressure. A PRIZE-FIGHTER! She
experienced a thrill of wickedness as she thought of what Sarah
would say could she see her now. Only he wasn't a prizefighter,
but a teamster.
Came an abrupt lengthening of step, the guiding pressure grew
more compelling, and she was caught up and carried along, though
her velvet-shod feet never left the floor. Then came the sudden
control down to the shorter step again, and she felt herself
being held slightly from him so that he might look into her face
and laugh with her in joy at the exploit. At the end, as the band
slowed in the last bars, they, too, slowed, their dance fading
with the music in a lengthening glide that ceased with the last
lingering tone.
"We're sure cut out for each other when it comes to dancin'," he
said, as they made their way to rejoin the other couple.
"It was a dream," she replied.
So low was her voice that he bent to hear, and saw the flush in
her cheeks that seemed communicated to her eyes, which were
softly warm and sensuous. He took the program from her and
gravely and gigantically wrote his name across all the length of
it.
"An' now it's no good," he dared. "Ain't no need for it."
He tore it across and tossed it aside.
"Me for you, Saxon, for the next," was Bert's greeting, as they
came up. "You take Mary for the next whirl, Bill."
"Nothin' doin', Bo," was the retort. "Me an' Saxon's framed up to
last the day."
"Watch out for him, Saxon," Mary warned facetiously. "He's liable
to get a crush on you."
"I guess I know a good thing when I see it," Billy responded
gallantly.
"And so do I," Saxon aided and abetted.
"I'd 'a' known you if I'd seen you in the dark," Billy added.
Mary regarded them with mock alarm, and Bert said good-naturedly:
"All I got to say is you ain't wastin' any time gettin' together.
Just the same, if' you can spare a few minutes from each other
after a couple more whirls, Mary an' me'd be complimented to have
your presence at dinner."
"Just like that," chimed Mary.
"Quit your kiddin'," Billy laughed back, turning his head to look
into Saxon's eyes. "Don't listen to 'em. They're grouched because
they got to dance together. Bert's a rotten dancer, and Mary
ain't so much. Come on, there she goes. See you after two more
dances."
CHAPTER III
They had dinner in the open-air, tree-walled dining-room, and
Saxon noted that it was Billy who paid the reckoning for the
four. They knew many of the young men and women at the other
tables, and greetings and fun flew back and forth. Bert was very
possessive with Mary, almost roughly so, resting his hand on
hers, catching and holding it, and, once, forcibly slipping off
her two rings and refusing to return them for a long while. At
times, when he put his arm around her waist, Mary promptly
disengaged it; and at other times, with elaborate obliviousness
that deceived no one, she allowed it to remain.
And Saxon, talking little but studying Billy Roberts very
intently, was satisfied that there would be an utter difference
in the way he would do such things . . . if ever he would do
them. Anyway, he'd never paw a girl as Bert and lots of the other
fellows did. She measured the breadth of Billy's heavy shoulders.
"Why do they call you 'Big' Bill?" she asked. "You're not so very
tall."
"Nope," he agreed. "I'm only five feet eight an' three-quarters.
I guess it must be my weight."
"He fights at a hundred an' eighty," Bert interjected.
"Oh, out it," Billy said quickly, a cloud-rift of displeasure
showing in his eyes. "I ain't a fighter. I ain't fought in six
months. I've quit it. It don't pay."
"Yon got two hundred the night you put the Frisco Slasher to the
bad," Bert urged proudly.
"Cut it. Cut it now.--Say, Saxon, you ain't so big yourself, are
you? But you're built just right if anybody should ask you.
You're round an' slender at the same time. I bet I can guess your
weight."
"Everybody guesses over it," she warned, while inwardly she was
puzzled that she should at the same time be glad and regretful
that he did not fight any more.
"Not me," he was saying. "I'm a wooz at weight-guessin'. Just you
watch me." He regarded her critically, and it was patent that
warm approval played its little rivalry with the judgment of his
gaze. "Wait a minute."
He reached over to her and felt her arm at the biceps. The
pressure of the encircling fingers was firm and honest, and Saxon
thrilled to it. There was magic in this man-boy. She would have
known only irritation had B
ert or any other man felt her arm. But
this man! IS HE THE MAN? she was questioning, when he voiced his
conclusion.
"Your clothes don't weigh more'n seven pounds. And seven
from--hum--say one hundred an' twenty-three--one hundred an'
sixteen is your stripped weight."
But at the penultimate word, Mary cried out with sharp reproof:
"Why, Billy Roberts, people don't talk about such things."
He looked at her with slow-growing, uncomprehending surprise.
"What things?" he demanded finally.
"There you go again! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look!
You've got Saxon blushing!"
"I am not," Saxon denied indignantly.
"An' if you keep on, Mary, you'll have me blushing," Billy
growled. "I guess I know what's right an' what ain't. It ain't
what a guy says, but what he thinks. An' I'm thinkin' right, an'
Saxon knows it. An' she an' I ain't thinkin' what you're thinkin'
at all."
"Oh! Oh!" Mary cried. "You're gettin' worse an' worse. I never
think such things."
"Whoa, Mary! Backup!" Bert checked her peremptorily. "You're in
the wrong stall. Billy never makes mistakes like that."
"But he needn't be so raw," she persisted.
"Come on, Mary, an' be good, an' cut that stuff," was Billy's
dismissal of her, as he turned to Saxon. "How near did I come to
it?"
"One hundred and twenty-two," she answered, looking deliberately
at Mary. "One twenty two with my clothes."
Billy burst into hearty laughter, in which Bert joined.
"I don't care," Mary protested, "You're terrible, both of
you--an' you, too, Saxon. I'd never a-thought it of you."
"Listen to me, kid," Bert began soothingly, as his arm slipped
around her waist.
But in the false excitement she had worked herself into, Mary
rudely repulsed the arm, and then, fearing that she had wounded
her lover's feelings, she took advantage of the teasing and
banter to recover her good humor. His arm was permitted to
return, and with heads bent together, they talked in whispers.
Billy discreetly began to make conversation with Saxon.
"Say, you know, your name is a funny one. I never heard it tagged
on anybody before. But it's all right. I like it."
"My mother gave it to me. She was educated, and knew all kinds of
words. She was always reading books, almost until she died. And
she wrote lots and lots. I've got some of her poetry published in
a San Jose newspaper long ago. The Saxons were a race of
people--she told me all about them when I was a little girl. They
were wild, like Indians, only they were white. And they had blue
eyes, and yellow hair, and they were awful fighters."
As she talked, Billy followed her solemnly, his eyes steadily
turned on hers.
"Never heard of them," he confessed. "Did they live anywhere
around here?"
She laughed.
"No. They lived in England. They were the first English, and you
know the Americans came from the English. We're Saxons, you an'
me, an' Mary, an' Bert, and all the Americans that are real
Americans, you know, and not Dagoes and Japs and such."
"My folks lived in America a long time," Billy said slowly,
digesting the information she had given and relating himself to
it. "Anyway, my mother's folks did. They crossed to Maine
hundreds of years ago."
"My father was 'State of Maine," she broke in, with a little
gurgle of joy. "And my mother was horn in Ohio, or where Ohio is
now. She used to call it the Great Western Reserve. What was your
father?"
"Don't know." Billy shrugged his shoulders. "He didn't know
himself. Nobody ever knew, though he was American, all right, all
right."
"His name's regular old American," Saxon suggested. "There's a
big English general right now whose name is Roberts. I've read it
in the papers."
"But Roberts wasn't my father's name. He never knew what his name
was. Roberts was the name of a gold-miner who adopted him. You
see, it was this way. When they was Indian-fightin' up there with
the Modoc Indians, a lot of the miners an' settlers took a hand.
Roberts was captain of one outfit, and once, after a fight, they
took a lot of prisoners--squaws, an' kids an' babies. An' one of
the kids was my father. They figured he was about five years old.
He didn't know nothin' but Indian."
Saxon clapped her hands, and her eyes sparkled: "He'd been
captured on an Indian raid!"
"That's the way they figured it," Billy nodded. "They recollected
a wagon-train of Oregon settlers that'd been killed by the Modocs
four years before. Roberts adopted him, and that's why I don't
know his real name. But you can bank on it, he crossed the plains
just the same."
"So did my father," Saxon said proudly.
"An' my mother, too," Billy added, pride touching his own voice.
"Anyway, she came pretty close to crossin' the plains, because
she was born in a wagon on the River Platte on the way out."
"My mother, too," said Saxon. "She was eight years old, an' she
walked most of the way after the oxen began to give out."
Billy thrust out his hand.
"Put her there, kid," he said. "We're just like old friends, what
with the same kind of folks behind us."
With shining eyes, Saxon extended her hand to his, and gravely
they shook.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "We're both old American
stock. And if you aren't a Saxon there never was one--your hair,
your eyes, your skin, everything. And you're a fighter, too."
"I guess all our old folks was fighters when it comes to that. It
come natural to 'em, an' dog-gone it, they just had to fight or
they'd never come through."
"What are you two talkin' about?" Mary broke in upon them.
"They're thicker'n mush in no time," Bert girded. "You'd think
they'd known each other a week already."
"Oh, we knew each other longer than that," Saxon returned.
"Before ever we were born our folks were walkin' across the
plains together."
"When your folks was waitin' for the railroad to be built an' all
the Indians killed off before they dasted to start for
California," was Billy's way of proclaiming the new alliance.
"We're the real goods, Saxon an'n me, if anybody should ride up on
a buzz-wagon an' ask you."
"Oh, I don't know," Mary boasted with quiet petulance. "My father
stayed behind to fight in the Civil War. He was a drummer-boy.
That's why he didn't come to California until afterward."
"And my father went back to fight in the Civil War," Saxon said.
"And mine, too," said Billy.
They looked at each other gleefully. Again they had found a new
contact.
"Well, they're all dead, ain't they?" was Bert's saturnine
comment. "There ain't no difference dyin' in battle or in the
poorhouse. The thing is they're deado. I wouldn't care a rap if
my father'd been hanged. It's all the same in a thousand years.
This braggin' about folks makes me tired. Besid
es, my father
couldn't a-fought. He wasn't born till two years after the war.
Just the same, two of my uncles were killed at Gettysburg. Guess
we done our share."
"Just like that," Mary applauded.
Bert's arm went around her waist again.
"We're here, ain't we?" he said. "An' that's what counts. The
dead are dead, an' you can bet your sweet life they just keep on
stayin' dead."
Mary put her hand over his mouth and began to chide him for his
awfulness, whereupon he kissed the palm of her hand and put his
head closer to hers.
The merry clatter of dishes was increasing as the dining-room
filled up. Here and there voices were raised in snatches of song.
There were shrill squeals and screams and bursts of heavier male
laughter as the everlasting skirmishing between the young men and
girls played on. Among some of the men the signs of drink were
already manifest. At a near table girls were calling out to
Billy. And Saxon, the sense of temporary possession already
strong on her, noted with jealous eyes that he was a favorite and
desired object to them.
"Ain't they awful?" Mary voiced her disapproval. "They got a
nerve. I know who they are. No respectable girl 'd have a thing
to do with them. Listen to that!"
"Oh, you Bill, you," one of them, a buxom young brunette, was
calling. "Hope you ain't forgotten me, Bill."
"Oh, you chicken," he called back gallantly.
Saxon flattered herself that he showed vexation, and she
conceived an immense dislike for the brunette.
"Goin' to dance?" the latter called.
"Mebbe," he answered, and turned abruptly to Saxon. "Say, we old
Americans oughta stick together, don't you think? They ain't many
of us left. The country's fillin' up with all kinds of
foreigners."
He talked on steadily, in a low, confidential voice, head close
to hers, as advertisement to the other girl that he was occupied.
From the next table on the opposite side, a young man had singled
out Saxon. His dress was tough. His companions, male and female,
were tough. His face was inflamed, his eyes touched with
wildness.
"Hey, you!" he called. "You with the velvet slippers. Me for
you."
The girl beside him put her arm around his neck and tried to hush
him, and through the mufflement of her embrace they could hear
him gurgling:
"I tell you she's some goods. Watch me go across an' win her from
them cheap skates."
"Butchertown hoodlums," Mary sniffed.
Saxon's eyes encountered the eyes of the girl, who glared hatred
across at her. And in Billy's eyes she saw moody anger
smouldering. The eyes were more sullen, more handsome than ever,
and clouds and veils and lights and shadowe shifted and deepened
in the blue of them until they gave her a sense of unfathomable
depth. He had stopped talking, and he made no effort to talk.
"Don't start a rough house, Bill," Bert cautioned. "They're from
across the hay an' they don't know you, that's all."
Bert stood up suddenly, stepped over to the other table,
whispered briefly, and came back. Every face at the table was
turned on Billy. The offender arose brokenly, shook off the
detaining hand of his girl, and came over. He was a large man,
with a hard, malignant face and bitter eyes. Also, he was a
subdued man.
"You're Big Bill Roberts," he said thickly, clinging to the table
as he reeled. "I take my hat off to you. I apologize. I admire
your taste in skirts, an' take it from me that's a compliment;
but I did'nt know who you was. If I'd knowed you was Bill Roberts
there wouldn't been a peep from my fly-trap. D'ye get me? I
apologize. Will you shake hands?"
Gruffly, Billy said, "It's all right--forget it, sport;" and
sullenly he shook hands and with a slow, massive movement thrust
