Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER VIII

  Daylight's coming to civilization had not improved him. True, he worebetter clothes, had learned slightly better manners, and spoke betterEnglish. As a gambler and a man-trampler he had developed remarkableefficiency. Also, he had become used to a higher standard of living,and he had whetted his wits to razor sharpness in the fierce,complicated struggle of fighting males. But he had hardened, and at theexpense of his old-time, whole-souled geniality. Of the essentialrefinements of civilization he knew nothing. He did not know theyexisted. He had become cynical, bitter, and brutal. Power had itseffect on him that it had on all men. Suspicious of the bigexploiters, despising the fools of the exploited herd, he had faithonly in himself. This led to an undue and erroneous exaltation of hisego, while kindly consideration of others--nay, even simplerespect--was destroyed, until naught was left for him but to worship atthe shrine of self. Physically, he was not the man of iron muscles whohad come down out of the Arctic. He did not exercise sufficiently, atemore than was good for him, and drank altogether too much. His muscleswere getting flabby, and his tailor called attention to his increasingwaistband. In fact, Daylight was developing a definite paunch. Thisphysical deterioration was manifest likewise in his face. The leanIndian visage was suffering a city change. The slight hollows in thecheeks under the high cheek-bones had filled out. The beginning ofpuff-sacks under the eyes was faintly visible. The girth of the neckhad increased, and the first crease and fold of a double chin werebecoming plainly discernible. The old effect of asceticism, bred ofterrific hardships and toil, had vanished; the features had becomebroader and heavier, betraying all the stigmata of the life he lived,advertising the man's self-indulgence, harshness, and brutality.

  Even his human affiliations were descending. Playing a lone hand,contemptuous of most of the men with whom he played, lacking insympathy or understanding of them, and certainly independent of them,he found little in common with those to be encountered, say at theAlta-Pacific. In point of fact, when the battle with the steamshipcompanies was at its height and his raid was inflicting incalculabledamage on all business interests, he had been asked to resign from theAlta-Pacific. The idea had been rather to his liking, and he had foundnew quarters in clubs like the Riverside, organized and practicallymaintained by the city bosses. He found that he really liked such menbetter. They were more primitive and simple, and they did not put onairs. They were honest buccaneers, frankly in the game for what theycould get out of it, on the surface more raw and savage, but at leastnot glossed over with oily or graceful hypocrisy. The Alta-Pacific hadsuggested that his resignation be kept a private matter, and then hadprivily informed the newspapers. The latter had made great capital outof the forced resignation, but Daylight had grinned and silently gonehis way, though registering a black mark against more than one clubmember who was destined to feel, in the days to come, the crushingweight of the Klondiker's financial paw.

  The storm-centre of a combined newspaper attack lasting for months,Daylight's character had been torn to shreds. There was no fact in hishistory that had not been distorted into a criminality or a vice. Thispublic making of him over into an iniquitous monster had pretty wellcrushed any lingering hope he had of getting acquainted with DedeMason. He felt that there was no chance for her ever to look kindly ona man of his caliber, and, beyond increasing her salary to seventy-fivedollars a month, he proceeded gradually to forget about her. Theincrease was made known to her through Morrison, and later she thankedDaylight, and that was the end of it.

  One week-end, feeling heavy and depressed and tired of the city and itsways, he obeyed the impulse of a whim that was later to play animportant part in his life. The desire to get out of the city for awhiff of country air and for a change of scene was the cause. Yet, tohimself, he made the excuse of going to Glen Ellen for the purpose ofinspecting the brickyard with which Holdsworthy had goldbricked him.

  He spent the night in the little country hotel, and on Sunday morning,astride a saddle-horse rented from the Glen Ellen butcher, rode out ofthe village. The brickyard was close at hand on the flat beside theSonoma Creek. The kilns were visible among the trees, when he glancedto the left and caught sight of a cluster of wooded knolls half a mileaway, perched on the rolling slopes of Sonoma Mountain. The mountain,itself wooded, towered behind. The trees on the knolls seemed tobeckon to him.

  The dry, early-summer air, shot through with sunshine, was wine to him.Unconsciously he drank it in deep breaths. The prospect of thebrickyard was uninviting. He was jaded with all things business, andthe wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse was between his legs--agood horse, he decided; one that sent him back to the cayuses he hadridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood. He had been somewhat of arider in those early days, and the champ of bit and creak ofsaddle-leather sounded good to him now.

  Resolving to have his fun first, and to look over the brickyardafterward, he rode on up the hill, prospecting for a way across countryto get to the knolls. He left the country road at the first gate hecame to and cantered through a hayfield. The grain was waist-high oneither side the wagon road, and he sniffed the warm aroma of it withdelighted nostrils. Larks flew up before him, and from everywhere camemellow notes. From the appearance of the road it was patent that ithad been used for hauling clay to the now idle brickyard. Salving hisconscience with the idea that this was part of the inspection, he rodeon to the clay-pit--a huge scar in a hillside. But he did not lingerlong, swinging off again to the left and leaving the road. Not afarm-house was in sight, and the change from the city crowding wasessentially satisfying. He rode now through open woods, across littleflower-scattered glades, till he came upon a spring. Flat on theground, he drank deeply of the clear water, and, looking about him,felt with a shock the beauty of the world. It came to him like adiscovery; he had never realized it before, he concluded, and also, hehad forgotten much. One could not sit in at high finance and keeptrack of such things. As he drank in the air, the scene, and thedistant song of larks, he felt like a poker-player rising from anight-long table and coming forth from the pent atmosphere to taste thefreshness of the morn.

  At the base of the knolls he encountered a tumble-down stake-and-riderfence. From the look of it he judged it must be forty years old atleast--the work of some first pioneer who had taken up the land whenthe days of gold had ended. The woods were very thick here, yet fairlyclear of underbrush, so that, while the blue sky was screened by thearched branches, he was able to ride beneath. He now found himself ina nook of several acres, where the oak and manzanita and madrono gaveway to clusters of stately redwoods. Against the foot of asteep-sloped knoll he came upon a magnificent group of redwoods thatseemed to have gathered about a tiny gurgling spring.

  He halted his horse, for beside the spring uprose a wild Californialily. It was a wonderful flower, growing there in the cathedral naveof lofty trees. At least eight feet in height, its stem rose straightand slender, green and bare for two-thirds its length, and then burstinto a shower of snow-white waxen bells. There were hundreds of theseblossoms, all from the one stem, delicately poised and ethereallyfrail. Daylight had never seen anything like it. Slowly his gazewandered from it to all that was about him. He took off his hat, withalmost a vague religious feeling. This was different. No room forcontempt and evil here. This was clean and fresh andbeautiful-something he could respect. It was like a church. Theatmosphere was one of holy calm. Here man felt the prompting of noblerthings. Much of this and more was in Daylight's heart as he lookedabout him. But it was not a concept of his mind. He merely felt itwithout thinking about it at all.

  On the steep incline above the spring grew tiny maidenhair ferns, whilehigher up were larger ferns and brakes. Great, moss-covered trunks offallen trees lay here and there, slowly sinking back and merging intothe level of the forest mould. Beyond, in a slightly clearer space,wild grape and honeysuckle swung in green riot from gnarled old oaktrees. A gray Douglas squirrel crept out on a bran
ch and watched him.From somewhere came the distant knocking of a woodpecker. This sounddid not disturb the hush and awe of the place. Quiet woods, noisesbelonged there and made the solitude complete. The tiny bubblingripple of the spring and the gray flash of tree-squirrel were asyardsticks with which to measure the silence and motionless repose.

  "Might be a million miles from anywhere," Daylight whispered to himself.

  But ever his gaze returned to the wonderful lily beside the bubblingspring.

  He tethered the horse and wandered on foot among the knolls. Their topswere crowned with century-old spruce trees, and their sides clothedwith oaks and madronos and native holly. But to the perfect redwoodsbelonged the small but deep canon that threaded its way among theknolls. Here he found no passage out for his horse, and he returned tothe lily beside the spring. On foot, tripping, stumbling, leading theanimal, he forced his way up the hillside. And ever the ferns carpetedthe way of his feet, ever the forest climbed with him and archedoverhead, and ever the clean joy and sweetness stole in upon his senses.

  On the crest he came through an amazing thicket of velvet-trunked youngmadronos, and emerged on an open hillside that led down into a tinyvalley. The sunshine was at first dazzling in its brightness, and hepaused and rested, for he was panting from the exertion. Not of oldhad he known shortness of breath such as this, and muscles that soeasily tired at a stiff climb. A tiny stream ran down the tiny valleythrough a tiny meadow that was carpeted knee-high with grass and blueand white nemophila. The hillside was covered with Mariposa lilies andwild hyacinth, down through which his horse dropped slowly, withcircumspect feet and reluctant gait.

  Crossing the stream, Daylight followed a faint cattle trail over a low,rocky hill and through a wine-wooded forest of manzanita, and emergedupon another tiny valley, down which filtered another spring-fed,meadow-bordered streamlet. A jack-rabbit bounded from a bush under hishorse's nose, leaped the stream, and vanished up the opposite hillsideof scrub-oak. Daylight watched it admiringly as he rode on to the headof the meadow. Here he startled up a many-pronged buck, that seemed tosoar across the meadow, and to soar over the stake-and-rider fence,and, still soaring, disappeared in a friendly copse beyond.

  Daylight's delight was unbounded. It seemed to him that he had neverbeen so happy. His old woods' training was aroused, and he was keenlyinterested in everything in the moss on the trees and branches; in thebunches of mistletoe hanging in the oaks; in the nest of a wood-rat; inthe water-cress growing in the sheltered eddies of the little stream;in the butterflies drifting through the rifted sunshine and shadow; inthe blue jays that flashed in splashes of gorgeous color across theforest aisles; in the tiny birds, like wrens, that hopped among thebushes and imitated certain minor quail-calls; and in thecrimson-crested woodpecker that ceased its knocking and cocked its headon one side to survey him. Crossing the stream, he struck faintvestiges of a wood-road, used, evidently, a generation back, when themeadow had been cleared of its oaks. He found a hawk's nest on thelightning-shattered tipmost top of a six-foot redwood. And to completeit all his horse stumbled upon several large broods of half-grownquail, and the air was filled with the thrum of their flight. Hehalted and watched the young ones "petrifying" and disappearing on theground before his eyes, and listening to the anxious calls of the oldones hidden in the thickets.

  "It sure beats country places and bungalows at Menlo Park," he communedaloud; "and if ever I get the hankering for country life, it's me forthis every time."

  The old wood-road led him to a clearing, where a dozen acres of grapesgrew on wine-red soil. A cow-path, more trees and thickets, and hedropped down a hillside to the southeast exposure. Here, poised abovea big forested canon, and looking out upon Sonoma Valley, was a smallfarm-house. With its barn and outhouses it snuggled into a nook in thehillside, which protected it from west and north. It was the erosionfrom this hillside, he judged, that had formed the little level stretchof vegetable garden. The soil was fat and black, and there was waterin plenty, for he saw several faucets running wide open.

  Forgotten was the brickyard. Nobody was at home, but Daylightdismounted and ranged the vegetable garden, eating strawberries andgreen peas, inspecting the old adobe barn and the rusty plough andharrow, and rolling and smoking cigarettes while he watched the anticsof several broods of young chickens and the mother hens. A foottrailthat led down the wall of the big canyon invited him, and he proceededto follow it. A water-pipe, usually above ground, paralleled thetrail, which he concluded led upstream to the bed of the creek. Thewall of the canon was several hundred feet from top to bottom, andmagnificent were the untouched trees that the place was plunged inperpetual shade. He measured with his eye spruces five and six feet indiameter and redwoods even larger. One such he passed, a twister thatwas at least ten or eleven feet through. The trail led straight to asmall dam where was the intake for the pipe that watered the vegetablegarden. Here, beside the stream, were alders and laurel trees, and hewalked through fern-brakes higher than his head. Velvety moss waseverywhere, out of which grew maiden-hair and gold-back ferns.

  Save for the dam, it was a virgin wild. No ax had invaded, and thetrees died only of old age and stress of winter storm. The huge trunksof those that had fallen lay moss-covered, slowly resolving back intothe soil from which they sprang. Some had lain so long that they werequite gone, though their faint outlines, level with the mould, couldstill be seen. Others bridged the stream, and from beneath the bulk ofone monster half a dozen younger trees, overthrown and crushed by thefall, growing out along the ground, still lived and prospered, theirroots bathed by the stream, their upshooting branches catching thesunlight through the gap that had been made in the forest roof.

  Back at the farm-house, Daylight mounted and rode on away from theranch and into the wilder canons and steeper steeps beyond. Nothingcould satisfy his holiday spirit now but the ascent of Sonoma Mountain.And here on the crest, three hours afterward, he emerged, tired andsweaty, garments torn and face and hands scratched, but with sparklingeyes and an unwonted zestfulness of expression. He felt the illicitpleasure of a schoolboy playing truant. The big gambling table of SanFrancisco seemed very far away. But there was more than illicitpleasure in his mood. It was as though he were going through a sort ofcleansing bath. No room here for all the sordidness, meanness, andviciousness that filled the dirty pool of city existence. Withoutpondering in detail upon the matter at all, his sensations were ofpurification and uplift. Had he been asked to state how he felt, hewould merely have said that he was having a good time; for he wasunaware in his self-consciousness of the potent charm of nature thatwas percolating through his city-rotted body and brain--potent, in thathe came of an abysmal past of wilderness dwellers, while he was himselfcoated with but the thinnest rind of crowded civilization.

  There were no houses in the summit of Sonoma Mountain, and, all aloneunder the azure California sky, he reined in on the southern edge ofthe peak. He saw open pasture country, intersected with wooded canons,descending to the south and west from his feet, crease on crease androll on roll, from lower level to lower level, to the floor of PetalumaValley, flat as a billiard-table, a cardboard affair, all patches andsquares of geometrical regularity where the fat freeholds were farmed.Beyond, to the west, rose range on range of mountains cuddling purplemists of atmosphere in their valleys; and still beyond, over the lastrange of all, he saw the silver sheen of the Pacific. Swinging hishorse, he surveyed the west and north, from Santa Rosa to St. Helena,and on to the east, across Sonoma to the chaparral-covered range thatshut off the view of Napa Valley. Here, part way up the eastern wallof Sonoma Valley, in range of a line intersecting the little village ofGlen Ellen, he made out a scar upon a hillside. His first thought wasthat it was the dump of a mine tunnel, but remembering that he was notin gold-bearing country, he dismissed the scar from his mind andcontinued the circle of his survey to the southeast, where, across thewaters of San Pablo Bay, he could see, sharp and distant, the twinpeaks of
Mount Diablo. To the south was Mount Tamalpais, and, yes, hewas right, fifty miles away, where the draughty winds of the Pacificblew in the Golden Gate, the smoke of San Francisco made a low-lyinghaze against the sky.

  "I ain't seen so much country all at once in many a day," he thoughtaloud.

  He was loath to depart, and it was not for an hour that he was able totear himself away and take the descent of the mountain. Working out anew route just for the fun of it, late afternoon was upon him when hearrived back at the wooded knolls. Here, on the top of one of them,his keen eyes caught a glimpse of a shade of green sharplydifferentiated from any he had seen all day. Studying it for a minute,he concluded that it was composed of three cypress trees, and he knewthat nothing else than the hand of man could have planted them there.Impelled by curiosity purely boyish, he made up his mind toinvestigate. So densely wooded was the knoll, and so steep, that hehad to dismount and go up on foot, at times even on hands and kneesstruggling hard to force a way through the thicker underbrush. He cameout abruptly upon the cypresses. They were enclosed in a small squareof ancient fence; the pickets he could plainly see had been hewn andsharpened by hand. Inside were the mounds of two children's graves.Two wooden headboards, likewise hand-hewn, told the state Little David,born 1855, died 1859; and Little Roy, born 1853, died 1860.

  "The poor little kids," Daylight muttered. The graves showed signs ofrecent care. Withered bouquets of wild flowers were on the mounds, andthe lettering on the headboards was freshly painted. Guided by theseclews, Daylight cast about for a trail, and found one leading down theside opposite to his ascent. Circling the base of the knoll, he pickedup with his horse and rode on to the farm-house. Smoke was rising fromthe chimney and he was quickly in conversation with a nervous, slenderyoung man, who, he learned, was only a tenant on the ranch. How largewas it? A matter of one hundred and eighty acres, though it seemedmuch larger. This was because it was so irregularly shaped. Yes, itincluded the clay-pit and all the knolls, and its boundary that ranalong the big canon was over a mile long.

  "You see," the young man said, "it was so rough and broken that whenthey began to farm this country the farmers bought in the good land tothe edge of it. That's why its boundaries are all gouged and jagged.

  "Oh, yes, he and his wife managed to scratch a living without workingtoo hard. They didn't have to pay much rent. Hillard, the owner,depended on the income from the clay-pit. Hillard was well off, andhad big ranches and vineyards down on the flat of the valley. Thebrickyard paid ten cents a cubic yard for the clay. As for the rest ofthe ranch, the land was good in patches, where it was cleared, like thevegetable garden and the vineyard, but the rest of it was too muchup-and-down."

  "You're not a farmer," Daylight said. The young man laughed and shookhis head. "No; I'm a telegraph operator. But the wife and I decidedto take a two years' vacation, and ... here we are. But the time'sabout up. I'm going back into the office this fall after I get thegrapes off."

  Yes, there were about eleven acres in the vineyard--wine grapes. Theprice was usually good. He grew most of what they ate. If he ownedthe place, he'd clear a patch of land on the side-hill above thevineyard and plant a small home orchard. The soil was good. There wasplenty of pasturage all over the ranch, and there were several clearedpatches, amounting to about fifteen acres in all, where he grew as muchmountain hay as could be found. It sold for three to five dollars morea ton than the rank-stalked valley hay.

  Daylight listened, there came to him a sudden envy of this young fellowliving right in the midst of all this which Daylight had travelledthrough the last few hours.

  "What in thunder are you going back to the telegraph office for?" hedemanded.

  The young man smiled with a certain wistfulness. "Because we can't getahead here..." (he hesitated an instant), "and because there are addedexpenses coming. The rent, small as it is, counts; and besides, I'mnot strong enough to effectually farm the place. If I owned it, or ifI were a real husky like you, I'd ask nothing better. Nor would thewife." Again the wistful smile hovered on his face. "You see, we'recountry born, and after bucking with cities for a few years, we kind offeel we like the country best. We've planned to get ahead, though, andthen some day we'll buy a patch of land and stay with it."

  The graves of the children? Yes, he had relettered them and hoed theweeds out. It had become the custom. Whoever lived on the ranch didthat. For years, the story ran, the father and mother had returnedeach summer to the graves. But there had come a time when they came nomore, and then old Hillard started the custom. The scar across thevalley? An old mine. It had never paid. The men had worked on it,off and on, for years, for the indications had been good. But that wasyears and years ago. No paying mine had ever been struck in thevalley, though there had been no end of prospect-holes put down andthere had been a sort of rush there thirty years back.

  A frail-looking young woman came to the door to call the young man tosupper. Daylight's first thought was that city living had not agreedwith her. And then he noted the slight tan and healthy glow thatseemed added to her face, and he decided that the country was the placefor her. Declining an invitation to supper, he rode on for Glen Ellensitting slack-kneed in the saddle and softly humming forgotten songs.He dropped down the rough, winding road through covered pasture, withhere and there thickets of manzanita and vistas of open glades. Helistened greedily to the quail calling, and laughed outright, once, insheer joy, at a tiny chipmunk that fled scolding up a bank, slipping onthe crumbly surface and falling down, then dashing across the roadunder his horse's nose and, still scolding, scrabbling up a protectingoak.

  Daylight could not persuade himself to keep to the travelled roads thatday, and another cut across country to Glen Ellen brought him upon acanon that so blocked his way that he was glad to follow a friendlycow-path. This led him to a small frame cabin. The doors and windowswere open, and a cat was nursing a litter of kittens in the doorway,but no one seemed at home. He descended the trail that evidentlycrossed the canon. Part way down, he met an old man coming up throughthe sunset. In his hand he carried a pail of foamy milk. He wore nohat, and in his face, framed with snow-white hair and beard, was theruddy glow and content of the passing summer day. Daylight thoughtthat he had never seen so contented-looking a being.

  "How old are you, daddy?" he queried.

  "Eighty-four," was the reply. "Yes, sirree, eighty-four, and spryerthan most."

  "You must a' taken good care of yourself," Daylight suggested.

  "I don't know about that. I ain't loafed none. I walked across thePlains with an ox-team and fit Injuns in '51, and I was a family manthen with seven youngsters. I reckon I was as old then as you are now,or pretty nigh on to it."

  "Don't you find it lonely here?"

  The old man shifted the pail of milk and reflected. "That alldepends," he said oracularly. "I ain't never been lonely except whenthe old wife died. Some fellers are lonely in a crowd, and I'm one ofthem. That's the only time I'm lonely, is when I go to 'Frisco. But Idon't go no more, thank you 'most to death. This is good enough for me.I've ben right here in this valley since '54--one of the first settlersafter the Spaniards."

  Daylight started his horse, saying:--

  "Well, good night, daddy. Stick with it. You got all the young bloodsskinned, and I guess you've sure buried a mighty sight of them."

  The old man chuckled, and Daylight rode on, singularly at peace withhimself and all the world. It seemed that the old contentment of trailand camp he had known on the Yukon had come back to him. He could notshake from his eyes the picture of the old pioneer coming up the trailthrough the sunset light. He was certainly going some for eighty-four.The thought of following his example entered Daylight's mind, but thebig game of San Francisco vetoed the idea.

  "Well, anyway," he decided, "when I get old and quit the game, I'llsettle down in a place something like this, and the city can go tohell."