Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER IX

  Instead of returning to the city on Monday, Daylight rented thebutcher's horse for another day and crossed the bed of the valley toits eastern hills to look at the mine. It was dryer and rockier herethan where he had been the day before, and the ascending slopessupported mainly chaparral, scrubby and dense and impossible topenetrate on horseback. But in the canyons water was plentiful andalso a luxuriant forest growth. The mine was an abandoned affair, buthe enjoyed the half-hour's scramble around. He had had experience inquartz-mining before he went to Alaska, and he enjoyed therecrudescence of his old wisdom in such matters. The story was simpleto him: good prospects that warranted the starting of the tunnel intothe sidehill; the three months' work and the getting short of money;the lay-off while the men went away and got jobs; then the return and anew stretch of work, with the "pay" ever luring and ever receding intothe mountain, until, after years of hope, the men had given up andvanished. Most likely they were dead by now, Daylight thought, as heturned in the saddle and looked back across the canyon at the ancientdump and dark mouth of the tunnel.

  As on the previous day, just for the joy of it, he followedcattle-trails at haphazard and worked his way up toward the summits.Coming out on a wagon road that led upward, he followed it for severalmiles, emerging in a small, mountain-encircled valley, where half adozen poor ranchers farmed the wine-grapes on the steep slopes.Beyond, the road pitched upward. Dense chaparral covered the exposedhillsides but in the creases of the canons huge spruce trees grew, andwild oats and flowers.

  Half an hour later, sheltering under the summits themselves, he cameout on a clearing. Here and there, in irregular patches where thesteep and the soil favored, wine grapes were growing. Daylight couldsee that it had been a stiff struggle, and that wild nature showedfresh signs of winning--chaparral that had invaded the clearings;patches and parts of patches of vineyard, unpruned, grassgrown, andabandoned; and everywhere old stake-and-rider fences vainly striving toremain intact. Here, at a small farm-house surrounded by largeoutbuildings, the road ended. Beyond, the chaparral blocked the way.

  He came upon an old woman forking manure in the barnyard, and reined inby the fence.

  "Hello, mother," was his greeting; "ain't you got any men-folk aroundto do that for you?"

  She leaned on her pitchfork, hitched her skirt in at the waist, andregarded him cheerfully. He saw that her toil-worn, weather-exposedhands were like a man's, callused, large-knuckled, and gnarled, andthat her stockingless feet were thrust into heavy man's brogans.

  "Nary a man," she answered. "And where be you from, and all the way uphere? Won't you stop and hitch and have a glass of wine?"

  Striding clumsily but efficiently, like a laboring-man, she led himinto the largest building, where Daylight saw a hand-press and all theparaphernalia on a small scale for the making of wine. It was too farand too bad a road to haul the grapes to the valley wineries, sheexplained, and so they were compelled to do it themselves. "They," helearned, were she and her daughter, the latter a widow of forty-odd.It had been easier before the grandson died and before he went away tofight savages in the Philippines. He had died out there in battle.

  Daylight drank a full tumbler of excellent Riesling, talked a fewminutes, and accounted for a second tumbler. Yes, they just managednot to starve. Her husband and she had taken up this government landin '57 and cleared it and farmed it ever since, until he died, when shehad carried it on. It actually didn't pay for the toil, but what werethey to do? There was the wine trust, and wine was down. ThatRiesling? She delivered it to the railroad down in the valley fortwenty-two cents a gallon. And it was a long haul. It took a day forthe round trip. Her daughter was gone now with a load.

  Daylight knew that in the hotels, Riesling, not quite so good even, wascharged for at from a dollar and a half to two dollars a quart. Andshe got twenty-two cents a gallon. That was the game. She was one ofthe stupid lowly, she and her people before her--the ones that did thework, drove their oxen across the Plains, cleared and broke the virginland, toiled all days and all hours, paid their taxes, and sent theirsons and grandsons out to fight and die for the flag that gave themsuch ample protection that they were able to sell their wine fortwenty-two cents. The same wine was served to him at the St. Francisfor two dollars a quart, or eight dollars a short gallon. That was it.

  Between her and her hand-press on the mountain clearing and himordering his wine in the hotel was a difference of seven dollars andseventy-eight cents. A clique of sleek men in the city got between herand him to just about that amount. And, besides them, there was ahorde of others that took their whack. They called it railroading,high finance, banking, wholesaling, real estate, and such things, butthe point was that they got it, while she got what wasleft,--twenty-two cents. Oh, well, a sucker was born every minute, hesighed to himself, and nobody was to blame; it was all a game, and onlya few could win, but it was damned hard on the suckers.

  "How old are you, mother?" he asked.

  "Seventy-nine come next January."

  "Worked pretty hard, I suppose?"

  "Sense I was seven. I was bound out in Michigan state until I waswoman-grown. Then I married, and I reckon the work got harder andharder."

  "When are you going to take a rest?"

  She looked at him, as though she chose to think his question facetious,and did not reply.

  "Do you believe in God?"

  She nodded her head.

  "Then you get it all back," he assured her; but in his heart he waswondering about God, that allowed so many suckers to be born and thatdid not break up the gambling game by which they were robbed from thecradle to the grave.

  "How much of that Riesling you got?"

  She ran her eyes over the casks and calculated. "Just short of eighthundred gallons."

  He wondered what he could do with all of it, and speculated as to whomhe could give it away.

  "What would you do if you got a dollar a gallon for it?" he asked.

  "Drop dead, I suppose."

  "No; speaking seriously."

  "Get me some false teeth, shingle the house, and buy a new wagon. Theroad's mighty hard on wagons."

  "And after that?"

  "Buy me a coffin."

  "Well, they're yours, mother, coffin and all."

  She looked her incredulity.

  "No; I mean it. And there's fifty to bind the bargain. Never mind thereceipt. It's the rich ones that need watching, their memories beingso infernal short, you know. Here's my address. You've got to deliverit to the railroad. And now, show me the way out of here. I want toget up to the top."

  On through the chaparral he went, following faint cattle trails andworking slowly upward till he came out on the divide and gazed downinto Napa Valley and back across to Sonoma Mountain... "A sweet land,"he muttered, "an almighty sweet land."

  Circling around to the right and dropping down along the cattle-trails,he quested for another way back to Sonoma Valley; but the cattle-trailsseemed to fade out, and the chaparral to grow thicker with a deliberateviciousness and even when he won through in places, the canon and smallfeeders were too precipitous for his horse, and turned him back. Butthere was no irritation about it. He enjoyed it all, for he was backat his old game of bucking nature. Late in the afternoon he brokethrough, and followed a well-defined trail down a dry canon. Here hegot a fresh thrill. He had heard the baying of the hound some minutesbefore, and suddenly, across the bare face of the hill above him, hesaw a large buck in flight. And not far behind came the deer-hound, amagnificent animal. Daylight sat tense in his saddle and watched untilthey disappeared, his breath just a trifle shorter, as if he, too, werein the chase, his nostrils distended, and in his bones the old huntingache and memories of the days before he came to live in cities.

  The dry canon gave place to one with a slender ribbon of running water.The trail ran into a wood-road, and the wood-road emerged across asmall flat upon a slightly travelled county road. There were
no farmsin this immediate section, and no houses. The soil was meagre, thebed-rock either close to the surface or constituting the surfaceitself. Manzanita and scrub-oak, however, flourished and walled theroad on either side with a jungle growth. And out a runway throughthis growth a man suddenly scuttled in a way that reminded Daylight ofa rabbit.

  He was a little man, in patched overalls; bareheaded, with a cottonshirt open at the throat and down the chest. The sun was ruddy-brownin his face, and by it his sandy hair was bleached on the ends toperoxide blond. He signed to Daylight to halt, and held up a letter."If you're going to town, I'd be obliged if you mail this."

  "I sure will." Daylight put it into his coat pocket.

  "Do you live hereabouts, stranger?"

  But the little man did not answer. He was gazing at Daylight in asurprised and steadfast fashion.

  "I know you," the little man announced. "You're Elam Harnish--BurningDaylight, the papers call you. Am I right?"

  Daylight nodded.

  "But what under the sun are you doing here in the chaparral?"

  Daylight grinned as he answered, "Drumming up trade for a free ruraldelivery route."

  "Well, I'm glad I wrote that letter this afternoon," the little manwent on, "or else I'd have missed seeing you. I've seen your photo inthe papers many a time, and I've a good memory for faces. I recognizedyou at once. My name's Ferguson."

  "Do you live hereabouts?" Daylight repeated his query.

  "Oh, yes. I've got a little shack back here in the bush a hundredyards, and a pretty spring, and a few fruit trees and berry bushes.Come in and take a look. And that spring is a dandy. You never tastedwater like it. Come in and try it."

  Walking and leading his horse, Daylight followed the quick-steppingeager little man through the green tunnel and emerged abruptly upon theclearing, if clearing it might be called, where wild nature and man'searth-scratching were inextricably blended. It was a tiny nook in thehills, protected by the steep walls of a canon mouth. Here wereseveral large oaks, evidencing a richer soil. The erosion of ages fromthe hillside had slowly formed this deposit of fat earth. Under theoaks, almost buried in them, stood a rough, unpainted cabin, the wideverandah of which, with chairs and hammocks, advertised an out-of doorsbedchamber. Daylight's keen eyes took in every thing. The clearingwas irregular, following the patches of the best soil, and every fruittree and berry bush, and even each vegetable plant, had the waterpersonally conducted to it. The tiny irrigation channels were everywhere, and along some of them the water was running.

  Ferguson looked eagerly into his visitor's face for signs ofapprobation.

  "What do you think of it, eh?"

  "Hand-reared and manicured, every blessed tree," Daylight laughed, butthe joy and satisfaction that shone in his eyes contented the littleman.

  "Why, d'ye know, I know every one of those trees as if they were sonsof mine. I planted them, nursed them, fed them, and brought them up.Come on and peep at the spring."

  "It's sure a hummer," was Daylight's verdict, after due inspection andsampling, as they turned back for the house.

  The interior was a surprise. The cooking being done in the small,lean-to kitchen, the whole cabin formed a large living room. A greattable in the middle was comfortably littered with books and magazines.All the available wall space, from floor to ceiling, was occupied byfilled bookshelves. It seemed to Daylight that he had never seen somany books assembled in one place. Skins of wildcat, 'coon, and deerlay about on the pine-board floor.

  "Shot them myself, and tanned them, too," Ferguson proudly asserted.

  The crowning feature of the room was a huge fireplace of rough stonesand boulders.

  "Built it myself," Ferguson proclaimed, "and, by God, she drew! Never awisp of smoke anywhere save in the pointed channel, and that during thebig southeasters."

  Daylight found himself charmed and made curious by the little man. Whywas he hiding away here in the chaparral, he and his books? He wasnobody's fool, anybody could see that. Then why? The whole affair hada tinge of adventure, and Daylight accepted an invitation to supper,half prepared to find his host a raw-fruit-and-nut-eater or somesimilar sort of health faddest. At table, while eating rice andjack-rabbit curry (the latter shot by Ferguson), they talked it over,and Daylight found the little man had no food "views." He ate whateverhe liked, and all he wanted, avoiding only such combinations thatexperience had taught him disagreed with his digestion.

  Next, Daylight surmised that he might be touched with religion; but,quest about as he would, in a conversation covering the most divergenttopics, he could find no hint of queerness or unusualness. So it was,when between them they had washed and wiped the dishes and put themaway, and had settled down to a comfortable smoke, that Daylight puthis question.

  "Look here, Ferguson. Ever since we got together, I've been castingabout to find out what's wrong with you, to locate a screw loosesomewhere, but I'll be danged if I've succeeded. What are you doinghere, anyway? What made you come here? What were you doing for aliving before you came here? Go ahead and elucidate yourself."

  Ferguson frankly showed his pleasure at the questions.

  "First of all," he began, "the doctors wound up by losing all hope forme. Gave me a few months at best, and that, after a course insanatoriums and a trip to Europe and another to Hawaii. They triedelectricity, and forced feeding, and fasting. I was a graduate of abouteverything in the curriculum. They kept me poor with their bills whileI went from bad to worse. The trouble with me was two fold: first, Iwas a born weakling; and next, I was living unnaturally--too much work,and responsibility, and strain. I was managing editor of theTimes-Tribune--"

  Daylight gasped mentally, for the Times-Tribune was the biggest andmost influential paper in San Francisco, and always had been so.

  "--and I wasn't strong enough for the strain. Of course my body wentback on me, and my mind, too, for that matter. It had to be bolsteredup with whiskey, which wasn't good for it any more than was the livingin clubs and hotels good for my stomach and the rest of me. That waswhat ailed me; I was living all wrong."

  He shrugged his shoulders and drew at his pipe.

  "When the doctors gave me up, I wound up my affairs and gave thedoctors up. That was fifteen years ago. I'd been hunting through herewhen I was a boy, on vacations from college, and when I was all downand out it seemed a yearning came to me to go back to the country. SoI quit, quit everything, absolutely, and came to live in the Valley ofthe Moon--that's the Indian name, you know, for Sonoma Valley. I livedin the lean-to the first year; then I built the cabin and sent for mybooks. I never knew what happiness was before, nor health. Look at menow and dare to tell me that I look forty-seven."

  "I wouldn't give a day over forty," Daylight confessed.

  "Yet the day I came here I looked nearer sixty, and that was fifteenyears ago."

  They talked along, and Daylight looked at the world from new angles.Here was a man, neither bitter nor cynical, who laughed at thecity-dwellers and called them lunatics; a man who did not care formoney, and in whom the lust for power had long since died. As for thefriendship of the city-dwellers, his host spoke in no uncertain terms.

  "What did they do, all the chaps I knew, the chaps in the clubs withwhom I'd been cheek by jowl for heaven knows how long? I was notbeholden to them for anything, and when I slipped out there was not oneof them to drop me a line and say, 'How are you, old man? Anything Ican do for you?' For several weeks it was: 'What's become of Ferguson?'After that I became a reminiscence and a memory. Yet every last one ofthem knew I had nothing but my salary and that I'd always lived a lapahead of it."

  "But what do you do now?" was Daylight's query. "You must need cash tobuy clothes and magazines?"

  "A week's work or a month's work, now and again, ploughing in thewinter, or picking grapes in the fall, and there's always odd jobs withthe farmers through the summer. I don't need much, so I don't have towork much. Most of my time I spend fooling around
the place. I coulddo hack work for the magazines and newspapers; but I prefer theploughing and the grape picking. Just look at me and you can see why.I'm hard as rocks. And I like the work. But I tell you a chap's gotto break in to it. It's a great thing when he's learned to pick grapesa whole long day and come home at the end of it with that tired happyfeeling, instead of being in a state of physical collapse. Thatfireplace--those big stones--I was soft, then, a little, anemic,alcoholic degenerate, with the spunk of a rabbit and about one per centas much stamina, and some of those big stones nearly broke my back andmy heart. But I persevered, and used my body in the way Natureintended it should be used--not bending over a desk and swillingwhiskey... and, well, here I am, a better man for it, and there's thefireplace, fine and dandy, eh?

  "And now tell me about the Klondike, and how you turned San Franciscoupside down with that last raid of yours. You're a bonny fighter, youknow, and you touch my imagination, though my cooler reason tells methat you are a lunatic like the rest. The lust for power! It's adreadful affliction. Why didn't you stay in your Klondike? Or whydon't you clear out and live a natural life, for instance, like mine?You see, I can ask questions, too. Now you talk and let me listen fora while."

  It was not until ten o'clock that Daylight parted from Ferguson. As herode along through the starlight, the idea came to him of buying theranch on the other side of the valley. There was no thought in hismind of ever intending to live on it. His game was in San Francisco.But he liked the ranch, and as soon as he got back to the office hewould open up negotiations with Hillard. Besides, the ranch includedthe clay-pit, and it would give him the whip-hand over Holdsworthy ifhe ever tried to cut up any didoes.