Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Daylight had made no assertion of total abstinence though he had nottaken a drink for months after the day he resolved to let his businessgo to smash. Soon he proved himself strong enough to dare to take adrink without taking a second. On the other hand, with his coming tolive in the country, had passed all desire and need for drink. He feltno yearning for it, and even forgot that it existed. Yet he refused tobe afraid of it, and in town, on occasion, when invited by thestorekeeper, would reply: "All right, son. If my taking a drink willmake you happy here goes. Whiskey for mine."

  But such a drink began no desire for a second. It made no impression.He was too profoundly strong to be affected by a thimbleful. As he hadprophesied to Dede, Burning Daylight, the city financier, had died aquick death on the ranch, and his younger brother, the Daylight fromAlaska, had taken his place. The threatened inundation of fat hadsubsided, and all his old-time Indian leanness and of muscle hadreturned. So, likewise, did the old slight hollows in his cheeks comeback. For him they indicated the pink of physical condition. He becamethe acknowledged strong man of Sonoma Valley, the heaviest lifter andhardest winded among a husky race of farmer folk. And once a year hecelebrated his birthday in the old-fashioned frontier way, challengingall the valley to come up the hill to the ranch and be put on its back.And a fair portion of the valley responded, brought the women-folk andchildren along, and picnicked for the day.

  At first, when in need of ready cash, he had followed Ferguson'sexample of working at day's labor; but he was not long in gravitatingto a form of work that was more stimulating and more satisfying, andthat allowed him even more time for Dede and the ranch and theperpetual riding through the hills. Having been challenged by theblacksmith, in a spirit of banter, to attempt the breaking of a certainincorrigible colt, he succeeded so signally as to earn quite areputation as a horse-breaker. And soon he was able to earn whatevermoney he desired at this, to him, agreeable work.

  A sugar king, whose breeding farm and training stables were atCaliente, three miles away, sent for him in time of need, and, beforethe year was out, offered him the management of the stables. ButDaylight smiled and shook his head. Furthermore, he refused toundertake the breaking of as many animals as were offered. "I'm surenot going to die from overwork," he assured Dede; and he accepted suchwork only when he had to have money. Later, he fenced off a small runin the pasture, where, from time to time, he took in a limited numberof incorrigibles.

  "We've got the ranch and each other," he told his wife, "and I'd soonerride with you to Hood Mountain any day than earn forty dollars. Youcan't buy sunsets, and loving wives, and cool spring water, and suchfolderols, with forty dollars; and forty million dollars can't buy backfor me one day that I didn't ride with you to Hood Mountain."

  His life was eminently wholesome and natural. Early to bed, he sleptlike an infant and was up with the dawn. Always with something to do,and with a thousand little things that enticed but did not clamor, hewas himself never overdone. Nevertheless, there were times when bothhe and Dede were not above confessing tiredness at bedtime afterseventy or eighty miles in the saddle.

  Sometimes, when he had accumulated a little money, and when the seasonfavored, they would mount their horses, with saddle-bags behind, andride away over the wall of the valley and down into the other valleys.When night fell, they put up at the first convenient farm or village,and on the morrow they would ride on, without definite plan, merelycontinuing to ride on, day after day, until their money gave out andthey were compelled to return. On such trips they would be goneanywhere from a week to ten days or two weeks, and once they managed athree weeks' trip.

  They even planned ambitiously some day when they were disgracefullyprosperous, to ride all the way up to Daylight's boyhood home inEastern Oregon, stopping on the way at Dede's girlhood home inSiskiyou. And all the joys of anticipation were theirs a thousandtimes as they contemplated the detailed delights of this grandadventure.

  One day, stopping to mail a letter at the Glen Ellen post office, theywere hailed by the blacksmith.

  "Say, Daylight," he said, "a young fellow named Slosson sends you hisregards. He came through in an auto, on the way to Santa Rosa. Hewanted to know if you didn't live hereabouts, but the crowd with himwas in a hurry. So he sent you his regards and said to tell you he'dtaken your advice and was still going on breaking his own record."

  Daylight had long since told Dede of the incident.

  "Slosson?" he meditated, "Slosson? That must be the hammer-thrower.He put my hand down twice, the young scamp." He turned suddenly toDede. "Say, it's only twelve miles to Santa Rosa, and the horses arefresh."

  She divined what was in his mind, of which his twinkling eyes andsheepish, boyish grin gave sufficient advertisement, and she smiled andnodded acquiescence.

  "We'll cut across by Bennett Valley," he said. "It's nearer that way."

  There was little difficulty, once in Santa Rosa, of finding Slosson.He and his party had registered at the Oberlin Hotel, and Daylightencountered the young hammer-thrower himself in the office.

  "Look here, son," Daylight announced, as soon as he had introducedDede, "I've come to go you another flutter at that hand game. Here's alikely place."

  Slosson smiled and accepted. The two men faced each other, the elbowsof their right arms on the counter, the hands clasped. Slosson's handquickly forced backward and down.

  "You're the first man that ever succeeded in doing it," he said. "Let'stry it again."

  "Sure," Daylight answered. "And don't forget, son, that you're thefirst man that put mine down. That's why I lit out after you to-day."

  Again they clasped hands, and again Slosson's hand went down. He was abroad-shouldered, heavy-muscled young giant, at least half a headtaller than Daylight, and he frankly expressed his chagrin and askedfor a third trial. This time he steeled himself to the effort, and fora moment the issue was in doubt. With flushed face and set teeth hemet the other's strength till his crackling muscles failed him. Theair exploded sharply from his tensed lungs, as he relaxed in surrender,and the hand dropped limply down.

  "You're too many for me," he confessed. "I only hope you'll keep outof the hammer-throwing game."

  Daylight laughed and shook his head.

  "We might compromise, and each stay in his own class. You stick tohammer-throwing, and I'll go on turning down hands."

  But Slosson refused to accept defeat.

  "Say," he called out, as Daylight and Dede, astride their horses, werepreparing to depart. "Say--do you mind if I look you up next year?I'd like to tackle you again."

  "Sure, son. You're welcome to a flutter any time. Though I give youfair warning that you'll have to go some. You'll have to train up, forI'm ploughing and chopping wood and breaking colts these days."

  Now and again, on the way home, Dede could hear her big boy-husbandchuckling gleefully. As they halted their horses on the top of thedivide out of Bennett Valley, in order to watch the sunset, he rangedalongside and slipped his arm around her waist.

  "Little woman," he said, "you're sure responsible for it all. And Ileave it to you, if all the money in creation is worth as much as onearm like that when it's got a sweet little woman like this to goaround."

  For of all his delights in the new life, Dede was his greatest. As heexplained to her more than once, he had been afraid of love all hislife only in the end to come to find it the greatest thing in theworld. Not alone were the two well mated, but in coming to live on theranch they had selected the best soil in which their love wouldprosper. In spite of her books and music, there was in her a wholesomesimplicity and love of the open and natural, while Daylight, in everyfiber of him, was essentially an open-air man.

  Of one thing in Dede, Daylight never got over marveling about, and thatwas her efficient hands--the hands that he had first seen taking downflying shorthand notes and ticking away at the typewriter; the handsthat were firm to hold a magnificent brute like Bob, that wonderfu
llyflashed over the keys of the piano, that were unhesitant in householdtasks, and that were twin miracles to caress and to run ripplingfingers through his hair. But Daylight was not unduly uxorious. Helived his man's life just as she lived her woman's life. There wasproper division of labor in the work they individually performed. Butthe whole was entwined and woven into a fabric of mutual interest andconsideration. He was as deeply interested in her cooking and hermusic as she was in his agricultural adventures in the vegetablegarden. And he, who resolutely declined to die of overwork, saw to itthat she should likewise escape so dire a risk.

  In this connection, using his man's judgment and putting his man's footdown, he refused to allow her to be burdened with the entertaining ofguests. For guests they had, especially in the warm, long summers, andusually they were her friends from the city, who were put to camp intents which they cared for themselves, and where, like true campers,they had also to cook for themselves. Perhaps only in California,where everybody knows camp life, would such a program have beenpossible. But Daylight's steadfast contention was that his wife shouldnot become cook, waitress, and chambermaid because she did not happento possess a household of servants. On the other hand, chafing-dishsuppers in the big living-room for their camping guests were a commonhappening, at which times Daylight allotted them their chores and sawthat they were performed. For one who stopped only for the night itwas different. Likewise it was different with her brother, back fromGermany, and again able to sit a horse. On his vacations he became thethird in the family, and to him was given the building of the fires,the sweeping, and the washing of the dishes.

  Daylight devoted himself to the lightening of Dede's labors, and it washer brother who incited him to utilize the splendid water-power of theranch that was running to waste. It required Daylight's breaking ofextra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a threeweeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Peltingwheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe and grindstone,Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph waswhen he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect awashing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked andreally washed clothes.

  Dede and Ferguson, between them, after a patient struggle, taughtDaylight poetry, so that in the end he might have been often seen,sitting slack in the saddle and dropping down the mountain trailsthrough the sun-flecked woods, chanting aloud Kipling's "Tomlinson,"or, when sharpening his ax, singing into the whirling grindstoneHenley's "Song of the Sword." Not that he ever became consummatelyliterary in the way his two teachers were. Beyond "Fra Lippo Lippi"and "Caliban and Setebos," he found nothing in Browning, while GeorgeMeredith was ever his despair. It was of his own initiative, however,that he invested in a violin, and practised so assiduously that in timehe and Dede beguiled many a happy hour playing together after night hadfallen.

  So all went well with this well-mated pair. Time never dragged. Therewere always new wonderful mornings and still cool twilights at the endof day; and ever a thousand interests claimed him, and his interestswere shared by her. More thoroughly than he knew, had he come to acomprehension of the relativity of things. In this new game he playedhe found in little things all the intensities of gratification anddesire that he had found in the frenzied big things when he was a powerand rocked half a continent with the fury of the blows he struck. Withhead and hand, at risk of life and limb, to bit and break a wild coltand win it to the service of man, was to him no less great anachievement. And this new table on which he played the game was clean.Neither lying, nor cheating, nor hypocrisy was here. The other gamehad made for decay and death, while this new one made for cleanstrength and life. And so he was content, with Dede at his side, towatch the procession of the days and seasons from the farm-houseperched on the canon-lip; to ride through crisp frosty mornings orunder burning summer suns; and to shelter in the big room where blazedthe logs in the fireplace he had built, while outside the worldshuddered and struggled in the storm-clasp of a southeaster.

  Once only Dede asked him if he ever regretted, and his answer was tocrush her in his arms and smother her lips with his. His answer, aminute later, took speech.

  "Little woman, even if you did cost thirty millions, you are sure thecheapest necessity of life I ever indulged in." And then he added,"Yes, I do have one regret, and a monstrous big one, too. I'd surelike to have the winning of you all over again. I'd like to go sneakingaround the Piedmont hills looking for you. I'd like to meander intothose rooms of yours at Berkeley for the first time. And there's nouse talking, I'm plumb soaking with regret that I can't put my armsaround you again that time you leaned your head on my breast and criedin the wind and rain."