"What are you going to do?"
"Oh, I ain"t scairt none," he answered. "But, honest to G.o.d, this is gettin" on my nerves. If I don"t find what that thing is, it"ll give me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s. I"m just goin" to reconnoiter. I won"t go close."
So intensely dark was the night, that the moment Billy crawled beyond the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and waited. The sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy"s progress by the cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few moments he returned and crawled under the blankets.
"I scared it away, I guess. It"s got better ears, an" when it heard me comin" it skinned out most likely. I did my dangdest, too, not to make a sound.--O Lord, there it goes again."
They sat up. Saxon nudged Billy.
"There," she warned, in the faintest of whispers. "I can hear it breathing. It almost made a snort."
A dead branch cracked loudly, and so near at hand, that both of them jumped shamelessly.
"I ain"t goin" to stand any more of its foolin"," Billy declared wrathfully. "It"ll be on top of us if I don"t."
"What are you going to do?" she queried anxiously.
"Yell the top of my head off. I"ll get a fall outa whatever it is."
He drew a deep breath and emitted a wild yell.
The result far exceeded any expectation he could have entertained, and Saxon"s heart leaped up in sheer panic. On the instant the darkness erupted into terrible sound and movement. There were trashings of underbrush and lunges and plunges of heavy bodies in different directions. Fortunately for their ease of mind, all these sounds receded and died away.
"An" what d"ye think of that?" Billy broke the silence.
"Gee! all the fight fans used to say I was scairt of nothin". Just the same I"m glad they ain"t seein" me to-night."
He groaned. "I"ve got all I want of that blamed sand. I"m goin" to get up and start the fire."
This was easy. Under the ashes were live embers which quickly ignited the wood he threw on. A few stars were peeping out in the misty zenith.
He looked up at them, deliberated, and started to move away.
"Where are you going now?" Saxon called.
"Oh, I"ve got an idea," he replied noncommittally, and walked boldly away beyond the circle of the firelight.
Saxon sat with the blankets drawn closely under her chin, and admired his courage. He had not even taken the hatchet, and he was going in the direction in which the disturbance had died away.
Ten minutes later he came back chuckling.
"The sons-of-guns, they got my goat all right. I"ll be scairt of my own shadow next.--What was they? Huh! You couldn"t guess in a thousand years. A bunch of half-grown calves, an" they was worse scairt than us."
He smoked a cigarette by the fire, then rejoined Saxon under the blankets.
"A h.e.l.l of a farmer I"ll make," he chafed, "when a lot of little calves can scare the stuffin" outa me. I bet your father or mine wouldn"t a-batted an eye. The stock has gone to seed, that"s what it has."
"No, it hasn"t," Saxon defended. "The stock is all right. We"re just as able as our folks ever were, and we"re healthier on top of it. We"ve been brought up different, that"s all. We"ve lived in cities all our lives. We know the city sounds and thugs, but we don"t know the country ones. Our training has been unnatural, that"s the whole thing in a nutsh.e.l.l. Now we"re going in for natural training. Give us a little time, and we"ll sleep as sound out of doors as ever your father or mine did."
"But not on sand," Billy groaned.
"We won"t try. That"s one thing, for good and all, we"ve learned the very first time. And now hush up and go to sleep."
Their fears had vanished, but the sand, receiving now their undivided attention, multiplied its unyieldingness. Billy dozed off first, and roosters were crowing somewhere in the distance when Saxon"s eyes closed. But they could not escape the sand, and their sleep was fitful.
At the first gray of dawn, Billy crawled out and built a roaring fire.
Saxon drew up to it shiveringly. They were hollow-eyed and weary. Saxon began to laugh. Billy joined sulkily, then brightened up as his eyes chanced upon the coffee pot, which he immediately put on to boil.
CHAPTER III
It is forty miles from Oakland to San Jose, and Saxon and Billy accomplished it in three easy days. No more obliging and angrily garrulous linemen were encountered, and few were the opportunities for conversation with chance wayfarers. Numbers of tramps, carrying rolls of blankets, were met, traveling both north and south on the county road; and from talks with them Saxon quickly learned that they knew little or nothing about farming. They were mostly old men, feeble or besotted, and all they knew was work--where jobs might be good, where jobs had been good; but the places they mentioned were always a long way off. One thing she did glean from them, and that was that the district she and Billy were pa.s.sing through was "small-farmer" country in which labor was rarely hired, and that when it was it generally was Portuguese.
The farmers themselves were unfriendly. They drove by Billy and Saxon, often with empty wagons, but never invited them to ride. When chance offered and Saxon did ask questions, they looked her over curiously, or suspiciously, and gave ambiguous and facetious answers.
"They ain"t Americans, d.a.m.n them," Billy fretted. "Why, in the old days everybody was friendly to everybody."
But Saxon remembered her last talk with her brother.
"It"s the spirit of the times, Billy. The spirit has changed. Besides, these people are too near. Wait till we get farther away from the cities, then we"ll find them more friendly."
"A measly lot these ones are," he sneered.
"Maybe they"ve a right to be," she laughed. "For all you know, more than one of the scabs you"ve slugged were sons of theirs."
"If I could only hope so," Billy said fervently. "But I don"t care if I owned ten thousand acres, any man hikin" with his blankets might be just as good a man as me, an" maybe better, for all I"d know. I"d give "m the benefit of the doubt, anyway."
Billy asked for work, at first, indiscriminately, later, only at the larger farms. The unvarying reply was that there was no work. A few said there would be plowing after the first rains. Here and there, in a small way, dry plowing was going on. But in the main the farmers were waiting.
"But do you know how to plow?" Saxon asked Billy.
"No; but I guess it ain"t much of a trick to turn. Besides, next man I see plowing I"m goin" to get a lesson from."
In the mid-afternoon of the second day his opportunity came. He climbed on top of the fence of a small field and watched an old man plow round and round it.
"Aw, shucks, just as easy as easy," Billy commented scornfully. "If an old codger like that can handle one plow, I can handle two."
"Go on and try it," Saxon urged.
"What"s the good?"
"Cold feet," she jeered, but with a smiling face. "All you have to do is ask him. All he can do is say no. And what if he does? You faced the Chicago Terror twenty rounds without flinching."
"Aw, but it"s different," he demurred, then dropped to the ground inside the fence. "Two to one the old geezer turns me down."
"No, he won"t. Just tell him you want to learn, and ask him if he"ll let you drive around a few times. Tell him it won"t cost him anything."
"Huh! If he gets chesty I"ll take his blamed plow away from him."