第179章 CHAPTER XXII(2)

"Makes me ashamed to think how much cash money each one of them teams is bringin' me in every day," he acknowledged.

They were turning off from the road toward the bars which gave entrance to the one hundred and forty, when the driver of the foremost wagon hallo'd and waved his hand. They drew in their horses and waited.

"The big roan's broke loose," the dryer said, as he stopped beside them. "Clean crazy loco--bitin', squealin', strikin', kickin'. Kicked clean out of the harness like it was paper. Bit a chunk out of Baldy the size of a saucer, an' wound up by breakin' his own hind leg. Liveliest fifteen minutes I ever seen."

"Sure it's broke?" Billy demanded sharply.

"Sure thing."

"Well, after you unload, drive around by the other barn and get Ben. He's in the corral. Tell Matthews to be easy with 'm. An' get a gun. Sammy's got one. You'll have to see to the briig roan.

I ain't got time now.--Why couldn't Matthews a-come along with you for Ben? You'd save time."

"Oh, he's just stickin'around waitin'," the driver answered. "He reckoned I could get Ben."

"An' lose time, eh? Well, get a move on."

"That's the way of it," Billy growled to Saxon as they rode on.

"No savve. No head. One man settin' down an' holdin his hands while another team drives outa its way doin what he oughta done.

That's the trouble with two-dollar-a-day men."

"With two-dollar-a-day heads," Saxon said quickly."What kind of heads do you expect for two dollars?"

"That's right, too," Billy acknowledged the hit. "If they had better heads they'd be in the cities like all the rest of the better men. An' the better men are a lot of dummies, too. They don't know the big chances in the country, or you couldn't hold 'm from it."

Billy dismounted, took the three bars down, led his horse through, then put up the bars.

"When I get this place, there'll be a gate here," he announced.

"Pay for itself in no time. It's the thousan' an' one little things like this that count up big when you put 'm together." He sighed contentedly. "I never used to think about such things, but when we shook Oakland I began to wise up. It was them San Leandro Porchugeeze that gave me my first eye-opener. I'd been asleep, before that."

They skirted the lower of the three fields where the ripe hay stood uncut. Billy pointed with eloquent disgust to a break in the fence, slovenly repaired, and on to the standing grain much-trampled by cattle.

"Them's the things," he criticized. "Old style. An' look how thin that crop is, an' the shallow plowin'. Scrub cattle, scrub seed, scrub farmin'. Chavon's worked it for eight years now, an' never rested it once, never put anything in for what he took out, except the cattle into the stubble the minute the hay was on."

In a pasture glade, farther on, they came upon a bunch of cattle.

"Look at that bull, Saxon. Scrub's no name for it. They oughta be a state law against lettin' such animals exist. No wonder Chavon's that land poor he's had to sink all his clay-pit earnin's into taxes an' interest. He can't make his land pay.

Take this hundred an forty. Anybody with the savve can just rake silver dollars offen it. I'll show 'm."

They passed the big adobe barn in the distance.

"A few dollars at the right time would a-saved hundreds on that roof," Billy commented. "Well, anyway, I won't be payin' for any improvements when I buy. An I'll tell you another thing. This ranch is full of water, and if Glen Ellen ever grows they'll have to come to see me for their water supply."

Billy knew the ranch thoroughly, and took short-cuts through the woods by way of cattle paths. Once, he reined in abruptly, and both stopped. Confronting them, a dozen paces away, was a half-grown red fox. For half a minute, with beady eyes, the wild thing studied them, with twitching sensitive nose reading the messages of the air. Then, velvet-footed, it leapt aside and was gone among the trees.

"The son-of-a-gun!" Billy ejaculated.

As they approached Wild Water; they rode out into a long narrow meadow. In the middle was a pond.

"Natural reservoir, when Glen Ellen begins to buy water," Billy said. "See, down at the lower end there?--wouldn't cost anything hardly to throw a dam across. An' I can pipe in all kinds of hill-drip. An' water's goin' to be money in this valley not a thousan' years from now.--An' all the ginks, an' boobs, an' dubs, an' gazabos poundin' their ear deado an' not seein' it comin.--An' surveyors workin' up the valley for an electric road from Sausalito with a branch up Napa Valley."

They came to the rim of Wild Water canyon. Leaning far back in their saddles, they slid the horses down a steep declivity, through big spruce woods, to an ancient and all but obliterated trail.

"They cut this trail 'way back in the Fifties," Billy explained.

"I only found it by accident. Then I asked Poppe yesterday. He was born in the valley. He said it was a fake minin' rush across from Petaluma. The gamblers got it up, an' they must a-drawn a thousan' suckers. You see that flat there, an' the old stumps.

That's where the camp was. They set the tables up under the trees. The flat used to be bigger, but the creek's eaten into it.

Poppe said they was a couple of killin's an' one lynchin'."

Lying low against their horses' necks, they scrambled up a steep cattle trail out of the canyon, and began to work across rough country toward the knolls.

"Say, Saxon, you're always lookin' for something pretty. I'll show you what'll make your hair stand up . . . soon as we get through this manzanita."