The Valley of the Moon

's, but at Saxon's suggestion

e looking for land and finding out about land, the quicker we begin to investigate the better. Besides,

quarters," was Billy's reiterated comme

hey'd crowd our kind

bled. "It looks like the free-born Americ

, with vague asperity, resenting cond

t the Porchugeeze do if he wanted to. Only he don't want to, tha

overted. "But I've seen an awful lot of

hey quit the farms an' go to the city for

letting out. And nearly all are Portuguese, Billy,

Billy sneered. "They had to come over here to get decent

a great light seemed suddenly

hey're doing it-doing it farming

he objected, pointing to a piece of land bare

d wanted to own a million, and who wound up as night watchman. That's what was the trouble with all u

"large scale's a whole lot better'n sm

ally, "-owning a few little acres and the team you're driving, or n

y wi

adrivin' other folkses' teams for a livin', a-strikin' and a-sluggin' scabs, an' not bein' able to keep up with the installments for a few sticks of furniture.

egion of tiny holdings-"farmlets," Billy called them;

y," and then she swung into old-fashioned

llin', yes, a-rollin', I hear the trumpet

a dusty pause in her singing, and Saxon

e up with the first piece of land we see. We

n't open yet

care if it takes months and months. We're footloose. A good start is better than a dozen bad ones. We've got to t

and at askin' questi

Portuguese. Where are all the Americans? They owned the land first, after the Mexicans. What made the Amer

s, and then her clear sw

ere de orange blossoms grow, For I hear de chillun callin', I see

What a lovely place! See that a

they passed. Now it was: "Look at the flowers!" or:

axon and Billy curiously. This Saxon could brook far easier tha

y came upon a linem

alk," Saxon

He's a lineman. What'd

way, and he'll be more likely to talk. See that tree in there, just inside the gate, and the way the

, when they w

do," he sa

ed in the cracking of a hard-boil

you do,"

houlders to the ground, and Sax

s question directly to Saxon, yet dividing it between h

"We're looking for land. Do

tudying them with sharp eyes as i

land sells for aro

n answered

ke this all around you runs at from two to three

led. "I guess we do

at high? Town lots?"

geeze make it tha

ood land that fetched a hu

ive away land once, an' if you was good

land around here?" w

acres around here for fifteen hundred dollars-five hundred down an' the balance in five years without inter

all right,"

the land it'd been better than a gold mine, an' I wo

ams

e strike i

e teamed there m

ion affairs and the strike situation; but Saxon refus

guese ran up the pric

effort, and for a moment regarded her with lack luste

f a hundred an' sixty. Look at old Silva-Antonio Silva. I've known him ever since I was a shaver. He didn't have the price of a square meal when he hit this section and begun leasi

out of your folks' l

ed his head with e

your folks do i

shrugged h

me," h

was in the land

saw it stickin' out so as you could notice it. The money was in the hands

y. "Come on, an' I'll show you," he said. "I'll show you why I'm workin' for wages when I might a-ben a

. From the main crotch diverged the four main branches of the tree. Two feet above the cr

ung, an' twisted 'em together. Pretty slick, eh? You bet. That tree'll never blow down. It's a natural, springy brace, an' beats iron bra

ke ten acres of trees. That'd be some several thousan' props. Which cost money, an' labor to put in an' take out every year. These here natural brac

betrayed perturbation at the freedom

herdin' in the mountains for a couple of years, then blew in to San Leandro. These five acres was the first land he leased. That was the beginnin'. Then he began leasin' by the hundreds of acres, an' by

outside the fence there, clear to the wheel-tracks in the road-horse-beans. We'd a-scorned to do a picayune thing like that. Not Silva. Why he's got a town house in San Leandro now. An' he rides around in a four-thousan'-dollar tourin' car. An' just the same his front door yard grows onions clear to the sidewalk. He clears three hundred a year on that patch alone. I know ten acres of land he bought last year,-a thousan'

did he get it all

woman, an' the babies. They have a sayin' that a kid four years old that can't pasture one cow on the county road an' keep it fat ain't worth his salt. Why, the Silva

n out-work any Portuguese woman ever born. And I've done it, too, in the jute mills. There were lots of Portuguese girls wor

oked at her in

ll over us, get our land, an' start accounts in the banks?' An' the only answer I know is that we ain't got the sabe. We don't use our head-pieces right. Something's wrong with us. Anyway, we wasn't wised up to farming. We played at it. Show you? That's what I brung yo

' putting' in a telephone for old Silva's cousin from the Azores that can't speak American yet. Horse-beans along the road-say, when Silva swung that trick he made more outa fattenin' hogs with 'em than grandfather made with all his farmin'. Grandfather stuck up his nose at horse-beans. He died with it stuck up, an' with more mortgages on the land he had left than you could shake a stick at. Plantin' tomatoes wrapped up in wrappin' paper-ever heard of that? Father snorted when he first seen the Porchu

, when he looked at his watch, said good bye, and returned to his ta

ith loops, that, once on the road, she could thrust her arms through the loops and carry it on h

tage; but she was determined upon building a fire and boiling coffee. Not that she desired it for herself, but that she was impressed with the idea that everything at the starting of their strange wande

ave a good time, a regular adventure like you read about in books.-My! I wish that boy that took me fishing to Goat Island could see me now. Oakland was just a place to start from, he

waited for the water to boil, "d

ow, but she shook her head.

e drove out to Moraga Valley behind Prince

umptious lunch," she ad

didn't have coffee

like housekeeping," she laughed; "kin

olated. "She was alway

ok what bec

ced it's the fastidious, la-de-da ones that turn out the rottenest. They're

s, vague and remote, which the mention

that day which you'd never guess,"

urmured, and guesse

eously he reached over, caught her hand,

ed hand. Then he gazed at Saxon, and she warmed with his w

d Billy was guilty of

e sank his teeth into his fifth bread-and-meat sandwich. "I c

d her, and she completed a sort of general resume of the i

that is that this is no place for us, with land a tho

ng to stop here,"

they make things go on it-send their children to school... and ha

at off to them,"

acre than four at a thousan' an acre. Somehow, you know, I'd

s tugged much the harder. In her way, allowing for the difference of a g

illy. "We're going in, not for forty acres, but for

xon, when a woman walks across the plains like your mother done, an' a man an' wife gets massac

up to us t

right, somewhere down in them re