The Valley of the Moon

nough at night to need blankets, and not only pines but plenty of other kinds of trees, with open spaces to pasture Billy's horses and cattle, and deer and r

laughed de

e, bees without stings, honey dew every morning, showers of manna betweenwhiles, fountains

in them, he got out a big atlas, and, though all the countrie

Come over to-night and I

nda to the telescope, and she found her

some valley you'll find

uiringly at them as

ey in the moon where she expe

istance," Saxon said. "And if it's t

earth," Hall continued. "For instance, you can't have redwoods wit

ebated

it's anything like Mr. Hafler's marble quarry, and there's a railroad handy, I guess we could manage to worry along. And you don't have to go to the moon for ho

mained uppermost, Hall swept off into a diatribe against the "g

and vastest natural resources of any country in the world, settled by immigrants who had thrown off all the leading strings of the Old World and

moved over the face of the land like so many locusts. They destroyed everything-the Indians, the soil, the forests, just as they destroyed the buffalo and the passenger pigeon. Their morality in business and politics was gambler morality. Their laws were gambling laws-how to play the ga

with the lands and forests and mines, they turned back, gambling for any little stakes they'd overlooked, gambling for fr

in their pockets and look on. When they got hungry, they went, hat in hand, and begged the successful gamblers for a job. The losers went to work for the winners, and they've been workin

lly asked. "I ain't seen

. I don't count.

t's

don't have to gamble. I don't have to work. My father left me enough of his winnings.-Oh, don't preen yourself

ended stoutly. "A man with g

t land?" Hall

d and acknowle

he can win out,

who lose. How many tramps have you met along the road who could get a job driving four horses for the Carmel Livery Stable? And some of them were as husky a

ame-" Billy

y has been gambling for generations. It was in the air when you were born. You've breathed it all your

of us losers to do

stop the game," Hall rec

n fr

dn't do," he amplified. "Go

edes. "A friend of mine says th

w swallowing the gump of canal boy to President, and millions of worthy citizens wh

litics and work hard for something better maybe we'll get it after a thousand years or so

w-a stack of chips and a fling at the game. Well, they won't get it now. That's what's the matter with you, chasing a valley in the moon. T

a good soap-boxer

ten gains. It's none of my affair. Let them rot. They'd be just as bad if the

. Hall i

p that, or you'll b

of hair and laug

to get ten cents from Billy at a gam

ad grown opulent. They fared better physically, materially, and spiritually; and all this was reflected in their features, in the carriage of their bodies. She knew Billy had never been handsomer nor in more splendid bodily condition. He swore he had a harem, and that she was his second wife-twice as be

broken arms, stood in Hall's living room, and the poet had to

y said; and so proud was his air of possession that Saxon b

ly than ever. Nor was she guilty of over-appraisal. She knew him for what he was, and loved him with open eyes. He had no book learning, no art, like the other men. His grammar was bad; she knew that, just a

ten Hall in argument the night the poet was on the pessimistic rampage. Billy had beaten him, not with the weapons of learning, but just by being himself and by speaking out the truth that was in him. Best of all, he had not even known that he had

th joy at recollection of his way of informing some truculent male that he was standing on his foot. "Get off your foot. You're standin' on it." It was Billy! It was magnificently Billy. And it was this Billy who loved her. She knew it. She knew it by the pul

o saddle horses had been left in his charge, and Saxon made herself a pretty cross-saddle riding costume of tawny-brown corduroy that matched the glints in her hair. Billy no longer worked at odd jobs. As extra driver at the stable he earned more than they spent, and, in preference to cash, he taught Saxon to ride, a

heir horses to a halt and gazed down into Carmel Valley. "I ain't ne

erything," she

on stayin' there an' livin' the way we used to? It'd mean work all day, three squares, an' movin' pictures for recreation. Movin' pictures! Huh! We're livin'

of summer arrived. Fortunately, the poet was put to no inconvenience, for Bideaux, the Iron Man with the basilisk eyes, had abandoned his

wner of the Carmel stable offered to put Billy in charge at ninety dollars

hailed them on the station platform at Mon

the moon," Saxon

their busine

g." Then his face fell. "And I've signed the contract," he groa