The Rose Dawn/Chapter 3

by Stewart Edward White

 

CHAPTER III

I

NOWADAYS the arrival of hotel guests means little or nothing to the residents of a resort town like Arguello. Then the societies of the town, the ranches, and the hotels were intermingled. A journey to California was not to be lightly undertaken. It consumed a week. The country was still wild. At this period the buffalo herds had not yet been exterminated; the blanket Indian was a commonplace, and such things as antelope, coyotes, lobo wolves, prairie dogs, and burrowing owls found their way into every letter home. The Golden State was far separated from the rest of the world, not only by space and time, but also by a zone of exotic experience. One felt oneself remote. The tourist never dreamed of undertaking the journey for less than an all-winter's stay. And since the local travel also was apt to be difficult and uncomfortable, as compared with our modern extra-fare trains, it also followed that the tourist was quite likely to settle down in one place and stay there.

Thus such a hotel as the Fremont had its regular inhabitants with whom the townspeople became intimately acquainted. The latter attended the weekly dances, and sat about the broad verandas. There was as yet no man's club in the village, and the place of it was taken by the Fremont's bar, where at one time or another could be met any of Arguello's male citizens. The Spanish-Californian element was still strong. It was the custom of certain of the young men of that race to serenade with voice and guitar such of the visiting damsels as caught their eye, whether or not they happened to be personally acquainted with said damsels. It was an entirely respectful tribute without ulterior motive, a custom of the place. Many a maiden heart has overflowed with emotion and exaltation and high romance at the plaintive, liquid sounds rising to her rosebowered window through the tepid semi-tropical night, with the moon hung like a lantern above the sea, and the mountains slumbering dark like inert beasts.

"Adios, adios amores——"
and the thin high thrill of frogs; and the heavy scent of orange blossoms and honeysuckle lying in the dusk like a fog—it was perhaps as well that the serenaders did take it all impersonally as a pretty custom, leaving the surcharged damsels to write reams to an utterly sceptical bosom friend in the East.

In such an intimate community the hotel register was the most consulted volume in or out of the county library. It was mounted on a revolving stand for easier reference.

Patrick Boyd and his son Kenneth received on arrival their full share of discussion. Not only were they an attractive couple personally—Boyd thick-set, blue-clad, jolly and vital; Kenneth tall, goodlooking, curly haired, laughing—but their name itself meant something to the rocking chair conference of the powers.

George Scott told them about him. Scott was a short, thick apoplectic little man who had come to California to die of various plethoric complaints, but had postponed doing so. He had never done a stroke of work in his life; but he had belonged to all the best clubs; he had travelled not only in Europe but in the Far East as well; he knew all the great names in social, political, financial, and military circles; and the latter days of his New York life had been dumpily but magnificently spent in the deep leather chairs of the Union League Club, gazing forth on the shifting Avenue. He thus possessed a wide knowledge and had acquired a biting tongue. Whether from liver or pose he was not afraid to express his full opinion, uncoated with the sugar of tact or, indeed, of common charity. If he did not like a man, he said so. He prided himself, however, in maintaining strictly the spectator's standpoint, and in never taking sides. Add a faculty of making enthusiasms look ridiculous by a mere air of detached amusement. Naturally he was much sought after and deferred to.

"Patrick Boyd," he told the other men oracularly, when the name had been reported back from the hotel register, "made his money in street railways. He is a Mick—came from Ireland in the steerage. Nevertheless he is a real person. He is nobody's fool, naturally; and those who have tried it say he is a bad man to fight. As he has no women of his class to hold him back, he has been well received—is a member of the Club. I don't need to tell Mr. Oberman what his standing is among men of wealth."

The millionaire brewer grunted. "All I got to say," he rumbled, "iss that when Pat Boyd talks pizaniss, you better pay attention."

The object of the discussion at this moment appeared in the wide doorways. His chest was thrown out, and his jolly face was twinkling with the pleasure of the fresh morning. He looked slowly about him at the mountains, the gardens, the people on the veranda. As his eye fell on the group in the rocking chairs, he strolled forward.

"How are you, Scott," he greeted the little man. "Surprised to see you here; thought you went to the Riviera, winters."

Boyd dropped easily into the group. They were all, except Scott, business men on long vacations; and they possessed all the vast leisure, boyish irresponsibility, and dry humour of their species. Boyd found them immediately congenial and proceeded to fall in step with their daily routine.

The latter was very simple. When their after-breakfast cigars were smoked out, they mounted horses and rode. In that they did not differ from all the rest of mankind. But their rides were, from the standpoint of the youngsters, intolerably pokey. Rarely, except for short distances and on the smooth roads or the beach, did they leave a walk. Nevertheless, first and last they covered a deal of country. And the amount of solemn chaffing and small practical joking that went on would have disgraced the Sixth Grade.

Occasionally, when the tide was low, they rode along the sands; and occasionally they took an excursion across the oak dotted acres of the ranchos. But much they preferred to clamber single file along the trails in the Sur. Then trails were not as they are now, graded, brushed, and smoothed by Forest Services or Chambers of Commerce. They were really rough and precipitous. It took Boyd some time to become accustomed to riding on them. The park horses he knew would never have been able to keep their footing in the loose stones and on the big outcropping boulders, over which these animals clambered so blithely. These trails, too, stood disconcertingly on end, so that the horses had to scramble hard with many humping heaves to reach a foothold where they could breathe; or they bunched all their feet together and sat back to slide. It was most unhorselike. And Boyd for a long time rested his weight on the inside stirrup where the trail narrowed, and the outside stirrup hung out over blue depths where the buzzards soared below him. He leaned slightly inward and looked straight ahead and conversed rather disjointedly. It was not that he was actually afraid, but he certainly was nervous. Those gay old birds, his companions, knew perfectly for they had been there themselves. Therefore they delighted at such times in trotting their horses, leaning forward to slap Boyd's animal on the haunches with their morales—the braided whip-like ends of the reins. After a while Boyd came to understand that to these hillbred horses, such a terrain was as safe as a boulevard. Then he relaxed and enjoyed himself.

The trails started in the canons with their shady oaks and sycamores, their parks of grass and flowers, their leaping sparkling streams with boulders and pools, waterfalls and fern banks; they climbed by lacets to a "hogsback"—or tributary ridge—through overarching cascara and mountain lilac; and so proceeded to upper regions. The sun against the shade and the chaparral warmed to life many odours. White of cascara, blue of lilac powdered whole mountain sides with bloom; the leaves of the mountain cherries glittered in the sun, and the satin red bark of manzanita glowed. The air was like crystal under the blue sky, and the single notes of the mountain quail rang clear as though the crystal had been struck. Cañon slopes fell away grandly. Great mathematical shadows defined the sharp ridge—and the abrupt foldings of the hills. The sky was a steady, calm watchful blue. No wonder old boys—old, but always boys—turned light hearted and played pranks that would have made their children or grandchildren ashamed—if they had known! Especially as George Scott, the amused cynic, never went riding. He spent his mornings at the beach, watching the bathers, snubbing the forward, and uttering caustic comment.

But it was when they stopped on some outlying spur and looked abroad on the scenery that the real charm of the country gripped them.

For over the panorama below them lay a misty peace, a suspended stillness as though a great Spirit had sighed in his sleep and had for a contented moment held his breath, and the moment was as the Biblical thousand years. From above, the folds of the lesser hills were soft and rounded, and on them showed the dark spots of the trees. The sea rose up from the depths below them until it met the horizon at the level of the eye. This gave it the curious effect of being the opposite wall of a cañon in the bottom of which lay Arguello and the farms and the ranchos and the shore. A yellow haze mellowed it. From incredible distances and with incredible clarity, rose single sounds—the stroke of a bell, the lowing of cattle. The pungent aroma of sage brush—Old Man—hung in the air.

The old boys used to stop and look on all this with great inner appreciation, but with outward indifference. At length Boyd himself broke out:

"Where on the globe," he cried, "will you find anything even approaching this? The climate is perfect; the people—look at the way that country lies! There's not another place in the world where you can ride a horse in high mountains and come home on a beach two hundred feet wide, and do it all in one afternoon! There's not another place like it in California! Why look at the size of that valley, and consider how many people, wealthy people, will flock in here when a few of them get to know it as we know it! There won't be room for them! Why, the fellow who owns real estate——"

They crowded their horses around him whooping with amusement, slapping him on the back, while even the staid old horse fidgeted.

"He's got it!" they cried. "It's bit him!" "The old cuss has a bad case; he'll come back!"

Boyd stood their banter with a grin that was at first a little shamefaced, but soon became triumphant. His was not a nature to take it lying down.

"Yes, I've got it, you poor nincompoops; and I'm bit. But I'm not coming back. Why? Because I won't have to. I'm going to stay. Just soak that up, will you? You got to go back and attend to your business. I don't have to unless I want to; and I don't want to. While you are sweating away in those pleasant eastern summers, or thawing the icicles out of the whiskers of hope before you can get away next winter, you just think of me right up here, or right down there picking oranges and flowers and filling my system up with this good air!"

"You don't mean that, do you, Boyd?" inquired Saxon, the shoe man.

"Of course I mean it."

"How about your business?"

"To hell with my business! It don't need me any more: and I don't need it."

"I don't know," rejoined Saxon doubtfully. He with the rest was sobered down from vacation irresponsibility by Boyd's decision to do what each had secretly played with as a fascinating but impractical possibility. "How about yourself? You'll get sick of this sort of a thing as a steady diet."

"I'll get me a place," said Boyd, stoutly. "I'll buy me a ranch over the mountains. There's a big future in this place. It's asleep now ; sure thing. But it can be waked up. It ought to be waked up. Judging from what I've seen, that would keep a man busy for a while. Oh, I won't take root, if that's what you mean. You fellows are as blind as bats. All you see is a sleepy little backwater town that you have a good time in. It's got a great future."

"So confounded future that you won't live to see it—except of course that more and more tourists will come in. You aren't going into the resort business, are you, Boyd? " observed someone else.

"I may. Do'no yet. But you can stick a railroad up the coast, and bore a tunnel in through these mountains here for water so you can irrigate the way they've begun to do at San Bernardino, and cut up these big ranches into farms with water on them, and——"

But his companions burst out laughing.

"You're in the traction business," Saxon suggested. "How about it? After you get all these mountains knocked down and kicked out the way for your railroad, how about a new mule for the street car system?"

"I may take hold of that, too," rejoined Boyd, after the renewal of laughter.

He had not before seriously considered abandoning the East, but suddenly he could see no reason against it. Since his last merger he had practically retired from active management of the concerns that brought him his enormous income. He had no other family ties than those that bound him to his son, Kenneth. To a man of his temperament new friends quickly replaced the old. The vision, genuine though narrowly commercial, that had made him what he was, pierced the veils of apathy behind which Arguello slumbered to a sense of the rose dawn of a modern day. Now, suddenly, there on top of the mountain he came to a decision.

After lunch most of the old boys took naps as part of the complete rest they had come out here for. About three or half past, they came to life and assembled in the room back of the bar where they played hilarious poker until dinner time. Boyd did not need a nap, so he usually occupied the time before the poker game began in a stroll down the long main street.

He was of a gregarious nature and utterly democratic, and thus he became genially acquainted with about everybody who did business on Main Street, from Chipo the bootblack to Oliver Mills the banker. At first he pursued these various acquaintances idly and for the amusement and companionship they afforded him; but once he had decided to settle down in the place he began very keenly to direct his efforts. Jim Paige in his harness shop was a mine of information, and loved to gossip in his slow, drawling fashion. Boyd immensely enjoyed his humour, and at the same time gained a pretty comprehensive birds-eye-view of the valley's history and present status. Of county politics he learned from Dan Mitchell, the shirt-sleeved, tobacco chewing, fat, sleepy-eyed, cynical editor of the Weekly Trumpet. He even added Chinatown to his collection after a time, thrusting his head in at strange doors and shouting a cheery greeting to grave celestials with red buttoned caps. He perched for minutes at a time on the edge of Gin Gwee's counter watching the laundry boys blowing fine sprays from their mouths. On all the length of Main Street was not one shop, laundry, bank or office—on the ground floor—with whose interior he was not more or less familiar.

The occupant of one office eluded him for long enough to arouse his interest. It was a very small office, hardly more than a cubby hole, obviously boarded off from another and much larger establishment. Looking through the window Boyd saw a cheap golden-oak roll-top desk, one very second hand swivel chair, another chair that looked much as though its intended objective had been the kitchen. The other furnishings consisted of lithographed advertising calendars, and one or two of those framed chromos of impossibly steady steamships cutting through tossing seas in which wallowed relatively minute rival craft. The gilded letters on the window conveyed the information that this was the business abode of Ephraim Spinner who sold and rented real estate, wrote insurance of all types, did stenography and typewriting, and held the office of notary public. Boyd for some time failed to catch a glimpse of Ephraim. The desk continued closed, the door locked, and on the knob hung a neatly lettered card that read: Back in ten minutes. It did not state which ten minutes.

In his idleness of mind Boyd used to peer in through the window as he passed and speculate on the personality and habits of Mr. Ephraim Spinner. He made a number of deductions. The place was always neat and picked up, which, of course might argue that it was never used. But dust failed to accumulate, and the swivel chair stood at several angles. Spinner, in the final analysis, Boyd decided must be either a very young man or a rather old one, a very busy man or a very lazy one. There was no middle ground. He would not spoil this very languid interest by inquiring.

So it was with rather a pleasurable quickening that at last he perceived the door standing open.

He entered the tiny office. A tall, spare nervous individual sat at the desk. He was a young man, but his face was strongly carved. His very blond hair stuck straight up in an old fashioned brush pompadour. His eybrows and eyelashes were likewise very blond, and the skin on his face and hands a clear transparent light brown that must have been equally fair before it had been much exposed to the sun. He wore what might be described as a "smart business suit"—a sort of bob-tailed cut-away, the edges of which were bound with black braid. His manners were alert as he swung to face Boyd.

"You are Mr. Spinner?" asked the latter.

"The same," jerked back the young man. "What can I do for you?"

The air was electric, charged with energy. Spinner apparently had not a moment to waste. Nevertheless Boyd seated himself comfortably in the kitchen chair.

"Have a cigar?" he proffered, "you are very little in your office, Mr. Spinner. I suppose I have been by here a dozen times and this is the first I have found you in."

"My business is largely outside," snapped back Spinner with an air that seemed to add, "and you're keeping me from going back to it."

"My name is Boyd—Patrick Boyd," he introduced himself. "I'm staying at the Fremont. It is in my mind to stay out here for a little while, and if so I do not want to stay on at a hotel."

At Boyd's name the eyes of the young man flickered for an instant; but his manner did not change.

"Buy or rent?" he demanded.

"That depends on what I can get."

"How big? How many in family?"

"Myself and my son—grown," answered Boyd, amused.

"Would you build?"

"I might."

Spinner whirled his chair back to the desk, snatched open a drawer, flipped over a pack of green cards, another of pink cards, and a third of white cards; selected a half dozen or so of each, slammed shut the roll top desk and arose.

"Come on," he said.

"Where?"

"To look at houses, of course," rejoined Spinner impatiently.

In meekness, admiration, and considerable amusement Boyd trailed his guide around the corner to where stood a horse and buggy. Spinner ran over his cards and climbed in.

"We'll look at rent places first," he announced.

"Would you mind my looking at these cards?" asked Boyd.

"Not at all. Help yourself."

In the year eighteen hundred and eighty-odd, card filing systems were so rare as to be practically unknown. Boyd looked upon Spinner's crude beginning with respect.

"Very ingenious," he commented, "and very handy."

"Saves time," said Spinner.

As they drove about from one place to another, Spinner kept up a rattling staccato commentary on Arguello, its resources, its climate, its future. As he talked a new and different Arguello took the place of the old. The bare and vacant foothills twinkled whitely with villas looking across Italian-wise to the sea, the rutted streets smoothed under pavements echoing to horses hoofs, the rolling reaches of the cattle country became snug with irrigated farms, fountains spouted in the barren square of the city park, a boulevard skirted the sea——

"It's a comer," he repeated, "a comer! All we need is a little enterprise to grasp the chance. It will come. These people here are asleep; they're dead. It needs a new lot, people who appreciate opportunities and have the bustle and get up and git."

"You can't very well kill the inhabitants off," laughed Boyd.

"Won't need to. They'll be submerged, lost. This town will grow so fast you won't be able to find an old hard-shell with a search warrant."

"Perhaps they can be waked up," suggested Boyd.

"They're dead," repeated Spinner, "you can't wake the dead. At least I can't. They've got no ambition. I never saw such a crowd! I've done my best, and I can't make a dent in them."

"Well, we may be able to do something," said Boyd, vaguely. He did not say so, but he could well conceive that the efforts of Patrick Boyd might get a reception that the efforts of Ephraim Spinner might lack.

In the course of investigation, which lasted over many days, they narrowed down to a quarter block lying just beyond Mrs. Stanley's place. It possessed two live oak trees; it was far enough out from the foothills to allow a view of the mountains: it caught a distant gleam of the sea; and—what Boyd foresaw would be most important—was within a few blocks of the Fremont. While the negotiations for its purchase were under way, Spinner had another suggestion.

"I've had a chance thrown my way," he said. "You're going to settle down here, you want to take an interest in the place, make a few investments, get an influence. Nothing like bank stock for that. And in a place like this bank stock is held mighty close. Formed by a few men and stock kept in the family. Now just at present I can get my hands on a good block of the First National. It's on the market, but quietly. I don't know for sure whether I'm the only agent. But it was put in my hands. It's a good buy as an investment; but it's a better buy because it's just what you need if you're going into affairs here. It's a chance you won't get every day."

"Give me the figures," said Boyd.

Thus it came about that he acquired the whole of Colonel Peyton's stock in the First National Bank, a very substantial interest that at once gave him a considerable influence in the management, should he choose to exert it.

II

Nor did Kenneth in his way make less of an initial impression than his forceful father. His handsome, laughing face and curly hair attracted attention at once; and his rather imperious manner did him no great harm. He was just past twenty, having graduated young from college; but, as is often the case with New York raised; youth, gave an appearance of being older. The young life of the place absorbed him. He was good at sports, and this was essentially an out-of-door existence. His riding school instruction stood him in good stead, although he had a great deal to re-learn. At first he was inclined to be scornful of stock saddles and long straight stirrups immediately under the body, of spade bits and the loose swinging rein, simply because he had been taught on an English saddle and with curb and snaffle rigging. But after he had ridden a few trails, and especially after his first hard all-day expedition, he began to discover that these things had a logic back of them. As they were also exotic and picturesque Kenneth naturally swung to the other extreme and became intensely partisan of all western gear. He also swam well and played a decent game of tennis. But his chief asset was his eager ready zest for everything.

A party of young people rode every morning, and gathered at the Fremont as a rendezvous. Kenneth had already met them at the barbecue. It was a small group, this, and kept itself to itself. There were always a few newcomers hanging about its fringes, but they rarely lasted long enough to gain an intimacy. These youngsters had been brought up on horseback, and they were little inclined to tolerate any lack of skill or determination. Indeed one of the first things they ordinarily did to a stranger was to take him at once up a peculiarly atrocious slide rock on the Arroyo Pinto trail, named Slippery Sal. If he took that smiling, they came home down the narrow way on the full trot, plunging down the almost perpendicular mountain side in short-cuts across the angles or lacets of the trail.

There were in this group three boys and four girls, all of an age. The boys, naturally, seemed much younger, were hobble-de-hoys, with the amusing admixture of boyish diffidences or crudenesses and a pseudo-manly ease. It was very evident that they were considered as mere children, useful at times, by the young ladies, their sisters, who at eighteen were in their own opinions quite grown-up and important. Kenneth agreed with them and found them charming. There were Dora Stanley, Myra Welch, and Isabelle Carson, with brothers Martin, Stanley, and Winchester Carson, all of whom Kenneth had met at Colonel Peyton's barbecue. Add also a small mischievous dark girl of sixteen, named Stella Maynard and a good deal of a nuisance in a gadfly fashion, and her brother John. Kenneth liked and patronized the "kids," as he looked on these fingerlings of the male sex: they made him feel old, important, a man of the world. He admired heartily the young ladies, their sisters, with their vigorous knowledge of out-of-door matters, their cool nerve, their sedate maturity flavoured with an occasional dash of tom-boy.

As was only human nature, especially at this age, he had his sentimental preference; or would have had could he have decided between two. Stella Maynard and Isabelle Carson were out of the running from the start. The former was a little brown thing with a sharp tongue and an unhappy faculty of making you feel that she was not taking you seriously at all points. The latter was too soft and slow and lazy. But between Dora Stanley and Myra Welch it was exceedingly difficult to choose. They were of quite opposite types, so their appeals could not be compared. Dora was quick, vivid in personality, exceedingly active physically, blonde, deep breasted, with a bright, high colour. She could hop on and off her sidesaddle without assistance from anybody; and she opened gates as she came to them, without masculine assistance. You could not "stump" her at anything. Once Kenneth by way of a particularly ridiculous joke said:

"I bet you don't dare ride down that rock slide."

Without a moment's hesitation she turned her horse's head toward the long, nearly perpendicular sweep of water-smoothed granite that dropped from the edge of the trail some fifty or sixty feet to the boulder-strewn creek bed. The animal hesitated, as well he might. Dora set her teeth and raised the short heavy quirt. There seemed no doubt that she intended to force Brownie to make the plunge. But Kenneth, his face pale as paper, crowded forward past Winchester, who sat in apparent paralysis, and laid his hand on her bridle reins.

"Hold on!" he cried, "I was only fooling! Don't you know better than to try that? You'll kill yourself!"

"I won't take a dare from anybody!" she answered, looking at him defiantly.

"Shucks," confided her brother Martin to his chum Winchester a little later. "I'm on to her. She'd have done it all right—if nobody had stopped her, but she knew darn well somebody would stop her," which was fairly astute even for younger brother, in which tribe no illusions dwell.

Myra Welch was just the opposite. She was slender and very dark, with a clear colourless complexion and slumbrous eyes veiled by indecently long lashes. Sometimes she raised them and looked appealing or helpless. She never thought of trying to climb into her sidesaddle without assistance. Her foot was small and arched. She placed the instep in the hollow of Kenneth's joined hands, and at a signal sprang lightly into the saddle. The brief momentary impact of her weight, the touch of her hand on his shoulder, the swirl of her habit as she hung her knee over the horn, the fumbling of her left foot for the stirrup—in which Kenneth must assist—all these possessed a strange and fascinating thrill. Twice or thrice he caught a glimpse of her silk stocking above her short boot, perhaps an inch or so lower than the hem of a modern skirt, but this was eighteen eighty-odd, and probably Myra got her effect. Then she would thank him demurely enough, but a fraction of a second before he would turn away she would raise her long demure lashes and gaze straight at him. Nor did she open gates, but waited. She had no brothers, but did not thereby escape brotherly criticisim. The three boys had grown up with her.

"Myra makes me sick!" said Win, bitterly. "I bet she gets his frat pin away from him in a month."

But for this sporting proposition he had no takers. Myra would certainly have had the fraternity emblem that acknowledgedly symbolic scalp of the college age—long before the month, had it not been that Kenneth was considerably intrigued by Dora's bold, vivid spirit. It was something he had not encountered in the East. Myra's type was not uncommon, though it must be confessed that she was Class A in her type.

Kenneth soon found that even the best horse he could hire at the big stables failed to do him sufficient honour. They were enduring enough. No amount of hard work could make more than a slight impression on these wiry western-bred animals, and these were certainly called upon to do their full share of the day's work. But livery horses get to be philosophers. They are ridden by so many different people that their pride of family descends to practically nil. They have no particular enthusiasm for scampers on the beach—who can tell how soon or for how far they will be called on again? Kenneth called his father's attention to the desirability of a private mount. Boyd saw the point.

At that time a first class California-bred horse, good in configuration, speedy, surefooted, could be had for twenty-five dollars. It was characteristic of Boyd that, from his intricate acquaintanceship on Main Street, he should know of a Kentucky mare, a chestnut, eight years old, a beautiful fine-bred animal that, nevertheless, had been raised in the back country and was as sure footed as any of the native stock. For her he paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars, an extravagant price as horse-flesh went. It was equally characteristic that he should refuse to finance Kenneth's idea as to fancy saddle and equipment.

"I'll buy you a good serviceable outfit," he proffered, "or I'll furnish half the money for any other outfit that you may want. But you will have to furnish the other half yourself."

"Where will I get the money?" returned Kenneth, doubtfully.

"You have an allowance"—Kenneth looked still more doubtful, "I know it is small, but it is sufficient if you want to deprive yourself of other things. Or you can go to work. I will find you something to do—probably in a bank. You will have no expenses, and can save all of your salary for whatever you want."

Kenneth looked out of the window toward the mountains.

"I want to work, of course," he returned, soberly, "and I suppose, since I graduated in mid-year, I ought not to wait over the summer vacation, as I should if I graduated in June. But I would like to start in the fall rather than now."

"I think myself that it would be better. I want you to have the benefit of this summer out-of-doors. It was only a suggestion."

Kenneth made arrangements for the rental of a livery outfit pending his ability to buy what he desired. He was still very much of a small boy in some respects. Jim Paige's harness shop inspired in him exactly the same longing as fills the breast of an urchin, nose pressed against the window, gazing in at an air gun or a Flobert rifle he knows to be beyond his reach. Kenneth loafed around Jim Paige's aromatic shop a great deal of the time. He half-pretended he liked to talk with Jim, whom he found to be a character, but in reality he came to gloat and yearn over certain articles he had singled out as to be his own in some impossibly remote future. It is not necessary to attempt an analysis of this feeling, nor to explain how in some mysterious manner these articles invested themselves with a compelling influence no mere physical objects ever could have. It is unnecessary because every mortal soul has experienced it.

There was, to begin with, the saddle. It was not a mere saddle, nor had it been picked out for its looks. By the time Kenneth had fully made up his mind to it, he knew a lot about saddles because there had been a great many decisions to make. The trees on which they were constructed were of different shapes—the Cheyenne, the Laramie and others—differing in the spread, the arch of the bow and the height of the cantle. Each type had its claimed advantages and its disadvantages. Each type also had its violent partisans in the persons of the cowboys who occasionally dropped across from the other side of the Sur and who roosted about Jim Paige's shop picturesquely, to the worshipful awe of the Eastern boy. His choice was decided by hearing an individual more dogmatic than the rest.

"The reason I holds with the Cheyenne is 'count of the bow," he said. "You take a centre-fire saddle and that bow and you tie to any steer on four hoofs and your outfit's going to hold."

On the strength of this Kenneth not only decided on the Cheyenne tree, but also the single cinch, or "centre-fire." Should he have the horn leather-covered or bare? Should the skirts have square corners or be cut away on a curve? Should the stirrups be of the ox-bow or California type? How about tapaderas, or stirrup covers? If it was decided to have them, should they be of the closed box type or the sort with long pointed flappers?

"When yo're drivin' cattle in the brush and you've got taps with flappers on them, you can just shake a foot and scare your stock out," stated the dogmatic cowboy.

So Kenneth decided on taps, just as he had decided on the Cheyenne tree, as though his chief requirement was a machine for handling heavy cattle!

The latigos must be of belt leather and without buckles—effeminate devices for saving time—what if just as you had roped a steer the buckle should tear out! For the same important reason the stirrup leathers must be quadruple, three inches wide, of thick stock, and must be laced with thongs. To change the length was a half hour's job, whereas a buckle will permit of their being raised or lowered in a jiffy—but consider again that enraged and ensnared steer! He picked out a cincha that was eight inches wide, woven of horsehair in a white and black pattern, with a tassel or tuft sticking down in the centre of it.

"That's what I call a real cinch," the cowboy had cried. "That'd hold anything!"

This new friend surveyed Kenneth's completed specifications attentively.

"That'd make you a saddle you wouldn't need to suspicion nohow," he pronounced.

Kenneth had already picked from the dozen beautiful made-up saddles in the shop the carved design that pleased him most. Of course this super-saddle must be carved! And that did not mean any of your cheap stamped stuff, but deep rich hand carving with simple tools—an almost lost art to-day. He offered his results to Paige and demanded a price.

"I got pretty near what you want already," said Jim, leading the way to a saddle in the window.

But the saddle in the window differed slightly, and Kenneth had so intently brooded over every detail that difference was fatal. Jim Paige promised to figure on it; and then, of course, laid the paper one side. Jim was always a very busy man. He could work and talk at the same time, but he could not work and figure at the same time. Every afternoon for nearly a week Kenneth demanded the figures of the estimate; and every afternoon Jim Paige confessed that he just sort of hadn't got around to it yet.

"Look here, young fellow," he said at last. "You sure stick to it like death to a dead nigger. Do you realize that this is getting on to harvest time? I've got my harness work to do. I couldn't make you a saddle before next month anyways."

So Kenneth mooned on into the question of bridles. There were flat leather, round leather, braided rawhide, and flat-braided horsehair; they could be made up as split-ear or regulation; they could be ornamental, with silver studs or silver conchas, or they could be left plain; the reins could be made California style with a lash or morale, or they could be made Arizona fashion, separately, so that all you had to do was to drop them and your horse was "tied to the ground." Of course he coveted a silver-mounted bit—one with wide side bars in which the silver was inlaid in blued steel and the whole heavily carved.

That much was certain, but how about the bit itself—spade, Cruces type, bronco type? It was all most fascinating. And there seemed to be a reason for each of these variations.

Of course there were also other items that had to do more with personal taste. Everybody wore big iron blunt spurs held on by broad straps. The rowels were an inch and over in diameter. There was a wide choice—anything could be had, from plain iron ones for a dollar to wonderful silver-inlaid beauties with clappers that rang against the rowels and conchas as big as a dollar on the carved straps. Of course one had to decide whether the shank should be straight, or should turn up, or down. Reasons having to do with hanging on by the cinch (when your horse bucked) or catching the cantle (when you left the saddle to pick things off the ground) were advanced for choosing one or the other. And there were rawhide or grass-rope riatas, and long hair ropes (one hopelessly expensive, incredibly soft one, of actual human hair), and cantinas to fit over the horn. Kenneth already possessed a broad Stetson hat, of course, with a carved leather band.

So assiduous became his devotion to the harness shop for the first ten days after the purchase of Pronto, that Boyd felt called upon to ask Jim if the young man were not a nuisance.

"Like to see him," returned Jim, carefully cutting a scoop out of a piece of leather.

"Well, you go ahead and make up that saddle he wants," said Boyd. "Don't say who it's for. I'll give it to him later for his birthday or Christmas or something. You sure he isn't a nuisance?"

"Not a bit," disclaimed Jim. "Besides, I don't believe you could keep him out with a fly screen."

III

The first Saturday of the month Kenneth was standing on the side veranda of the Fremont awaiting the arrival of Pronto when with disconcerting suddenness a wild cavalcade dashed around the bend in the drive and pulled up before the hitching rail. They brought with them a swirl of dust and noise and rapid motion. There were five of them on horseback, and these only immediately preceded a four-horse drag that took the turn in a grand sweep. Kenneth glanced at the driver with admiration of his skill and saw a rigid, small immaculate dark man in a wide Stetson hat, a carefully tied white stock, a checked cut-away coat, and riding breeches ending in high-heeled cowboy boots. He wore brown gloves. He had glittering black eyes, glittering white teeth, and a small moustache waxed to long, stiff needle points. His handling of his four was beyond praise. He tooled them skillfully alongside the veranda and to a halt, with no more than a slight raising of his gloved hands. Then he handed the reins to a Mexican who sat beside him but at a lower elevation, and descended from his perch.

The horsemen flung themselves from the saddle and with fine disregard for rules and regulations as to hitching animals in the hotel grounds, dropped their reins over their horses' heads and left them. Then they tramped boisterously across the veranda, laughing loudly, shouting to each other, clanking the rowels of their spurs against the floor; elaborately unconscious of the spectators, and disappeared in the bar room door. The irruption and disappearance took place so quickly that Kenneth got no more than a confused impression. One had a long white beard and a rubicund face; one seemed to be a very large man.

Near the hitching rail the abandoned saddle horses were tossing their heads, rolling their eyes, shifting softly to and fro. They were a wild, half-broken looking lot, curly with sweat. The leather of the equipment was dark and shiny with use, and Kenneth thrilled to observe that the necks of the horns were deeply grooved where they had taken the strain of the rope. The four harnessed horses were also restless, stamping their feet, shifting their positions, but standing, for they were evidently well trained. The vehicle to which they were attached was a wonderful creation. It consisted of two front wheels with a seat on a superstructure about eight feet immediately above it, and two rather distant hind wheels attached to the rest of it by one solid beam.

"If that ain't the darn-foolest contraption for four horses to drag!" observed a bitter voice next Kenneth's ear. He turned to meet old Patterson's bilious eye. The riding master with his tame animals was awaiting the gathering of his supertame class. "And look at them saddle hosses—one mess of sweat. Makes me sick!"

"Who are they?" asked Kenneth.

"Passel of darn fools that live on ranches over the mountains. They come in about once a month and raise hell. I don't see why people stand for them. If I was marshal I bet I'd put a stop to 'em. I'd have them up for disturbin' the peace and cruelty to animals and—there, look at that mess! Serves 'em right!"

The saddle horses had, during this colloquy, begun to quarrel and bite. The Mexican descending from the drag attempted to quiet them, whereupon the supposedly well-trained four abandoned the path of virtue and started to wheel off. They turned away from the Mexican so that in another second they would have got going, and then there would have ensued a really spectacular runaway, had not Kenneth darted out and seized the leaders' bits. The Mexican's shout evidently reached the noisy party in the bar for they piled out as rapidly as they had piled in. The little dark man with the waxed moustache strolled to the edge of the veranda. He shot a volley of Spanish at the Mexican under which the latter curled up.

"Now, darling little ones," he addressed his companions caressingly, "since the first lovely exuberance of your spirits has spent itself, suppose you hitch that awful collection to something, as you should have done in the first place." His voice was slow and soft but carried a sarcastic edge, which it lost as his next words were addressed to Kenneth: "I have to thank you, sir, for your prompt action. My name is Herbert Corbell. You will join us, I trust."

Kenneth found himself in the dark, high cool aromatic interior of the Fremont bar, with the twinkling glasses and mirrors, and white-clad Barney eyeing him across the counter.

There were a number of round tables. Some perched on these, some dangled their legs from the bar itself. Kenneth had a confused impression of a roomful of people, which was not the reality; Corbell held him firmly by the upper arm and halted him in the middle of the room.

"Brother members of the ancient Sociedad de los Años," he said pleasantly; and at once the tumult died to absolute silence and all faces were turned toward him. "This young man says his name is Boyd, which I do not vouch for, of course. All I know is that he was to-day sent by Providence to take our part. He is therefore nominated Benefactor, and will be respected as such for this session only." He turned to Kenneth and gravely extended his hand. "Sir, I congratulate you," he said, ceremoniously, "on your election to the worshipful position of Benefactor."

Kenneth, much confused, blushed and shifted uneasily and wondered what he was supposed to do or say. But Corbell went smoothly on.

"Allow me to introduce in turn the members of the equally worshipful Society. The shrinking violet on the end of the bar is Bill Hunter; he is native born, free up to date—though unjustly—fairly white though inclined toward the brick red. The best he does is to swell. Hop down and swell for the Benefactor, Bill"

Bill was a compact, powerfully built thick man dressed in black and white checks that emphasized his size, with a blond, sweeping moustache, and a childlike blue eye. As Corbell's smooth voice ceased he obediently dropped from the end of the bar. Holding his arms half crooked from his sides he proceeded to expand his chest and contract all his mighty muscles. The stout cloth was instantly strained smooth around his mighty proportions.

"That's why we call him Big Bill. You should see him do it stripped," continued Corbell, blandly. "He is better at that than at headwork. Our Bill is none too bright, I am sorry to say. He has little sense of humour. That will be all, Bill."

Hunter, without appearing to mind all this in the least, grinned and heaved himself back on the end of the bar.

"The youngster over there with the long white lambrequin is Johnny Anderson. He is supposed to have died about ten years ago; but he's too contrary to obey orders. He is one of those pests known as old-timers—drove stage over the gol-dingdest mountains and all that sort of thing. If you don't watch him very closely he'll take you one side and tell you stories of the good old days. He's a hardened old sinner who ought to know better than go around with us. The thing he does best is to drink whisky toddies, but we will not ask him to exhibit his skill. The long lank personage near Big Bill ought, of course, to be called Shorty. But he's not. His name is Frank Moore and he's chiefly noted for being the human goat. Feed a glass, Barney."

The barkeeper set out a thin edged champagne glass, empty.

"Not in that condition," objected Frank firmly.

"Obey your Potentate who watches that the lamb be not fleeced nor that the thirsty thirst. All will be made up unto you in due time," replied Corbell, cryptically.

"Oh, very well, I rely on your good faith," grumbled Moore. He picked up the empty champagne glass, bit a chunk out of it, chewed up the glass and appeared to swallow it.

"The next exhibit," proceeded Corbell without pause, and indicating a little hard muscled young Englishman in tweeds, well worn riding breeches, and old boots, "is William Maude St. Clair Ravenscroft. He claims to be British and of very high rank, but we suspect him because every one of these names is spelled just the way I pronounced it. The only mitigating circumstance is that he has named his ranch Bletherington Towers and pronounces it Chumley Briars. So he may be all right after all. Now there are various others," he said looking severely around the room, "but I weary. All present with one exception are members in good standing." His glance rested on one after the other appraisingly, and they all stood grinning, waiting to see if he intended to continue his monologue. Kenneth's eyes followed his. To his surprise he recognized Jim Paige. The harnessmaker was never away from his bench. He saw also a round-faced, good humoured looking young chap in cowboy rig. Old George Scott was there. A vapid looking individual in tweeds and a fore-and-aft cap, wearing a monocle and a flaxen moustache—one of that very rare species, the typical stage Englishman—was looking on with an air of bewilderment illy concealed under an attempt to appear knowing. Kenneth guessed him the one exception mentioned by Corbell. In fact he proved to be a visitor addressed as Sir Edgar. He was collecting material for a book on the country, and these young men had taken him up for the pleasure of seeing that he got it. Ravenscroft was the only member who did not look pleased whenever Sir Edgar came to the front.

"Worthy Potentate," spoke up the glass eater at length. "When does the Benefactor benefact?"

"He has partly benefacted," explained Corbell, "in stopping my team. It is meet that he now complete the function of his being."

All eyes were turned on Kenneth. An expected pause ensued. He was in an agony of embarrassment, for he had not the slightest idea what to do. He caught Barney's good humoured Irish eye. Barney made the slightest gesture as though drinking.

"Will you gentleman join me?" invited Kenneth instantly.

They joined him and after the confusion of ordering, crowding about, and getting the drinks had settled Kenneth found himself, not neglected nor ignored, but simply relegated to a position of second importance. He had not money enough in his pocket to pay for the treat; but a word with Barney fixed that all right. Kenneth had a better chance to look about him and to enjoy what he saw.

The principal business of the Society seemed to be providing Sir Edgar with material for his book. All the worn old "California stories" were being trotted out for his benefit. Some of these were so steep that Kenneth could not imagine any one taking them seriously; but the nearest the Englishman came to incredulity was an anxious inquiry or so.

"I say, you're not spoofing me now?"

Kenneth watched him narrowly in suspicion that his innocence might be only apparent.

"I'm English myself," said Ravenscroft at his elbow, disgustedly, "but this is really too much of a silly ass!"

"If they believe his book in England," observed Kenneth, "the score will be more than even."

"By Jove, I believe you're right," said Ravenscroft brightening, and looking at Kenneth with a new interest. "And I'll buy an edition and distribute it."

From that moment he took more part in the stuffing of Sir Edgar. Frank Moore was explaining that the size of California products was due to the alleged fact that a galvanic current running from the North Pole to South Pole—hence the compass—in California for the first time ran across the land.

"Unfortunately the rest of its course is beneath the sea," said Frank didactically. "You have no doubt noticed, Sir Edgar, the enormous proportions of our agricultural products—it is all due to the influence on the soil of this galvanic current."

"Jolly big strawberries for breakfast," murmured Sir Edgar. "Big as tomatoes, 'pon my word."

"Not as big as our tomato, pardon me," breathed Moore with exquisite courtesy. "But strawberrries are hardly fair, for they are to a large extent non-conductors."

"Non-conductors?" echoed Sir Edgar.

"Of galvanic current. Some things are better conductors of the current than others, and naturally they get more influence from it and attain to a larger size. Take our pumpkins, for example——"

"Pumpkins?"

"A sort of squash. You know the ordinary size of squashes—well these pumpkins grow to such a size that it is quite customary to place a small pig or shoat inside. As he eats he grows, until he has attained his full size inside the pumpkin."

"I say, you are spoofing."

"Not at all—in proper localities, of course, you must understand me. The growth is necessarily very rapid. On rough ground it is sometimes necessary to place wheels or rollers beneath the pumpkins."

"What is that for?"

"To prevent their being worn out. You see the vines grow so fast that they drag the pumpkins about."

Even Sir Edgar's vacuous countenance took on an expression of derisive incredulity.

"You'll have to show me that, you know," said he.

"It is, unfortunately, the wrong time of year for pumpkins," replied Moore.

"Haw, haw!" cackled Sir Edgar triumphantly.

"Darn fool!" muttered Corbell, in reference to Frank Moore, "if he doesn't watch his step he'll spoil the whole game!" He tried to catch Frank's eye.

But that saturnine individual knew his way about.

"Well," he drawled argumentatively, "there's our asparagus. You know what asparagus is like, ordinarily. Out here, in localities where the current is strong, it grows to quite extraordinary size—quite extraordinary, I assure you. It has to be cut down with an axe and trucked to the railroad; and must be transported on flat cars."

"You'll have to show me that, you know," retorted Sir Edgar. This seemed to have been an effective bit of repartee before.

"Certainly," agreed Frank, unexpectedly. "Come along."

He slouched out to the veranda, followed curiously by all the Society and its Benefactor. Alongside the garden walk, where it had been stowed awaiting transportation to the dump heap, lay a stalk of the century plant. As most people now know this central stalk, before it branches into flower, shoots up to a height of ten to twenty feet, and almost exactly resembles a stalk of fat asparagus. But very few people knew it then. Sir Edgar gazed on this monstrosity with open mouth.

"Bah Jove, I'd never have believed it!" he gasped. "I should like to obtain a photograph!"

"If you will promise to publish it in your book," suggested Frank, "I will get you a photograph of a bunch of it tied for market."

"Will you really?"

"Oh, rawther!" breathed the enraptured Society.

Frank evidently thought he had earned a drink by this masterly turning to account of what his quick eye had noticed on coming in. His pumpkin story was also thereby rehabilitated. But suddenly Corbell put his foot down. It was obvious that he was the leader of these wild spirits, evidently from sheer force of personality.

"We're not here to get drunk," he pronounced,—"at least not this early in the day. Programme! To the beach!" He turned politely to Kenneth, with no trace of the mock buffoonery. "Have you a horse? Yes? Suppose you ride with the others and I will take Jim Paige with me." It was assumed that Kenneth would remain with the party, and he was very glad to do so.

Corbell, the Mexican, and Jim Paige managed to squeeze themselves into the airy little seat; the others leaped into their saddles; and with shattering suddenness they burst into violent motion down the drive. Around the corner into Main Street the ponies scampered headlong. Kenneth over his shoulder saw the drag careening drunkenly after. Then he gave his attention to his riding; for, good horseman that he was, he had not yet attained that utter abandon and recklessness that comes to those brought up in pursuit of wild mountain cattle. He had rather a confused impression of people dodging out of the way, of his mare skipping nimbly over or around chuck holes or obstructions, of a whirl of dust, of more people drawing hastily aside, of considerable shouting—and he found himself at the beach. The drag stopped broadside on. The horsemen nimbly dismounted and began to strip the saddles from their mounts.

"Come over here by me," Corbell summoned him. "You don't know this game; and it is against the rules for Benefactors to take part."

They mounted bareback and at once proceeded to pull each other from their seats. It was a nice display of horsemanship and judgment. The ponies wheeled and darted, their riders clinging like Indians. They snatched at each other, attempting surprise or tactical advantage. Occasionally they came to grips and wrestled. Then it was only a question of a moment or so before one—or both—hit the sand with a thump. It was a wild, fascinating, rough, rather dangerous game. The two star performers were Bill Hunter, by reason of his enormous strength, and the Englishman Ravenscroft because of his hard wiry agility.

So interested was Kenneth that he did not observe the approach of a grave middle-aged bearded man beautifully mounted on a dapple gray. He wore a long black coat and a wide black hat. But Corbell saw him.

"Pinched again," he said disgustedly—"the sheriff!" His eye fell on Sir Edgar and lit with hope. With remarkable agility he scrambled down from his lofty perch and walked to meet the officer. For some time a whispered colloquy went on, Corbell's hand on the mane of the gray and the sheriff bending gravely forward to listen. Several times his eyes rested on Sir Edgar. At length his bearded lips parted in a reluctant smile.

"All right," he said, raising his voice so that the attentive participants in the suspended game might hear him. "This once—for the last time!"

He swung the gray's forefeet lightly and gracefully off the ground in a half circle and trotted away.

"He has no sense of humour," observed Corbell, looking sadly after him. "But we've got to behave going back. The infuriated populace is laying for us with shotguns."

They rode back to the Fremont two by two at a walk, their heads bowed, holding their hats in their right hands clasped against their breasts.

At the hotel Kenneth lost sight of them for a while, as they started off somewhere on another expedition to which they did not think to invite him. He was too shy to call himself to their attention. They reappeared for dinner at an especial table in the corner. There was wine in ice buckets and considerable noise. The rest of the decorous dining room looked indignant, amused, or scandalized. Still they were perfectly respectable, except for the noise. Sir Edgar was in evening dress trying very hard to enter into the spirit of the occasion. He drank considerably more wine than anybody else, to which course he was indefatigably urged by an increasingly polite and solicitous Frank Moore. Ravenscroft's lean, weathered face showed a slight uneasiness. This was the night of the weekly "hop" and many of the women had on light toilettes for the occasion. Some of the townspeople were dining there. Corbell caught sight of Kenneth and waved his hand, to the latter's secret delight.

"Friends of yours?" commented Boyd. "Who are they? I see Jim Paige and George Scott lapping it up with the best of them, but I don't recognize the others."

"They are ranch men from over the mountains," answered Kenneth, "and they are loads of fun." That on reflection was all he knew about them.

After dinner the Sociedad adjourned directly to the bar, whence came wild sounds. Kenneth would much have liked to go see what fun or deviltry was up, but was not yet sufficiently out of his boyhood openly and boldly to enter a bar-room.

The hotel "hop" began shortly after eight o'clock, which hour then seemed entirely pleasant and appropriate. It took place in the long hotel parlour, which had been canvased for the purpose, and the heavier furniture of which had been moved into a back hall. A Spanish orchestra consisting of a piano, a violin, two mandolins, and three guitars tinkled at one end. The guests sat in chairs lined in a row against the walls. All the social life of the place, old and young, was there, and if to our eyes the banged hair, the tight sleeves, the hour-glass figures, and the bustles and flounces would seem ridiculous, nevertheless none of these things could disguise the fresh sweet vivacious youth, the high colour and spirits, and the feminine daintiness whose alchemy can—temporarily—transfer the worst vagaries of fashion into charm. They danced a hopping waltz that went round and round and round, and the schottische and polka, and a number of square dances. Occasionally the even tenor of merriment would be broken by one or the other of the members of the Sociedad de los Años appearing in the doorway. They were always perfectly quiet and respectable; though, it must be admitted, a trifle flushed; and they contented themselves with standing in the doorway for a few moments looking on. Nevertheless this brief appearance always caused a flutter of uneasiness. Suppose one of them should leave the doorway and cross the floor directly at one, and ask one to dance! Horrors! What would one say? and what would mamma say afterward! The idea was shivery, exciting, perhaps not wholly unpleasant.

It was not until nearly ten o'clock, however, that Herbert Corbell appeared. His dark face was not in the least flushed, and his bright, quick eye was thoroughly in command. Quite coolly he ran it over the room. Then he fulfilled the secret fear-hope of the fluttered; he proceeded in the most leisurely fashion across the room straight toward the spot where sat Myra Welch. Myra from the ambush of her long sleepy lashes saw him coming, but pretended not to, and began suddenly to lavish the most unusual attention on her awkward campanion. For, by chance, Myra was doing a duty dance with John Maynard, whose callow attempts bored her extremely. Therefore she had, when the music stopped, steered him over next Mrs. Stanley, who was chaperoning both Dora and herself.

Mrs. Stanley saw the approach of Corbell with a rising of the hackles. The uncompromising old lady disapproved of Corbell in every way. She did not like his waxed moustache, which she considered vaguely villainous and certainly affected; she did not like the direct, faintly quizzical concealed amusement of his glance; she did not like his silly superior accent nor his broad A's; she did not like his clothes, which she thought of as "dudish"; she thoroughly disapproved of all his actions and expected the worst. Instantly she visualized his dancing with Myra, and then walking out on the veranda or into the grounds with her, and not bringing her back until all hours, and that soft fool Myra not knowing any better than to permit it—flirtatious, soft, little fool!—and she responsible to Mrs. Welch—no use trying to drop a hint to the young people of these days; they had no idea whatever of propriety or obedience. What they needed was a good spanking—all these thoughts, and others similar, went through Mrs. Stanley's head as Corbell picked his way across the floor. They had the effect of making her look even stiffer and more formidable than ever. Mrs. Stanley had bedecked her tall spare frame with all the war harness of the ball-room, and yet one saw her still in tweeds as her best wear.

Corbell, undismayed, was bowing before her with what she mentally designated as "dancing monkey manners." He made some pleasant remark to which, after glaring at him a moment, she returned a monosyllabic reply. Then he and Myra hopped off in a waltz.

Many eyes were turned on them. Against the united suspicion of the room they did not cease dancing until the music fell; against all prediction Corbell did not suggest that they go out and look at the moon. At the end of the dance Corbell led the secretly chargrined Myra directly back to Mrs. Stanley. For several moments he stood gallantly over the two, engaging them in lofty converse. Then he bowed low in courtly fashion and left the room with the utmost dignity. Once in the big empty hall outside the ballroom, however, he dissolved into whoops of delighted laughter, bending nearly double and slapping his leg.

"Fooled the old crab!" he cried to Kenneth, who happened to be passing. "Oh, didn't I fool her!"

He seized Kenneth by the arm and propelled him to the bar.

"This is too rich. Come and we'll tell the boys!"

The room was full. The members of the celebrated Sociedad held the centre of the floor, but the fringes and the side tables were occupied by secretly delighted old boys who sipped their drinks silently and watched the fun. Kenneth had to drink with them. Sir Edgar was still the centre of attention and, it must be conceded, Sir Edgar was pretty far along. To the most outrageous saying or doings he merely smiled vacuously and murmured protestingly:

"I say—oh, I say!"

Some of them, especially Frank Moore, were piling it on pretty thick. They were trying to get Sir Edgar to perform various difficult physical tricks, such as placing his feet thirty inches from the wall and then picking a pin out of the wall with his teeth. There were numbers of these—all familiar to you from childhood—and Frank Moore was remembering them all. Sir Edgar was game, though it was doubtful if his evening clothes would weather the storm. Every little while Corbell pounded vigorously on the bar for silence and then made each man repeat rapidly the words: "United States twin-screw steel cruiser" on penalty of no more drinks for failure. Every little while, also, he detailed one or more to go make an appearance in the ballroom.

"We must prove individually and collectively our complete sobriety," he pronounced. "Sir Edgar is excused. His reputation is established."

After a time Colonel Peyton came in, courteous, old-fashioned, smiling. The room immediately fell silent, and those who were sitting or perching jumped to their feet.

"Good evening, boys, good evening," said the Colonel. "Having a good time? That's right! That's right! Pretty noisy don't object to that—but——"

Corbell turned and held up his hand.

"United States twin-screw steel cruisers," a chorus answered him.

"Perfectly satisfactory, gentlemen," said the Colonel. "Your honour and the honour of the house appear to be safe as usual. Now will you honour me by drinking a little toast to the pleasure of the evening; and permit me to tell you how glad I am that you are here."

The Colonel, as beseemed a Kentucky gentleman raised in California, took a finger of bourbon in a little glass. They all insisted on clinking their glasses against his. The little ceremony consumed several minutes. Then they drank bottoms-up in silence.

"I will wish you good evening, gentlemen," then said the Colonel. "I am very glad that you are here again."

"The darn old cuss really means it," sniffled Shot Sheridan, the erstwhile silent member, suddenly becoming tearful and sentimental.

"Shot, you're drunk!" Corbell accused him severely. "Go and sit at that table. Do it!—Bill!" he said, as Sheridan showed signs of rebellion.

Bill Hunter placed his huge hand on Shot's shoulder and propelled him like a child to the designated table. There was no resisting that mighty force.

"Now," continued Corbell, turning to Sir Edgar. "What are we going to do about this thing? I am glad to see you boys had sense enough to crowd around and hide him. I should have been mortified to have the Colonel see him in this state. It was a narrow squeak. While he is not a member, still we are responsible for him. Disgracefully pickled!"

"Oh, I say!" protested Sir Edgar feebly.

But Kenneth could stay no longer to see the outcome. He had been for some time shifting from one foot to the other in an agony of indecision. Kenneth had a horrible fear that the number of dances he was "bolting" could never be explained. He returned to the ballroom. When, an hour later, he looked into the bar it was empty—save for Sir Edgar. That peer's swallow coat tails had been nailed to the wall. Sir Edgar was struggling feebly to get away.

"Chuck it, old chap, chuck it!" Kenneth understood him to say.

IV

However hard these joyous spirits might play, they worked equally hard. Only—as is always the case with such men—the work was done far away and out of sight where it did no good to their reputations. On Monday morning they had disappeared, and Kenneth learned from Barney that they would probably not reappear until the following month. They left behind them the clue to one gorgeous story that kept the town chuckling foil a week, once its fragments had been pieced together. The clue was an inquiry by Sir Edgar, proffered so many times that at length its repetition aroused the curiosity of the old boys around the Fremont veranda.

"Do you know Frank Moore?" he would ask, screwing in his monocle. "Rum sort of chap, now, isn't he?"

"Why does he pick out Frank Moore especially from that gang of young hoodlums?" speculated Saxon.

"I'll ask Jim Paige," said Boyd.

It seemed that there was about half way up one of the cañons of the Sur a copious sulphur hot-spring. To it led a rough mountain road that ended in a small hotel and facilities for bathing. All California was full of these resorts, some of them quite pretentious, and all of them much scroll-sawed and white painted and fancy panelled as beseemed the Boss-Carpenter age of decoration and architecture. Most of these structures have fallen into complete or partial decay as men's faith in mineral springs has waned—and it must be confessed—as other road house facilities have increased. Frank Moore had invited Sir Edgar to sup with him that Sunday evening at the Hot Springs Hotel. Sir Edgar had ridden his horse toilsomely up the steep mountain road just at dusk, and had been led by his host to a table perfectly appointed for two. When the meal had been served it had proved to consist entirely and solely of raw eggs and champagne. Moore, conversing affably, with entire lack of self consciousness, sucked the eggs, ate the shells, drank the champagne and ate the glasses. Then the two gentlemen adjourned to the veranda overlooking the valley two thousand feet below for a short smoke; after which they rode down the mountain together. Sir Edgar had not emerged from his customary stolidity during the interesting performance; nor did he ever utter any comment beyond the one above quoted.

The old life recommenced, with its riding, bathing, and buzzing about. Winchester Carson's prediction that Myra would get Kenneth's fraternity pin was not fulfilled. The reason was a damsel named Pearl Schultz. She worked in a combined bakery and candy shop half way down Main Street; and Kenneth, by an irony of fate, first encountered her when purchasing caramels for Myra herself! Pearl was undoubtedly good looking, with fresh blonde colouring, flaxen hair, large blue eyes, and a voluptuously redundant figure. She was very demure and ladylike, almost prim in her manners, carried herself with a little self-conscious stiffness, and answered Kenneth's easy young-man-of-the-world advances with admirable and polite brevity. Nevertheless even in that first interview some subtle attraction, some fascination drew his interest. She was exceedingly good to look at, after her fashion, was starchily clean in her pink wash dress, and piqued his curiosity as to what lay behind her demure and conventional replies to his remarks. He got into the habit of dropping in at the Kandy Kitchen daily, on one excuse or another—purchasing candy—or even buns when his funds were low—that he hardly knew what to do with. There swiftly grew in his spirit one of those strange, purposeless, absorbing fascinations peculiar to extreme youth. It was in no sense the pursuit of a more sophisticated man. Kenneth had no clear idea of what he wanted of Pearl. He liked her looks; he felt the lure of the unexplored in her novelty. He had a rough general knowledge of how girls like Dora Stanley would look upon most things, and—within broad limits—how they would act. Pearl belonged to a different genus. What lay beneath the prim stiffness of her exceedingly proper manner? What signified the side looks she gave him with her big, staring eyes?

It took Kenneth nearly a week of brief purchasing visits and the employment of his most killing facetiousness, to break through this first reserve. At his jokes Pearl in the beginning stared coolly; but after she had learned his name and had become accustomed to his personality she would giggle and exclaim:

"Lord, Mr. Boyd, but ain't you too ridiculous!"

Then she began to answer him back; and after the delivery of her repartee she had a trick of catching her lower lip with an even row of little white teeth, and looking at him wide-eyed to see how he would take it. Kenneth found this delightful.

Nevertheless the Kandy Kitchen became a most unhandy meeting ground. People were always coming in to get waited upon in the most annoying fashion, and took the most useless time fussing over their silly purchases, serenely oblivious to a glaring young man in the background. And then, too, the counter with its glass cases was always between them. Somehow it cut off confidences, as a sort of barrier against really getting together and talking. Kenneth had as yet no idea nor thought of man-handling Pearl, but it would be rather pleasant not to have that old counter between them.

"What time do you get out of this hole, anyhow?" he asked her.

"We don't close until six o'clock," she told him. That was an awkward hour for Kenneth. His absence or tardiness at the early hotel dinner would not be objected to, of course; but it would be commented upon and would require some sort of explanation, however light.

"Can't I see you then?" he asked, nevertheless.

"Oh, I've got to go right straight home to dinner, and then to help Mama with the dishes!"

Kenneth had a bright idea.

"Well, you don't stay open on Sunday!" he pointed out. "Will you go for a walk with me on Sunday?"

She considered a moment, looking down, the wild rose on her fair cheek deepening.

"I should be very pleased to," she decided primly.

"Where do you live?" asked Kenneth.

But for some reason she did not want to tell him that.

"I will meet you at the beach near the wharf at three o'clock," she told him; nor would she consider any other arrangement.

Kenneth was on the beach fifteen minutes before the hour. A little past three she joined him. She had on a little shell-shaped hat thrust forward low over her bang, a voluminous plaited cloth skirt with bustle, and a thin knit jersey—then a new fashion—that defined frankly the upper lines of her figure. She was walking very demurely, her hands crossed in front, the muscles of her shoulders held rigid. To Kenneth's boyish hail she replied:

"I am very pleased to see you to-day, Mr. Boyd."

They turned up the hard beach and fell into step. Kenneth realized with a little start of surprise that she was a much smaller girl than he had thought—indeed, the top of her quaint forward-tilting hat was not much above his shoulder. The Kandy Kitchen surroundings had invested her with a fictitious height.

The tide was low. A hard, wide, dark-brown beach offered itself as a boulevard, shining, and with occasional puddles in depressions as though it had just been raining. A single line of surf close to shore heaved itself wearily to the height of a foot or so, and fell as though letting go all holds after the performance of a duty. The wash crept stealthily up its required distance, and retired with a faint rattling of little stones. Gulls wheeled on motionless wing. Every log mooring-buoy of the fishing boats accommodated a row of black cormorants. Surf ducks rode just outside the lazy breakers, or sprawled on the beach whence they hitched themselves awkwardly and painfully at the approach of Pearl and Kenneth. Long strings of kelp were flung in graceful festoons across the sands.

"I think the beach is elegant," said Pearl. "I just adore this salt smell."

"Salt smell!" jeered Kenneth, "rotten kelp and dead fish and things—that's what makes your 'salt sea air'!"

"I think you're just horrid!" she cried, giving him a little push.

Kenneth was full of spirits, and gambolled about like a colt. He shied pebbles at the surf ducks to see them dive; he selected flat stones and sent them skipping across the water; he found an admirable kelp skipping rope and used it with all the half-forgotten steps of his childhood. Pearl walked demurely straight ahead, duly admiring or exclaiming, but abating in no jot her air of perfect and painful propriety. It was pose that in her became a provocative quaintness. Kenneth was intrigued by it; it was outside his experience of girls. He did not know exactly what it meant. One thing, it certainly did not stand for awkwardness or embarrassment, for Pearl gave an impression of complete self-possession. Gradually a desire came to him to break through, to penetrate to the reality beneath it, whatever that might be. He began to tease her; to dash in, push her, and dash out again in avoidance of her retributive slap. He made a lasso out of kelp, and roped her—after many attempts. He caught sandcrabs and tried to scare her with them. With all this he managed to fluster her, succeeded in deepening the wild rose colour of her cheeks, even mussed up a bit her Sunday correctness of raiment. But though she protested in pretended anger, though she slapped at him when he pranced within reach not once did she lose her air of quaint, prim sedateness.

After a mile the beach was closed where the cliffs began. A picturesque pile called Gull Rock acted as the barrier. At high tide the surf, aroused slightly from its low-tide laziness, dashed over this barrier in clouds of spray. At low tide, however, there were left exposed about its fringes little inlets of bare sand, ledges streaming with the long green hair of the sea, clear pools beneath the surface of which lay tidy gardens like wax under glass; and the wash sucked back and forth perfunctorily as though tired. It was a famous clambering place, for it was full of cavelets and foot and hand holds, and unexpected nooks where one might sit and look seaward. A bold horseman, taking instant advantage of the waves, might dash around the foot of Gull Rock and so find himself below the cliffs on the other side. Kenneth had never done this, for the simple reason that in the other direction the beach extended almost unbroken for nearly twenty miles.

Pearl seemed to know well the possibilities of Gull Rock. Following her lead Kenneth found himself on a tiny ledge with just room comfortably for two to sit. It had a back hollowed to fit, and a place for the feet, and it looked straight out to sea with a suck of waters immediately below. But the best feature of it was that it could be reached only by the one route they had taken, which involved a scramble that would be plainly audible before the intruder could come into sight.

"Isn't this a wonder!" cried Kenneth."Made to order! How did you happen to know of it?"

But Pearl, discreetly, did not answer this question. She disposed herself with great deliberation, spread her skirts with care and leaned back against the rocky wall.

"I always like it here," she commented. "It seems to be sort of private."

She was staring fixedly out to sea. The angle of vision of the human eyes being whatever it is, she could not—theoretically—see what Kenneth was doing. As a matter of fact Kenneth was looking her over, and she was perfectly aware of it. He was thinking that she was better looking than he thought, with her fair skin, her faint colouring, her gleaming hair, her saucy little hat pushed down over her brow, her wide, dreaming eyes. The pose she had taken, with her hands clasped back of her head, threw into relief all the fine lines of her full but firm figure, and the tight fitting "jersey" gave them all their value. Kenneth, in his attitude toward any he considered "nice" girls, was as free from actual sex impulse as any young man of his age; and Pearl was most certainly a "nice" girl; nevertheless he experienced a warm, breath-taking, generalized sort of attraction toward her that he would have repudiated indignantly as sex attraction, yet which was indubitably due neither to his aesthetic sense nor his appreciation of her sparkling conversation.

Indeed, after a dozen sentences the conversation rather lagged. They stared out to sea lulled by the ebb and flow of the, water and the slow wheeling of gulls. Kenneth dropped his hand to his side and unexpectedly found it in contact with Pearl's. Her hand was a good one, soft and pink, unroughened by coarse work. Kenneth experienced a sudden, pleasurable tingling shock; Pearl appeared to be quite unconscious of this contact. She did not withdraw her hand for some moments, during which Kenneth sat almost breathless. Then she raised it quite naturally to adjust her hair, and when that operation was finished, she dropped it in her lap. Had she noticed? and was she offended? Kenneth did not know.

The affair ran its usual course. Kenneth had been through such things before with "summer girls" in the East. But what differentiated this from all the others was the girl's puzzling personality. She was so very prim and stiff and precise in her movements, the choice of her phrases; had such strange inhibitions and conventions which she insisted on, and such a disregard of other conventions which Kenneth had heretofore looked upon as essential! Her very reticence added flavour to her concessions. It was like a scarlet lining to a nun's robe. Kenneth soon found that she did not particularly object to his holding her hand, in fact would as soon hold his hand in public except that it might make people laugh. She made more fuss about his arm about her waist, but after due and decent struggle permitted him to sit so. But she became truly indignant when he tried, to kiss her; and meant it.

"I'd like to know what kind of a girl you think I am!" she cried indignantly to the bewildered young man, whose simple creed saw absolutely no difference in kind between the one caress and the other. If a girl let you put your arm around her, surely she'd let you kiss her! "You must have a very low opinion of me! The idea!" and it took him some time to smooth her down.

But these bewildering inconsistencies certainly added zest to the chase. Kenneth spent more and more of his time dangling about the Kandy Kitchen girl. He developed many of the symptoms of love; being uneasy when he was away from her, uneasy in a different way when he was with her. He had the going-going-gone feeling at the diaphragm when the appointed hour neared, and he developed extraordinary small jealousies as to the wearing of pins, rings, and knicknacks. Pearl had his fraternity pin.

"You'll have to take off that other junk if you wear my frat pin," said Kenneth, in reference to various bangles, clasps, and similar gee-gaws bestowed by other young men. Though Kenneth by virtue of his awesome social class had the inside track he was not the only one in the running.

"They were given to me by my gentlemen friends," Pearl rubbed it in, "and I certainly shall wear them. I don't know that I care for your pin."

"It isn't that I mind who gave them to you," argued Kenneth, from a high plane. "It doesn't make any difference to me. But you don't realize that my Fraternity is a very old Institution. It's been founded since 1826, and it's got more famous men as Brothers than any other frat in the world.. And you won't find chapters in every little jay college either. We only have eighteen chapters all told, but whenever you see a Kappa Omega Pi chapter you'll know that it is the best frat in that college. It isn't just only a silly club. It has high Ideals. I can't tell you about it, because all that is Secret, but if you knew about it you'd realize that it has the highest kind of aims and ideals. A girl ought really not to wear our frat pin at all. There used to be a rule against it, but that was modified at the Cleveland convention. Now they're permitted to wear it, but they can't wear any other frat pin at the same time. Wearing it makes you a Kap Sister, you see."

"But these others aren't frat pins," objected Pearl.

"They're practically the same thing. There isn't any college here, and these fellows haven't been to college, or they would be frat pins," returned Kenneth with convincing logic.

The upshot was that the miscellaneous hardware disappeared and was replaced by Kenneth's shining emblem.

"If you're a real Kap Sister," said Kenneth, "you ought to wear it night and day. It ought never to leave you."

"I'll pin it on my night gown," said Pearl, impressed.

Kenneth fastened the jewelled emblem with hands that trembled slightly, for he was about to make a very daring proposition.

"Of course you know," he said, trying in vain to steady his voice, "that when you become a Kap Sister I ought to teach you the secret grip."

He leaned forward suddenly and kissed her.

"You—you—what do you mean by that!" she demanded in a choking voice, her face scarlet.

"It's the grip—the Sister's grip," Kenneth hastened to explain. "If you're a Kap Sister, that's the secret grip."

"Secret grip!" she repeated scornfully.

"Yes, it is. Truly! Listen here," and Kenneth hummed to the tune of the Last Cigar those gay and disarming verselets written in a moment of inspiration by some questing college Lothario:

"And when they seek to join us
The way we do is this:
We put our arms around their waist
And give their lips a kiss.
And if they dare to murmur
Or ask the reason why,
We tell them 'tis the secret grip
Of Kap' Omega Pi."

Pearl pretended to be convinced.

Of course they plucked petals to the tune of loves-me, loves-me-not; and crossed the similar letters from their names to some sort of the amatory count.

Their meetings gained a certain fictitious element of the clandestine due to the fact that Pearl would never allow him to discover her home. She met him always either at the beach or the park. Pearl's father and mother were decidedly plain folk who sat about in shirt sleeves and dressing sacks respectively: and while Pearl told herself that she was not ashamed of them, still there was no sense in bringing their surface drawbacks to the attention of this aristocratic young man; at least not just at the first. The element of the clandestine instilled into Kenneth's candid spirit a certain discomfort, an uneasiness, that was not shared in the slightest degree by his self-possessed companion. They sat for long hours in a rather sickly, sentimental haze, leaning against each other, occasionally exchanging a kiss. It was delicious, but the situation would hardly have been understood, Kenneth felt, by Dora Stanley, for example—or even his father, for that matter.

V

California has always been hospitable. Had Patrick Boyd and his son so wished, they might have dined any and every evening in one or another of the roomy wooden dwellings that housed the "first families" of the town. As a matter of practise they did drive to such places two or three times a week, hitching their horse with the others to the commodious rails provided, dusting their shoes with the feather duster that hung by every door pull, and nodding cheerfully to the white-robed Chinaman who let them in. Only on rare occasions did these people give dinner parties. Most of the entertainments I am describing included the whole family from oldest to youngest, and also the entire families of the guests. They were clan affairs, and while they were not particularly lively for the younger people, the latter did not mind that for they did their real playing with each other during the day times and at the Fremont "hops."

One small group, however, broke with this tradition. They gave dinners, with selected guests, and a certain formality of dress and procedure. This was due to the initiative of Mrs. Gordon Carlson.

Mrs. Gordon Carlson was a willowy, bendy, uncorseted woman in her thirties, affecting very large hats, an intense manner, long earrings of jade, and a clinging, individual style in dress. She was "up" in all intellectual movements. Her husband was a poet, and one with a very genuine voice. He was also a hard rider, a tremendous climber of mountains, a redoubtable poker player, an enthusiastic hunter and fisherman, and a conscientious punisher of booze. His poems were exquisite, but he concealed the side of him that produced them as though it were a vice. The fact that he was large, burly, and redfaced helped him in this. Gordon Carlson would have resented being called a poet as he would have resented an epithet. He was sick and tired of poets, and he did everything he could think of in the way of rude, rough coarse things to prove that he did not belong to that breed. In the long run it spoiled his hand and greatly limited his output, which was a tremendous pity.

Kenneth fell under Mrs. Carlson's eye at one of the Fremont hops, and made an impression.

"The young Keats!" she murmured to Mrs. Iredell, her right bower. "We must have him with us!"

So Kenneth received his invitation and in due time presented himself, correctly attired, at the Carlson door.

He began to be awed at once. The whole place was dim. You could hardly see anything. There were queer paintings, and very dark, carved woodwork, and vases on wabbly pillars, and a faint aromatic smell as of incense. Mrs. Carlson swayed to meet him. Her black hair was parted smoothly in the middle and the braids wound around her head crown-wise—a sufficient departure from the universal choice between a square "bang" and a friz; earrings of jade almost touched her shoulder; her gown was of black and fitted closely, in defiance of the fashion. To display a plat-white skin it was cut very low, and yet the impression of Mrs. Carlson's figure was such that one felt it could have gone even lower without much damage. She addressed Kenneth in a low, deep, rich voice several tones below a contralto.

"I am so glad that you could come," she told him. She turned at once to the dim shadows. "I want you to meet the members of our little group. And to you, dear friends, I have brought the embodiment of the Spirit of Youth, the hyacinthine boy! Mrs. Iredell, may I present Mr. Boyd."

Kenneth very awkard, much embarrassed, bowed toward the fussy, fat, severe looking little woman.

"And Mr. Oliver Iredell." She turned to Kenneth in an audible "aside." "You are of course familiar with his Cynthia of Samothrace" The person designated materialized momentarily from the dimness as a tall, slim gray man crowned by a mop of back-thrust hair and wearing eyeglasses with wide black ribbons. He looked as though everybody should know all about him and Cynthia of Samothrace and as Kenneth had never heard of either he felt uncomfortable about it.

In like manner he met Herbert Delmore, also tall and slim, but bald as a boulder, with a white ascetic face and long white hands; and Burton Hallowell who looked like a pink cherub with a vandyke beard.

"I'm so sorry that Gordon cannot be with us to-night," Mrs. Carlson went on smoothly. "He was almost heartbroken. Some tiresome business came up." She conveyed skillfully the impression that normally Carlson would be doing the honours at the head of his board. As a fact the poet was at that moment exactly where he always was when his wife gave one of her "damn intellectual parties,"—in the room back of the Fremont bar trying to make a sceptical Jim Paige believe he held at least four kings.

One other slipped in at the last moment, just as they were about to move into dinner, a girl about Kenneth's age wearing a straight smock with a border of Greek design and squarely bobbed hair. Her skin was very white, her lips very red, her eyes were a turquoise green and held an expression of utter and somewhat disdainful weariness. Kenneth found himself beside her as they moved toward the dining room. She, as well as Mrs. Carlson, proved to possess a deep rich mahogany voice, the only difference being that Mrs. Carlson's was naturally so while Miss Wills had arrived at her depths by careful cultivation.

"You are new here," she stated to Kenneth. "You will love it. In this simple out-of-doors we meet again, after all these centuries, the spirit of shepherd Greece. Do you walk?"

"A little; I ride more."

"But you must walk. It is so much more intimate. To-day I met such a sympathetic tree."

"Huh?" ejaculated Kenneth, startled out of his politeness.

She favoured him with a long, slow stare.

"Oh, I beg pardon," she said, dropping her voice a tone or so in richness. "I thought you belonged," and she turned to him a white shoulder.

At table Kenneth, to his relief, found himself separated from this formidable young person, and placed between Mrs. Iredell and his hostess. At first the conversation was general. It had to do with poetry as an art. A bitter controversy arose between Oliver Iredell and Herbert Delmore. Delmore maintained that poetry should be the natural medium of expression, that unspoiled men would normally express themselves in poetry of one form or another, that primitive man did in essence so express himself; and in support he quoted from primitive folk-lore and literature at astonishing length. Iredell on the other hand stood stoutly for the sacredness of poetry. His thesis seemed to maintain that the art was so very holy that it was a profanation for any one below the rank of Shakespeare or Dante to touch it at all. He did not quote, but he extemporized a wonderful and eloquent argument. The sentiment of the table appeared to be with him. Miss Wills flamed into eagerness, leaning forward across the table to hurl her grenades almost breathlessly:

"Yes, yes; and remember what Matthew Arnold says,"—she could quote extensively, too.

Kenneth had nothing to contribute. It was beyond him. He could not remember a single quotation on any subject, let alone the one before the house. The Night before Christmas was the only visitor to his distracted brain, and he could not see how to work that in, and he had grave doubts of its reception in any case. So he looked intelligent until he ached behind the ears, and was agonizedly embarrassed because he had no word to say. He need not have been self-conscious about that. These people needed listeners more than they needed reinforcements.

The discussion died down slowly into a victory for Iredell. Poetry, it was agreed, was a Sacred Art; and nobody below the rank of Shakespeare or Dante should fool with it. There ensued a short silence while everybody ate soup.

"Have you been doing anything lately, Oliver?" Mrs. Carlson then asked in her deep voice.

"Nothing very much, lately. It has been a barren time," confessed Iredell wearily. "The ideas hover but they are vague, formless, they will not take the classical shape. Since I saw you last, dear lady, I have done only one little sonnet."

"I should so love to hear it!" breathed Mrs. Carlson. "Didn't you bring it with you? You know I will never forgive you, if you did not!"

Mr. Iredell admitted that he just happened to have a copy with him; and, on further urging, he pulled it from his pocket. A wild wayward thought swooped across Kenneth's mind, causing him to choke in his soup. According to Iredell's own argument poetry was too sacred for anybody but Shakespeare and Dante; here was Iredell himself preparing to read an original poem—ergo? He glanced about for sympathy in this thought, but met only surprise and question——

It was a silly thought——

He listened to Iredell's sonnet and was tremendously impressed. Indeed, he thought it quite one of the best things he had ever heard, and his opinion for Iredell grew to a vast respect and admiration. Kenneth was not one of those to whom writing of any kind comes easy, though he read much. He was young. Iredell's poem was a good journeyman poem built according to specifications that never fail to bring results. Its scansion and rhymes were conventionally perfect: and Iredell could read with effect. Its base was a commonplace platitude of morality in Greek dress, and it contained a number of polysyllabic, unusual and exceedingly melodious words. The effect on Kenneth was of a great piece of work.

Delmore, who had listened attentively, his head on one side, pounced upon a detail of quantities of a transposed Greek word offering a substitute. Everybody agreed that the meanings were sufficiently alike, but the connotations——!! Kenneth, beyond his depth, caught at an understandable straw: he remembered that Longfellow had used that same word somewhere, and said so. This remark produced a flat silence.

"Still Longfellow has done some good lines," said Mrs. Carlson, after a moment.

They settled the point only by abandoning it to pursue a subject on which they seemed to be in agreement. This was the work of Giovanni Asperoni. Kenneth gathered that this must be a poet. He had flourished in the sixteenth century and apparently had been completely forgotten by the world until Peter Younger, the publisher, had brought him out in hand-made paper, deckel-edged, with three-inch margins and Stowcroft binding. The edition had been limited to 121 copies, after which the plates had been destroyed. The present company was enthusiastically in agreement as to Asperoni. Not only in form, thought, imagery, and sheer inspiration was he the superior of all modern writers, but the best of modern poetry was modelled directly upon him. Kenneth felt himself cast into outer intellectual darkness because he had never heard of the Italian. At this point, unexpectedly, up spoke Hallowell, who had contributed little but sapient strokings of his vandyke beard. He advanced and defended the hypothesis that the Greeks had done all aesthetic things perfectly; that it is useless to attempt to improve upon perfection; therefore we should cease a vain attempt to produce art and should give all our time to study and interpretation of Greek art. This was rather a bombshell. It was necessary to one's intellectual reputation to exalt the Greek—and yet as producers of one form of modern art——

They compromised at length by excepting poetry from this sweeping relegation. Poetry was the only true art of interpretation: and it was necessary that each age interpret to itself the eternal truths that Greece had embodied as generalizations. This ingenious way out was suggested by Miss Wills.

But Delmore, who was secretly still a little sulky over Iredell's having read a poem while he had not, interposed obstinately:

"I can see how for form—in sculpture and architecture—and politics and drama we can go back to the Greeks, but how about colour, atmosphere—painting, in short?"

This plunged them into a tremendous argument. They talked Pre-Raphaelite, and Rennaissance, and Perugino, and Fra Angelico and forty-eleven old masters, with theories of light, colour, symbolism thrown in. Kenneth knew not even the common terms of painting. He took cover and stayed under, and when the party finally broke up he went back to the hotel in a curiously mixed state of mind. He felt ignorant and uncomfortable and uneducated and outclassed; yet he was elated over the chance to mingle with such superior, intelligent, and inspired people.

He found his awe shared by his usual companions.

"Good grief! Dining at the Carlson's!" cried Dora Stanley. "I'd no more dare go there than fly! They make me feel like a worm, a positive worm!"

Several times he came across one or the other of them and with them exchanged grave bows; but he was not again invited to dine with them, and he felt crushed and humble enough to withdraw the Bhavaghad Gita, a volume of Walter Pater and a random-selected title of Matthew Arnold from the public library. He might for a brief period have become a recluse and a student had not the Sociedad de los Años come again to town on its monthly bust.

They greeted Kenneth cordially enough, but made no move toward including him in their intimacy. Nevertheless, fascinated by the anticipation of the unexpected he tagged modestly behind them into the bar, where he withdrew to a spectator's position at one of the round tables.

Bill Hunter let out a howl that shook the gas chandeliers.

"Look who's here," he yelled, bearing down on an individual leaning against the bar talking to Barney. This was a well-built man of medium height, with a wind-reddened face, a flaxen moustache, and bright blue eyes. One would have taken him for a ranchman, or—better still—a deep-sea sailor. He began at once to speak distinctly but very rapidly.

"I warn you I go armed and I shall not hesitate to defend myself. Barney give me that mallet. If you lay a finger on me I'll break it over your iron head, you big chunk of pig-meat. Stand off, I tell you! I mean business!"

He flourished the beer mallet threateningly, his blue eyes flashing.

"Stand off!" commanded Corbell from the doorway. "He'll do it."

"Of course I'll do it! Do you think I'm going to be manhandled by a bunch of mucker hoodlums just for a little thing like mayhem or murder? Not me! That's better. Now you can approach and greet me like little gentlemen."

He dropped his mallet and they gathered about him.

"Explain yourself," said Corbell. "Where were you last month?"

"East."

"East! Poor old devil. What did you do that for?"

"Couldn't do it by mail. But it paid. Have a drink."

"Wise man that came out of the East," chirped Shotwell Sheridan, and then looked surprised when they burst into mingled laughter and applause.

"Out of the mouths of babes—he actually doesn't know he did it," remarked the stranger, dryly.

After a time, out of the press, Frank Moore emerged and sat on the edge of the table next Kenneth. He nodded in so kindly a fashion that Kenneth felt encouraged to question him.

"That?" answered Frank, surprised. "Don't you know him? That's Gordon Carlson."

"Why!" cried Kenneth startled, "I thought he was a poet."

Frank turned to him gravely, his usual air of dry raillery falling from him.

"He is a poet, son, make no mistake in that. Have you never read any of his stuff? No? Well, you're the only man here who hasn't. Get you a set of them. They're good he stuff, what a man can bite on. Lord! but he can do it. Hunt up one called The Dogie. That'll put hair on your chest. And if you like the pretties read The Meadow Lark."

Kenneth could not adjust so quickly. He looked absolutely bewildered. Moore chuckled.

"I know his wife—I dined at his house the other evening," Kenneth managed at last.

The dry quizzical look returned to Moore's face. He questioned Kenneth further; and at last lifted up his voice above the din.

"Gordy!" he called. "Gordy, come here!"

The poet disentangled himself and sauntered over, grinning pleasantly.

"I want Mr. Boyd to meet you," said Moore. "Now look here, Gordy, this a pretty good sort of young fellow. He ain't got any tenor voice nor such physical disabilities. He was our last month's Benefactor, and we like him. But he's been to dinner with the Pet Poets, and he thinks they are great people. You've simply got to uncork a little professional jealousy."

"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Boyd," said Carlson sincerely. "Are you by any chance a writer or an artist?"

"The best thing he draws is his health, and the best thing he writes is a check," interposed Frank. "But he can ride a horse a little, and he's got a popgun he says will shoot—a sixteen gauge Scott, Gordy, think of that! sixteen! I want to go out and see if a peashooter that size will kill a quail! And he's got nice healthy instincts; and he was being took care of good until lately. We taught him to buy a drink or two and I understand Pearl is giving him a little attention," continued this astonishing person calmly, "so you see his education is in good experienced hands. No, he don't do none 'of these tricks. He's just cast for the 'hyacinthine boy'—that's it, ain't it, son?"

Kenneth, overwhelmed by all this crash of preconceptions, could only stammer something incoherent.

"Now, Gordy," pursued Moore, "just answer me a few questions honestly, to save this kid's immortal soul. What kind of a poet is Oliver Iredell?"

"Punk!"

"Why?"

Carlson turned fully to Kenneth and addressed him solely, in the gentlest and kindliest tones:

"You see, he is not a poet at all. He is a skillful versifier with a good classical education. Have you seen his work? "

"I heard him read a sonnet the other evening."

"Exactly. It was probably an excellent school-room example of a sonnet, and it probably began 'As one who—' He takes any moral commonplace—like be good and you'll be happy—, he transposes them to ancient Greece, clothes them in classic imagery, and embodies them in a standard verse form. A poem that is truly a poem must have either originality of thought, inspiration of sentiment, or sheer beauty of form. A great poem has all of them."

"Professional jealousy," interposed Moore. "Time presses. We will skip the other Pets. Let's get down to cases. Puncture the high-falutin' and then we'll get back to our drinks."

"I suppose he means the type of pseudo-intellectual conversation they indulge in—sacred art of poetry, the Divine Greeks, and all the rest of it. That stuff impress you?"

Kenneth turned red but he answered valiantly.

"Yes, it did. I drew some books from the library and was trying to read up."

"Good for you!" cried Carlson, with quickened interest; but it was evident his exclamation did not refer to the books. "Did you ever read one of these big thick scientific dog books? They have so much to say about ventilation and diet and water and shelter and Lord knows what that when you get through you wonder how you ever dared keep a dog at all. Same way with art in general. When I lived East I belonged to The Gramercy, a club of those connected with the arts. There was always a crowd of men in the leather chairs discussing very profoundly all the fine points of writing a book. They talked of balance and proportion and relation and about two hundred things of the kind, and they got in so deep that I couldn't follow them. After I had listened to them a while I realized that I knew nothing whatever about how to write a book. And then I began to enquire around. Not a single one of those easy chair experts had ever written a book." He laughed amusedly. "I had at that time written three without knowing how; and they seemed to get by with the critics at that."

"Puncture the dear old Greeks," urged Moore.

"No, I won't puncture the dear old Greeks," returned Carlson. "The dear old Greeks were all right, and I am for them. But they didn't do all there is to be done because they didn't have either the materials nor the experience to do it with."

"I suppose they embodied perfectly the great fundamental truths," suggested Kenneth, parroting some of the talk he had heard.

"These great fundamental truths as you call them are very few in number. Their combinations and reactions vary infinitely according to the conditions of the particular time in which they are examined. Do I make myself clear?"

"I think I see what you mean," replied Kenneth, slowly. "Well, this is no place for a discussion. Think it over. Who's the particular poet just now?"

"? ? ?"

"They generally have some obscure nonentity they quote as the greatest ever."

"Oh, yes! Giovanni Asperoni."

"Giovanni Asperoni!" repeated Carlson, with a shout of laughter. "Never heard of him!"

"Oh, haven't you?" cried Kenneth, delighted. "I'm glad. Neither had I."

"I got me a poet once and sprung him on them," said Frank, gravely. "He went fine."

"Tell Mr. Boyd about him," urged Carlson.

"I went with the Pet Poets once," grinned Moore. "It was some time ago. I wasn't no hyacinthine boy, you understand, but I was a wild free soul, I think it was. Well, they snowed me under so far I didn't even have no breath hole. That Iredell woman started in on me with the soup. Says she: 'Mr. Moore, what in your opinion was the influence of the early Egyptian mysteries on the Rosicrucians?'"

"What did you tell her?" asked Kenneth, laughing.

"I told her it wasn't a marker on the influence of the Brazilian Aztecs on modern occultism. But they had a dago poet then, too, and they shot me so full of holes with him that if I'd fell down in the gutter any peddlar would have picked me up for a colander. That Wills girl would spring one of those as one who lines on me and say, 'of course you remember how the rest goes,' and when I said, no ma'am, I didn't, she gave me one of those Lo, the poor insect looks, and I'd peek up at her from under the edge of my plate. She got me hostile after a while, and when I left the pen all raw and bleeding I said to myself, 'I'll get you, young woman'; so I did."

"How?" begged Kenneth.

"I got me a little private dago poet of my own, and sprung him on them."

"I wouldn't know where to look one up," Kenneth confessed.

"Hell, I didn't look him up, I made him up," explained Frank. "He sure was good! I picked him a good name off three dago fishermen down at Largo's, and I wrote him a bunch of these as one who first lines. You know," confided Frank, "it's plumb easy to write first lines to sonnets; it's the rest of 'em that stump you. All you have to do is to get 'em sort of solemn, like as one who died without his trousers on. Then next time I got invited—they invited me twice—I waited until the right time and then pulled my dago. 'Miss Wills,' says I—you bet I can do the flossy when I want to, can't I, Gordy?—'that is indeed a beautiful thing. But I don't need to ask you if you remember the lines by John Smith'—or whatever I called him—'beginning as one who died et cetery!' and by gosh she walked right in! 'I can't just quote them,' says she, 'but I remember them perfectly, of course.'"

Before he went to bed that night Kenneth had borrowed a copy of The Ranges and had thrilled over The Dogie, his eyes had filled over The Meadow Lark, and he had chuckled aloud at The Ballad of Bold Bad Men. Gordon Carlson had won him completely: and his soul was forever freed from the smothering danger of the near-culture. He saw the humour of it, and turned his light out, chuckling. Then a swift unexpected thought struck through him. What was that about Pearl?

VI

While all these relations were being established California had gone on her serene way through her seasons. The carpets of flowers had come to seed and had laid them down on the warm soil to rest until another year. Over the hills the alfileria, the fox tail, the wild oats had turned brown and the live oak trees in contrast stood clear and rounded, cuddling each its precious shadow under the sun. And the sun drove his chariot triumphantly through blue days.

People sat out evenings in the tepid air: and the night was ecstatically alive with creatures that chirped or croaked or fluttered on painted downy wings around the dim gas jets in the halls. At noontimes a somnolence fell, so that people overcome by it went into cool darkened rooms, and the land slept in a golden haze.

The next afternoon following Kenneth's illuminating talk with Carlson and Frank Moore he rode slowly alone down Main Street at this hour of the siesta. He was almost the only moving creature to be seen. Saddle horses, heads drooping, dozed with one hind leg comfortably out of focus; dogs spread out flat in the shade; even the mule car, having stopped at the beach end of the track, seemed to be staying there indefinitely. The fine white dust of the roadway, as though animated by the life-giving heat of the sun, stirred and rose at the lightest breath of air. It followed Kenneth like a spirit.

Why he was out on horseback at this time of day he had no very clear idea; nor why he had not gone riding that morning with the other young people. He certainly was not consciously taking stock after his illuminating experience of the evening before; though he may have been doing so subconsciously. The morning he had spent in his room fussing about. He had read more of Carlson's poems, he had written a few letters, he had oiled his shotgun, he had loaded half the brass shells. For this was probably the first sixteen gauge shotgun ever seen on the Pacific Coast, and ammunition for it was not to be had for purchase. People shot tens at all sorts of game; though occasionally some small-bore crank used a twelve at quail. He would never have thought of doing so at ducks. A sixteen was 'of course a pop-gun. Kenneth had fifty brass shells which he reloaded. After lunch he became restless.

The beach, too, was empty of human life, except for two of Largo's men mending nets on the dry sand above high tide mark. Kenneth drew rein for a moment, taking in the cool air that breathed from the sea. He was in the act of turning his horse to the left for his customary canter on the hard sands when he heard his name called.

He turned. A girl riding a palomino horse followed by two dogs had come upon him unheard through the soft sand. She was riding astride a stock saddle, and wore a divided coat over bloomers and boots. This was sufficiently startling at an epoch when every woman rode side saddle and nothing more lively than a piano ever had legs. Kenneth was duly startled, and sat up and took notice. She wore the almost universal broad Stetson hat, thrust low on her head, and had gathered her hair under it. Kenneth raised his hat, puzzled. She was a very pretty girl, with a clear imperious gaze, piquantly irregular features, and a brown skin beneath which surged rich colour; and she sat her daintily stepping animal in complete nervous response to his slightest movement.

"Why are you going that way?" she asked him. "Have you never been up beyond Gull Rock, it's ever so much nicer."

"I never have," confessed Kenneth, still racking his brains, and trying to act as natural as though she were not riding astride. "I didn't know you could go beyond the next little beach. Doesn't the sea shut you off against the cliffs?"

"Come and see," she invited him.

They rode at a footpace to Gull Rock. Kenneth started much conventional small talk, to which he got little or no response. Yet she seemed neither sniffy nor unintelligent, for ever and anon she would proffer some friendly comment on what offered itself—the cormorants on the logs, the band of quicksand where the sulphur spring seeped up, a strip of kelp lying fantastically, and the like—in a manner that seemed to take for granted an identical point of view. Being at the age when a pause in conversation between members of the opposite sex is a social crime, Kenneth found this peculiarity as intriguing as the cross saddle riding.

Thus they reached Gull Rock. The tide was low, but—as has been pointed out—even at that a horseman had to make several bold dashes as the wash receded. The palomino made a difficulty, more in play than earnest. The girl's slim figure straightened and stiffened. Twice she brought her heavy quirt down on the palomino's flanks. He reared and snorted. She leaned gracefully to his motion, swung him to his feet, and seemed literally to force him by the will power in her rigid young body. He snorted and made a dash forward, the suddenness of which did not in the slightest degree disturb her seat. Pronto, more accustomed to the sea, followed soberly. They were now on a short, steep curving beach, a quarter mile in length, between Gull Rock and a point where steep cliffs ran down into the sea.

"You certainly can ride!" cried Kenneth.

"That isn't riding," she replied scornfully.

"No: but I can tell by the way you sit, the way you go at it."

"Now it doesn't look as though you could possibly go another inch, does it?" she cried animatedly, dismissing Kenneth's compliment. "Come and I'll show you."

She touched heel to the palomino. The beach was shelving at this point and the sand soft. Her horse's hoofs flung the loose sand back by handfuls, stinging Kenneth's eyes. He had either to draw rein and fall back out of range, or race alongside in heavy laborious footing. He chose to do the former, in which his judgment coincided with that of the two dogs, who rolled their eyes comically up at him and wagged their tails. They caught up with the palomino dancing restlessly.

"Why didn't you come along?" she demanded.

"Pretty heavy going. That soft steep sand is mighty hard on horses."

"Good heavens! You aren't going to be one of these careful ones, are you?" she cried impatiently.

Kenneth's face flushed darkly, but he made no direct reply.

"I don't see how we go any farther," he commented.

"Follow me," she commanded.

She put her horse directly at the swirl of waters. At this point the waves broke not over twenty feet out from the cliffs, and the wash, rushing forward in a white mass, was rebuffed in whirlpools. The palomino snorted loudly as he was put at this, but advanced gingerly, nevertheless, feeling his way with little steps. Almost immediately the water rose above the line of his belly. The girl kicked her feet from the stirrups and raised them out of the way.

Kenneth had perforce to follow, though neither he nor Pronto favoured the move. Indeed, it required strong application of the big-rowelled blunt spurs to start him at all, although he had another horse to follow. The two dogs ran agonizedly up and down a short arc of the beach by way of formal protest, then sadly plunged in and swam in a business-like fashion, buffeted to and fro by the swirl of the tide. Then all rounded a sharp spur of the cliffs and found themselves in a far country.

On the right ran the low cliffs, unbroken as far as the eye could see, yellow and seamed and tunnelled with the rains. On the left was the sea. Between the two was the wide moist beach; and these three were the boundaries of a world beyond which the imagination refused to stray to the dry, hot dusty California mid-summer. Like islands in a river, here and there huge rocks or groups of smaller rocks outcropped from the sand; and the tide was in then, rushing and draining away. And here, out of the protection of the outflung coast, hummed a strong, sweet wind from overseas, the summer Trades, fresh and cool and bracing; and with it came a thundering, tumbling surf from which the tops were stripped and flung aloft like veils.

"Come on!" cried the girl.

Kenneth struck spurs to his horse and in a bound was alongside. He felt under his hand the momentary play against the bit, and then Pronto settled down to a rhythmical pound. The dogs, who had been idling after a roll in dry sand, came to attention and settled down to business. The brown, wet beach seemed to be flowing toward him. The pace gradually increased. Tears stood in his eyes so that he saw but dimly, and the great wind ran past him with a roar. Beneath him Pronto exulted, too, skipping pools, rocks, piles of seaweed that were gone before Kenneth had clearly sensed them; making small playful shies as the tide reached out toward him. Clumsy ducks spattered panic-stricken to the left, flocks of beach birds divided and wheeled with cries. The dogs were running at the edge of the wash, throwing the sand and the water, their tongues out. One of them rolled his eyes companionably up at Kenneth as though to say "aren't we having a good time!" Pronto, his neck stretched, felt powerful beneath him, as though he could go thus forever, like a machine.

Then he became aware that the girl was leaning back, pulling. He began to get Pronto in hand. Soon they had slowed to a hand canter, and then to a walk as they approached a wide reef of rock thrown across the beach.

Through the miniature ledges of this the animals picked a gingerly way. Beyond it they came out upon another clear stretch. Kenneth cleared away the tears. The horses plodded soberly along. The dogs panted and grinned; and one of them, from sheer exuberance, hippity-hopped along ten paces or so on three legs. The girl settled her Stetson a little more firmly, but said nothing. She seemed to be unaware of Kenneth and to be frankly enjoying the beach. Now that her colour had been heightened by the scamper, she was most decidedly a good looking girl, one you could hardly forget, and yet Kenneth could not for the life of him remember where they had met.

The dogs discovering that their humans intended to go slowly for a time, began to range ahead, chasing up the wet sand at a great rate, or investigating painstakingly mysterious dog-interests to be found in the dry sand above high-tide mark. There was much to see. An impression of life—teeming, busy, self contained, self-sufficient, independent life—informed this remote sea land. Dozens of compact bands of tiny white sanderlings fringed the edge of the wash. They followed the receding water with a twinkle twinkle twinkle of black legs, picking busily at mysterious things they found, pursuing the spent wave fairly into the maw of its successor: and then when it seemed inevitable that they be caught and overwhelmed, twinkle twinkle twinkle back they ran, keeping always just ahead of the water no matter how fiercely it pursued. So timed and accurate and simultaneous were their evolutions that they gave the appearance of executing a preconcerted drill. Then there were also flocks of the big brown sickle-billed curlews, standing motionless, transparent like phantoms against the brown sand. They minded the dogs very little, merely lifting on wing and dropping again as these busy canines loped beneath them. But on the approach of the horsemen they arose at some distance and made long flights along the coast just above the breakers, uttering weird shrill cries. And at one place they came to a great convention of gulls and pelicans, hundreds of them, seated on the sands, that arose a few at a time, protesting, as they drew near; and at last whirled up in a cloud, and went out and sat on the water just beyond the combers, riding the waves lightly like little ships at anchor, and the wind lifted their feathers when they turned from it. On the sands they left a tracery of fine foot-prints, like a delicate pattern of lace.

The tide was at its lowest. Already the singing wind was graying and ribbing the surface of the sand. A mist of fine particles was dancing elfishly. Where lay shells or pebbles the wind was industriously carving, so that they stood up slightly above the surface as the caps of miniature pillars or the heads of tiny promontories. Nevertheless, the beach itself was hard as iron underneath and the hoofs of the horse went k-pit k-pat, and the occasional popping of kelp bubbles.

From the open Pacific the breakers rolled powerfully in. For a moment they stood erect, and one could see the green lucence through them, and the wild sudden lift of weeds; then they rushed forward in a roar of white, tossing, tumbling, playing wild pranks with the shore they had reached at last after so many leagues. And alternately appeared and disappeared spouting dripping black rocks with weeds like green hair unbound. And beyond was the low gray sea, lifting and falling.

Outside the breaker-lines a school of dolphins played, running up the coast as though pacing the flying horsemen. Long lines of black "shags," or cormorants, were going somewhere; flying close to the water, their necks stretched out. Swifter ducks passed them or darted across their flight. Pelicans sailed along majestically only to let go all holds and drop as though shot, hitting the water with an awkward splash. Then the attendant small gulls or terns bore down screaming to where the pelican rode high on the waves like a galleon, hoping that the great bird would drop his catch when he tossed it from his pouch to catch it again in mid-air. A number of seals swam close inshore, and they raised their sleek, brown intelligent heads to stare at these passers by. One of them held a large fish crosswise in his mouth. As the great waves heaved up finally before breaking, and the green light shone through them, Kenneth could see behind their faces, as though he looked through the glass of an aquarium, the shadowy forms of more seals darting agilely back and forth in the lift of the comber only to fade at the last moment before the heavy water crashed down. They were playing, flirting with the last moment; just as the surf ducks were riding calmly the smaller waves, not diving until the overwhelming cataracts were upon them; just as the gulls sat on the very inner edge of possibility beyond the surf; just as the cormorants sailed as close to the bosom of the heavy sea as they could, lifting only just far enough to let the crest of the ground swell slip beneath them and dropping smoothly into the hollow beyond; just as the sanderlings in their drilled evolutions barely escaped the pursuing wash that tugged at their twinkling little heels. The only persons out for business seemed to be the pelicans.

"They have just as much fun playing as we do," suddenly remarked the girl.

Kenneth came to with a start of surprise that his thought had been so accurately met. And for the first time he realized that he had been committing one of the worst social crimes in his young code, and it did not seem to matter: he had been riding for a quarter hour absolutely silent, without one polite word to throw to the conventions. It did not seem to matter because, in a subtle way he did not understand, it came to him that up to this point they had been seeing the same things in the same way, and that speech had been unnecessary. The experience was a new one.

There seemed no end to the cliffs and the beach. Around the point of each little scallop in the coast they made their way only to find another crescent of hard sand. The smell of seaweed was on the breeze, of fresh kelp, plucked daily by the tides. The cliffs saw to it that at each high water yesterday's lot was carried away, so that never did it become stale. Sometimes they galloped for a half mile or so, and the horses shook their heads impatient for another race, and stately herons flipped upon tilted wings gathering their legs under them, and the cries of beach birds scattered like leaves. But the greater part of the time they walked their horses side by side in a sociable silence. And the feeling persisted in Kenneth's mind that they were sharing these things completely. He did not even know her name, but it seemed that he had known her a long time.

The afternoon drew to a close. Westward the sea had thrown aside its gray and was shining in gold. The Trade was wearying fast. Ahead of them in the distance of a broad curve, the cliffs were proud in saffron, or tender in mauve and lilac. Alongside the dogs pattered busily, their ears flat back, their tongues out, fairly laughing up at their humans. The horses, still fresh, were dancing forward with a proud half-hesitating step, begging for another run. Kenneth came to with a start.

"We must have come an awful way!" he exclaimed. "And look how the tide is coming in!" He reined in his horse with a sudden dismay. "We'll never get back in time to get around that point!" he cried.

She looked at him with tolerant amusement.

"Have you just thought of that?" she rallied him. "You must get into terrible scrapes when you have nobody to take care of you. See where those trees show on top? There's a trail up a little barranca ^[1] there. We'll take that up to the mesa. It's not far from town then 'cross country. You see we've been going on a big curve and now we can cut straight across."

The barranca trail proved to be sketchy and scrambly. It led them through stiff chaparral to an oak dotted mesa, like a park. When they topped the rise they seemed to leave the fresh, damp, cool sea world, and to return to the California summer. Tepid air and warm faint odours enveloped them. A still peace replaced the tingling life of the beach. Across the rich, brown meadow came liquid and sleepy the note of a belated lark. Across the distance the great ramparts of the Sur slumbered, wrapped in tinted veils.

They talked volubly from this time on. The girl seemed to possess an astonishing local knowledge of things that grew or moved out of doors. Finding that Kenneth was genuinely interested she took the delight of a child in pointing out to him common or curious things. Kenneth, in the large way of the foreign and uninformed, had concluded that with the passing of the brilliant scarves laid in acres over the hills California's flower season had passed completely. This girl showed him the indigo larkspur that had taken the place of the golden primroses; and blue phacelias that stood where of late had bloomed the shooting stars; the mimulus, scarlet among the rocks, and the silene, crimson on the slopes.

"There's no dead season here, like your winters back East," she told him, "just a ripe season, and a little season of sleep."

"That's all winter is," he told her; "a little season of sleep."

"Dead cold sleep—dead," she replied. "Here we just rest lightly for a little, and we dream in flowers."

"Why, that is a beautiful thought!" cried Kenneth. "It would make a good idea for a poem!"

She paid no attention to his compliment.

"Do you write poems?" she asked him.

"No, of course not, I couldn't," disclaimed Kenneth, with all the confusion of a healthy boy avoiding even the appearance of shame. "But I like to read good stuff. Did you ever read any of Carlson's?"

"Of course I have, what a silly question!"

"Don't you think he's bully?"

"He's California."

"Why, that's just what he is!" cried Kenneth. "You certainly put things well! You don't know what a relief it is to talk to an intelligent woman after a lot of these silly girls you meet around."

"Is it?" she smiled enigmatically.

They had crossed the mesa and now struck unexpectedly into the Camino Real. It was pastern deep in light dust at this time of the year, so they rode slowly on the brown grass alongside. To Kenneth's surprise they were only a few miles from town: in fact almost opposite the Corona del Monte ranch. They had ridden on the beach around a wide arc of a bow, and were now cutting across the chord.

"Well, good-bye," suddenly announced the girl, as they reached a willow-shaded, little-used cross roads. "I'm going to leave you here."

"Hold on!" cried Kenneth. "When do I see you again?"

But she had clapped heels to her palomino and was off in a cloud of dust followed by the dogs. Kenneth wheeled, with a half intention of fol1owing; but she disappeared on the keen run, and he knew from his late experience on the beach that Pronto was outclassed when it came to a race. While he hovered irresolute, his decision was made for him by the appearance of Dora Stanley and Myra Welch. The two girls had been horseback to call on Pilar Cazadero.

"You're a fine one!" cried Dora. "Why didn't you go with us this morning? And to go sneaking off like this in the afternoon! I declare!"

Privately Kenneth considered this harmless speech as immature and in bad taste; an opinion he would not have held two hours before. However, he might get some desired information.

"Did you see who I was riding with just now?" he asked.

"I should think you would be ashamed, cradle robber!" teased Dora.

"Who was it?" went on Kenneth, a little bewildered.

"You don't mean to say you don't remember her! What a blow!"

"Where did I ever see her before?"

"At the Peyton barbecue, for one place. That's the Brainerd kid."

"The Brainerd kid? " repeated Kenneth, still puzzled. "What do you mean?"

But Myra Welch broke in. She had been watching Kenneth from beneath her sleepy lashes.

"I truly believe he doesn't know, Dora," she drawled. "Do you think you have made another mash, Ken? You know, Dora, with her hair up under her hat that way——"

Dora went off into what Kenneth indignantly described to himself as shrieks of hyena laughter.

"You're right, Myra, you're right!" she cried. "Ken, listen. Remember that kid you watched the rough-riding with down on the corral fence? "

A great light burst on the mortified Kenneth.

"That kid!" he cried, "that gangle-legged kid, with her hair down her back!"

"Shouldn't speak of a young lady's leg," drawled Myra, who was daring of speech twenty years ahead of her time.

Kenneth had an engagement with Pearl that evening. He hired one of the Spanish stable boys to take her a note of regrets. He told himself that this was because all girls certainly made him sick!

VII

Luckily for Ken these human tangles were all postponed, and by his own act. He did not know he was running away, but that was what it amounted to. Patrick Boyd had long contemplated a business trip to San Francisco, and Kenneth suddenly decided that it would be good for him to go along.

Boyd, as is often the case with big men of business suddenly thrown into a quiet life, was deeply involved in small affairs. He was building a house and stable and planting a garden on the new lot next Mrs. Stanley, and he was giving all his time and ability to it. It was characteristic of the man that he let no contracts, but went ahead with a master carpenter on a day labour basis. This required daily supervision and daily consultation with all sorts of artisans. Boyd gave as much ability to it as he would have bestowed on a whole traction line, and enjoyed himself hugely. He had also made the discovery that gardens grow fast in California, and had developed a tremendous interest in things of the soil. Often he donned heavy gloves and himself dug energetically for an hour or so; a great deal of the time he spent driving or pulling up stakes, or squinting along curves. In this charming occupation he was aided and abetted by Mrs. Stanley. That formidable lady strode here and there across his precious acres, delivering her opinions in the strident voice of command, bestowing much valuable information belligerently. She managed by sheer weight of authority and positiveness to lift Boyd from the first to the second stage of California gardening.

"People are all alike," she boomed. "When they first get here they are so pleased with the way things grow, and the brightness of the colours, that they slap in all the brilliant, hardy things indiscriminately."

"Well, I like bright gay flowers," urged Boyd, "and I certainly like tough ones that can take care of themselves and don't need to have you hold their hands every cold night."

"So do I," agreed Mrs. Stanley. "But let me ask you something. Do you know anything about what blooms at various seasons? I thought not! Well, then, if you go ahead at your own sweet will how do you know that you won't have everything blooming at one time and not a single thing any other?"

"I thought all flowers just naturally bloomed in the spring," confessed Boyd.

"I thought so! Well you listen to me. Take that border for example. What are you going to plant there?"

"Marigolds," said Boyd, boldly.

"A very good flower. What's it going to look like when the marigolds are resting? Do you know what happens to marigolds when they aren't blooming? I thought not. Well, what you want is some small shrubbery—say bush honeysuckle—behind them."

Thus was the mind of Patrick Boyd illumined and his garden laid out for him. He had his nasturtiums and red geraniums and plumbago and other bright and common things; but he had them where Mrs. Stanley told him to have them. The result would be good, he had to admit, but his free and independent masculine soul was a little irked. At times he joined battle with Mrs. Stanley, but was always badly worsted for the reason that he knew very little about it. One cannot fight without ammunition. In his usual thoroughgoing manner he visited the keeper of the local greenhouses and nursery and from him carried back a number of choice bombshells.

"Pooh!" cried Mrs. Stanley. "You've been talking to old MacDonald. Do you know what your garden would look like, if he could have his way? It would be full of spindling, miserable varieties that could just make out to live because they would be out of their natural soil and climate. MacDonald is the worst kind of a snob."

"Snob!" echoed Boyd, recalling the surly, independent corduroyed old Scotchman.

"Yes, plant snob. You don't believe it? Well, listen. One day we were talking about pepper trees. 'Yes,' said he, 'it is a beautiful tree; it's a pity it's so common.' Now what do you say to that? a pity it's so common, indeed!"

They agreed amicably enough on the dividing fence between the two properties. At least, Mrs. Stanley thought a lattice affair you could grow things over would be about right; and Boyd thought so, too. But when the fence was once up and it came time to plant the "things," they locked horns. Boyd was in favour of blue moonflowers. There were some over a back fence down at the Fremont and he liked them. Also the Fremont gardener told him they grew very fast. But Mrs. Stanley was opposed.

"You don't know what you are talking about," she stated in her positive manner. "They do grow fast, to be sure; but they eat the soil, and they scatter all over the place, and they'll rot out your lattice, and a dozen other things. What you want is a banksia, or a Cecil Bruner or a Cherokee."

Boyd proved obstinate, for once. There ensued a deadlock. The space along the fence apparently remained unplanted. Then one morning Mrs. Stanley, clumping along the boundary lines in her brogans, saw some tender shoots pushing their way out of the soil. She bent incredulously to examine them. Other similar shoots were spaced along the fence. They were moonflowers!

This was too serious for informal action. Mrs. Stanley at once clumped back to her house where she indited a note. In it she called Mr. Boyd's attention to the fact that she had equal rights in a line fence and that she unalterably opposed moonflowers. This she dispatched to the Fremont by hand.

Within the half hour she had the reply:

Dear Mrs. Stanley:

In answer to your note will state that you are in error. The fence is not a line fence but belongs entirely to me, and is situated six inches inside my property line. I had it moved one night two weeks ago. I am sorry you do not like moonflowers; but of course it is always possible to erect your own fence and grow what suits you better.

Mrs. Stanley was a staunch old warrior who could take blows as well as give them.

"Humph!" she sniffed, when she read this. "Just like a man! Well, he'll have to learn."

The subject was never brought up again. But, to anticipate for a moment, within two years Boyd found that Mrs. Stanley had been right. He pulled up the moonflowers and planted banksias, Cecil Bruners and Cherokees in one, two, three order.

Mrs. Oliver Mills, herself much of a gardener, commented on this arrangement with wonder.

"Poor man, someone ought to tell him," she said. "Of course the Cherokees will smother the others."

"It isn't how it looks but what it stands for," replied Mrs. Stanley grimly, but she would not explain what she meant.

Now at the exact point to which our history has led us, the new house had arrived at the slow finishing stage. Men were scraping and planing and fitting interminably. Boyd resolved to seize the opportunity of a visit to San Francisco for the purpose of looking over the north, and incidently to buy gas fixtures, finishing hardware, and similar matters.

At first Kenneth was inclined to stay in Arguello, but later events, as has been related, switched him so completely to a new mood that he changed his mind.

They sailed north on the Santa Rosa, arrived after a smooth voyage, and proceeded at once to the Occidental Hotel. From this base they made excursions in all directions, taking in the sights. Our history lies with Arguello, so we will not follow them in detail. Kenneth saw Woodward's Gardens with its record-sized grizzly bear, he slid down the slippery seats of the cable cars as they climbed fly-like up the impossible grades of California Street and Telegraph Hill, he drove to the Cliff House and watched the seals, he wandered much in the devious ways of Chinatown, he frequented the Barbary Coast and gazed upon the tall ships. When Boyd had quite completed his business they ran down to Del Monte.

There they lingered for some time. The noble gardens were already well grown, and the rambling wooden hotel—later to be burned to the ground—was most comfortable. It was then fashionable to play croquet, to try to reach the centre of the ingenious "maze" of cedar hedges. There were bowling alleys and the four huge glassed-in swimming tanks with varying depths and temperatures, and drives to the celebrated cypresses and the rock-bound coast. Monterey village was still quaint and old fashioned. People drove in basket phaetons with fringed, square tops.

The hotel society was very lively. It was the day of bonanza kings. The Floods, the O'Briens, the Stanfords, the Fairs, and many others were there. It was a very dashing life, with a good deal of champagne, a good many diamonds, high coloured complexions, startlingly blonde hair. One of the bonanza kings, a little gorilla-like Irishman, had bought him a tall, stately, glorious creature for wife. She had a regal carriage, and a proud, unhappy look in her blue eyes. She never complained, nor appeared to abate her pride, but she had evidently been tamed by her master. Lanagan was short and square and hairy and terribly strong both in physique and in will power. He wore a massive watch chain of nuggets strung together, with which his thick blunt ringers were always toying. Mrs. Lanagan was willowy and fair and stately and cold. She was always magnificently dressed and carried herself haughtily like a queen. Hers was the marble type of beauty. She spoke rarely. Never by word or faintest indication did she show annoyance or mortification at her husband's gaucheries. He was always calling for spittoons, or cracking bad jokes in worse taste, or eating with bis knife, or performing other shuddery atrocities. And to Mrs. Lanagan his lightest word commanded an instant obedience. It seemed often as though he enjoyed testing his power; as though he commanded merely to be obeyed. Once in the crowded ball room he hailed her, passing:

"Cum here!"

She turned aside and swept to him, waiting impassively. He thrust his leg at her.

"Me foot hurts. Pull off me boot," he commanded.

And in her silks and jewels, without a word, before her partner could forestall her, she dropped on her knees and pulled off this man's boot. Ben Sansome, the old beau, veteran of social changes since the days of 'Forty-nine, cynical, surprised at nothing, often caught himself wondering what mysteries of pride, venality, contempt, will, brutality lay back of this astonishing proud acquiescence.

Lanagan had millions, as had his confrères. A few years before he had been a pick-and-shovel miner, as had many of them. But the time had struck for big, crude men, and these had answered the time. There was something elemental about them; and their vigour can be traced to the San Francisco of to-day.

With these men Boyd found himself congenial. They played a healthy game of poker. The projected week or so at Del Monte stretched to over a month. September was well advanced before the Boyds returned to Arguello.

VIII

Kenneth was by these circumstances and this excursion entirely cured of girls; but he was by no means released from uneasiness. His break with Pearl had been too abrupt to be graceful, provided Pearl knew it had taken place. That young lady was probably still living on the memory of his last kisses and expectation of his next. Some sort of explanation must be made, Kenneth fully appreciated that; and he frankly dreaded it.

Therefore it was to his great delight that he found Herbert Corbell possessed a long memory. Early in the spring he had expressed deep interest in Kenneth's sixteen gauge shotgun; and now that the quail season was about to open he put it into practical form by an invitation. Boyd did not see how he could get away at that time—the house was requiring attention—; but neither could he see any reason for Kenneth's refusing. So the latter laid in a canister of Dupont's Medium Ducking, a sack of number eight chilled shot, Eley's cardboard and felt wads, and the requisite primers. On an agreed day he climbed into a buckboard beside a saturnine looking cattleman, and so set forth to new adventures beyond the Sur.

After leaving the Camino Real five or six miles out, the road—narrow, winding, and steep—climbed rapidly the sides of the great range, taking clever advantage of the "hog's backs," diving into and out of shallow canons on hairpin turns, wriggling in lacets where no other footholds offered. At the top they drove for a half mile in a bay-shaded cool little cañon with a singing brook, climbed a tiny dividing ridge, and so found themselves on the down grade into the back country. Kenneth had often looked abroad over this back country from the ridge, but never had he descended into it. They rattled down with a continuous shrieking and scraping of brakes. On this side of the range the various kinds of chaparral grew to a height and thickness that made of it almost a jungle. The trees, too, were larger—both the live oaks, the white oaks, and the enormous contorted sycamores along the stream beds. It was a rolling land of shallow, wide valleys with streams in them flanked by mesas on which trees grew parklike; and all about were very lofty, dark mountains on which the lighter coloured stratified rocks showed in patterns. The air had here a different quality—very hot, but dry, with an exhilaration in it. Everywhere, but especially along the river down the general direction of which their course lay, was a teeming bird life. The bush was full of them, hopping, perching, chirping; the ground was alive with them, scurrying and scratching; the air was traced with the slow circlings of innumerable stately buzzards or larger hawks. Brush rabbits sitting in the soft dust of the road made two hops to vanish in the bushes; jackrabbits bounded loftily away across sage flats; in every grass opening the ground squirrels scurried to their holes, or sat upright and chirked. Once Kenneth caught a glimpse of some large gray animal as it flashed away.

"What was that?" he cried, excited.

The cowboy spat over the wheel.

"Bobcat, I reckon," said he.

This cowboy was a grave and silent individual, who answered questions politely but very briefly, and volunteered nothing whatever. Yes, there were plenty of quail. Yes, there were plenty of deer. Yes, there's ducks on Pico Lake. Yes, there's trout in the river; rainbows and steelhead.

At noon they drew aside in a little grass flat where a brook ran into the river. The cowboy unhitched the team and provided it with feed. Then he rolled a paper cigarette. To Kenneth's question he replied briefly that he didn't wish for no lunch. Kenneth took his sandwiches in his hand and went down to look at the river.

He found it a tiny shallow stream, with some deep pools, making its way through a bed of boulders and small stones some hundreds of feet wide. On his return he ventured the comment that it did not seem to him much of a river. The cowman grunted.

"Low water," he vouchsafed. "Dry season. You oughta see her after the rains. She picks up them boulders and rolls 'em like marbles."

Throughout the afternoon they drove, until the sun was touching the rim of the hills, through what seemed to be a great natural park of alternate mesa and bottomland, with the wide oak trees spaced as though planted ornamentally. Cattle grazed or rested in large or small bands. On each of these the cowboy fixed his grave attention, staring them over deliberately as long as they remained in sight.

"That fork-ear Triangle cow has strayed over yere, I see," he remarked, "I been wonderin' where she was at."

"Do you mean to say that you can tell these animals apart, at that distance?" said Kenneth, incredulously.

"Sure."

"I suppose that you know every cow in this country by sight," observed Kenneth with sarcastic intent.

"I know most of them," replied the cowboy with a final simplicity that closed the subject.

The Corbell ranch proved to be a series of long one-storied white buildings situated on a flat below low sagebrush hills, next a deep barranca that contained a flowing streamlet, and beneath live oak trees that, contrary to the usual habit of that species, grew tall and overarching. Circular corrals of greasewood stakes had been built on the flat beyond; and a commodious rough board stable loomed large a short distance down stream. As the buckboard drew nearer Kenneth saw that the white buildings were adobe structures, plastered; set flat to the ground, with narrow verandas running their entire lengths.

At the sound of the wheels the door opened and Corbell appeared to greet him.

"I am glad you could come," said he, "and I'm sorry your father could not. However, we'll have a grand shoot to-morrow. I'm going to put you in this room here at the end. Just make yourself at home. When you've washed up, come right down the veranda here to the middle door, and come in. We are all there."

The room was small and square with thick adobe walls and a floor made of square, red irregular tiles. These must have been laid directly on the hard soil for their surface was uneven. The furnishings were of the simplest. Two small windows looked out through deep embrasures across the oakdotted flat to the low, even sagebrush hills a quarter mile away. And from these hills Kenneth heard faintly through the gathering dusk the jaunty staccato notes of quail.

His toilet did not take him long. He proceeded along the narrow veranda, also tile paved, past the entrances to two rooms similar to his own, and so to a long chamber occupying the whole centre. It was lighted at this moment only by the flames of a fire leaping in a tremendous fireplace. Kenneth standing in the doorway made out a table at one end set for eating; a shelf of books; a half dozen deer heads; skins of animals tacked against the wall; pegs from which hung bridles, spurs, ropes; a rack in the corner for guns; another, smaller, round table cluttered with books, magazines, pipes, tobacco jars, loose cartridges, and similar untidinesses. The floor, still of the big square uneven tiles, was partly covered by a bright rug of Indian or Mexican weave and a number of coyote skins. Overhead were heavy horizontal beams. A number of light, portable chairs, unoccupied, were scattered about. A divan and three heavy easy chairs were grouped before the fireplace, and the heads of their occupants were silhouetted against the flames. Tobacco smoke lay in strata, or eddied violently when caught by the currents of air.

Corbell came forward at once to greet his guest. The others turned their heads and waved their hands.

"Come up to the fire," invited the ranchman. "The evenings are chilly over the mountains at this time of year. You know these men. We'll have some supper shortly."

Kenneth greeted Frank Moore and Bill Hunter. A welter of dogs raised languid heads or rapped languid tails, then sank back with sighs to toasting their brains in almost immediate contact with the fire. Shortly a lean, carven-faced brown man came in and lighted lamps; and so they moved over to the table and to a hearty supper. After that meal they moved back to the fireplace where they smoked and talked until ten o'clock. After the first twenty minutes—in which the prospects of birds and the sixteen gauge gun were the topics—Kenneth sat back and listened. It was tremendously interesting to him. These harum-scarum members of the Sociedad became serious men engaged in a serious business. They discussed cattle, mostly, and feed and ranges; the breed of stock; the provision that could be taken against a dry year; the relative advantages of markets. Frank Moore lost all his facetiousness as he declaimed against the tentative project of importing some Durham bulls to improve the native stock.

"I'm with you on improving the stock," said he. "There's more head than beef on these Mexican longhorns. But Durhams won't do it."

"They are a fine, beefy critter," observed Bill Hunter, "and they are hardy."

"That's it. They're hardy; but only as long as things go right. When feed gets scarce they don't rustle the way they should. They'll hang around their ranges until they just naturally starve to death. Now a Hereford is a rustler. On a dry year you'll find them 'way up on top of the mountains. They'll climb like goats for it when they have to. That's the sort of stock you want to breed to on a wild range."

"And that's the sort of stock that wanders so far they get off your range completely and you never do see them again, unless with a blanketed brand," grumbled Bill, stretching his mighty limbs.

"What is a blanketed brand?" asked Kenneth.

They explained how cattle thieves, or "rustlers," would change a brand by skillful addition of lines. But for a long time thereafter it would, of course, be easy to detect the difference between the new and the old burning. However, it had been discovered that branding through a wet blanket gave to fresh brands an appearance of age that could hardly be detected. From that point the conversation drifted to certain "rustlers" who lurked in the fastnesses of the high coast ranges back of the Sur; and what their activities were and what would eventually have to be done about it. Kenneth snuggled the bowl of his pipe, lost in delighted sense of the romantic—with the firelight playing across the game-heads and on the bright metal of the equipment, and a brace of coyotes shrieking like devils on the hill opposite.

For some time after he had turned in he lay listening to this weird ululation. A big contralto owl in the tree outside at intervals remarked whoo! whoo! whoo! Every once in a while, as the night cold penetrated, the old timbers of the adobe cracked loudly.

He was awakened just at dawn by the lean, carven-faced, silent man; and dressed hastily, shivering. The water in which he splashed was icy; and the air, when he emerged to the veranda, stung the lining of his nose. The day was just breaking. Eastward the hills lay in hard outline against a brightening sky. There was a stirring and rustling among the oak leaves as though of things awakening; and from the very tops of them floated softly, as thistledown floats, the infinitely remote, infinitely mournful, infinitely tender note of wild doves.

In the living room the fire was roaring and the lamps were lit. The three ranchmen dressed in stout boots, flannel shirts, and old stained canvas coats with many pockets, were piling equipment together in the middle of the floor. They were joyfully hilarious, again the members of the Sociedad.

"Here we are!" cried Corbell, at sight of Kenneth. "So that's the little pop-gun!" He threw it to his shoulder. "It certainly comes up nice! Here Bill, feel this."

The massive Hunter aimed the piece and grunted.

"Feel as though I were handling a toothpick! I like something I can hold steady."

"He's got it," said Frank Moore to Kenneth. "Did you ever see his cannon? Here's what he has the nerve to lug around after quail."

He handed Kenneth a huge ten bore, with thirty inch barrels, a tremendous and awe-inspiring piece of ordnance that weighed nine or ten pounds.

"It's a cylinder bore. Bill loads her with five drachms and an ounce and a half! When he turns her loose he kills everything within an angle of thirty degrees, big and little, birds, animals, insects. It's like dynamiting a pool, I say."

"You go to hell!" was all Bill's comment.

Each several times tried the feel of Kenneth's little Scott. They liked the way it handled; but they much doubted its shooting quality. It might be all right of course for very close range; but long shots now—or old birds?

Kenneth grew eloquent in defence of the sixteen. He had done considerable wing shooting in the East both at the Bob White and the ruffed grouse. They listened politely.

"You have to reload, don't you?" Corbell changed the subject. "How many shells have you?"

"Fifty."

"That is very few. I think I'll put in a little twelve I have for you."

"I ought to get all the birds I want with fifty shells," protested Kenneth. "I'm really not such a bad shot as all that."

Again they listened politely. They were all old hands at the sport, and had witnessed the downfall of much eastern pride. Corbell, as host, did his duty by letting fall a hint.

"The western Colinus, or quail," he stated with a burlesque of the didactic, "is as compared with the eastern Colinus, or quail, a swift and elusive proposition that requires especial study."

"Such being the case, suppose we go and study him," suggested Moore.

Breakfast over they picked up their guns and started forth. Full daylight had come, and the first rays of the sun were gilding the sagebrush hills on the left side of the valley. Toward these the hunters proceeded on foot.

From that moment until lunch time Kenneth acquired much valuable experience. He learned that hunting the valley quail was indeed a specialist's job. Arrived at the sagebrush slope Corbell strung his command out at such intervals as to sweep the hill. They began to move forward abreast.

Soon in the openings Kenneth began to see the quail, running busily, their heads held low, their bodies trim, darting through the sagebrush.

"Here are some, just ahead!" he shouted.

The line quickened its pace in order to flush the birds. Kenneth held his gun forward ready at any instant for a shot. But the quail kept ahead. Occasionally he caught glimpses of them still running.

"Shake it up!" cried Corbell, from near the top of the hill.

They broke into a dog trot. Kenneth felt a vexed wonder as to how any one could be expected to pick his footing, dodge sagebrush, cling to a side hill, and shoot—at this pace. Then suddenly with a whir of wings a half dozen of the birds sprang into the air about a hundred yards away. Promptly Frank Moore flung his gun to his shoulder and let drive both barrels. Kenneth's disgusted astonishment at the foolishness of firing at such an absurd range was instantly swallowed up in wonder, for as though answering the reports came a roar like a cataract, as hundreds of quail flushed in a pack. The air was blue with them, literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, Kenneth could not begin to guess. They, too, were well over a hundred yards distant. Nevertheless both Corbell and Hunter fired instantly, followed a second later by two more from Frank, who had reloaded.

"Come on! Come on!" yelled Corbell, and started after them on the run. The quail buzzed for fifty yards, set their wings and sailed for fifty yards more, then pitched down sidewise in an open space and paced away like quarter horses. The little band of sweating, stumbling hunters caught up with them—if flushing them at another hundred yards, range could be called catching up—only after a jog of nearly a quarter mile. Then once more six barrels blazed away, without of course touching a feather at such a distance. And off they set again after the vanishing pack.

To Kenneth the whole performance seemed crazy. He was accustomed to some sort of an orderly performance over dogs; he had some ideas of effective ranges and the wasting of ammunition. There was no fun in this. Twice stragglers from the main covey got out almost under his feet, but he could not even get organized for a shot; on another occasion his companions flushed individuals at good range but apparently did not see them, or at least paid them no attention.

At length after the third repetition of this silly performance Corbell called a halt, and came down the hill wiping his brow.

"I reckon we've got enough laid away," he observed. "Enough for a good shoot, anyway." He caught Kenneth's expression and laughed. "I forgot to ask you if you knew anything about this game," said he. "I see you don't. I suppose you think we're crazy."

"Well," replied Kenneth, cautiously, "I don't believe I quite understand how you expect to kill anything at that range."

"We don't," laughed Corbell. "Bless you, we aren't shooting with the expectation of killing anything. We just shoot to make a noise, raise a row."

"I see," said Kenneth blankly, but still trying desperately to be polite.

"The California quail in these big packs would run a hundred miles, if you gave them a chance," explained Corbell. "You could chase those fellows all day, and they'd always keep just about a hundred yards ahead of you. Try it and see. The only hope is to rattle them, scare them a little. Then, a few at a time, they'll scatter; and when they're scattered they'll lie close. The noise of the guns and, I suppose, the patter of spent shot, does just that. Didn't you notice that the pack was much smaller on that last rise?"

"I'm afraid I didn't notice much of anything," confessed Kenneth.

"Well, it was. There were close to seven or eight hundred birds on that first rise. I don't believe there were over three hundred the last time they got up. Where do you suppose the rest are? Why, scattered through the brush back of us, of course; where they pitched in and hid. They will lie: and that is where we are going to get our shooting. See?"

"I see."

"Well, listen."

They held quiet, and from the long brushy side hill back of him Kenneth heard near at hand subdued clucks, whispered calls; and from farther away, now here, now there, now half voiced, now full strength came the jaunty clear gathering call over and over repeated.

"You can't shoot! You can't shoot!"

"Now we will go back over the same ground and get our shooting," instructed Corbell. "You will have to pick up your own birds, and to do that you will have to mark them very closely. This brush all looks pretty much alike. Until you get used to it I'd advise you not to kill a second bird until you have picked up the first. And another thing: if you fall behind the line looking for a down bird, you don't shoot again until you have caught up, even if you do flush something. That's for safety. Everybody ready? All right: we're off!"

In the retracing of his steps Kenneth had many bitter truths borne in on him. The valley quail in his full growth and strength is one of the speediest of upland game. He is very strong in flight, and he launches himself from the advantage of iron-hard ground. He is like a blue bullet; and is a hard bird to hit when flushed on level ground. But here Kenneth was midway up a steep hill. Rarely did a quail flush exactly on his level, and rarely did it fly on the same level. It darted quartering up the hill from below, or swooped curving down the hill from above, or deceived all calculation by rocketing up, over and back. He shot over, he shot behind; and at his first shattering report, a bewildering, buzzing half dozen of these blue devils darted into the air on all sides of him to confuse his second barrel. Then he had to keep his footing and make his way through brush. Above and below him the guns were speaking regularly; and several times the remnants of his bewildered attention saw the quick puff of feathers and the long slanting fall that means a clean kill. But he became more and more flustered and angry until at a point where the low growth of sage came to an end, he was thoroughly rattled.

"Nice shoot: they lay nicely!" observed Corbell, as they gathered together. He began to pull quail from the game pockets of his canvas coat. "How did you make out, Boyd?"

"Very badly."

"Well, that's to be expected at first. How many did you get?"

"I killed two," confessed Kenneth, miserably, "but I couldn't find either of them. I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm not a crack shot by any means, but I used to be able to hit something!"

"These quail are tough customers—— Perhaps that gun——" began Bill Hunter.

"I never saw an Eastern shot, no matter how good, who could hit a flock of balloons first day out," interrupted Corbell, consolingly. "Never! It's a different game. Suppose we trade guns for a little while. I'd really like to try that little fellow."

Kenneth agreed. He found to his astonishment that of the fifty loaded brass shells only about twenty remained charged.

"I did not realize I had shot so many!" he confessed. Then more boldly. "Would you mind, Mr. Corbell, if I just trailed you for a little while? I want to see how it's done, and get some hints. I can pick up your birds for you."

"Certainly. Come along. But there isn't much to learn. It's a matter of practise."

"What do we do now? Hunt up another covey?"

"No: go right back over the same ground. We didn't get up a quarter of them. We could go back and forth there all day and still get up birds: and the oftener we went the closer they'd lie."

On this second trip Kenneth added to his humility. Corbell was a beautiful shot. And he found that, even with the preoccupation of shooting, the older man was able to mark dead birds more accurately than could Kenneth, who was giving his whole attention to it.

"You'll find him about three feet further to the left, under that brush with the dead stalk," he told Kenneth. The bird had been the first of three killed in a scattering rise from one spot, when Corbell had to turn square away for the second and third. "It's a matter of spotting some one individual bush or even spear of grass," he told Kenneth. When the shooters grouped again at the end of this drive, Corbell was enthusiastic about the little Scott.

"It kills 'em," he said, "and it kills 'em just as far as that old cannon of yours, Bill. I wouldn't have believed it! And it kills them clean. It's either a clean kill or a clean miss; and you've got to hold close. I missed several birds just because I didn't get square on and centre them. And, Lord! she does handle prettily!"

"How many did you scratch down with the thing?" inquired Hunter.

"An even dozen, with twenty shots."

"Beginner's luck," asserted Bill. "Can't repeat in a thousand years. Me, I like a gun you can depend on; not one you got to carry a rabbit's foot with."

Corbell's eyes were snapping.

"Ill tell you what I'll do," he suggested, suavely. "I'll take twenty shells to-morrow morning, after the birds are scattered, and I'll get more birds with this little popgun than you can with that old blunderbuss of yours. Only it will cost you fifty dollars to see me do it. Are you on?"

"I promised my mother I wouldn't gamble," said Bill. "But this isn't gambling: it's a sure thing. Yes, I'll take your money."

They returned to the ranch house for lunch at noon, after which saddle horses were brought and they spent the rest of the day jogging in a leisurely fashion over the ranges. Kenneth trailed along. The more he saw and the longer he listened the more impressed was he by the great complication and uncertainty of the cattle business, and the amount of specialized knowledge necessary to run it on anything but a hit-or-miss basis. As they went along Corbell told him something of what happens when two dry years come in succession; the failure, first of the feed, and then of the streams and springs; the weakening and the starvation of cattle and other stock.

"I drove a bunch of horses across country 'way over into Inyo County just to save them," he said. "You could have your pick of riding animals, if you'd promise to feed them. We shot all but the very finest stock. Some of the Spanish people drove big herds of cattle off the sea cliffs so they would not die inland and contaminate the air. They estimate that a million cattle died that time. A million's a good many!"

He shook his head as his thoughts strayed to those black years.

"Now we've got a new system. We raise hay, and bale it, and pile it up, and roof it over. Every year a crop is piled up and not used until it is in danger of spoiling. After a few years you get to have quite a lot of hay. You've seen it standing about like big buildings in all the bottom lands. When another dry year comes along, we'll feed it out."

"I should think you could raise most anything here," said Kenneth. "The soil looks fine."

But at this Corbell drew into his shell.

"It's not an agricultural country," he said shortly: and here, had he but known it, Kenneth was touching the obstinate conservatism of the cattleman, sensing dimly the quarter from which his doom was to come.

A week later Kenneth rode back alone across the mountains on a borrowed horse. He left his baggage to follow when the buckboard or the high trap next visited town; but he carried some fifty quail.

"You must come back in the pigeon season," was Corbell's parting remark. "They come down from the north in clouds. Greatest wing shooting you ever did!"

At Arguello Kenneth found himself once more in face of his problem, which had in no way diminished by being temporarily ignored. In fact it had increased by the one fact that this plunge into wholesome, manly, out-of-door pursuits had given him a positive distaste for Pearl. Nevertheless he had his code. It was his fault; not hers. He would be a dastard and a villain to go back on her now. It would be like slapping a child. He must go through with it: play his part. After balking shamefully for two days, he revolted against himself, and made an especial trip downtown for the sole purpose of stopping in at the Kandy Kitchen. Pearl was behind the counter, dressed in her usual clean pink starched things. She certainly looked neat and clean and refreshing; but somehow vapid. Kenneth had never noticed this before. He seemed to be looking at her from an outside detached viewpoint.

"Hello, Pearl," he greeted, trying for ease of manner. "Haven't seen you for a dog's age. I've been away—up north—over the mountains, you know," he hastened to add.

"How do you do," she returned primly. "Yes, I heard you had."

A wonder crossed Kenneth's panic-stricken mind as to why it had not occurred to him to write. Actually the idea had never until this moment crossed his mind. She must be wondering the same thing!

If so, she showed no signs of it. She answered his lame sallies in her usual prim, self-possessed manner. Customers were numerous, and Kenneth made them an excuse for leaving.

"Meet me this evening?" he forced himself to ask.

"Thank you, I can't this evening."

"Well, s'm'other time," said Kenneth, making a thankful escape.

But his conscience would not let him off. It dragged him, always with increasing distaste, to the Kandy Kitchen, where were reënacted varying repetitions of the same interview. Invariably Kenneth, as in duty bound suggested a meeting, but invariably was put off by an excuse. The fourth visit discovered a black-haired young fellow leaning over the counter talking low-voiced to Pearl. Her manner was as precise as ever, but her star-eyes were downcast, and a faint pink flushed her cheeks.

"Seven o'clock near the bandstand," Kenneth heard her say.

And a great burden fell from his shoulders. For in this black-haired young man he saw again himself.

He greeted Pearl jovially, cracked some jokes, met the young man cordially, and breezed out again without suggesting further an evening or a Sunday meeting. Thereafter he liked to drop in at the Kandy Kitchen occasionally, to chaff Pearl, to join the young people at the soda fountain. Pearl was a good soul; not bad looking in her way. But never again did he see her alone.

Nor did he ever get back his jewelled fraternity pin!

1. Barranca—an eroded ravine with precipitous sides.