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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON by Jack London




BOOK I

CHAPTER 1

"You hear me, Saxon? Come on along. What if it is the
Bricklayers? I'll have gentlemen friends there, and so'll you.
The Al Vista band'll be along, an' you know it plays heavenly.
An' you just love dancin'---"

Twenty feet away, a stout, elderly woman interrupted the girl's
persuasions. The elderly woman's back was turned, and the
back-loose, bulging, and misshapen--began a convulsive heaving.

"Gawd!" she cried out. "O Gawd!"

She flung wild glances, like those of an entrapped animal, up and
down the big whitewashed room that panted with heat and that was
thickly humid with the steam that sizzled from the damp cloth
under the irons of the many ironers. From the girls and women
near her, all swinging irons steadily but at high pace, came
quick glances, and labor efficiency suffered to the extent of a
score of suspended or inadequate movements. The elderly woman's
cry had caused a tremor of money-loss to pass among the
piece-work ironers of fancy starch.

She gripped herself and her iron with a visible effort, and
dabbed futilely at the frail, frilled garment on the board under
her hand.

"I thought she'd got'em again--didn't you?" the girl said.

"It's a shame, a women of her age, and . . . condition," Saxon
answered, as she frilled a lace ruffle with a hot fluting-iron.
Her movements were delicate, safe, and swift, and though her face
was wan with fatigue and exhausting heat, there was no slackening
in her pace.

"An' her with seven, an' two of 'em in reform school," the girl
at the next board sniffed sympathetic agreement. "But you just
got to come to Weasel Park to-morrow, Saxon. The Bricklayers' is
always lively--tugs-of-war, fat-man races, real Irish jiggin',
an' . . . an' everything. An' The floor of the pavilion's swell."

But the elderly woman brought another interruption. She dropped
her iron on the shirtwaist, clutched at the board, fumbled it,
caved in at the knees and hips, and like a half-empty sack
collapsed on the floor, her long shriek rising in the pent room
to the acrid smell of scorching cloth. The women at the boards
near to her scrambled, first, to the hot iron to save the cloth,
and then to her, while the forewoman hurried belligerently down
the aisle. The women farther away continued unsteadily at their
work, losing movements to the extent of a minute's set-back to
the totality of the efficiency of the fancy-starch room.

"Enough to kill a dog," the girl muttered, thumping her iron down
on its rest with reckless determination. "Workin' girls' life
ain't what it's cracked up. Me to quit--that's what I'm comin'
to."

"Mary!" Saxon uttered the other's name with a reproach so
profound that she was compelled to rest her own iron for emphasis
and so lose a dozen movements.

Mary flashed a half-frightened look across.

"I didn't mean it, Saxon," she whimpered. "Honest, I didn't. I
wouldn't never go that way. But I leave it to you, if a day like
this don't get on anybody's nerves. Listen to that!"

The stricken woman, on her back, drumming her heels on the floor,
was shrieking persistently and monotonously, like a mechanical
siren. Two women, clutching her under the arms, were dragging her
down the aisle. She drummed and shrieked the length of it. The
door opened, and a vast, muffled roar of machinery burst in; and
in the roar of it the drumming and the shrieking were drowned ere
the door swung shut. Remained of the episode only the scorch of
cloth drifting ominously through the air.

"It's sickenin'," said Mary.

And thereafter, for a long time, the many irons rose and fell,
the pace of the room in no wise diminished; while the forewoman
strode the aisles with a threatening eye for incipient breakdown
and hysteria. Occasionally an ironer lost the stride for an
instant, gasped or sighed, then caught it up again with weary
determination. The long summer day waned, hut not the heat, and
under the raw flare of electric light the work went on.

By nine o'clock the first women began to go home. The mountain of
fancy starch had been demolished--all save the few remnants, here
and there, on the boards, where the ironers still labored.

Saxon finished ahead of Mary, at whose board she paused on the
way out.

"Saturday night an' another week gone," Mary said mournfully, her
young cheeks pallid and hollowed, her black eyes blue-shadowed
and tired. "What d'you think you've made, Saxon?"

"Twelve and a quarter," was the answer, just touched with pride
"And I'd a-made more if it wasn't for that fake bunch of
starchers."

"My! I got to pass it to you," Mary congratulated. "You're a sure
fierce hustler--just eat it up. Me--I've only ten an' a half, an'
for a hard week ... See you on the nine-forty. Sure now. We can
just fool around until the dancin' begins. A lot of my gentlemen
friends'll be there in the afternoon."

Two blocks from the laundry, where an arc-light showed a gang of
toughs on the corner, Saxon quickened her pace. Unconsciously her
face set and hardened as she passed. She did not catch the words
of the muttered comment, but the rough laughter it raised made
her guess and warmed her checks with resentful blood. Three
blocks more, turning once to left and once to right, she walked
on through the night that was already growing cool. On either
side were workingmen's houses, of weathered wood, the ancient
paint grimed with the dust of years, conspicuous only for
cheapness and ugliness.

Dark it was, but she made no mistake, the familiar sag and
screeching reproach of the front gate welcome under her hand. She
went along the narrow walk to the rear, avoided the missing step
without thinking about it, and entered the kitchen, where a
solitary gas-jet flickered. She turned it up to the best of its
flame. It was a small room, not disorderly, because of lack of
furnishings to disorder it. The plaster, discolored by the steam
of many wash-days, was crisscrossed with cracks from the big
earthquake of the previous spring. The floor was ridged,
wide-cracked, and uneven, and in front of the stove it was worn
through and repaired with a five-gallon oil-can hammered flat and
double. A sink, a dirty roller-towel, several chairs, and a
wooden table completed the picture.

An apple-core crunched under her foot as she drew a chair to the
table. On the frayed oilcloth, a supper waited. She attempted the
cold beans, thick with grease, but gave them up, and buttered a
slice of bread.

The rickety house shook to a heavy, prideless tread, and through
the inner door came Sarah, middle-aged, lop-breasted,
hair-tousled, her face lined with care and fat petulance.

"Huh, it's you," she grunted a greeting. "I just couldn't keep
things warm. Such a day! I near died of the heat. An' little
Henry cut his lip awful. The doctor had to put four stitches in
it."

Sarah came over and stood mountainously by the table.

"What's the matter with them beans?" she challenged.

"Nothing, only ..." Saxon caught her breath and avoided the
threatened outburst. "Only I'm not hungry. It's been so hot all
day. It was terrible in the laundry."

Recklessly she took a mouthful of the cold tea that had been
steeped so long that it was like acid in her mouth, and
recklessly, under the eye of her sister-in-law, she swallowed it
and the rest of the cupful. She wiped her mouth on her
handkerchief and got up.

"I guess I'll go to bed."

"Wonder you ain't out to a dance," Sarah sniffed. "Funny, ain't
it, you come home so dead tired every night, an' yet any night in
the week you can get out an' dance unearthly hours."

Saxon started to speak, suppressed herself with tightened lips,
then lost control and blazed out. "Wasn't you ever young?"

Without waiting for reply, she turned to her bedroom, which
opened directly off the kitchen. It was a small room, eight by
twelve, and the earthquake had left its marks upon the plaster. A
bed and chair of cheap pine and a very ancient chest of drawers
constituted the furniture. Saxon had known this chest of drawers
all her life. The vision of it was woven into her earliest
recollections. She knew it had crossed the plains with her people
in a prairie schooner. It was of solid mahogany. One end was
cracked and dented from the capsize of the wagon in Rock Canyon.
A bullet-hole, plugged, in the face of the top drawer, told of
the fight with the Indians at Little Meadow. Of these happenings
her mother had told her; also had she told that the chest had
come with the family originally from England in a day even
earlier than the day on which George Washington was born.

Above the chest of drawers, on the wall, hung a small
looking-glass. Thrust under the molding were photographs of young
men and women, and of picnic groups wherein the young men, with
hats rakishly on the backs of their heads, encircled the girls
with their arms. Farther along on the wall were a colored
calendar and numerous colored advertisements and sketches torn
out of magazines. Most of these sketches were of horses. From the
gas-fixture hung a tangled bunch of well-scribbled dance
programs.

Saxon started to take off her hat, but suddenly sat down on the
bed. She sobbed softly, with considered repression, but the
weak-latched door swung noiselessly open, and she was startled by
her sister-in-law's voice.

"NOW what's the matter with you? If you didn't like them beans--"

"No, no," Saxon explained hurriedly. "I'm just tired, that's all,
and my feet hurt. I wasn't hungry, Sarah. I'm just beat out."

"If you took care of this house," came the retort, "an' cooked
an' baked, an' washed, an' put up with what I put up, you'd have
something to be beat out about. You've got a snap, you have. But
just wait." Sarah broke off to cackle gloatingly. "Just wait,
that's all, an' you'll be fool enough to get married some day,
like me, an' then you'll get yours--an' it'll be brats, an'
brats, an' brats, an' no more dancin', an' silk stockin's, an'
three pairs of shoes at one time. You've got a cinch-nobody to
think of but your own precious self--an' a lot of young hoodlums
makin' eyes at you an' tellin' you how beautiful your eyes are.
Huh! Some fine day you'll tie up to one of 'em, an' then, mebbe,
on occasion, you'll wear black eyes for a change."

"Don't say that, Sarah," Saxon protested. "My brother never laid
hands on you. You know that."

"No more he didn't. He never had the gumption. Just the same,
he's better stock than that tough crowd you run with, if he can't
make a livin' an' keep his wife in three pairs of shoes. Just the
same he's oodles better'n your bunch of hoodlums that no decent
woman'd wipe her one pair of shoes on. How you've missed trouble
this long is beyond me. Mebbe the younger generation is wiser in
such thins--I don't know. But I do know that a young woman that
has three pairs of shoes ain't thinkin' of anything but her own
enjoyment, an' she's goin' to get hers, I can tell her that much.
When I was a girl there wasn't such doin's. My mother'd taken the
hide off me if I done the things you do. An' she was right, just
as everything in the world is wrong now. Look at your brother,
a-runnin' around to socialist meetin's, an' chewin' hot air, an'
diggin' up extra strike dues to the union that means so much
bread out of the mouths of his children, instead of makin' good
with his bosses. Why, the dues he pays would keep me in seventeen
pairs of shoes if I was nannygoat enough to want 'em. Some day,
mark my words, he'll get his time, an' then what'll we do?
What'll I do, with five mouths to feed an' nothin' comin' in?"

She stopped, out of breath but seething with the tirade yet to
come.

"Oh, Sarah, please won't you shut the door?" Saxon pleaded.

The door slammed violently, and Saxon, ere she fell to crying
again, could hear her sister-in-law lumbering about the kitchen
and talking loudly to herself.



CHAPTER II

Each bought her own ticket at the entrance to Weasel Park. And
each, as she laid her half-dollar down, was distinctly aware of
how many pieces of fancy starch were represented by the coin. It
was too early for the crowd, but bricklayers and their families,
laden with huge lunch-baskets and armfuls of babies, were already
going in--a healthy, husky race of workmen, well-paid and
robustly fed. And with them, here and there, undisguised by their
decent American clothing, smaller in bulk and stature, weazened
not alone by age but by the pinch of lean years and early
hardship, were grandfathers and mothers who had patently first
seen the light of day on old Irish soil. Their faces showed
content and pride as they limped along with this lusty progeny of
theirs that had fed on better food.

Not with these did Mary and Saxon belong. They knew them not, had
no acquaintances among them. It did not matter whether the
festival were Irish, German, or Slavonian; whether the picnic was
the Bricklayers', the Brewers', or the Butchers'. They, the
girls, were of the dancing crowd that swelled by a certain
constant percentage the gate receipts of all the picnics.

They strolled about among the booths where peanuts were grinding
and popcorn was roasting in preparation for the day, and went on
and inspected the dance floor of the pavilion. Saxon, clinging to
an imaginary partner, essayed a few steps of the dip-waltz. Mary
clapped her hands.

"My!" she cried. "You're just swell! An' them stockin's is
peaches."

Saxon smiled with appreciation, pointed out her foot,
velvet-slippered with high Cuban heels, and slightly lifted the
tight black skirt, exposing a trim ankle and delicate swell of
calf, the white flesh gleaming through the thinnest and flimsiest
of fifty-cent black silk stockings. She was slender, not tall,
yet the due round lines of womanhood were hers. On her white
shirtwaist was a pleated jabot of cheap lace, caught with a large
novelty pin of imitation coral. Over the shirtwaist was a natty
jacket, elbow-sleeved, and to the elbows she wore gloves of
imitation suede. The one essentially natural touch about her
appearance was the few curls, strangers to curling-irons, that
escaped from under the little naughty hat of black velvet pulled
low over the eyes.

Mary's dark eyes flashed with joy at the sight, and with a swift
little run she caught the other girl in her arms and kissed her
in a breast-crushing embrace. She released her, blushing at her
own extravagance.

"You look good to me," she cried, in extenuation. "If I was a man
I couldn't keep my hands off you. I'd eat you, I sure would."

They went out of the pavilion hand in hand, and on through the
sunshine they strolled, swinging hands gaily, reacting
exuberantly from the week of deadening toil. They hung over the
railing of the bear-pit, shivering at the huge and lonely
denizen, and passed quickly on to ten minutes of laughter at the
monkey cage. Crossing the grounds, they looked down into the
little race track on the bed of a natural amphitheater where the
early afternoon games were to take place. After that they
explored the woods, threaded by countless paths, ever opening out
in new surprises of green-painted rustic tables and benches in
leafy nooks, many of which were already pre-empted by family
parties. On a grassy slope, tree-surrounded, they spread a
newspaper and sat down on the short grass already tawny-dry under
the California sun. Half were they minded to do this because of
the grateful indolence after six days of insistent motion, half
in conservation for the hours of dancing to come.

"Bert Wanhope'll be sure to come," Mary chattered. "An' he said
he was going to bring Billy Roberts--'Big Bill,' all the fellows
call him. He's just a big boy, but he's awfully tough. He's a
prizefighter, an' all the girls run after him. I'm afraid of him.
He ain't quick in talkin'. He's more like that big bear we saw.
Brr-rf! Brr-rf!--bite your head off, just like that. He ain't
really a prize-fighter. He's a teamster--belongs to the union.
Drives for Coberly and Morrison. But sometimes he fights in the
clubs. Most of the fellows are scared of him. He's got a bad
temper, an' he'd just as soon hit a fellow as eat, just like
that. You won't like him, but he's a swell dancer. He's heavy,
you know, an' he just slides and glides around. You wanta have a
dance with'm anyway. He's a good spender, too. Never pinches. But
my!--he's got one temper."

The talk wandered on, a monologue on Mary's part, that centered
always on Bert Wanhope.

"You and he are pretty thick," Saxon ventured.

"I'd marry'm to-morrow," Mary flashed out impulsively. Then her
face went bleakly forlorn, hard almost in its helpless pathos.
"Only, he never asks me. He's ..." Her pause was broken by sudden
passion. "You watch out for him, Saxon, if he ever comes foolin'
around you. He's no good. Just the same, I'd marry him to-morrow.
He'll never get me any other way." Her mouth opened, but instead
of speaking she drew a long sigh. "It's a funny world, ain't it?"
she added. "More like a scream. And all the stars are worlds,
too. I wonder where God hides. Bert Wanhope says there ain't no
God. But he's just terrible. He says the most terrible things. I
believe in God. Don't you? What do you think about God, Saxon?"

Saxon shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

"But if we do wrong we get ours, don't we?" Mary persisted.
"That's what they all say, except Bert. He says he don't care
what he does, he'll never get his, because when he dies he's
dead, an' when he's dead he'd like to see any one put anything
across on him that'd wake him up. Ain't he terrible, though? But
it's all so funny. Sometimes I get scared when I think God's
keepin' an eye on me all the time. Do you think he knows what I'm
sayin' now? What do you think he looks like, anyway?"

"I don't know," Saxon answered. "He's just a funny proposition."

"Oh!" the other gasped.

"He IS, just the same, from what all people say of him," Saxon
went on stoutly. "My brother thinks he looks like Abraham
Lincoln. Sarah thinks he has whiskers."

"An' I never think of him with his hair parted," Mary confessed,
daring the thought and shivering with apprehension. "He just
couldn't have his hair parted. THAT'D be funny."

"You know that little, wrinkly Mexican that sells wire puzzles?"
Saxon queried. "Well, God somehow always reminds me of him."

Mary laughed outright.

"Now that IS funny. I never thought of him like that How do you
make it out?"

"Well, just like the little Mexican, he seems to spend his time
peddling puzzles. He passes a puzzle out to everybody, and they
spend all their lives tryin' to work it out They all get stuck. I
can't work mine out. I don't know where to start. And look at the
puzzle he passed Sarah. And she's part of Tom's puzzle, and she
only makes his worse. And they all, an' everybody I know--you,
too--are part of my puzzle."

"Mebbe the puzzles is all right," Mary considered. "But God don't
look like that yellow little Greaser. THAT I won't fall for. God
don't look like anybody. Don't you remember on the wall at the
Salvation Army it says 'God is a spirit'?"

"That's another one of his puzzles, I guess, because nobody knows
what a spirit looks like."

"That's right, too." Mary shuddered with reminiscent fear.
"Whenever I try to think of God as a spirit, I can see Hen Miller
all wrapped up in a sheet an' runnin' us girls. We didn't know,
an' it scared the life out of us. Little Maggie Murphy fainted
dead away, and Beatrice Peralta fell an' scratched her face
horrible. When I think of a spirit all I can see is a white sheet
runnin' in the dark. Just the same, God don't look like a
Mexican, an' he don't wear his hair parted."

A strain of music from the dancing pavilion brought both girls
scrambling to their feet.

"We can get a couple of dances in before we eat," Mary proposed.
"An' then it'll be afternoon an' all the fellows 'll be here.
Most of them are pinchers--that's why they don't come early, so
as to get out of taking the girls to dinner. But Bert's free with
his money, an' so is Billy. If we can beat the other girls to it,
they'll take us to the restaurant. Come on, hurry, Saxon."

There were few couples on the floor when they arrived at the
pavilion, and the two girls essayed the first waltz together.

"There's Bert now," Saxon whispered, as they came around the
second time.

"Don't take any notice of them," Mary whispered back. "We'll just
keep on goin'. They needn't think we're chasin' after them."

But Saxon noted the heightened color in the other's cheek, and
felt her quicker breathing.

"Did you see that other one?" Mary asked, as she backed Saxon in
a long slide across the far end of the pavilion. "That was Billy
Roberts. Bert said he'd come. He'll take you to dinner, and
Bert'll take me. It's goin' to be a swell day, you'll see. My! I
only wish the music'll hold out till we can get back to the other
end."

Down the floor they danced, on man-trapping and dinner-getting
intent, two fresh young things that undeniably danced well and
that were delightfully surprised when the music stranded them
perilously near to their desire.

Bert and Mary addressed each other by their given names, but to
Saxon Bert was "Mr. Wanhope," though he called her by her first
name. The only introduction was of Saxon and Billy Roberts. Mary
carried it off with a flurry of nervous carelessness.

"Mr. Robert--Miss Brown. She's my best friend. Her first name's
Saxon. Ain't it a scream of a name?"

"Sounds good to me," Billy retorted, hat off and hand extended.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Brown."

As their hands clasped and she felt the teamster callouses on his
palm, her quick eyes saw a score of things. About all that he saw
was her eyes, and then it was with a vague impression that they
were blue. Not till later in the day did he realize that they
were gray. She, on the contrary, saw his eyes as they really
were--deep blue, wide, and handsome in a sullen-boyish way. She
saw that they were straight-looking, and she liked them, as she
had liked the glimpse she had caught of his hand, and as she
liked the contact of his hand itself. Then, too, but not sharply,
she had perceived the short, square-set nose, the rosiness of
cheek, and the firm, short upper lip, ere delight centered her
flash of gaze on the well-modeled, large clean mouth where red
lips smiled clear of the white, enviable teeth. A BOY, A GREAT
BIG MAN-BOY, was her thought; and, as they smiled at each other
and their hands slipped apart, she was startled by a glimpse of
his hair--short and crisp and sandy, hinting almost of palest
gold save that it was too flaxen to hint of gold at all.

So blond was he that she was reminded of stage-types she had
seen, such as Ole Olson and Yon Yonson; but there resemblance
ceased. It was a matter of color only, for the eyes were
dark-lashed and -browed, and were cloudy with temperament rather
than staring a child-gaze of wonder, and the suit of smooth brown
cloth had been made by a tailor. Saxon appraised the suit on the
instant, and her secret judgment was NOT A CENT LESS THAN FIFTY
DOLLARS. Further, he had none of the awkwardness of the
Scandinavian immigrant. On the contrary, he was one of those rare
individuals that radiate muscular grace through the ungraceful
man-garments of civilization. Every movement was supple, slow,
and apparently considered. This she did not see nor analyze. She
saw only a clothed man with grace of carriage and movement. She
felt, rather than perceived, the calm and certitude of all the
muscular play of him, and she felt, too, the promise of easement
and rest that was especially grateful and craved-for by one who
had incessantly, for six days and at top-speed, ironed fancy
starch. As the touch of his hand had been good, so, to her, this
subtler feel of all of him, body and mind, was good.

As he took her program and skirmished and joked after the way of
young men, she realized the immediacy of delight she had taken in
him. Never in her life had she been so affected by any man. She
wondered to herself: IS THIS THE MAN?

He danced beautifully. The joy was hers that good dancers take
when they have found a good dancer for a partner. The grace of
those slow-moving, certain muscles of his accorded perfectly with
the rhythm of the music. There was never doubt, never a betrayal
of indecision. She glanced at Bert, dancing "tough" with Mary,
caroming down the long floor with more than one collision with
the increasing couples. Graceful himself in his slender, tall,
lean-stomached way, Bert was accounted a good dancer; yet Saxon
did not remember ever having danced with him with keen pleasure.
Just a hit of a jerk spoiled his dancing--a jerk that did not
occur, usually, but that always impended. There was something
spasmodic in his mind. He was too quick, or he continually
threatened to be too quick. He always seemed just on the verge of
overrunning the time. It was disquieting. He made for unrest.

"You're a dream of a dancer," Billy Roberts was saying. "I've
heard lots of the fellows talk about your dancing."

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