They started their horses, but a dog-tooth violet,
shouldering amongst the maidenhair, caught her eye
and made her rein in again.
They cleared the crest and emerged from the pool as
if into another world, for now they were in the thicket
of velvet-trunked young madronos and looking down
the open, sun-washed hillside, across the nodding
grasses, to the drifts of blue and white nemophilae
that carpeted the tiny meadow on either side the tiny
stream. Dede clapped her hands.
“It’s sure prettier than office furniture,”
Daylight remarked.
“It sure is,” she answered.
And Daylight, who knew his weakness in the use of
the particular word sure, knew that she had repeated
it deliberately and with love.
They crossed the stream and took the cattle track
over the low rocky hill and through the scrub forest
of manzanita, till they emerged on the next tiny valley
with its meadow-bordered streamlet.
“If we don’t run into some quail pretty
soon, I’ll be surprised some,” Daylight
said.
And as the words left his lips there was a wild series
of explosive thrumming as the old quail arose from
all about Wolf, while the young ones scuttled for
safety and disappeared miraculously before the spectators’
very eyes.
He showed her the hawk’s nest he had found in
the lightning-shattered top of the redwood, and she
discovered a wood-rat’s nest which he had not
seen before. Next they took the old wood-road
and came out on the dozen acres of clearing where the
wine grapes grew in the wine-colored volcanic soil.
Then they followed the cow-path through more woods
and thickets and scattered glades, and dropped down
the hillside to where the farm-house, poised on the
lip of the big canon, came into view only when they
were right upon it.
Dede stood on the wide porch that ran the length of
the house while Daylight tied the horses. To
Dede it was very quiet. It was the dry, warm,
breathless calm of California midday. All the
world seemed dozing. From somewhere pigeons were
cooing lazily. With a deep sigh of satisfaction,
Wolf, who had drunk his fill at all the streams along
the way, dropped down in the cool shadow of the porch.
She heard the footsteps of Daylight returning, and
caught her breath with a quick intake. He took
her hand in his, and, as he turned the door-knob,
felt her hesitate. Then he put his arm around
her; the door swung open, and together they passed
in.
Many persons, themselves city-bred and city-reared,
have fled to the soil and succeeded in winning great
happiness. In such cases they have succeeded
only by going through a process of savage disillusionment.
But with Dede and Daylight it was different.
They had both been born on the soil, and they knew
its naked simplicities and rawer ways. They
were like two persons, after far wandering, who had
merely come home again. There was less of the
unexpected in their dealings with nature, while theirs
was all the delight of reminiscence. What might
appear sordid and squalid to the fastidiously reared,
was to them eminently wholesome and natural.
The commerce of nature was to them no unknown and
untried trade. They made fewer mistakes.
They already knew, and it was a joy to remember what
they had forgotten.
