“Huh, I want to say you was goin' some yourself. They just took to you. Why, honest to God, Saxon, in the singin' you was the whole show, along with the ukulele. All the women liked you, too, an' that's what counts.”
It was their first social triumph, and the taste of it was sweet:
“Mr. Hall said he'd looked up the 'Story of the Files,'” Saxon recounted. “And he said mother was a true poet. He said it was astonishing the fine stock that had crossed the Plains. He told me a lot about those times and the people I didn't know. And he's read all about the fight at Little Meadow. He says he's got it in a book at home, and if we come back to Carmel he'll show it to me.”
“He wants us to come back all right. D'ye know what he said to me, Saxon? He gave me a letter to some guy that's down on the government land—some poet that's holdin' down a quarter of a section—so we'll be able to stop there, which'll come in handy if the big rains catch us. An'—Oh! that's what I was drivin' at. He said he had a little shack he lived in while the house was buildin'. The Iron Man's livin' in it now, but he's goin' away to some Catholic college to study to be a priest, an' Hall said the shack'd be ours as long as we wanted to use it. An' he said I could do what the Iron Man was doin' to make a livin'. Hall was kind of bashful when he was offerin' me work. Said it'd be only odd jobs, but that we'd make out. I could help'm plant potatoes, he said; an' he got half savage when he said I couldn't chop wood. That was his job, he said; an' you could see he was actually jealous over it.”
“And Mrs. Hall said just about the same to me, Billy. Carmel wouldn't be so bad to pass the rainy season in. And then, too, you could go swimming with Mr. Hazard.”
“Seems as if we could settle down wherever we've a mind to,” Billy assented. “Carmel's the third place now that's offered. Well, after this, no man need be afraid of makin' a go in the country.”
“No good man,” Saxon corrected.
“I guess you're right.” Billy thought for a moment. “Just the same a dub, too, has a better chance in the country than in the city.”
“Who'd have ever thought that such fine people existed?” Saxon pondered. “It's just wonderful, when you come to think of it.”
“It's only what you'd expect from a rich poet that'd trip up a foot-racer at an Irish picnic,” Billy exposited.