“But you don't own it,” Saxon objected.
“Well, you won't be a hundred years old before I do. Straight from here I hike to Payne an' bind the bargain—an option, you know, while title's searchin' an' I 'm raisin' money. We'll borrow that four hundred back again from Gow Yum, an' I'll borrow all I can get on my horses an' wagons, an' Hazel and Hattie, an' everything that's worth a cent. An' then I get the deed with a mortgage on it to Hilyard for the balance. An' then—it's takin' candy from a baby—I'll contract with the brickyard for twenty cents a yard—maybe more. They'll be crazy with joy when they see it. Don't need any borin's. They's nearly two hundred feet of it exposed up an' down. The whole knoll's clay, with a skin of soil over it.”
“But you'll spoil all the beautiful canyon hauling out the clay,” Saxon cried with alarm.
“Nope; only the knoll. The road'll come in from the other side. It'll be only half a mile to Chavon's pit. I'll build the road an' charge steeper teamin', or the brickyard can build it an' I'll team for the same rate as before. An' twenty cents a yard pourin' in, all profit, from the jump. I'll sure have to buy more horses to do the work.”
They sat hand in hand beside the pool and talked over the details.
“Say, Saxon,” Billy said, after a pause had fallen, “sing 'Harvest Days,' won't you?”
And, when she had complied: “The first time you sung that song for me was comin' home from the picnic on the train—”
“The very first day we met each other,” she broke in. “What did you think about me that day?”
“Why, what I've thought ever since—that you was made for me.—I thought that right at the jump, in the first waltz. An' what'd you think of me?
“Oh, I wondered, and before the first waltz, too, when we were introduced and shook hands—I wondered if you were the man. Those were the very words that flashed into my mind.—IS HE THE MAN?”