quarters in clubs like the Riverside, organized and practically
maintained by the city bosses. He found that he really liked
such men better. They were more primitive and simple, and they
did not put on airs. They were honest buccaneers, frankly in the
game for what they could get out of it, on the surface more raw
and savage, but at least not glossed over with oily or graceful
hypocrisy. The Alta-Pacific had suggested that his resignation
be kept a private matter, and then had privily informed the
newspapers. The latter had made great capital out of the forced
resignation, but Daylight had grinned and silently gone his way,
though registering a black mark against more than one club member
who was destined to feel, in the days to come, the crushing
weight of the Klondiker’s financial paw.
The storm-centre of a combined newspaper attack lasting for
months, Daylight’s character had been torn to shreds. There was
no fact in his history that had not been distorted into a
criminality or a vice. This public making of him over into an
iniquitous monster had pretty well crushed any lingering hope he
had of getting acquainted with Dede Mason. He felt that there
was no chance for her ever to look kindly on a man of his
caliber, and, beyond increasing her salary to seventy-five
dollars a month, he proceeded gradually to forget about her. The
increase was made known to her through Morrison, and later she
thanked Daylight, and that was the end of it.
One week-end, feeling heavy and depressed and tired of the city
and its ways, he obeyed the impulse of a whim that was later to
play an important part in his life. The desire to get out of the
city for a whiff of country air and for a change of scene was the
cause. Yet, to himself, he made the excuse of going to Glen
Ellen for the purpose of inspecting the brickyard with which
Holdsworthy had goldbricked him.
He spent the night in the little country hotel, and on Sunday
morning, astride a saddle-horse rented from the Glen Ellen
butcher, rode out of the village. The brickyard was close at
hand on the flat beside the Sonoma Creek. The kilns were visible
among the trees, when he glanced to the left and caught sight of
a cluster of wooded knolls half a mile away, perched on the
rolling slopes of Sonoma Mountain. The mountain, itself wooded,
towered behind. The trees on the knolls seemed to beckon to him.
The dry, early-summer air, shot through with sunshine, was wine
to him. Unconsciously he drank it in deep breaths. The prospect
of the brickyard was uninviting. He was jaded with all things
business, and the wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse was
between his legs–a good horse, he decided; one that sent him
back
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to the cayuses he had ridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood.
He
had been somewhat of a rider in those early days, and the champ
of
bit and creak of saddle-leather sounded good to him now.
Resolving to have his fun first, and to look over the brickyard
afterward, he rode on up the hill, prospecting for a way across
country to get to the knolls. He left the country road at the
first gate he came to and cantered through a hayfield. The grain
was waist-high on either side the wagon road, and he sniffed the
warm aroma of it with delighted nostrils. Larks flew up before
him, and from everywhere came mellow notes. From the appearance
of the road it was patent that it had been used for hauling clay
to the now idle brickyard. Salving his conscience with the idea
that this was part of the inspection, he rode on to the
clay-pit–a huge scar in a hillside. But he did not linger long,
swinging off again to the left and leaving the road. Not a
farm-house was in sight, and the change from the city crowding
was essentially satisfying. He rode now through open woods,
across little flower-scattered glades, till he came upon a
spring. Flat on the ground, he drank deeply of the clear water,
and, looking about him, felt with a shock the beauty of the
world. It came to him like a discovery; he had never realized it
before, he concluded, and also, he had forgotten much. One could
not sit in at high finance and keep track of such things. As he
drank in the air, the scene, and the distant song of larks, he
felt like a poker-player rising from a night-long table and
coming forth from the pent atmosphere to taste the freshness of
the morn.
At the base of the knolls he encountered a tumble-down
stake-and-rider fence. From the look of it he judged it must be
forty years old at least–the work of some first pioneer who had
taken up the land when the days of gold had ended. The woods
were very thick here, yet fairly clear of underbrush, so that,
while the blue sky was screened by the arched branches, he was
able to ride beneath. He now found himself in a nook of several
acres, where the oak and manzanita and madrono gave way to
clusters of stately redwoods. Against the foot of a steep-sloped
knoll he came upon a magnificent group of redwoods that seemed to
have gathered about a tiny gurgling spring.
He halted his horse, for beside the spring uprose a wild
California lily. It was a wonderful flower, growing there in the
cathedral nave of lofty trees. At least eight feet in height,
its stem rose straight and slender, green and bare for two-thirds
its length, and then burst into a shower of snow-white waxen
bells. There were hundreds of these blossoms, all from the one
stem, delicately poised and ethereally frail. Daylight had never
seen anything like it. Slowly his gaze wandered from it to all
that was about him. He took off his hat, with almost a vague
religious feeling. This was different. No room for contempt and
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evil here. This was clean and fresh and beautiful-something he
could respect. It was like a church. The atmosphere was one of
holy calm. Here man felt the prompting of nobler things. Much
of this and more was in Daylight’s heart as he looked about him.
But it was not a concept of his mind. He merely felt it without
thinking about it at all.
On the steep incline above the spring grew tiny maidenhair ferns,
while higher up were larger ferns and brakes. Great,
moss-covered trunks of fallen trees lay here and there, slowly
sinking back and merging into the level of the forest mould.
Beyond, in a slightly clearer space, wild grape and honeysuckle
swung in green riot from gnarled old oak trees. A gray Douglas
squirrel crept out on a branch and watched him. From somewhere
came the distant knocking of a woodpecker. This sound did not
disturb the hush and awe of the place. Quiet woods, noises
belonged there and made the solitude complete. The tiny bubbling
ripple of the spring and the gray flash of tree-squirrel were as
yardsticks with which to measure the silence and motionless
repose.
“Might be a million miles from anywhere,” Daylight whispered to
himself.
But ever his gaze returned to the wonderful lily beside the
bubbling spring.
He tethered the horse and wandered on foot among the knolls.
Their tops were crowned with century-old spruce trees, and their
sides clothed with oaks and madronos and native holly. But to
the perfect redwoods belonged the small but deep canon that
threaded its way among the knolls. Here he found no passage out
for his horse, and he returned to the lily beside the spring. On
foot, tripping, stumbling, leading the animal, he forced his way
up the hillside. And ever the ferns carpeted the way of his
feet, ever the forest climbed with him and arched overhead, and
ever the clean joy and sweetness stole in upon his senses.
On the crest he came through an amazing thicket of velvet-trunked
young madronos, and emerged on an open hillside that led down
into
a tiny valley. The sunshine was at first dazzling in its
brightness, and he paused and rested, for he was panting from the
exertion. Not of old had he known shortness of breath such as
this, and muscles that so easily tired at a stiff climb. A tiny
stream ran down the tiny valley through a tiny meadow that was
carpeted knee-high with grass and blue and white nemophila. The
hillside was covered with Mariposa lilies and wild hyacinth, down
through which his horse dropped slowly, with circumspect feet and
reluctant gait.
Crossing the stream, Daylight followed a faint cattle trail over
a low, rocky hill and through a wine-wooded forest of manzanita,
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and emerged upon another tiny valley, down which filtered another