lk around
to do that for you?"

She leaned on her pitchfork, hitched her skirt in at the waist, and
regarded him cheerfully. He saw that her toil-worn, weather-exposed
hands were like a man's, callused, large-knuckled, and gnarled, and
that her stockingless feet were thrust into heavy man's brogans.

"Nary a man," she answered. "And where be you from, and all the way up
here? Won't you stop and hitch and have a glass of wine?"

Striding clumsily but efficiently, like a laboring-man, she led him
into the largest building, where Daylight saw a hand-press and all the
paraphernalia on a small scale for the making of wine. It was too far
and too bad a road to haul the grapes to the valley wineries, she
explained, and so they were compelled to do it themselves. "They," he
learned, were she and her daughter, the latter a widow of forty-odd.
It had been easier before the grandson died and before he went away to
fight savages in the Philippines. He had died out there in battle.

Daylight drank a full tumbler of excellent Riesling, talked a few
minutes, and accounted for a second tumbler. Yes, they just managed
not to starve. Her husband and she had taken up this government land
in '57 and cleared it and farmed it ever since, until he died, when she
had carried it on. It actually didn't pay for the toil, but what were
they to do? There was the wine trust, and wine was down. That
Riesling? She delivered it to the railroad down in the valley for
twenty-two cents a gallon. And it was a long haul. It took a day for
the round trip. Her daughter was gone now with a load.

Daylight knew that in the hotels, Riesling, not quite so good even, was
charged for at from a dollar and a half to two dollars a quart. And
she got twenty-two cents a gallon. That was the game. She was one of
the stupid lowly, she and her people before her--the ones that did the
work, drove their oxen across the Plains, cleared and broke the virgin
land, toiled all days and all hours, paid their taxes, and sent their
sons and grandsons out to fight and die for the flag that gave them
such ample protection that they were able to sell their wine for
twenty-two cents. The same wine was served to him at the St. Francis
for two dollars a quart, or eight dollars a short gallon. That was it.

Between her and her hand-press on the mountain clearing and him
ordering his wine in the hotel was a difference of seven dollars and
seventy-eight cents. A cl