in' pictures
yesterday. An' some day we'll have little chickens in the garden, won't
we, old girl?"

"And a daughter, too," Saxon amplified.

"An' I'll be the old geezer sayin' them same words to the hired man,"
Billy carried the fancy along. "It don't take long to raise a daughter
if you ain't in a hurry."

Saxon took her long-neglected ukulele from its case and strummed it into
tune.

"And I've a song you never heard, Billy. Tom's always singing it. He's
crazy about taking up government land and going farming, only Sarah
won't think of it. He sings it something like this:

"We'll have a little farm, A pig, a horse, a cow, And you will drive the
wagon, And I will drive the plow."

"Only in this case I guess it's me that'll do the plowin'," Billy
approved. "Say, Saxon, sing 'Harvest Days.' That's a farmer's song,
too."

After that she feared the coffee was growing cold and compelled Billy to
take it. In the helplessness of two broken arms, he had to be fed like a
baby, and as she fed him they talked.

"I'll tell you one thing," Billy said, between mouthfuls. "Once we get
settled down in the country you'll have that horse you've been wishin'
for all your life. An' it'll be all your own, to ride, drive, sell, or
do anything you want with."

And, again, he ruminated: "One thing that'll come handy in the country
is that I know horses; that's a big start. I can always get a job at
that--if it ain't at union wages. An' the other things about farmin' I
can learn fast enough.--Say, d'ye remember that day you first told me
about wantin' a horse to ride all your life?"

Saxon remembered, and it was only by a severe struggle that she was able
to keep the tears from welling into her eyes. She seemed bursting with
happiness, and she was remembering many things--all the warm promise of
life with Billy that had been hers in the days before hard times. And
now the promise was renewed again. Since its fulfillment had not come
to them, they were going away to fulfill it for themselves and make the
moving pictures come true.

Impelled by a half-feigned fear, she stole away into the kitchen bedroom
where Bert had died, to study her face in the bureau mirror. No,
she decided; she was little changed. She was still equipped for the
battlefield of love. Beautiful she was not. She knew that. But had not
Mercedes said that the great women of history who had won men had not
been beautiful? And yet, Saxon insisted, as she gazed at h