led out on the San Leandro pike. An' here, already,
is two places open--Mrs. Mortimer's an' Benson's; an' steady jobs, too.
Yep, a man can get work in the country."

"Ah," Saxon amended, with a proud little smile, "you haven't said it
right. Any GOOD man can get work in the country. The big farmers don't
hire men out of charity."

"Sure; they ain't in it for their health," he grinned.

"And they jump at you. That's because you are a good man. They can see
it with half an eye. Why, Billy, take all the working tramps we've met
on the road already. There wasn't one to compare with you. I looked them
over. They're all weak--weak in their bodies, weak in their heads, weak
both ways."

"Yep, they are a pretty measly bunch," Billy admitted modestly.

"It's the wrong time of the year to see Pajaro Valley," Benson said,
when he again sat beside Saxon and Sargent's was a thing of the past.
"Just the same, it's worth seeing any time. Think of it--twelve thousand
acres of apples! Do you know what they call Pajaro Valley now? New
Dalmatia. We're being squeezed out. We Yankees thought we were smart.
Well, the Dalmatians came along and showed they were smarter. They were
miserable immigrants--poorer than Job's turkey. First, they worked
at day's labor in the fruit harvest. Next they began, in a small way,
buying the apples on the trees. The more money they made the bigger
became their deals. Pretty soon they were renting the orchards on long
leases. And now, they are beginning to buy the land. It won't be long
before they own the whole valley, and the last American will be gone.

"Oh, our smart Yankees! Why, those first ragged Slavs in their first
little deals with us only made something like two and three thousand
per cent. profits. And now they're satisfied to make a hundred per cent.
It's a calamity if their profits sink to twenty-five or fifty per cent."

"It's like San Leandro," Saxon said. "The original owners of the land
are about all gone already. It's intensive cultivation." She liked that
phrase. "It isn't a case of having a lot of acres, but of how much they
can get out of one acre."

"Yes, and more than that," Benson answered, nodding his head
emphatically. "Lots of them, like Luke Scurich, are in it on a large
scale. Several of them are worth a quarter of a million already. I know
ten of them who will average one hundred and fifty thousand each. They
have a WAY with apples. It's almost a gift. They KNOW trees in m