Billy let out. "He's some boy, that. Nothing
stuck up about him. Just like Jim Hazard, comes along and makes himself
at home, you're as good as he is an' he's as good as you, an' we're all
friends together, just like that, right off the bat."

"He's old stock, too," Saxon said. "He told me while you were
undressing. His folks came by Panama before the railroad was built, and
from what he said I guess he's got plenty of money."

"He sure don't act like it."

"And isn't he full of fun!" Saxon cried.

"A regular josher. An' HIM!--a POET!"

"Oh, I don't know, Billy. I've heard that plenty of poets are odd."

"That's right, come to think of it. There's Joaquin Miller, lives out
in the hills back of Fruitvale. He's certainly odd. It's right near
his place where I proposed to you. Just the same I thought poets wore
whiskers and eyeglasses, an' never tripped up foot-racers at Sunday
picnics, nor run around with as few clothes on as the law allows,
gatherin' mussels an' climbin' like goats."

That night, under the blankets, Saxon lay awake, looking at the stars,
pleasuring in the balmy thicket-scents, and listening to the dull rumble
of the outer surf and the whispering ripples on the sheltered beach a
few feet away. Billy stirred, and she knew he was not yet asleep.

"Glad you left Oakland, Billy?" she snuggled.

"Huh!" came his answer. "Is a clam happy?"

CHAPTER VIII

Every half tide Billy raced out the south wall over the dangerous course
he and Hall had traveled, and each trial found him doing it in faster
time.

"Wait till Sunday," he said to Saxon. "I'll give that poet a run for his
money. Why, they ain't a place that bothers me now. I've got the head
confidence. I run where I went on hands an' knees. I figured it out this
way: Suppose you had a foot to fall on each side, an' it was soft
hay. They'd be nothing to stop you. You wouldn't fall. You'd go like a
streak. Then it's just the same if it's a mile down on each side. That
ain't your concern. Your concern is to stay on top and go like a streak.
An', d'ye know, Saxon, when I went at it that way it never bothered me
at all. Wait till he comes with his crowd Sunday. I'm ready for him."

"I wonder what the crowd will be like," Saxon speculated.

"Like him, of course. Birds of a feather flock together. They won't be
stuck up, any of them, you'll see."

Hall had sent out fish-lines and a swimming suit by a Mexican cowboy
bound south to his ranch, and f