by Saxon,
bullied him into keeping books. Each night, after supper, he and Saxon
posted their books. Afterward, in the big morris chair he had insisted
on buying early in the days of his brickyard contract, Saxon would creep
into his arms and strum on the ukelele; or they would talk long about
what they were doing and planning to do. Now it would be:

"I'm mixin' up in politics, Saxon. It pays. You bet it pays. If by next
spring I ain't got a half a dozen teams workin' on the roads an' pullin'
down the county money, it's me back to Oakland an' askin' the Boss for a
job."

Or, Saxon: "They're really starting that new hotel between Caliente and
Eldridge. And there's some talk of a big sanitarium back in the hills."

Or, it would be: "Billy, now that you've piped that acre, you've just
got to let me have it for my vegetables. I'll rent it from you. I'll
take your own estimate for all the alfalfa you can raise on it, and pay
you full market price less the cost of growing it."

"It's all right, take it." Billy suppressed a sigh. "Besides, I 'm too
busy to fool with it now."

Which prevarication was bare-faced, by virtue of his having just
installed the ram and piped the land.

"It will be the wisest, Billy," she soothed, for she knew his dream of
land-spaciousness was stronger than ever. "You don't want to fool with
an acre. There's that hundred and forty. We'll buy it yet if old Chavon
ever dies. Besides, it really belongs to Madrono Ranch. The two together
were the original quarter section."

"I don't wish no man's death," Billy grumbled. "But he ain't gettin'
no good out of it, over-pasturin' it with a lot of scrub animals. I've
sized it up every inch of it. They's at least forty acres in the three
cleared fields, with water in the hills behind to beat the band. The
horse feed I could raise on it'd take your breath away. Then they's at
least fifty acres I could run my brood mares on, pasture mixed up with
trees and steep places and such. The other fifty's just thick woods, an'
pretty places, an' wild game. An' that old adobe barn's all right. With
a new roof it'd shelter any amount of animals in bad weather. Cook at me
now, rentin' that measly pasture back of Ping's just to run my restin'
animals. They could run in the hundred an' forty if I only had it. I
wonder if Chavon would lease it."

Or, less ambitious, Billy would say: "I gotta skin over to Petaluma
to-morrow, Saxon. They's an auction on the Atkinson Ranc