exclaimed.

"An' don't be scared of it ever goin' back on you. If the rains fooled
you, there's Sonoma Creek alongside. All we gotta do is install a
gasolene pump."

"But we'll never have to, Billy. I was talking with 'Redwood' Thompson.
He's lived in the valley since Fifty-three, and he says there's never
been a failure of crops on account of drought. We always get our rain."

"Come on, let's go for a ride," he said abruptly. "You've got the time."

"All right, if you'll tell me what's bothering you."

He looked at her quickly.

"Nothin'," he grunted. "Yes, there is, too. What's the difference? You'd
know it sooner or later. You ought to see old Chavon. His face is that
long he can't walk without bumpin' his knee on his chin. His gold-mine's
peterin' out."

"Gold mine!"

"His clay pit. It's the same thing. He's gettin' twenty cents a yard for
it from the brickyard."

"And that means the end of your teaming contract." Saxon saw the
disaster in all its hugeness. "What about the brickyard people?"

"Worried to death, though they've kept secret about it. They've had men
out punchin' holes all over the hills for a week, an' that Jap chemist
settin' up nights analyzin' the rubbish they've brought in. It's
peculiar stuff, that clay, for what they want it for, an' you don't find
it everywhere. Them experts that reported on Chavon's pit made one
hell of a mistake. Maybe they was lazy with their borin's. Anyway,
they slipped up on the amount of clay they was in it. Now don't get to
botherin'. It'd come out somehow. You can't do nothin'."

"But I can," Saxon insisted. "We won't buy Ramona."

"You ain't got a thing to do with that," he answered. "I 'm buyin' her,
an' her price don't cut any figure alongside the big game I 'm playin'.
Of course, I can always sell my horses. But that puts a stop to their
makin' money, an' that brickyard contract was fat."

"But if you get some of them in on the road work for the county?" she
suggested.

"Oh, I got that in mind. An' I 'm keepin' my eyes open. They's a chance
the quarry will start again, an' the fellow that did that teamin' has
gone to Puget Sound. An' what if I have to sell out most of the horses?
Here's you and the vegetable business. That's solid. We just don't go
ahead so fast for a time, that's all. I ain't scared of the country any
more. I sized things up as we went along. They ain't a jerk burg we hit
all the time on the road that I couldn't jump into an' make