But such a drink began no desire for a second. It made no impression. He was too profoundly strong to be affected2 by a thimbleful. As he had prophesied3 to Dede, Burning Daylight, the city financier, had died a quick death on the ranch4, and his younger brother, the Daylight from Alaska, had taken his place. The threatened inundation5 of fat had subsided6, and all his old-time Indian leanness and of muscle had returned. So, likewise, did the old slight hollows in his cheeks come back. For him they indicated the pink of physical condition. He became the acknowledged strong man of Sonoma Valley, the heaviest lifter and hardest winded among a husky race of farmer folk. And once a year he celebrated7 his birthday in the old-fashioned frontier way, challenging all the valley to come up the hill to the ranch and be put on its back. And a fair portion of the valley responded, brought the women-folk and children along, and picnicked for the day.
At first, when in need of ready cash, he had followed Ferguson's example of working at day's labor8; but he was not long in gravitating to a form of work that was more stimulating9 and more satisfying, and that allowed him even more time for Dede and the ranch and the perpetual riding through the hills. Having been challenged by the blacksmith, in a spirit of banter10, to attempt the breaking of a certain incorrigible11 colt, he succeeded so signally as to earn quite a reputation as a horse-breaker. And soon he was able to earn whatever money he desired at this, to him, agreeable work.
A sugar king, whose breeding farm and training stables were at Caliente, three miles away, sent for him in time of need, and, before the year was out, offered him the management of the stables. But Daylight smiled and shook his head. Furthermore, he refused to undertake the breaking of as many animals as were offered. "I'm sure not going to die from overwork," he assured Dede; and he accepted such work only when he had to have money. Later, he fenced off a small run in the pasture, where, from time to time, he took in a limited number of incorrigibles.
"We've got the ranch and each other," he told his wife, "and I'd sooner ride with you to Hood12 Mountain any day than earn forty dollars. You can't buy sunsets, and loving wives, and cool spring water, and such folderols, with forty dollars; and forty million dollars can't buy back for me one day that I didn't ride with you to Hood Mountain."
His life was eminently13 wholesome14 and natural. Early to bed, he slept like an infant and was up with the dawn. Always with something to do, and with a thousand little things that enticed15 but did not clamor, he was himself never overdone16. Nevertheless, there were times when both he and Dede were not above confessing tiredness at bedtime after seventy or eighty miles in the saddle.
Sometimes, when he had accumulated a little money, and when the season favored, they would mount their horses, with saddle-bags behind, and ride away over the wall of the valley and down into the other valleys. When night fell, they put up at the first convenient farm or village, and on the morrow they would ride on, without definite plan, merely continuing to ride on, day after day, until their money gave out and they were compelled to return. On such trips they would be gone anywhere from a week to ten days or two weeks, and once they managed a three weeks' trip.
They even planned ambitiously some day when they were disgracefully prosperous, to ride all the way up to Daylight's boyhood home in Eastern Oregon, stopping on the way at Dede's girlhood home in Siskiyou. And all the joys of anticipation18 were theirs a thousand times as they contemplated19 the detailed20 delights of this grand adventure.
One day, stopping to mail a letter at the Glen Ellen post office, they were hailed by the blacksmith.
"Say, Daylight," he said, "a young fellow named Slosson sends you his regards. He came through in an auto21, on the way to Santa Rosa. He wanted to know if you didn't live hereabouts, but the crowd with him was in a hurry. So he sent you his regards and said to tell you he'd taken your advice and was still going on breaking his own record."
Daylight had long since told Dede of the incident.
"Slosson?" he meditated22, "Slosson? That must be the hammer-thrower. He put my hand down twice, the young scamp." He turned suddenly to Dede. "Say, it's only twelve miles to Santa Rosa, and the horses are fresh."
She divined what was in his mind, of which his twinkling eyes and sheepish, boyish grin gave sufficient advertisement, and she smiled and nodded acquiescence23.
"We'll cut across by Bennett Valley," he said. "It's nearer that way."
There was little difficulty, once in Santa Rosa, of finding Slosson. He and his party had registered at the Oberlin Hotel, and Daylight encountered the young hammer-thrower himself in the office.
"Look here, son," Daylight announced, as soon as he had introduced Dede, "I've come to go you another flutter at that hand game. Here's a likely place."
Slosson smiled and accepted. The two men faced each other, the elbows of their right arms on the counter, the hands clasped. Slosson's hand quickly forced backward and down.
"You're the first man that ever succeeded in doing it," he said. "Let's try it again."
"Sure," Daylight answered. "And don't forget, son, that you're the first man that put mine down. That's why I lit out after you to-day."
Again they clasped hands, and again Slosson's hand went down. He was a broad-shouldered, heavy-muscled young giant, at least half a head taller than Daylight, and he frankly24 expressed his chagrin25 and asked for a third trial. This time he steeled himself to the effort, and for a moment the issue was in doubt. With flushed face and set teeth he met the other's strength till his crackling muscles failed him. The air exploded sharply from his tensed lungs, as he relaxed in surrender, and the hand dropped limply down.
"You're too many for me," he confessed. "I only hope you'll keep out of the hammer-throwing game."
Daylight laughed and shook his head.
"We might compromise, and each stay in his own class. You stick to hammer-throwing, and I'll go on turning down hands."
But Slosson refused to accept defeat.
"Say," he called out, as Daylight and Dede, astride their horses, were preparing to depart. "Say—do you mind if I look you up next year? I'd like to tackle you again."
"Sure, son. You're welcome to a flutter any time. Though I give you fair warning that you'll have to go some. You'll have to train up, for I'm ploughing and chopping wood and breaking colts these days."
Now and again, on the way home, Dede could hear her big boy-husband chuckling26 gleefully. As they halted their horses on the top of the divide out of Bennett Valley, in order to watch the sunset, he ranged alongside and slipped his arm around her waist.
"Little woman," he said, "you're sure responsible for it all. And I leave it to you, if all the money in creation is worth as much as one arm like that when it's got a sweet little woman like this to go around."
For of all his delights in the new life, Dede was his greatest. As he explained to her more than once, he had been afraid of love all his life only in the end to come to find it the greatest thing in the world. Not alone were the two well mated, but in coming to live on the ranch they had selected the best soil in which their love would prosper17. In spite of her books and music, there was in her a wholesome simplicity27 and love of the open and natural, while Daylight, in every fiber28 of him, was essentially29 an open-air man.
Of one thing in Dede, Daylight never got over marveling about, and that was her efficient hands—the hands that he had first seen taking down flying shorthand notes and ticking away at the typewriter; the hands that were firm to hold a magnificent brute30 like Bob, that wonderfully flashed over the keys of the piano, that were unhesitant in household tasks, and that were twin miracles to caress31 and to run rippling32 fingers through his hair. But Daylight was not unduly33 uxorious34. He lived his man's life just as she lived her woman's life. There was proper division of labor in the work they individually performed. But the whole was entwined and woven into a fabric35 of mutual36 interest and consideration. He was as deeply interested in her cooking and her music as she was in his agricultural adventures in the vegetable garden. And he, who resolutely37 declined to die of overwork, saw to it that she should likewise escape so dire38 a risk.
In this connection, using his man's judgment39 and putting his man's foot down, he refused to allow her to be burdened with the entertaining of guests. For guests they had, especially in the warm, long summers, and usually they were her friends from the city, who were put to camp in tents which they cared for themselves, and where, like true campers, they had also to cook for themselves. Perhaps only in California, where everybody knows camp life, would such a program have been possible. But Daylight's steadfast40 contention41 was that his wife should not become cook, waitress, and chambermaid because she did not happen to possess a household of servants. On the other hand, chafing-dish suppers in the big living-room for their camping guests were a common happening, at which times Daylight allotted42 them their chores and saw that they were performed. For one who stopped only for the night it was different. Likewise it was different with her brother, back from Germany, and again able to sit a horse. On his vacations he became the third in the family, and to him was given the building of the fires, the sweeping43, and the washing of the dishes.
Daylight devoted44 himself to the lightening of Dede's labors45, and it was her brother who incited46 him to utilize47 the splendid water-power of the ranch that was running to waste. It required Daylight's breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Pelting48 wheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe49 and grindstone, Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked and really washed clothes.
Dede and Ferguson, between them, after a patient struggle, taught Daylight poetry, so that in the end he might have been often seen, sitting slack in the saddle and dropping down the mountain trails through the sun-flecked woods, chanting aloud Kipling's "Tomlinson," or, when sharpening his ax, singing into the whirling grindstone Henley's "Song of the Sword." Not that he ever became consummately50 literary in the way his two teachers were. Beyond "Fra Lippo Lippi" and "Caliban and Setebos," he found nothing in Browning, while George Meredith was ever his despair. It was of his own initiative, however, that he invested in a violin, and practised so assiduously that in time he and Dede beguiled51 many a happy hour playing together after night had fallen.
So all went well with this well-mated pair. Time never dragged. There were always new wonderful mornings and still cool twilights at the end of day; and ever a thousand interests claimed him, and his interests were shared by her. More thoroughly52 than he knew, had he come to a comprehension of the relativity of things. In this new game he played he found in little things all the intensities53 of gratification and desire that he had found in the frenzied54 big things when he was a power and rocked half a continent with the fury of the blows he struck. With head and hand, at risk of life and limb, to bit and break a wild colt and win it to the service of man, was to him no less great an achievement. And this new table on which he played the game was clean. Neither lying, nor cheating, nor hypocrisy55 was here. The other game had made for decay and death, while this new one made for clean strength and life. And so he was content, with Dede at his side, to watch the procession of the days and seasons from the farm-house perched on the canon-lip; to ride through crisp frosty mornings or under burning summer suns; and to shelter in the big room where blazed the logs in the fireplace he had built, while outside the world shuddered56 and struggled in the storm-clasp of a southeaster.
Once only Dede asked him if he ever regretted, and his answer was to crush her in his arms and smother57 her lips with his. His answer, a minute later, took speech.
"Little woman, even if you did cost thirty millions, you are sure the cheapest necessity of life I ever indulged in." And then he added, "Yes, I do have one regret, and a monstrous58 big one, too. I'd sure like to have the winning of you all over again. I'd like to go sneaking59 around the Piedmont hills looking for you. I'd like to meander60 into those rooms of yours at Berkeley for the first time. And there's no use talking, I'm plumb61 soaking with regret that I can't put my arms around you again that time you leaned your head on my breast and cried in the wind and rain."
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1
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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prophesied
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| v.预告，预言( prophesy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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inundation
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| n.the act or fact of overflowing | |
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subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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7
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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banter
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| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
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incorrigible
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| adj.难以纠正的，屡教不改的 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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15
enticed
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| 诱惑，怂恿( entice的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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16
overdone
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| v.做得过分( overdo的过去分词 )；太夸张；把…煮得太久；（工作等）过度 | |
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17
prosper
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| v.成功，兴隆，昌盛；使成功，使昌隆，繁荣 | |
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18
anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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auto
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| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
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meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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chagrin
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| n.懊恼；气愤；委屈 | |
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chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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27
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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fiber
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| n.纤维，纤维质 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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31
caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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32
rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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uxorious
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| adj.宠爱妻子的 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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40
steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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41
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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42
allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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44
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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45
labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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46
incited
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| 刺激，激励，煽动( incite的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
utilize
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| vt.使用，利用 | |
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48
pelting
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| 微不足道的，无价值的，盛怒的 | |
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49
lathe
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| n.车床，陶器，镟床 | |
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50
consummately
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| adv.完成地，至上地 | |
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51
beguiled
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| v.欺骗( beguile的过去式和过去分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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52
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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53
intensities
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| n.强烈( intensity的名词复数 )；（感情的）强烈程度；强度；烈度 | |
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54
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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55
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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56
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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57
smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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58
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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59
sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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60
meander
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| n.河流的曲折，漫步，迂回旅行；v.缓慢而弯曲地流动，漫谈 | |
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plumb
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| adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深 | |
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