THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
JACK LONDON
BOOK 1
CHAPTER 12

The days flew by for Saxon. She worked on steadily at the laundry, even doing
more overtime than usual, and all her free waking hours were devoted to
preparations for the great change and to Billy. He had proved himself God's own
impetuous lover by insisting on getting married the next day after the proposal, and
then by resolutely refusing to compromise on more than a week's delay.
"Why wait?" he demanded. "We're not gettin' any younger so far as I can notice,
an' think of all we lose every day we wait."
In the end, he gave in to a month, which was well, for in two weeks he was
transferred, with half a dozen other drivers, to work from the big stables of
Corberly and Morrison in West Oakland. House-hunting in the other end of town
ceased, and on Pine Street, between Fifth and Fourth, and in immediate proximity
to the great Southern Pacific railroad yards, Billy and Saxon rented a neat cottage
of four small rooms for ten dollars a month.
"Dog-cheap is what I call it, when I think of the small rooms I've ben soaked for,"
was Billy's judgment. "Look at the one I got now, not as big as the smallest here,
an' me payin' six dollars a month for it."
"But it's furnished," Saxon remmded him. "You see, that makes a difference."
But Billy didn't see.
"I ain't much of a scholar, Saxon, but I know simple arithmetic; I've soaked my
watch when I was hard up, and I can calculate interest. How much do you figure it
will cost to furnish the house, carpets on the floor, linoleum on the kitchen, and
all?"
"We can do it nicely for three hundred dollars," she answered. "I've been thinking
it over and I'm sure we can do it for that."
"Three hundred," he muttered, wrinkling his brows with concentration. "Three
hundred, say at six per cent that'd be six cents on the dollar, sixty cents on ten

"So you've gone an' done it," Mary commented, one morning in the laundry. They
had not been at work ten minutes ere her eye had glimpsed the topaz ring on the
third finger of Saxon's left hand. "Who's the lucky one? Charley Long or Billy
Roberts?"
"Billy," was the answer.
"Huh! Takin' a young boy to raise, eh?"
Saxon showed that the stab had gone home, and Mary was all contrition.
"Can't you take a josh? I'm glad to death at the news. Billy's a awful good man, and
I'm glad to see you get him. There ain't many like him knockin' 'round, an' they
ain't to be had for the askin'. An' you're both lucky. You was just made for each
other, an' you'll make him a better wife than any girl I know. when is it to be?"
Going home from the laundry a few days later, Saxon encountered Charley Long.
He blocked the sidewalk, and compelled speech with her.
"So you're runnin' with a prizefighter," he sneered. "A blind man can see your
finish."
For the first time she was unafraid of this big-bodied, black-browed men with the
hairy-matted hands and fingers. She held up her left hand.
"See that? It's something, with all your strength, that you could never put on my
finger. Billy Roberts put it on inside a week. He got your number, Charley Long,
and at the same time he got me."
"Skiddoo for you," Long retorted. "Twenty-three's your number."
"He's not like you," Saxon went on. "He's a man, every bit of him, a fine, clean
man."
Long laughed hoarsely.
"He's got your goat all right."
"And yours," she flashed back.
"I could tell you things about him. Saxon, straight, he ain't no good. If I was to tell
you "
"You'd better get out of my way," she interrupted, "or I'll tell him, and you know
what you'll get, you great big bully."

death told by the arrow that transfixed his breast. In the air, leaping past him into
the water, sword in hand, was Billy. There was no mistaking it. The striking
blondness, the face, the eyes, the mouth were the same. The very expression on the
face was what had been on Billy's the day of the picnic when he faced the three
wild Irishmen.
Somewhere out of the ruck of those warring races had emerged Billy's ancestors,
and hers, was her afterthought, as she closed the book and put it back in the
drawer. And some of those ancestors had made this ancient and battered chest of
drawers which had crossed the salt ocean and the plains and been pierced by a
bullet in the fight with the Indians at Little Meadow. Almost, it seemed, she could
visualize the women who had kept their pretties and their family homespun in its
drawers the women of those wandering generations who were grandmothers and
greater great grandmothers of her own mother. Well, she sighed, it was a good
stock to be born of, a hard-working, hard-fighting stock. She fell to wondering
what her life would have been like had she been born a Chinese woman, or an
Italian woman like those she saw, head-shawled or bareheaded, squat, ungainly
and swarthy, who carried great loads of driftwood on their heads up from tha
beach. Then she laughed at her foolishness, remembered Billy and the four-roomed
cottage on Pine Street, and went to bed with her mind filled for the hundredth time
with the details of the furniture.