No paying mine had ever been struck in the valley, though there had been no end of prospect-holes put down and there had been a sort of rush there thirty years back.
A frail-looking young woman came to the door to call the young man to supper.
Daylight's first thought was that city living had not agreed with her. And then he noted the slight tan and healthy glow that seemed added to her face, and he decided that the country was the place for her.
Declining an invitation to supper, he rode on for Glen Ellen sitting slack-kneed in the saddle and softly humming forgotten songs.
He dropped down the rough, winding road through covered pasture, with here and there thickets of manzanita and vistas of open glades.
He listened greedily to the quail calling, and laughed outright, once, in sheer joy, at a tiny chipmunk that fled scolding up a bank, slipping on the crumbly surface and falling down, then dashing across the road under his horse's nose and, still scolding, scrabbling up a protecting oak.
Daylight could not persuade himself to keep to the travelled roads that day, and another cut across country to Glen Ellen brought him upon a canon that so blocked his way that he was glad to follow a friendly cow-path.
This led him to a small frame cabin.
The doors and windows were open, and a cat was nursing a litter of kittens in the doorway, but no one seemed at home.
He descended the trail that evidently crossed the canon.
Part way down, he met an old man coming up through the sunset. In his hand he carried a pail of foamy milk.
He wore no hat, and in his face, framed with snow-white hair and beard, was the ruddy glow and content of the passing summer day.
Daylight thought that he had never seen so contented-looking a being.
"How old are you, daddy?" he queried.
"Eighty-four," was the reply.
"Yes, sirree, eighty-four, and spryer than most."
"You must a' taken good care of yourself," Daylight suggested.
"I don't know about that.
I ain't loafed none.
I walked across the Plains with an ox-team and fit Injuns in
'51, and I was a family man then with seven youngsters.
I reckon I was as old then as you are now, or pretty nigh on to it."
"Don't you find it lonely here?"
The old man shifted the pail of milk and reflected.
"That all depends," he said oracularly.
"I ain't never been lonely except when the old wife died.
Some fellers are lonely in a crowd, and I'm one of them.
That's the only time I'm lonely, is when I go to 'Frisco.
But I don't go no more, thank you 'most to death.
This is good enough for me.
I've ben right here in this valley since '54—one of the first settlers after the Spaniards."
Daylight started his horse, saying:—
"Well, good night, daddy.
Stick with it.
You got all the young bloods skinned, and I guess you've sure buried a mighty sight of them."
The old man chuckled, and Daylight rode on, singularly at peace with himself and all the world.
It seemed that the old contentment of trail and camp he had known on the Yukon had come back to him.
He could not shake from his eyes the picture of the old pioneer coming up the trail through the sunset light.
He was certainly going some for eighty-four.
The thought of following his example entered Daylight's mind, but the big game of San Francisco vetoed the idea.
"Well, anyway," he decided, "when I get old and quit the game, I'll settle down in a place something like this, and the city can go to hell."
CHAPTER IX
Instead of returning to the city on Monday, Daylight rented the butcher's horse for another day and crossed the bed of the valley to its eastern hills to look at the mine.
It was dryer and rockier here than where he had been the day before, and the ascending slopes supported mainly chaparral, scrubby and dense and impossible to penetrate on horseback.
But in the canyons water was plentiful and also a luxuriant forest growth.
The mine was an abandoned affair, but he enjoyed the half-hour's scramble around.
He had had experience in quartz-mining before he went to Alaska, and he enjoyed the recrudescence of his old wisdom in such matters.
The story was simple to him: good prospects that warranted the starting of the tunnel into the sidehill; the three months' work and the getting short of money; the lay-off while the men went away and got jobs; then the return and a new stretch of work, with the "pay" ever luring and ever receding into the mountain, until, after years of hope, the men had given up and vanished.
Most likely they were dead by now, Daylight thought, as he turned in the saddle and looked back across the canyon at the ancient dump and dark mouth of the tunnel.
As on the previous day, just for the joy of it, he followed cattle-trails at haphazard and worked his way up toward the summits.