"STAR" TALES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10303, 7 November 1911, Page 4

"STAR" TALES.

BURNING DAVIiGHT.

(By JACK LONDON.) 'Author of " The Call of the Wild," " The Sea Wolf," etc.

[Ail Rights R>:skhvkt>.] PMIT 11. CHAPTER XXffl. J l £no ',v something of the fight W?e baen making," Dodo contended, '* t£ you stop now, all tho work you have done, everything, will bo destroyed. You have no right to do it. Daylight was obdurate, iio shook lis head and smiled tantalisingly. 1 " Nothing will be destroyed, Dede, Eothing. You don't underhand this usiness game. It's done on paper. Don't you see? Where's the gold 1 dug out of Klondike? Why, it sin twenty-dollar gold pieces, m gold .watches, in wedding rings. No matter yrhai happens to me, tho twenty-dollar pieces, the watches and the, wedcting jings remain. Suppose I died right inow. It wouldn't affect the gold ana iota. It's sure the same with this present situation. All I stand for is paper. I've got the paper for thousands of acres of land. All right. J3urn up the paper, and burn me along With it. The land remains, don't it? {The rain falls on it, the seeds _ sprout in it, th© trees grow out of it, tho houses stand on it, the electric cars run ibver it. It's paper that business is anin on, I lose my paper, or I lose my pife, it's all tho same; it won't alter |6ne grain of sand in all that land, or .twist one blade of grass around side- ■ m? a- | " Nothing is going to bo lost—not fpno pile out of the docks, not one railToad spike, not one ounce of steam out W the gauge of a ferry-boat. The cars [Vill go on running, whether I hold the j|>aper or somebody else holds it. The itide has set towards Oakland. People *|ire beginning to pour in. We're sell■ing building lots again. There is no that tide. No matter what happens to me or the paper, them three (hundred thousand folks are coming just •the same. • And there'll be cars to carry them around, and houses to hold them, and good water for them to drink, and electricity to give them light, and all the rest." ■ By this time Began had arrived in An automobile. The honk of it came ]n through the open window, and they Jaw it stop alongside the big red machine. In the car were Unwin and Harrison, while Jones sat with the chauffeur. "I'll see Hegan," Daylight told i)ede. " There's no need for the rest. B-'hey can wait in the machine." "la he drunk?" Hegan whispered to pede at th© door. Dede shook her head and showed him )n. "Good morning, Larry," wa§ Day- , Right's greeting. "Sit down and rest your feet. You sure seem to be in a Sutter." " s " I am," the little Irishman snapped pack. "Grimshaw and Hodgkins are going to smash iT something isn't done quick. Why didn't you come to the office ? What are you going to do about itP J) "Nothing," Daylight drawled lazily. "Except let them smash, I guess " ■/■" But " " I've had no dealings with GrimBhaw and Hodgkins. I don't o>ve them anything. Besides, I'm going to smash * myself. -Look here, Larry, you know Sue. You know when I make up my blind I mean it. Well, I've sure made Up my mind. I'm tired of the whole fame. I'm lotting go of it as fast as can, and a smash is the quickest way to let go." Jt Hegan stared at his chief, then passed his horror-stricken gaze on to .Dede, who nodded in sympathy. '<' "So let her smash, Larry," Daylight ."went on- " All you've got to do is to protect yourself and all our friends. ■New yon listen to me while I tell you Xvhat to do. Everything is in good shape to do it. Nobody must get hurt. 'Everybody that stood by me must come through without damage. All the back wages and salaries must be paid pronto. All the money I've switched ,away from tho water company, the street care, and the ferries must be

Switched back. And you won't get hurt yourself none. Ever;/ company < you got stock in will come 'through " - "You are crazy, Daylight!" the '■ little lawyer cried out. "This ia babbling lunacy. What is the matter .With you? You haven't been eating a /djiug or something?" ... "I sure have," Daylight smiled refly. " And I'm now coughing it up. 'in sick of living in a city and playing 'business. I'm going off to the sunshine, and the country, and the green J?rasa. And Dede, here, is going with fine. So you've got the chance to be %he first to congratulate me." ( "Congratulate the—the dovil!" ■ 'Hegan spluttered. " I'm not going to ;stand for this sort of foolishness." v • "Oh yes, you are; because if you t ■don't there'll be a bigger smash and i LSome folks will most likely get hurt. (You're worth a million or more yourself, now, and if you listen to ine you iome through with a whole skin. I tyflnt to get hurt, and get hurt to the Jimit. That's what I'm looking for, 'and there's no man or bunch of men - 'can get between me and what I'm lookin# For. Savee, Hcgan ? Savee?" . r WhJtb have you done to him?" (Began snarled at Dede. ■, { " Hold on there, Larry." For the ]first time Daylight's voice was sharp, 'fahile all the old lines "of cruelty in his , face stood forth. "Miss Mason is ' - .going to be my wife, and while I don't itaina your talking to her all you want, 'you've got to use a different tone or . YVpice or you'll be heading for a hospital, which will sure be an unexpected leoni) of Smash. And let me tell you tone, other thing. This-all is my doing ' fßhe Bays I'm crazy, too." 1 ' Hegan shook his head in speechless ajadness, and continued to stare. "There'll be temporary receiver'jfaips, of course "\ Daylight advised; but they wont bother none or lart ' \-long. What you must do immediately '/is. to save Everybody—the men that fh'ave been letting their wages ride with v. me, all the creditors, and all tho con(<>OTns that have stood by. There's ih« wad of land that New Jersey crowd (has been dickering for. They'll take ifiil of & couple oi thousand acres Jind frill close now if you give them half a chance. That Fairmount section is the iream of it, and they'll dig up as high fs a thousand dollars an acre for°a ' That'll help out some. (That five-hundred acre tract beyond l You'll be luoky if they pay two hundred an acre." S: Dede, who had been scarcely listen- , seemed abruptly to make up her d, and stepped forward where sho Fronted the two men. Her face '■W&s pale, but set with determination, >o that Daylight, looking at it, was Aeirainded of the day when she first -• fode Bob. ( "Wait," she said. " I want to say

something. Elam, if you do this insane thing, I won't marry you. I refuse to marry you." Hegan, in spite of his misery, gave Lor a quick, grateful look. " I'll tako my chance on that," Daylight began. '"Wait!" sho again interrupted " And it you don't do this thing, I will marry you."

'' Let mo get this proposition clear." Daylight spoke with exasperating slowness and deliberation. " As I understand it, if 1 keep right on at the business game, you'll sure marry me? You'll marry me if I keep on working my head off and drinking Martinis?" After each question ho paused, while she nodded an affirmation.

" And vou'll marry me right awav?" "Yes." "To-dav? Now?" "Yes."'

He pondered for a moment. "No, little woman. I won't do it. It won't work, and you know it yourself. I want you—all of you; and to get it I'll have to give you all of myself, and there'll be dam little to myself left over to give if I stay with tho business game. Why, Dede, with you on tho ranch with me, I'm sure of you —and of myself. I'm sure of you, anyway. You can talk will or won't all you want, but you're sure going to marry mo just the same. And now, Larry, you'd better be going. I'll beat the hotel in a little while, and since I'm not going to step into the office again, bring all papers to sign and the rest over to my rooms. This smash is going through. Savvee ? I'm quit and done."

He stood up as a sign for Hegan to go. Tho latter was plainly stunned. He also rose to his feet, but stood looking helplessly around. "Sheer, downright, absolute insanity.'' he muttered.

Daylight put his hand on the other's shoulder.

" Buck up, Larry. You're always talking about the wonders of human nature, and here I am giving you another sample'of it and you ain't appreciating it. I'm a bigger dreamer than yon are, that's all, and I'm sure dreaming what's coming true. It's tho biggest, best dream I ever had, and I'm going after it to get it " "By losing all you've got," Hegan exploded at him. " Sure—by losing all I've got that I don't want. But I'm hanging on to them hundred and forty hair bridles just the same. Now you'd better hustle out to Unwin and Harrison and get on down town. I'll be at the hotel and you can call me up any time." He turned to Dedo as soon as Hegan was gone, and took her by the hand. " And now, little woman, you needn't come to the office any more. Consider yourself discharged. And remember, I was your employer, so you've got to come to me for a recommendation, and if you're not real good,/1 won't give you one. In the meantime, you just rest up and think about what things you want to pack, because we'll just about have to set up housekeeping on your stuff—leastways, the front part of the house.''

" But, Elam, I won't, -1 won't I If you do this mad thing I never will marry you." , She attempted to take her hand away, but he closed on it with a protecting fatherly clasp. " Will you be straight and honest ? All right, hero goes. Which would you sooner have—me and the money, or me and the ranch ?" " But " she began. "No buts. Me and the money ?" She did not answer.

"Me and the ranch ?" Still she did not answer, and still he was undisturbed. .

" You see, I know your answer, Dedo, and there's nothing more to say. Here's where you and I quit and hit the high places for Sonoma. You make up your mind what you want to pack, and I'll have some men out here in a couple of days to do it far you. It will bo about the last work anybody else ever does for us. You and Ido the unpacking and the arranging ourselves." She made a last attempt. "Elarri, won't you be resonable F There is time to reconsider. I can telephone down and catch Mr Hegan as soon as he reaches the office " " Why, I'm the only reasonable man in the bunch right now," he rejoined. " Look at mo—as calm as you please, and as happy as a king, while they're fluttering around like a lot of cranky hens whose heads are liable to be cut off."

" I'd cry, if I though it would do any good," sho threatened. "In which case I reckon I'd have to hold you in my arms some more and sort of soothe you down," he threatened back. . " And now I'm going to go. It's too bad you got rid of Mab. You could have sent her up to tho ranch. But I'll seß you've got a mare to ride of some sort or other."

As ho stood at the top of the steps, leaving, she said: "You needn't send those men. There will be no packing, because I am not going to marry you." " I'm not a bit scared," he answered, and went down the steps. CHAPTER XXIV. Three days later, Daylight rode to Berkeley in his red car. It was for the last time, for on the morrow the big machine passed into another's possession. It had been a strenuous three days, for his smash had been the biggest tho panic had precipitated in California. The papers had been filled with it, and a great cry of indignation had gone up from the very men who later found that Daylight had fully protected their interests. It was these facts, coming slowly to light, that gave rise to the widely-repeated charge that Daylight had gone insane. It was the unanimous conviction among business men that no sane man could possibly behave in such fashion. On the other hand, neither his prolonged steady drinking nor his affair with Dede became public, so the only conclusion attainable was that the wild financier from Alaska had gone lunatic. And Daylight had grinned and confirmed the" suspicion by refusing to see the reporters. He halted tho automobile before Dede's door, and met her with his same rushing tactics, enclosing her in his arms before a word could be uttered. Not, until afterward, when she had recovered herself from him and got him seated, did he begin to speak. "I've done it," he announced. "You've seen the newspapers, of course. I'm plumb cleaned out, and I've just called around to find out what day you feel like starting for Glen Elien. It'll have to be soon, for its real expensive living in Oakland these days. My board at the hotel is only naid to the end 'of the week, and I can't afford to stay on after that. And beginning with to-morrow I ve got to use the street cars, and they suro eat up the nickels." , Ho paused, and wafted, and looked at her. Indecision and trouble showed on her face. Then the smile he knew /> well began to grow on her lips and in her eyes until slie threw back her head and laughed in the old forthright boyish way. ' . , " When are those men coming to pack for metf" sho asked. And again she laughed and simulated a vain attempt to escape his bearlike arms. , , . . ~ , " Dear Elam," sho whispered ; dear Elam." And of herself, for tho first time, she kissed him. She ran her hand caressingly through his hair. >* "Your eyes are all go»d right now, he said. " I can look in tlieni and tell just how much you love me." " T'liey have been all gold for you, Elam, and for a long time. I think, on our little ranch, they will always be all gold." "Your hair has gold in it, too, a sort of fiery gold." He turned her face suddenly and he'd it between liis hands and looked long into her eyes. " And your eyaa were full of gold only tho other

day, when you said you wouldn't marry me."

She nodded and laughed. " You would have your will," she confessed. " But I couldn't bo a party to such madness. All that money was yours, not mine. But I was loving you all the time, Elam, for tho great big boy you are, breaking the thirty-mil-lion toy with which you had grown tired of playing. And when I said no, I knew all the time it was yes. And I am sure that my eyes were golden all tho time. I had only one fear, and that was that you would fail to lose everything. Because, dear, I knew I should marry you anyway, and.l did so want just you and the ranch and xiob and Wolf and those horsehair bridles. Shall I tell you a secret? As soon as you left, I telephoned the man to whom I sold Mab."

She hid her face against his breast for an instant, and then looked at him again, fladly radiant. " You see, Elam, in spite of what my lips said my mind was made up then. I—l simply had to marry you. But I was praying you would succeed in losing everything. And so I tried to find what had become of Mab. But the man had sold her, and did not know what had become of her. You see, I wanted to ride with you over the Glen Ellen hills, on Mab and you on Bob, just as T had ridden with you through tho Piedmont hil's."

The disclosure of Mab's whereabouts trembled on Daylight's lips, but he forbore.

" I'll promise you a mare that you'll like just as much as Mab," he said. But Dede shook her head, and on that one point refused to Bo comforted. " Now, I've got an idea," Daylight said, hastening to get the conversation on less perilous ground. " We're running away from cities, and you have no kith nor kin, so it don't seem exactly right that w9 should start off by getting married in a city. So here's the idea: I'll run up to tlio ranch and get things in shape around the house and give the caretaker his walking papers. You_ follow me in a ?ouple of days, coming on the morning train. I'll have the preacher fixed and waiting. And here's another idea. You bring your riding togs in a suit-case. And as soon as the ceremony's over, vou can go to tho hotel and change, taien out you come, arid you find me waiting with a couple of horses, and we'll ride over the landscape so as you can see the prettiest parts of the ranch the first thing. And she'ssure pretty, that ranch. And now that it's settled. I'll be waiting for you at the morning train day after tomorrow."

Dede blushed as she spoke. u are su °h a hurricane." Well, ma'am," he drawled, "Isure hate to burn daylight. And yon and I have burned a heap of daylight. We've been scandalously extravagant. We might have been married years ago."

. Two davs later. Daylight stood waiting outside the little Glen Ellen hotel. lho ceremony w as> over, and he had jelt Dede to go inside and change into her ridmg-habit while he brought th" horses. Ho held them now, Bob and Mab and in the shadow of the water-ing-trough Wolf lay and looked on. Already two days of nrdent California had touched with new fires tho ancient bronze in Daylight's face But warmer still was the glow that came into his cheeks ai\d .burned in his eves as he saw Dede coming out of the door, riding-wnip in hand, cLid in the fnniiW ™'duroy-skirt and leggings of the old Piedmont days. There was warmth and glow m her own face as she answered his gaze and glanced on past mm to tho horses. Then she saw Mab. l! 1 '\ cr ?. n / je ,en Pfd back to the man. Oh, Elam !" she breathed. It was almost a prayer, but a prayer th at included a, thousand meanings. -)p.ylight strove to feign sheepishness, but his heart was sinsinjj too wild a song for mere playfulness? All tilings had been in the learning of his name—reproach, refined' nway by gratitude, and all compounded of jov and love. She stepped forward and caressed the mare, and again turned and looked at the man, and breathed: " Oh, Elam."

, And all that was in her voice was in her eyes, and in them Daylight glimpsed a profundity deeper and wider than any speech or thought—the whole vast inarticulate mystery and wondei of sex and love.

Again he strove for playfulness or ■speech, but it was'too great a moment for even love facetiousness to enter in. Neither spoke. She gathered the rems, and, bending, Daylight received her foot iti his hand. She sprang, as he lifted, and. pained the next moment ho was mounted and beside her, and, with "Wolf sliding along m his own typical wolf-trot, they went up the hill that led out of town —two lovers on two chestnut sorrel steeds, riding out and away to honeymoon through tile warm summer day. Daylight felt himself drunken as with wine. He was at the topmost pinnacle of life. Higher than this no man could climb or had ever climbed. It was his day of days, his love-time and his mating-time, and all crowned by this virginal possession of a mate who had said " Oh, Elam !'» as she had said it, and looked at him out of her soul as she had looked. They cleared tho crest of the hill, and he watched the joy mount in her face as she gazed on the sweet, fresh land. He nointed out the group of heavily-wooded knolls across the rolling stretches of ripe grain. " They're ours," he said. " Ariel they're only a sample of the ranch. Wait till you see the big canon. There are 'coons down there, and back here on the Sonoma there aro mink. And deer ! —why, that mountain's suro tliiclf with them, and T reckon we caij scare up a mountain lion if we want to real hard. And, say, there's a little meadow—well, I ain't going to tell you another word. You wait and see for yourself."

They turned in at the gate, where the road to the clay-pit. crossed tho fields, and both sniffed with delight as the warm aroma of the rine hay rose in their nostrils. As on his first visit, tho larks were uttering their rich notes and fluttering up before the horses until the woods and the flowerscattered. glades were reached, when the larks gave way to blue jays and woodpeckers. " We're on our land now," he said, as they loft tho hayfield behind. "It runs right across country over the roughest parts. Just you wait and see.''

As on the first day, he turned aside from the clay-nit and worked through the woods to the left, passing the first spring and Jumping the horses over the ruined remnants of the stake-and-rider fence. From here on, Dede was in an unending ecstasy. By the spring that gurgled among the redwoods grow another great white lily, bearing on its slender stalk the prodigious outburst of white waxen bells. This time he did not dismount, but led the way to the deep canon where the stream had cut a passage among the knolls. Pie had been at work here, and a steep and slippery hurse trail now crossed the creek, so they rode up beyond, through the sombre redwood twilight, and, farther on, through a tangled wood of oak and madrono. They came to a small clearing of several acres, where the grain stood waist-higli. " Ours," Daylight said. She bent in her saddle, plucked a stalk of tho ripe grain, and nibbled it between her teeth. " Sweet mountain hav," she cried. "Tho kind Mab likes.". And throughout the ride sho continued to utter cries and ejaculations of surprise and delight. " And you never told me all this!" she reproached him. as they looked across tho little clearing and over the de-

scending slopes of woods to the great curving sweep of Sonoma Valley. "Come," lie said; and they turned and went back through the forest shade, crossed the stream and came to the lily by tho spring. Here, also, where the way led up the tangle oF tho steep hill, he had cut a rough horse trail. As thev forced their way up tho zigzags, they caught glimpses out and down through the sea of foliage. Yet always were thenfarthest glimpses stopped by the closing vistas of green, and, yet alAvays, as they climbed, did the forest roof arch overhead, with only here and there rifts that permitted shattered shafts of sunlight to penetrate. And all about them were ferns, a score of varieties, from the tiny gokl-blacks and maidenhair to lingo brakes six and eight feet tall. Below them, as they mounted, they glimpsed great gnarled trunks and branches of ancient trees, and above them were similar great gnarled branches. Dede stopped her horse and sighed with the beauty of it all. "It is as if "we are swimmers," slie said, " rising out of a deep pool of green tranquillity. Up above is tlie sky and tho sun, but this is a pool, and ivo are fathoms deep." They started their horses, but a dogtooth violet, shouldering amongst tho maidennair, caught her eye and made her rein in again. They cleared the crest and emerged from the pool as if into another world for now they were in the thicket of velvet-trunked young madronos, and lookino- down the open, sun-washed hillside, across the nodding grasses, to the drifts of blue and white nemophilte that carpeted the tiny meadow on either side the tiny stream. Dede clapped her hands. " It's sure prettier than office furniture," Daylight remarked.

" It sure is," she answered. And Daylight, who knew his weakness in the use of the particular word sure, knew that she had repeated it deliberately and with love.

They crossed tho stream and took the cattle track over the low rocky hill and through the scrub forest of manzanita, till they emerged on the next tiny valley with its meadow-em-broidered streamlet. "If we don't run into some quail pretty soon. I'll be surprised some," Daylight eaid. And as the words left his lips there was a wild series of explosive thrumming.? as the old quail arose from all about Wolf, while the young ones scuttled for safety and disappeared miraculously before the spectators' very eves. .

He showed her tho hawk's nest he had found in the lightning-shattered top of tho redwood, and she discovered a wood-rat's nest which he hnd not seen before. Next they took the old wood-road and came out on the dozen acres of clearing where the wine grapes grew in the wine-coloured volcanic soil. Then they followed the cow-path through more woods and thickets and scattered glades, and dropped down the hillside to where the farm-house, poised on the lip of the big canyon, came into view only when they were right upon it. Dede stood on tho wide porch that ran the length of the house while Daylight tied the horses. To Dede it was very nuiot. Tt was the dry, warm, breathless calm, of Cali&ni'nia/ mid 11 day. All the world seemed dozing. From somewhere pigeons were cooing lazily. With a deep sigh of satisfaction. Wolf, who hnd drunk his fill at all tho streams along the way, dropped down in the cool shadow of the porch. She heard the footsteps of Daylight returning,' and caught her breath with a quick intake. He took her hand in his, and, as he turned the door-knob, felt her hesitate. Then he put his arm around her; tho door swung open, and together they passed in. (To be continued next Monday.)