The Valley of the Moon. Jack LondonЧитать онлайн книгу.

      CHAPTER III

      They had dinner in the open-air, tree-walled dining-room, and Saxon noted that it was Billy who paid the reckoning for the four. They knew many of the young men and women at the other tables, and greetings and fun flew back and forth. Bert was very possessive with Mary, almost roughly so, resting his hand on hers, catching and holding it, and, once, forcibly slipping off her two rings and refusing to return them for a long while. At times, when he put his arm around her waist, Mary promptly disengaged it; and at other times, with elaborate obliviousness that deceived no one, she allowed it to remain.

      And Saxon, talking little but studying Billy Roberts very intently, was satisfied that there would be an utter difference in the way he would do such things... if ever he would do them. Anyway, he'd never paw a girl as Bert and lots of the other fellows did. She measured the breadth of Billy's heavy shoulders.

      "Why do they call you 'Big' Bill?" she asked. "You're not so very tall."

      "Nope," he agreed. "I'm only five feet eight an' three-quarters. I guess it must be my weight."

      "He fights at a hundred an' eighty," Bert interjected.

      "Oh, out it," Billy said quickly, a cloud-rift of displeasure showing in his eyes. "I ain't a fighter. I ain't fought in six months. I've quit it. It don't pay."

      "Yon got two hundred the night you put the Frisco Slasher to the bad," Bert urged proudly.

      "Cut it. Cut it now.—Say, Saxon, you ain't so big yourself, are you? But you're built just right if anybody should ask you. You're round an' slender at the same time. I bet I can guess your weight."

      "Everybody guesses over it," she warned, while inwardly she was puzzled that she should at the same time be glad and regretful that he did not fight any more.

      "Not me," he was saying. "I'm a wooz at weight-guessin'. Just you watch me." He regarded her critically, and it was patent that warm approval played its little rivalry with the judgment of his gaze. "Wait a minute."

      He reached over to her and felt her arm at the biceps. The pressure of the encircling fingers was firm and honest, and Saxon thrilled to it. There was magic in this man-boy. She would have known only irritation had Bert or any other man felt her arm. But this man! IS HE THE MAN? she was questioning, when he voiced his conclusion.

      "Your clothes don't weigh more'n seven pounds. And seven from—hum—say one hundred an' twenty-three—one hundred an' sixteen is your stripped weight."

      But at the penultimate word, Mary cried out with sharp reproof:

      "Why, Billy Roberts, people don't talk about such things."

      He looked at her with slow-growing, uncomprehending surprise.

      "What things?" he demanded finally.

      "There you go again! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look! You've got Saxon blushing!"

      "I am not," Saxon denied indignantly.

      "An' if you keep on, Mary, you'll have me blushing," Billy growled. "I guess I know what's right an' what ain't. It ain't what a guy says, but what he thinks. An' I'm thinkin' right, an' Saxon knows it. An' she an' I ain't thinkin' what you're thinkin' at all."

      "Oh! Oh!" Mary cried. "You're gettin' worse an' worse. I never think such things."

      "Whoa, Mary! Backup!" Bert checked her peremptorily. "You're in the wrong stall. Billy never makes mistakes like that."

      "But he needn't be so raw," she persisted.

      "Come on, Mary, an' be good, an' cut that stuff," was Billy's dismissal of her, as he turned to Saxon. "How near did I come to it?"

      "One hundred and twenty-two," she answered, looking deliberately at Mary. "One twenty two with my clothes."

      Billy burst into hearty laughter, in which Bert joined.

      "I don't care," Mary protested, "You're terrible, both of you—an' you, too, Saxon. I'd never a-thought it of you."

      "Listen to me, kid," Bert began soothingly, as his arm slipped around her waist.

      But in the false excitement she had worked herself into, Mary rudely repulsed the arm, and then, fearing that she had wounded her lover's feelings, she took advantage of the teasing and banter to recover her good humor. His arm was permitted to return, and with heads bent together, they talked in whispers.

      Billy discreetly began to make conversation with Saxon.

      "Say, you know, your name is a funny one. I never heard it tagged on anybody before. But it's all right. I like it."

      "My mother gave it to me. She was educated, and knew all kinds of words. She was always reading books, almost until she died. And she wrote lots and lots. I've got some of her poetry published in a San Jose newspaper long ago. The Saxons were a race of people—she told me all about them when I was a little girl. They were wild, like Indians, only they were white. And they had blue eyes, and yellow hair, and they were awful fighters."

      As she talked, Billy followed her solemnly, his eyes steadily turned on hers.

      "Never heard of them," he confessed. "Did they live anywhere around here?"

      She laughed.

      "No. They lived in England. They were the first English, and you know the Americans came from the English. We're Saxons, you an' me, an' Mary, an' Bert, and all the Americans that are real Americans, you know, and not Dagoes and Japs and such."

      "My folks lived in America a long time," Billy said slowly, digesting the information she had given and relating himself to it. "Anyway, my mother's folks did. They crossed to Maine hundreds of years ago."

      "My father was 'State of Maine," she broke in, with a little gurgle of joy. "And my mother was horn in Ohio, or where Ohio is now. She used to call it the Great Western Reserve. What was your father?"

      "Don't know." Billy shrugged his shoulders. "He didn't know himself. Nobody ever knew, though he was American, all right, all right."

      "His name's regular old American," Saxon suggested. "There's a big English general right now whose name is Roberts. I've read it in the