Chapter 2

The brothers were young men at that time, and as their mother had been
dead for many years, their friends supposed that they would carry on the
ranch in a sort of family partnership. But Uncle Harry, in his love of a
wild and independent life, was my grandfather over again. He announced
that he had had enough of civilization, persuaded my father to buy out
his share of the Santa Brigida, and bade his brother and his friends
good-bye. I remember, when I was very small, how eagerly we looked
forward to the letters my father used to read aloud to us: accounts of
African gold-mining; of wanderings in Central America and Mexico; of
great cattle-ranches–_estancias_, Uncle Harry called them–in the
Argentine; of voyages along the barren Chilean coast; of storms and
shipwrecks among distant archipelagoes. In the end he settled as a
trader, a buyer of copra and pearl-shell, in the South Seas.

As for my father, he was content to marry and to stay at home, but he
clung to his cattle stubbornly, refusing to farm or to sell an acre of
his land and growing poorer with each year that passed. He often said
that we would never starve and that our land was constantly increasing
in value, but at such times my mother used to rise from her chair with a
sigh and walk out alone among her roses in the court. She was a patient
woman and she loved my father dearly, but I knew that the sale of only a
few acres among all our thousands would have provided her with many
things she craved. What with dry years and low prices, our taxes ate up
nearly all the profits from the cattle. We could never afford a
motor-car or the occasional trips to San Francisco of which our
neighbors’ children gave me glowing accounts, yet outside of such
luxuries, I must own that we had little need of ready money. Our own fat
steers provided us and our men with beef; my mother was superintendent
of a garden which furnished more vegetables than we could eat; and in
the fall and winter game was still plentiful enough to be a real
resource.

Our circumstances had made me a rather serious boy, fond of solitude and
given to endless daydreams–dreams of returning from vague goldmines or
speculations in land with a fortune, to be invested in the ranch and to
provide my mother with travel, and rest, and pretty clothes. On my rides
to school along a five-mile stretch of coast, where the pearly fog
billowed about the hills and the Pacific broke lazily beyond the dunes,
I lived in a world of pure fancy, from which the sight of San Isidro,
with its single dusty street, its stores, and hideous frame schoolhouse,
recalled me daily with an unpleasant start. All through the week I lived
only for the coming Saturday, when I would be free to shoot, or fish in
the surf, or ride out with our men to track down some band of half-wild
steers, hidden in the thick oak scrub of the foothills.

It was on a Saturday that my uncle came. I was fifteen that winter, and
ten years had gone by since he had visited us last, but I had not
forgotten his lean powerful figure, or the black eyes lighting up a face
tanned to an unfading brown, or the stories he had told a wondering
youngster of five, sitting on his knee by the fireplace.

The month was February, as I remember it, for the wild mustard was tall
and green on the hills and scattered cock-quail were perched on the
fenceposts, filling the air with the long sweet whistle of their
mating-time. We were early risers, all of us, and at dawn, as I was
eating the breakfast my mother had prepared, she asked me if I would
take my gun and try for some wild duck on the marshes. There would be
guests from San Isidro tomorrow, and a few brace of duck would be a
treat for people from the town. I assented joyfully, for such a request
meant that ammunition would be furnished from my father’s store, and I
loved nothing more than the long lazy hours in a blind, where one could
watch the strings of wild fowl trailing across the sky.

I had good sport that morning, hidden close to a shallow pool behind the
dunes. As I waded across the marsh, carrying my gun and half-a-dozen
wooden decoys, a cloud of teal rose quacking from the grass and headed
seaward on beating wings. The redhead were beginning to fly northward
from their wintering grounds on the lonely Mexican lagoons; small flocks
of them, led by drakes with heads glinting like burnished copper in the
sunlight, rose from the creeks ahead of me and sped away, low over the
sand hills. At the place that I had chosen for my shooting, I unwound
the anchor-lines of the decoys, tossed them far out into the pool, and
built myself a rough shelter of pickle-weed, strung on stakes pounded
into the mud. I found an old piece of board for a seat, loaded my gun,
laid out a box of cartridges within easy reach, and settled myself
luxuriously to wait.

Next moment I glanced upward and crouched down lower than before,
cocking my old-fashioned hammer-gun. High in the air above the marsh, a
flock of sprig was descending in great spiral curves, the wind humming
musically through the rigid flight-feathers of their wings. Lower and
lower they swung, while my pulse raced as I peeped over the edge of the
blind. I could see the snowy breasts of the drakes, the feathers of
their long forked tails, and their heads turning this way and that as
they scanned the marsh warily for signs of danger. They had seen the
decoys, and as they swept past me, still out of range, I called to them,
imitating the feeble quack of the hen bird. Then, while I held my
breath, they turned again, low over the pool, and came sailing straight
at me–necks up and feet dropping to settle among the decoys. My hands
were trembling a little, but I took careful aim at the old
white-breasted leader, pulled the trigger, and saw him crumple and
strike the water with a mighty splash. Wild with alarm, another drake
came towering above my head, and leaning backward till I nearly fell off
my seat, I let drive with the left barrel and watched him fold his wings
and come down plunging to the grass.

I can recall that warm winter morning as if it were yesterday: the
steady thunder of the breakers, the perfume of the salt marsh, the wisps
of cloud drifting across a soft blue sky. Flock after flock of wild fowl
came speeding in from the sea, circled the marsh, set their wings to
alight, bounded upward, scattering, at the reports of my gun, and headed
back for the ocean–fast-vanishing dots above the dunes. Once a wedge of
geese passed at a great height overhead, flying northward with slow
steady wing-beats, thrilling me with the hoarse music of their voices.
My life seemed cramped and narrow as I gazed at these free rovers of
the sky, travelers beyond the far rim of the horizon north and south.