ique of sleek men in the city got between her
and him to just about that amount. And, besides them, there was a
horde of others that took their whack. They called it railroading,
high finance, banking, wholesaling, real estate, and such things, but
the point was that they got it, while she got what was
left,--twenty-two cents. Oh, well, a sucker was born every minute, he
sighed to himself, and nobody was to blame; it was all a game, and only
a few could win, but it was damned hard on the suckers.

"How old are you, mother?" he asked.

"Seventy-nine come next January."

"Worked pretty hard, I suppose?"

"Sense I was seven. I was bound out in Michigan state until I was
woman-grown. Then I married, and I reckon the work got harder and
harder."

"When are you going to take a rest?"

She looked at him, as though she chose to think his question facetious,
and did not reply.

"Do you believe in God?"

She nodded her head.

"Then you get it all back," he assured her; but in his heart he was
wondering about God, that allowed so many suckers to be born and that
did not break up the gambling game by which they were robbed from the
cradle to the grave.

"How much of that Riesling you got?"

She ran her eyes over the casks and calculated. "Just short of eight
hundred gallons."

He wondered what he could do with all of it, and speculated as to whom
he could give it away.

"What would you do if you got a dollar a gallon for it?" he asked.

"Drop dead, I suppose."

"No; speaking seriously."

"Get me some false teeth, shingle the house, and buy a new wagon. The
road's mighty hard on wagons."

"And after that?"

"Buy me a coffin."

"Well, they're yours, mother, coffin and all."

She looked her incredulity.

"No; I mean it. And there's fifty to bind the bargain. Never mind the
receipt. It's the rich ones that need watching, their memories being
so infernal short, you know. Here's my address. You've got to deliver
it to the railroad. And now, show me the way out of here. I want to
get up to the top."

On through the chaparral he went, following faint cattle trails and
working slowly upward till he came out on the divide and gazed down
into Napa Valley and back across to Sonoma Mountain... "A sweet land,"
he muttered, "an almighty sweet land."

Circling around to the right and dropping down along the cattle-trails,
he quested for another way back to Sonoma Valley; but the cattle-trails
seemed to