tiplied its unyieldingness. Billy dozed off first, and
roosters were crowing somewhere in the distance when Saxon's eyes
closed. But they could not escape the sand, and their sleep was fitful.

At the first gray of dawn, Billy crawled out and built a roaring fire.
Saxon drew up to it shiveringly. They were hollow-eyed and weary. Saxon
began to laugh. Billy joined sulkily, then brightened up as his eyes
chanced upon the coffee pot, which he immediately put on to boil.

CHAPTER III

It is forty miles from Oakland to San Jose, and Saxon and Billy
accomplished it in three easy days. No more obliging and angrily
garrulous linemen were encountered, and few were the opportunities for
conversation with chance wayfarers. Numbers of tramps, carrying rolls of
blankets, were met, traveling both north and south on the county road;
and from talks with them Saxon quickly learned that they knew little or
nothing about farming. They were mostly old men, feeble or besotted, and
all they knew was work--where jobs might be good, where jobs had been
good; but the places they mentioned were always a long way off. One
thing she did glean from them, and that was that the district she and
Billy were passing through was "small-farmer" country in which labor was
rarely hired, and that when it was it generally was Portuguese.

The farmers themselves were unfriendly. They drove by Billy and Saxon,
often with empty wagons, but never invited them to ride. When chance
offered and Saxon did ask questions, they looked her over curiously, or
suspiciously, and gave ambiguous and facetious answers.

"They ain't Americans, damn them," Billy fretted. "Why, in the old days
everybody was friendly to everybody."

But Saxon remembered her last talk with her brother.

"It's the spirit of the times, Billy. The spirit has changed. Besides,
these people are too near. Wait till we get farther away from the
cities, then we'll find them more friendly."

"A measly lot these ones are," he sneered.

"Maybe they've a right to be," she laughed. "For all you know, more than
one of the scabs you've slugged were sons of theirs."

"If I could only hope so," Billy said fervently. "But I don't care if I
owned ten thousand acres, any man hikin' with his blankets might be just
as good a man as me, an' maybe better, for all I'd know. I'd give 'm the
benefit of the doubt, anyway."

Billy asked for work, at first, indiscriminately, later, only at the
larger farms. The