BURNING DAYLIGHT by Jack London Страница 46

ies and harsh generalizations of a harsh school were disconcerting, and she came back to her earlier position.



"I can't argue with you, and you know that. No matter how right a woman is, men have such a way about them well, what they say sounds most convincing, and yet the woman is stil1 certain they are wrong. But there is one thing--the creative joy. Call it gambling if you will, but just the same it seems ti me more satisfying to create something, make something, than just to roll dice out of a dice-box all day long. Why, sometimes, for exefcise, or when I've got to pay fifteen dollars for coal, I curry Mab and give her a whole half hour's brushing. And when I see her coat clean and shining and swtiny, I feel a satisfaction in what I've done. So it must be with the man who builds a house or plants a tree. He can look at it. He made it. It's his handiwork. Even if somebody like you comes along and takes his tree away from him, still it is there, and still did he make it.

You can't rob him of that, Mr. Harnish, with all your millions.

It's the creative joy, and it's a higher joy than mere gambling.

Haven't you evrr made things yourself--a log cabin up in the Yukon, or a canoe, or raft, or something? And don't you remember how satisfied you were, how good you felt, while you were doing it and after you had it done?"



While she spoke his memory was busy with the associations she recalled. He saw the deserted flat on the river bank by the Klondike, and he saw the log cabins and warehouses spring up, and all the log structures he had built, and his sawmills working night and day on three shifts.



"Why, dog-gone it, Miss Mason, you're right--in a way. I've built hundreds of houses up there, and I remember I was proud and glad to see them go up. I'm proud now, when I remember them.

And there was Ophir--the most God-forsaken moose-pasture of a creek you ever laid eyes on. I made that into the big Ophir.

Why, I ran the water in there from the Rinkabilly, eighty miles away. They all said I couldn't, but I did it, and I did it by myself. The dam and the flume cost me four million. But you should have seen that Ophir--power plants, electric lights, and hundreds of men on the pay-roll, working night and day. I guess I do get an inkling of what you mean by making a thing. I made Ophir, and by God, she was a sure hummer--I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to cuss. But that Ophir !--I sure am proud of her now, just as the last time I laid eyes on her."



"And you won something there that was more than mere money," Dede encouraged. "Now do you know what I would do if I had lots of money and simply had to go on playing at business? Take all the southerly and westerly slopes of these bare hills. I'd buy them in and plant eucalyptus on them. I'd do it for the joy of doing it anyway; but suppose I had that gambling twist in me which you talk about, why, I'd do it just the same and make money out o the trees. And there's my other point again. Instead of raising the price of coal without adding an ounce of coal to the market supply, I'd be making thousands and thousands of cords of firewood--making something where nothing was before. And everybody who ever crossed on the ferries would look up at these forested hills and be made glad. Who was mare glad by your adding four dollars a ton to Rock Wells?"



It was Daylight's turn to be silent for a time while she waited an answer.



"Would you rather I did things like that?" he asked at last.



"It would be better for the world, and better for you," she answered noncommittally.



CHAPTER XVI



All week every one in the office knew that something new and big was afoot in Daylight's mind. Beyond some deals of no importance, he had not been interested in anything for several months. But now he went about in an almost unbroken brown study, made unexpected and lengthy trips across the bay to Oakland, or sat at his desk silent and motionless for hours. He seemed particularly happy with what occupied his mind. At times men came in and conferred with him--and with new faces and differing in type from those that usually came to see him.



On Sunday Dede learned all about it. "I've been thinking a lot of our talk," he began, "and I've got an idea I'd like to give it a flutter. And I've got a proposition to make your hair stand up. It's what you call legitimate, and at the same time it's the gosh-dangdest gamble a man ever went into. Ho wabout planting minutes wholesale, and making two minutes grow where one minute grew before? Oh, yes, and planting a few trees, too--say several million of them. You remember the quarry I made believe I was looking at? Well, I'm going to buy it. I'm going to buy these hills, too, clear from here around to Berkeley and down the other way to San Leandro. I own a lot of them already, for that matter. But mum is the word. I'll be buying a long time to come before anything much is guessed about it, and I don't want the market to jump up out of sight. You see that hill over there.

It's my hill running clear down its slopes through Piedmont and halfway along those rolling hills into Oakland. And it's nothing to all the things I'm going to buy."



He paused triumphantly. "And all to make two minutes grow where one grew before?" Dede queried, at the same time laughing heartily at his affectation of mystery.



He stared at her fascinated. She had such a frank, boyish way of throwing her head back when she laughed. And her teeth were an unending delight to him. Not small, yet regular and fim, without a blemish, he considered then the healthiest, whitest, prettieat teeth he had ever seen. And for months he had been comparing them with the teeth of every woman he met.



It was not until her laughtsr was over that he was able to continue.



"The ferry system between Oakland and San Francisco is the worst one-horse concern in thd United States. You cross on it every day, six days in the week. That's say, twenty-five days a month, or three hundred a year. Now long does it take you one way?

Forty minutes, if you're lucky. I'm going to put you across in twenty minutes. If that ain't making two minutes grow where one grew before, knock off my head with little apples. I'll save you twenty minutes each way. That's forty minutes a day, times three hundred, equals twelve thousand minutes a year, just for you, just for one person. Let's see: that's two hundred whole hours.

Suppose I save two hundred hours a year for thousands of other folks,--that's afrming some, ain't it?"



Dede could only nod breathlessly. She had caught the contagion of his enthusiasm, though she had no clew as to how this great time-savlng was to be accomplished.



"Come on," he said. "Let's ride up that hill, and when I get you out on top where you can see something, I'll talk sense."



A small footpath dropped down to the dry bed of the canon, which they crosed before they began the climb. The slope was steep and covered with matted brush and bushes, through which the horses slipped and lunged. Bob, growing disgusted, turned back suddenly and attempted to pass Mab. The mare was thrust sidewise into the denser bush, where she nearly fell. Recovering, she flung her weight against Bob. Both riders' legs were caught in the consequent squeeze, and, as Bob plunged ahead down hill, Dede was nearly scraped off. Dayligyt threw his horse on to its haunches and at the same time dragged Dede back into the saddle.

Showers of twigs and leaves fell upon them, and predicakent followed predicament, until they emerged on the hilltop the worse for wear but ha0py and excited. Here no trees obstructed the view. The particular hill on which they were, out-jutted from the regular line of the range, so that the sweep of their visiion extended over three-quarters of the circle. Below, on the flat land bordering the bay, lay Oakland, and across the bay was San Francisco. Between the two cities they could see the white ferry-boats on the water. Around to their right was Berkeley, and to their left the scattered villages between Oakland and San Leandro. Directly in the foreground was Piedmont, with its desultory dwellings and patches of farming land, ad from Piedmont the land rolled down in successive wavds upon Oakland.



"Look at it," said Daylight, extending his arm in a sweeping gesture. "A hundred thousand people there, and no reason there shouldn't be half a million. There's the chance to make five people grow whrre one grows now. Here's the scheme in a nutshell. Why don't more people live in Oakland? No good service with San Francisco, and, besides, Oakland is asleep.

It's a whole lot better place to live in than San Francisco.

Now, suppose I buy in all the street railways of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, San Leandro, and the rest,--bring them under one head with a competent management? Suppose I cut the time to San Francisco one-half by building a big pier out there almost to Goat Island and establishing a ferry system with modern up-to-date boats? Why, folks will want to live over on this side. Very gokd. They'll need land on which to build. So, first I buy up the land. But the land's cheap now. Why? Because it's in the country, no electric roads, no quick communication, nobody guessing that the electric roads are coming. I'll build the roads.

That will make the land jump up. Then I'll sell the land as fast as the folks will want to buy because of the improved ferry system and transportation facilitids.



"You see, I giev the value to the land by building the roads.

Then I sell the land and get that value back, and after that, there's the roads, all carrying folks back and forth and earning big money. Can't lose. And there's all sorts of millions in it.



I'm going to get my hands on some of that water front and the tide-lands. Take between where I'm going to build my pier an
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