“For that even more I thank God he’s gone.”

“What did he do?”

“I’ll never tell you nightmare things.”

“He had the strangest eyes, the golden man. They put me in mind of a goat’s eyes.”

“Drink your sweety-milk and you shall have a stick with ribbons and a long whistle like silver.”

“And the shiny box with a picture into it?”

“That also, so you drink up your sweety-milk and beg no more.”

There it was, mined out of the dusty past.

Doxology was climbing the last rise before the hollow of the home ranch and the big feet stumbled over stones in the roadway.

It was the eyes, of course, Samuel thought. Only twice in my life have I seen eyes like that—not like human eyes. And he thought, It’s the night and the moon. Now what connection under heaven can there be between the golden man hanged so long ago and the sweet little bearing mother? Liza’s right. My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day. Let me dig this nonsense out, else I’ll be searching that poor child for evil. This is how we can get trapped. Now think hard and then lose it. Some accident of eye shape and eye color, it is. But no, that’s not it. It’s a look and has no reference to shape or color. Well, why is a look evil then? Maybe such a look may have been sometime on a holy face. Now, stop this romancing and never let it trouble again—ever. He shivered. I’ll have to set up a goose fence around my grave, he thought.

And Samuel Hamilton resolved to help greatly with the Salinas Valley Eden, to make a secret guilt-payment for his ugly thoughts.

2

Liza Hamilton, her apple cheeks flaming red, moved like a caged leopard in front of the stove when Samuel came into the kitchen in the morning. The oakwood fire roared up past an open damper to heat the oven for the bread, which lay white and rising in the pans. Liza had been up before dawn. She always was. It was just as sinful to her to lie abed after light as it was to be abroad after dark. There was no possible virtue in either. Only one person in the world could with impunity and without crime lie between her crisp ironed sheets after dawn, after sunup, even to the far reaches of midmorning, and that was her youngest and last born, Joe. Only Tom and Joe lived on the ranch now. And Tom, big and red, already cultivating a fine flowing mustache, sat at the kitchen table with his sleeves rolled down as he had been mannered. Liza poured thick batter from a pitcher onto a soapstone griddle. The hot cakes rose like little hassocks, and small volcanos formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned. A cheerful brown, they were, with tracings of darker brown. And the kitchen was full of the good sweet smell of them.

Samuel came in from the yard where he had been washing himself. His face and beard gleamed with water, and he turned down the sleeves of his blue shirt as he entered the kitchen. Rolled-up sleeves at the table were not acceptable to Mrs. Hamilton. They indicated either an ignorance or a flouting of the niceties.

“I’m late, Mother,” Samuel said.

She did not look around at him. Her spatula moved like a striking snake and the hot cakes settled their white sides hissing on the soapstone. “What time was it you came home?” she asked.

“Oh, it was late—late. Must have been near eleven. I didn’t look, fearing to waken you.”

“I did not waken,” Liza said grimly. “And maybe you can find it healthy to rove all night, but the Lord God will do what He sees fit about that.” It was well known that Liza Hamilton and the Lord God held similar convictions on nearly every subject. She turned and reached and a plate of crisp hot cakes lay between Tom’s hands. “How does the Sanchez place look?” she asked.

Samuel went to his wife, leaned down from his height, and kissed her round red cheek. “Good morning, Mother. Give me your blessing.”

“Bless you,” said Liza automatically.

Samuel sat down at the table and said, “Bless you, Tom. Well, Mr. Trask is making great changes. He’s fitting up the old house to live in.”

Liza turned sharply from the stove. “The one where the cows and pigs have slept the years?”

“Oh, he’s ripped out the floors and window casings. All new and new painted.”

“He’ll never get the smell of pigs out,” Liza said firmly. “There’s a pungency left by a pig that nothing can wash out or cover up.”

“Well, I went inside and looked around, Mother, and I could smell nothing except paint.”

“When the paint dries you’ll smell pig,” she said.

“He’s got a garden laid out with spring water running through it, and he’s set a place apart for flowers, roses and the like, and some of the bushes are coming clear from Boston.”

“I don’t see how the Lord God puts up with such waste,” she said grimly. “Not that I don’t like a rose myself.”

“He said he’d try to root some cuttings for me,” Samuel said.

Tom finished his hot cakes and stirred his coffee. “What kind of a man is he, Father?”

“Well, I think he’s a fine man—has a good tongue and a fair mind. He’s given to dreaming—”

“Hear now the pot blackguarding the kettle,” Liza interrupted.

“I know, Mother, I know. But have you ever thought that my dreaming takes the place of something I haven’t? Mr. Trask has practical dreams and the sweet dollars to make them solid. He wants to make a garden of his land, and he will do it too.”