When the supper was nearing its end, Ah Sing, accompanied by two of his faithful feline devil-chasers, came in. He seemed somewhat sadder and more bland than usual.

"What's the matter, Sing?" queried Jim.

"Oh,—me plenty mad,—me feel heap swear."

He sat down very disconsolately, and the cats took immediate advantage of the shining moment by rubbing and purring pleasantly round and against their master's legs.

"Tell us about it then. We savvy, Sing."

"Oh,—my wifee—you know—she allee way live China. She make me angly. My fliend in China he send me photoglaph Chinee girlie. Me want get another wifee,—see!"

Sing handed over a picture of a typical country Chinese maid.

"Gee!—she's a fine looker,—isn't she, Phil?" exclaimed Jim with a wink, handing it over for Phil to examine.

"You bet she is!" conceded Phil.

Sing did not seem to enthuse.

"Oh, may be! Not too bad! Not velly muchee good! She thirteen year old. Her father he want me pay two hundled and fifty dollar for me catch her. I no likee velly much. I catch another. See! That one, she fourteen;—she cost four hundled dollar."

The second picture was that of a decidedly prettier girl with a much more refined appearance than the first.

"Oh, she best. Sure thing!" said Jim.

"Yes,—she pletty good."

"You catch her, Sing?"

Sing shook his head ruefully.

"No!—I no catch her. Make me heap swear. I save up four hundled dollar; I send allee money my wifee. I tell her buy that one for me,—see!

"She send me letter. I get him to-day. She tell me she get money, but she no buy other wifee for me. She buy house and ten acres land. Next time I go China, I tell her 'Damn!'—see. I plenty heap swear."

"I think she was a darned good judge," remarked Phil, as he and Jim laughed loudly.

But Ah Sing could not see the joke nor could he grasp wherein came his wife's good wisdom.

"What l'matter, you laugh?" he said. "Chinaman first wifee, she boss;—second wifee she do allee work. I catchee second wifee help my first wifee—see!"

"Pshaw! That's all right for a bluff, Sing, but it won't go down," cried Phil. "Come on;—cheer up, and have a drink! This is Christmas time."

"What you got?" asked Sing, brightening,—"Scotchee whisky?"

"No siree! This is none of your sheebeens," replied Phil.

"You catchem sam souey?" returned Sing, his voice high and piping. "Sam souey pletty good."

"No sam souey,—you tough nut! Here!"

Phil handed the Chinaman a bottle of lemonade. Sing's face fell.

"Ah,—no good! He cleam soda."

"Well—what's the matter with it? I suppose you want something with a kick in it."

"Kick? No savvy kick! Allee same, cleam soda you pullem cork—plup—whee—phizz—he jump out all over and he run allee way down stair before you catchem.

"Feed'm chicken cleam soda. No good Chinaman!"

"Yes,—you slit eyed Mongolian! That reminds me," exclaimed Jim, his mouth half-full of apple-pie. "Talking about chickens,—what you do with all our chickens?"

"Chickens? No savvy!" innocently commented Sing, as he replaited and tied the black silk cords at the end of his pig-tail.

"You savvy all right,—you son-of-a-gun!

"Phil,—when we came here there were thirty-six chickens in our pen. We've had two to eat ourselves. I counted only fourteen there to-day. That's twenty chickens gone somewhere."

Ah Sing still shook his head.

"I know, I savvy!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Coyote catchem!"

"Coyote hell!" shouted Jim.

"Ya,—you bet! Coyote hell evely night. You hear'm?"

"Sure we hear them. The darned brutes howl and laugh and keep us off our sleep every night the moon is up."

"Well!—coyote catchem," was all Sing would say.

"Yes!—and I suppose coyote leave bones in the garbage heap at your back door? Look here, Sing!—next time Chinese coyote take any more chicken, I fill him up buck shot out of that gun. No more chicken for you,—see!"

"All light!" conciliated the wily Chinaman, rising to go now that the discussion had come a bit too near home for his comfort. "I tell you quick next time coyote come—you fill him belly buck shot, heap plenty."

Two hours later, when the moon came up, the coyotes certainly provided entertainment. They howled and laughed, taunting an old terrier dog which belonged to the ranch and had neither the speed nor the inclination to try its mettle against its vicious enemies. It growled and barked a-plenty, but the coyotes sensed their safety and ventured the closer and yelped the louder in sheer deviltry.

Jim and Phil got down their guns, in the hope of bagging at least one of the brutes, but before they got outside, a wild frightened squawking and a tremendous to-do of fluttering told its own story. They raced round, but by the time they got to the rear of the house the squawking was quite a bit away, and the moon, ere it shot behind a cloud, showed two distant, shadowy forms scurrying quickly over the hill with their kill.

Phil fired a shot, but it did not seem to take any effect.

"I guess we put too much blame on poor old Sing after all," said Jim, "but I could have sworn he was meddling with these hens. I never knew the chink yet that could resist a chicken coop. He's even worse than the nigger is for that.

"I can hear music down at Sing's now; let us go quietly along and see what he is up to."

They went on to Sing's shack and peeped cautiously in at the window.

The Chinaman was sitting in a chair before his stove, scraping away on a Chinese fiddle, bringing the most unearthly cat-calls from the thing and singing to himself in a thin falsetto voice.

"He's nothing if he is not musical," remarked Jim.

Suddenly Sing stopped and laid down his fiddle. He rose, opened the oven door and brought out two beautifully roasted chickens, laid the pan down on top of the stove and rubbed his hands in pleasant anticipation.

"Well I'll be darned!" whispered Jim.

"And we blamed it on the coyotes," answered Phil. "Let us go in and scare the daylights out of him."

For a moment Jim seemed inclined to follow Phil's suggestion, but he relented.

"Och!—what's the good? The poor deevil hasna a body to make frien's o', nor a thing to do to keep himsel' out o' mischief. Besides it is Christmas Eve. Let us bide in the spirit o' it and leave the poor heathen to enjoy himsel' for this once.

"Come on up hame to our virtuous cots!"



CHAPTER XXI

A Maiden, a Lover and a Heathen Chinee

Next morning, while inspecting the ravaged chicken coop and endeavouring to follow the trail of the light-footed coyotes, Jim and Phil discovered a trickle of blood here and there on the snow on top of the knoll, telling them that Phil's flying shot had come much nearer its billet than they had at first surmised.

"By jove!—what do you think of that, Philly, my boy? You pinked one of those brutes after all. What do you say to following up a bit?"

Sing had promised to look after the cooking of the Christmas dinner, so, as there was nothing in particular for them to do for the next few hours, Phil readily agreed. They went back for their rifles, muffled themselves up a bit more and donned their heavy boots.

It was a glorious morning when they set out from the ranch. A fresh fall of snow the night before had already been crusted over by the cold north wind which so often tore in through the rifts in the hills at that time of the year, squeezing the thermometer almost to disappearing point at twenty-five to thirty below. The sun's brightness looked eternal. The sky was never so blue. Great fleecy clouds rolled and frolicked in well-nigh human abandon. Almost everywhere, when looking upward, the eyes rested against snow-white hills with their black reaching spars of sparse fir trees; while below and stretching away for miles—winding and twisting between the hills—the flat, solidly-frozen Kalamalka Lake, with its fresh, white coating, caught the sun's rays and threw them back in a defiant and blinding dazzle. At intervals, in unexpected places and along the shore line, smoke curled up cheerily from the snug little homes of the neighbouring ranchers and settlers.

As the two men trudged along, with the old terrier dog at their heels, the frozen air crackled in their nostrils. They smoked their pipes, however, and threw out their chests in sheer joy of living, for a winter's day, such as this was, did not freeze young blood, but rather sent it sparkling and effervescing like ten-year-old champagne.

They followed the red stains on the snow and finally came to a spot in a gulley where the coyote evidently had disposed of its steal, for feathers lay about in gory profusion. They continued through the thicket, where they lost all track of further blood-stains. To add to their worries, the old terrier disappeared.

"He must have got scared and beat it for home," said Phil.

"Looks like it! I guess we should follow his lead, for Mister Coyote seems to have got pretty well away."

"Let us go down toward the lake then and home along the shore line. It is easier travelling that way."

They went down the incline together, digging with their heels at times to stop them up, and slipping in fifteen feet lengths at other times. When they neared the bottom they heard a loud yelp, as of a dog suddenly hit by a missile of some kind. They looked out in the direction of the lake and away in the middle of it, half a mile from shore, their eyes sighted two dark objects rolling over and over each other.

A yelp, sharper than the first, came again.

"By jingo!" shouted Jim, "what do you know about that? It's our supposed yellow-livered terrier. He's got the coyote. Come on! The brute will have him eaten alive."

They plunged down the remainder of the hill, through another thicket of pines, along the shore and out on to the lake. The ice was several feet thick and as solid as the land itself. Time and again both Phil and Jim stepped up in order to try a shot, but it was impossible to get one in without endangering the life of the plucky old dog.

They slid and scurried along, full speed—while the terrier seemed to be hanging on gamely to the coyote, or else the coyote had such a hold on the terrier that the latter was unable to shake it. They continued to roll over and over in a whirling bundle of fur.

"Better try a shot anyway, Phil," cried Jim in desperation. "You are surer with the gun than I am. The dog is all in and it looks as if it didn't really matter now which you hit anyway."

Phil threw the gun to his shoulder, took almost careless aim and fired. It was a long shot and a difficult one for even an expert.

For a moment, it looked as if the bullet had gone wide. The next moment it could be seen that something had been hit, but it was hard to tell what. Then out of the scurry and whirl, the old terrier was observed to get on top.

"Good boy!" cried Jim. "You got the right one!"

As they came up on the scene of the fight, they found their dog mauled almost to ribbons, but he was still clinging gamely and worrying at the throat of the dead coyote.

Jim spoke a word of praise to that remnant of a dog and separated it from its late antagonist.

The excitement over, it wagged its stump of a tail, staggered for a little, trembled, then lay down on the ice with a little whimper, in absolute exhaustion.

The coyote was a huge brute of its kind and its coat was in perfect condition.

Phil's shot of the previous night had passed through a fleshy part of its hind quarters, without breaking any bones on its journey, but the coyote had evidently bled almost to death before the terrier got at it. This alone accounted for its inability to beat the old dog at the very first turn of the encounter. The shot which killed it had gone clean through its eye and out behind its ear.

Jim got out his knife and started in to skin the animal, while Phil did what he could in the matter of lending first aid to the wounded terrier.

On glancing casually along the surface of the ice, then away toward their ranch, Phil noticed a vehicle drawn up at the front door.

"Jim,—there's a rig of some kind at our door. Looks as if we had visitors!"

"Now who the Dickens can it be?" queried Jim, scratching his head as he knelt beside the carcass of the coyote. "It's a sleigh. Christmas Day and nobody to welcome them! Phil, you beat it back. I'll finish this job and follow after you with the dog. He won't be able to go fast and it is no use both of us waiting."

"All right!"

"Whoever they are, keep them till I come."

"Sure!"

And off Phil went at a run.

When he was about a quarter of a mile from the house, he saw Ah Sing amble round from the far side of the house and go in at the front door. This had hardly taken place, when he heard the scream of a woman in fear. A flying figure darted out and down the trail, up which Phil was now hurrying from the beach. He failed at first to make out who the figure was. It was followed closely by the Chinaman, crying out his incoherent Chinese jibberish and broken English, and, despite his years and apparent shuffling gait, he was bear-like in his agility and gained at every step on the woman he was pursuing. She turned her head in fear, and seeing how close to her he was she screamed again, then collapsed in a heap.

Ah Sing stooped over her, looking down, still muttering and shaking his fists angrily, but evidently in a quandary. He did not notice the oncomer until he was almost by his side. Phil tossed his gun from him, caught the Chinaman by the neck with his two hands, lifted him off his feet and nearly shook his greasy head off in the process. He then got him by the collar in one hand and the loose pants in the other, raised him sheer over his head and hurled him ten feet away, against the foot of an apple tree where he crashed and lay in stupid semi-consciousness.

Of all the unexpected persons to Phil, the young lady who lay on the ground was Eileen Pederstone. He raised her gently in his arms and carried her up the pathway through the orchard and back into the house. He set her on a camp cot and fetched her a glass of water. And it was not long before she sat up. But the dread of something was still upon her. She was pale and she trembled spasmodically.

She clung to Phil's arm, keeping close to him as they sat on the edge of the cot, as if afraid that his presence were not quite the substantial reality it seemed.

He tried his best to soothe her and to get her to explain what had happened, but she did not answer him. He patted her back, he put his arm about her. He pushed her hair up from her eyes. But she sat and trembled, and would not be comforted.

She had a large towel pinned about her waist, and from the broom which lay on the floor near the door it looked to Phil as if she had been sweeping out the place when the Chinaman had entered.

"But you must tell me what happened!" said Phil. "Did you say or do anything to Sing to make him angry?"

"Oh, I don't know! I have no idea!" returned Eileen at last brokenly. "He—he—when I came—there was no one here.—I started in to sweep up.—I was sweeping at the door when he came in suddenly—he frightened me.—I must have swept some of the dust over him, for he ran right into the broom.—He swore at me and started to jibber.—He caught me by the arm.—He swore again.—I—I struggled free and ran out—and—and he followed me—shouting he would—he would kill me."

Phil's brows wrinkled in perplexity, for he could not make the thing out at all.

Ah Sing he knew for a peculiar individual and a wily one, with considerable standing among the other Orientals in the neighbourhood, but he had always heard of him as being meek and docile enough with those for whom he worked and, like most Chinamen, had a wholesome respect for the power of the white man's law. That he should suddenly break out in this outrageous way, for no apparent cause, was beyond Phil's comprehension.

Quietly and without speaking further, Phil and Eileen sat together, then tears of relief came to Eileen. Her shuddering ceased. She gazed up at Phil timidly and, as she gazed, she must have noticed the anxiety and yearning in his eyes for she laid her head on his breast and wept quietly. Phil did not try to stop her tears. He sat there, smoothing her glossy brown hair with his big hand and talking soothingly to her the while.

At last her sobbing spent itself and she slowly raised her head and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. Phil caught her face in both his hands and gazed searchingly into it for a while. Helplessly, Eileen braved his look and, when a faint trembling smile played about the corners of her mouth, Phil drew her face close to his and his lips touched hers.

Eileen blushed, and jumped up suddenly with a cry of alarm. She rushed over to the stove and lifted up the lid of a pot, the contents of which were bubbling over.

"Come on, boy!" she cried with a strange tone of possession in her voice which set Phil's heart jumping, "help me get dinner out. Big, lanky, fail-me-never Jim will be here pretty soon."

They had hardly put the finishing touches to the table, when Langford ran in. He seemed to have sensed something wrong before he got inside, for his face wore an anxious look.

"Merry Christmas, Eileen! Awfully glad you came out to see us. Hullo!—what has been wrong? I saw you, and Phil, and Sing in a mix-up and I hurried along. What was the trouble, Phil? Has Sing been playing any monkey-doodle business?"

"It was nothing at all! Hurry and get a wash up, Jim! Dinner's ready," smiled Eileen. "We'll tell you all you want to know when we are having something to eat."

They sat down to a pleasant little meal, but, somehow, the earlier proceedings had cast a damper over the usual gaiety of the trio and their conversation for once was desultory and of a serious nature.

Phil explained as best he could what had taken place between Eileen and Sing. Eileen could throw no further light on Phil's story. But Jim did not seem to require any, for a look of perfect understanding showed in his big, gaunt, honest face.

"Do you know, Eileen,—you could not have heaped a worse insult on Sing than you did," he remarked.

"But I didn't say a word, Jim!"

"No!—but you demonstrated on him with that broom."

"And what of that? Anybody is liable to get a little dust swept over him by a busy housewife."

Jim rose. "Wait a bit!" he remarked. He went to the door and whistled a loud note that Ah Sing was familiar with.

Shortly afterwards, the Chinaman, very much bruised up—his eye swollen, and limping—came in. An expression of the deepest humility and cringe was on his battered countenance.

"I heap solly! I velly solly! I no mean hurt lady. I no do him any more. You no tell policeman Chief! You no tell him, Bossee Man Jim, Bossee Man Phil, Lady Missee Pedelston. Ah Sing he velly solly. Heap much plenty velly solly!" He grovelled and cringed.

"What you do that for anyway? you slit-eyed son of Confucius!"

"You know, Bossee Jim;—you know all about Chinaman. Lady, she sweepee bloom all over Sing. Bloom he sweepee up dirt. She pointem bloom; she touch Ah Sing with bloom. Allee same call Ah Sing dirty pig,—see! Me no dirty—me no dirty pig.

"Anytime pointem bloom, somebody b'long me die. One time, white man hit me bloom,—my lil boy he die same day away China. Pointem bloom Chinaman, somebody b'long him die evely time.

"Now maybe my wifee she die—maybe my blother, maybe my mama. I no savvy yet! Ah Sing get heap mad,—see!

"You no pointem bloom Chinaman any more, Missee Eileen. Makem heap angly. He get mad all up in him inside."

"Well, folks!—do you get it?" asked Jim.

Phil nodded.

"Yes!—evidently another of their Chinese superstitions," returned Eileen.

"Just so!" said Jim. "Sing,—all right! You beat it,—quick!"

The Chinaman went like a shot.

"And that is the kind of material—just as it stands, sometimes not half so civilised—that we allow into our country to over-run it by the thousands, allowing it to rub shoulders with us, to come into speaking distance with our women folks; their children—out of homes and hovels fathered by beings like that—sitting side by side with our own dear little mites at school."

"Yes! but, after all, who brings them here?" commented the practical Jim.

"Who?"

"The farmers and the ranchers who are too mean to pay high enough for decent white labour; and the ordinary white labour itself who refuse to condescend to the more menial work on the farm. They have been the means of their coming here and—and now they are kicking themselves for their short-sighted stupidity, for John Chinaman is beating them to a frazzle at their own game and he is crowding us out of house and shelter like the proverbial camel did.

"John always was a better truck farmer anyway. He can make a fortune off a piece of land that a white man would starve on. He will outbid the white man every time in the matter of price when renting land for farming purposes and the land-owner doesn't give a darn then whether he rents to white or yellow—so long as he gets the highest bidder's money. The chink spends hardly anything on clothes, he lives in a hovel; eats rice, works seven days in the week, pays no taxes except a paltry Road Tax of something like four dollars a year—and generally manages to evade even that;—doesn't contribute to Church, Charity or Social welfare, and sends every gold coin he can exchange for dollar bills over to Hongkong where it is worth several times its value here. And—when all is said and done—he is still the best of three classes of Orientals our Province is being flooded with. There is the Jap, with his quiet, monkey-like imitation of white folks' ways, yet all the time hanging on to his Japanese schools right in the midst of us; and the Hindoo who, as a class, prefers to herd like cattle in a barn and never will assimilate anything of this country but its roguery."

"Well, it oughtn't to be too late to work a remedy," put in Eileen.

"It may not be too late—it is not too late—but it seems to be much too big a proposition for any of our own politicians to tackle single-handed; while our politicians in the East and Over-seas haven't the faintest notion of the menace. You have to live among it and see just what we have seen to-day to get a glimpse of it.

"Why, even your own dad, Eileen, would be afraid to burn his political fingers with it,—and he understands it too."

"Oh, yes,—I know! He is in the party, like they all get. He has to do as they do. If he doesn't, he is either hounded out or has to play a lone hand and become 'a voice crying in the wilderness.'"

"Good for you, lassie!" laughed Jim.

"And I suppose," put in Jim, "if we did get them out—the very first time there would be a labour shortage or a wage dispute those same farmers and ranchers would be the first to forget their previous experiences, would raise a holler about white imposition and claim a fresh coolie importation. Here we are ourselves,—took Sing on in his old job without giving the matter a thought—all because we have got used to their presence."

"And the startling thing about it is this," said Jim, "almost every School Examination Report in the Province tells us one story:—the sons and daughters of these same ignorant, superstitious Chinamen head the lists in open competition; our own white youngsters tailing hopelessly in the rear. Not only that, but once in a while we find one of these Canadian educated Chinese kids—despite his education—while working as kitchen help in some of our homes, committing a most atrocious murder of our white women folks."

"Well—what are we going to do about it?" asked Eileen, rising.

"God knows!" answered Jim, "and nobody seems to lose any sleep over it. It just goes on,—and on,—and on."

"I guess I'll have to be going on too, boys!" smiled Eileen. "Dad's here for the holidays, you know. We are having our Christmas dinner eight o'clock to-night. I promised dad I would be back by three this afternoon.

"I'm terribly glad you two have got away from the 'herd' as it were. I won't see you again for quite a while. I'm going back with daddy Royce Pederstone again to Victoria, and I'll be there looking after his well-being all the time the House is sitting."

Phil's face fell in disappointment. Eileen noticed it and was glad. Jim noticed also, and wondered what had been going on that he was unaware of.

"It will be a dandy change. I suppose, all the same, all the time I am there I shall have a picture of Vernock and the Valley at the back of my mind, and I won't be really and truly happy till I'm back again."

"You are not the first one I have heard say he felt that way about this little countryside. It just sort of tacks itself on as part of you."

"It is always that way with me anyway," said Eileen. "As for Phil, he hasn't been here long enough to feel the same."

"Maybe Phil will be having a little picture of Victoria in his mind's eye!" was Jim's caustic comment, to which he received no answer.

"Well!—aren't you going to see the lady home?" he continued, addressing Phil.

"I guess one of us should," answered Phil with alacrity.

"Off you go then! Hitch your own nag on behind, Phil. By the time you get back I'll have the dishes washed up and everything looking lovely."

Eileen went up to the big fellow and patted his cheek.

"You're just a dear old grouchy grandpa."

"And my age is exactly twenty-eight," he grinned.

Eileen jumped and threw her arms round his broad shoulders. She pinned him in a flying hug, then jumped back again.

Jim pulled out his pipe and struck a match in studied indifference, but there was an expression in his deep, brown eyes that spoke of an inward merriment and pleasure.

And as Eileen and Phil drove off for town, Jim—with one long, slender leg crossed over the other—leaned lazily against the door-post, smoking dreamily and waving his hand.

"I guess Jim has never had a real sweetheart," said Eileen.

"It doesn't seem very like it," answered Phil.

"And yet, as you can see, he really is a lady's man from the sole of his big foot to his bronze hair."

"Then, either he has had a sweetheart and the course didn't run smoothly, or he has still to encounter the real Princess Charming. I have waited quite a long time for mine, you know, Eileen."

The young lady blushed and looked away.

"And do you think you have really found her at last?" she asked.

"Do I think I have! Ah, Eileen!—you would ask me that after our little——"

"Now, Phil,—you mustn't say a word about that, or I'll cancel the next. You caught me at a weak moment and, just like a man, you took fullest advantage," she smiled.

Phil pulled the horse to a stop and stared blankly at Eileen.

"But—but you meant it, Eileen? We really are sweethearts now?" he asked seriously.

"Why, of course,—you great big boy!" she laughed, "but you don't have to stop the horse over it. We are on the public highway, too."

"And some day——?" he continued, starting up the horse again.

"Maybe,—if you don't hurry me. You won't hurry me, Phil? Will you—dear? For I am terribly happy, and I—I don't quite seem to have got everything properly laid out in my mind."

"You just take your own good time, Eilie. I have my career to make first; but I am going to do it now that I have you to think of——"

"That's the way I like to hear a man talk," she returned, with an enthusiasm that carried contagion. "I don't think there is a thing in this world impossible to any man if he only makes up his mind to attain it. If a man has health—and he can have that if he goes about it the right way—and is willing to throw aside the hundred and one little time-wasters that surround all of us; if he will work and work and do the very best he knows, he is sure to gain his object in the end."

"Even in the winning of a young lady?"

"Yes!—even in that," she answered. "Why,—you can see that happen every day. Men whom young ladies actually repulse at first, often attract these same ladies in the end by their devotion, determination and singleness of purpose, and they gain the love they seek in the end, too."

"But that must just be destiny."

"I don't know. If you mean by destiny, that if a man strives all that is in him to attain a laudable object or ambition, and allows of no permanent rebuffs, but comes back at it, again and again—the result is absolutely certain and he need have no worry as to the ultimate success, because it is up to him to use and develop his talent, but the result is with his Creator who first gave him his talent to work on and first prompted his ambition for the materially hidden but ultimate good of the Universe—then I agree with you:—it is destiny."

After she spoke, Phil and she glided on in silence, for both felt somehow that they had been verging on a new understanding, as it were—a sixth sense—a tuning up and a telepathic communication with the Infinite.

Tears started in Eileen's eyes which Phil did his best to banish.

"Oh,—I know I am foolish," she said. "Sometimes I feel so strong; at other times so—so feminine. It is my dear, old daddy I worry over, Phil. He is not what he used to be before he got mixed up with this political crowd, with Mayor Brenchfield, with all these land schemes he has afoot. He used to be just my dear old daddy: now I seem to be losing him. That—that is why I have insisted on going with him to Victoria."

"I am sorry—very, very sorry, Eileen! If I could help, I would, gladly. Brenchfield I know is far from straight. He is educated, wealthy, influential, smooth,—but he is crooked."

"What do you know of Graham Brenchfield?" she asked suddenly. "When was it that you met him before coming here? What did he do to you? That time you met in my little home up on the hill was not your first acquaintance."

Phil was completely taken aback by the suddenness of her query, and he did not answer.

Eileen laid her hand over his.

"Phil,—I—I've a right to know;—I—we——"

Phil's hand closed tightly on hers and, as they glided rapidly over the snow toward Vernock, he told her what he had told Jim only the night before.

"Oh, the brute! The coward!" was all Eileen's bloodless lips allowed to pass, as she sat staring blankly ahead of her, her face pale and her hands working together on her lap.

"And that—that snake had the impertinence to ask me to marry him," she continued later, "still thinks he may induce my father to agree to a marriage between us. I think that he is working up some scheme now to get daddy too heavily involved, so that we may have to use him. The miserable hound!—as if my dad would think of coercing me into marrying him!"

"You aren't afraid of Brenchfield, Eileen? Because, if you are, I'll throttle the life out of him."

"No, no! I am not a bit afraid of Mayor Brenchfield,—not now. But I am afraid for my father.

"Brenchfield has a scheme for grabbing the land in the Valley whenever, wherever, and by whatever means he can. He has infected father with the same desire. They buy, and buy, and buy—vying each other in their daring. No one knows—they hardly know themselves—how much they really have."

"But don't they turn it over?"

"No! Everyone else does and gets rich in the process. They buy, and buy, and when offered a big advance on their purchase price they refuse to sell. They think this advancing in prices will go on for ever. The bank keeps on lending them money when they run short, taking their holdings as security in return. After all, daddy really owns but an interest in the properties—and a precarious interest at that. The banks won't lose. Allow them! But they have no right to encourage this kind of business;—it is bad for the country at large."

"That is true enough, but still, I think property will go on advancing for quite a little time yet," said Phil. "Every tendency points that way. Settlers from Ontario and Manitoba farms are coming in here by the hundreds to ranch, on account of the less rigorous climate. The Valley is the favourite in Canada for Old Country people with capital who are anxious to do fruit farming, and they are pouring in all the time. I can see nothing but increases in values for some time to come, Eileen."

"Well,—maybe I am wrong, but it looks to me as if the West were going mad and that there will be one wild, hilarious fling and then—the deluge.

"God help daddy, Brenchfield or anybody else who gets caught in the maelstrom.

"Phil,—promise me one thing;—you won't get caught in this? Buy and sell for others if you wish. Yes!—gamble with a little if you have it to spare, but you won't,—promise me you won't get involved in this awful business in such a way that a turn of the tide would leave you broken and dishonoured."

"I never was lucky in mines, oils or land, Eilie, dear;—and you have my promise. If ever I have anything to do with real estate, believe me, it will be simply—as you suggest—in buying and selling for the other fellow. That game has always had a great fascination for me."

"Why, yes!—you can get all the excitement without the far-reaching consequences. But what worries me about daddy is that he has so many unfinished ends lying everywhere. That was always his weakness; now it seems to be his obsession. He has ranches stocked with the best animals in the country. He has the best implements, but he has no real record of them and they disappear all the time. Some of his foremen are getting marvellously well-to-do suddenly. Why, the other day a man brought in a herd of pigs and sold them to daddy for cash. The pigs were daddy's own—stolen from one of his ranches the night before—and daddy didn't know them. Last spring, one of his foremen told daddy, just before the snow went, that they would require new machinery for this particular ranch he was working; ploughs, reapers, binders, et cetera. Dad ordered them for him and, when the snow went, he discovered all kinds of the same machinery there which had been left lying out all winter and simply ruined—really enough machinery to work a dozen ranches."

"And didn't he fire the foreman?"

"Not he! He said he couldn't put a married man out in that way. And that same married man came in here penniless four years ago, has been working for dad all the time for wages; and he could retire to-morrow and live on the interest of his invested capital.

"Daddy Royce Pederstone doesn't see it at all. He says some men are lucky speculators. Oh,—it makes me furious!"

In that short drive to town Phil got confirmed in a great many things he had previously considered merely gossip and conjecture.

At the entrance to Eileen's home he handed over the reins.

"Are you going to clear yourself with the police regarding Mayor Brenchfield, Phil?" asked Eileen.

"That is just what Jim asked, girlie. I may, some day. And I may never require to. Meantime, Brenchfield is stewing in his own juices. I prefer, for a while at any rate, to let him work away—as you said not so very long ago—and leave the result or issue to his Creator. What is it the Great Book says?—'Vengeance is mine. I will repay.'"

Eileen sighed and turned her head away to hide a tell-tale tear.

"Well—I shall not see you again for a long time, little girlie. Good-bye, and—and, God bless you!"

And there among the shade trees of the avenue Eileen threw the reins aside and sprang down beside Phil. His arms went about her agile little body, as her fingers clung to him. He kissed her lips, her eyes and her hair. Then he caught her face in his hands again, as he had done out at the ranch, looked deeply into the heart of her eyes, and her eyes answered him bravely.

He kissed her solemnly on the lips once more and let her go.

When she looked back at the turn of the avenue, he was still standing there where she had left him.



CHAPTER XXII

Fire Begets Hot Air

Late one afternoon three months after Eileen's departure for the coast, just as the dark was beginning to come down and as Phil was turning off the main road by the trail leading to the ranch, he noticed a man in sheepskin chaps making for the trees a hundred yards behind the farmhouse. He stopped his horse and watched him quietly, for there was something in the fellow's gait that seemed familiar to him. The man mounted a horse among the trees, came out boldly, cantered through the orchard on to the main road and away.

The spring thaw was on, mud was everywhere, and the stranger's beast ambled away with the silence of a ghost.

Phil did not know what to make of it, so he questioned Jim on the subject.

"Were any of that Redmans gang in seeing you?" he asked.

"Seeing me? Good land, no! Why?"

"Oh, I saw what looked like one of them getting on his horse among the trees at the back there, and riding away."

"Uhm!" said Jim, rubbing his chin.

"I thought it was Skookum, but I couldn't be quite sure.

"I wonder what the devil he could be up to, so far from home?"

"Might have been along by the lake a bit seeing some of that bunch at Larry Woodcock's place. Larry's gang and the Redmans lot are pretty much of the same kidney."

"Well," said Phil, dismissing the subject, "I guess it is up to us to keep our eyes peeled, anyway."

It was two weeks after this, following a run to town, that Jim came in with an angry look in his eyes.

"Say, Phil!—there's some darned monkey-doodle business afoot. I wish I could get to the bottom of it."

"What is it now?"

"I saw Red McGregor on the main road yesterday, and to-night I met him, Stitchy Summers and Skookum full in the teeth, jogging into town. Darned funny thing,—I never saw them on this road before."

"Well,—it is a good job we haven't started in with any stock yet. Like enough somebody will be hollering again about being shy a few fat steers or calves. There were three hundred head of cattle reported missing off the ranges last year and about that much or more every year for a dog's age—if all reports be true. Funny thing they can't lay the rustlers by the heels and hang them by the necks in the good old-fashioned way."

"Yes!" commented Jim, "if that crowd are mean enough to thieve feed and grain, I wouldn't care to turn them loose among anybody's cattle, especially now the feed and grain stealing business is unhealthy."

"But how can they get away with it, Jim? The cattle are branded."

"Sure thing, Simple Simon! But they are not branded under their hides."

"How do you mean?"

"Only one thing I can think of:—the thieves must be driving off the cattle, two or three at a time, and killing them in some lonely spot out over the ranges; skinning them and burying or burning the hides. They could then sell the fresh meat to butchers in some of the border towns who might buy it from them innocently enough through the breeds, or who might be in the ring and getting their meat dirt cheap.

"However,—let's forget it. It is none of our funeral. And I promised Mrs. Clunie for both of us that we'd take a run back to her place at nine o'clock. She is having a birthday party for all her old friends, and wants us help her celebrate."

"I guess we had better go then, Jim, or we'll never hear the end of it."

Half an hour later, they set out. Five hours later still, after a merry time—as merry times went at Mrs. Clunie's—they returned, and it was a much speedier return than their going had been, for there was a great glare of red in the sky, near to the lake, that was suspiciously close to their own ranch.

Neither spoke a word, but, as the feeling of idle curiosity gave way to one of interest, interest to suspicion and suspicion to anxiety, their horses—as if sensing their masters' feelings—started off themselves from a walk to a canter, from a canter to a gallop and from a gallop to a hell-bent-for-leather race which never slackened until the two riders threw themselves breathlessly from their backs, among a crowd of neighbouring ranchers who had been doing their best to combat the flames in the absence of the owners.

But it was all over. The heavy horses had been saved, the barns were practically uninjured, but the dwelling house itself was but a charred heap of smoking debris.

Phil looked dumbly at Jim. Jim threw out his hands, palms up and showed his big teeth.

"Well, Philly, old cock!—there, there, by the grace of God, goes up in smoke my ambitions to be the greatest fruit rancher and stock breeder the world has ever known."

"Aren't we going to start and build up on the ruins?" asked Phil.

"We? Start all over? Good Lord, man,—not me, anyway! Not on your tin-tacks! This is the best excuse I ever had for a thing in my life. It's a heller of a game, this ranching stuff, to one who doesn't know a darned thing about it. Great Scot, man!—we were never made for it, anyway."

"I can't say that we have done very much so far," replied Phil.

"Do you want to have another go?"

Phil shook his head.

"No,—can't say I'm aching for it. If we could only sell the blessed place as it stands."

A voice at Phil's elbow broke into the conversation.

The speaker was old Ralph Mawson, the man who owned the adjoining ranch on the right.

Phil and Jim woke up as it were to find themselves surrounded by their neighbours.

"You boys want to sell out? I'll make you a bid for her as she stands—spot cash."

"Yes!" said Jim.

"Five thousand bucks," said Mawson.

"Haud yer horrrses!" said another voice, which simply romped with delight every time it struck the letter "r."

Alick McAdam, the rancher on the left, was also on the job.

"I'll gi'e ye fifty-five hunnerrr."

"Six thousand!" topped Mawson in ministerial tones.

Things began to get interesting, and the crowd saw possibilities of an auction.

Jim immediately turned from Mawson to McAdam.

"Sixty-five hunnerrr," dourly droned the Scot.

"Seven thousand!" said Mawson.

There was a stop.

"Seven thousand I'm offered!" cried Jim suddenly. "Seven thousand:—any advance on seven thousand? Seven thousand:—going once,—seven thousand,—going twice;—for the third and last time——"

"Seven thoosand and five hunnerrr, and no' a currrrdy mairrr," put in McAdam, pulling at his long whiskers.

Mawson stuck his hands in his pockets and started off.

"I'm through!" he remarked.

"Sold for seven thousand five hundred dollars, cash," concluded Jim, with a friendly nod to McAdam, who rubbed his hands together and grinned.

"The fule!—he doesna ken a barrrgain when he sees it. This rrranch is worrrth ten if rrrightly managed, and no' by a wheen schule-bairrrns that would plant tatties upside doon. Come awa' owerrr tae my place and we'll put this on paperrr."

Jim drew up the agreement in McAdam's kitchen at three o'clock that morning, got McAdam's cheque for seven thousand five hundred dollars and, despite the old fellow's cordial invitation to spend the remainder of the night with him, Jim and Phil set out again for Mrs. Clunie's.

"We're making money," said Phil.

"We would have made more if we had had that old fire-trap of a place insured," answered Jim, Scotslike.

"That's what that Redmans gang have been up to;—not cattle this time."

"Looks like it."

"Well,—the artful Mr. Brenchfield, if he couldn't get me one way, got me another," remarked Phil.

"What do you mean?" asked Jim, as they cantered along.

"He didn't succeed in buying back his confession, but he took mighty good care nobody else would get it. It is burned up now all right."

"Is it?" replied Jim; "not if Jimmy Langford knows it!"

"What! Do you mean to say you have it? that you have been carrying that thing with you all this time?"

"Sure! I never change without changing it, too. It is in my belt here. So we still have one on Mayor Brenchfield if he cuts up nasty. My, but he will be chuckling this morning over his fine stroke of business. I would dearly love to show it to him, but I daresay I better hadn't."

"You're right!" said Phil, "you just better hadn't,—meantime.

"But do you really think, Jim, that he would get his gang to burn up the place for that?"

"Would he? Great Heavens, man!—that paper means social and material life or death to your former side-kicker and sparring partner, Graham Brenchfield."

"And what can we do?"

"Not a thing! The men from Redmans have as much right to roam around as we have. We haven't a vestige of definite proof that they set our house ablaze, although we both know, darned well, that they and nobody else did it."

Next morning early, shortly after the bank opened, Rattlesnake Dalton nearly threw the proverbial fit in his office, when confronted by Phil and Jim and presented with a certified cheque for one thousand dollars, plus interest, with a demand for the deed to the Brantlock Ranch.

Dalton knew better than try any more nonsense, so he had the deed made out in proper form and handed over.

McAdam drove in to town shortly afterwards and had the transfer of the property made to himself and completed the deal, thus ending the careers of two would-be ranchers before they had properly begun.

"Over six thousand dollars in the bank, and nothing to do with it," exclaimed Jim, as soon as they were together in the street, and alone. "That won't do, Phil. I have the fever now. We've got to make it sixty thousand."

"I'm with you on that," answered Phil. "Let's go down to the Kenora and talk it over in a corner over a real swell dinner. I haven't had one for a month of Sundays—and I have a six thousand dollar appetite."

That dinner at the corner table of the Kenora dining-room was the birthplace of many future events. Jim talked volubly and he talked often, for despite his nationality and its proverbial proneness to caution, he was bubbling with enthusiasm over the new plan for progress which he had conceived. Truth to tell, for the first time for many a long day, he was the proud possessor of a half interest in six thousand dollars and it was burning a hole in his pocket; but with all his persuasiveness he had a hard task in converting his less mercurially disposed partner to his cause.

The dinner was a masterpiece, but it took second place to the conversation.

"Good night, bairn!" exclaimed Jim at last, "there is McWilliams—two years ago he was city garbage man. Look at him now—luxuriates in his five-thousand-dollar car; has his town residence and his ranch; winters in California every year. Think of Fraser & Somerville:—three years ago Fraser borrowed twenty-five cents from me to buy a meal in the Chinese restaurant the day he blew in here, and he hasn't paid it back, either, although both he and Somerville are a considerable way up Easy Street. Peter Brixton was the conductor on the C.P.R. train running into the Valley from Sicamous—now he would think nothing of hiring a special to take him up to Sicamous if he took the fool notion. The only men at the game in town who had money when they started are McIntyre & Anderson,—and they've made the least of any because they lack the necessary pep. Even that lizard Dalton, is worth fifty thousand dollars, and all in selling real-estate. Man!—it makes me wearied to think of it. And besides, the early Spring Season is just opening up. We can be in right at the start of it."

Jim rose.

"Phil,—I don't want to, but I'm going to try this thing out alone if you won't come in. I'll show them in this town. If you don't come, you'll rue it once and that'll be all your life."

He stood looking down on Phil, who was resting his elbows on the table with his head on his upturned palms.

"Who said I wasn't coming in?" he murmured slowly.

Jim was round the end of the table and on him with a bound. He tilted up Phil's head.

"You're in on it! Whee-he!" he yelled, and to the astonishment of the remainder of the diners he dragged his partner to his feet and danced him round till both were dizzy and staggering.

That afternoon they took a year's lease of the front offices that had been the Commercial Bank before the bank had moved to their new premises further down Main Street. It was a bigger place than that of any other two real-estate brokers in town combined. They took it as it was; counters, desks, chairs and fixtures, and contracted to pay two hundred and fifty dollars a month for it. They paid three months' rent in advance; not because they had to but as a token of good faith and to establish some foundation of financial stability.

Jim scoured the main thoroughfares, spending half an hour at every window of every real-estate office in town, examining their cards and taking copious notes therefrom; and in the process brought McIntyre, Fraser, McWilliams and others out to their respective doors to inquire if there was any property they could show him; but all they could get out of Jim was:—"Maybe later on. I'm just looking around."

While he was thus engaged, Phil was commissioning the best sign-writers in Vernock to do a hurry-up job of absolutely first-class workmanship and have it in place above their office windows the next morning, regardless of cost.

He was too late to get a full-page advertisement in the Advertiser, which came out the next day, but he arranged it for the next issue and, on the strength of it, succeeded in inducing McQuarrie—Ben Todd's advertising manager—to rush off two thousand dodgers and insert them between the sheets of each copy of the current weekly, although not exactly a legal thing to do.

He ordered five thousand letter forms announcing the new business partnership and he had McQuarrie send them next day to every name on his special mailing list. This job alone, including the mailing, local and foreign, cost them three hundred dollars; but, for the time being, money was no object.

Two card writers, each at three dollars an hour, worked all night on Jim's purloined information, making out window cards which offered every available and unavailable piece of land in the Valley for sale, at a figure. A whole army of fat, lean and guttural-speaking charladies, behind carefully drawn blinds, worked all night long on the office floors, desks, counters and windows. Luxurious carpets and new filing cabinets were rushed in.

A typewriter was purchased. The prettiest stenographer in town was engaged to operate it—or, at least, to sit behind it for effect—regardless of expense. Two telephones, which had not been removed since the Bank's occupancy, were arranged for and retained. The dull electric lights were taken down and powerful oxygen lamps put in place. There was going to be nothing dull in the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation.

A joint visit by Phil and Jim was made to the tailor's and each got fitted out in a new suit of the latest model, with fancy and somewhat garish waistcoats. Cigars of the best brand—five boxes of them—and two thousand cigarettes were purchased for the purpose of camaraderie and general corruption.

A new auto, not too sporty but brave and dazzling in its unscratched varnish and untarnished nickel-plated lamps and rods, value fifteen hundred dollars, was purchased on terms:—five hundred dollars down and the balance in equal payments, three and six months.

Everything but that automobile was fully paid for on the nail, for Jim contended, and rightly too, that cash with a first order very often assured credit with the order to follow.

It was strenuous work, and exciting while it lasted, but they had the satisfaction of accomplishing almost everything they had set out to do.

Next morning the town was jolted with surprise at finding a new business in full operation on one of the chief sites on Main Street. The new Catteline-Harvard car was standing at the kerb before the door, shrieking its newness. A great sign over the door told the world at large, and in no uncertain manner, that the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation was doing business below. The two windows were a dainty display of the show-card writers' art, hanging above and around a miniature fruit ranch, complete with trees, house and barns in the one, and a miniature townsite in the making in the other. "Come in and Talk It Over," said one card. "Nothing in Land We Cannot Buy for You. Nothing We Cannot Sell," proclaimed another. "If you have tried all the others and have not got what you want—try Us." "Better Save Yourself Time and Worry by Trying Us First." "The Recognised, Reliable Okanagan Land Agents." "Our Time and Our Cars are at Your Disposal."

In addition to these were dozens of neat cards in plain letters and figures, offering wonderful values in Ranches, Wild Land, Homes and New Sub-divisions, the real owners of which the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation could no more than make a guess at.

It was not long before the windows were attracting the early morning passers-by in the dozens.

Someone telephoned McWilliams, who came along and had a look at the display. He went away in high dudgeon to inform Somerville, Brixton, McIntyre and the rest of them that the new outfit had been getting next to their customers and had succeeded in getting the listings of almost every piece of property in the Valley.

Meantime, Phil and Jim were comfortably ensconced in easy chairs behind their new desks, each smoking a fine brand of cigar, but busy poring over a profusion of maps and blue-prints, in a belated endeavour to get some notion—however indistinct—of how the land lay according to numbers. They knew where Kickwillie Loop was; they could go blindfold to Blear-eyed Monoghan's Ranch, or Mudflats, or Sunset Avenue, but when it came to driving out to, say, lot 21 sub-division 16, district lot 218—well, that was quite another matter and called for deep and urgent concentration.

Jim kept his brand-new, high-tension, low-geared stenographer busy typing and re-typing forms of Agreements for Sale and Deeds, in anticipation of later business.

Several prominent citizens came in to compliment them on their enterprise and to wish them good luck. The numbers of these well-wishing citizens increased as the news went round, and the Langford-Ralston stock of cigars and cigarettes decreased correspondingly, but the new concern had the pleasure of listing at least a dozen pieces of property direct from the owners.

An alarming piece of information vouchsafed itself just before lunch time, when, for the first time, the bank book of the Financial Corporation was consulted. Out of their original six thousand dollars, there were three thousand left.

"Holy Mackinaw!" breathed Phil, in prayer to some Esquimo god.

"Great Andrew Carnegie!" muttered Jim, wetting the glowing end of his cigar and putting it carefully into his upper vest pocket for future use when a client might be around.

Receipts and jotted notes were gathered together and hastily consulted, but they were unable to reduce their outlay or swell the credit side of their bank book.

"Good job we noticed it in time!" grinned Jim.

"I should say so! And we have to start in right now with a proper system; card indices, loose-leaf, cash book, ledgers, everything up to the minute. You're the lawyer, Jim, the silver tongue, the eloquently persuasive. Me for the books, the financing, the adjusting and the accounts;—with a help out on the buying and selling end when required."

"Right-o,—that's the stuff!"

And so it was arranged.

At noon Phil ran over to break the news to Sol Hanson that he had quit,—for a season at least.

The big, good-natured fellow almost shed tears at the news, although he had known that Phil would be leaving him one of these days—but, as he had fancied, for the purpose of ranching, not buying and selling property.

"Well, I been guess you ain't no fool, Phil. You know your business pretty good. Jim too! You make dam-fine real-estate ginks."

He scratched his head.

"Only I been left with one hell-job. Can't get nobody take your place. You dam-fine blacksmith all shot toboggan to the devil."

"Say, old man!" put in Phil. "I know a man that will suit you down to the ground."

"What you call him?" asked Sol.

"Smiler Hanson!"

Sol laughed.

"Aw, go on! You crazy! Smiler dam-fine little rotter all right, but he no good, no work, headpiece all shot toboggan to blazes."

"Don't you believe it? Why, he only wants to be given a show."

Sol shook his head.

"Shake away!" continued Phil. "Smiler's getting a big fellow and he is as strong as a bull. He is simply foolish over horses. Why—I can't chase him out of this place at times."

As Phil was going on with his eulogy, the head of the grinning Smiler popped round the door-post.

"Hi, there;—come here!" shouted Phil.

Smiler came in, tattered and unkempt as usual, but wiry and sinewed, as anyone could see at a glance. A different Smiler from what he was only a short year ago before he was regularly fed! The open air and the unfettered life, in conjunction with Mrs. Sol Hanson's wholesome fare had worked miracles on his constitution.

"I'll bet you five dollars, Sol, that this young rascal can make a horse shoe right now from a straight piece of steel, and do it better too than a whole lot of journeymen blacksmiths that I know."

"Aw, go on!" laughed Sol.

"Why, man!—that kid's been in and around this shop for years. Everybody thinks he is crazy and calls him crazy. How could he be anything else but crazy? with such a bunch of mean thought from his fellow men to contend with? You would be crazy yourself under similar circumstances.

"Give the boy one real chance."

"Forget it! No good!" said Sol.

Phil took out his purse and pulled out a bill.

"All right!—there's my five dollars. Cover it,—and we'll prove it right here."

"I take you!" cried Sol.

"And if Smiler makes a tolerable shape at it, you'll start him in?"

"You bet!"

"Here, Smiler! You show Sol how to make a horse shoe."

Smiler stood and grinned, shaking his head in the direction of Sol, who had always shown a tradesman's rooted objection to anyone handling any of his tools at any time and had more than once chased Smiler out of the premises for touching a hammer.

"It is all right, son! Sol won't say a word. Go to it; and, if you do it right that ten dollars there are yours and you'll get working here with Sol all the time and will make plenty of money."

Smiler threw off his ragged coat in a second, tied on one of Phil's old aprons in a business-like way, rolled up his sleeves—what was left of the lower parts of them—picked up a piece of steel, thrust it into the heart of the fire and started the bellows roaring.

And in time—before the bewildered face of Sol Hanson—he took out the almost white-hot iron, tested it, hammered it and turned it, with the skill of a master-craftsman, heeding no one; all intent on his work. He chiselled it, he beat it, he turned it and holed it, then tempered the completed shoe, handing it over finally with a crooked smile on his begrimed and sweat-glistening face.

Sol was positively dazed. When he did come to a true realisation of what Smiler had done, he sprang on him, hugging him and god-blessing him until Phil began to fear for the youngster's personal safety.

"Well," said Phil, picking up the ten dollars and handing them over to Smiler, "I guess, Sol, you have found your man?"

"Found him! You bet your life, I got him. Yiminy crickets!—and I make him one dam-fine fellow now, I tell you what. He my son now—my little Smiler."

And Smiler smiled, as Phil hurried back to relieve Jim at the office.

When Phil got back there, he found Jim on tenterhooks of excitement awaiting his arrival, for he had had a prospective buyer just off the train, who wanted Jim to drive him out to inspect a few ranches in the neighbourhood, immediately after he had a wash-up and some lunch at the Kenora; and Jim had been fearing that Phil would not get back in time.

"He's a farmer from the Prairies—so I mean to land him. They are the kind that ha'e the bawbees!"

"Have the what?" asked Phil; for despite his long contact with Jim, the latter was constantly springing a Scotticism on him that he had not heard before.

"Bawbee, man!—sillar,—ha'pennies,—one cent pieces!"

"A fat lot of good one cent pieces will do when it comes to buying a ranch in British Columbia."

Jim threw up his hands at Phil's apparent lack of wit, then he laughed and rushed across the road for a bite of lunch at a small restaurant.

He was back in a few minutes and before his prairie farmer returned.

Jim introduced the farmer to his partner as "Mr. Phil Ralston, one of the most shrewd financial men in the West," loaded him up with cigars, then got him into his Catteline-Harvard, drove him slowly past every other real-estate office in town, then out into the country. He took so long on that trip that Phil was on the point of closing up for the day ere he returned.

He was bubbling over with excitement and perspiring freely. He clapped Phil on the back, then sat down with a show of collapse.

"Come on! Tell me all about it, you clam."

"Great Scot!" said Jim, "and they say that it is a 'lotus eater's' job selling real-estate. I've shown that hard-headed old son-of-a-gun nine ranches this afternoon. I've talked climate, position, irrigation, soil, seed and production for six solid hours. I would rather write a 'dime novel' every day in my life, than this." He mopped his brow. "It is a great life if you stay with it!"

"Did you sell him?" asked the matter-of-fact Phil.

"Did I? Sure I did! I've sold old Eddie Farleigh's sixty acres for thirty thousand dollars cash—one of the best orchards in the Valley. The old fellow is coming in to-morrow morning to close the deal."

"But can you deliver the goods? We really haven't the listing of it. It is one of Peter Brixton's."

"We'll make a bold try at it. Thirty thousand dollars is Peter's listed price, and old Eddie got the property years ago for a song. I happen to know he is extremely anxious to clean up and go to his daughter at the Coast.

"Five per cent of thirty thousand dollars is fifteen hundred dollars. Peter is a good-natured sort. He isn't going to turn down half or even a third of that commission."

Jim took up the telephone and got into communication with Peter Brixton then and there.

"Hullo! 276? This is the Langford-Ralston Company. That you, Peter?"

"Yes!"

"Have just been commissioned by eastern capital to purchase a sixty acre ranch. Got anything in sight?"

"Yes!—there's the Metford Place on the B.X."

"No good, Peter! They want it in the Coldcreek district. I have several good prospects in view, but I rather fancy Eddie Farleigh's ranch. I hear it is up for sale."

"It is too!"

"What does he want for it?"

"Thirty thousand,—a third cash, the balance in twelve and twenty-four months!"

"Uhm! She's kind of high. Still,—it might be worth considering. What commission do you want out of it?"

"It's a five per cent deal, and I'm willing to split it with you;—if you'll do the same when the shoe's on the other foot."

Peter did not tell Jim that the actual price set by Farleigh was twenty-eight thousand dollars and whatever could be got above that figure would be reckoned as the broker's commission.

Jim thought for a moment. Again the voice came.

"Or I'll take a third and you get two-thirds. I'll get the double portion any time I sell any of yours."

"That's a go!—the agent who sells gets two-thirds of the commission. Well!—run down, Peter, and give me the exact lay-out and maybe we can close the deal. I want to put the sale through first thing in the morning and it has to show as coming direct through the Langford-Ralston Company."

"Right! I'll come now," answered Brixton, putting up the receiver.

Jim's grin was a treat to behold as he jumped up and caught Phil by both arms.

"Two-thirds of fifteen hundred dollars,—one thousand dollars! Oh, boy!—we're on the upgrade already."

The prairie farmer would have been inclined to question the wisdom of his purchase had he seen the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation hopping round its office like a pair of dancing bears. But he did not see it, and, what was more to the point, he never rued his bargain.



CHAPTER XXIII

So Deep in Love am I

It was not long before Phil and Jim found out that although few people in Vernock were willing to lend hard cash, many of them were friendly, even indulgent, and quite ready to encourage any honest enterprise, and brotherly enough to give a new man a fighting chance.

A week had not gone before outsiders began to see that Jim Langford had at last found himself. He did not develop, but rather he utilised what he had always possessed, the powers of winning confidence, of persuasion, of argument; combined with a shrewdness for sizing up his clients and knowing instinctively what they wanted, what they were prepared to go in price, and consequently, what to show them.

And Phil was not a whit behind, for the spirit of emulation was rife in him. He had been born with a burning ambition to succeed, and now that he saw a lifetime chance, he exerted all his power of mind and body to take advantage of it to the full.

The banking account of the Langford-Ralston Company did not fall lower than that consternation mark of three thousand dollars, and it rapidly increased with the advent of the spring sunshine and the incoming settlers who in ever-increasing numbers had heard of the fertility and the climatic perfection of the Valley; and hearing, came to see; and seeing, succumbed to Dame Nature's seductiveness. Sales increased; so did the new company's listings. So rapidly did the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation go ahead that the other real-estate men in town began to sit up and gasp. They had given the "mushroom outfit" anything from a week to six weeks in which to crumple up, but they rapidly withdrew the time-limit, contenting themselves with wait-and-see, wise-acre nods of their heads.

For the first time since leaving his home, Jim took it upon himself to communicate with his father, who was the head of an old firm of Edinburgh Solicitors and Lawyers. True, his method of communication was somewhat impersonal, consisting as it did solely of a continuous weekly bombardment of pamphlets on the fruit-growing possibilities of the Okanagan Valley, with the Langford-Ralston Corporation writ large on the advertisements thereon; printed dodgers of sub-divisions and ranching first mortgage propositions issued by the Company every few days; and copies of the Vernock and District Advertiser containing the Langford-Ralston Company's regular full-page advertisement.

"Why don't you write to him?" asked Phil one day.

Jim laughed.

"Because I know him!" he answered. "If I wrote to him, he'd smell a rat. But the constant drip will have its effect, laddie. His firm has money by the train-load to lend out on good security,—but the security has got to be good. It won't be long before he is making inquiries through some of the banks. Why, man!—I know that Fraser & Somerville placed a quarter of a million dollars for him on first mortgages a year or so ago. Why shouldn't we have it?"

In response to Phil's peculiar look, Jim went on.

"Oh, ay!—you may glower. I know I've been a rotter, and I don't think I deserve any confidences from my old dad. I never played the game with him. All the same, I'm not going to crawl to him for all the money on earth. I've come to myself at last and I mean to show him I am still worthy to be called his son,—as the Good Book says. If he is interested in our legitimate business and cares to get in touch in a business-like way, we'll be mighty glad to show him what we've got and accept his fatted calf, or should I say, golden calf, with becoming dignity."

"Well, Jim,—you're lucky," reflected Phil. "I doubt if my father knows now that I am alive. He was a mighty good dad to me, but he doesn't seem to have allowed much for youthful impetuosity and indiscretion. Evidently, he has never forgiven me for refusing to accept a new mother on a moment's notice. You may say what you like about Brenchfield, but if it hadn't been for the kindness of his father and mother, God only knows what and where I would have been to-day."

"Yes, Sentimental Tommy! And you paid all of it back, a thousand per cent,—so forget that part! A fat lot Graham Brenchfield did for you, personally."

"Oh, yes!—but still——"

"Oh, you make me tired with your excuses for that coyote;—forget it! But, if your dad was so good to you when you were a kiddie, for the life of me I'm darned if I can understand where his paternal instinct has got to. If I had a laddie,—God save me for indulging in such a fantasy!—but, if I did have, I'd go after him if he were in hell itself. Think o' it, Phil! Your own flesh and blood, of the woman you have loved well enough to make your wife—the combination transfused—to grow, and develop, and work out to prove before God and his fellow-man the wisdom or folly of the choice the father and mother of him made when they took each other for better or worse."

"Yes,—when you put it that way, Jim, it makes a man think hard of the tremendous seriousness of the step."

Jim grinned again.

"You needn't worry, anyway. If you keep on as you are doing, you'll win the best and bonniest lassie in this Valley."

Phil quickly changed the subject, but a tell-tale ruddiness added to the confirmations that Jim had been accumulating along that particular line.

"Talking about my dad, Jim!" reverted Phil, "it is strange the longings I have at times to see him and to patch up the old breach, even if I might never be permitted to see him again after that. But,—oh, well!—what's the use? I won't trouble inquiring about him now—it is too late. And I guess he isn't worrying about me. All the same, I'd give my right hand to see my little sister, Margery. When I ran away, she was a bright, mischievous, fair-haired, little girl, just starting school. She and I were the great chums. She will be growing quite a young lady now.

"I fight the feeling, Jim,—but some day I fear the pulling from her end will be too strong for me and I'll go back and hunt them up—if only to stand in the shadows and watch her pass."

Jim looked at his watch and got up to fulfil a business engagement.

"Well, old man!—I never had a little sister. If I had had, I fancy I wouldn't be here to-day. So that's how it goes. But we have a good year ahead of us to buy and sell and loan for a fare-you-well; to make a stake as big as all the others have made together in the last three or four years. And we are going to do it, too. I feel it in the air.

"I don't know what will happen after that—some of the big fellows, Royce Pederstone, Brenchfield and Arbuthnot are overloaded now, but they keep on mortgaging and buying more. The newer ranchers here have planted their orchards and are sitting still for the 'seven lean years' till their orchards begin to bear, instead of getting busy with truck stuff, poultry and pigs to keep them going. Some of them are feeling the pinch already, for it costs like the devil to live here—especially the way these fellows insist on living. They also are mortgaging heavily. Man, if any kind of a slump came in realty, or a shortage of money, and the banks shut down and the money-lenders started to draw in their capital, there would be a veritable stampede.

"I give it a year, boy; then, if we've got the money, that's the time to put it in, for, a few years more and all these baby orchards about the Valley will be paying for themselves over and over again.

"Half of the ranchers in the meantime are going to get cold feet, because they won't be able to get their stuff to the paying markets, while, if they only organised—as they undoubtedly will do later—they could get their fruit anywhere and at a big price, too.

"But—that's where we can get in."

And as Jim went off, Phil sat for a while thinking—a dreamer and a visionary—until he was jolted out of his reverie by the pressing inquiries of his recently augmented staff.

One day the inevitable, according to Jim's notion of things, happened. A letter arrived, bearing the heading of Langford & Macdonald, Solicitors and Attorneys, Princes Street, Edinburgh, making inquiry as to the possibility of placing trust funds on gild-edged first mortgage security, requesting bank references and inviting correspondence from the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation.

The letter was straight business. There were no paternal greetings; not a word to suggest that either Langford had ever known of the other's existence.

Jim, with his usual long-headedness, insisted on Phil replying to it and signing it on behalf of the firm.

Phil demurred.

"Why, man alive!—give me credit for knowing my own father. Do you suppose he doesn't know all about us already?—more than we know ourselves. Just go ahead and answer that. Doing it that way will humour him.

"It is by far the biggest thing we have landed yet. Unlimited capital to lend on good security is a grand foundation for a Financial Corporation. But we have to see that everything is absolutely right—absolutely straight—absolutely secure. One mistake with Langford & Macdonald and that's the end of it."

And the banks knew of the stabilising of the Langford-Ralston Company almost before the L. R. Company realised it themselves, and they vied with one another for the privilege of handling their bank account, putting inquiring clients in touch with them direct as a sop for future business. What the banks did became the fashion in town. And in such days as the West was then passing through, that meant much indeed, for everyone was thinking, talking, handling and dreaming Real Estate. Even Percival DeRue Hannington forgot his former hurt and gave them his business. All were making money—nobody lost. They bought at a price and sold for more, and the difference in value was debited and redebited to old Mother Earth. Prosperity vaunted itself in rolling wheels, cigar smoke, late orgies and rare wines; costly winter trips to the South; dress, diamonds, foolishness and mining and oil stocks.

Yet through that wildest year of all, Phil and Jim stood firm to the principles of their business—they bought and sold for their clients, they loaned on first-class security—they paid as they went and they banked their commissions. Not once, but a hundred times, could they have doubled their savings by speculation with a quick turn-over, but they held fast; and their savings increased faster than their wildest dreams had ever pictured.

They did more advertising than all the others combined. Their staff of salesmen and stenographers increased in numbers by rapid jumps. They had correspondents in every city of importance in the Dominion and the United States. They had the best stand in town. Anyone coming in by train could not fail to see it and could not fail to be impressed by its importance and apparent prosperity, even when they had not been previously apprised of it.

When early June arrived with its continuous sunshine, when the older ranches revelled in miles of pink and white apple blossom, when the small, wild sunflowers spread themselves like a sea of gold over the hills and valleys bursting in fairy splendour even through the hard roads and the rock fissures; when the air was redolent with the hypnotising, cloying sweetness of Nature's perfume from a hundred million blossoms and charged with the melody of her gaily bedecked feathered choristers,—Eileen Pederstone came back to her beloved "Valley of Tempestuous Waters."

In the six short months she had been away, she had written only occasionally to Phil and then it had been superficially, for she was not one given to expressing her feelings in pen and ink.

And Phil, in the rush of the new enterprise, had been something of a desultory correspondent. He had refrained from mentioning business in any of his letters to her—despite her many questions to him regarding his endeavours and his progress—intending, thereby, to spring the greater surprise when she should return. But he might have saved himself such thoughts, for Eileen was fully posted on every move he and Jim had made.

She came in on them one day with the brightness and impetuosity of the June sun bursting through the early morning clouds over Blue Nose Mountain, causing everything but the sun she emulated to stand still for half an hour and breathe in the added sweetness in the atmosphere.

All the hunger in Phil's being welled up at the very sight of her; smart, neat, healthy, radiant, vivacious, and pretty as the bursting red roses on her bosom.

He caught her two hands in his and looked down at her; and as she gave a little pleasure-laugh far down in her throat, he almost drew her up to his breast, when a cough from Jim startled him back to the cold truth that he was in the open office of the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation, among half a dozen salesmen and as many stenographers.

Jim and Phil escorted Eileen into their private office, and there they fired back their answers to her queries until she gasped in sheer bewilderment at the tremendous success of their daring enterprise.

"And, oh, boys!—you're making good. I knew you would. Glad!—I'm so glad, because you are just like two big brothers of mine."

"Now, Eileen," put in Jim, "kindly dispense with the 'brother' stuff. You can't tell me that you are going to be a mere sister to both of us."

She blushed.

"Does he know?" she queried at Phil.

"He thinks he does," said Phil. "I haven't told him a thing."

"Oh, haven't you?" remarked Jim.

"Shall we tell him, Phil?"

"Doesn't look as if he required any telling,—but go on, fire away!"

"Well!" she commenced, nodding her head and putting out her lips, "some day—Phil and I—we two—both of us——"

"Yes! Yes! Go on!" hurried Jim in mock excitement.

She sighed and sat back.

"That's all! Just that, Jim!"

"Did you get it?" asked Phil, laughing.

Jim nodded quietly for a moment, then he bent over, with an expression of almost motherly softness in his big, rugged face. He got Eileen's hand in his left hand and Phil's in his right.

"The best of God's good luck!" he said quietly.

He looked at his watch. "I have an appointment at three o'clock.

"Why don't you take the lady for a spin, Phil?"

"Would you like to come, Eileen?" asked Phil.

"Would I? Oh, boy!"

Jim went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder as an older brother would do. He tilted up her chin, bent down and kissed her on the cheek.

"You don't mind, old Phil!" he said.

He left her and jumped over to Phil with a laugh and a shout.

"And you beat him to it, laddie:—money, duplicity, hum-bug and all! You beat him! Man,—you're great!"

And he was into the outer office, out on the street and away in his car before they could properly grasp his meaning.

Phil and Eileen followed out shortly afterwards, out into the sunshine, and soon they were driving up the steep hill from the town, leading to the Kelowna highway. It was some time before either spoke.

"I wonder what Jim meant by the remark he made when he left us, Eileen?"

"Don't wonder about anything just now, boy,—excepting me. Don't let us think about a thing that isn't pleasant and in keeping with the glorious day. We can do our 'trouble talks' on the way back."

She snuggled up close to her big companion who, as they reached the top of the hill, opened up and sent the car speeding along. At one of the sharp turns, he slowed up and stopped to admire the ever-changing delight of the scenery.

"Did you ever see anything so beautiful?" exclaimed Eileen, "and yet some folks want to go away from here when they have a holiday."

They were on the thin line of roadway which was cut half-way on the face of the hillside. All the ranges were a spread of golden sunflowers; away below, sheer three hundred feet down, the blue waters of the Kalamalka Lake reflected the blue, cloudless sky, while here and there it seemed to throw back the sun's rays in a golden spray.

On the other side of the water, as far as the eye could scan—until it rested again on the background of hills of gold, purple and green—the long, regular lines of old orchard-land shone a riot of pink and white. The air was laden with the perfume of bursting flowers.

Far up the Lake, alongside which the road ran in a brown, winding thread, were little wooded and grassy promontories sitting like islands upon the water and suggesting the last peaceful reservation of all the fairies, wood-elves and brownies who might be crowded out from the cities and the busy lands now over-run and exploited by the unpoetical humans.

A little, warm hand placed itself over Phil's as he held the steering wheel and it roused him from his reverie. He gazed at Eileen's upturned face. He put his arms about her, drew her closer to him and kissed her on the lips.

She laughed—that same little, happy laugh away down in her throat, then she clapped her hands with pleasure.

"My, but I'm glad!" she cried. "My Phil is a dreamer after all."

"Didn't you know that before, girlie?"

"No! I always hoped—and fancied sometimes—but I know now and I am ever so glad about it." Her face became solemn.

"Phil,—you won't ever let money, and business, and success steal your love to dream away from you?"

"I should say not! Did you think I would?"

"Oh,—so many men lose their love for the beautiful things, for poetry, music, pictures, pretty scenery——"

"And their sweethearts," put in Phil.

"Yes,—sometimes. But more often their wives. They do not lose their love exactly, but rather they forget to use it in their over-absorption in business, and it gradually slips away from them like a child's belief in fairies and in Santa Claus."

Phil started up the car again and they bowled merrily along to the village of Oyama, the half-way rest between Vernock and Kelowna, at the division of the two lakes.

"Take Jim now," said Phil, continuing the line of thought, "I'll bet he believes in sprites, and ghosts, and Santa Claus, right to-day. He is the kind that never grows away from his boyhood."

"And why should he? His boyhood was doubtless the happiest period of his life, and he is just staying with it like a wise man."

Eileen sighed.

"Phil,—I wish Jim could get a real, nice sweetheart. Did you ever hear of him having one?"

"Never!—at least not a real one. Did you?"

"No! He doesn't seem ever to get any further with the young ladies than mere acquaintance. Yet I know lots—and nice girls, too—who would be glad to have a man like Jim."

"I guess he is just waiting on ''till the right girl comes along,' as the poet says. I hope she will prove worthy of him. His kind are so apt to get fooled at the finish. What shall we do with him when we get married, Eileen?"

Eileen blushed. "It is a hard problem, but we've just got to mother, and sister, and brother him until he gets settled."

"If he ever does!"

"If he doesn't, I am going to keep on mothering him—that's all. So it is up to you, Phil, to find him a real, nice girl."

"No, thanks! It has been a hard job finding one for myself."

"And you are quite satisfied?" she queried again, solemnly.

"Quite!"

"And you'll never grow tired of me?"

"Never! Why, dearie,—how could I?"

"Oh, I don't know! Men do, sometimes. I guess I am just foolish. But, if I don't measure up, you will promise to be lenient with me?"

"You'll always measure up with me, Eileen. It is my measuring up with you that I am afraid of."

"And if I don't just grasp things quickly;—if I can't climb the mountains of thought and progress as fast as you can,—you won't grow impatient?"

"No!"

"You'll wait for me, and help me over the boulders, and even if I wish to sit down and rest for a while, you'll sit down with me and rest also until I am ready to climb on? You won't run ahead—as so many husbands do—so far ahead that I shall not be able to catch up?"

"No, dearie, no! Your speed is just going to be my speed unless it is too much for me, and we'll both get up to the top of the hill together."

"Kiss me then, Phil,—and let us turn for home. I am happy at last,—just ever so happy."

"Eileen, I think I'd better come along and make my peace, et cetera, et cetera, with your dad," said Phil, as they neared Vernock again. "Does he know anything of our plans?"

"No, Phil! I have told him of our good friendship, but I have been waiting and waiting in the hope that a chance would come for us to talk to him when he was not absorbed, body, soul and spirit, in business and politics. But the time seems to get farther and farther off than ever. I guess you had better come along now.

"And don't I wish you could advise him to give up his silly notions for acquiring land. He might listen to you, Phil. You might be able to induce him to sell part of what he has in order to bolster up what remains. If a slump of any kind comes, he will be without a prop to lean on. No man has any right to involve himself in this way, no matter how good the ultimate prospects may look."

"I can't understand it, Eileen, for it appears to be a kind of contagious disease, attacking the ablest and otherwise most business-like men in the Province. Your father is by no means alone."

"I know; Mr. Brenchfield, Mr. Arbuthnot, the Victoria and the Vancouver political gang,—they are all more or less in it the same way. I can't think what has come over them. The danger signals ahead stand out so brightly to me, although I may be wrong. I hope,—oh, I hope I am!

"They have got to think so much prosperity and progress that they have hypnotised themselves into believing that it is permanent. And they all imagine, whatever comes, that they will be able to see before the man in the street does and so be able to get out from under, leaving someone else with the load of unrealisable property."

"I am afraid, though, your dad would hardly listen to me. He would put any advice I might give him down to gratuitous impertinence and cubbish presumption."

Eileen sighed again.

"Don't you worry though, dearie! If the opportunity turns up I will speak my mind."

As they ran in at the gateway and up through the avenue of trees, they found John Royce Pederstone seated in a garden chair on the front lawn.

The old man's greeting to his daughter and to Phil was cordiality itself, for John Royce Pederstone was always a cheerful man, believing good of all whom he met, shutting his ears to all slander and quick to recognise enterprise and ability.

"Well, young man!—you've been making rapid progress since I saw you last," he remarked, by way of greeting.

"More ways than one," put in Eileen a little shyly.

Phil lost no time in stating his case in plain words to the politician. And his very plain words were what struck the responsive chords, for John Royce Pederstone was of all things a plain man. And the great pity of it all was that he had not stayed with plain blacksmithing or plain ranching.

So many men find out after the act that they have left the substance to chase the shadow.

John Royce Pederstone, however, had not yet come to the point of recognising this very great truth.

"What does my Eileen say to all this?" he asked, by way of answer.

"Eileen says, 'Ugh-huh!' daddy," she put in roguishly.

Royce Pederstone held out his hand and gripped Phil's, with a slightly tired smile.

"If my Eileen says, 'Ugh-huh!' my son, then 'Ugh-huh!' it is."

Eileen threw her arms round her father's neck and hugged him.

"I don't know anything much about you, Ralston, but your record is clean since you came here—despite some attempts to blacken it. I like your face—and if you can make my motherless girl happy when I'm gone, you'll have an old man's blessing.

"If you don't, though" (his blue eyes flashed temporary fire), "God help you! There have been more than one who wanted my Eileen, but I have told all of them that the choice of a man must be Eileen's.

"By the way, Phil,—is it true what they say,—that the Langford-Ralston Company buy and sell for everybody but themselves?"

"Yes,—quite true!" answered Phil.

The old man laughed. "Doesn't seem much like being very fond of their own cooking, Eileen."

"One doesn't have to eat what he cooks, daddy,—and somebody's got to cook."

"That's an old song of yours, girlie. But, seriously, Phil, you and Jim Langford could double and re-double your money if you only put it into some of the land you buy for others. You would save commission too, which is quite an item."

"Well, sir!—it is a policy we settled on when we started in, and it is a policy that has gained for us very many clients and has been the means of getting us considerable Old Country capital for investment in first mortgages. If we had not been on this conservative basis, we should never have received the agency for Langford & Macdonald's wealthy clientele."

"You would never have needed it, man."

"But we are doing pretty well, and at the finish we shall be on top. That is more than every land speculator will be able to say when the finish comes."

"If we ever see it! But meantime, you could make your stake and be out of it. That's what I mean to do myself."

"Don't you think it is getting near to the time when one should start in unloading; at least when he should stop acquiring more? This has been a fairly long boom."

"Boom? Did you say boom? Man, alive!—this isn't a boom, it is the natural growth to real values. I saw this coming fifteen years ago. And it is good for a long time yet. Why!—this is an investment in industry. This is a Fruit Valley;—the best fruit growing country in British Columbia. This isn't a mushroom townsite proposition. You can't compare this with ordinary realty wild-catting."