"Well, ever since Bill Conway was big enough to throw a leg over a horse and hold a gun to his shoulder, he's been shooting deer and quail and coursing coyotes on this ranch. Whenever he felt the down-hill drag, he invited himself up to visit us. h.e.l.lo! Why, I believe the old horse-thief is down there now; at least that's his automobile. I'd know that ruin anywhere. He bought it in 1906, and swears he's going to wear it out if it takes a lifetime. Let's go down and see what they're up to there. Come on, folks!" And, without waiting to see whether or not he was followed, he urged the pinto over the crest and rode down the hillside at top speed, whooping like a wild Indian to attract the attention of Bill Conway. In a shower of weeds and gravel the pinto slid on his hind quarters down over the cut-bank where the grading operations had bitten into the hillside, and landed with a grunt among the teams and sc.r.a.pers.

"Bill Conway! Front and center!" yelled the master of Palomar.

"Here! What's the row?" a man shouted, and, from a temporary shack office a hundred yards away, a man stepped out.

"What do you mean by cutting into my dam-site without my permission?"

Farrel yelled and drove straight at the contractor. "Hey, there, old settler! Mike Farrel, alive and kicking!" He left the saddle while the pinto was still at a gallop, landed on his feet in front of Bill Conway and took that astounded old disciple of dump-wagon and sc.r.a.per in a bearlike embrace.

"Miguel! You young scoundrel!" Conway yelled, and forthwith he beat Farrel between the shoulder-blades with a h.o.r.n.y old fist and cursed him lovingly.

"Cut out the profanity, Mr. Conway," Don Mike warned him. "Some ladies are about due on the job."

"When'd you light in the Palomar, boy? Gimme your hand. What the--say, ain't it a pity the old man couldn't have lasted until you got back? Ain't it, now, son?"

"A very great pity, Mr. Conway. I got home last night."

"Boy, I'm glad to see you. Say, you ran into surprises, didn't you?"

he added, lowering his voice confidentially.

"Rather. But, then, so did the other fellow. In fact, sir, a very pleasant time was had by all. By the way, I hope you're not deluding yourself with the belief that I'm going to pay you for building this dam."

"By Judas priest," the alert old contractor roared, "you certainly do file a bill of complications! I'll have to see Parker about this right away--why, here he is now."

The Parkers had followed more decorously than had Farrel; nevertheless, they had arrived in more or less of a hurry. John Parker rode directly to Conway and Farrel.

"Well, Mr. Conway," he shouted pleasantly, "the lost sheep is found again."

"Whereat there is more rejoicing in San Marcos County than there will be over the return of some other sheep--and a few goats--I know of.

How do you do, Mr. Parker?" Conway extended his hand, and, as Kay and her mother rode up, Farrel begged their permission to present him to them. Followed the usual commonplaces of introduction, which Farrel presently interrupted.

"Well, you confounded old ditch-digger! How about you?"

"Still making little rocks out of big ones, son. Say, Mr. Parker, how do we stack up on this contract, now that Little Boy Blue is back on the Palomar, blowing his horn?"

Parker strove gallantly to work up a cheerful grin.

"Oh, he's put a handful of emery dust in my bearings, confound him, Mr.

Conway! It begins to look as if I had leaped before looking."

"Very reprehensible habit, Mr. Parker. Well--I'm getting so old and worthless nowadays that I make it a point to look before I leap. Mike, my son, do you happen to be underwriting this contract?"

Don Mike looked serious. He pursed his lips, arched his brows, drew some bills and small coins from his pocket, and carefully counted them.

"The liquid a.s.sets of the present owner of that dirt you're making so free with, Mr. Conway, total exactly sixty-seven dollars and nine cents. And I never thought the day would come when a pair of old-time Californians like us would stoop to counting copper pennies. Before I joined the army, I used to give them away to the cholo children, and when there were no youngsters handy to give the pennies to, I used to throw them away."

"Yes," Bill Conway murmured sadly. "And I remember the roar that went up from the old-timers five years ago when the Palace Hotel in San Francisco reduced the price of three fingers of straight whisky from twenty-five cents to fifteen. Boy, they're crowding us out."

"Who's been doing most of the crowding in San Marcos County while I've been away, Mr. Conway?" Farrel queried innocently.

"j.a.ps, my son. Say, they're comin' in here by the ship-load."

"You don't tell me! Why, two years ago there wasn't a j.a.p in San Marcos County with the exception of a couple of shoemakers and a window-washing outfit in El Toro."

"Well, those hombres aren't mending shoes or washing windows any more, Miguel. They saved their money and now they're farming--garden-truck mostly. There must be a thousand j.a.panese in the county now--all farmers or farm-laborers. They're leasing and buying every acre of fertile land they can get hold of."

"Have they acquired much acreage?"

"Saw a piece in the El Toro Sentinel last week to the effect that nine thousand and twenty acres have been alienated to the j.a.ps up to the first of the year. Nearly all the white men have left La Questa valley since the j.a.ps discovered they could raise wonderful winter celery there."

"But where do these j.a.panese farmers come from, Mr. Conway?" Parker inquired. "They do not come from j.a.pan because, under the gentlemen's agreement, j.a.pan restricts emigration of her coolie cla.s.ses."

"Well, now," Bill Conway began judicially. "I'll give j.a.pan the benefit of any doubts I have as to the sincerity with which she enforces this gentlemen's agreement. The fact remains, however, that she does not restrict emigration to Mexico, and, unfortunately, we have an international boundary a couple of thousand miles long and stretching through a spa.r.s.ely settled, brushy country. To guard our southern boundary in such an efficient manner that no j.a.p could possibly secure illegal entry to the United States via the line, we would have to have sentries scattered at hundred-yard intervals and closer than that on dark nights. The entire standing army of the United States would be required for the job. In addition to the handicap of this unprotected boundary, we have a fifteen-hundred-mile coast-line absolutely unguarded. j.a.panese fishermen bring their nationals up from the Mexican coast in their trawlers and set them ash.o.r.e on the southern California coast. At certain times of the year, any landlubber can land through the surf at low tide; in fact, ownerless skiffs are picked up on the south-coast beaches right regularly."

"Well, you can't blame the poor devils for wanting to come to this wonderful country, Mr. Conway. It holds for them opportunities far greater than in their own land."

"True, Mr. Parker. But their gain is our loss, and, as a matter of common sense, I fail to see why we should accord equal opportunity to an unwelcome visitor who enters our country secretly and illegally. I grant you it would prove too expensive and annoying to make a firm effort to stop this illegal immigration by preventive measures along our international boundary and coast-line, but if we destroy the j.a.p's opportunity for profit at our expense, we will eliminate the main incentive for his secret and illegal entry, which entry is always very expensive. I believe seven hundred and fifty dollars is the market-price for smuggling j.a.ps and Chinamen into the United States of America."

"But we should take steps to discover these immigrants after they succeed in making entry--"

"Rats!" the bluff old contractor interrupted. "How are we going to do that under present conditions? The cry of the country is for economy in governmental affairs, so Congress prunes the already woefully inadequate appropriation for the Department of Labor and keeps our force of immigration inspectors down to the absolute minimum. These inspectors are always on the job; the few we have are splendid, loyal servants of the government, and they prove it by catching j.a.ps, Chinamen, and Hindus every day in the week. But for every illegal entrant they apprehend, ten escape and are never rounded up. Confound them; they all look alike, anyhow! How are you going to distinguish one j.a.p from another?

"Furthermore, Mr. Parker, you must bear this fact in mind: The country at large is not interested in the problem of Oriental immigration. It hasn't thought about it; it doesn't know anything about it except what the j.a.ps have told it, and a j.a.p is the greatest natural-born liar and purveyor of half-truths and sugar-coated misinformation this world has known."

"Easy, old timer!" Don Mike soothed, laying his hand on Conway's shoulder. "Don't let your angry pa.s.sions rise."

Conway grinned.

"I always fly into a rage when I get talking about j.a.ps," he explained deprecatingly to the ladies. "And it's such a helpless, hopeless rage.

There's no outlet for it. You see," he began all over again, "the dratted j.a.p propagandist is so smart--he's so cunning that he has capitalized the fact that California was the first state to protest against the j.a.panese invasion. He has made the entire country believe that this is a dirty little local squabble of no consequence to our country at large. He keeps the attention of forty-seven states on California while he quietly proceeds to colonize Oregon, Washington, and parts of Utah. Lately he has pa.s.sed blithely over the hot, lava-strewn, and fairly non-irrigated state of Arizona to the more fertile agricultural lands of Texas. And yet a couple of hundred prize b.o.o.bs in Congress talk sagely about an amicable settlement of the j.a.p problem in California! When they want information, they consult the j.a.panese amba.s.sador!"

"But why," Kay ventured to ask, "do the j.a.panese not acquire agricultural lands in the Middle West? There are no restrictions in those states in the matter of outright purchases of land, and surely the soil is fertile enough to suit the most exacting j.a.p."

"Ah, young lady," Bill Conway boomed. "I'm glad you asked me that question. The j.a.p is a product of the temperate zone; he does not take kindly to extremes of heat and cold. Unlike the white man he cannot stand such extremes and function with efficiency. That's why the extreme northern part of j.a.pan, which is very cold in winter, is so spa.r.s.ely populated, although excellent agricultural land. Why freeze to death up there when, by merely following the j.a.pan Current as it laves the west coast of North America from British Columbia down, one can, in a pinch, dispense with an overcoat in January?"

"Enough of this anti-j.a.panese propaganda of yours, Senor Conway," Don Mike interrupted. "Our friends here haven't listened to anything else since I got home last night. Mr. Parker, being quite ignorant of the real issue, has, of course, fallen under the popular delusion; and I've been trying my best to lead him to the mourner's bench, to convince him that when he acquires the Rancho Palomar--which, by the way, will not be for at least a year, now that I've turned up to nullify his judgment of foreclosure--that it will be a far more patriotic action on his part, even if less profitable, to colonize the San Gregorio with white men instead of j.a.ps. In fact, Mr. Parker, I wouldn't be surprised if you should succeed in putting through a very profitable deal with the state of California to colonize the valley with ex-soldiers."

Old Bill Conway turned upon John Parker a smoldering gaze.

"So I'm building a dam to irrigate a lot of j.a.p truck-gardens, am I?"

he rumbled.

The sly, ingenious manner in which Miguel Farrel had so innocently contrived to strew his already rough path with greater obstacles, infuriated Parker, and for an instant he lost control of himself.

"What do you care what it's for, Conway, provided you make your profit out of the contract?" he demanded brusquely.

"Ladies," the contractor replied, turning to Mrs. Parker and Kay, "I trust you will pardon me for discussing business in your presence just for a minute. Miguel, am I to understand that this ranch is still Farrel property?"

"You bet! And for a year to come."