"It was like this. I was sitting on the veranda, enjoying a smoke and admiring my property and the view, when a collector Johnnie came up the road and asked me where Douthem was. I told him Douthem was gone, and I was now the proprietor.

"'Didn't know they had changed tenants,' said he. 'I've called for the rent.'

"Do you know, Phil, I fawncied the silly owl had gone balmy, but he insisted that he had to collect thirty dollars a month rent.

"Of course, I showed the fellow my receipt for the place, proving I was the owner of it. But he just looked at it and said:--

"'Say!--who are you making a kid of? This might be all right for a bunch of groceries, or electric light, or a ton of coal, but it isn't all right for a rawnch.'

"'Why!--what's the matter with it?' I asked. 'Doesn't it say, Received from Percival DeRue Hannington the sum of five thousand dollars for one ranch of twenty acres, with house and barns, situated ten miles from the city of Vernock and called Douthem's Ranch?'

"'Sure it does,' said the chap. And he was devilish rude about it too."

By this time, Phil had all he could do to keep from shouting with merriment. He did not dare to look at DeRue Hannington, so he kept religiously to his food.

"Well,--he told me the rawnch belonged to some other people; that Douthem only rented it, and that one had to have a deed and register it when one bought property. The blooming upshot was I had to pay the collecting fellow his thirty dollars and get out. So I landed back here to-day.

"I daresay, Phil, a man has to pay for his experience, but you know it looks as if a fellow had to do so much paying that when he does finish up by really owning something, he will have paid such a beastly lot for it that he'll never be able to make it up again."

Phil showed impatience.

"Good heavens, man!--don't you know that land is not exchanged without an Agreement for Sale, or a Deed?"

"How should I know?" answered the innocent. "I never bought land before. If I pay the price for an article, it should be mine, shouldn't it?"

"If the man you pay is honest," replied Phil, "but he isn't always honest, hence Agreements and Deeds.

"Next time you buy a ranch, Mr. Hannington, take my advice and hire a lawyer to see the deal through for you."

"No more bally rawnches for me, Phil. And it is possibly just as well I lost this one, because I have learned that one has to grub and mess among caterpillars and all those dirty little insects and worms they call bugs, which keep getting on the fruit trees, eating up the bally stuff you are trying to grow. I simply cawn't stand the slimy, squashy little reptiles, you know!"

"I am afraid you are destined to meet them in other places besides ranches," remarked Phil.

"I have found them on my dinner table before now!"

"How disgusting!" exclaimed the horrified Englishman.

"What are you going to tackle next? Don't you think you had better get a job for a while, working for wages, until you get acclimatised; and so conserve your money until you have had the necessary experience?"

"Not so long as my old dad is willing to foot the bills! The least he can do is to keep me going here. It is cheaper for him than letting me gad about between London, Paris and the Riviera. Besides, my mother would die of shame if she fawncied her boy Percy was working for wages like a common labouring bounder."

This was a species of maternal niceness Phil had never run up against, consequently he did not feel sympathetic toward it.

"They tell me oil-wells are a jolly good thing to get into. That fellow Rockefeller made a lot out of them, didn't he? You don't know of any likely places around here, Phil?"

"No! I don't think this is much of an oil country, Mr. Hannington.

What we hear about oil here is more or less bunk. Better leave it alone!"

"You know,--I did meet a fellow on the train coming across. He had a jolly good thing. He was a water-diviner;--could tell you where the water was for a well just by walking over the land with a twig in his hand and doing a kind of prayer. Seemed to listen for the water, the same way as a robin does on the lawn when after worms."

Phil laughed. "Yes!--I have met a few of that water-divining species, and some of them were pretty good at it, too. They seemed to strike it right fairly often."

"Aw, yes, Phil!" continued DeRue Hannington, wiping his mouth with his napkin and leaning back in his chair, "but this fellow did have a good scheme. He said, you know, if a man could divine water, there was nothing to prevent him from divining oil too. So he was going to the oil-well district in California to test himself out with his idea, then he was coming back to Canada to start up oil-wells all over the bally country."

"He's going to let me in on it too. That's what I call one of my _futures_. Just a speculation, old chap! I gave him two hundred and fifty dollars on his note. He required it to pay his way to the Oil Wells. Don't you think it might be a real good thing, Phil?"

"It might!--but I don't think I would tell many people about it," said Phil quietly.

"Why?--Oh, yes, I see! I oughtn't to give the chap away before he elaborates his plans. Might spoil them. Silly I didn't think of that!"

"Just so, Mr. Hannington!"

"Meantime, though,--I intend buying a house here and settling down. I do like this Valley. It is so deuced picturesque, you know, and rural.

When I'm properly established, I can go in for mining. On a hilly country like this, there ought to be good mining properties; gold, silver, etcetera. Don't you think so, Phil?"

"There might be, if one could only hit them. I've never had enough time or money myself to take the matter up as a hobby."

DeRue Hannington rose slowly from the table.

"Well, Phil, old top!--I've enjoyed our talk. I hope to see you again soon. Come and have a c.o.c.ktail before I go!"

Phil got up, and they went into the bar together, where a number of Vernock's seasoned bar-loungers were following their usual bent.

DeRue Hannington kept harping on his various money-making schemes, in his high drawling voice, which could be heard all over the saloon.

Suddenly his eye fell on one with whom he seemed to be casually acquainted; a foppishly dressed, smooth-tongued rascal who dealt in horses, cards, bunco real-estate, insurance and anything else that brought a commission without much work. He was called Rattlesnake Jim by those who knew him, but Mr. Dalton by those who didn't.

"Excuse me, Phil, but I would like to have a word with Mr. Dalton."

Phil knew at once that Hannington was one of those who didn't know Rattlesnake Jim.

The Englishman called Dalton over.

"Say, old chap,--have a drink!"

Dalton had one.

"What about that horse, Dalton? Have you sold her yet?"

"No siree! I'll sell her when I get my price. I ain't in no hurry."

"Well, you know I offered you two hundred and fifty for her."

"And she's yours for five hundred bucks."

Phil interfered.

"Oh, come off the gra.s.s! What do you take my friend for?"

"Do you know the horse we're talking about?" asked Dalton.