"Burglars,--no! Darned black cats! The door won't stay closed without being bolted, and these ugly black devils of Sing's have taken such a fancy to the place and the heat, that I have been busy all day slinging them outside."

"That accounts for the negro shuffle you did as I came in," laughed Phil.

"Exactly! I've got the habit now."

"But what on earth does the Chinaman do with so many black cats?"

"Just another tom-fool notion these loonies have. They're plumb scared o' the dark. The dark and the devil work a sort of co-operative business against the c.h.i.n.k. That is why Sing keeps his light burning all night."

"But where do the cats come in?" asked Phil.

"You wouldn't ask that if you had had to punt them out all day, to-day, as I did. But, punning aside:--Sing and his kind think that when there's no light, safety lies in having black cats around.

Somehow, his Satanic Majesty--poor devil--is scared for black cats."

The conversation changed as Phil surveyed the interior of the house.

He found a great change had come over their abode. For one thing, it was decidedly cosier. The damp, bug-like feel had gone from the place.

An odour of varnish pervaded. The holes in the ceiling and floors had been boarded over, the windows were clean and had curtains on, the stove was polished, and a general air of home comfort was present.

Jim had made an auspicious start.

And every day thereafter showed an added improvement, for it was little that Langford was able to do out-of-doors in that in-between season just prior to the freezing up--and all his energies were evidently being divided between the fixing up of the house and his usual contributions to Aunt Christina's love column and Captain Mayne Plunkett's monthly "thriller."

They had hardly been three weeks on the ranch, when the winter set in for good and shackled the earth in snow and ice.

The morning and evening rides in and out to the smithy were a perfect delight to Phil and they set his blood effervescing in his veins as it had never done before.

Many an evening when it was getting late and the great whiteness around was deathly still, he and Jim would stand on the front veranda and smoke a pipe together, as they silently drank in the beauty of the scene about them.

Jim was by nature a dreamer, and it only required an occasion such as that to set him brooding.

Phil, with the call of the open born in him, preferred the out-of-doors and nature's silences to all else that the world contained.

They would stand there together, looking over the dark rows of young trees, erect and soldier-like in the orchard, against the background of white,--away down to the Kalamalka Lake, smooth and frozen over, then beyond to the low hills that undulated interminably. Quietly, they would admire the sky above them as it seemed fairly strung over with myriads of fairy lamps, twinkling and changing colour in real fairy delight. They would watch those fairy globes here and there shatter into fragments--as if with the cold--and trail earthward in a shimmering streak of silver-dust. They would wait till the moon sailed up over the hills in all her enchantment, then slowly on the heels of their boots, they would beat out the dying embers from the bowls of their pipes, take a glance down the end of the orchard to Ah Sing's shack--where a dim light, suggestive of nothing else but Orientalism, seemed ever to be burning--nod to each other and smile, then turn in without a word and go to bed.

It was in these silences that Phil got to know Jim for the true gentleman he was. It was away out there in that evening stillness that Jim, lonely and misunderstood for the most part, grasped for the first time in his life the true meaning of comradeship, and it aroused in him a fierce love for Phil that could be likened only to the mother-love of a cougar for her young.

That there was some shadow in Phil's life which Phil had never spoken of to him, Jim knew only too well, but he cared little for his friend's past. Only the present counted with men like Jim Langford.

Besides, it was little after all that Phil knew of Jim. But what he did know was all to the good.

And, were they not in the West where heredity and social caste is scoffed at, where what a man has sprung from, what he has been or done amiss, matters not at all; where only whether or not he now stands four-square with his fellows counts in the reckoning?

Yet, many times, Phil had made up his mind to confide in Jim and tell him of all his past dealings with Brenchfield; what he had suffered in his youthful folly for that creature who had only sought to do him irreparable injury in return. But, somehow, he had kept thrusting it into the background till a more favourable opportunity should present itself.

The inevitable did come, however, swift and sudden, and all unexpectedly for both of them.

CHAPTER XX

A Breach and a Confession

It was but two days from Christmas. Phil and Sol Hanson had been striving hard to cope with an acc.u.mulation of work so that they might be clear of it during the holiday season. Sol, in fact, had been slaving at nights as well as during the day, until even he was bordering on a physical exhaustion.

Jim Dalton, that evil genius, came into the smithy during a temporary absence of Phil's, proffered Sol a drink from the inevitable bottle which he always seemed to have hidden somewhere about his person, and Sol was too weak to refuse.

By the time Phil got back Sol had disappeared.

For the first time since her marriage, Betty's love and influence had failed to anchor her big, weak husband.

From past experience, Phil knew that it was useless going after the big fellow, who required only a few hours to end his carousal. He failed to return to the smithy that evening, so Phil locked up and rode home. He did not call in at Sol's home, for he hoped that the Swede would find his way there within a few hours more.

Next morning, Phil had to open up again.

Betty called in, flooded in tears. Sol had not been home. Phil counselled her to go back and wait in her little cottage for the return of her husband, for he did not wish her to be a witness of his usual reaction. She departed, but whether or not she took Phil's advice, he did not know.

About eleven o'clock, Sol staggered in, helpless, but good-natured as usual. The heat of the smithy soon did its work and the big fellow curled himself up in a corner, among some empty sacks, and dropped off to sleep.

It was the awakening that Phil dreaded, but risky as he knew it would be, he determined to give Sol a chance and leave him to wake up, without sending out to inform Royce Pederstone, who was home for a week to partic.i.p.ate in the Christmas festivities, and the Mayor,--whose combined duty it was to see that Sol was properly secured against doing anyone any bodily injury.

But Phil's good intentions were not allowed to fructify.

Brenchfield and Royce Pederstone rode into the yard together, as if they had been aware of every move of Sol's.

They ordered Phil to lock the front door and come out by the back way.

Phil pleaded Sol's cause for a little, but only got called a sentimental fool for his kindly feelings; and he had no recourse but to obey instructions, for Brenchfield and Royce Pederstone had almost unlimited power in regard to Sol's permanent freedom or confinement.

Brenchfield pitched some chunks of coal at Sol through the broken window. Sol woke with a start, cursed in a mixture of Swedish and English, then, with that terrible madness upon him--which Phil had witnessed only once before but would never forget,--he sprang for the back door, as Phil got round the gable-end of the smithy.

Sol wrestled for a few seconds with the back door and finally tore it completely from its hinges. He darted out into the yard, hurling the broken woodwork full at Brenchfield as the latter was swinging his lariat. Hanson followed his missile and, for a short s.p.a.ce, it looked as if the Mayor's last moment had arrived. But numbers counted again and, fortunately for the big Swede, he could not be in two places at once. Royce Pederstone's rope landed deftly over his head and brought him to earth gasping for breath, half strangled.

Brenchfield recovered. His rope whirled in the air and tightened over Sol's uptilted legs. The rest was easy. Shortly afterwards, Hanson, foaming at the mouth and shouting at the pitch of his voice, was trussed securely to the stanchions supporting one of the barns.

The Mayor and Royce Pederstone were still inside the barn, and Phil was standing in the yard, when poor, little, distraught Betty came anxiously round the building, still on her quest for her man. She heard Sol's voice, and her eyes grew wide and shone in fear and anger.

She darted toward the out-house. Phil tried to stop her, but it was useless. Inside she went, and when she surveyed the scene before her--the two strong, calculating men standing watching her husband whom she loved with all the strength of her robust little being, and he roped and hog-tied like some wild animal--her whole womanly nature welled up and overflowed.

"What have you done?" she cried fiercely, her voice weakening as she went on. "Solly, dearie,--my own Sol!"

And Sol cursed, and shrieked, and struggled, unheeding. She ran forward to him and placed her arms about his great neck where the veins were swollen almost to bursting point. She patted his huge, heaving, hairy chest. She wiped away the perspiration from his forehead and the white ooze from his lips. She laid her face gently against his, tapping his cheek with her fingers; crooning to him and kissing him as she would a baby.

Slowly the big fellow melted under her influence. His struggling gradually ceased. Betty kept on calling his name again and again. Her tears dropped on to his upturned, distorted face, and those tears did what knotted lariats and wooden beams had failed to do--they brought peace and sanity back to the eyes of big Sol Hanson.

His head cradled back in his Betty's arms and he panted, looked up at her, and, after a few minutes, smiled crookedly.

"Loosen them ropes!" Betty commanded of Brenchfield and Royce Pederstone.

"We daren't do it," answered the Mayor.