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“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.
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“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 bills311over 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 Province312tells 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.”
313
“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.
314
“And do you think you have really found her at last?” she asked.
“Do I think I have! Ah, Eileen!––youwould 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 reallyaresweethearts 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 can315see 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?” she316asked 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 advance317on 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 me318about 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, some319day. 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.
320CHAPTER XXIIFire 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 gang321and 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 border322towns 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.”
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“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.
324
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, but325he 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 completed326the 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 he327would 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,328examining 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 theAdvertiser, 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,329which 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. “Nothing330in 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 them331on 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,332for 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 piece333of 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––he334took 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,335then 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 hundred336dollars. 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 morning337and 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.