THE Summer was well on toward September. Billy’s first business that Monday morning in June when he made his final break with boyhood was to go to Mr. Smith’s Tum-wah Valley office for instructions. Here Mr. Smith came every morning to see how his big concerns were going in earth and rock, before he took them up in his town offices in the mystic symbolism of paper and figures, and business policy and confidence,—all that vast idealism which is so much more really the business of the world than are the products of the earth we live on.

From the open door of the artistic, vine-covered log building Billy could look up the steep hill to Tuk-wil-la (hazel-nuts), Mr. Smith’s summer home, set in the edge of the forest overlooking the little valley and the broad Lake Kal-lak-a-la-chuck.

Mr. Smith’s instructions were brief. “I told you it would be no picnic, Billy. This is your stunt: take your shovel and go to work with those Dagos on the grade. Learn all of ’em, the look of the face, walk, and whatever you can pick up of their talk. You’ll have to slouch along and be a Dago yourself. Mind, I don’t want any tattling,—just to know if they are plotting any mischief, that’s all. And don’t come near me unless you’re called. Treat me as you see them treat me. See?”

“I’ll try,” Billy answered. He went to the foreman for his tools, and set to work.

The hard work, the long hours, and Billy’s youth unaccustomed to labor left him at night little more than a log to roll into bed, sleep heavily, and go dully off in the morning to another day of digging. It was no wonder that the strange situation of being engaged to marry a young woman and already entered upon his life obligation of providing her home, and yet not knowing where she was, did not weigh upon him as much as he had thought it would.

But as he became hardened to his labor, her problem grew more obtrusive, and he longed to hear from her. He puzzled over the one, the only letter he had received, trying by many readings to understand it, but it revealed less and less meaning. That she had received a letter purporting to be from him instructing her to take the money from his club fund, go away, and not write for four weeks, and even then not reveal her location,—this he gathered. But how she came by such a letter which he had never written, how she could be deceived in the writing, how she got the desk drawer open,—these and many other questions would have become unendurable had he not been so engrossed with his new life.

Through the papers he had seen that her father had failed in business, that Mr. Alvin Short was the chief creditor, and that the home had been sold. It also transpired that Mr. Fisher’s business record was not one of which any son-in-law could be proud.

Billy could never recover from his disgust at the camp feeding where the dirty crew bolted better food than they were accustomed to in silent haste, and yet complained. It was some time before the well-bred boy could mentally detach himself and imagine he was in his own home; but he partly accomplished this feat at last, and ate with better appetite.

He found one among them, an American whose better upbringing had somewhat survived the tramping that had gone with the bottle. He was now “doing his yearly stunt” at work, he said, putting by enough to keep him out of “the poor house, or the chain gang, or whatever is the fashion for the gentry of the road in the town I strike next Winter.”

At one corner of the table they ate together, and sometimes talked a little, while the rest fed. But he was a philosopher, and Billy learned from him many things that set him thinking. “Billy, a man must fight and wait,” the man broke out suddenly one day, “before he can fight and win.” They were lying under a madroÑo tree, resting after the midday meal.

“You’ll have to switch on the light; I don’t get a glimmer,” Billy replied lazily.

“Anybody can fight, when he has to; even a dog does; but few of us have the grit to fight and hold on. You’re just beginning life, my boy; hold on.”

“I mean to do that.”

“Not to this! It is a dog’s life—to slave for another man, feed, sleep, wake, and do it all over again. I shall not do it much longer. But you—don’t form the quitting habit; hold, and all the time search for something better. Then your fight tells. See?”

“Yes. But what’s the matter with you? Why don’t you do a little holding yourself?”

The man’s eyes darkened and he frowned. “Too late.”

“It’s never too late.”

The man jerked himself up, and energy flashed in the weak face. “Not too late for you. Opportunity will pass your way many times. Catch her every time—hold her. By Heaven! With your face and body, your clean mind and good brain, you can do anything,—be a young god. Billy, a fellow at the open door of life doesn’t suspect his power, doesn’t use a fraction of it.” He reached his hand up to the summer sky. “Up there, down here,” he dug his foot into the fecund earth, “a thousand million possibilities wait for us to draw them forth with our minds.”

“And you?” Billy asked as the other looked off gloomily.

He wheeled almost angrily. “I? I have ruined my chances. It takes a clear eye, a steady hand, and a clean heart—mind you, a clean heart—to see and hear the secrets up there, down here.” Again he indicated earth and sky. “Under desert skies, miles from any human habitation, I’ve watched the stars march from purple twilight to golden morning, and heard things—whispers right out of heaven that would have been triumph for me if—if I had been fit.”

The foreman called, and they took up their shovels; and Billy’s was no longer heavy. But the man settled into his habitual silent, uneven effort.

Side by side they worked till mid-afternoon, when the Smiths’ machine appeared in the distance, May Nell alone in the tonneau. Billy’s first impulse was to straighten and greet her, but it flashed across him that the men must not know of his acquaintance with the daughter of the “boss.” “Stand in front of me, will you?” he asked of the man, and bent to re-tie his shoe.

“What did you do that for?” the tramp inquired as the machine flew by. “Do you know her? If you do, don’t let any devilish pride keep you from standing in her presence, a man, clean-faced or dirty.”

Billy grinned. “That’s all right; it’s part of my game.”

“I don’t get you.”

“It’s not because my face is dirty, or that she would care—she’s pure gold—but because it’s part of my job to do that.”

“All right; you know your cards; I don’t.”

Billy’s eyes twinkled. “This is the fight,” he waved his hand around toward the sweating, bending crew; “and not letting her see me is the holding on. See?”

The philosopher smiled. “You’ve caught on, all right.”

That night after work, and supper, and when Billy was trudging down the hill to get the car for home, he met the machine again. He tried to dodge it for workmen were passing, some lounging along the dusty road in groups.

May Nell saw him and ordered the driver to stop. “What do you mean, Billy Boy, by refusing to speak to me? I saw you this afternoon. Your shoe didn’t need—”

“Miss Smith, I—”

She stiffened as if struck.

“Miss Smith, circumstances alter cases,” Billy added quietly.

She was conscious of the slower gait of the dark passers, their smiles and frank curiosity.

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you any more, lady,” he finished with a comical imitation of the obsequious attitude of the foreign workman to his employers. “I tell-a the Big-a Boss.”

She laughed and ordered the machine on, but he saw the perplexity in her face as she sped away.

Billy turned to meet a leering, grinning Italian face. “Boss-a girl vera good look-a.” He gave Billy a nudge that permitted no resentment, since Billy had encouraged familiarity from the workmen. “You lika?”

Billy ached to “spoil his face.” Instead, “Be prepared” came instantly to his mind. He pointed to the palatial home on the hill, Tuk-wil-la. “Queens! Understand?”

The man nodded.

Billy stooped and gathered a handful of the dust at his feet and pointed to himself. “Me. Understand?”

Again the man nodded, but with a queer look, half credulity, half suspicion, and trudged on.

Billy had not grown up in the vineyard country of California without learning something of Italian peasantry, and he had not worked a week before he knew the men had a grievance. He got an Italian primer and a phrase book, and utilized his time on the car, which was nearly two hours each day, for studying, with the result of being shortly able to catch the drift of most that was said around him. So it was that as the Summer passed he learned and reported enough of their crude plottings to keep Mr. Smith on his guard.

When Billy arrived home a second letter from Erminie awaited him, and again behind his locked door he read it, wondering as he tore it open, that he did not feel the same excited hurry as over the first one. It was the unsatisfactory letter of one unaccustomed to correspondence and without the natural gift for it, yet it was surprising enough.

“Dearest Billy:

“Here is five dollars more. I’ll be able to pay up soon now, for Cousin Will got me a job. It has seemed a long time to wait, six weeks; but I’m doing just as you said in that letter of instruction, Billy.

“I want to tell you again, Billy, that I would rather have faced it out with you, because I wasn’t afraid to stand up to anybody about that night, with you so splendid to me. It’s all right. Whatever you say goes about that business.

“I can’t understand yet how it was you knew all about the circular, and had it all planned out—what I was to do—before you went on the scout. None of us knew about it, the dodger I mean, till Saturday night. And how was it, Billy, that you had me send the key to a place away over in North City? I didn’t know any of your friends lived over there. The way I put it up is that some one there is to act in the club pro tem, for you this Summer, while you are working.

“I like my work just fine. Such a jolly bunch, hayseeds of course, but I’m getting so I don’t mind that. And they’re all so nice to me, especially the boys. But Cousin Will don’t let any of ’em get funny. They all think I’m his steady.

“I’m sending a letter to ma in this. Please mail it. I expect she’s about crazy. I sent one to the home number. I had to do that, Billy, if you did tell me not to. That wasn’t a bit like you, Billy. But the letter came back. If this goes to the general delivery maybe she’ll get it. You’ll send it, won’t you, Billy? She’s lost her home, you know; I saw it in the paper. Or Will did.

“So long, dear Billy. Don’t forget me, though I’m not worth remembering. I think a lot of you. If I amount to anything it’ll be a lot because of you.

“Cousin Will is dandy to me, so thoughtful,—lots like you, only he’s a hayseed too; but I don’t mind that; I’m getting used to it. He’s twenty-four.

“Your loving Erminie.”

Billy stared at the sheet a long time, turning it over and over, and scrutinizing the envelope as if he might make it tell him something more. What could it all mean? Who had sent her that letter? Planned her movements so carefully and forged his name? And the money? He didn’t see yet how she could have got it out of the drawer at school even if she did have a key.

Twenty-four! An old fellow that Will was. He wasn’t really her cousin either. Billy set his teeth and wished he were free to set out on a search for her. The letter was postmarked Portland, Oregon. The other had been the same. But of course the place where she was must be the country, and some distance too, or she would not call the people hayseeds.

Suddenly the task of finding a girl somewhere in the State of Oregon with nothing but that postmark to guide him revealed to him its hopelessness; and too restless to sleep he went out and walked,—faster and faster, without realizing it, going south.

With every step the puzzle grew worse. Only one grain of comfort showed: Erminie’s letter would prove him no thief. Why, yes! that really fastened the proof on him, and worse, showed that he was taking care of her. That was no way out of the tangle.

Who could be using his name for this business? Of course, no one but the Kid, and he was too cunning to be caught. And where was that key? Would some of the boys get it, and never know where it came from? And the desk drawer—whose would it be when September found that silent old pile ringing again with a thousand student voices?

At length he found himself in the southernmost park of the city, not so very far from Tum-wah. Exhausted, he threw himself on one of the benches, drawing well within the shadows that he might, unmolested, go over again all the matters that troubled him.

While he mused, he became gradually conscious of voices approaching, and he was sensible of some ominous import in them. He knew they were Italians. Instantly he dropped to the grass and crept behind the bench, intending to go on as soon as they passed.

They were quarrelling, but speaking in guarded tones, vehemently. Billy heard broken bits, “More, more,” and “Thousand dollars,” in English; and in Italian, names of places he knew were in Italy. But nothing excited him till he heard, “the boss,” and “in the lake!”

The Black Hand! That had put its mark on Mr. Smith! Well, even the Black Hand might find its mate in a white one!

Billy was not so frightened as he might have been, had he known less of their ways, these hotheaded Latins that live in America, but not of it till a second generation binds them to the soil. He knew their allegiance to hates and friendships rooted in the land they had left; and perhaps what he had heard was only a scheme to “even up” somewhere, and concerned Mr. Smith only so far as the fact that the money they earned came from him.

The men went by slowly, halting once or twice, and Billy crept cautiously out and followed them at a distance till they came under one of the park lamps that revealed them perfectly. Billy knew them; one was the man who had chaffed him about May Nell.

He hurried around by the gate on the other side and took a car for home, where he called up Mr. Smith at Tuk-wil-la.

“It sounds important, Billy. Out with it.”

“It’s not to be told over the wire. But please don’t leave your house to-night—”

“To-night? It’s twelve o’clock. You’ve got me out of bed.”

“Well, let me see you in the morning before you leave the house, then; it may be nothing,—what I have to tell,—and it may be a good deal.”

“All right, boy. Don’t worry yourself. Nothing is as bad in the morning as it seems at night. Good-night.”

But in spite of that bit of truth Billy went to bed to dream of swarthy banditti, Italian caves, beautiful maids held for ransom, and hair-breadth escapes known only to dreams.