A team of horses and a wagon were standing at the front entrance to Mrs. Clunie’s boarding house.

It was the same team and wagon that Jim Langford took over from Rattlesnake Dalton with the Brantlock Ranch.

It was early morning and still dark, but the two would-be ranchers had already loaded up the wagon with their tools, bedding and personal effects.

With a nod of satisfaction to each other, they grinned, tied their saddle horses on behind, clambered into the front of the wagon and started off.

This ranching fad was entirely Jim’s, for Phil looked with Lord Nelson’s blind eye when it came to seeing any quick fortune in fruit farming. But knowing that the Brantlock Ranch was a sheer give-away at the price they had paid for it and not being desirous of parting from Jim or of smothering any attempt on the part of the latter to take up some definite work, he had compromised: Jim was to remain on the ranch all the time, while Phil would keep on working at his trade with Sol Hanson, thereby giving Sol time to look about for a substitute and also ensuring a good food supply until they should realise on their next season’s general produce, which Jim had decided to plant and cultivate between his fruit trees. This revolutionary plan of combining truck gardening and ranching had been a pet scheme of Jim’s for a number of years. He contended, and rightly too, 259 that despite the fact that a fruit rancher was a fruit rancher, there was no particular reason why a rancher should not be a farmer as well; rather than lay out his young trees and sit still for the next five or six years and become poor or bankrupt in the process of waiting till his trees should grow to fruition––as so many seemed to be doing––when by pocketing his pride and condescending to a little hard work in market gardening, he could at least make ends meet until the time came for the greater harvest of the big fruits.

Jim Langford was not destined to demonstrate this theory personally, although he lived to be confirmed in his wisdom and to see the plan work out to splendid success.

The Brantlock Ranch was only some two miles from town, and Phil, for company’s sake, had agreed to spend his spare time there, riding in and out to work morning and evening.

When all was ready, Jim handled the reins of his team, blew a kiss in the location of the chaste and goodly Mrs. Clunie’s bedroom window, and they started off.

Phil glanced up at the clouded sky, through which the grey of dawn was endeavouring to peep. Away beyond the mist, the dark outline of the cold, enveloping hills barely showed itself.

“It’s a great day to start out ranching, Jim,” he commented with a shiver, as he buttoned up his coat and turned up his collar.

Jim looked upward. A blob of very moist snow––the forerunner of many––splashed into his eye and blurred his vision.

“It sure is!” he agreed, squeezing it out.

“It is a good job we have Morrison’s tarpaulin over our stuff.”

“Ugh-huh!”

Five minutes’ silence ensued, in which the grey of dawn seemed to be getting the worse of its tussle with the black of night.

“I guess the gang down town will think we’re crazy starting out to ranch in the month of November.”

“Ay!”

A splash of snow struck the bridge of Phil’s nose, spread itself and slid slowly down to the point, where it clung precariously for a moment, then lost its hold. Another––the size of a silver dollar––landed sheer on the nape of Jim’s neck just where the coat and his hair did not meet. Jim turned up his coat collar to forestall a possible repetition.

“There’s one consolation, Jim, we’ll have everything in apple-pie order by the spring-time.”

“Ya!”

A cattleman, going townward, passed.

“Rotten weather for movin’, fellows!” was his chilling comment.

Jim looked up lugubriously, but without verbal response.

Phil well understood the mood, and did not worry.

Langford might have been pondering on the comfortable bed he had left at Mrs. Clunie’s and on the advisability of turning back, or he might have been figuring how much they were going to make on the next year’s fruit crop. As he did not turn back, his thoughts, despite his monosyllables, were evidently bravely optimistic.

On they jogged through the enveloping mists of the vanguard of a snow-storm, huddling themselves gradually into smaller and smaller compass as the sleety snow warmed––or rather, cooled––to its task of discouragement and settled down in ghostly earnest, pushing back the already delayed dawn and casting a cheerless gloom over the countryside.

Before the budding ranchers had gone half a mile, the watery snow was running off their clothes. When a mile was completed they were soaked through, sitting like two scare-crows, their hats almost to their chins and their chins buried in their buttoned mackinaws.

They were nearing their journey’s end––too miserable for words––when a horse clip-clopped on the muddy road behind them. The rider drew up alongside them.

“Gee, boys, but you started early. I thought I’d never catch up on you.”

The speaker was Eileen Pederstone, snug in her riding habit and enveloped in an oilskin coat.

“In the name of all that’s lovely!” ejaculated Jim. “What are you doing up at this time in the morning?”

“I’m up by this time pretty nearly every morning, Mister Impertinence.

“I thought I might be in time to catch you at Mrs. Clunie’s before you left. I just heard of this enterprise late last night.”

She laughed.

“My, but that was a great coup. You’re a dandy pair! I just wanted to wish you both the best of luck right at the start.”

“Thanks awfully!” grinned Jim, “for we sure are getting it.”

“Oh, tush! This is nothing. Okanagan ranchers don’t worry about a little snow in November or December. It’s a good warm blanket for the roots of the trees when the cold comes along, and a fine drink for them later on in the spring-time.

“Here’s something for your first meal on the ranch. Who’s to be cook,––you Jim, or Phil?”

Phil glanced over quickly and Eileen’s cheeks took on a rosier tint.

“Oh, Jim’s to be the rancher and I’ve to earn a living 262 for both in the meantime,” answered Phil, “so I guess he will be cook––unless we can hog-tie one somewhere.”

Eileen handed them a large parcel from under her oilskin.

“Well,––that’s all, boys,” she said. “I’m going to Victoria pretty soon, to be dad’s house-keeper. But I’ll be out to see you before I go. You’re off on your own at last,––and that’s the only way. If you don’t like ranching, sell out. But whatever you do,––oh boys!––keep on your own. Don’t ever work for the other fellow any more. Stay out on your own. One is always of most value to one’s-self. I wish I could preach that from the hill-tops. Wage slaving for somebody else is the curse of the times.”

“Hush!––you rascally little socialist; do you wish to ruin all the millionaires and trust companies by giving away their trade secrets in this way?” dryly commented Jim.

Eileen laughed.

“Well,––good-bye, Jim! Good-bye, Phil! And jolly good luck!”

With a whirl and a jump she turned and made off. But the cheery sunshine of her presence and her hearty greeting kept radiating over the two, leaving a warmth and a cheerfulness around them, where a few moments before had been cold and grumpiness.

They reached their destination at last, unhitched and turned the horses into a large barn in the rear of the dwelling house.

There was no doubting the splendidness of the ranch proper, with its acres of young fruit trees set out in rows with mathematical exactitude, and its pasturage which was now blanketed with snow. Neither, alas! was there any doubting the miserableness of the broken-down 263 two-storied, log-built barn of a place that was meant for their future home.

Jim and Phil shook the icy water from their clothes, stamped their feet and went inside.

The house was damp and cheerless, and evidently had not been subjected to heating of any kind for months.

They unloaded their bedding and other effects, then set about to light a fire in the fairly business-like stove that stood in a corner of the kitchen. They were busy at it, when the smooth, greasy, grinning face of a fat Chinaman showed round the door-post.

“Hullo, John,––come on in!” greeted Jim.

The oriental obeyed, with just a little show of diffidence, although diffidence of any degree did not sit too well on the general sleek confidence of his appearance.

“Hullo!” said Phil, looking him over.

“Hullo!” said the Chinaman, familiarly. “You new bossy-man,––eh?”

“You bet! Where you come from, John?”

“Where me come? Me live here. Me stop little house way down orchard. Me work allee time nicee day;––live here allee time winter.

“You let me stop,––eh?”

The Chinaman was quick in getting to business.

“What do you say, Jim?” asked Phil.

“Sure thing,––just what we want!

“Say, John!––what your name?”

“Me,––my name? My name, Ah Sing.”

“Ah Sing!” exclaimed Jim, looking upward in expectancy.

“Ya,––Ah Sing!” repeated the other with a set, Chinese grin.

“Ah Sing!”

“Ya,––Ah Sing!”

“Then, why in heaven’s name, don’t you? I’ve asked you twice,” laughed Jim, showing his large teeth.

The Chinaman showed his own in return.

“Sing,––you know me?”

“Ya,––I know you. You bossy-man, Big Jim. I see you Court House plenty time.”

“Well!––you catchem heap firewood, cleanem up, sweepee floor––just little bit––cookem one time every day;––and you stop. No do it;––you go away;––no get stop here,––see!”

“Me stop here long time,” remonstrated Sing fearfully, “one––two––three––four bossy-man come, Sing stop allee time.”

“No matter,––you work little bit, or no stop here,––see!”

The idea of winter work did not appeal to the wily Sing, but as it was “work” or “get out,” he relented.

“All lite!” he agreed. “Me stop. You pay me spling-time?”

“Yes!––that’s a go, Sing. I pay you all time you work outside on ranch. No pay winter time: not muchee work: just little bit.”

“Me savvy! Me go catchem dly wood.”

“So he is an old pal of yours, Jim?”

“Yes!––and he’s a pretty wise guy at that.

“He was up before Thompson, the Government Agent, one time I was there. Thompson was trying to get him to take an oath over something. He asked Sing how he would like to swear, whether by kissing the Bible or in the Chinese way.

“Me no care,” said Sing, “burnem paper, smellum book––allee same Ah Sing.”

“Thompson saw how much the Chinaman cared about oaths in general, so he got busy and pretty nearly scared the daylights out of Sing.”

“What did he do?” asked Phil, as both continued unpacking their gear.

“Oh,––he made Sing swear by the live chicken. You see, a Chinaman will always tell the truth when he has to cut a live chicken’s head off over it. If he happens to be guilty of anything and says he isn’t and cuts the fowl’s koko off,––he is sure to die for his prevarication. We all die, anyway, of course,” commented Jim, “but not so suddenly, evidently. Then, if John is accused by someone of doing something he didn’t do and he pleads innocent and cuts the infernal bird’s headpiece off––the other fellow cops off.”

Phil laughed, and worked on his fingers as if endeavouring to figure the thing out.

“It’s quite easy;––simple as A.B.C.,” commented Jim, “only you’re too darned thick skulled to savvy,––that’s all.”

“And I guess the chinks think we are pretty dense not to understand,” put in Phil.

“Just so!”

Sing put an end to the conversation by reappearing with a big armful of wood.

A respectable fire was soon blazing in the stove and a sense of increasing comfort began to pervade the place. Eileen’s eatables––meat pie and some baked fruits––were put into the oven to heat, while Jim and Phil changed into dry clothes.

They then went into the adjoining room to inspect the furnishings, which consisted solely of an iron bedstead with a fairly good spring on it; a cheap little bureau, two chairs and an oil lamp.

The walls of the place were of shiplap covering the logs, while the roof at the corners had holes in it big enough to put one’s head through. Fortunately a loft of some kind separated the heavens from the occupants.

They spent the day making the house somewhat habitable, inspecting the barns and grooming and feeding their horses.

In a spirit of thankfulness for small mercies, as night drew down they got out their mattresses and bedding and prepared to make themselves as comfortable as possible. They partook of supper and went to bed early. Both were tired, and it was not long before they were sound asleep. They might have remained so until morning had not Phil wakened up with the fancy of something scampering over his face.

He sprang into a sitting posture.

“Get down, man! You’re letting in the draught. It’s all right. You were just dreaming,” grunted Jim.

“Dreaming nothing!” cried Phil, brushing his face. “Something as big as a horse ran over my cheek.”

“Lie down then and cover up your head. It’ll be all right.”

Phil was not so easily satisfied. He struck a match and looked about him.

“See that!” he whispered. As Jim jumped up in response, several shadowy forms scurried off in various directions. The match burned to Phil’s fingers and spluttered out, as Phil swore and sucked his injured digits.

“Deevils!” whispered Jim eerily.

“Rats!” exclaimed Phil, striking another match and groping for the lamp.

“Better than bugs!” said Jim philosophically.

“Oh, you wait!” retorted Phil. “The bugs haven’t found out yet that we’re here. You’ll make acquaintance with them later.”

Jim shivered.

“Man,––I detest bugs, though! I wouldn’t wonder if you are right too; the place had a musty smell; besides, 267 that wily duck of a civilized chink would be living here if there wasn’t something wrong.” He shivered again. “They give me the grue. I can feel the darned little brutes already.”

“Oh, forget it!” said Phil. “Whoever heard of a calculating, sober-minded, creepy bug coming out on a night like this and scaring you away before you’re right settled down. Bugs have more sense than that, Jim.”

Langford curled himself up in small compass, covered his head over with the blankets and dozed off again.

Phil rose, took his twenty-two rifle from his pack and set it alongside the bed. He put a light to the lamp, got into bed again and turned the light down to a peep. He lay quietly watching the hole in the corner of the roof over by the foot of the bed.

The lamplight reflected suddenly from two tiny beads at the edge of the hole. Phil reached cautiously for his rifle, raised it, aimed carefully and fired. Something fell on the floor with a thud.

Jim sprang up in alarm.

“Good heavens, man!––what’s up?” he cried.

“Oh, go to sleep!” answered Phil. “I’ve just shot one of your bugs.”

“Shoot away then,” retorted Jim, “but please remember they’re not my bugs.”

In a few minutes more, Phil shot again, and another victim thumped to the floor. Half a dozen times this happened at intervals, until Jim––unable to get any sleep––grew faintly interested in the sport and volunteered to take a turn while Phil crept under the blankets for warmth.

It was only when morning began to dawn that the two got down to an honest hour’s slumber.

When they rose, thirty-six dead bush rats lay in a heap directly under the hole in the roof.

“And they told us nobody lived here!” remarked Jim. “That’s a great bag, though. Man,––if only they were rabbits!”

“How do you suppose they come to make this room their shelter?” asked Phil.

“Easy enough! They evidently come in from the outside between the logs and the shiplap to the loft above. They have made a run along by the beams there and down that board running from the roof to the floor and propping up the wall there; then they make over the floor to that hole, and into the stable where the litter and feed is.”

“Great stuff!” commented Phil.

“Ay,––ay!” said Jim wearily, “but I can see where most of my time is going to be occupied in keeping the house to ourselves.”

They were late in getting about that morning, but, fortunately, Ah Sing had been around and was putting the finishing touches to a breakfast for two.

Three ugly black cats were at the Chinaman’s legs with erect tails, rubbing their backs against him in feline glee every moment he stopped shuffling over the floor.

“Hullo, Sing;––pretty early! Think maybe best you cook dinner night-time––one meal every day––no cookem breakfast. We makem breakfast,” said Jim, as he picked up one cat after another by the neck and solemnly dropped them out at the front door.

“Ya,––I savvy!” said Ah Sing. “Me cookem supper every night––to-morrow––but no do’em this time to-day. My blother’s wifee, she die and get buried one year to-day. Savvy! Me want to go and put’m chicken, piecee pork, punk stick, all on grave––see!”

Phil laughed as he sat down to the table. Ah Sing looked hurt.

“What you do that for?” asked Phil.

“You no savvy?” queried the Chinaman, leaning over with arched eyebrows. “Put’m on grave so devil come and eat’m up. Devil say, ‘Ah Sing good boy;––Ah Sing blother Lee, he good boy too.’ Devil, heap pleased. No hurt Ah Sing and Lee Sing.”

Jim ventured a cautious look up from his oatmeal and milk, as if awaiting the outcome of the discussion.

“Gee!––but they’re a crazy bunch,” said Phil, addressing no one in particular. Ah Sing was of the knowing school of chink and did not choose to let the remark slide by.

“You say ‘heap crazy.’ No crazy! White man just allee same crazy. He put’m flower on white girlie grave. You no think that crazy. Chinaman put’m chicken and pork on Chinee girlie grave,––Chinaman no crazy.

“White man look up––see angel; white man put’m flower, please angels. Angels no hurt anybody.

“Chinaman look down––see devil. Devil he can hurt everybody. Chinaman put’m chicken for devil. Devil heap pleased:––no hurt Chinaman.

“Just allee same,––allee same! White man flower;––Chinaman chicken!”

Jim laughed. “Best forget it, Phil;––he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Chinaman, fully Canadianised. You can’t beat him. He has a pat answer for anything you like to put up to him. And, after all, when you come to analyse the darned thing,––there is about as much sense in the pork and punk-stick stuff as there is in the flowers. Give me my bouquets when I am alive,––that’s what I say.”

After breakfast, Phil saddled his horse and rode to town. It was still snowing softly, but a rift of blue and a shaft of sunlight overhead gave promise of a let-up, while a wind with a nip in it prophesied a drop in the barometer and a tightening up.

When he got back in the evening, he found the front 270 door bolted on the inside. He rapped on the panel, and Jim opened it very slightly, making a scooping motion with his foot along the floor, as if helping something out of the kitchen or trying to prevent something from coming in.

“What’s up, Jim? Scared for burglars?”

“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 chink. 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 272 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.