Next morning, while inspecting the ravaged chicken coop and endeavouring to follow the trail of the light-footed coyotes, Jim and Phil discovered a trickle of blood here and there on the snow on top of the knoll, telling them that Phil’s flying shot had come much nearer its billet than they had at first surmised.

“By jove!––what do you think of that, Philly, my boy? You pinked one of those brutes after all. What do you say to following up a bit?”

Sing had promised to look after the cooking of the Christmas dinner, so, as there was nothing in particular for them to do for the next few hours, Phil readily agreed. They went back for their rifles, muffled themselves up a bit more and donned their heavy boots.

It was a glorious morning when they set out from the ranch. A fresh fall of snow the night before had already been crusted over by the cold north wind which so often tore in through the rifts in the hills at that time of the year, squeezing the thermometer almost to disappearing point at twenty-five to thirty below. The sun’s brightness looked eternal. The sky was never so blue. Great fleecy clouds rolled and frolicked in well-nigh human abandon. Almost everywhere, when looking upward, the eyes rested against snow-white hills with their black reaching spars of sparse fir trees; while below and stretching away for miles––winding and twisting between the hills––the flat, solidly-frozen Kalamalka Lake, with its fresh, 303 white coating, caught the sun’s rays and threw them back in a defiant and blinding dazzle. At intervals, in unexpected places and along the shore line, smoke curled up cheerily from the snug little homes of the neighbouring ranchers and settlers.

As the two men trudged along, with the old terrier dog at their heels, the frozen air crackled in their nostrils. They smoked their pipes, however, and threw out their chests in sheer joy of living, for a winter’s day, such as this was, did not freeze young blood, but rather sent it sparkling and effervescing like ten-year-old champagne.

They followed the red stains on the snow and finally came to a spot in a gulley where the coyote evidently had disposed of its steal, for feathers lay about in gory profusion. They continued through the thicket, where they lost all track of further blood-stains. To add to their worries, the old terrier disappeared.

“He must have got scared and beat it for home,” said Phil.

“Looks like it! I guess we should follow his lead, for Mister Coyote seems to have got pretty well away.”

“Let us go down toward the lake then and home along the shore line. It is easier travelling that way.”

They went down the incline together, digging with their heels at times to stop them up, and slipping in fifteen feet lengths at other times. When they neared the bottom they heard a loud yelp, as of a dog suddenly hit by a missile of some kind. They looked out in the direction of the lake and away in the middle of it, half a mile from shore, their eyes sighted two dark objects rolling over and over each other.

A yelp, sharper than the first, came again.

“By jingo!” shouted Jim, “what do you know about that? It’s our supposed yellow-livered terrier. He’s got 304 the coyote. Come on! The brute will have him eaten alive.”

They plunged down the remainder of the hill, through another thicket of pines, along the shore and out on to the lake. The ice was several feet thick and as solid as the land itself. Time and again both Phil and Jim stepped up in order to try a shot, but it was impossible to get one in without endangering the life of the plucky old dog.

They slid and scurried along, full speed––while the terrier seemed to be hanging on gamely to the coyote, or else the coyote had such a hold on the terrier that the latter was unable to shake it. They continued to roll over and over in a whirling bundle of fur.

“Better try a shot anyway, Phil,” cried Jim in desperation. “You are surer with the gun than I am. The dog is all in and it looks as if it didn’t really matter now which you hit anyway.”

Phil threw the gun to his shoulder, took almost careless aim and fired. It was a long shot and a difficult one for even an expert.

For a moment, it looked as if the bullet had gone wide. The next moment it could be seen that something had been hit, but it was hard to tell what. Then out of the scurry and whirl, the old terrier was observed to get on top.

“Good boy!” cried Jim. “You got the right one!”

As they came up on the scene of the fight, they found their dog mauled almost to ribbons, but he was still clinging gamely and worrying at the throat of the dead coyote.

Jim spoke a word of praise to that remnant of a dog and separated it from its late antagonist.

The excitement over, it wagged its stump of a tail, staggered for a little, trembled, then lay down on the ice with a little whimper, in absolute exhaustion.

The coyote was a huge brute of its kind and its coat was in perfect condition.

Phil’s shot of the previous night had passed through a fleshy part of its hind quarters, without breaking any bones on its journey, but the coyote had evidently bled almost to death before the terrier got at it. This alone accounted for its inability to beat the old dog at the very first turn of the encounter. The shot which killed it had gone clean through its eye and out behind its ear.

Jim got out his knife and started in to skin the animal, while Phil did what he could in the matter of lending first aid to the wounded terrier.

On glancing casually along the surface of the ice, then away toward their ranch, Phil noticed a vehicle drawn up at the front door.

“Jim,––there’s a rig of some kind at our door. Looks as if we had visitors!”

“Now who the Dickens can it be?” queried Jim, scratching his head as he knelt beside the carcass of the coyote. “It’s a sleigh. Christmas Day and nobody to welcome them! Phil, you beat it back. I’ll finish this job and follow after you with the dog. He won’t be able to go fast and it is no use both of us waiting.”

“All right!”

“Whoever they are, keep them till I come.”

“Sure!”

And off Phil went at a run.

When he was about a quarter of a mile from the house, he saw Ah Sing amble round from the far side of the house and go in at the front door. This had hardly taken place, when he heard the scream of a woman in fear. A flying figure darted out and down the trail, up which Phil was now hurrying from the beach. He failed at first to make out who the figure was. It was followed closely by the Chinaman, crying out his incoherent Chinese 306 jibberish and broken English, and, despite his years and apparent shuffling gait, he was bear-like in his agility and gained at every step on the woman he was pursuing. She turned her head in fear, and seeing how close to her he was she screamed again, then collapsed in a heap.

Ah Sing stooped over her, looking down, still muttering and shaking his fists angrily, but evidently in a quandary. He did not notice the oncomer until he was almost by his side. Phil tossed his gun from him, caught the Chinaman by the neck with his two hands, lifted him off his feet and nearly shook his greasy head off in the process. He then got him by the collar in one hand and the loose pants in the other, raised him sheer over his head and hurled him ten feet away, against the foot of an apple tree where he crashed and lay in stupid semi-consciousness.

Of all the unexpected persons to Phil, the young lady who lay on the ground was Eileen Pederstone. He raised her gently in his arms and carried her up the pathway through the orchard and back into the house. He set her on a camp cot and fetched her a glass of water. And it was not long before she sat up. But the dread of something was still upon her. She was pale and she trembled spasmodically.

She clung to Phil’s arm, keeping close to him as they sat on the edge of the cot, as if afraid that his presence were not quite the substantial reality it seemed.

He tried his best to soothe her and to get her to explain what had happened, but she did not answer him. He patted her back, he put his arm about her. He pushed her hair up from her eyes. But she sat and trembled, and would not be comforted.

She had a large towel pinned about her waist, and from the broom which lay on the floor near the door it 307 looked to Phil as if she had been sweeping out the place when the Chinaman had entered.

“But you must tell me what happened!” said Phil. “Did you say or do anything to Sing to make him angry?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I have no idea!” returned Eileen at last brokenly. “He––he––when I came––there was no one here.––I started in to sweep up.––I was sweeping at the door when he came in suddenly––he frightened me.––I must have swept some of the dust over him, for he ran right into the broom.––He swore at me and started to jibber.––He caught me by the arm.––He swore again.––I––I struggled free and ran out––and––and he followed me––shouting he would––he would kill me.”

Phil’s brows wrinkled in perplexity, for he could not make the thing out at all.

Ah Sing he knew for a peculiar individual and a wily one, with considerable standing among the other Orientals in the neighbourhood, but he had always heard of him as being meek and docile enough with those for whom he worked and, like most Chinamen, had a wholesome respect for the power of the white man’s law. That he should suddenly break out in this outrageous way, for no apparent cause, was beyond Phil’s comprehension.

Quietly and without speaking further, Phil and Eileen sat together, then tears of relief came to Eileen. Her shuddering ceased. She gazed up at Phil timidly and, as she gazed, she must have noticed the anxiety and yearning in his eyes for she laid her head on his breast and wept quietly. Phil did not try to stop her tears. He sat there, smoothing her glossy brown hair with his big hand and talking soothingly to her the while.

At last her sobbing spent itself and she slowly raised her head and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. Phil caught her face in both his hands and gazed searchingly into it for a while. Helplessly, Eileen braved his 308 look and, when a faint trembling smile played about the corners of her mouth, Phil drew her face close to his and his lips touched hers.

Eileen blushed, and jumped up suddenly with a cry of alarm. She rushed over to the stove and lifted up the lid of a pot, the contents of which were bubbling over.

“Come on, boy!” she cried with a strange tone of possession in her voice which set Phil’s heart jumping, “help me get dinner out. Big, lanky, fail-me-never Jim will be here pretty soon.”

They had hardly put the finishing touches to the table, when Langford ran in. He seemed to have sensed something wrong before he got inside, for his face wore an anxious look.

“Merry Christmas, Eileen! Awfully glad you came out to see us. Hullo!––what has been wrong? I saw you, and Phil, and Sing in a mix-up and I hurried along. What was the trouble, Phil? Has Sing been playing any monkey-doodle business?”

“It was nothing at all! Hurry and get a wash up, Jim! Dinner’s ready,” smiled Eileen. “We’ll tell you all you want to know when we are having something to eat.”

They sat down to a pleasant little meal, but, somehow, the earlier proceedings had cast a damper over the usual gaiety of the trio and their conversation for once was desultory and of a serious nature.

Phil explained as best he could what had taken place between Eileen and Sing. Eileen could throw no further light on Phil’s story. But Jim did not seem to require any, for a look of perfect understanding showed in his big, gaunt, honest face.

“Do you know, Eileen,––you could not have heaped a worse insult on Sing than you did,” he remarked.

“But I didn’t say a word, Jim!”

“No!––but you demonstrated on him with that broom.”

“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.

“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 bills 311 over 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 Province 312 tells 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.”

“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.

“And do you think you have really found her at last?” she asked.

“Do I think I have! Ah, Eileen!––you would 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 really are sweethearts 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 can 315 see 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?” she 316 asked 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 advance 317 on 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 me 318 about 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, some 319 day. 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.