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 gang 321 and 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 border 322 towns 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.”

“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.

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, but 325 he 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 completed 326 the 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 he 327 would 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, 328 examining 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 the Advertiser, 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, 329 which 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. “Nothing 330 in 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 them 331 on 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, 332 for 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 piece 333 of 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––he 334 took 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, 335 then 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 hundred 336 dollars. 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 morning 337 and 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.