The Pride of Palomar Part 6

"'Happy'? I should tell a man! I'm as happy as a c.o.c.k valley-quail with a large family and no coyotes in sight. Wow! This steak is good."

"Not very, I think. It's tough."

"I have good teeth."

She permitted him to eat in silence for several minutes, and when he had disposed of the steak, she asked,

"You live in the San Gregorio valley?"

He nodded.

"We have a ranch there also," she volunteered. "Father acquired it recently."

"From whom did he acquire it?"

"I do not know the man's name, but the ranch is one of those old Mexican grants. It has a Spanish name. I'll try to remember it." She knitted her delicate brows. "It's Pal-something or other."

"Is it the Palomares grant?" he suggested.

"I think it is. I know the former owner is dead, and my father acquired the ranch by foreclosure of mortgage on the estate."

"Then it's the Palomares grant. My father wrote in his last letter that old man Gonzales had died and that a suit to foreclose the mortgage had been entered against the estate. The eastern edge of that grant laps over the lower end of the San Gregorio. Is your father a banker?"

"He controls the First National Bank of El Toro."

"That settles the ident.i.ty of the ranch. Gonzales was mortgaged to the First National." He smiled a trifle foolishly. "You gave me a bad ten seconds," he explained. "I thought you meant my father's ranch at first."

"Horrible!" She favored him with a delightful little grimace of sympathy. "Just think of coming home and finding yourself homeless!"

"I think such a condition would make me wish that Russian had been given time to finish what he started. By the way, I knew all of the stockholders in the First National Bank, of El Toro. Your father is a newcomer. He must have bought out old Dan Hayes' interest." She nodded affirmatively. "Am I at liberty to be inquisitive--just a little bit?" he queried.

"That depends, Sergeant. Ask your question, and if I feel at liberty to answer it, I shall."

"Is that j.a.panese, Okada, a member of your party?"

"Yes; he is traveling with us. He has a land-deal on with my father."

"Ah!"

She glanced across at him with new interest.

"There was resentment in that last observation of yours," she challenged.

"In common with all other Californians with manhood enough to resent imposition, I resent all j.a.panese."

"Is it true, then, that there is a real j.a.panese problem out here?"

"Why, I thought everybody knew that," he replied, a trifle reproachfully. "As the outpost of Occidental civilization, we've been battling Oriental aggression for forty years."

"I had thought this agitation largely the mouthings of professional agitators--a part of the labor-leaders' plan to pose as the watch-dogs of the rights of the California laboring man."

"That is sheer buncombe carefully fostered by a very efficient corps of j.a.panese propagandists. The resentment against the j.a.panese invasion of California is not confined to any cla.s.s, but is a very vital issue with every white citizen of the state who has reached the age of reason and regardless of whether he was born in California or Timbuctoo.

Look!"

He pointed to a huge sign-board fronting a bend in the highway that ran close to the railroad track and parallel with it:

NO MORE j.a.pS WANTED HERE

"This is entirely an agricultural section," he explained. "There are no labor-unions here. But," he added bitterly, "you could throw a stone in the air and be moderately safe on the small end of a bet that the stone would land on a j.a.p farmer."

"Do the white farmers think that sign will frighten them away?"

"No; of course not. That sign is merely a polite intimation to white men who may contemplate selling or leasing their lands to j.a.ps that the organized sentiment of this community is against such a course. The lower standards of living of the Oriental enable him to pay much higher prices for land than a white man can."

"But," she persisted, "these aliens have a legal right to own and lease land in this state, have they not?"

"Unfortunately, through the treachery of white lawyers, they have devised means to comply with the letter of a law denying them the right to own land, while evading the spirit of that law. Corporations with white dummy directors--purchases by alien j.a.ps in the names of their infants in arms who happen to have been born in this country--" he shrugged.

"Then you should amend your laws."

He looked at her with the faintest hint of cool belligerence in his fine dark eyes.

"Every time we Californians try to enact a law calculated to keep our state a white man's country, you Easterners, who know nothing of our problem, and are too infernally lazy to read up on it, permit yourselves to be stampeded by that h.o.a.ry shibboleth of strained diplomatic relations with the Mikado's government. Pressure is brought to bear on us from the seat of the national government; the President sends us a message to proceed cautiously, and our loyalty to the sisterhood of states is used as a club to beat our brains out. Once, when we were all primed to settle this issue decisively, the immortal Theodore Roosevelt--our two-fisted, non-bluffable President at that time--made us call off our dogs. Later, when again we began to squirm under our burden, the Secretary of State, pacific William J. Bryan, hurried out to our state capital, held up both pious hands, and cried: 'Oh, no! Really, you mustn't! We insist that you consider the other members of the family. Withhold this radical legislation until we can settle this row amicably.' Well, we were dutiful sons. We tried out the gentleman's agreement imposed on us in 1907, but when, in 1913, we knew it for a failure, we pa.s.sed our Alien Land Bill, which hampered but did not prevent, although we knew from experience that the cla.s.s of j.a.ps who have a strangle-hold on California are not gentlemen but coolies, and never respect an agreement they can break if, in the breaking, they are financially benefited."

"Well," the girl queried, a little subdued by his vehemence, "how has that law worked out?"

"Fine--for the j.a.ps. The j.a.panese population of California has doubled in five years; the area of fertile lands under their domination has increased a thousand-fold, until eighty-five per cent. of the vegetables raised in this state are controlled by j.a.ps. They are not a dull people, and they know how to make that control yield rich dividends--at the expense of the white race. That man Okada is called the 'potato baron' because presently he will actually control the potato crop of central California--and that is where most of the potatoes of this state are raised. Which reminds me that I started to ask you a question about him. Do you happen to know if he is contemplating expanding his enterprise to include a section of southern California?"

"I suppose I ought not discuss my father's business affairs with a stranger," she replied, "but since he is making no secret of them, I dare say I do not violate his confidence when I tell you that he has a deal on with Mr. Okada to colonize the San Gregorio valley in San Marcos County."

The look of a thousand devils leaped into Farrel's eyes. The storm of pa.s.sion that swept him was truly Latin in its terrible intensity. He glared at the girl with a malevolence that terrified her.

"My valley'" he managed to murmur presently. "My beautiful San Gregorio! j.a.ps! j.a.ps!"

"I hadn't the faintest idea that information would upset you so," the girl protested. "Please forgive me."

"I--I come from the San Gregorio," he cried pa.s.sionately. "I love every rock and cactus and rattlesnake in it. _Valgame Dios_!" And the maimed right hand twisted and clutched as, subconsciously, he strove to clench his fist. "Ah, who was the coward--who was the traitor that betrayed us for a handful of silver?"

"Yes; I believe there is a great deal of the Latin about you," she said demurely. "If I had a temper as volcanic as yours, I would never, never go armed."

"I could kill with my naked hands the white man who betrays his community to a j.a.p. _Madre de Dios_, how I hate them!"

"Well, wait until your trusty right hand is healed before you try garroting anybody," she suggested dryly. "Suppose you cool off, Mr.

Pepper-pot, and tell me more about this terrible menace?"

"You are interested--really?"

"I could be made to listen without interrupting you, if you could bring yourself to cease glaring at me with those terrible chile-con-carne eyes. I can almost see myself at my own funeral. Please remember that I have nothing whatsoever to do with my father's business affairs."