d hand to beat; so now it's quite in order for me to
spring my little joker and try to take the odd trick. Mr. Conway, I
want you to do something for me. Not for my sake or the sake of my
dead father, who was a good friend of yours, but for the sake of this
state where we were both born and which we love because it is
symbolical of the United States. I want you to stand pat and refuse to
cancel this contract. Insist on going through with it and make Mr.
Parker pay for it. He can afford it, and he is good for it. He will
not repudiate a promise to pay while he has money in bank or securities
to hypothecate. He is absolutely responsible financially. He owns a
controlling interest in the First National Bank of El Toro, and he has
a three-hundred-thousand-dollar equity in this ranch in the shape of a
first mortgage ripe for foreclosure--you can levy on those assets if he
declines to go through with the contract. Force him to go through;
force him, old friend of my father and mine and enemy of all Japanese!
For God's sake, stand by me! I'm desperate, Mr. Conway--"

"Call me 'Bill,' son," Conway interrupted gently.

"You know what the Farrels have been up against always, Bill," Don Mike
pleaded. "That easy-going Spanish blood! But, Bill, I'm a throw-back.
By God, I am! Give me this chance--this God-given chance--and the
fifty-per-cent, Celtic strain in me and the twenty-five-per-cent.
Gaelic that came with my Galvez blood will save the San Gregorio to
white men! Give me the water, Bill; give me the water that will make
my valley bloom in the August heat, and then, with the tremendous
increase in the value of the land, I'll find somebody, some place, who
will trust me for three hundred thousand paltry dollars to give this
man and save my ranch. This is a white-man's country, and John Parker
is striving, for a handful of silver, to betray us and make it a yellow
paradise."

His voice broke under the stress of his emotion; he gulped and the
tears welled to his eyes.

"Oh, Bill, for God's sake don't fail me!" he begged. "You're a
Californian! You've seen the first Japs come! Only fifteen years ago,
they were such a rare sight the little boys used to chase them and
throw rocks at them just to see them run in terror. But the little
boys do not throw rocks at them now, and they no longer run. They have
the courage of numbers and the prompt and forceful backing of a
powerful fraternity across the Pacific. You