losure. I didn't
desire to annoy you while you were in hospital and you've been busy on
the range ever since. When can I induce you to submit to a
process-server?"

"This afternoon will suit me, Mr. Parker."

"I'll gladly wait awhile longer, if you can give me any tangible
assurance of your ability to meet the mortgage."

"I cannot do that to-day, sir, although I may be able to do so if you
will defer action for three days."

Parker nodded and the conversation languished. The car had climbed out
of the San Gregorio and was mounting swiftly along the route to La
Questa, affording to the Parkers a panorama of mountain, hill, valley
and sea so startling in its vastness and its rugged beauty that Don
Mike realized his guests had been silenced as much by awe as by their
desire to avoid a painful and unprofitable conversation.

Suddenly they swung wide around a turn and saw, two thousand feet below
them, La Questa Valley. The chauffeur parked the car on the outside of
the turn to give his passengers a long, unobstructed view.

"Looks like a green checker-board with tiny squares," Parker remarked
presently.

"Little Japanese farms."

"There must be a thousand of them, Farrel."

"That means not less than five thousand Japanese, Mr. Parker. It means
that literally a slice of Japan has been transplanted in La Questa
Valley, perhaps the fairest and most fruitful valley in the fairest and
most fruitful state in the fairest and most fruitful country God ever
made. And it is lost to white men!"

"Serves them right. Why didn't they retain their lands?"

"Why doesn't water run up hill? A few Japs came in and leased or
bought lands long before we Californians suspected a 'yellow peril.'
They paid good prices to inefficient white farmers who were glad to get
out at a price in excess of what any white man could afford to pay.
After we passed our land law in 1913, white men continued to buy the
lands for a corporation owned by Japanese with white dummy directors,
or a majority of the stock of the corporation ostensibly owned by white
men. Thousands of patriotic Californians have sold their farms to
Japanese without knowing it. The law provides that a Japanese cannot
lease land longer than three years, so when their leases expire they
conform to our foolish law by merely shifting the tenants from one farm
to another. Eventually so many Japs settled in the valley that that
white farmers, unable to secure white labor,