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 Japanese, 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 Japanese."

"Is it true, then, that there is a real Japanese 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
Japanese propagandists. The resentment against the Japanese invasion
of California is not confined to any class, 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 JAPS 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 Jap 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 Japs that the
organized sentiment of this community is against such a c