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’ve seen them spread gradually over the land—­why, Bill, just think of the San Gregorio five years hence—­the San Gregorio where you and I have hunted quail since I was ten years old.  You gave me my first shot-gun—­”