“I suspect his friends are not far off,” he said. “We had better go round again and see that everything’s ready.”
CHAPTER XIII—THE REPULSE
The night was dark and the road bad, and Clay leaned forward in the lurching car, looking fixedly ahead. The glare of the headlamp flickered across wagon ruts and banks of tall fern that bordered the uneven track, while here and there the base of a great fir trunk flashed suddenly out of the enveloping darkness and passed. Where the bush was thinnest, Clay could see the tiny wineberries glimmer red in the rushing beam of light, but all above was wrapped in impenetrable gloom. They were traveling very fast through a deep woods, but the road ran straight and roughly level, and talking was possible.
“You had trouble in the city lately. How did it begin?” Clay asked the driver. “I’m a stranger, and know only what’s in your papers.”
“The boys thought too many Japs were coming in,” the man replied. “They corralled most of the salmon netting, and when there was talk about prices being cut, the white men warned them to quit.”
He broke off as the car dropped into a hole, and it was a few moments later when Clay spoke.
“The Japs wouldn’t go?”
“No, sir; they allowed they meant to hold their job; and the boys didn’t make a good show when they tried to chase them off. Then, as they were getting other work into their hands, the trouble spread. The city’s surely full of foreigners.”
“You had a pretty big row a day or two ago.”
“We certainly had,” the driver agreed, and added, after a pause during which he avoided a deep rut, “The boys had fixed it up to run every blamed Asiatic out of the place.”