“Seems queer?”
“No. I’m just glad I’ve had a hand in passing you that claim. Good luck, Bill. I’m sure your man.”
Bill gripped the hand thrust out at him. Then the smile passed out of both men’s faces as if by agreement. After all the policeman’s work was his foremost concern.
“It don’t seem to me there’s a thing to do about your story of this murdering Indian, and the folks he dragged to death with him,” he said, in his alert official way. “In a way it’s a sort of poetic justice on all concerned. I’ll need to pass it along with the official report, but it’ll maybe just end right there. But these Euralians. That’s a swell scoop for me, sure. It’s a thing for Ottawa, an’ll need to go down in detail. Maybe you’ll be needed to hand further information. Japanese, eh? Well, it isn’t new in this western country. It’s the same from northern Alaska down to Panama. The darn continent’s alive with ’em, penetrating peacefully, and robbing us white folks of our birthright. You know, Bill ther’s a bad day coming for us whites. We sit around an’ look on, shrugging our shoulders, and eating and sleeping well. And all the time this thing’s creeping on us, like some dam disease. The Americans know it, and are alive to the danger. We don’t seem to worry. At least, not officially. But I sort of see the day coming when this thing’s got to be fought sheer out, and I’m by no means sure of the outcome. We’re told the Yellow man in the West outnumbers the White. But that don’t suggest a thing of the reality. When the Yellow men mean to strike you’ll find they’ve honeycombed this country, and the States, and it’ll be something like four to one waiting to rise at the given word. Yes, it’s bad,” he finished up, with a grave shake of the head. “But you certainly have given me a swell scoop that should help my boat along with Ottawa. Guess you won’t feel like quitting our territory now, eh?”
The man’s manner had changed from gravity to something bantering as he put his question.
“More than ever,” Bill said, with a shake of the head.
“But it’s the North’s given you all—this?”
“Yes. That’s so, George.” Bill knocked out his pipe. “But you don’t know. Felice has been raised in the darkness of that darn region, almost without decent human comfort. She hasn’t known a thing but buckskin and the river trail, and the flies and skitters of a barren world for twenty of the best years of her life. She doesn’t know a thing but an almighty fight to make three meals of food a day, and a night passed in queer brown blankets an’ caribou pelts. Well, it’s up to me to teach her the thing life is and can be. I’m going to. I’m going to give her such a time she won’t remember those days. She’s going where the sun’s warm and life’s dead easy. And so are those belonging to her. It’s up to me, and I’m out to do it. You haven’t seen her yet. You’d understand if you had. She’s right outside sitting waiting for me in the buggy. Will you come along and say a word of welcome to her?”
Bill had risen to his feet. There was just a shade of eagerness in his invitation. It was almost as if he feared reluctance in this old friend of his.
But there was none. Not a shadow. Raymes rose from his desk on the instant, and his eyes were full of swift censure.