CHAPTER VI
Purely by accident, the wall of reserve that Hilda had reared between herself and Cheerio was, for the nonce at least, removed. Sandy had desired to go over a certain cliff, incredibly steep and slippery and four hundred feet above the river. Now Sandy could climb up and down places with the agility and sureness of a mountain goat, but even a mountain goat would have hesitated to go over the side of that cliff.
Hilda came out of her absent trance with a start, as she realized the intention of the daring and reckless youngster. Over an out-jutting rock Sandy was poised.
“Sandy McPherson! You cut out that darned nonsense. You can’t go down there. It’s too doggone steep.”
“Guess I can if I want to,” retorted the boy, looking over the perilous edge and scrutinizing the grade for any possible root or tree stump upon which he might grasp in an emergency. “Say,” his head jerked sideways toward Cheerio, who had dismounted himself to investigate the situation. “Will you look after Silver Heels till I get back? ’Tain’t safe for him to go over, but I’ll be Jake.”
“Sandy! You come back! Dad said the earth wasn’t safe under those rocks there, and any minute one of ’em might roll over. That rock’s moving now! Sandy! Oh, stop him! D-d-don’t let—him! Please!”
She had appealed to Cheerio. It was the first request she had ever made of him. Instantly he grasped the arm of her brother.
“Come on, old man. There’s a prospect over yonder that looks a jolly sight better than down there.”
“Aw, girls give me a pain,” declared the disgusted Sandy. “What do they want to come spyin’ along for anyway, and throwin’ fits about nothin’. What do they know about dinosauruses or anything else, I’d like to know?”
“On you go, old man!”
He had hoisted the grumbling boy upon his horse. Sandy raced angrily ahead. Cheerio looked at Hilda with the expectant boyish smile of one hoping for reward. He had “taken her part.” Thanks were his due. Thanks indeed he did not get. Hilda’s glance met his own only for a moment and then she said, while the deep colour flooded all of her face and neck:
“Now you can see for yourself what your fool expeditions might lead to. Sandy’s the only brother I have in the world, and first thing you know he’ll be going over one of those cliffs and then—then—you’ll be entirely to blame.”
Discomfited, Cheerio lost the use of his tongue. After a moment he inquired, somewhat dejectedly:
“Sh-shall we c-c-c-call them off then?”
Hilda was unprepared for this. Though she would not have admitted it to herself for anything in the world, those evening rides were becoming the most important events in her life. Indeed, she found herself looking forward to and thinking of them all day. Faced now with the possibility of their being ended, she said hurriedly and with a slight catching of her breath that made Cheerio look at her with an odd fixity of expression:
“No, no—of course not. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my brother, b-but I can’t trust that boy alone. I’ve always taken care of Sandy. That’s why I come along. Sandy’s just a little boy, you know.”
How that “little boy” would have snarled with wrath at his sister’s designation! Even Cheerio’s eyes twinkled, and Hilda, to cover up her own embarrassment, hastily pressed her heel into her horse’s flank, and for the first time she suffered him to ride along beside her.
It was intensely still and a dim golden haze lay like a dream over all the sky and the land, merging them into one. Into this glow rode the girl of the ranching country and the man from the old land across the sea. The air was balmy and full of the essence of summer. There was the sweet odour of recently-cut hay and green feed and a suave wind whispered and fragrantly fanned the perfumed air about them. They came out of the woods directly into the hay lands and passed through fields of thick oats already turning golden. A strange new emotion, a feeling that pained by its very sweetness was slowly growing into being in the untutored heart of the girl of the foothills. Glancing sideways at the man’s fine, clean-cut profile, his gaze bent straight ahead, Hilda caught her breath with a sudden fear of she knew not what. Why was it, she asked herself passionately, that she was unable to speak to this man as to other men? Why could she scarcely meet his clear, straight glance, which seemed always to question her own so wistfully? What was the matter with her and with him that his mere presence near her moved her so strangely? Why was she riding alone with him now in this strange, electrical silence? As the troubled questions came tumbling over one another through the girl’s mind, Cheerio suddenly turned in his saddle and directly sought her gaze. A wonderful, a winning smile, which made Hilda think of the sunshine about them, broke over the man’s face. She was conscious of the terrifying fact that that smile awoke in her breast tumultuous alarms and clamours. She feared it more than a hostile glance. Feared the very friendly and winning quality of it.
Impetuously the girl dug her little spurred heels into her horse’s flanks and rode swiftly ahead.
It was nearly ten o’clock, yet the skies were incredibly bright and in the west above the wide range of mountains, shone the splendour of a late sunset, red, gold, purple, magenta and blue. All of the country seemed tinted by the reflected glow of the night sun. Hilda, riding breathlessly along, had the sense of one in a race, running to escape that which was pursuing her. On and on, neck and neck with the galloping horse beside her, and feeling its rider’s gaze still bent solely upon her.
Presently there was a slackening of the running speed; gradually the galloping turned to the shorter trot. Daisy and Jim Crow, panting from the long race, slowed down to a lope. Some of the fever had run out of Hilda’s blood and she had recovered her composure.
Silence for a long interval, while they rode steadily on into the immense sun glow. Then:
“R-ripping, isn’t it?” said the man, softly.
“Meaning what?” demanded the girl, angry with herself that her voice was tremulous.
Almost they seemed to be riding into the sky itself. Sky and earth had the curious phenomenon of being one.
“Everything,” he replied, with an eloquent motion of his hand. “It’s a r-ripping—land! I’m jolly glad I came.”
“I don’t suppose,” said Hilda, “that you have skies like this in England.”
“Hardly.”
“It’s foggy and dark there, I’ve heard,” said Hilda.
He glanced at her, as if slightly surprised.
“Why no, that hardly describes it, you know.”
He was thoughtful a moment, and then said, with a smile, as if glad to reassure her:
“It’s a dashed fine place, all the same. C-carn’t beat it, you know.”
That brought the girl’s chin up. For some reason, she could not have analyzed, it hurt and offended her to hear him praising the land from which he had come.
“Hm! I wonder why Englishmen who think so darned much of their own old land bother to come to wild outlandish places like Canada.”
If she had expected him to deny that Canada was wild and outlandish she was to be disappointed, for he replied eagerly:
“Oh, by Jove! th-that’s wh-why we like it, you know. It’s—it’s exhilarating—the difference—the change from things over there. One gets in a rut in the old land and travel is our only antidote.”
Hilda had never travelled. She had never been outside the Province of Alberta. Calgary and Banff were the only cities Hilda had ever been in. She was conscious now of a sense of extreme bitterness and pain. Like some young wounded creature who strikes out blindly when hurt, Hilda said:
“Look here, Mr.——er——Whatever your name is, if you Englishmen just come out to Canada out of curiosity and to——”
“But, my dear child, Canada is part of us! We’re all one family. I’m at home here.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a fish out of water.”
“I s-say——”
“And look here, I don’t let anyone call me ‘dear child.’ I won’t be patronized by you or anyone like you. I’m not a child anyway. I’m eighteen and that’s being of age, if you want to know.”
He could not restrain the smile that came despite himself at this childish statement. Hilda’s face darkened, and her eyelids were smarting with the angry tears that, much to her indignation, seemed to be trying to force their way through. She said roughly, in an effort to hide the impending storm:
“Anyway you can’t tell me that there is anything whatsoever in England to compare with—that—for instance.”
Her quirt made an eloquent motion toward the west, along the complete horizon of which the long line of jagged peaks were silhouetted against the gilded skies.
“Righto!” said the man, softly and then after a pause he added almost gently, and as if he were recalling something to memory: “But I doubt if there’s anything rarer than our English country lanes—lawns—fine old places—the streams—but you must see it all some day.”
When he spoke, when he looked like that, with the faraway absent expression in his eyes. Hilda had a passionate sense of rebellion and resentment. For some reason she could not have explained she begrudged him his thought of England. It tormented her to think that the man beside her was homesick. Her quirt flicked above Daisy’s neck. A short swift gallop and back again to the lope of the cow ponies. The ride had whipped the colour into her cheeks and brought back the fire to her eyes. She was ready now with the burning questions that for days she had ached to have answered.
“If England’s such a remarkable place, why do you come to Canada to make a home for this—what was her name, did you say?”
“Her name? Oh, I see—you mean—Nanna.”
He said the name softly, almost tenderly, and Hilda’s breath came and went with the sudden surge of unreasonable fury that swept over her. He answered her lightly, deliberately begging the question.
“Why not? This is the p-p-promised land!”
“Are you making fun of Canada?” she demanded imperiously.
“No—never. I s-said that quite seriously.”
She shot her next question roughly. She was determined to know the exact relationship of this Nanna to the man beside her. Undoubtedly she was the woman of the locket, whose fair, lovely face Hilda was seeing in imagination too often these days for her peace of mind.
“Is she your sister?”
“Oh, no. No relation whatever. At least, no blood relation.”
“I see. I sup-pose you think her very—pretty?”
“Lovely,” said Cheerio. Something had leaped into his eyes—something bright and eager. He leaned toward Hilda with the impulse to confide in her, but the look on the girl’s face repelled him, so that he drew back confounded and puzzled. Hilda set her little white teeth tightly together, put up her nose, and, with a toss of her head, said:
“For goodness sakes, let’s get home. Hi, Daisy! get a wiggle on you, you old poke.”
She was off on the last lap of the journey.
In her room, she faced herself in the wide mirror and revealed a remarkable circumstance so far as she was concerned. Tears, bitter and scorching, were running down her face. Clinching her hands, she said to the tear-stained vision in the mirror:
“It’s just because I hate him so! Oh, how I hate him. I never knew anyone in all the days of my life that I hated so much before and I’d give anything on earth if only I could just hurt him!”
Hurt him she did, for the following evening when he brought her horse, saddled and ready for her, to the front of the ranch house, Hilda, in the swinging couch on the verandah apparently deeply absorbed in a dictionary, looked up coolly, and inquired what the hell he was doing with her horse.
“Wh-why I th-th-thought you would be coming with us as usual,” said the surprised Cheerio.
“No thank you, and I’m quite able to saddle my own horse when I want to go,” said Hilda, and returned to a deep perusal of the dictionary. But the crestfallen and puzzled Cheerio did not see her, as on tiptoe, she stole around the side of the house, to catch a last glimpse of him as he rode out with Sandy beside him. Her cheeks were hot and her eyes humid with undropped tears as over the still evening air her brother’s shrill young voice floated:
“Hilda not coming! Gee! we’re in luck! Now we can go over the cliff!”
Hilda didn’t care just then whether that brother of hers went over the cliff or not. She felt forsaken, bitter, ill-used and extremely unhappy and forlorn. But she had had her last ride in the magical evenings on a dinosaur quest.