CHAPTER XIV
At the ranch house, P. D. McPherson alternately paced the living-room, the hall, the dining-room, the kitchen and the back and front verandahs.
Fourteen times he called for his daughter and twice fourteen times he had roared for his son.
The morning’s mail (brought on horseback seven miles from Morley post-office by an Indian) contained a letter that P. D. had been waiting for all of that summer. It was brief and to the point almost of curtness. It consisted of one line scrawl of a certain famous chess player in the City of Chicago and was to the effect that the writer would be pleased to accept the challenge of the Canadian player for November 30th of the current year.
If P. D. had drunk deeply and long of some inebriating cup he could not have felt any more exhilarated than after reading that epistle.
On November thirtieth—scarce two months off—he, P. D. McPherson, chess champion of Western Canada, was to go to the City of Chicago, in the State of Illinois, there to sit opposite the greatest chess player in the United States of America and at that time demonstrate to a skeptical world that Canada existed upon the map.
He’d show ’em, by Gad! Yanks! (The average Canadian refers to the average American as “Yank” or “Yankee” regardless of the part of the States of which he may be a resident. P. D. knew better than to refer to a Chicagoan as a Yank, but had acquired the habit, and in his heart he was not fussy over designations.)
Yanks! Hmph! P. D. snorted and laughed, and G.D.’ed the race heartily and without stint. Not that he had any special animus against Americans. That was just P. D.’s way of expressing himself. Besides he was still smarting over having been ignored and snubbed for long by those top-lofty, self-satisfied, condescending lords of the chess board. For two years P. D. had banged at the chess door and only now had he at last been reluctantly recognised. He’d show ’em a thing or two in chess.
Yanks as chess players! It was to laugh! P. D. had followed every printed game that had been published in the chess departments of the newspapers and periodicals. His fingers had fairly itched many a time when a game was in progress to indite fiery instructions to the d-d-d-d-d-d-d-fool players, who were alternately attacking and retreating at times when a trick could be turned that would end hostilities at a single move. P. D. knew the trick. It was all his own. He had invented it; at least, he thought he had invented it, and had been angry and uneasy at a suggestion put out by a recent player that it was a typically German move.
Two months! Two months in which to practice up and study for the mighty contest, which might mean that the winner would be the chosen one in an international tournament that would include all the nations of the world. Ah ha! He’d waste not a precious moment. He’d begin at once! At once!
“Hilda! Hilda! Hilda! Where’s that girl? Hilda! Hi, you there, G— D— you Chum Lee, where’s Miss Hilda?”
“Me no know, bossie. Chum Lee no sabe where Miss Hilda go on afternoon.”
“Didn’t you see her go by?”
“No, bossie, me no see Miss Hilda. Mebbe she like go see him blandie” (brand).
“Beat it over to the corral and tell her I want her—at once—at once!”
“Hilda! Hil-l-lda!”
He made a trumpet of his hands and roared his daughter’s name through it.
“Hil-lda! Where in the name of the almighty maker of mankind is that girl! Hilda!”
Yanks indeed! Dog damn their souls! Their smug satisfaction with themselves; their genius for bragging and boasting; their ignorance concerning any other part of the earth save the sod on which their own land stood—their colossal self-esteem and intolerance—all this was evidence of an amazing racial provincialism that P. D. proposed to expose and damn forevermore.
“Hilda! Damn it all, where are you?”
“Hilda! You hear me very well, miss!”
Tramp, tramp, tramp. Round and round the house, inside and out, hands twitching behind, holding still to that precious letter.
“Sandy! Sandy! Sa-nn-n-ndy! Where’s that boy gone?”
Tramp, tramp again and:
“Sandy! You come here, you red-haired young whipper-snapper—You hear me very well. Sandy! Sandy! San-n-dy!”
No reply. It was evident that the house was empty and his son and daughter nowhere within hearing unless in hiding. Chum Lee scurried past back from the corrals, and apparently unconscious of the amazed and furious string of blistering epithets and cusses that pursued him from his “bossie.”
From the direction of the corrals a din surged, the moaning, groaning calves and the mothers penned in the neighbouring field. These cries were not music to the ears of the formerly proud owner of the cattle. It mattered not this day to P. D. whether a brand was slapped on true or banged on upside down; whether it were blurred or distinct. It mattered not whether the dehorning shears had snipped to one inch of the animal’s head as prescribed by law, or had clipped down into the skull itself. He paid a foreman crackajack wages to look after his cattle. If he could not do the work properly, there were other foremen to be had in Alberta. P. D. had no desire whatsoever to go to the corrals and witness the operations. His place at the present time was the house, where one could occupy their minds with the scientific game of chess.
“Sandy! Sandy!”
Back into the house went the irate P. D. The chess table was jerked out and the chess board set up. P. D. propped up a book containing illustrations of certain famous chess games, before him, and set his men in place.
P. D. began the game with a dummy partner, making his own move first and with precise care his partner’s. Fifteen minutes of chess solitaire and then out again, and another and louder calling for his son and his daughter.
No doubt they were at the corrals, dog blast their young fool souls. What was the matter with that bleak nit-wit of a foreman? He was hired to run a ranch, and given more men for the job than that allotted by any other ranch for a similar work. What in blue hades did he mean by drawing upon the house for labor? The son and daughter of P. D. McPherson were not common ranch hands that every time a bit of branding or rounding-up was done they should be pulled out to assist with the blanketty, blistering, hell-fire work.
Raging up and down, up and down, through the wide verandah and back through the halls and into the living-room again and again at the unsatisfactory chess solitaire, the furious old rancher was in a black mood when voices outside the verandah caused him to jerk his chin forward at attention. The missing miscreants had returned!