CHAPTER XIX
Autumn came late to Alberta that year, and in the month of November, the cattle were still upon the range. The experienced cowman in Alberta is never deceived by the long sun-laden days of however warm an Autumn. Well he knows that the climate of Alberta is like unto a temperamental woman whose tantrums may burst forth into fury even while her smile lingers.
It is no uncommon thing in Alberta for a period of warm and balmy weather to be electrically broken by amazing storms and blizzards which spring into being out of a perfectly clear blue sky. Sometimes they last but a few hours; sometimes they rage for a week, during which period the effect is devastating to such of the cattlemen who have their stock still upon the range. The cattle caught unawares in the Autumn blizzard upon the open range will sometimes drift for miles before it and have been known to perish literally by the hundreds when trapped in coulie and gulch or driven for shelter against fence line, lie buried body on body. Because, therefore, blizzards are dangerous matters for the cattle to contend with, it is the custom in Alberta to round up in the month of October, and some outfits round up as early as September.
At O Bar O this year there was an atmosphere of restlessness and uncertainty. The riders were all at hand, awaiting word from the chief to set forth upon the Fall round-up; to bring in the cattle loose on the winter range to the home fields, where they would find ample protection under the long cattle sheds, and be given proper care and attention over the winter months.
For more than a month streams of cattle belonging to other outfits had been passing daily along the Banff Highway, coming down from the summer range on the Indian or Forest Reserve, en route to their winter homes on the ranches. This steadily moving army kept the O Bar O outfit on tenter-hooks.
Bully Bill, chewing, spitting, moving restlessly about, eager to be off, kept his own counsel so far as the murmuring crew were concerned; but a suggestive question however humorously or pacifically couched anent the matter of O Bar O round-up aroused his irritation and profanity to a hair-splitting degree. The harassed foreman was beside himself with anxiety and uncertainty. The sight of his men slouching about the corrals and the yards aroused both his wrath and his grief. He had worked his wits all through the month of October to find sufficient work to keep his men going, but the work created by the foreman was of a sort for which a rider feels only contempt. November the fifth, and riders—cowpunchers of the great O Bar O ranch hauling logs for fire wood or fence posts! Puttering with fencing, brush-cutting—Indians’ work, by Gad! Snugging up the bunkhouse and barn with dirt and manure for the winter! By Gravy! Those were jobs for tenderfeet and Indians. Not for self-respecting riders. No wonder the fellows were beginning to growl among themselves and cast black looks at the ranch house. Two of them had quit the service of the old ranch, two first-class men, at that, and Bully Bill noted them later upon the Banff Highway, riding with a hated rival outfit.
The O Bar O prided itself on maintaining a prize crew of men. They knew every inch of the range which extended over a hundred and fifty thousand acres into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. They knew the brands of half the cattlemen in Alberta. They could pick out O Bar O stock even when the brand was overgrown. At this time of year, skilled labour of this sort were in great demand and could choose their own jobs and demand their own price. If P. D. failed to find them regular men’s jobs, his foreman knew that presently they would give ear to the solicitations of rival outfits.
“Whispering Jake,” owner of the Bar D Ranch in the Jackass Valley, kept his eye “peeled” always for O Bar O hands. Himself unable to keep his men for long, he was satisfied to engage men trained at O Bar O and discharged for one cause or another. “Whisper,” as he was more popularly known—the name having been given to him in derision, because he talked always at the top of his immense voice—had been over the last few weeks, supposedly to look for a roan heifer, which he declared had strayed on to O Bar O. Bully Bill knew very well that the cowman had come, in fact, to look the O Bar O men over and to drop a hint of the amount of advance he was willing to pay over what the men were getting from P. D. “Whisper” made a point of going up $20 a month over O Bar O wages; but he dropped his men as soon as the rush season was over and left them high and dry for the winter. On the other hand, P. D. did not raise his men’s wages in the busy seasons, but kept them on all winter, regardless of slack periods and the drop of price in cattle. At Christmas, moreover, if the stock were in healthy shape and the profit of the business warranted it, O Bar O men received an annual bonus.
This year “Whisper” had learned, through the medium of Holy Smoke, that during the period when the hands of O Bar O were idling about waiting for P. D. to give the order to set out upon the round-up, considerable of the men’s wages had disappeared in poker games played in the bunkhouse, and also at times in the newspaper man’s camp. The losers, needing immediate funds, wavered toward the promises of the other cattlemen, and especially toward “Whispering Jake.”
Chafe and fret and rage internally as Bully Bill might, no word came forth from the ranch house, where for more than a month the Chess Champion of Western Canada and the potential challenger of the world had been closeted each night with Cheerio. When the third man left the service of O Bar O, Bully Bill hearkened to the suggestion of his assistant and accompanied by him paid a visit to the ranch house, where he requested Chum Lee to ask Miss Hilda to come to the front door.
Hilda, in the living-room, intently watching every move upon the board, looked up surprised at the whispered message of the Chinaman. Glad to escape from what she clearly perceived was practically the end of another game, the girl joined the foreman and his assistant upon the verandah.
“Miss Hilda,” began Bully Bill, “Ho and I are here to-night to ask you what’re we goin’ to do about the cattle? We can’t afford to wait no longer.”
Hilda debated the matter, hand on chin. She was looking off quite absently and suddenly she said to Bully Bill:
“Look here, Bill, if Dad had only moved his Knight instead of his Castle, he could have checked his King from both ends of the board and the jig would have been up. But Dad’s losing his nerve. He’s been beat too often lately. I can just see him fairly breaking. It’s telling on him. He’s an old man, my Dad is, and it’s terrible at his age to lose confidence. So long as Dad knew he was the best player in the West, he was just as cocky and spunky as a two-year-old, but you ought to see him now. Bunched up in his chair, his old eyes dim, and the eyebrows sticking out and his lip bulged. You’d hardly know him. Oh! if he had only moved his Knight! I could just have slapped him when he lifted that darned Castle. I tell you, Bill, Dad has simply got to beat him. He’s got to win at least one game. He’d never survive a permanent defeat, and apart from Dad’s feelings, neither would I!”
“But, look-a-here, Miss Hilda, what’re we all agoin’ to do till then? We can’t allow them cattle to be out till end of November. Why, them cattle——”
“Oh, the cattle! The cattle! You give me a pain! Can’t you think of anything but cattle, cattle, cattle? I guess there’s people in the world as well as cattle, cattle!”
“So there are, miss, but at this time of year we got to think of the cattle first, or they’ll get thinking with their own feet and first thing we know they’ll wander off somewheres where you ain’t goin’ to see them no more. Just let ’em get awandering up in them hills near Broken Nose Lake, and I betchu that’ll be the last of ’em. Besides, I heered down in Cochrane that there’s a sight of rustlers prowlin’ around this year, and the Indians ain’t any too scrupilous and when they’re hungry, they ain’t depising no handy beef. Why, Jim Lame-Leg’s doin’ time now for as slick a trick as ever I heerd of. Drive a cow over a canyon, and then git the job of haulin’ her out, and when she’s out she’s got her leg broke and she dies on his hand, and the owner pays for the haulin’ of the cow out with the dead carcass. Lee caught ’im breakin’ a leg of one of the Lazy L’s stock and the boss told him to go ahead and shoot her and keep the carcass, till someone put him wise, and he had the Mounty down from the Reserve and Jim Lame-Leg’s doin’ time now. If we don’t look out there’ll be others just as smart as Jim and when we come to countin’ up stock, I betchu we’ll be out a dozen head and more.”
“Well, it’s pretty bad, I know, but I won’t have Dad bothered about cattle. He’s got enough on his mind right now. Anyway, I believe the cattle are all right. What’s the matter with the herders, anyway? They’re still out, aren’t they?”
“Herders! My foot! Excuse my cussing, miss, but when you talk of herders,—my gosh! Herders ain’t a bit of good when the cold snap comes. They keep in their tents and holler for the riders and that’s what the riders is for.”
“But then, look at the weather this year. The cattle’ll get along for a month yet, I do believe. Last year we had soft weather clear up till Christmas. You know that and lots of cattle people were sorry they hadn’t taken advantage of the weather and left the cattle on the range. Anyway, they’ll come trailing home gradually themselves. Have all the gates down.”
“Some’ll come home, sure enough, but we got a lot of new stuff and they ain’t broke to this range. We threw some of the best stock you ever set eyes on over to the north of Loon Lake. If a storm comes up——”
Holy Smoke, plaiting a long cowhide bullwhip had taken no part in the conversation, but his ears were pricked up and his crafty eyes scarcely left the girl’s face.
“I tell you what you’d better do,” suggested Hilda, “get your men together and start on off. Dad won’t mind, and it’s the only thing to do.”
“He won’t mind! He threw a million fits last year when I just gathered in the lighter stuff before he said the word—stuff that was right at the gate, at that. Orders is flat, nothing doing till he says the word. He’s God Almighty on the O Bar O—begging your pardon, Miss Hilda—and he wants every Son-of-a-Gun on the place to know it.”
“I’ll say so!” declared P. D.’s daughter with pride. “Go along in, then, and put your cards on the table before him.”
“Nothing doing. Tried the job last week. He was out on this verandy and he was walkin’ up and down, with his hands behind him and his head dropped, and I ses to myself, ‘Mebbe he’s through. I’ll tuck in a word edgeways now.’ So I slipped over and——”
“What did Dad say?”
Hilda was leaning forward, wide-eyed with delighted interest. Dad’s utterances were always matters of the profoundest psychological interest and pride to his admiring daughter.
Bully Bill lowered his voice confidentially.
“Miss Hilda, I ain’t got the nerve to repeat to you the curious string of damns and cusses that your father give me and——”
Hilda laughed, a rippling girlish chuckle of genuine pride and delight.
“Isn’t Dad a perfect peach when he starts swearing? Don’t you love it? It sounds so—so—healthy, somehow. Can’t he just rip out the dandiest string of swear words you ever did hear? I’ll bet there’s not another man in the entire country can cuss as my Dad can. Most of ’em run off just the ordinary common old damns, but Dad—why Dad can—can—literally coin cuss words. I’d rather hear my Dad cuss than—than—hear a prima donna sing. Why, do you know, the very first word that either Sandy or I learned to speak was ‘damn’!”
Up tossed the young head. Hilda’s white teeth shone as her fresh laughter rippled forth, and at that musical sound, and the sight of the beautiful, laughing young woman before him, moved by an irresistible impulse, Holy Smoke, who had been squatting at his work, jumped restlessly to his feet. Hilda’s back was to the door. The hall was dark behind her.
“Miss Hilda,” said Ho, ingratiatingly, “we thought as how if you would ask your father and——”
“I? Not on your life. It’s all I can do to induce him to eat, let alone talk of anything else in the world except chess—Kings, Queens, Knights, Bishops, Rooks, Pawns! Gods and devils! Why did he make this move, and what object he had in making that, and if he had done this and hadn’t done that such and such a thing might have happened. Why, Dad’s just plumb chess crazy!”
“You said it,” grinned Ho delightedly, eager to ingratiate himself by agreeing with her, and at the same time voice his own thought regardless of the consequences. “This ain’t no cattle ranch no longer. It’s a loon ranch.”
“What’s that you say?”
Hilda’s voice had risen with excitement. Someone came out of the living-room inside, and paused half-way across the hall on his way to the verandah.
“I said—” repeated Holy Smoke, feeling a curious excitement and delight in the flaming anger he had aroused—“I said that this ain’t no longer a cattle ranch but a loon ranch.”
“How dare you say a thing like that about O Bar O. A lot you know about ranching. You come on over from the States with your wind and your brag and there’s no one believes a word you say. You dare to insinuate that my father is——”
“When I said ‘loon,’ Miss Hilda, I wasn’t mentioning no names, but s’long as you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, I’ll tell you that I was thinkin’ of that English fly, him that’s made all of the trouble here. My hands is itchin’ to lariat him and take it out o’ his hide. You say the word, Miss Hilda, and there’ll be a bunch of us turn the trick to-night!”
At the mention of Cheerio, the dark blood had rushed into the face of the girl. Her glance was full of contempt and hatred now.
“You, Holy Smoke! Yes, you’d need to rope your man. I’m thinking otherwise you’d have your hands D-d-d-d-d-full if you tried to tackle him man to man with your hands, for, take it from me, he’d make you eat your words and twist!”
Holy Smoke’s voice was husky:
“Look ahere, d’you mean to say——”
“Yes, I do mean to say—the very worst there is about you, and you can get right off O Bar O the minute your month is up. I’ll undertake to be responsible to my father and——”
Ho’s tongue searched his cheek. An ugly chuckle came from him and his slow words caused the girl to draw back as if struck.
“Since you’re so stuck on him——”
Hilda was aware that the door behind her had opened and then was banged to. She whirled around, and found herself face to face with Cheerio. Even in the moonlight, she could see that his face was set and stern as his glance passed by her and rested upon the shifting gaze of Ho, who suddenly, hurriedly moved away.
There was no sound now but the sobbing breath of the excited Hilda. Bully Bill had followed his assistant. She was alone on the verandah with Cheerio. A moment she looked up in the quiet moonlight at the man she had told herself so often that she hated.
What must he think of her now? Had he heard Holy Smoke’s taunt? Would he believe then that she—The thought was intolerable—an agony; but her agony was turned to a curious bliss, when, quite suddenly, she felt her hand warmly enclosed. For a long moment, he held her captive and she felt the deep gaze of his eyes searching her own. Then she was released, and like one in a dream she heard rather than saw him moving away from her. Unconsciously, a sob in her throat, Hilda McPherson held out her arms toward him. But he did not see her. She had a sudden frantic apprehension that he would go after Holy Smoke—that there would be a fight and he—An almost primitive fear of harm befalling him, sent Hilda along to the edge of the verandah. Then she heard something that stopped her flight, and held her there, straining to hear the last note of that long, soft whistle which rose in crescendo like a bird’s song that dropped across the silence of the night and slowly melted away.
Something rose in a suffocating flood in the heart of the Alberta-born girl. Spellbound and shaken, suddenly Hilda consciously faced the truth: She loved!