His Royal Nibs

by Onoto Watanna

CHAPTER XV

“San-ndy!”

The three on the verandah jumped. That crisp summons, that peculiar inflection meant but one thing. Chess! Sandy cast a swift agonized glance about him, seeking an immediate mode of escape. He was slipping cat-footed and doubled over along the back of the swinging couch on the verandah, when again came the imperative summons, this time with even more deadly significance.

“Sandy! In here, sir!”

“Yessir, I’m comin’, sir.”

Now it happened that the foreman of O Bar O had come especially over to the ranch house, accompanied by the son and daughter of P. D. to announce to his employer the discharge of Cheerio. It was an ironclad rule of O Bar O that no “hand” upon the place should be dismissed without his case first being examined before the final court of judgment in the person of P. D. This was merely a formality, for P. D. was accustomed to O. K. the acts of his foreman. Nevertheless, it was one of the customs that could not be ignored. What is more, a man reported for his final pay to the supreme boss of the ranch.

It was also the law at O Bar O that such discharges and reports should be made after the working hours in the field. In the present instance, Bully Bill had harkened to the advice of his assistant and discharged Cheerio at the noon hour. O Bar O, he contended, could not afford to risk its prestige by having in its employ for even a few more hours a man who had acted at the corrals as had the Englishman. Therefore, having put his men back to work at the corrals, Bully Bill had come to the house to report to his employer.

That Sandy summons was unmistakable. The noble and ancient game was about to be played. It was well-known lese majeste to interrupt when the game was in progress. Bully Bill and the young McPhersons looked at each other in consternation and dismay.

Sandy, in his ragged and soiled overalls, one of the “galluses” missing and the other hitched in place with a safety pin, groaned aloud, then shuffled unwillingly into the house. Rebellion bristled and stuck out of every inch of the reluctant and disgusted boy. At that moment Sandy loathed chess above everything else on earth. It was a damfool game that no other boy in the country was forced to play. Sandy could not see why he should be singled out as a special victim. Sullenly he seated himself before the hated board. Blindly he lifted and moved a black pawn forward two paces. His father’s eyes snapped through his glasses.

“Since when did it become the custom for the Black to move before the White?” he demanded fiercely.

Sandy coughed and replaced the pawn. His father took the first move with his white pawn.

Now when Sandy McPherson entered thus unwillingly into the ranch house he passed not alone into the place. Close upon his heels, silently and unseen by the absorbed master of the house, followed the yellow dog, Viper. He slunk in fact along behind chairs and tables, for well Viper knew he was on forbidden and hostile territory. Reaching the great, overstuffed sofa that stood in soft luxury before the big stone fireplace, Viper leaped soundlessly aboard, and a moment later was snuggled well down among the numerous sofa pillows and cushions that were the creations of Hilda’s feminine hands.

P. D. McPherson had his scientific opinion touching upon the subject of dogs. To a limited extent, he had experimented upon the canine race, but he had not given the subject the thought or the work bestowed on his other subjects, as he considered animals of this sort were placed on earth more for the purpose of ornament and companionship rather than for utilization by the human race, as in the case of horses, cattle, pigs, etc. O Bar O possessed some excellent examples of P. D.’s experiments. He had produced some quite remarkable cattle dogs, a cross between collie and coyote in looks and trained so that they were almost as efficient in the work of cutting out and rounding-up cattle as the cowboys. These dogs had been duly exhibited at the Calgary Fair but the judgment upon them had so aroused the wrath of the indignant P. D. that after a speech that became almost a classic in its way, because of the variety and quality of its extraordinary words, P. D. departed from the fair ground with his “thoroughbred mongrels” as the “blank, blank, blank fool judges” had joshingly named them. P. D. was not finished with his dog experiments “by a damn sight.” However, his subjects at this time were held in excellent quarters pending the time when P. D. would renew work upon them. Occasionally, said dogs were brought forth for the inspection of their creator, but even they, good products and even servants of O Bar O, knew better than to intrude into his private residences.

Of Viper’s existence at the present stage in his career, P. D. was totally ignorant. He supposed, in fact, that this miserable little specimen of the mongrel race had been duly executed, for such had been his stern orders, when at an inconvenient time Viper had first thrust himself upon the notice of his master’s father.

P. D. knew not that such execution was stayed through the weakness of the executioner, who had hearkened to the heartrending pleas for clemency and mercy that had poured in a torrent from Sandy, supported by the pitying Hilda. Sandy had pledged himself moreover to see that his dog was kept out of sight and sound of his parent.

Of all his possessions, Sandy valued Viper the most. Ever since the day when he had traded a whole sack of purloined sugar for the ugly little yellow puppy, Sandy had loved his dog. He had “raised” him “by hand,” in the beginning actually wrapping the puppy up in a towel and forcing him to suckle from a baby bottle acquired at the trading-post especially for that purpose. All that that dog was or would be, he owed to Sandy McPherson. Sandy considered him “a perfect gentleman” in many ways, one who could “put it all over those pampered kennel fellows.” Viper could bark “Thank you” for a bone as intelligibly as if he had uttered the words; he could wipe his mouth, blow his nose, suppress a yawn with an uplifted paw, and weep feelingly. He could dance a jig, turn somersaults, balance a ball on his nose, and he could laugh as realistically as a hyena. Not only was he possessed of these valuable talents, but Viper had demonstrated his value by services to the ranch which only his master fully appreciated. The barns, when Viper was at hand, were kept free of cats and poultry and other stock that had no right to be there, and Sandy’s job of bringing home the milk cows in the morning and evening was successfully transferred to Viper. Sandy had merely to say:

“Gawn! Git ’em in,” and the little dog would be off like a flash, through the barnyard, out into the pasture, and up the hill to where cattle were grazing. He would pick out from among them the ten head of milk stock, snap at their heels till they were formed into a separate bunch, and drive them down to the milk sheds.

Viper’s continued existence at O Bar O, therefore, was most desired by his master. By some miracle, due largely to P. D.’s absorption in his own important affairs, the little dog had escaped the notice or especial observation of Sandy’s father. Once he had indeed looked absently at the dog as he passed at the heels of Sandy, and he had actually remarked at that time on the “Indian dogs” that were about the place, and that should be kept toward the camps.

In the hurry and rush of events of this especial day, Viper was forgotten, and the excited Sandy had omitted to lock him up in the barn, as was his custom, when he went to the house.

So far as P. D. was concerned, Viper was a dead dog. Very much alive in fact, however, was Sandy’s dog, as curled up on that couch of luxury he bit and snapped at elusive fleas that are no respectors of places and things and thrive on a dog’s back whether he be lying upon a bed of straw or sand or, as in the present instance, curled up on an overstuffed sofa.

Meanwhile, as Sandy made his unwilling moves, and while Viper disappeared into the land of oblivion through the medium of dog sleep, a whispered council of war was held on the front verandah.

“Go in and speak to him now. The game may run on till midnight. You know Dad! If, by any chance, Sandy puts up a good fight and prolongs the game, he’ll have it to do all over again and again until Dad beats him hard, and if Sandy plays a poor game, then he’ll be as sore no one’ll be able to go near him and he’ll make me take his place. So there you are. You may as well take the bull by the horns right now, and hop to it.”

The woman tempted and the man did fall.

The foreman of O Bar O, endeavouring to put firmness and resolution into his softened step, took his courage into his hands and entered the forbidden presence of the chess players. Hat in hand, nervously twisting it about, tobacco shifted respectfully into one cheek, this big, lanky gawk of a man cleared his throat apologetically. Only a slight twitch of one bushy eyebrow betrayed the fact of P. D.’s irritated knowledge of the presence of intruders.

“Dad!” Hilda’s voice trembled slightly. She appreciated the gravity of interrupting her father’s game, but Hilda was in that exalted mood of the hero who sacrifices his own upon the altar of necessity and duty. What had occurred at the corrals was a climax to her own judgment and condemnation of the prisoner before the bar.

P. D. affected not to hear that “Dad!” On the contrary, he elaborately raised his hand, paused it over a knight, lifted the knight and set it from a black to a red square. Dangerous and violent consequences, Hilda knew, were more than likely to follow should she persist. A matter of life and death concerned not the chess monomaniac when a game was in progress. Not till the old gambler could shout the final:

“Check to your king, sir! Game!” should man, woman, child, or dog dare to address the players.

“Dad!”

P. D.’s hand, which had just left the aforementioned Knight, made a curious motion. It closed up into a fist that shot into the palm of his left hand. Up flashed bright old eyes, glaring fiercely through double-lensed glasses. Up lifted the shaggy old head, jerked amazedly from one to the other of the discomfited pair before him.

“What’s this? What’s this? Business hours changed, heh? Who the——”

Bully Bill cleared his throat elaborately and lustered a clumsy step forward.

“Just come over to the house to tell you I’ve fired his royal nibs, sir, and he’ll be over for his pay.”

“You’ve what?”

“Fired——”

Half arising from his feet, P. D. emitted a long, blood-curdling, blistering string of original curses that caused even his hardened foreman to blench. That raised voice, those unmistakable words of wrath penetrated across the room and into the cocked ear of Sandy’s sleeping dog. Full and exciting as the owner of Viper made all of his days, the exhausted animal never failed, when opportunity offered, to secure such rest as fate might allow him from the wild career through which his master daily whirled him. Nevertheless that raised and testy voice, for all Viper knew, might be directed against the one he loved best on earth.

Viper turned a moist nose mournfully to the ceiling, and ere the last of the scorching words of P. D. McPherson had left his lips, a low moan of exquisite sympathy and pain came from the direction of the overstuffed couch. Instantly the red, alarmed flush of guilt and terror flooded the freckled face of the owner of the dog, as wriggling around to escape that raised hand of his furious parent, Sandy added chaos to confusion by upsetting the sacred chess board.

There was a roar from the outraged chess player, a whining protest from the boy, ducking out of his way, and at that critical moment, Viper sprang to the defence of his master. Planting himself before P. D. McPherson, the little dog barked furiously and menacingly, and then fled before the foot kicked out for dire punishment. Pandemonium broke loose in that lately quiet room, dedicated to the scientific, silent game of chess.

“Who let that dog in?” roared the enraged ranchman.

“He come in himself,” averred Sandy, quailing and trembling before his father’s terrible glance, and casting a swift, furtive look about him for an easy means of exit.

“Get him out! Get him out! Get him out!” shouted P. D., and, seizing a golf club, he jabbed at the swiftly disappearing animal. For awhile, dog and boy cavorted through the room, the one racing to safe places under sofas and behind chairs and piano, and the other coaxing, pleading, threatening, till at last, crawling cravenly along the floor on his stomach, Viper gave himself up to justice.

“Hand him over to me,” demanded P. D.

“Wh-what’re you goin’ to do to him?” quavered the boy, an eye on the niblick in P. D.’s hand, and holding his treasured possession protectingly to his ragged breast.

“Never mind what I’m going to do. You hand that dog to me, do you hear me, and do it G— D— quick!”

“Here he is then,” whimpered Sandy, and set the dog at his father’s feet.

There was a flash, a streak across the room, and the dog had disappeared into some corner of the great ranch house. The boy, with a single glance at his father’s purpling face, took to his heels as if his life were imperilled and followed in the steps of his dog.