CHAPTER XXVII

Hilda awoke with a sob. She sat up in bed, pressing her hands to her eyes. Slowly, painfully, she recalled the events of the previous night.

She had called him a cheat—a coward! She had said that she never wished to see his face again! She had driven him from O Bar O. He had gone out of her life now forever.

Hilda could see the dim light of the approaching dawn already tinting the wide eastern sky. It was a chill, raw morning. He would walk out from O Bar O, with his old, battered grip in his hand and that gray suit that had so edified the ranch hands. Her breast rose and swelled. The tears of the previous night threatened to overwhelm her again. Hilda had literally cried practically all of the night, and her hour’s sleep had come only through sheer exhaustion.

The unhappy girl crept out of bed and knelt by the window, peering out in the first grey gloom of the Autumn morning, toward the bunkhouse. She fancied she saw something moving in that direction, but the light was dim, and she could not be sure.

It was cold and damp as she knelt on the floor. No matter. He would be cold and chilled, too, and she had driven him from O Bar O!

A light gleamed now in the dusk over at the saddle rooms. A glance at her watch showed it was not yet six o’clock. He would make an early start, probably leaving before the men started off on the round-up—they were to leave for the range at seven that morning.

Without quite realizing what she was doing, Hilda dressed swiftly. The cold water on her tear-blistered face soothed and cooled it. She wrapped a cape about herself, put on a knitted tam.

The halls were dark, but she dared not turn on the electric lights, lest she should awaken Sandy or her father. Feeling her way along the wall, she found the stairs, and clinging to the bannister went quickly down. A moment to seek the door knob, and swing the big door open. At last she was out of the house.

The cold air smote and revived her. It gave her courage and strength.

The darkness was slowly lifting, and all over the sky the silvery waves of morning were now spreading. Hilda sped like a fawn across the barn yard, through the corrals and directly to the saddle room, from whence came the light. The upper part of the door was open, and Hilda pushed the lower part and stepped inside.

A man in white chaps was bending over a saddle to which he was attaching a lariat rope. As the lower door slammed shut behind Hilda, he started like an overtaken thief, and jumped around. Hilda saw his face. It was Holy Smoke.

All at once Hilda McPherson knew that before her stood the man who had tried to lariat her in the woods. She stared at him now in a sort of fascinated horror. A cunning look of surprised delight was creeping over the man’s face. Hilda put her hand behind her and backed for the door. At the same time, once again she raised her voice, and sent forth that loud cry of alarm:

“Hi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-iiiii-i-i-i-i!”

The cry was choked midway. She was held in a strangling hold, the big hand of the cowpuncher gripped upon her throat.

“There’ll be none of the Hi-yi-ing for you to-day! If you make another peep, I’ll choke you to death! I’m quittin’ O Bar O for good and all to-day, but before I go you and me has got an account to settle.”

She fought desperately, with all her splendid young strength, scratching, kicking, biting, beating with her fists like a wild thing at bay, and, with the first release as he staggered back, when her sharp teeth dug into his hands, again she raised her voice; but this time her cry was stopped by the brutal blow of the man’s fist. She clutched at the wall behind her. The earth seemed to rock and sway and for the first time in all her healthy young life, Hilda McPherson fainted.

She lay on a sheepskin, a man’s coat beneath her head. Chum Lee knelt beside her, cup in hand. She swallowed with difficulty, for her throat pained her and she still felt the grip of those terrible fingers. Hilda moaned and moved her head from side to side. The Chinaman said cheerfully:

“All lightee now, Miss Hilda. Chum Lee flix ’im fine. Slut ’im. Bang ’im. Slut ’im up till Mr. Cheerio come. Big fight!” Chum Lee’s eyes gleamed. “All same Holy Smoke bad man. Take ’im gun. Banfi! Sloot Mr. Cheerio. Velly good, now lide on lail.”

Hilda understood only that Holy Smoke had shot Cheerio.

She clutched the Chinaman’s arm, and forced herself to her feet. Pushing Chum Lee aside, Hilda made her way from the saddle shed, where they had laid her.

Outside, the sharp cold air of the Fall morning was like a dash of bitter water and brought its revivifying effect. Hilda turned in the direction of the voice she now heard clearly, for sound carries far in a country like Alberta, and although Hilda could clearly hear the voices of the men, they were in fact more than a mile from the ranch. She was obsessed with the idea that Cheerio had been killed and that her men had taken his murderer into the woods and were hanging him. Oh! she wanted a hand in that hanging. Everything primitive and wild in her nature surged now into being, as she made her way blindly down that incredibly long hill and ran stumblingly through the pasture lands to where the group of men were about some strange object that was tied and bound half sitting on a rail. Then Hilda understood, and waves of unholy joy swept over her in a flood. They were tarring and feathering Holy Smoke!

Above the deafening roar of the cheering shouting voices, presently rose the clear call of the one she knew. No fluttering, stammering tongue now. The voice of a captain, a leader among men:

“One, two, three! In she goes!”

The rail was swung back and forth, and at that “Three,” with a roar from twenty or thirty throats, it was released from the hands gripping it at either end and plunged into the muddy water of the shallow slough. It described a somersault. Head downward went the man they had tarred and feathered. The rail jerked over, and the head of Holy Smoke arose out of the water, a grotesque paste of mud and tar covering it completely. Loud shouts of glee arose from the men. They jeered and yelled to the struggling wretch in the water.

From the direction of the ranch, came the sound of the loud clanking breakfast bell of Chum Lee. In high good humour, with appetites whetted and vengeance satisfied, the men of O Bar O retraced their steps toward the ranch, prepared for that hearty breakfast which should stiffen them against the invigorating work of at last rounding up.

Cheerio alone remained by the slough, and Hilda, watching him from the little clump of bush, witnessed a strange and merciful act on his part; the sort of thing a man of Cheerio’s type was accustomed to do at the front, when an enemy, hors de combat, needed final succour. Cheerio thrust two long logs into the mud of the slough, very much as he had done when he had rescued the heifer in the woods. Now also he went out across the logs and cut the ropes that bound the man to the rail. Holy Smoke grasped after the logs, clung to them desperately, and Cheerio gave his stiff order to him to get off the place as expeditiously as possible if he valued his hide.

Having set the man free, Cheerio returned to the bank, stopped to clean the mud off his boots with a handy stick and then moved to follow after the men, now at a considerable distance.

Hilda, her blue and red cape flapping back from her as she came from the little bush toward him, was holding out both her hands, but as Cheerio stopped short they dropped helplessly at her side. His grave eyes slowly travelled over the piteous little figure in his path. The eyes that had been so stern now softened, but Cheerio could not speak at that moment. Something rose in his throat and held him spellbound, looking at the girl he loved and whom he had expected never to see again. Hilda’s eyes were unnaturally wide and dark; her lips were as tremulous as a flower and quivering like those of a hurt child. The flag of hostility and hate was down forever. She was pathetic and most lovely in her humility.

Cheerio murmured something unintelligible and held out his arms to her. Hilda would have gone indeed directly to that haven; but there was Sandy racing along the trail on Silver Heels, shouting like an Indian excited queries and shrilly demanding to know why he had been “left out of the fun.” Nevertheless, Cheerio had sensed the unconscious motion of the girl, and a light broke over his face, driving away the last shadow. His wide, boyish smile beamed down upon her. Speech failed him not at that blessed moment.

“Darling!” said Cheerio, in such a voice that Hilda thought the word an even more beautiful one than the “Dear” he had once before called her.

“Hi, Hilday! What’s all the racket about? What they done to Ho? Where is he? Dad’s goin’ to kill ’em. He’s gone plumb crazy at the house. Chum Lee come on in an tol’ ’im that he beat you up. Is that true?”

Cheerio answered for her.

“He’s a bad lot, Sandy, and he’s got his deserts.” His eyes were still on Hilda. It didn’t seem possible that he could withdraw them. Over her pale cheeks a glow was coming like the dawn, and her shy glance trembled toward his own.

“My! Dad’s hoppin’ mad. Ses hangin’ ain’t too good for him, the dirty dog, an I say it too! What’d he do to you? What was you doin’ in the barn at that hour?”

Hilda shook her head. Her eyes were shining so that even Sandy was nonplussed.

“You don’t look beaten up,” said her brother, and Hilda laughed and then unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears and she sobbed.

“Gee! I wish someone’d waked me up. Doggone it, I don’t see why I was left out. Wish I’d caught him hittin’ my sister! Dad’s nearly crazy. You better hustle along home, Hilda. You’d think you were the only person at O Bar O now to hear Dad talk. He’s thinkin’ up every mean thing he ever said to you and he’s cryin’ like a baby.”

“Poor old Dad!” said Hilda, softly.

A movement on the edge of the slough now attracted the incredulous eyes of Sandy McPherson. He was shuffling into the clothes left for him on the bank. Instantly Sandy had reined up beside him. He yelled insults and epithets down at the shivering wretch on the bank, stuck his fingers into his mouth and produced a hooting whistle; then Sandy played at lariating the man, but Ho, with a venomous look, grasped the rope as it fell in a ring near him, and there was a tug of war for its possession between man and boy. Sandy let go the rope and concentrated upon the nine foot long bull whip in his other hand. Yelling to the man to move along swiftly and to get “to hello” off O Bar O, Hilda’s brother pursued her assailant.

Meanwhile, Hilda and Cheerio seized the opportunity to continue that interrupted duologue. He said suddenly, after a rapt moment:

“Hilda, you don’t hate me then, do you, dear?”

In a little voice, Hilda said:

“No.”

“And you d-don’t want me to go away, do you?”

Hilda shook her head, too moved for more speech, but her eyes brimmed at the mere thought of his going. That was too much for Cheerio, and regardless of Sandy, he took Hilda’s hand.

“Then I’ll stay,” he said, softly.

Hand in hand, they were moving homeward, walking in an entranced silence, the glow of the early morning drawing them under its golden spell; but before Sandy had joined them, all that they had yearned to say and hear was spoken.

“Hilda! I love you!”

“Oh, do you? Then—then—that Nanna—”

“Nanna is seventy-four. My old nurse, Hilda. When I returned from—Germany—I was a prisoner there nine months, Hilda—Nanna was the only one at home who knew me. You see—you see—it was better that they shouldn’t know me. M-m-my brother was in my place. And you see, Hilda, I c-came out here, and N-Nanna planned to f-follow me. She is seventy-four.”

“Seventy-four! Oh, I thought—I thought—that picture in the locket——”

“That was Sybil—now my brother’s wife.”

Wonderful things were happening to Hilda. She wanted to laugh; she wanted to cry, and the pink cheek wavered from him, and then came to rest against his rough sleeve. Cheerio never even glanced back to see if Sandy were at hand. He placed his arm completely and competently around Hilda’s waist. Their lips were very close. This time it was Hilda who whispered the words, and Cheerio bent so close to hear them that his lips came upon her own.

“Oh, I loved you all the time!” said Hilda McPherson.

At this juncture, they stopped walking, for one may not kiss as satisfactorily while moving along.

When Hilda regained her power of speech, she said:

“I’m never going to say another unkind thing to you.”

“You can say anything you want, sweetheart,” said Cheerio. “Whatever you say will sound just right to me—dearest old girl.”

It occurred to Hilda that he possessed a most wonderful and extensive vocabulary. She had never heard such terms before, and when she had read them Hilda had felt embarrassed, and in her rough way had thought: “Oh, slush!”

But somehow the words had an almost lyrical sound when uttered by the infatuated Cheerio.

They were brought back to life by the yipping, jeering Sandy.

“Gee! I believe you two’s struck on each other!”

He reined up beside them and examined the telltale faces with all a boy’s cunning and disgusted amusement.

“Say, are you goin’ to git married?”

“You better believe we are!” laughed Cheerio, falling easily into the slang of the country.

“Holy Salmon! Well, there’s no accountin’ for tastes,” said Hilda’s young brother, with disparagement. Then resignedly: “But, I betchu Dad’ll be tickled. He’ll have a life partner for chess. Gee! Here’s where I escape!”

He kicked his heels into his horse’s flanks and with the grace and agility of a circus rider, with neither saddle nor bridle merely a halter—Sandy was off. He turned bodily around in his seat on the running horse’s back to yell back at them as he rode, hand to mouth:

“Aw, cut out the spoons! I’m going to hustle home and break the news to fa-ather! Let ’er go, bronc! Let ’er fly! Let ’er fly!”

They smiled after the vanishing boy, smiled into each other’s faces and smiled at the sunshine and the gilded hills, now shining in the full light of the marvellous Alberta sun. After a moment, shyly, despite the fact that she was held closely to him:

“What’s your real name?”

“Edward Eaton Charlesmore of Macclesfield and Coventry.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“N-no, I’m not, darling. That’s my real name.”

Hilda smiled delightedly.

“But what do they call you?”

He laughed, squeezed her tightly, kissed her and then kissed her again.

“Cheerio!” he said.

“But that’s not a real name!”

“It’s good enough for me. You gave me it, you know.”

“And—and are you really a duke or something like that?”

Again he laughed.

“You bet I am.”

Her face fell. She regretted his high estate. Cheerio put his lips against her small pink ear, and he kissed it before he whispered what he said was a great secret:

“Hilda, I’ll tell you who I am: Cheerio, Duke of the O Bar O, and you’re the darling Duchess!”

“That’s Jake!” said Hilda.

THE END

Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Table of Contents added by the transcriber.

Known changes have been made as follows: