He had been equally successful with his horses and other stock. Turning from cattle and stock, P. D. next expended his genius upon the grain. It was a proud and triumphant day for O Bar O when, at the annual Calgary Fair, the old rancher showed a single stalk of wheat, on which were one hundred and fifty kernels.
His alfalfa and rye fields, in a normally dry and hilly part of the country, were the wonder and amazement of farmers and ranchers.
The Government, the Railways, the Flour mills and the Agricultural Colleges, sought him out, and made tempting offers to induce him to yield up to them his secrets.
P. D. stroked his chin, pinched his lower lip, drew his fuzzy eyebrows together, and shook his fine, shaggy old head. He was not yet satisfied that his experiments had reached perfection.
He’d “think it over.” He’d “see about it some day, maybe,” and he “wasn’t so damned cussed sure that it would benefit the world to produce cheap wheat at the present time. This way out, gentlemen! This way out!”
He was a rude old man, was P. D. McPherson.
In a way, he was obliged to be so, for otherwise he would have been enormously imposed on. O Bar O was in the heart of the game and fishing country, and was, therefore, the mecca of all aspiring hunters and fishermen, to say nothing of the numerous campers and motor hoboes, who drove in every day upon the land and left their trail of disorder and dirt behind, and quite often small or large forest fires, that were kept under control only by the vigilance of O Bar O.
The ranch was noted for its hospitality, and no tramp or stranger or rider along the trail had ever been turned from its door. The line, however, had to be drawn somewhere, and it was drawn in so far as the idle tourists, pausing en route to Banff or Lake Louise to “beat” a meal or a pleasant day at the ranch, were concerned, or the numerous motor hoboes, who, denied at the ranch house their numerous requests for milk and eggs and gasolene and the privilege of spending the night there, slipped in under the bridge by the river, and set up their camps on the banks of the Ghost River.
About the time when his wheat had brought him considerable, but undesired, fame, P. D., holding his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, was looking about for new experimental worlds to conquer. By chance, his motherless son and daughter, then of the impressionable ages of four and ten respectively, shot under his especial notice, through the medium of a ride down the bannister and resultant noise.
P. D. studied his offspring appraisingly and thoughtfully, and as he looked into the grimy, glooming young faces, he conceived another one of his remarkable “inspirations.”