If, however, the young McPhersons had missed school, they had learned much of which the average child of to-day is more or less ignorant. They knew all of the theories concerned in the formation of this earth of ours, and the living things upon it. They were intimately acquainted with every visible and many invisible stars and planets in the firmament. They had a plausible and a comprehensible explanation for such phenomena as the milky way, the comets, the northern lights, the asteroids and other denizens of the miraculous Alberta sky above them. They knew what the west, the east, the north and the south winds portended. They could calculate to a nicety the distance of a thunderstorm. No mean weather prophets were the children of P. D. McPherson; nor were their diagnosis dependent upon guess-work, or an aching tooth, or rheumatic knee, or even upon intuition or superstition, as in the case of the Indian.
Woodlore they knew, and the names and habits of the wild things that abounded in the woods of O Bar O. Insects, ants, butterflies, bees, were known by their scientific names. A rainbow, a sunrise, sunset, the morning mist, fog, the night sun of Alberta, the Japanese current that brought the Chinook winds over the Rocky Mountains, that changed the weather from thirty below zero to a tropical warmth in Alberta, the melting clouds in the skies, the night rainbows—all these were not merely beautiful phenomena, but the result of natural causes, of which the McPherson children were able to give an intelligent explanation.
They could ride the range and wield the lariat with the best of the cowpunchers. Hilda could brand, vaccinate, dehorn, and wean cattle. She was one of the best brand readers in the country, and she rode a horse as if she were part of the animal itself. She could leap with the agility of a circus rider upon the slippery back of a running outlaw, and, without bridle or saddle, maintain her place upon a jumping, bucking, kicking, wildly rearing “bronc.”
Untamed and wild as the mavericks that, eluding the lariat of the cowpuncher, roamed the range unbranded and unbroken, Hilda and Sandy McPherson came up out of their childhood years, and paused like timid, curious young creatures of the wild upon the perilous edge of maturity.
Hilda was not without a comprehension of certain things in life that had been denied her. If her heart was untamed, it was not the less hungry and ardent. Though she realized that she had missed something precious and desirable in life, she was possessed with a spartan and sensitive pride. About her ignorance, she had erected a wall of it.
It was all very well to ride thus freely over the splendid open spaces and to wend her fearless way through the beckoning woods of the Rocky Mountain foothills. It was fine to be part of a game which every day showed the results of labour well done, and to know that such labour was contributing to the upkeep and value of the world. Yet there were times when a very wistful expression of wonder and longing would come into the girl’s dark eyes, and the craving for something other than she had known would make her heart burn within her.
To appease this heart hunger, Hilda sought a medium through the reading matter obtainable at O Bar O; but the reading matter consisted of the Encyclopædia Brittanica, Darwin’s “Origin of the Species,” several scientific works, and two voluminous works on the subject of chess.
For a time, the Encyclopædia afforded sufficient material to satisfy at least her curiosity; but presently a new source was tapped. From the bunkhouse came dime novels and the banned newspapers, which P. D. had more than once denounced as “filthy truck fit for the intelligence of morons only.” Besides these were the Police Gazette, two or three penny dreadfuls, Hearsts’, and several lurid novels of the blood-and-thunder type. This precious reading matter, borrowed or “swiped” by Sandy and Hilda, while the men were on the range, was secretly devoured in hayloft and other secure places of retreat, and made a profound impression upon their eager young minds.
CHAPTER IV
At this time, P. D. McPherson held the title of Champion Chess Player of Western Canada. He was, however, by no means proud or satisfied with this honourable title to chess fame.