“Why don’t cha set ’im choppin’ real logs if he’s stuck on the job. Stick ’im in the timber and see if he’ll whistle over his job then.”
So “into the timber” went Cheerio, with strict orders to cut down ten fifty-feet tall trees per day. He looked squarely into the face of the assistant foreman, and said: “Righto,” and took the small hand axe handed him by the solemn-faced Hootmon, whose tongue was in his cheek, and who doubled over in silent mirth as soon as Cheerio’s back was turned. But neither Mootmon, nor Ho, nor Bully Bill, nor, for that matter, old P. D. or his son and daughter, laughed when at the end of the day Cheerio returned with twelve trees to his credit for the day’s work. It was, in fact, a matter of considerable wonder and speculation as to the method employed by the Englishman to achieve those twelve immense trees through the medium of that small hand axe. Cheerio went on whistling, kept his own counsel, and was starting off the next morning upon a similar errand when Bully Bill harkened to another suggestion of his assistant, and beckoned him to the corrals.
There was a wary-eyed, ominously still, maverick tied to a post, and him Cheerio was ordered to mount. He said:
“Hello, old man—waiting for me, what?” smiled at the boy holding his head, and swung up into the saddle.
“Now,” said Bully Bill. “You lookut here. You ride that bronc to hell and back again, and break ’er cowboy if you have to break your own head and hide and heart in doing it.”
Then someone untied the halter rope, and the race was on. He was tossed over and over again clear over the head of the wild maverick, and over and over again he remounted, to be thrown again by the wildly kicking bronco. Bruised and sore, with a cut lip and black eye, he pursued, caught, and again and again mounted, again and again was thrown, to mount once again, and to stick finally like glue to the horse’s back, while the hooting, yelling ring of men surrounding the corrals—Hilda and Sandy upon the railings—yelled themselves hoarse with derisive comments and directions, and then went wild with amazed delight, when, still upon the back of a subdued and shivering young outlaw, Cheerio swept around the corrals. He arose in his stirrups now, himself cheering lustily, and waving that newly-acquired O Bar O hat like a boy. Even Hilda begrudged him not the well-earned cheers, though she stifled back her own with her hand upon her mouth, when she found that he had observed her, and with eyes kindling with pride, rode by.
He was thumped upon the back, hailed as “a hellufafellow,” and enjoyed the pronounced favour and patronage of Bully Bill himself, who brought forth his grimy plug of chewing tobacco, and offered a “chaw” of it to the Englishman. Cheerio bit into it with relish, nor showed any sign of the nauseating effects of a weed he preferred in his pipe rather than his mouth.
As a matter of fact, like most Englishmen of his class, Cheerio was an excellent rider, though his riding had not been of the sort peculiar to cowboydom. However, it did not take him long to learn “the hang of the thing.” He dropped his posting for the easy, cowboy lope, and he discovered that, while one clung with his knees when on an English saddle, such an action had painful and exhausting results with a stock saddle. There really was something to Bully Bill’s simple formula:
“Hell! There ain’t nothin’ to this here ridin’. All you got to do is throw your leg over his back and—stick!”
His English training, however, stood him in good stead. More than the foreman at O Bar O noted and appreciated the fact that the newcomer was as intimate with horses as if they were human brethren.