Tramp, tramp again and:
“Sandy! You come here, you red-haired young whipper-snapper—You hear me very well. Sandy! Sandy! San-n-dy!”
No reply. It was evident that the house was empty and his son and daughter nowhere within hearing unless in hiding. Chum Lee scurried past back from the corrals, and apparently unconscious of the amazed and furious string of blistering epithets and cusses that pursued him from his “bossie.”
From the direction of the corrals a din surged, the moaning, groaning calves and the mothers penned in the neighbouring field. These cries were not music to the ears of the formerly proud owner of the cattle. It mattered not this day to P. D. whether a brand was slapped on true or banged on upside down; whether it were blurred or distinct. It mattered not whether the dehorning shears had snipped to one inch of the animal’s head as prescribed by law, or had clipped down into the skull itself. He paid a foreman crackajack wages to look after his cattle. If he could not do the work properly, there were other foremen to be had in Alberta. P. D. had no desire whatsoever to go to the corrals and witness the operations. His place at the present time was the house, where one could occupy their minds with the scientific game of chess.
“Sandy! Sandy!”
Back into the house went the irate P. D. The chess table was jerked out and the chess board set up. P. D. propped up a book containing illustrations of certain famous chess games, before him, and set his men in place.
P. D. began the game with a dummy partner, making his own move first and with precise care his partner’s. Fifteen minutes of chess solitaire and then out again, and another and louder calling for his son and his daughter.
No doubt they were at the corrals, dog blast their young fool souls. What was the matter with that bleak nit-wit of a foreman? He was hired to run a ranch, and given more men for the job than that allotted by any other ranch for a similar work. What in blue hades did he mean by drawing upon the house for labor? The son and daughter of P. D. McPherson were not common ranch hands that every time a bit of branding or rounding-up was done they should be pulled out to assist with the blanketty, blistering, hell-fire work.
Raging up and down, up and down, through the wide verandah and back through the halls and into the living-room again and again at the unsatisfactory chess solitaire, the furious old rancher was in a black mood when voices outside the verandah caused him to jerk his chin forward at attention. The missing miscreants had returned!