“Well, well, what’s this? What’s this? Stop pawing me,” he objected. “What in the name of Holy Christmas are you whimpering about? I don’t like it. Women’s tears are a scientific evidence of a weak intellect. Stop sniffling, I say! Stop leaking on my neck! Damn dash it all! Get away! Get away!”
Hilda’s rare tears, dropping like pearls down her russet cheeks, described as leaks! In the presence of that man, stooping above the chess board the better to hide the amused grin that would show despite his best efforts, despite indeed the stony glare (if eyes moist with running-over tears could stonily glare) that Hilda favoured him with.
She had no soft thoughts for him now. If she could have forgotten his confession at the corrals, Hilda felt that she never, never could forgive his treatment of her father.
Just what Hilda would have desired him to do in the circumstances, cannot be said. She would have shared her father’s resentment had Cheerio purposely played a poor game, in order to give the older man an opportunity to win. Nevertheless she bitterly resented the fact that his victories were crushing the spirit of the old chess warrior. There had been some discussion—an idea, in fact, put out in the newspaper of that miserable reporter who was camped down by the river, on the edge of the O Bar O lands, that in the event of P. D.’s failure to beat the Englishman that the latter should take his place in Chicago, so that Canada’s chances of the world championship might be more likely assured.
That story, read by Hilda in the newspaper brought her from the camp by Sandy, and jealously hidden from her father, caused the girl’s heart to ache. She was intensely patriotic, was Hilda, and she desired, as any good Canadian would, to see the championship wrested from the U. S. A., but she loathed the thought of the wrester being Cheerio. She had fondly hoped to see her father in that desired role. Her heart coiled in tenderness about the crochetty, thorny old man, with his stumbling moves. She could not recall when her father had played so poorly or so uncertainly. He seemed to have lost all of his former skill. His confidence in himself as a chess player was completely gone. Anyone could have seen that after watching the old man play. Even the winning of one game might have a good effect and restore P. D.’s former confidence and craft. It was the daily absorption in the game, and the constant losing which was having its bad psychological effect upon him. Hilda knew that if P. D. failed to keep that Chicago engagement, he would suffer the bitterest disappointment of his life. She feared, indeed, it would seriously affect his health. He would lose his interest in chess forever, and for P. D. to lose interest in chess was tantamount to losing interest in life itself.
CHAPTER XIX
Autumn came late to Alberta that year, and in the month of November, the cattle were still upon the range. The experienced cowman in Alberta is never deceived by the long sun-laden days of however warm an Autumn. Well he knows that the climate of Alberta is like unto a temperamental woman whose tantrums may burst forth into fury even while her smile lingers.
It is no uncommon thing in Alberta for a period of warm and balmy weather to be electrically broken by amazing storms and blizzards which spring into being out of a perfectly clear blue sky. Sometimes they last but a few hours; sometimes they rage for a week, during which period the effect is devastating to such of the cattlemen who have their stock still upon the range. The cattle caught unawares in the Autumn blizzard upon the open range will sometimes drift for miles before it and have been known to perish literally by the hundreds when trapped in coulie and gulch or driven for shelter against fence line, lie buried body on body. Because, therefore, blizzards are dangerous matters for the cattle to contend with, it is the custom in Alberta to round up in the month of October, and some outfits round up as early as September.
At O Bar O this year there was an atmosphere of restlessness and uncertainty. The riders were all at hand, awaiting word from the chief to set forth upon the Fall round-up; to bring in the cattle loose on the winter range to the home fields, where they would find ample protection under the long cattle sheds, and be given proper care and attention over the winter months.
For more than a month streams of cattle belonging to other outfits had been passing daily along the Banff Highway, coming down from the summer range on the Indian or Forest Reserve, en route to their winter homes on the ranches. This steadily moving army kept the O Bar O outfit on tenter-hooks.