“Yes, I do mean to say—the very worst there is about you, and you can get right off O Bar O the minute your month is up. I’ll undertake to be responsible to my father and——”
Ho’s tongue searched his cheek. An ugly chuckle came from him and his slow words caused the girl to draw back as if struck.
“Since you’re so stuck on him——”
Hilda was aware that the door behind her had opened and then was banged to. She whirled around, and found herself face to face with Cheerio. Even in the moonlight, she could see that his face was set and stern as his glance passed by her and rested upon the shifting gaze of Ho, who suddenly, hurriedly moved away.
There was no sound now but the sobbing breath of the excited Hilda. Bully Bill had followed his assistant. She was alone on the verandah with Cheerio. A moment she looked up in the quiet moonlight at the man she had told herself so often that she hated.
What must he think of her now? Had he heard Holy Smoke’s taunt? Would he believe then that she—The thought was intolerable—an agony; but her agony was turned to a curious bliss, when, quite suddenly, she felt her hand warmly enclosed. For a long moment, he held her captive and she felt the deep gaze of his eyes searching her own. Then she was released, and like one in a dream she heard rather than saw him moving away from her. Unconsciously, a sob in her throat, Hilda McPherson held out her arms toward him. But he did not see her. She had a sudden frantic apprehension that he would go after Holy Smoke—that there would be a fight and he—An almost primitive fear of harm befalling him, sent Hilda along to the edge of the verandah. Then she heard something that stopped her flight, and held her there, straining to hear the last note of that long, soft whistle which rose in crescendo like a bird’s song that dropped across the silence of the night and slowly melted away.
Something rose in a suffocating flood in the heart of the Alberta-born girl. Spellbound and shaken, suddenly Hilda consciously faced the truth: She loved!
CHAPTER XX
The shooting season was at hand. At frequent intervals along the fence lines of O Bar O, big square slabs of white enamelled wood were nailed to fence posts, bearing in great black letters the legend:
TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN
Punished to fullest extent of law.
BEWARE THE DOGS
P. D. McPherson, Owner.