With the thought of his past, came irresistibly back to torment her the woman of the locket—“Nanna,” for whom he had come to Canada to make a home. She had never been wholly absent from Hilda’s thought and unconsciously now, as in the midst of her bliss she came back vividly to mind, a little sob escaped her. She tried to fight the encroaching thought of this woman’s claim.
“Suppose he had been in love with her, I’ve cut her out! She is done for.”
Thus Hilda, to the unresponsive wall facing her.
Suppose, however, they were engaged. That was a word that was followed by marriage. This thought sent Hilda to her feet, stiff with a new alarm. The unquiet demon of Jealousy had struck its fangs deep into the girl’s innermost heart. She no sooner tried to recall his face as he had looked at her in the moonlight, the warm clasp of his hand, the term of endearment that had slipped from his lips, when the knife was twisted again within her, and she saw the lovely face of the other woman smiling at her from the gold locket, with her fair hair enshrined on the opposite side.
The recollection was intolerable—unendurable to one of Hilda’s tempestuous nature. Suppose she should come to Alberta! Perhaps she would not release him, even if he desired it! Suppose she should come even to O Bar O. How would she—Hilda—bear to meet her? Her wild imagination pictured the arrival, and Hilda began to walk her floor. Love was now a purgatory. What was she to do? What was she to do? Hilda asked herself this question over and over again, and then when her pain became more than she could bear, she turned desperately to her door. At any cost, however humiliating to her pride, she would learn the truth. She would go directly to him. She would ask him point-blank whether from this time on it was to be her or—Nanna!
She had done without her dinner. She could not have eaten had she been able to force herself to the table. Her father had called her, Sandy had pounded upon her door. It mattered not. Hilda was deaf to all summons, save those clamouring ones within her.
As far as that goes, she was not the only one at O Bar O who had gone supperless.
Cheerio, after she had left him, remained at the foot of the steps, just looking up at the door through which the world for him seemed to have vanished. How long he stood thus, cannot be estimated by minutes or seconds. Presently he sat down upon the steps, and soon was lost in a blissful daze of abstraction.
Above him spread the great map of the skies, at this time of year especially beautiful, star-spotted and slashed with the long rays of Northern lights and the night rainbows. Still and electric was the night. Keen and fresh the air. The ranch sounds were like mellow musical echoes. Even the clang of Chum Lee’s cow-bell, calling all hands to the evening meal, seemed part of the all-abiding charm of that perfect night.
The voices of the men en route from bunkhouse to cook-car, the sharp bark of the dog Viper, and the answering growls of the cattle dogs, the coyote, still wailing wildly in the hills.