“M-m-m-miss Hilda, I r-r-recommend this f-for b-b-both pleasure and information. It’s p-p-part of one’s education to read Dumas.”
Education! The word was inflammatory. It was an affront to her pride. He was rubbing in the fact of her appalling ignorance. That was her own affair—her own misfortune. Hilda sprang to her feet, up in arms, on the defensive and the offensive. While the astonished Cheerio still extended the book—a silent peace offering—Hilda’s dark head tossed up, in that characteristic motion, while her foot stamped the ground.
“I don’t care for that kind of rot, thank you. My dad’s right. It’s better to be real people in the world rather than fake folk in a book.”
Again the head toss and the blaze of angry wide eyes; then, swift as a fawn, Hilda sped across the verandah and the ranch house door banged hard.
Thus might have ended the Dumas incident, but on the following day, when the men were all out on the range, she who had spurned The Three Musketeers slipped out of the ranch house, over to the grove of trees to the east and running behind the shelter of these, so that Chum Lee should not see her as she passed, made her way swiftly to the bunkhouse.
Bunkhouses in a ranching country are not savoury or attractive places as a general rule. This of the O Bar O was “not too bad” as the expression goes in Alberta. It had the virtue at all events of being clean, thanks to the assiduous care of Chum Lee. Moreover, shiftless and dirty fellows found a short job at O Bar O. Hats and caps, hide shirts, buckskin breeks, chaps and coats were all, therefore, neatly hung along the wall on the row of deer horns, while under these were piled on the long shelf the puttees, boots and other gear of the riders.
The bunkhouse was lavishly decorated, the entire walls being covered with pictures cut from magazines or newspapers or from other sources and pasted or tacked upon the wall. Ladies in skin tights of rounded and ample curves, in poses calculated to attract the attention of the opposite sex, ravishing beauties, all more or less with that stage smile in which all of the dental equipment of their owners, alluringly displayed, beamed down above the beds of the riders of O Bar O. Hilda had seen these often before and they had no especial interest for her. Her glance travelled instead to the long table on which was piled the treasured possessions of the men, correspondence boxes, tobacco, pipes, jackknives, quirts, gloves, letters and photographs of friends and relatives. Nothing on that table would likely belong to him. Nothing suggested Cheerio. Her eye went slowly down the row of beds till it came to rest upon that one pulled out from the wall till the head was thrust directly under the widely opened window, by the side of which stood the crude bookcase and stand. She paused only a moment and then swiftly crossed to the Englishman’s bed.
Three of the shelves were filled tightly with books and the bottom one held a writing folio and sketch tablet. This Hilda seized upon, but stopped before opening it, while the colour receded from her cheeks. Within that folio, perhaps, would be found some clue, some letter from the woman he loved. Yes, Hilda faced the fact that Cheerio loved the woman whose pictured face was in the locket, and for whom he had come to Canada to make a home. As she held the folio in her hand, she felt a passionate impulse of shame that fought her natural curiosity, and caused her to put the thing back upon the shelf. No! She had not come to the bunkhouse to spy into a man’s correspondence. It was only that she suffered from an unconquerable hunger merely again to see the other woman’s face; to study it, to compare it with her own—Oh! to destroy it! But no, no—she would not stoop so low as to look at something which he did not wish her to see.
The book was a different matter. He had offered it to her. It was therefore really her own. Thus argued Hilda within herself. A quick search along the shelves and she had picked out the volume she sought. It was marked number one in the row of books by Alexandre Dumas. Thrusting it under her cape, Hilda hurried to the door, and once again like a scared child who has been stealing apples, she slipped behind the sheltering bushes, came from behind them into the open and sped across the yard to the house.
All of that morning, Hilda McPherson was dead to the world. Lying on the great fragrant heap in the hay loft, she lost herself in the meshes of one of the most entrancing romances that has ever been penned by the hand of man. She emerged from her retreat at the dinner hour, brought back to earth by the arrival of the “hands” in the barn below. It was haying time and the men came in from the fields for their noon meal. Certain of the horses were changed and relieved and brought to the stables for especial feeding. Hiding her precious book under a pile of hay in a corner of the loft, Hilda descended, and still under the spell of the book she had been reading all morning, made her way to the house.
It so happened, that in her absorption, she had paid little attention to Sandy’s dog, who leaped up at her as she passed, capered around her, sought to lick her hands and otherwise ingratiate himself. Absently Hilda ordered him down.
“That will do, Viper! Now cut it out! Get away! Get away! Shoooo‑o‑o! Bad dog! Down!”
Duly admonished, spirits but slightly dampened, Viper repaired to the barn, where for a spell, with his tongue hanging out and panting from recent long runs across the land after his master on horse,
