He was whooping and hurrahing internally for himself and he felt as proud of his achievement as if he had won a hard pitched battle. In fact, if one reckoned success in the terms of dollars and of cents, then Cheerio had saved for O Bar O the considerable sum of $1,500, which was the value of the purebred heifer rescued from the slough. Moreover, Cheerio had brought from the bush the full quota of missing cows and their offspring. When at last he joined up with that steadily-growing line pouring down from all parts of the woods and the ranges, to join in the lower meadows, he was whistling and jubilantly keeping time to his music with the clanking “bell,” and when he came within sight of his “mates” he waved his hat above his head, and rode gleefully down among them, shouting and boasting of his day’s work. He counted his cows with triumph before the doubting “Thomases” who had predicted that the tenderfoot would come out of that dense wood with half a heifer’s horn and a calf’s foot.
They rode westward under a sky bright blue, while facing them, wrapped about in a haze of soft mauve, the snow-crowned peaks of the Rocky Mountains towered before them like a dream. The glow of a late summer day was tinting all of the horizon and rested in slumberous splendour upon the wide-spreading bosom of pastures and meadows and fair undulating sloping hills. Almost in silence, as if unconsciously subdued by the beauty of the day, came the O Bar O outfit, riding ahead, behind, and flanking the two sides of that marvellous army of cattle.
Small wonder that the Englishman’s heart beat high and that his blood seemed to race in his veins with an electrical fervour that comes from sheer joy and satisfaction with life. If anyone had asked him whether he regretted the life he had deliberately sacrificed for this wild “adventure” in Western Canada, he would have shouted with all the vehemence and it may be some of the typical profanity of O Bar O:
“Not by a blistering pipeful! This is the life! It’s r-ripping! It’s—Jake!”
But now they were at the corrals. Finished the exhilarating riding of the range, done the pretty work of cutting out the cattle and drawing the herd into that line while one by one they were passed through the gates that opened into especial pastures assigned for the mothers, while the calves that were to be operated upon were “cut out” and driven into the corrals.
Slowly Cheerio tore his gaze from the fascinating spectacle of that moving stream of cattle and turned towards the corral. He saw, first of all, a giant structure, a platform on which was a gallowslike contrivance. Already a bawling calf had been driven up the incline and its head had been gripped by the closing gates around its neck. The Squeezegate! The dehorning shears were being sharpened over the grindstone and the whirring of the wheel, the grating of the steel hissed into the moaning cries of the trapped calves in the corrals.
XII
Holy Smoke rode in ahead with orders from Bully Bill for all hands finished riding to fall to and help at the branding and the dehorning. To each man was assigned some especial post or task, and Ho was in his element as he shouted his orders to the men, “showing off” in great form. His left eye had flattened in a broad wink to the veterinary surgeon, as he paused by Cheerio, turned now from the Squeezegate and trying to recapture the enthusiasm that had animated him before he had noted that platform.
“Hey you there! Bull ses yer to give a hand to the Doc, and there ain’t no time neither for mannicarring your nails before fallin’ to. This ain’t no weddin’ march, take it from me. We ain’t had no roundup for fun. We’re here to brand and dehorn, d’ you get me?”
“Righto!”
Cheerio drew up sprightly before Dr. Murray and saluted that grimy, nicotine-stained “vet.” The latter glimpsed him over in one unflattering and comprehensive sweep of a pair of keen black eyes. Then, through the corner of his mouth, he hailed young Sandy, right on the job at the fire.
“Hey, kid, give a poke, will yer? Keep that fire agoing.”
This was a job upon which Sandy doted. From his baby years, fire had been both his joy and his bane, for despite many threats and whippings, the burning down of a costly barn brought a drastic punishment that was to stick hotly in the memory of even a boy who loved fire as dearly as did Sandy. It caused him forevermore to regard matches with respect and an element of fear. P. D. had deliberately burned the tips of his son’s fingers. Though Sandy feared the fire, he still loved it. With both care and craft, therefore, he poked the fire, and pounded the huge pieces of coal till they spluttered and burst into flames. The heat grew intense.
The cattle were now pouring into the corrals and the riders by the gates were cutting out such of the mothers as had gotten through, besides certain weaklings of the herd that were to be spared the branding. These, temporarily driven to adjoining corrals, set up the most deafening outcries and calls for their young, while in the calf corrals these sturdy young creatures voiced their indignant and anguished protests.
Darting in and out of the clamouring herd, the experienced “hands” bunched and separated them according to the bellowing orders of Holy Smoke.
The scorching crunch of the closing Squeezegate and the first long bawl of agony swept the pink from the cheeks of the Englishman. He was seized with a sudden, overwhelming impulse to flee from this Place of Horrors, but as he turned instinctively toward the gate, he saw Hilda standing upon it. She had climbed to the
