“Hilda! Hilda! Hilda! Where’s that girl? Hilda! Hi, you there, G⸺ D⸺ you Chum Lee, where’s Miss Hilda?”
“Me no know, bossie. Chum Lee no sabe where Miss Hilda go on afternoon.”
“Didn’t you see her go by?”
“No, bossie, me no see Miss Hilda. Mebbe she like go see him blandie” (brand).
“Beat it over to the corral and tell her I want her—at once—at once!”
“Hilda! Hil‑l‑lda!”
He made a trumpet of his hands and roared his daughter’s name through it.
“Hil‑lda! Where in the name of the almighty maker of mankind is that girl! Hilda!”
Yanks indeed! Dog damn their souls! Their smug satisfaction with themselves; their genius for bragging and boasting; their ignorance concerning any other part of the earth save the sod on which their own land stood—their colossal self-esteem and intolerance—all this was evidence of an amazing racial provincialism that P. D. proposed to expose and damn forevermore.
“Hilda! Damn it all, where are you?”
“Hilda! You hear me very well, miss!”
Tramp, tramp, tramp. Round and round the house, inside and out, hands twitching behind, holding still to that precious letter.
“Sandy! Sandy! Sa-nn-n-ndy! Where’s that boy gone?”
Tramp, tramp again and:
“Sandy! You come here, you red-haired young whippersnapper—You hear me very well. Sandy! Sandy! San-n-dy!”
No reply. It was evident that the house was empty and his son and daughter nowhere within hearing unless in hiding. Chum Lee scurried past back from the corrals, and apparently unconscious of the amazed and furious string of blistering epithets and cusses that pursued him from his “bossie.”
From the direction of the corrals a din surged, the moaning, groaning calves and the mothers penned in the neighbouring field. These cries were not music to the ears of the formerly proud owner of the cattle. It mattered not this day to P. D. whether a brand was slapped on true or banged on upside down; whether it were blurred or distinct. It mattered not whether the dehorning shears had snipped to one inch of the animal’s head as prescribed by law, or had clipped down into the skull itself. He paid a foreman crackajack wages to look after his cattle. If he could not do the work properly, there were other foremen to be had in Alberta. P. D. had no desire whatsoever to go to the corrals and witness the operations. His place at the present time was the house, where one could occupy their minds with the scientific game of chess.
“Sandy! Sandy!”
Back into the house went the irate P. D. The chess table was jerked out and the chess board set up. P. D. propped up a book containing illustrations of certain famous chess games, before him, and set his men in place.
P. D. began the game with a dummy partner, making his own move first and with precise care his partner’s. Fifteen minutes of chess solitaire and then out again, and another and louder calling for his son and his daughter.
No doubt they were at the corrals, dog blast their young fool souls. What was the matter with that bleak nitwit of a foreman? He was hired to run a ranch, and given more men for the job than that allotted by any other ranch for a similar work. What in blue hades did he mean by drawing upon the house for labor? The son and daughter of P. D. McPherson were not common ranch hands that every time a bit of branding or rounding-up was done they should be pulled out to assist with the blanketty, blistering, hellfire work.
Raging up and down, up and down, through the wide verandah and back through the halls and into the living-room again and again at the unsatisfactory chess solitaire, the furious old rancher was in a black mood when voices outside the verandah caused him to jerk his chin forward at attention. The missing miscreants had returned!
XV
“San-ndy!”
The three on the verandah jumped. That crisp summons, that peculiar inflection meant but one thing. Chess! Sandy cast a swift agonized glance about him, seeking an immediate mode of escape. He was slipping cat-footed and doubled over along the back of the swinging couch on the verandah, when again came the imperative summons, this time with even more deadly significance.
“Sandy! In here, sir!”
“Yessir, I’m comin’, sir.”
Now it happened that the foreman of O Bar O had come especially over to the ranch house, accompanied by the son and daughter of P. D. to announce to his employer the discharge of Cheerio. It was an ironclad rule of O Bar O that no “hand” upon the place should be dismissed without his case first being examined before the final court of judgment in the person of P. D. This was merely a formality, for P. D. was accustomed to OK the acts of his foreman. Nevertheless, it was one of the customs that could not be ignored. What is more, a man reported for his final pay to the supreme boss of the ranch.
It was also the law at O Bar O that such discharges and reports should be made after the working hours in the field. In the present instance, Bully Bill had harkened to the advice of his assistant and discharged Cheerio at the noon hour. O Bar O, he contended, could not afford to risk its prestige by having in its employ for even a few more hours a man who had acted at the corrals as had the Englishman. Therefore, having put his men back to work at the corrals, Bully Bill had come to the house to report to his employer.
That Sandy summons was unmistakable. The noble and ancient game was about to be played. It was well-known lese majeste to interrupt when
