“Here he is then,” whimpered Sandy, and set the dog at his father’s feet.
There was a flash, a streak across the room, and the dog had disappeared into some corner of the great ranch house. The boy, with a single glance at his father’s purpling face, took to his heels as if his life were imperilled and followed in the steps of his dog.
XVI
Bully Bill stretched his long neck, and appeared to be troubled with his Adam’s apple. His eye did not meet the ireful one of his employer.
“I came over to the house,” he repeated, with elaborate casualness, “to tell you I’ve fired his royal nibs.”
“Fired what? Who? The King of the Jews or who in the name of chattering crows do you mean?
“And you come to me at the hour of two-thirty in the afternoon to announce the discharge of an employee of the O Bar O? Eh?”
“Wa‑al, I reckon, boss, that O Bar O can’t afford to keep no white-livered hound in its employ for even the rest of the day.”
“What crime has he committed?”
“Well, it ain’t a crime exactly, but—well, boss, I give him an easy job to do—a kid’s job—Sandy could a done it, and I’m switched if he didn’t double over and faint dead away at the first bat of the brand. Never seen nothing like it in my life. At the first sniff! Why, a baby could—”
“Do you wish me to understand that you fired an employee of my ranch because he had the temerity to be ill?”
His irritation, far from being appeased, was steadily mounting.
“Dad,” interrupted Hilda, stepping forward suddenly. “It wasn’t illness. It was worse than that. It was plumb cowardice.”
“Cowardice! Look in the dictionary for the proper definition of that word, young woman. A man doesn’t faint from cowardice. He runs away—hides—slinks off—”
“That’s what he did—in France. He confessed it when he came to. Tried to excuse himself by saying it was constitutional. Just as if anyone could be a constitutional coward. Bully Bill is right, Dad. O Bar O cannot employ that kind of men.”
“Who is running this ranch?” demanded P. D., with rising wrath, thumping upon the table, and upsetting the last of the chess men and then the table itself.
“But, Dad—”
“Silence!”
Mutinously, the girl stood her ground, catching her breath in sobbing excitement.
“But, Dad, you don’t understand—”
“One more word from you, miss, and you leave the room. One more word, and we’ll cut out the gymkhana at Grand Valley next week.”
Turning to the foreman:
“Now, sir, explain yourself—explain the meaning of this damnation, unwarranted intrusion into my house.”
Slowly, gathering courage as he went along, Bully Bill told the tale of the branding.
P. D., finger tips of either hand precisely touching, heard him through with ill-concealed impatience and finally snapped:
“And you adjudge a man a coward because of a few words said while in a condition of semi-hysteria and delirium. Pi-shshsh! Any half-baked psychologist would tell you that a man is not responsible for his vague utterances at such a time. The evidence you adduce, sir, is inconclusive, not to say preposterous, and damned piffling and trifling. By Gad! sir, the role of judge and jury does not become you. You’re hired to take care of my cows, not to blaggard my men. What’s been this man’s work?”
“General hand, sir.”
“Efficient?”
“Ain’t no good at chores. He’s the bunk at fencing. Ain’t a bit o’ help with implements; no account in the brush; ain’t worth his salt in the hay field; but—” reluctantly the foreman finished, “—he’s a damned good rider, sir. Best at O Bar O, and he’s OK with the doegies.”
“And you ask me to fire a first-class rider at a time when the average ’bo that comes to a ranch barely knows the front from the hind part of an animal?”
“Dad,” interjected Hilda again, her cheeks aflame. “Look here, you may as well know the truth about this man. He was engaged in the first place as a joke—nothing but a joke, and because Bully Bill was late at the haying and said we’d have to cut out the races this year, and things were dull, and he took him on to liven things up, didn’t you, Bill?”
Bully Bill nodded.
“Well, we’ve had tenderfeet before at O Bar O, and we’ve all taken a hand stringing them, as you know, but this one was different. I—I disliked him from the very first, and—”
“Ah, g’wan! You’re stuck on him, and you know it!”
Sandy, who had returned as far as the door, gave forth this disgusted taunt. Upon him his sister whirled with somewhat of her father’s fury.
“How dare you say that?”
“ ’Cause it’s true, and I told him so, too.”
“You told him—him—that I—I—I—”
Hilda was almost upon the verge of hysterics. She was inarticulate with rage and excitement. The thought of Sandy confiding in Cheerio that she was “stuck” on him was unendurable.
“Why so much excitement?” queried her father. “Do you realize that the flood of words you have unharnessed would have force and power enough, if attached to machinery, to run—”
“Do you think I’m going to stand for that—that—mutt accusing me of caring for a—coward?”
At that moment, a gentle cough at the door turned all eyes in its direction. Natty and clean, in his grey English suit—the one he had worn that first day he had come to O Bar O—Cheerio was standing in the room looking about him pleasantly at the circle of expressive faces. No sooner had the girl’s angry glance crossed his own friendly one, than out popped the despised word:
“Cheerio!” said Cheerio.
His glance rested deeply upon Hilda for a moment, and then quietly withdrew. Sandy, whose allegiance to his former hero and oracle had been somewhat shattered by the corral incidents, suddenly grinned at his friend and favoured him with a knowing wink.
“Aw, she’s hot under the collar just ’cause I told her I told you about her being stuck on you.”
“I—I—just
