“Oh, doesn’t it, though!” Hilda could have hit him with pleasure. So it didn’t matter to the big, heartless public whether her Dad or that Englishman won or not.
“Well, would you mind asking your father just that?”
Hilda, inside:
“Dad, he wants to know whether either you or—him” (Hilda referred always to Cheerio as “him” or “he”) “will be going to Chicago for the tournament now.”
“You tell that bloody young news hound that he’ll do well to clear off the place in a damn quick hurry, or we’ll make it a damned sight hotter for him than the place he’s eventually headed for.”
Hilda, back at screen door:
“My father says for you to clear off the place, and I advise you to, too. You’ve a nerve to come here to get stuff to print against my father in the paper. I’d just like to see you dare to print anything about us. It’s none of the newspapers’ business, and my father will win, anyway.”
“Thank you. I’m glad to have that line on the game. Did he win last night?”
“I’m not going to answer a single question. We don’t want a single thing to get in the papers.”
“But it’s already been in the paper.”
“What?”
“Here you are—half a column story.”
Hilda came out on to the porch, and seized and scanned the paper. Her face burned as she read, and the hot, angry tears arose in her eyes. How dared they publish for all the world to read that her old dad was being beaten each night by that Englishman? She whirled around on the inoffensive reporter.
“Who wrote that beastly stuff? It’s a damned shame. Just goes to show what your old newspapers are. Did you write it?”
“No, no,” hastily denied the reporter. “I was only assigned to the job today. That’s some outside stuff telephoned in, probably by one of your neighbours. I’m here to follow up—to get a special story, in fact. And look here, Miss McPherson—you’re Miss McPherson, aren’t you?—well, look here, it’s better for us to get the dope directly from yourselves than have to make it up. I’m here to get a story, and I’m going to get it.”
“Well, let me tell you, you’ll have some sweet time getting it.”
“I intend to stay here till I do.”
“Here on our steps? I’d like to see you.”
“Well, not exactly on the steps—but on the job, at all events, I’ll camp down the road by the river, and I can cover the story just as well from there.”
Hilda threw him a look of withering scorn. Pushed the screen door open, and banged it, as well as the inside door, in the reporter’s face.
He stood in thought a moment on the steps and then he jotted down:
Beautiful young daughter of P. D. McPherson on guard over father. Inherits famous disposition. Declares that her father will win. Intimates that he, not his hitherto victorious opponent, will go to Chicago—
At this juncture, and while he was jotting down the notes anent Hilda McPherson, Cheerio came up the steps and crossed the verandah toward the front door, followed by Sandy, who, much to the bitter indignation of his sister, was once again the Englishman’s satellite and admirer.
“Good evening,” said the reporter, cordially.
“Hello!” returned the unsuspicious Cheerio, and returned the grip of the newspaper man’s hand.
“I wonder if you could give me some information about this Englishman who’s playing opposite Mr. P. D. McPherson for the Western Championship and—”
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-what f-f-for?” stammered Cheerio, taken aback by the question.
“I’m from the Calgary Blizzard and—”
“G-g-g-good God!”
“If you know the man who—”
“Gee! He’s him hisself!” chortled Sandy.
Cheerio was punching the electric bell persistently. Hilda, hurrying at the summons, opened the door inside, cast a haughty look from the reporter to Cheerio, and then reluctantly unhooked the latch and let the latter in. She closed both doors again with a snap.
Sandy, who had not followed Cheerio into the house, stood grinning up at the reporter, and the latter was seized with an inspiration. He returned the jeering stare of P. D.’s son with a man-to-man look of confidence. Nonchalantly, he brought forth a cigarette case and, extending it carelessly to Sandy, invited him to have one. Sandy, whose young lips had never touched the forbidden weed, helped himself with ostentatious carelessness and even accepted the light tendered from the other’s half finished stub.
“In a hurry?” asked the newspaper man.
“Nope.”
“Suppose we sit over here.”
The reporter indicated the steps, and Sandy leaned back against the pillar with the cigarette alternately between his two fingers or between his young lips.
“You’re P. D. McPherson’s son, are you not?”
“Yeh.”
“Well, what about this Englishman? I wonder if you can tell me something about him.”
“Sure,” said Sandy, ignoring a sudden quaking at the pit of his stomach, and blowing out an elaborate whiff of smoke. “Sure, I c’n tell you all about him.”
XVIII
If the orders issued from headquarters (viz. P. D. McPherson) had been implicitly obeyed, the life of the newspaper man would have been most uncomfortable. Even as it was, he was prudent enough to give the house a wide berth. “Dunc” Mallison was fond of fishing, and his assignment was in the nature of a vacation for him. He possessed a “dinky” little flivver, whose front seat turned back on hinges, transforming the interior into a tolerably comfortable bed, à la Pullman. Scouting along the banks of the Ghost River, which bounded one side of the O Bar O ranch, the newspaper man found an ideal place for a camp, not far from the cave where Cheerio painted of a Sunday in secret.
Though “Dunc” fished the greater part of the day, he nevertheless dispatched bulletins to his paper in town, and began work on a feature story concerning P. D., the
