“Nothing doing. Tried the job last week. He was out on this verandy and he was walkin’ up and down, with his hands behind him and his head dropped, and I ses to myself, ‘Mebbe he’s through. I’ll tuck in a word edgeways now.’ So I slipped over and—”
“What did Dad say?”
Hilda was leaning forward, wide-eyed with delighted interest. Dad’s utterances were always matters of the profoundest psychological interest and pride to his admiring daughter.
Bully Bill lowered his voice confidentially.
“Miss Hilda, I ain’t got the nerve to repeat to you the curious string of damns and cusses that your father give me and—”
Hilda laughed, a rippling girlish chuckle of genuine pride and delight.
“Isn’t Dad a perfect peach when he starts swearing? Don’t you love it? It sounds so—so—healthy, somehow. Can’t he just rip out the dandiest string of swear words you ever did hear? I’ll bet there’s not another man in the entire country can cuss as my Dad can. Most of ’em run off just the ordinary common old damns, but Dad—why Dad can—can—literally coin cuss words. I’d rather hear my Dad cuss than—than—hear a prima donna sing. Why, do you know, the very first word that either Sandy or I learned to speak was ‘damn’!”
Up tossed the young head. Hilda’s white teeth shone as her fresh laughter rippled forth, and at that musical sound, and the sight of the beautiful, laughing young woman before him, moved by an irresistible impulse, Holy Smoke, who had been squatting at his work, jumped restlessly to his feet. Hilda’s back was to the door. The hall was dark behind her.
“Miss Hilda,” said Ho, ingratiatingly, “we thought as how if you would ask your father and—”
“I? Not on your life. It’s all I can do to induce him to eat, let alone talk of anything else in the world except chess—Kings, Queens, Knights, Bishops, Rooks, Pawns! Gods and devils! Why did he make this move, and what object he had in making that, and if he had done this and hadn’t done that such and such a thing might have happened. Why, Dad’s just plumb chess crazy!”
“You said it,” grinned Ho delightedly, eager to ingratiate himself by agreeing with her, and at the same time voice his own thought regardless of the consequences. “This ain’t no cattle ranch no longer. It’s a loon ranch.”
“What’s that you say?”
Hilda’s voice had risen with excitement. Someone came out of the living-room inside, and paused halfway across the hall on his way to the verandah.
“I said—” repeated Holy Smoke, feeling a curious excitement and delight in the flaming anger he had aroused—“I said that this ain’t no longer a cattle ranch but a loon ranch.”
“How dare you say a thing like that about O Bar O. A lot you know about ranching. You come on over from the States with your wind and your brag and there’s no one believes a word you say. You dare to insinuate that my father is—”
“When I said ‘loon,’ Miss Hilda, I wasn’t mentioning no names, but s’long as you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, I’ll tell you that I was thinkin’ of that English fly, him that’s made all of the trouble here. My hands is itchin’ to lariat him and take it out o’ his hide. You say the word, Miss Hilda, and there’ll be a bunch of us turn the trick tonight!”
At the mention of Cheerio, the dark blood had rushed into the face of the girl. Her glance was full of contempt and hatred now.
“You, Holy Smoke! Yes, you’d need to rope your man. I’m thinking otherwise you’d have your hands D-d-d-d-d-full if you tried to tackle him man to man with your hands, for, take it from me, he’d make you eat your words and twist!”
Holy Smoke’s voice was husky:
“Look ahere, d’you mean to say—”
“Yes, I do mean to say—the very worst there is about you, and you can get right off O Bar O the minute your month is up. I’ll undertake to be responsible to my father and—”
Ho’s tongue searched his cheek. An ugly chuckle came from him and his slow words caused the girl to draw back as if struck.
“Since you’re so stuck on him—”
Hilda was aware that the door behind her had opened and then was banged to. She whirled around, and found herself face to face with Cheerio. Even in the moonlight, she could see that his face was set and stern as his glance passed by her and rested upon the shifting gaze of Ho, who suddenly, hurriedly moved away.
There was no sound now but the sobbing breath of the excited Hilda. Bully Bill had followed his assistant. She was alone on the verandah with Cheerio. A moment she looked up in the quiet moonlight at the man she had told herself so often that she hated.
What must he think of her now? Had he heard Holy Smoke’s taunt? Would he believe then that she—The thought was intolerable—an agony; but her agony was turned to a curious bliss, when, quite suddenly, she felt her hand warmly enclosed. For a long moment, he held her captive and she felt the deep gaze of his eyes searching her own. Then she was released, and like one in a dream she heard rather than saw him moving away from her. Unconsciously, a sob in her throat, Hilda McPherson held out her arms toward him. But he did not see her. She had a sudden frantic apprehension that he would go after Holy Smoke—that there would be a fight and he—An almost primitive fear of harm befalling him, sent Hilda along to the edge of the verandah. Then she heard something that stopped her flight, and held her there, straining to hear the last note of that long, soft whistle which rose in crescendo like a bird’s song that dropped across the silence of the night and slowly melted away.
Something rose in a suffocating flood in the heart of the Alberta-born
