“Who’s his royal nibs, Bully Bill?”
Through the corner of his mouth, the foreman enlightened her:
“Vodeyveel show. Things gittin’ kind o’ dull at O Bar. Thought I’d pull in something to cheer the fellows up a bit, and they’s nothing tickles them more than turnin’ a green tenderfoot Englishman on to them. This one here is a circus. When I asked him what the hello—excuse me, Miss Hilda!—what the hello he was doin’ round here, he ses: ‘Cheerio!’ Say, if ever there was ‘Kid me’ writ all over a human bein’, it’s splashed over that there one.”
“Um!”
Hilda came down the steps and approached the newcomer. Head slightly on one side, she examined him with evident curiosity and amusement. “Paper-collar dudes,” as the ranch folk called the city people, came quite often to O Bar O, but this particular specimen seemed somehow especially green and guileless. A wicked dimple flashed out in the right cheek of the girl, though her critical eyes were still cold as she looked the man over from head to foot.
“Hi-yi! You! Where do you hail from?”
As he looked up at the beautiful, saucy young creature before him, the Englishman was seized with one of his worst spells of stuttering. The impediment in his speech was slight, on ordinary occasions, but when unduly moved, and at psychological moments, when the tongue’s office was the most desired of adjuncts, it generally failed him. Now:
“Bb-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b—”
The girl, hands on hips, swayed back and forth with laughter.
“Haven’t you a tongue even? What are you doing in this wild country, you poor lost lamb from the fold?”
He had recovered his wits, and the use of his tongue. His heels came together with a curiously smart and military click, and his blue eyes looked squarely into the impudent brown ones of the girl, laughing in his face. With complete gravity, he replied:
“J-just came across to the p-promised land, to try and make a home for myself and—” he paused, smiling sunnily—“and another, you know.”
“Now wasn’t that the great idea!” guyed the girl, with mock seriousness. “And who’s the other one, by the way? Another like you? Do tell us.”
“Her name’s—Nanna, we call her.”
“Nanna! Nanna! What a sweet name!”
She was still mocking, but suddenly swung the locket on its chain toward him.
“Do you know, I believe we’ve found your long-lost Nanna. I was just admiring her fair, sweet face inside. Catch her!”
She tossed it across to him. It dropped on the stones between them. He stooped to pick it up, and anxiously examined it, before turning to look back at the girl with a slightly stern glance.
“Righto!” he said. “Thanks for returning her to me.”
For some unaccountable reason, the girl’s mood changed. She tossed her head, as the colour flooded her face. Something wild and free in that tossing suggested the motion of a young thoroughbred colt. Affecting great disdain, and as if looking down at him from a height, she inquired:
“Oh, by the way, what’s your name?”
He absently fished in his vest pocket, and this action provoked a fresh gale of laughter from the highly edified hands, in which the girl heartily joined. At the laughter, he looked up, slightly whistled, and said in his friendly way:
“Cheerio!”
“Cheerio!” repeated the girl. “Some name. Boys, allow me—Cheerio, Duke of the O Bar O. Escort his grace to the dining-car, and mind you treat him gentle. And say, boys—” she called after them, “doll him up in O Bar O duds. Let’s see what he looks like in reglar clothes.”
Shoved along by the men, “his grace” was pushed and hustled into the cook-car. Here the odour of the hot food, and the rich soup being slapped into each bowl along the line of plates, almost caused the hungry Englishman to faint. Nevertheless, he kept what he would have termed “stiff upper lip,” and as the Chinaman passed down between the long bench tables, and filled the bowl before the newcomer, Cheerio, as he was henceforward to be known, controlled the famished longing to fall to upon that thick, delicious soup, and, smiling instead, turned to the man on either side of him, with a cigarette case in his hand:
“Have one, old man, do. P-pretty g-good stuff! Got them in France, you know. Believe I’ll have one myself before starting in, you know. Topping—what?”
III
P. D. McPherson, or “P. D.” as he was better known throughout the ranching country, owner of the O Bar O, was noted for his eccentricities, his scientific experiments with stock and grain, and for the variety and quality of his vocabulary of “cusses.”
An ex-professor of an Agricultural College, he had come to Alberta in the early days, before the trails were blazed. While the railroads were beginning to survey the new country, he had established himself in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Beginning with a few head of cattle imported from the East, P. D. had built up his herd until it was famous throughout the cattle world. His experiments in crossing purebred grades of cattle in an attempt to produce an animal that would give both the beef of the Hereford and the butterfat and cream of the Holstein, had been followed with unabated interest.
He had been equally successful with his horses and other stock. Turning from cattle and stock, P. D. next expended his genius upon the grain. It was a proud and triumphant day for O Bar O when, at the annual Calgary Fair, the old rancher showed a single stalk of wheat, on which were one hundred and fifty kernels.
His alfalfa and rye fields, in a normally dry and hilly part of the country, were the wonder and amazement of farmers and ranchers.
The Government, the Railways, the Flour mills and the Agricultural Colleges, sought him out, and made tempting offers
