Colour had been splashed prodigally upon the canvasses. Maroon, lemon, magenta, scarlet, vivid purple, cerise, blues, flame colour. Indian colours! Indian faces! Here was more than a mere tribe of Indians. The artist had stamped indelibly upon the canvas a revelation of the history of a passing race. He had painted the Iliad of the Indian race.
Here was an ancient chief, grave, stern as a judge, with the dignity of a king and a pride that all the squalor and poverty and starvation of a long, hard life, the repression and tyranny at the hands of successive Indian agents and parasites upon his race, had been unable to quench.
Here, the infinitely old and wrinkled, toothless, witch-like great-great-grandmother of the tribe, a crone who mumbled prophetic warnings to which the lightest-hearted paid superstitious heed. And here the blind Medicine Man.
Smiling, wheedling, begging, the pleasantly-plump shining-faced squaws. The Braves, young and old, variously clad, some clinging to the garb of their ancestors, or wearing the holiday dress, gaudy Hudson’s Bay blankets and rugs and headdresses of eagle or turkey feathers; others in the half cowboy, half Indian clothes, and others again poorly attired in the mockery of the white man’s clothes.
Thin faces, deep and hungry-eyed, with that subdued look that tells not so much of the conquering hand of the white man as of the insidious effects of the great white plague.
Tragic faces of half-breeds, pawns of an undesired fate. Something of smouldering wildness, something of sadness, something of intense longing and wistfulness looked from the strange eyes of the breeds, legally white and permitted the “privilege” of the franchise, subject to conscription and taxation, yet doomed to live among their red kindred.
Beauty peered from the half-lifted ragged magenta shawl of an Indian Madonna, upon whose back the tiny blonde head of a blue-eyed papoose told a story more eloquent than words.
This, then, was the “find” of the newspaper man. Of the pictures, he selected six. He had no compunction about helping himself. It was part of his trade, and he had discovered the cave. What is more, he cherished the enthusiastic ambition of making the unknown artist famous. There were people in Calgary who would appreciate what this man had done. Mallison intended to show his find to these connoisseurs.
From the Indian pictures, he turned to the portfolio of sketches. Several of Sandy and the ranch hands, one of Bully Bill, with the quid of tobacco in his cheek, a characteristic bit of old P. D., one of Viper at the heels of the milk cows, a stream of cattle pouring over the hill, and—Hilda! One hundred and eighteen sketches of Hilda McPherson. Now the reporter understood, and he chuckled with sympathy. He did not blame the man. He had seen Hilda!
From the portfolio, Mallison selected two or three sketches of P. D., one of Sandy, three of Hilda, and a single photograph of Cheerio, taken evidently in France, and in uniform. He was easily recognizable. There was no mistaking that boyish and friendly smile, that seemed somehow to irradiate and make singularly interesting the essentially sensitive features of the young Englishman.
XXI
Every night, after his dinner, P. D. would take what he termed a “catnap.” Not even chess interrupted these short dozes on the comfortable couch by the pleasantly-crackling logs heaped upon the big fireplace.
There would be an interval, then, when Cheerio and Hilda would find themselves practically alone in the living-room. Sometimes Cheerio would look across expectantly at Hilda, and she would turn away and stare with seeming absorption out of the window. Then he would bring forth his tobacco pouch, fill and light his pipe and dip down in the pocket of his old coat and bring up a book. Hilda’s absorption in the outside view would undergo a swift change. Against her will, she found herself watching him furtively. It fascinated her to see the way in which he would handle a book, his fingers seeming sensitively to caress the pages. He always closed the book reluctantly and would return it carefully to his pocket as if it were something precious. She had satisfied her curiosity as to the titles and the authors of the books he read. She had never heard the names before, and suffered a pang that he should be close to matters concerning which she was totally ignorant. She tried to comfort and reassure herself. Even if one had missed school and college, even if one had been sidetracked all of her life on an Alberta ranch, even if a girl’s solitary associates and friends, over all the days of her life, had been merely the rough types peculiar to the cattle country, he had said that a world might be discovered right within the pages of a book. There was hope, therefore, for the unhappy Hilda.
He had made that remark to no one in particular one night, as he gently closed the book in his hand, and reached for the tobacco pouch in his rough tweed pocket. Then he had filled his pipe, beamed upon the sleeping P. D., and with his brown head against the back of the Morris chair, Cheerio had lapsed into what seemed to be a brown study in which Hilda and all the rest of the world appeared to disappear from his ken.
Cheerio had a trick of disappearing, as it was, in this manner—disappearing, mentally. Always there would then arise something torturing in the breast of Hilda McPherson. She had a passionate curiosity to know where the mind of the dreaming man had leaped in thought. Across the water—Ah! there was no doubt of that! Back in that England of his! Figures rose about him. Hilda had an intuitive knowledge of the types of people who were his familiars on the other side. Always among them was the smiling woman, whose
