After all, the fellow had a right to his own secret. He had been darned nice to the reporter. Was a darned good friend. Mallison’s mind went back to those long, pleasant Sundays, when they had talked and smoked together. He recalled a day, when with a friendly smile, Cheerio had tossed from his horse into Mallison’s arms a fine haunch of venison. A man couldn’t buy venison from the Indians, nor, at that time, could he shoot deer. The Indians alone had that right, and while they were not permitted to sell venison to the white men, there was no law to prevent them from making gifts of the desired meat. Nor was there any law that prevented the white man returning the compliment with a bag of sugar or a can of molasses or whatever sweet stuff the red man might demand. Cheerio remarked that he had no use for the venison at the ranch house and the stuff was a hanged sight better cooked over a camp fire, so “There you are, old man. One minute, and I’ll give you a hand.”
He had built the fire and he had cut up and broiled the venison, and he had spread it thickly with O Bar O butter, and with a friendly grin, he had dished it out to the camper.
Mallison felt himself shrivelling under a mean pang. It was a dirty trick to have taken the sketches, though Mallison proposed to show them to certain prominent folk of Calgary who might help the fellow who was a ranch hand. He had not intended to exploit his friend. He had a good enough story about P. D., and he had been sent to “cover” P. D. and the chess game. So why—
His chair scraped the floor. He leaned heavily across the city desk.
“I say, Chief, I don’t need to find out what he’s doing up here. I know. He’s up here so’s not to stand in the way of his brother’s happiness. That’s how I dope it out. And he’s a darned good sort, and I’m hanged if I want the job of writing a story like that. He’s a friend of mine, and it’d be a scurvy trick. It’s none of our dashed business, anyway.”
“It’s a good newspaper story,” said the city editor without emphasis.
“Oh, I dunno. Who gives a hang in this country about an Englishman? You can dig up a dozen stories like that any day up here in Alberta.”
“Maybe you can.”
Charley Munns answered five telephone calls in succession, signed two slips brought to him by a boy, read a telegram, called an assignment across to a reporter who rose from his typewriter and made an instant exit, and then turned back to the gloomy Mallison at his elbow. A grin twisted the city editor’s mouth, and a humorous twinkle lighted up his tired eyes.
“Suit yourself, Dunc. Give’s a column, then, about old P. D. and the chess, and run a few of the Indian pictures and the one of the old man—the one with the pipe and the hat. Cut out the Cheerio man, then. If he’s satisfied where he is, let him stay—among those missing. We should worry.”
Duncan Mallison grinned delightedly.
“Thanks! I’ll tell him what you said.”
XXIII
A mighty panorama of golden hills swelled like waves on all sides and vanished into cloud-like outlines of yet higher hills that zigzagged across the horizon and merged in the west into that matchless chain of rugged peaks. Snow crowned, rosy under the caress of the slowly sinking sun, bathed in a mystic veil of gilded splendour, the Canadian Rockies were printed like an immense masterpiece across the western sky.
Hilda rode slowly along, her gaze pinned upon the hills. Yet of them she was thinking but vaguely. They were a familiar and well-loved presence that had been with them always. To them she had turned in all her girlish troubles. To them she had whispered her secrets and her dreams.
As she rode on and on, her thoughts were all of those strange evenings in the company of this man—the too-short, electrical half hour or so when they would be alone together before her father awoke.
Her reins hung loose over her horse’s neck; her hands were in the pockets of her hide coat; her head slightly bent, Hilda gave herself up to a long, aching, yet singularly glowing day dream. Daisy made her own trail, idly loping along above the canyon that skirted the Ghost River, stopping now and then to nibble at the sweet grass along the paths.
The woods were very still and lovely. Wide searchlights of the remaining sunshine pierced through the branches of the trees and flickered in and out of the woods, playing in golden, dancing gleams upon the green growth.
Brown and gold, deeply red, burnt yellow, and green, the trees were freighted with glorious beauty. Masses of the leaves fluttered idly to the ground, moved by the soft fragrant breeze and the branches on bush and tree seemed lazily to shake themselves, as if succumbing unwillingly to the slumberous spell of the quiet Autumn day.
The flowers beneath the trees still shone, their radiance but slightly dulled by the touch of the night frosts, seeming lovelier indeed, as if veiled by some softening web-like touch. Scarlet and bright, all through the wooded growth, the wild-rose berries grew.
Coveys of partridge and pheasants fluttered among the bush, peeked up with bright, inquiring eyes at the girl on horse, then hopped a few paces away, under the thick carpet of leaves.
In an open field, swiftly running horses raced to meet them. Like playful children, they ran around and in front and on all sides of Hilda’s mare, thrusting their noses against hers, and laying their faces across her slender back, utterly unafraid of the rider, yet timorous
