“Hi, yi, yi, yi, yi, yi, yi, yi, yi! Eee-yaw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw!”
As she called, as she ran, an answering shout came from the direction of the ranch, still more than a mile away; but he who had answered her call for help was even then coming over the crest of the last hill, and the silhouette in the twilight of man and horse stopped the girl short and sent her heart racing like a mad thing in her breast. He was riding as only one at O Bar O could ride. Reining up sharply before Hilda, Cheerio swiftly dismounted and was at her side.
“Hilda! You’ve been thrown!”
Oh, how that voice, with its unmistakable note of deep anxiety in her behalf, made Hilda’s heart leap. Even in her excitement, she was conscious of a strangely exultant pang at the thought that he should have been the one to have come to her in her need. She could scarcely speak from the excitement and terror of her recent experience, and for the tumultuous emotions at the sight of the man she loved.
“Over there—a man! He followed me—Oh—has been trailing me through the woods, and at the gate—the gate—he threw the lariat—the lariat!”
Her voice rose hysterically.
“It missed us—just touched Daisy. I—I—tied it to the gate post. Gate’s closed. He can’t come through on horse. Look! There he is! There he is! See—see—white chaps! Look!”
She was speaking in little sobbing gasps, conscious not of the fact that she was held in the comforting curve of the man’s strong arm.
Dimly the vanishing form of horse and man showed for an instant in the half light and disappeared into the dense woods beyond. Cheerio made a motion as if to remount and follow, but Hilda clung to his sleeve.
“Oh, don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. I’m—I’m—afraid to be alone.”
“N-not f-for worlds,” he said, “but d-d-dear—” Through all her pain she heard that soft term of endearment, “He’s left the lariat. Couldn’t stop to get it. Come, we’ll get it. It may furnish a clue.”
Back at the gate, they untied the knotted lariat and Cheerio recoiled it and attached it to his own saddle.
“We’ll keep this as a memento. Maybe there’s a man at O Bar O short a lariat.”
“No man at O Bar O would do a coyote’s trick like that,” said Hilda, faintly.
She had recovered somewhat of her composure, though she still felt the near influence of the man walking beside her, leading his horse with one hand, and holding her arm with the other. Her own mount had gone free and would not be recovered till the morning. She would not follow his suggestion to mount his horse.
And so they came down over the hill together. Just before they passed into the ranch yard, Cheerio controlled his fluttering tongue and stammered something that he had been trying to say to her all of the way down the hill.
“Hilda, I’m a f-f-f-fortunate d-dog. I’m jolly glad I w-w-went out to look for you tonight.”
“Were you looking for me, then? Why?”
“C-can’t explain it. S-something m-made me go. I had to f-find you, Hilda.”
Now they were at the steps of the ranch house. Hilda went up one step, paused, went up another and stopped, unable to go further. Cheerio leaned up and tried to see her face in the semi-light that was now silvering the land from the broad moon above. What he saw in Hilda’s face brought the word bursting to his lips:
“M-my dear old girl!” he said. “I’m dashed jolly glad I’m alive.”
Hilda said in a whisper:
“Ah, so am I!”
And then she fled—fled in panic-stricken retreat to the house. Blindly she found her way to her room, and cast herself down upon her bed. She was trembling with an ecstasy that stung her by its very sweetness.
XXIV
Of all the emotions, whether sublime or ridiculous, that obsess the victim of that curious malady of the heart which we call Love, none is more torturing or devastating in its effect than that of jealousy with its train of violent reactions.
Love affected and afflicted Hilda and Cheerio in different and yet in similar ways.
Hilda, kneeling by her bed, her arms clasped about her pillow, into which she had buried her hot young face, gave herself up at first to the sheer ecstasy and glow of those first exalting, electrical thrills. All she comprehended was that she was in love.
Love! It was the most beautiful, the most sacred, the most precious and the most terrible thing in all the universe. That was what Hilda thought. Gradually her thoughts began to assemble themselves coherently. Sitting upon the floor by her bed, Hilda brought back to mind every incident, every word and look that had passed between her and Cheerio that she could recall since first he had come to O Bar O.
Who was this man she loved? What was he doing at O Bar O? Where had he come from? Who were his people? She did not even know his name. The very things that had aroused the derision of the men, his decently-kept hands, the daily shave and bath, his speech, his manner, his innate cleanliness of thought and person—these bespoke the gentleman, and Hilda McPherson had the ranch girl’s contempt for a mere gentleman. In the ranching country, a man was a man. That was the best that could be said of him.
With the thought of his past, came irresistibly back to torment her the woman of the locket—“Nanna,” for whom he had come to Canada to make a home. She had never been wholly absent from Hilda’s thought and unconsciously now, as in the midst of her bliss she came back vividly to mind, a little sob escaped her. She tried to fight the encroaching thought of this woman’s claim.
“Suppose he had been in love with her, I’ve cut her out! She is done for.”
Thus Hilda, to
