“What’s this? Why so much excitement? Why all this hysterical waste of force? It carried even to my office—electrical waves of angry sound. No doubt could be heard across at the bunkhouse or the barns. I’ll make a test some day. Sit down, sit down. If you wish to witness our game, oblige us with silence, if you please.”
To Cheerio he said:
“Be seated, sir. You will pardon the excitement of my daughter. Youth is life’s tempestuous period—hard to govern—hard to restrain, a pathological, problematical time of life. Be seated, sir. My move, I believe, sir.”
Hilda felt weak and curiously broken. She sat forward in her chair, her eyes so dark and large that her face, no longer rosy, seemed now peculiarly small and young.
Old P. D. scratched his chin and pinched his lower lip as he examined the board through his glasses. Cheerio was not looking at the board, his sad, somewhat stern glance was pinned upon Hilda.
There was a pause, and suddenly P. D.’s face jerked forward. A crafty twitch of the left eyebrow. He glanced up at Cheerio, moved a Bishop three paces to the right. Cheerio withdrew his eyes reluctantly from the drooping Hilda, looked absently at the board and made the obvious move. Instantly P. D.’s hand shot toward his Queen. A pause, and then suddenly through the room, like the pop of a gun, P. D.’s shout resounded:
“Check!”
Pause.
“Check!”
This time louder.
“Check to your King, sir! Game! Game!” Up leaped P. D. McPherson, sprang toward his opponent, smashed him upon the shoulder, gripped him by both hands, and shouted:
“Beat you! By Gad! I’d rather beat you than go to Chicago. Damn your hands and feet, you’re a dashed damned fine player, and it’s an honour to beat you, sir! Come along with me, sir!”
He dragged his opponent out, and arm and arm they hurried across to the bunkhouse to proclaim the “damnfine news” and to order all hands of the O Bar O to set out on the following morning upon that annual Fall roundup which had been put off for so long. But before Cheerio had left the room, and even while her father was all but embracing him, his glance had gone straight into the eyes of Hilda, pale as death and slowly arising.
Like one moving in sleep, feeling her way as she passed, Hilda McPherson followed her father and Cheerio. But she could go no farther than the verandah. There she sat crouched down on the steps, her face in her hands, overwhelmed by the unbearable pain that seemed to clutch at her heart. The truth had shocked Hilda into a realization of the inexcusable wrong and insult that she had dealt to this man. No words were needed. She comprehended exactly what had happened in that room. Cheerio, she now knew, had changed the men on the board for her father’s advantage. And she had called him a cheat!
She took her hands down from her face, and spoke the words aloud:
“I called him a cheat! I called him a—coward! Oh, what am I to do?”
The man who had been sitting in the swinging couch, and whom she had not seen, strolled across the verandah and came directly down the steps to where the unhappy Hilda was crouched.
“Miss McPherson! Can I do anything for you?”
Hilda was in too much pain to feel either surprise or resentment for the intrusion. She said piteously:
“I called him a cheat! a coward!”
“A coward—him!”
Duncan Mallison’s face darkened with an almost angry red.
“You may as well know this much at least,” he said roughly. “The man you called a coward won the Victoria Cross for an act of sublime heroism during the war.”
Hilda stood up. She looked beaten and small. She was wrenching her hands together as she backed toward the door. Her lips were quivering. She tried to speak, but the words could not come, and she shook her head dumbly.
The reporter, who probably understood human nature far better than the average person, was touched by the girl’s evident misery. He put his hand under Hilda’s arm, and guided her to the door. There he said soothingly:
“Now, don’t worry. Everything’s all right, and you’re in luck. We’re going to take him on the paper. Fine job. He’ll make out great. So, don’t worry. First thing in the morning we’ll be off, and you can depend upon me to do the best I can for him. He’s a darned good pal.”
XXVII
Hilda awoke with a sob. She sat up in bed, pressing her hands to her eyes. Slowly, painfully, she recalled the events of the previous night.
She had called him a cheat—a coward! She had said that she never wished to see his face again! She had driven him from O Bar O. He had gone out of her life now forever.
Hilda could see the dim light of the approaching dawn already tinting the wide eastern sky. It was a chill, raw morning. He would walk out from O Bar O, with his old, battered grip in his hand and that gray suit that had so edified the ranch hands. Her breast rose and swelled. The tears of the previous night threatened to overwhelm her again. Hilda had literally cried practically all of the night, and her hour’s sleep had come only through sheer exhaustion.
The unhappy girl crept out of bed and knelt by the window, peering out in the first grey gloom of the Autumn morning, toward the bunkhouse.
