Cheerio alone remained by the slough, and Hilda, watching him from the little clump of bush, witnessed a strange and merciful act on his part; the sort of thing a man of Cheerio’s type was accustomed to do at the front, when an enemy, hors de combat, needed final succour. Cheerio thrust two long logs into the mud of the slough, very much as he had done when he had rescued the heifer in the woods. Now also he went out across the logs and cut the ropes that bound the man to the rail. Holy Smoke grasped after the logs, clung to them desperately, and Cheerio gave his stiff order to him to get off the place as expeditiously as possible if he valued his hide.
Having set the man free, Cheerio returned to the bank, stopped to clean the mud off his boots with a handy stick and then moved to follow after the men, now at a considerable distance.
Hilda, her blue and red cape flapping back from her as she came from the little bush toward him, was holding out both her hands, but as Cheerio stopped short they dropped helplessly at her side. His grave eyes slowly travelled over the piteous little figure in his path. The eyes that had been so stern now softened, but Cheerio could not speak at that moment. Something rose in his throat and held him spellbound, looking at the girl he loved and whom he had expected never to see again. Hilda’s eyes were unnaturally wide and dark; her lips were as tremulous as a flower and quivering like those of a hurt child. The flag of hostility and hate was down forever. She was pathetic and most lovely in her humility.
Cheerio murmured something unintelligible and held out his arms to her. Hilda would have gone indeed directly to that haven; but there was Sandy racing along the trail on Silver Heels, shouting like an Indian excited queries and shrilly demanding to know why he had been “left out of the fun.” Nevertheless, Cheerio had sensed the unconscious motion of the girl, and a light broke over his face, driving away the last shadow. His wide, boyish smile beamed down upon her. Speech failed him not at that blessed moment.
“Darling!” said Cheerio, in such a voice that Hilda thought the word an even more beautiful one than the “Dear” he had once before called her.
“Hi, Hilday! What’s all the racket about? What they done to Ho? Where is he? Dad’s goin’ to kill ’em. He’s gone plumb crazy at the house. Chum Lee come on in an tol’ ’im that he beat you up. Is that true?”
Cheerio answered for her.
“He’s a bad lot, Sandy, and he’s got his deserts.” His eyes were still on Hilda. It didn’t seem possible that he could withdraw them. Over her pale cheeks a glow was coming like the dawn, and her shy glance trembled toward his own.
“My! Dad’s hoppin’ mad. Ses hangin’ ain’t too good for him, the dirty dog, an I say it too! What’d he do to you? What was you doin’ in the barn at that hour?”
Hilda shook her head. Her eyes were shining so that even Sandy was nonplussed.
“You don’t look beaten up,” said her brother, and Hilda laughed and then unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears and she sobbed.
“Gee! I wish someone’d waked me up. Doggone it, I don’t see why I was left out. Wish I’d caught him hittin’ my sister! Dad’s nearly crazy. You better hustle along home, Hilda. You’d think you were the only person at O Bar O now to hear Dad talk. He’s thinkin’ up every mean thing he ever said to you and he’s cryin’ like a baby.”
“Poor old Dad!” said Hilda, softly.
A movement on the edge of the slough now attracted the incredulous eyes of Sandy McPherson. He was shuffling into the clothes left for him on the bank. Instantly Sandy had reined up beside him. He yelled insults and epithets down at the shivering wretch on the bank, stuck his fingers into his mouth and produced a hooting whistle; then Sandy played at lariating the man, but Ho, with a venomous look, grasped the rope as it fell in a ring near him, and there was a tug of war for its possession between man and boy. Sandy let go the rope and concentrated upon the nine foot long bull whip in his other hand. Yelling to the man to move along swiftly and to get “to hello” off O Bar O, Hilda’s brother pursued her assailant.
Meanwhile, Hilda and Cheerio seized the opportunity to continue that interrupted duologue. He said suddenly, after a rapt moment:
“Hilda, you don’t hate me then, do you, dear?”
In a little voice, Hilda said:
“No.”
“And you d-don’t want me to go away, do you?”
Hilda shook her head, too moved for more speech, but her eyes brimmed at the mere thought of his going. That was too much for Cheerio, and regardless of Sandy, he took Hilda’s hand.
“Then I’ll stay,” he said, softly.
Hand in hand, they were moving homeward, walking in an entranced silence, the glow of the early morning drawing them under its golden spell; but before Sandy had joined them, all that they had yearned to say and hear was spoken.
“Hilda! I love you!”
“Oh, do you? Then—then—that Nanna—”
“Nanna is seventy-four. My old nurse, Hilda. When I returned from—Germany—I was a prisoner there nine months, Hilda—Nanna was the only one at home who knew me. You see—you see—it was better that they shouldn’t know me. M-m-my brother was in my place. And you see, Hilda, I c-came out here, and N-Nanna planned to f-follow me. She is seventy-four.”
“Seventy-four! Oh, I thought—I thought—that picture in the locket—”
“That was Sybil—now my brother’s wife.”
Wonderful things were happening to Hilda. She wanted to laugh; she wanted to cry, and the pink cheek wavered from him, and then came to rest against his rough sleeve. Cheerio never
