Sandy made three somersaults of glee on the turf, and at his last
turn-over, his head came into contact with something hard. He rubbed
said head, and at the same time observed that which had pained him.
It was a large, old-fashioned gold locket, studded with rubies and
diamonds.
“Holy Salmon!” ejaculated the highly-elated boy. In an instant he had
seized the bridle of his horse, and was on him. He went up the hill on
a run, and began calling outside the house, while still on horse.
“Hilda! I say, Hilda! Come on out! Looka here what _I_ found!”
A girl, skin bronzed by sun and wind, with chocolate-coloured eyes
and hair and a certain free grace of motion and poise, came on to the
wide verandah. Sandy had ridden his horse clear to the railing, and
now he excitedly held up the trinket in his hand, and then tossed it
to Hilda, who caught it neatly in her own. Turning it over, the girl
examined to find with admiration and curiosity, and, with feminine
intuition, she found the spring and opened the locket. Within, the
lovely, pictured face of a woman in low-cut evening dress, looked back
from the frame. On the opposite side, a lock of dead-gold hair curled
behind the glass.
Sandy had leaped off his horse, and now was excitedly grasping after
the treasure.
“Wher’d you find it, Sandy?”
“Down in the lower pasture. Betchu its his girl! Say, Hilda, he’s a
scream. You’d oughter’ve been there. He came along the road all dolled
up in city clothes, and--look! Oh, my God-frey! Look ut him, Hilda!”
In an ecstasy of derision and delight, Sandy pointed.
Hand shading his eyes, the stranger was gazing across the
wide-spreading panorama of gigantic hills, etched against a sky of
sheerest blue, upon which the everlasting sun glowed.
“By George!” exclaimed the new “hand” of the O Bar O, “what a tophole
view! Never saw anything to beat it. Give you my word, it b-b-beats
S-switzerland. When I was tramping along the road, I th-thought that
was a good one on us at home, ’bout this being the Land of Promise, you
know, b-but now, by George! I’m hanged if I don’t think you’re right.
A chap cannot look across at a view like that and not feel jolly well
uplifted!”
There was a ring of men closing in about the new arrival, for it was
the noon hour, and Hootmon had hurried them along from bunkhouse and
corral. At the stranger’s stream of eloquence to Bully Bill anent the
beauties of nature in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, “Pink-eyed
Jake” swooned away in the arms of Hootmon. A gale of unbridled laughter
burst from a dozen throats. The men held their sides and leaned forward
the better to scan this new specimen of the human family. Hands on
hips, they “took his number” and pronounced him internally a freak of
nature.
To the door of the cook-car, rolled the immense form of Tom Chum Lee,
the Chinese cook who dominated the grub-car of O Bar O. With a vast
smile of benignant humour directed upon his “boys,” Lee summoned all
hands to chow, by means of a great cow bell, that he waved generously
back and forth.
With immense satisfaction and relish, the newcomer was taking in all of
the colour and atmosphere of the ranch. The fact that he himself was an
object of derisive mirth to the outfit, troubled him not at all.
A skirt--pink--flirted around the side of the house, and outlined
against the blue of the sky, the slim form of a young girl shone on the
steps of the ranch house. The Englishman had a glimpse of wide, dark
eyes, and a generous red mouth, through which gleamed the whitest of
teeth. But it was her voice, with its shrill edge of impudent young
mirth that sent the colour to the pinched cheeks of the new hand of
O Bar O. There was in it, despite its mockery, a haughty accent of
contempt.
“Who’s his royal nibs, Bully Bill?”
Through the corner of his mouth, the foreman enlightened her:
“Vodeyveel show. Things gittin’ kind o’ dull at O Bar. Thought I’d pull
in something to cheer the fellows up a bit, and they’s nothing tickles
them more than turnin’ a green tenderfoot Englishman on to them. This
one here is a circus. When I asked him what the hello--excuse me, Miss
Hilda!--what the hello he was doin’ round here, he ses: ‘Cheerio!’ Say,
if ever there was ‘Kid me’ writ all over a human bein’, it’s splashed
over that there one.”
“Um!”
Hilda came down the steps and approached the newcomer. Head slightly
on one side, she examined him with evident curiosity and amusement.
“Paper-collar dudes,” as the ranch folk called the city people, came
quite often to O Bar O, but this particular specimen seemed somehow
especially green and guileless. A wicked dimple flashed out in the
right cheek of the girl, though her critical eyes were still cold as
she looked the man over from head to foot.
“Hi-yi! You! Where do you hail from?”
As he looked up at the beautiful, saucy young creature before him, the
Englishman was seized with one of his worst spells of stuttering. The
impediment in his speech was slight, on ordinary occasions, but when
unduly moved, and at psychological moments, when the tongue’s office
was the most desired of adjuncts, it generally failed him. Now:
“Bb-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b----”
The girl, hands on hips, swayed back and forth with laughter.
“Haven’t you a tongue even? What are you doing in this wild country,
you poor lost lamb from the fold?”
He had recovered his wits, and the use of his tongue. His heels came
together with a curiously smart and military click, and his blue eyes
looked squarely into the impudent brown ones of the girl, laughing in
his face. With complete gravity, he replied:
“J-just came across to the p-promised land, to try and make a home for
myself and--” he paused, smiling sunnily--“and another, you know.”
“Now wasn’t that the great idea!” guyed the girl, with mock
seriousness. “And who’s the other one, by the way? Another like you? Do
tell us.”
“Her name’s--Nanna, we call her.”
“Nanna! Nanna! What a sweet name!”
She was still mocking, but suddenly swung the locket on its chain
toward him.
“Do you know, I believe we’ve found your long-lost Nanna. I was just
admiring her fair, sweet face inside. Catch her!”
She tossed it across to him. It dropped on the stones between them. He
stooped to pick it up, and anxiously examined it, before turning to
look back at the girl with a slightly stern glance.
“Righto!” he said. “Thanks for returning her to me.”
For some unaccountable reason, the girl’s mood changed. She tossed her
head, as the colour flooded her face. Something wild and free in that
tossing suggested the motion of a young thoroughbred colt. Affecting
great disdain, and as if looking down at him from a height, she
inquired:
“Oh, by the way, what’s your name?”
He absently fished in his vest pocket, and this action provoked a fresh
gale of laughter from the highly edified hands, in which the girl
heartily joined. At the laughter, he looked up, slightly whistled, and
said in his friendly way:
“Cheerio!”
“Cheerio!” repeated the girl. “Some name. Boys, allow me--Cheerio, Duke
of the O Bar O. Escort his grace to the dining-car, and mind you treat
him gentle. And say, boys--” she called after them, “doll him up in O
Bar O duds. Let’s see what he looks like in reglar clothes.”
Shoved along by the men, “his grace” was pushed and hustled into the
cook-car. Here the odour of the hot food, and the rich soup being
slapped into each bowl along the line of plates, almost caused the
hungry Englishman to faint. Nevertheless, he kept what he would have
termed “stiff upper lip,” and as the Chinaman passed down between the
long bench tables, and filled the bowl before the newcomer, Cheerio,
as he was henceforward to be known, controlled the famished longing to
fall to upon that thick, delicious soup, and, smiling instead, turned
to the man on either side of him, with a cigarette case in his hand:
“Have one, old man, do. P-pretty g-good stuff! Got them in France,
you know. Believe I’ll have one myself before starting in, you know.
Topping--what?”