P. D. McPherson, or “P. D.” as he was better known throughout
the ranching country, owner of the O Bar O, was noted for his
eccentricities, his scientific experiments with stock and grain, and
for the variety and quality of his vocabulary of “cusses.”
An ex-professor of an Agricultural College, he had come to Alberta in
the early days, before the trails were blazed. While the railroads were
beginning to survey the new country, he had established himself in the
foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Beginning with a few head of cattle imported from the East, P. D. had
built up his herd until it was famous throughout the cattle world. His
experiments in crossing pure-bred grades of cattle in an attempt to
produce an animal that would give both the beef of the Hereford and the
butterfat and cream of the Holstein, had been followed with unabated
interest.
He had been equally successful with his horses and other stock. Turning
from cattle and stock, P. D. next expended his genius upon the grain.
It was a proud and triumphant day for O Bar O when, at the annual
Calgary Fair, the old rancher showed a single stalk of wheat, on which
were one hundred and fifty kernels.
His alfalfa and rye fields, in a normally dry and hilly part of the
country, were the wonder and amazement of farmers and ranchers.
The Government, the Railways, the Flour mills and the Agricultural
Colleges, sought him out, and made tempting offers to induce him to
yield up to them his secrets.
P. D. stroked his chin, pinched his lower lip, drew his fuzzy eyebrows
together, and shook his fine, shaggy old head. He was not yet satisfied
that his experiments had reached perfection.
He’d “think it over.” He’d “see about it some day, maybe,” and he
“wasn’t so damned cussed sure that it would benefit the world to
produce cheap wheat at the present time. This way out, gentlemen! This
way out!”
He was a rude old man, was P. D. McPherson.
In a way, he was obliged to be so, for otherwise he would have been
enormously imposed on. O Bar O was in the heart of the game and fishing
country, and was, therefore, the mecca of all aspiring hunters and
fishermen, to say nothing of the numerous campers and motor hoboes, who
drove in every day upon the land and left their trail of disorder and
dirt behind, and quite often small or large forest fires, that were
kept under control only by the vigilance of O Bar O.
The ranch was noted for its hospitality, and no tramp or stranger or
rider along the trail had ever been turned from its door. The line,
however, had to be drawn somewhere, and it was drawn in so far as the
idle tourists, pausing en route to Banff or Lake Louise to “beat” a
meal or a pleasant day at the ranch, were concerned, or the numerous
motor hoboes, who, denied at the ranch house their numerous requests
for milk and eggs and gasolene and the privilege of spending the night
there, slipped in under the bridge by the river, and set up their camps
on the banks of the Ghost River.
About the time when his wheat had brought him considerable, but
undesired, fame, P. D., holding his lower lip between thumb and
forefinger, was looking about for new experimental worlds to conquer.
By chance, his motherless son and daughter, then of the impressionable
ages of four and ten respectively, shot under his especial notice,
through the medium of a ride down the bannister and resultant noise.
P. D. studied his offspring appraisingly and thoughtfully, and as he
looked into the grimy, glooming young faces, he conceived another one
of his remarkable “inspirations.”
It was soon after this, that P. D. founded that “School of Nature,”
to which were bidden all of the children of the neighbouring ranch
country, and into which his own progeny were unceremoniously dumped.
However, when the curriculum of this Institution of Learning became
more fully understood, despite the fame of its founder and president,
there were none among the parents of the various children who felt
justified in sending them to the O Bar O School of Nature.
Even the most ignorant among them believed that school existed only
mainly for the purpose of teaching the young minds how to shoot with
reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic.
P. D. proposed only the slightest excursion into these elementary
subjects. Nature, so he declared, addressing the assembled farmers at
a special meeting, was the greatest of all teachers, a book into which
one might look, without turning a single leaf, and learn all that was
necessary for the knowledge of mankind.
He was convinced, so eloquently proclaimed P. D., that school such as
the world knew it, was antiquated in its methods and wholly unnecessary
and wrong. To teach the young the secrets and mysteries of nature--that
alone was needed to produce a race of supermen and women.
One timid little woman arose, and asked what “supermen” meant, and the
huge, rough father of the family of ten replied that it meant “men who
liked their supper.”
The meeting broke up in a riot--so far as P. D. was concerned, and his
neighbours departed with his wrathful imprecations ringing in their
ears.
Not to be daunted by the lack of support afforded him by his
neighbours, P. D. set at once to put his theories into practice upon
his helpless children.
It came to pass that the children of P. D. missed the advantages of the
ordinary modern schools. Had P. D., in fact, carried out his original
curriculum, which he prepared with scientific detail, it is quite
possible that the results might have turned out as satisfactorily as
his experiments with cattle, pigs, sheep and horses. P. D. reckoned
not, however, with the vagaries and impetuosities of youth and human
nature. Unlike dumb stock, he had fiery spirits, active imaginations,
and saucy tongues to deal with. He was not possessed with even the
normal amount of patience desirable in a good teacher. His classes,
therefore, were more often than not punctuated by explosive sounds,
miraculous expletives, indignant outcries, and the ejection or hurried
exit from the room of a smarting, angry-eyed youngster, suffering from
the two-fold lash of parental tongue and hand.
Then when some of his original ideas were just beginning to take
substantial root in their young minds and systems, P. D. fell a victim
to a new and devastating passion, which was destined to hold him in
thrall for the rest of his days.
Chess was his new mistress, alternately his joy and his bane. Even his
children were forgotten in the shuffle of events, and, turned upon
their own resources, they grew up like wild young things, loose on a
great, free range.
If, however, the young McPhersons had missed school, they had learned
much of which the average child of to-day is more or less ignorant.
They knew all of the theories concerned in the formation of this
earth of ours, and the living things upon it. They were intimately
acquainted with every visible and many invisible stars and planets in
the firmament. They had a plausible and a comprehensible explanation
for such phenomena as the milky way, the comets, the northern lights,
the asteroids and other denizens of the miraculous Alberta sky above
them. They knew what the west, the east, the north and the south
winds portended. They could calculate to a nicety the distance of
a thunderstorm. No mean weather prophets were the children of P.
D. McPherson; nor were their diagnosis dependent upon guess-work,
or an aching tooth, or rheumatic knee, or even upon intuition or
superstition, as in the case of the Indian.
Woodlore they knew, and the names and habits of the wild things that
abounded in the woods of O Bar O. Insects, ants, butterflies, bees,
were known by their scientific names. A rainbow, a sunrise, sunset,
the morning mist, fog, the night sun of Alberta, the Japanese current
that brought the Chinook winds over the Rocky Mountains, that changed
the weather from thirty below zero to a tropical warmth in Alberta, the
melting clouds in the skies, the night rainbows--all these were not
merely beautiful phenomena, but the result of natural causes, of which
the McPherson children were able to give an intelligent explanation.
They could ride the range and wield the lariat with the best of the
cowpunchers. Hilda could brand, vaccinate, dehorn, and wean cattle.
She was one of the best brand readers in the country, and she rode a
horse as if she were part of the animal itself. She could leap with the
agility of a circus rider upon the slippery back of a running outlaw,
and, without bridle or saddle, maintain her place upon a jumping,
bucking, kicking, wildly rearing “bronc.”
Untamed and wild as the mavericks that, eluding the lariat of the
cowpuncher, roamed the range unbranded and unbroken, Hilda and Sandy
McPherson came up out of their childhood years, and paused like timid,
curious young creatures of the wild upon the perilous edge of maturity.
Hilda was not without a comprehension of certain things in life that
had been denied her. If her heart was untamed, it was not the less
hungry and ardent. Though she realized that she had missed something
precious and desirable in life, she was possessed with a spartan and
sensitive pride. About her ignorance, she had erected a wall of it.
It was all very well to ride thus freely over the splendid open spaces
and to wend her fearless way through the beckoning woods of the Rocky
Mountain foothills. It was fine to be part of a game which every day
showed the results of labour well done, and to know that such labour
was contributing to the upkeep and value of the world. Yet there were
times when a very wistful expression of wonder and longing would come
into the girl’s dark eyes, and the craving for something other than she
had known would make her heart burn within her.
To appease this heart hunger, Hilda sought a medium through the
reading matter obtainable at O Bar O; but the reading matter consisted
of the Encyclopædia Brittanica, Darwin’s “Origin of the Species,”
several scientific works, and two voluminous works on the subject of
chess.
For a time, the Encyclopædia afforded sufficient material to satisfy
at least her curiosity; but presently a new source was tapped. From
the bunkhouse came dime novels and the banned newspapers, which P. D.
had more than once denounced as “filthy truck fit for the intelligence
of morons only.” Besides these were the _Police Gazette_, two or
three penny dreadfuls, _Hearsts’_, and several lurid novels of the
blood-and-thunder type. This precious reading matter, borrowed or
“swiped” by Sandy and Hilda, while the men were on the range, was
secretly devoured in hayloft and other secure places of retreat, and
made a profound impression upon their eager young minds.