At this time, P. D. McPherson held the title of Champion Chess Player
of Western Canada. He was, however, by no means proud or satisfied with
this honourable title to chess fame.
Western Canada! One could count on the fingers of one hand the number
of real players in the whole of the west. P. D. had played with them
all. He considered it child’s play to have beaten them. P. D. had
issued a challenge not merely to the eastern holders of the title, but
across the line, where went his bid to contest the world’s title with
the Yankee holders of the same.
P. D. dreamed and brooded over the day when he would win in an
international tournament that would include the chess players of
all the nations of the world. Meanwhile, it behooved him to keep in
practice, so that his skill and craft should abate by not a jot or a
tittle.
He had taught his young son and daughter this noble game. Though
good players, they had inherited neither their parent’s craft nor
passion for it. Indeed, they had reason to fear and dislike chess as a
veritable enemy. Many a ranch or barn dance, many a gymkhana, rodeo,
stampede and Indian race; many a trip to Calgary or Banff had been
wiped off Hilda’s pleasure slate, as punishment for a careless move or
inattention when the ancient game was in progress. Many a night the
bitter-hearted Sandy had departed early, supperless, to bed, because of
a boyish trick of wriggling while his father debated in long-drawn-out
study and thought the desirability of such and such a move.
Hilda and Sandy loved their father; yet his departure upon a scouting
expedition on the trail of a prospective chess player filled them
always with a sense of unholy elation and ecstatic freedom.
P. D.’s good or bad humour upon his return to the ranch depended
entirely upon the success or failure of his quest. If success crowned
his pursuit, and his cravings were satisfied, P. D. returned, beaming
with good will upon the world in general and the inhabitants of O Bar
O in particular. On the other hand, should such excursions have proven
fruitless, the old monomaniac came back to his ranch in uncertain and
irascible humour. All hands upon the place then found it expedient and
wise to give him a wide berth, while his unfortunate son and daughter
were reduced to desperate extremities to escape his especial notice and
wrath.
It should not be inferred from the foregoing that P. D. necessarily
neglected his ranching interests. Chess was a periodic malady with him.
The ranch was a permanent institution. O Bar O was the show-place of
the foothills and a matter of pride to the country. The smoothest of
beef, grass-fed steers, topped the market each year, when they went
forth from the ranch not merely to the local stockyards, but to Kansas
City, Montreal, St. Louis, and Chicago, in the latter place to compete
with success with the corn-feds of the U. S. A.
At the fairs, over the country, O Bar O stock carried a majority of
the ribbons, and “Torchy,” a slim, black streak of lightning and fire,
brought undying fame to its owner by going over the bar of the annual
horse-show of Calgary, with Hilda upon his back, the highest peak ever
attained by a horse in Canada.
A berth at O Bar O was coveted by all the riders and cowpunchers of the
country. The fame of the fine old ranch had crossed the line, in fact,
and had brought to the ranch some of the best of the bronco busters and
riders. The outfit could not, in fact, be beaten. The food was of the
best; the bunkhouses modern and clean; the work done in season and in
a rational number of hours per day; the wages were fair; first-class
stock to care for; a square foreman, and a bully boss. What more could
a man wish upon a cattle ranch? Pride permeated to every man-Jack upon
the place. Each sought to stand well in the eyes of P. D., and his
praise was a coveted thing, while his anger was something to escape,
and unlikely to be forgotten.
P. D.’s praise took the form of a resounding, smashing clap upon the
shoulder, a prized assignment, and a bonus at the end of the month.
His anger took the form of an ungodly and most extraordinary string of
blistering and original curses, words being cut in half to slip curses
midway between as the torrent poured from the wrathful P. D.
It may be mentioned in passing that P. D.’s son and his daughter had
inherited and were developing a quaint vocabulary of typical O Bar O
“cusses,” much to their father’s amazement and indignation. Indeed,
the first time P. D.’s attention was directed toward this talent of
his daughter--her voice was raised in shrill damning speech toward a
squawking hen who desired to sit upon a nest of eggs destined for the
house--the old fellow stopped midway in his strut across the barnyard,
overcome with dismay and anger. Every “hand” within sight and sound was
bawled to the presence of the irate parent, and upon them he poured
the vials of his wrath.
“Where in hot hell did my daughter learn such language? You blocketty,
blinketty, gosh darned, sons of cooks and dish-washers have got to
cut out all this damned, cursed, hellish language when my daughter’s
around. D’you hear me?”
And to the foreman!
“Orders to your men, sir, no more damned cursing upon the place!
I’ll have you and your men know that this is O Bar O and not a
G-- D-- swearing camp for a blasted lot of bohunks.”
This, then, was the outfit to which the seemingly guileless Englishman
had become attached.
P. D., his bushy eyebrows twitching over bright old eyes, confirmed the
judgment of the foreman, that “a bite of entertainment won’t come amiss
at O Bar O” in the shape of the English tenderfoot.
“Put him through the ropes, damn it. Get all the fun you want out of
him. Work the blasted hide off him. Make him sweat like hell to earn
his salt. Go as far as you like, but--” and here P. D.’s bushy eyebrows
drew together in an ominous frown, “give the man a damned square deal.
This is O Bar O, and we’ll have no G-- D-- reflections upon the place.”
So the Englishman was “put through the ropes.” Despite his greenness
and seeming innocence, it is possible that he was wider awake than
any of the men who were working their wits to make his days and
nights exciting and uproarious. He played up to his part with seeming
ingenuousness and high good humour. If the hands of O Bar O regarded
him as a clown, a mountebank, a greenhorn, he played greener and
funnier than they had bargained for.
He was given steers to milk. He was assigned the job of “housemaid,
nurse, chambermaid, and waitress” to the house barn stock. He fed
the pigs, and he did the chores of cook-car and bunkhouse. All the
small and mean jobs of the ranch were assigned to the newcomer. He
was constantly despatched upon foolish and piffling errands. For an
indefinite period, he was relegated to the woodpile of the cook-house.
This was a job that the average cowman scorned. The cowpuncher and
ranch rider consider any work not concerned with horse or cattle a
reflection upon their qualities as riders. Cheerio, however, acquired
a genuine fondness for that woodpile. He would chop away with
undiminished cheer and vigour, whistling as he worked, and at the end
of the day, he would sit on a log and contentedly smoke his pipe, as he
surveyed the fruit of his labours with palpable pride and even vanity.
“Boastin’ of how many logs he’d split. Proud as a whole hen. Hell!
you can’t feaze a chap like that. He’d grin if you put’m to breakin’
stones.”
Thus Bully Bill to Holy Smoke, assistant foreman at the O Bar O. “Ho”
as he was known for short, scowled at that reference to breaking
stones, for Ho knew what that meant in another country across the
line. Out of the side of his mouth he shot:
“Why don’t cha set ’im choppin’ real logs if he’s stuck on the job.
Stick ’im in the timber and see if he’ll whistle over his job then.”
So “into the timber” went Cheerio, with strict orders to cut down ten
fifty-feet tall trees per day. He looked squarely into the face of
the assistant foreman, and said: “Righto,” and took the small hand
axe handed him by the solemn-faced Hootmon, whose tongue was in his
cheek, and who doubled over in silent mirth as soon as Cheerio’s back
was turned. But neither Mootmon, nor Ho, nor Bully Bill, nor, for that
matter, old P. D. or his son and daughter, laughed when at the end of
the day Cheerio returned with twelve trees to his credit for the day’s
work. It was, in fact, a matter of considerable wonder and speculation
as to the method employed by the Englishman to achieve those twelve
immense trees through the medium of that small hand axe. Cheerio went
on whistling, kept his own counsel, and was starting off the next
morning upon a similar errand when Bully Bill harkened to another
suggestion of his assistant, and beckoned him to the corrals.
There was a wary-eyed, ominously still, maverick tied to a post, and
him Cheerio was ordered to mount. He said:
“Hello, old man--waiting for me, what?” smiled at the boy holding his
head, and swung up into the saddle.
“Now,” said Bully Bill. “You lookut here. You ride that bronc to hell
and back again, and break ’er cowboy if you have to break your own head
and hide and heart in doing it.”
Then someone untied the halter rope, and the race was on. He was tossed
over and over again clear over the head of the wild maverick, and over
and over again he remounted, to be thrown again by the wildly kicking
bronco. Bruised and sore, with a cut lip and black eye, he pursued,
caught, and again and again mounted, again and again was thrown, to
mount once again, and to stick finally like glue to the horse’s back,
while the hooting, yelling ring of men surrounding the corrals--Hilda
and Sandy upon the railings--yelled themselves hoarse with derisive
comments and directions, and then went wild with amazed delight, when,
still upon the back of a subdued and shivering young outlaw, Cheerio
swept around the corrals. He arose in his stirrups now, himself
cheering lustily, and waving that newly-acquired O Bar O hat like a
boy. Even Hilda begrudged him not the well-earned cheers, though she
stifled back her own with her hand upon her mouth, when she found that
he had observed her, and with eyes kindling with pride, rode by.
He was thumped upon the back, hailed as “a hellufafellow,” and enjoyed
the pronounced favour and patronage of Bully Bill himself, who brought
forth his grimy plug of chewing tobacco, and offered a “chaw” of it to
the Englishman. Cheerio bit into it with relish, nor showed any sign of
the nauseating effects of a weed he preferred in his pipe rather than
his mouth.
As a matter of fact, like most Englishmen of his class, Cheerio was an
excellent rider, though his riding had not been of the sort peculiar
to cowboydom. However, it did not take him long to learn “the hang of
the thing.” He dropped his posting for the easy, cowboy lope, and he
discovered that, while one clung with his knees when on an English
saddle, such an action had painful and exhausting results with a stock
saddle. There really was something to Bully Bill’s simple formula:
“Hell! There ain’t nothin’ to this here ridin’. All you got to do is
throw your leg over his back and--stick!”
His English training, however, stood him in good stead. More than the
foreman at O Bar O noted and appreciated the fact that the newcomer was
as intimate with horses as if they were human brethren.
From this time on, his progress at the ranch was swift, considering the
daily handicaps the men still continued to slip in his way. His courage
and grit won him at least the grudging respect of the men, though, try
as he might, to “pal” with the O Bar O “hands,” his overtures were met
with suspicion.
There is about certain Englishmen, an atmosphere of superiority that
gives offence to men of the newer lands. The “hands” of the O Bar O
realized instinctively that this man belonged to another class and
caste than their own. No one in the outfit was in a mood to be what
he would have considered “patronized.” It was all very well to have a
whale of a good time “guying,” “stringing,” and making the tenderfoot
hop. That was part of the game, but when it came down to “pal-ing” with
a “guy,” who patronized the Ghost River for a daily bath, wielded a
matutinal razor, and had regard for the cleanliness of his underwear
as well as his overwear, that was a different proposition. Undaunted
by continual rebuffs, however, Cheerio pertinaciously and doggedly
continued to cultivate his “mates” of the bunkhouse, and at the end of
the second month he felt that he could call at least four of the men
his friends.
Pink-eyed Jake vehemently and belligerently proclaimed him a
“damfinefellow.” This was after Cheerio had knocked him out in a
bout, in private, after enduring public bulldogging and browbeating.
Hootmon made no bones about expressing his conviction that Cheerio
was a “mon”! Neither he nor Cheerio revealed the fact that the better
part of Cheerio’s first month’s wages was in the coat pocket of the
Scotchman. The latter had a sick wife and a new baby in Calgary. Jim
Hull was unlikely to forget certain painful nights, when all hands in
the bunkhouse snored in blissful indifference to his groans, while
Cheerio had arisen in his “pink piejammies” and rubbed “painkiller” on
the rheumatic left limb.
The foreman by this time had discovered that despite his stammering
tongue and singular ways, this lean and slight young Englishman could
“stand the gaff” of twenty-four hours at a stretch in the saddle, nor
“batted an eyelash” after a forty mile trip and back to Broken Nose
Lake, after a “bunch” of yearling steers, without a moment off his
horse, or a speck of grub till late at night.
His love of nature, his enthusiasm over sunsets and sunrises, the
poetry he insisted upon inditing to the moon and the star-spotted
skies, to the jagged outline of those misty mountains, towering against
the sun-favoured sky, the pen pictures he drew of the men and the
silhouette shadows of ranch buildings and bush; the wild flowers he
carried into the bunkhouse and cherished with water and sun; these
and other “soft” actions, which had at first brought upon him the
amused contempt of the men, slowly won at last their rough respect and
approval.
Came long evenings, when under the mellow beams of the Alberta night
sun, the wide-spreading hills and meadows seemed touched by a golden
spell, and a brooding silence reigned on all sides, then the low murmur
of Cheerio, half humming, half reciting the songs he had written of
home and friends across the sea, tightened something in the throats of
the toughest of the men and brought recollections of their own far-off
homes, so that with suspended pipes they strained forward the better to
catch each half-whispered word of the Englishman.