At the ranch house, P. D. McPherson alternately paced the living-room,
the hall, the dining-room, the kitchen and the back and front verandahs.
Fourteen times he called for his daughter and twice fourteen times he
had roared for his son.
The morning’s mail (brought on horseback seven miles from Morley
post-office by an Indian) contained a letter that P. D. had been
waiting for all of that summer. It was brief and to the point almost
of curtness. It consisted of one line scrawl of a certain famous chess
player in the City of Chicago and was to the effect that the writer
would be pleased to accept the challenge of the Canadian player for
November 30th of the current year.
If P. D. had drunk deeply and long of some inebriating cup he could not
have felt any more exhilarated than after reading that epistle.
On November thirtieth--scarce two months off--he, P. D. McPherson,
chess champion of Western Canada, was to go to the City of Chicago, in
the State of Illinois, there to sit opposite the greatest chess player
in the United States of America and at that time demonstrate to a
skeptical world that Canada existed upon the map.
He’d show ’em, by Gad! Yanks! (The average Canadian refers to the
average American as “Yank” or “Yankee” regardless of the part of the
States of which he may be a resident. P. D. knew better than to refer
to a Chicagoan as a Yank, but had acquired the habit, and in his heart
he was not fussy over designations.)
Yanks! Hmph! P. D. snorted and laughed, and G.D.’ed the race heartily
and without stint. Not that he had any special animus against
Americans. That was just P. D.’s way of expressing himself. Besides
he was still smarting over having been ignored and snubbed for long
by those top-lofty, self-satisfied, condescending lords of the chess
board. For two years P. D. had banged at the chess door and only now
had he at last been reluctantly recognised. He’d show ’em a thing or
two in chess.
Yanks as chess players! It was to laugh! P. D. had followed every
printed game that had been published in the chess departments of
the newspapers and periodicals. His fingers had fairly itched many
a time when a game was in progress to indite fiery instructions to
the d-d-d-d-d-d-d-fool players, who were alternately attacking and
retreating at times when a trick could be turned that would end
hostilities at a single move. P. D. knew the trick. It was all his own.
He had invented it; at least, he thought he had invented it, and had
been angry and uneasy at a suggestion put out by a recent player that
it was a typically German move.
Two months! Two months in which to practice up and study for the mighty
contest, which might mean that the winner would be the chosen one in
an international tournament that would include all the nations of the
world. Ah ha! He’d waste not a precious moment. He’d begin at once! At
once!
“Hilda! Hilda! Hilda! Where’s that girl? Hilda! Hi, you there,
G-- D-- you Chum Lee, where’s Miss Hilda?”
“Me no know, bossie. Chum Lee no sabe where Miss Hilda go on afternoon.”
“Didn’t you see her go by?”
“No, bossie, me no see Miss Hilda. Mebbe she like go see him blandie”
(brand).
“Beat it over to the corral and tell her I want her--at once--at once!”
“Hilda! Hil-l-lda!”
He made a trumpet of his hands and roared his daughter’s name through
it.
“Hil-lda! Where in the name of the almighty maker of mankind is that
girl! Hilda!”
Yanks indeed! Dog damn their souls! Their smug satisfaction with
themselves; their genius for bragging and boasting; their ignorance
concerning any other part of the earth save the sod on which their own
land stood--their colossal self-esteem and intolerance--all this was
evidence of an amazing racial provincialism that P. D. proposed to
expose and damn forevermore.
“Hilda! Damn it all, where are you?”
“Hilda! You hear me very well, miss!”
Tramp, tramp, tramp. Round and round the house, inside and out, hands
twitching behind, holding still to that precious letter.
“Sandy! Sandy! Sa-nn-n-ndy! Where’s that boy gone?”
Tramp, tramp again and:
“Sandy! You come here, you red-haired young whipper-snapper--You hear
me very well. Sandy! Sandy! San-n-dy!”
No reply. It was evident that the house was empty and his son and
daughter nowhere within hearing unless in hiding. Chum Lee scurried
past back from the corrals, and apparently unconscious of the amazed
and furious string of blistering epithets and cusses that pursued him
from his “bossie.”
From the direction of the corrals a din surged, the moaning, groaning
calves and the mothers penned in the neighbouring field. These cries
were not music to the ears of the formerly proud owner of the cattle.
It mattered not this day to P. D. whether a brand was slapped on true
or banged on upside down; whether it were blurred or distinct. It
mattered not whether the dehorning shears had snipped to one inch of
the animal’s head as prescribed by law, or had clipped down into the
skull itself. He paid a foreman crackajack wages to look after his
cattle. If he could not do the work properly, there were other foremen
to be had in Alberta. P. D. had no desire whatsoever to go to the
corrals and witness the operations. His place at the present time was
the house, where one could occupy their minds with the scientific game
of chess.
“Sandy! Sandy!”
Back into the house went the irate P. D. The chess table was jerked
out and the chess board set up. P. D. propped up a book containing
illustrations of certain famous chess games, before him, and set his
men in place.
P. D. began the game with a dummy partner, making his own move first
and with precise care his partner’s. Fifteen minutes of chess solitaire
and then out again, and another and louder calling for his son and his
daughter.
No doubt they were at the corrals, dog blast their young fool souls.
What was the matter with that bleak nit-wit of a foreman? He was hired
to run a ranch, and given more men for the job than that allotted by
any other ranch for a similar work. What in blue hades did he mean
by drawing upon the house for labor? The son and daughter of P. D.
McPherson were not common ranch hands that every time a bit of branding
or rounding-up was done they should be pulled out to assist with the
blanketty, blistering, hell-fire work.
Raging up and down, up and down, through the wide verandah and back
through the halls and into the living-room again and again at the
unsatisfactory chess solitaire, the furious old rancher was in a black
mood when voices outside the verandah caused him to jerk his chin
forward at attention. The missing miscreants had returned!