A Bird to Pluck
As he walked down Main Street toward the Kenora Hotel, where it was
his intention to have a bite to eat, Phil congratulated himself
inwardly, on the one side, on the more than ordinary success of his
gigantic bluff--for he knew that so long as he was able to hold this
bogey of a confession as a club over the head of Brenchfield, he was
safe from open interference:--on the other side, he cursed his arrant
stupidity and childlike simplicity in destroying a document which,
even if he never used it, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt his
innocence of the crime for which he had been imprisoned.
He tried hard to recollect exactly what had happened that fatal
morning after Brenchfield had left the shack on the side of the road
at Carnaby, but all was more or less hazy and indistinct. He
remembered deciphering the note and crumpling it up in his despair and
worry. Later, he recollected gathering up the loose papers and other
material evidences of Brenchfield's guilt, stuffing them into the
stove and setting them alight.
As he walked along his musings were brought to an abrupt stop, as his
eye caught sight of a tall, straight, picturesque-looking individual
coming toward him. The man was dressed in what at one time had been an
immaculate sporting suit, but which, in its now battered and tattered
state, gave the wearer the look of a bookmaker who had been dragged
through a mud puddle and then hung out to dry.
The man's wide sombrero was battered, his stock around his neck was
dirty, the brass buttons on his robin-redbreast waistcoat were dull
and tarnished, his riding breeches and leggings seemed sworn enemies
of brush and polish. But despite all this, one could not get away from
the fact that everything the man wore was of the very best and most
expensive materials.
He stepped up in front of Phil apologetically. His voice was
attractively musical and exceedingly English.
"Excuse me, old chap! I'm a stranger here. I'm deuced dirty and
devilish hungry. Do you mind directing me to a good hotel where I
could get a wash and a jolly good tuck in?"
"Certainly," said Phil. "I think the Kenora's all right. I'm going
that way myself for a snack, if you care to come along."
"Thanks! Jolly decent! Don't mind if I do!"
He turned with Phil, and as they went on together he took a little
silver case from his pocket and handed a card to Phil.
"My name! What's yours?"
Phil scanned the card and smiled.
Percival DeRue Hannington
The Oaks Mount Raeburn
Hants
"Sorry I haven't a card," he said. "My name's Ralston, Phil Ralston."
"Don't mention it, old chap! They don't cotton much to cards out here,
I notice."
He wrung Phil's hand heartily.
A little cord was hanging round Percival Hannington's neck and led to
a top pocket of his vest. Phil felt positive it terminated in a
monocle and, as the stranger's fingers wandered down the cord, Phil,
in his dread of what was about to happen, laid his hand restrainingly
over the travelling fingers.
"Don't!" he pleaded. "They don't cotton to that, either, out here."
The stranger flushed a little.
"By jove,--you're right. Thanks! Habits are beastly things, you know.
Better rid myself of all my old ties if I'm to start afresh, eh!"
He pulled out the monocle, jerked the cord from his neck, snapped the
glass between his fingers and tossed the lot into the roadway.
Something in the spontaneous act went to Phil's heart and he felt from
that moment that here was a man he could like despite his strange
exterior.
They passed through the bar of the Kenora, which was the only way one
could get admittance to that hotel unless by the back door among empty
cans and kitchen garbage. The strange apparition of the Englishman
reduced everyone in the saloon to funereal silence. Phil bravely led
the way, however, without mishap, except for a distant shout of
laughter which reached them at the dining-room.
Phil spoke to the hotel clerk, who shouted for the bell boy.
"Follow that boy," said Phil. "He will fix you up."
"Thanks! If you don't mind, I should like to have my bite with you,
old chap. I won't be a jiffy."
And off he strutted after the grinning boy, while Phil sat in five
minutes' dreamy contemplation.
Back came Percival DeRue Hannington, spick and span as far as a
clothes-brush and soap and water could make him.
"By jove! It's a corker how much dirt can stick to a fellow without
falling off," he remarked. "What are you having?"
Phil named something light.
"That all?" asked Hannington. "I'm hungry as a blooming hawk. I
haven't had a decent bite for three months.
"Everything on the blessed calendar for me, miss, frills and extras
included," he went on, addressing the waitress, who went away with the
end of her apron in her mouth.
"You know, Mister--Mister----"
"Phil Ralston!"
"Ah, yes! Mister Phil----"
"Just plain Phil!"
"Phil--yes, excuse me! You know, I came out to this bally country on
false pretences, as it were. Oh,--the country's all right! Don't
misunderstand me. It's a regular ripper, but, damme, I got done, you
know."
The soup came along, and DeRue Hannington fumbled for his monocle but
suddenly seemed to remember that it was no longer a part of him. He
blundered awkwardly a while, as if he had suddenly been deprived of
one of his active members.
"It's this way, Mister, eh, Phil. The guv'nor thought I was going the
pace too hard and becoming a bally rotter, so he said I had to go out
West and be a rawncher. He said it just like that,--as if being a
rawncher was as easy as being a rotter.
"Are you a rawncher?"
"No! It takes money to be that."
"You're a foreman, or a cowboy, or something?"
"No,--I'm not anything yet," smiled Phil. "I'm just starting in. I've
lately finished my college training."
The irony in his voice was lost on DeRue Hannington who was too full
of his own troubles to worry about those of anyone else.
"Well, you see,--when the dad and I had that tiff, I just took him
on.
"I saw an advertisement of a rawnching chap in a London journal,
offering to take on an Englishman as an apprentice and teach him
everything about rawnching for three years for five hundred dollars a
year. I just cabled that fellow and got his answer to come right away.
And here I got three months ago."
All the time he was speaking, Hannington was eating ravenously but
with the ease and daintiness of one whose table manners were an
eternal part of him.
"The rawncher met me at the station with two horses. Not a blessed
wagon or a thing to carry my luggage did the bounder have. It is lying
at the station yet;--at least it was last time I called in there. The
fellow took my five hundred dollars, then took me twenty miles up over
these everlasting hills. A thousand miles in the bally wilderness!
"Of course, you know, Phil, I will admit I was deuced raw."
Phil laughed. DeRue Hannington's good nature asserted itself and he
laughed, too.
After a while, he went on.
"This rawnching Johnnie's name was Duff. You don't happen to know
him?"
Phil shook his head.
"Well,--he put me in the charge of Mrs. Duff, and she set me to paring
potatoes, washing the floors, scouring pots and pans, wringing clothes
and all that sort of rot; till, one day, I just said to Duff that I'd
come West to rawnch, not to skivvy.
"Of course, I'll admit, I didn't know an apple tree from a cauliflower,
but, damme, I was game to learn, Phil. Don't you think I did right to
jolly-well remonstrate?"
"You certainly did!"
Thus encouraged, DeRue Hannington continued:
"He then put me to digging, and digging, and digging, till the cows
came home, then to weeding, and weeding, and weeding, miles and miles
of rows and rows of beastly carrots and things until I can't look an
honest carrot in the face or a potato in the eye without feeling
faint.
"I really didn't seem to be learning anything, but I stuck it gamely
until three days ago, when Mr. and Mrs. Duff went off to visit a
neighbour five miles up the Valley. They left me to look after the
blooming squawking baby. That just got me real mad, so when it started
in to bawl, I sat down and wrote a note saying I was through. I pinned
it to the baby,--and, here I am.
"Don't you think I did the right thing?"
"You bet!" answered Phil, striving hard to suppress his bubbling
merriment.
"They cawn't make me serve my three years out, can they, Phil?"
queried DeRue Hannington, anxiously.
"Not they! Why, all they wanted was your five hundred dollars. They'll
be glad to be quit of you."
The Englishman perked up.
"They're welcome to the money. But I'm not through rawnching, you
know. You see I've got the worst over now and I'm feeling quite a
Westerner. You don't happen to know anyone who has a good rawnch for
sale?--one with a decent sort of a house and stables, and lots of
fruit trees on it. I've got the money in the bank, you know, and could
pay cash for it. I really think I could run a rawnch now."
"No,--I haven't the slightest idea!" returned Phil. "But it shouldn't
be a hard job getting a ranch, if you have the money. There are always
lots of people ready to sell goods for cash. Take my advice, though;
don't be in too great a hurry."
Phil rose to go.
DeRue Hannington followed him to the saloon, where Phil shook hands
and left him.
As he passed out at the door he heard the voice of the stranger raised
above the general conversation of the saloon.
"Excuse me, but have any of you good fellows any idea where a chap
could buy a good rawnch for cash?"
Phil threw up his hands in despair and walked on, knowing that
Percival DeRue Hannington had still a lot to learn about ranching and
about those who had ranches to sell.