Читать книгу His Royal Nibs - Onoto Watanna - Страница 3

Table of Contents

Along the Banff National Highway, automobiles sped by in a cloud of dust, heat, noise and odour. They stopped not to offer a lift to the wayfarer along the road, for they were intent upon making the evergrowing grade to Banff on “high.”

This year tramps were common on the road, war veterans, for the most part, “legging it” from Calgary to lumber or road camp, or making for the ranches in the foothills, after that elusive job of which the Government agent in England had so eloquently expatiated, but which proved in most cases to be but a fantastic fable. With somewhat of that pluck which had meant so much to the world, when the “vets” were something more than mere job hunting tramps, these men from across the sea trudged in the heat, the dust and the dry alkali-laden air. Sometimes they were taken on at camp or ranch. More often they were shunted farther afield. One wondered where they would finally go, these “boys” from the old land, who had crossed to the Dominion of Canada with such high hopes in their breasts.

The O Bar O lies midway between Calgary and Banff, in the foothills of the ranching country. Its white and green buildings grace the top of a hill that commands a view of the country from all sides.

From the Banff road the fine old ranch presents an imposing sight, after miles of road through a country where the few habitations are mainly those melancholy shacks of the first homesteaders of Alberta.

When “Bully Bill,” foreman of the O Bar O, drove his herd of resentful steers from the green feed in the north pasture, where they had broken through the four lines of barbed wire, he was shouting and swearing in a blood-curdling and typically O Bar O fashion, whirling and cracking his nine feet long bull whip over the heads of the animals, as they swept before him down to the main gate.

Bully Bill had “herding” down to a science, and “them doegies,” as he called them, went in a long line before him like an army in review. Had events followed their natural course, the cattle should have filed out of the opened gate into the roadway, and across the road to the south field, where, duly, they would distribute themselves among the hummocks and coulies that afforded the most likely places for grazing. On this blistering day, however, Bully Bill’s formula failed. Something on the wide road had diverted the course of the driven steers. Having gotten them as far as the road, Bully Bill paused in his vociferous speech and heady action to take a “chaw” of his favorite plug; but his teeth had barely sunk into the weed when something caused him to shift it to his cheek, as with bulging eyes, he sat up erectly upon his horse, and then moved forward into swift action.

A certain pausing and grouping, a bunching together and lowering of heads, the ominous movement of a huge roan steer ahead of the herd, apprised the experienced cowpuncher of the fact that a stampede was imminent.

As he raced through the gate, Bully Bill perceived the cause of the revolution of his herd. Directly in the path of the animals was a strange figure. Not the weary footsore tramp common to the trail. Not the nervy camper, applying at O Bar O for the usual donation of milk and eggs. Neither neighbour, nor Indian from Morley. Here was a clean tweed-clad Englishman, with a grip in his hand. How he had maintained his miraculous neatness after forty-four miles of tramping all of the way from Calgary cannot be explained.

Eye to eye he faced that roan steer, whose head sank loweringly, as he backed and swayed toward that moving mass behind him, all poised and paused for the charge.

Time was when the Englishman had been in another kind of a charge, but that is a different story, and France is very far away from Alberta, Canada.

As the dumbfounded cowpuncher raced wildly in his direction, the man afoot did a strange thing. Raising on high his grip in his hand, he flung it directly into the face of the roan steer. In the scattering and scampering and bellowing that ensued, it was hard to distinguish anything but dust and a vast, moving blur, as the startled herd, following the lead of the roan steer, swept headlong down the road, to where in the canyon below, the Ghost and the Bow Rivers had their junction.

From the direction of the corrals swept reinforcements, in the shape of “Hootmon,” a Scot so nicknamed by the outfit, because of his favourite explosive utterance, and Sandy, son of the O Bar O, red-haired, freckled-faced and indelibly marked by the sun above, who rode his Indian bronc with the grace and agility of a circus rider.

Into the roaring mêlée charged the yelling riders. Not with the “hobo-dude,” lying on the inner side of the barbed-wire fence, through which he had scrambled with alacrity before the roan steer had recovered from the onslaught of the grip, were the “hands” of the ranch concerned. Theirs the job to round up and steady that panic-stricken herd; to bring order out of chaos; to soothe, to beat, to drive into a regulation bunch, and safely land the cattle in the intended south field.

Half an hour later, when the last of the tired herd had passed through the south gate, when the bellowings had died down and already the leaders were taking comfort in the succulent green grass on the edges of a long slough, Bully Bill bethought him of the cause of all this extra work and delay. He released that plug of tobacco from his left cheek, spat viciously, and with vengeance in his eye, rode over to where the intruder still reclined upon the turf. Said turf was hard and dry, and tormenting flies and grasshoppers and flying ants leaped about his face and neck; but he lay stretched out full-length upon his back, staring up at the bright blue sky above him. As Bully Bill rode over, he slowly and easily raised himself to a sitting posture.

“Hi! you there!” bawled the foreman, in the overbearing voice that had earned for him his nickname. “What the hell are you squattin’ out here for? What d’ya mean by stirrin’ up all this hell of a racket? What the hell d’ya want at O Bar O?”

The stranger smiled up at him, with the sun glinting in his eyes. His expression was guileless, and the engaging ring of friendliness and reassurance in his voice caused the irate cowhand to lapse into a stunned silence, as he gaped at this curious specimen of the human family on the ground before him.

“Ch-cheerio!” said the visitor. “No harm done. I’m f-first rate, thank you. Not even scratched. How are you?”

Hootmon applied his spurs to his horse’s flanks, and cantered up the hill in the direction of the corrals, there to recount to an interested audience old Bully Bill’s discomfiture and amazement.

Things move slowly in a ranching country, and not every day does the Lord deposit a whole vaudeville act at the door of a ranch house.

Sandy, seeking to curry favour with the confounded foreman, winked at him broadly, and then deliberately pricked the rump of the unfortunate Silver Heels with a pin. Kicking around in a circle, the bronco backed and bucked in the direction of the man upon the grass, now sitting up and tenderly examining an evidently bruised shin.

At this juncture, the long-suffering Silver Heels developed an unexpected will of his own. Shaking himself violently from side to side, he reared up on his hind legs, and by a dash forward of his peppery young head, he jerked the reins from the hands of the surprised lad, who shot into the air and nearly fell into the lap of the Englishman.

That individual gripped the boy’s arm tightly and swung him neatly to his side.

“You leggo my arm!”

Sandy squirmed from the surprisingly iron grip of the visitor.

The tramp, as they believed him to be, was now sitting up erectly, with that sublime, smooth air of cheerful condescension which Canadians so loathe in an Englishman.

“Cheerio, old man!” said he, and slapped the unwillingly impressed youngster upon the back. “Not hurt much—what?”

“Hurt—nothing! Whacha take me for?”

Sandy, a product of O Bar O, let forth a typical string of hot cusses, while the Englishman grinned down upon him.

“What the hell you doin’ sittin’ on our grass?” finished Sandy shrilly. “What cha want at our ranch?”

“Oh, I say! Is this a rawnch then?”

He turned a questioning eager gaze upon the foreman, who now sat with right leg resting across the pummel of the saddle, studying their visitor in puzzled silence. After a moment, having spat and transferred his plug from the left to the right cheek, Bully Bill replied through the corner of his mouth.

“You betchour life this ain’t no rawnch. Ain’t no rawnches this side o’ the river. They ranch on this side.”

The other looked unenlightened, and Bully Bill condescended further explanation, with a flicker of a wink at the delighted Sandy.

“Yer see, it’s like this. On the south side of the river, there’s a sight of them English “dooks” and earls and lords and princes. They play at rawnching, doncherknow. On the north side, we’re the real cheese. We’re out to raise beef. We ranch!”

Having delivered this explanation of things in the cattle country, Bully Bill, well pleased with himself, dropped his foot back into his stirrup and saluted the Englishman condescendingly:

“Here’s lookin’ at you!” he said, and gently pressed his heel into his horse’s side.

“I say——!”

The tramp had sprang to his feet with surprising agility, and his nervy hand was at the mouth of Bully Bill’s mount.

“I say, old man, will you hold on a bit? I w-wonder now, do you, by any chance, need help on your ranch? Because if you do, I’d like to apply for the position. If this is a cattle ranch, I’ll say that I know a bit about horses. R-r-r-ridden s-some in my time, and I t-took care of a c-car-load of cattle c-coming up from the east. W-w-worked my way out here, in fact, and as to w-wages, nominal ones will be quite satisfactory as a s-starter.”

Bully Bill, his mouth gaped open, was surveying the applicant from head to foot, his trained eye travelling from the top of the sleekly-brushed blond hair, the smoothly-shaven cheek, down the still surprisingly dapper form to the thin shoes that were so painfully inadequate for the trail. Sandy was doubled up in a knot, howling with fiendish glee. Bully Bill spat.

“I d-don’t m-mind roughing it at all,” continued the applicant, wistfully. “D-don’t judge me by my clothes. Fact is, old man, they happen to be all I’ve g-got, you see. B-but I’m quite c-competent to——”

Bully Bill said dreamily, looking out into space, and as if thinking aloud.

“We ain’t as tough as we’re cracked up to be. Of course, they’s one or two stunts you got to learn on a cattle ranch—rawnch—beggin’ your pardon——”

“That’s quite all right, old man. Don’t mention it. Is there a chance then for me?”

There was not a trace of a smile on Bully Bill’s face as he solemnly looked down into the anxious blue eyes of the applicant.

“They’s the makin’s of a damn fine cowboy in you,” he said.

“I say!”

A smile broke all over the somewhat pinched face of the strange tramp. That smile was so engaging, so sunny, so boyish that the cowpuncher returned it with a characteristic grin of his own.

“D-you really mean to say that I’m engaged?”

“You betchu.”

“Thanks awfully, old man,” cried the other cordially, and extended his white hand, which gripped the horny one of the cowpuncher, at rest on his leather-clad knee.

Bully Bill rode off at a slow lope, and as he rode, he steadily chewed. Once or twice he grunted, and once he slapped his leg and made a sound that was oddly like a hoarse guffaw. In the wake of the loitering horse, carrying his now sadly-battered grip in his hand, the Englishman plugged along, and as he came he whistled a cheery strain of music.