: His Royal Nibs by Watanna Onoto - Ranch life Fiction; Alberta Fiction

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HIS ROYAL NIBS

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.

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