His Royal Nibs by Winnifred Eaton Reeve — Read

If the orders issued from headquarters (viz. P. D. McPherson) had been implicitly obeyed, the life of the newspaper man would have been most uncomfortable. Even as it was, he was prudent enough to give the house a wide berth. "Dunc" Mallison was fond of fishing, and his assignment was in the nature of a vacation for him. He possessed a "dinky" little flivver, whose front seat turned back on hinges, transforming the interior into a tolerably comfortable bed, à la Pullman. Scouting along the banks of the Ghost River, which bounded one side of the O Bar O ranch, the newspaper man found an ideal place for a camp, not far from the cave where Cheerio painted of a Sunday in secret.

Though "Dunc" fished the greater part of the day, he nevertheless dispatched bulletins to his paper in town, and began work on a feature story concerning P. D., the mysterious Cheerio, Hilda McPherson, "beautiful daughter of the Chess Champion and famous rancher," Sandy, the wise young son and heir of O Bar O, and the various other folk who made up that temperamental ranch. The reporter depended not upon personal interviews with P. D. himself after that first explosive-forced session, through the medium of the evidently belligerent Hilda. Sandy, the guileless and the garrulous, himself interested in the attractions of the Ghost River canyon, was a mine of information upon which the reporter drew at length. Sandy was unable to resist the cigarette case, nor did the resulting tumult in his stomach of that first day's indulgence prevent his appearance at the newspaper man's camp and the reindulgence in the noxious weed, which his father had once vehemently declared was "purely poisonous."