His Royal Nibs is a novel by Winnifred Eaton Reeve. Set in western Canada after the First World War, it moves between the Banff road, Calgary and the O Bar O ranch, among veterans seeking work and new beginnings. It offers a warm, grounded view of hope and hardship in the foothills.
ТО CARL LAEMMLE FOR WHOM THE AUTHOR HAS THE SINCEREST ADMIRATION
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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 bloodcurdling 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.
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