Every day Nettie arose at six and went about her dull duties. There was the cream to separate, the pails and separator to clean and scald; there was the butter to make; the chickens to feed, washing, ironing and cleaning. The canning season was at hand and the Indians rode in with wild cranberries, gooseberries, raspberries and saskatoons. From day to day she picked over and washed the fruit, packed it in syrup in jars, and set them in the wash boiler on the range.
Time accustoms us even to suffering, and one of the penalties of youth and health is that one thrives and lives and pursues one's way, even though the heart within one be dead. Vaguely Nettie groped for a solution to her tragedy. She knew that it was not something that could be pushed away into some recess of the mind; it was something unforgettable, a scar upon the soul rather than the body. Of Cyril she could think only with the most intense anguish of mind, and knewthat she could never face the man she loved and tell him what had befallen her. Already he had come to exist in her mind only as a loved one dead. He was no longer for her. She had lost Cyril through this act of Bull Langdon.
Two weeks after the departure of the Bull for the purebred camp, Nettie was startled at her work by the insistent ringing of the telephone, which had been unusually silent since then. Her first thought was that the Bull was calling from Barstairs, and the thought of his hated voice, even upon the wire, held her back. The telephone repeated its ring, and with lagging feet Nettie at last answered it.
"Hello!"
"Is that the Bar Q?"
It was a woman's voice, quavering and friendly. Nettie's hand tightened in a vise about the receiver. Her eyes closed. Pale as death, she leaned against the wall.
"Is that Bar Q? Is that you, Nettie?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Is Mr. Langdon home?"
"No, ma'am."
"Any of the men about?"
"They're all in the fields."
"That's too bad. I'm here at the station. Came down on the noon train. 'Twould take too long for you to harness up and meet me, so I'll go over to the Reserve, and maybe Mr. Barrons will bring me up. Good-by, Nettie. Is everything all right?"
A pause, and then Nettie answered faintly:
"Yes, ma'am."
Nettie hung up the 'phone, and stood with her face pressed to the wall. A great tide of fear and shame swept over her. How was she to face her gentle mistress? How speak to her? How find words to tell her? She longed to escape from the kind and questioning eyes that would look so trustingly and fondly into her own.
It was but half an hour's run by automobile from the station, and the grating noise of the car, valorously trying to make the high grade to the house, brought Nettie violently back to life. She dabbed at her eyes with her apron, smoothed her hair and tried to compose herself as best she could as the little car chugged to the back door.
An appalling change had taken place in Mrs. Langdon. Despite her feeble protest, the Indian agent, inwhose car she had come, insisted upon lifting the frail little woman from the automobile, and carrying her into the house. She tried to laugh, as Nettie placed a chair for her, and when her breath would permit it, she said bravely:
"Well, here I am, Nettie, back like a bad penny, and feeling just fine!"
Fine! When there was scarcely anything left of her but skin and bones. Fine! When she was so weak she could scarcely stand without holding on to something. Nettie knelt in a passion of mothering pity beside her, and removed the little woman's coat and hat. Meanwhile, the faint tinkle of her mistress's chiding laughter hurt Nettie more than if she had struck her.
"Why, Nettie, one would think I was a baby the way you are fussing over me. I really feelverywell. I'm in perfect health. We all are, dear, you know. Illness is just an error of the imagination, just as sin and everything that is ugly and cruel in the world is. We are all perfect, made in God's image, and we can be what we will. Why, Nettie, dear, what on earth——!"
Nettie's head had fallen upon her mistress's lap, great sobs rending her.
"Nettie! Nettie! I'm real cross with you. Thiswon't do at all. Don't you see that by giving way like this, we bring on our illnesses and troubles? We really are manufacturers of our own ills, and the solutions of all our problems are right within ourselves."
Nettie raised her head dumbly at that, and tried to choke back the overwhelming sobs.
"Mrs. Langdon, I can't never leave you now."
"Never leave me! Were you thinking of going, then?"
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Langdon. I thought I'dhaveto go. There—were reasons why, and——"
"Nettie, if the reasons are—Cyril, why, I know all about it. You can't possibly marry anyway until he gets back. Bill wants him to go to the States with the bulls."
"Mrs. Langdon, I can't never marry Cyril Stanley. I'd die first. Oh, Mrs. Langdon, I wisht I was dead. I wisht I had the nerve to drown myself in the Ghost River."
"Nettie Day, that is downright wicked. Whatever's come over you? Have you fallen out with Cyril? You've been brooding here alone. Now I'm back, things will right themselves. I want you to be the cheerful girl I'm so fond of—so very fond of, Nettie."
Very slowly, but bravely waving back the help Nettie proffered with outstretched hand, Mrs. Langdon moved to the stairs, smiling and reiterating softly her health formula:
"I am strong; in perfect health; in God's image; His creation. All's well with me and God's good world."
Nettie watched her as slowly she climbed the stairs. There was the sound of a closing door, and then a hollow, wrenching, barking cough. Words of the Bull flashed like lightning across Nettie's mind:
"My old woman ain't strong. She'll croak soon. There'll be another Mrs. Langdon at Bar Q. You——"
Nettie's hand went to her strangling throat. Her voice rang out through the room in wild despair:
"Oh, myGod!" prayed Nettie Day. "Don't let Mrs. Langdon die. Don't let her die. Please, please, please, oh, God! let her live!"
The long, golden fall of Alberta was especially beautiful that year, and although well into November, the weather was as warm and sunny as the month of May. Winter came late to Alberta, sometimes withholding its frosty hand till considerably after Christmas; but it stayed late, extending even into the spring months. There was a popular saying that there was no spring in Alberta; one stepped directly out of winter into summer. But the Alberta fall was incomparably beautiful. The days were laden with sunlight, and the night skies, with their myriad stars, set in a firmament more beautiful than anywhere else on earth, were remarkable for their lunar rainbows, and the white blaze of the Northern lights.
Yet the long, sunlit days, and the cool, starry nights brought no balm to the distracted Nettie. She felt undone—body and soul.
As she trailed listlessly across the barnyard, she no longer chirruped happily to the wee chicks or reproved the contentious mother hens. All joy in work and incontact with the live things on the ranch was gone for her. She lived on like a machine, automatically wound up. There were certain daily duties to be done; she went about them dully and mechanically.
One November evening as she came, basket in hand, out of the cowbarn, where she had been looking for eggs in the stalls where the hens loved to lay, Jake raced through the yard on his broncho, shouting and screaming with excitement.
"Him! Him!" wildly yelled Jake, pointing toward where along the Banff highway a solitary horseman could be seen. At the word "Him" Nettie's first thought was of the Bull, and she stiffened and paled; but as she looked down the slope, to where the rider was passing through the main gate to the road, she turned even whiter, and longing and fear together shook her so violently that she could hardly keep from swooning at the sight of the well-remembered wide hat, the bright flowing scarf, loosely tied beneath the boyish chin, the orange-colored chapps, and the peppery young broncho bearing his rider now so swiftly up that slope. She did not recover from her emotion in time to take flight, as her terrified impulse urged her, for Jake had already opened the gate of the corral, and Cyril passedthrough. He had seen the girl at the barn door, and leaping from his horse, was at her side in an instant.
The basket of eggs in her hand crashed to the ground. She lifted up both her hands, and her eyes looked wildly about her like a trapped thing, seeking some way of escape, as steadily, with face aglow, he closed in upon her. With a muffled cry, she beat him back from her, crying loudly:
"No-o! No!No!"
Like one possessed, she pushed him from her with mad strength and rushed through the corral out into the yard. Dumfounded, Cyril looked after her, and then calling her by name he pursued her.
"Nettie! Nettie! I say—Nettie!"
She fled as if demented, running in a circle around the house; then darted in at the back kitchen door. She tried to hold the door closed, but his impetuous hand forced it open. Her breath coming in spasmodic gasps, leaning against the wall of the back kitchen for support, Nettie faced him.
She cried out loudly:
"Go away! Go away!"
"Go away? What do you mean? What for? Nettie, for God's sake, what's the matter, little girl?"
She repeated the words wildly, with all her force.
"Go away! Go! Don't come near me. Don't touch me. Don't even look at me."
"Why not? What's the matter? You're playin' a game, and it ain't fair to go so far. What's the matter, girl? Nettie—you—you ain't gone back on me, are you?"
She could not meet those imploring young eyes, and turned bodily about, so that now her face was to the wall, and her back to him. Her voice sounded muffled, strangled:
"Leave me be. I mustn't see you."
"Why not? Since when? What've I done? I got a right to know. What's happened?"
His voice quavered though he sought manfully to control it. There was a long, tense silence, and then Nettie Day said in a low, dead voice:
"I ain't the same."
"You mean you've changed?" he demanded, and she answered in that same lost voice:
"Yes—all changed. I ain't the same."
He took this in slowly, his hands clenching, the hot tears scalding his lids. Then burst out with boyish anguish and passion:
"Don't say that, Nettie. I can't believe it. It ain't true. You and me—we're promised. I been thinking of nothing else. I built the little house for you. It's all ready now, dear, and I come on up to Bar Q now to tell you I got a chance to go to the States with the purebred stuff, and there's a bonus of $500 in it for me, and a $10 raise to my wages. Nettie, girl, I took him up on that proposition, because I wanted to do more for you."
"Why did you go away?" said Nettie harshly.
"I went on your account. You ain't mad about that, are you, girl? Why, I wanted to make things softer for you, and I got a chance now to make good money—$500, Nettie, and I says to myself: 'Here's where Nettie and me'll go off on our honeymoon to the U.S.,' and I come up here now thinking, 'Here's where we'll put one over on the Bull, and we'll slip down to Calgary and get married, and then we get aboard the train. I'll spring my wife on the outfit and——'"
He choked and gulped, and Nettie moaned aloud, crying:
"I tell you I ain't the same. I'm changed. You oughtn't to've gone away."
Dark suspicions began to mount and with theirgrowth jealous fury caused him to swing her roughly about, so that again she faced him. But she evaded his glance, turning her head from side to side, so that she need not meet his accusing hot young eyes.
"You got another fellow, have you? Have you? You can answer that, anyway."
But there was no answer from the girl, and as his grip relaxed on her arms, her head dropped dumbly down. A cruel laugh broke from the boy's lips.
"I see! Someone's cut me out, heh? I'm dead on to you now. I got your number, I have. If you're that sort—if you couldn't stand a few months' separation without goin' back on a fellow, I'm well rid of you. I wish you luck with your new fellow. I hope he ain't the fool like I been."
Still there was no answer from the girl, standing there with her head down, and her arms hanging like a dead person's by her sides.
Presently there was a clatter of hoofs in the corral, and Cyril went out at a furious trot. As the flying horseman disappeared over the hills, Nettie slowly sank to her knees, and her arms stretched out, she cried aloud:
"I wisht I was dead! I wisht I was dead!"
Cyril reached the purebred camp the following morning. He had ridden without stopping the whole of the previous night. His mind was a burning chaos; and he suffered all the torments of jealousy and uncertainty. Even while he told himself that he now hated Nettie, his heart went back to her—in aching tenderness about her. He pictured her as he had known her—her hair shining in the sun, and that look which love alone brings to the human eyes, lighting up her face and making it divinely beautiful to her lover. He recalled her at the little shack, where she had helped him fashion some of the rude pieces of furniture; riding across the prairie, their horses' necks touching as they pressed as close to each other as the horses would permit; the nightly meetings in the berry bushes; her hand nestling in his own. He remembered her in his arms, her lips upon his!
In the darkness of the night, the boy rode sobbing. In the gray of the morning, red of eyes, his hat wellover his face, he pulled into the Bull camp, and with as steady a gait and voice as he could command he faced Langdon.
"You back already?"
"Yes."
"Ready to go on?"
"Yes."
"Good. We'll get away a few days ahead. Hold on there!"
Cyril had moved to go. He stood now at the door of the cattle shed.
"Where've you been?"
There was no answer, and the Bull persisted.
"You been to Bar Q?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
There was silence again, and the Bull cut in with seeming indifference.
"How's your gell? When you gettin' married?"
A deep pause, and Cyril answered slowly.
"It's off. I ain't marryin'."
"Turned you down, did she? Huh! Well, what do you care? There's plenty good fish in the sea. There ain't nothing to bellyache about. When you get overto the States, you'll get all this female guff out of your bones. Women ain't no good, anyways. They ain't worth fretting about. They're a bad lot. Gimmecattlein preference."
He extended the plug of tobacco, which the boy ignored. His reddened eyes looked levelly into the Bull's, and he said sturdily:
"It's a lie what you said about women. They ain't bad!"
Shut in all of that winter, throughout which spells of bitter cold had alternated with blinding blizzards, dissipated only by the tempering warmth of Chinook winds, Nettie and Mrs. Langdon were thrown upon their own resources, and drew closer together.
As the winter deepened, something of the girl's strange depression reacted upon the spirits of the sick woman, so that she, too, lapsed into long spells of silence. She would lie on the couch in the dining-living room close to the radiator, propped up high with the pillows Nettie piled around her, her book on Health and Happiness held loosely in her thin hands, as over and over again she conned its lessons, beautiful lessons in which surely no one who read, could fail to find that crumb of hope and comfort that means so much to the hungry heart.
Occasionally her attention would stray from her beloved book, and then she would lie there idly andabsently watching the silent Nettie, as she moved about her duties. One day, watching her more intently than usual, and puzzling over the change in the formerly lighthearted and happy girl, something about her movements, a certain lassitude, brought Mrs. Langdon's thoughts to an abrupt pause. At first she put the idea from her as fantastic and impossible; but moving round the better to scrutinize the girl, she knew she had made no mistake. The book slipped from her hand. Mrs. Langdon sat up on her couch, and stared with a startled gaze at Nettie Day. The fall of the book caused the girl to turn from her work, and as she stooped to pick it up, she met her mistress's eyes.
"Come here, Nettie. I want to speak to you."
Nettie advanced slowly, instinctively holding back, and in her unquiet heart there stirred a dread of the question she knew was trembling on her mistress's lips. Mrs. Langdon's eyes rose steadily, as she scanned the girl from head to foot.
"Nettie, you are introuble!"
Nettie could not speak for the tightness in her throat and held her dry lips pressed together.
"Oh, you poor child! You poor little girl! Why didn't you tell me before?NowI understand!"
Nettie moved around sideways, averting her gaze from those eyes so full of compassion and tenderness.
"Mrs. Langdon," she said in a low voice, "I done nothing wrong."
"Oh, Nettie! Don't deny it, dear. I can see for myself. Sit beside me, dear. I am not condemning you. I only want your confidence. Tell me all about it, Nettie."
"Ican'ttell you, Mrs. Langdon! Ican't. It's something can never be told you."
Nettie was past that stage where tears would have relieved her. All of her senses seemed numbed and hardened, but she clung persistently to the one passionate purpose, to hide the truth, at all costs, from Mrs. Langdon.
Of all who had known Bull Langdon, his wife alone, despite her cruel experiences with him over the years, did not hate him. To her, he was an erring child, who had started on the wrong trail, and went, misguided and blind, stumbling on in the darkness, never finding his way to that peaceful haven of thought that had been his wife's comfort and refuge. Incapable of evil herself, she had the child's simple faith in the goodness of others, or in their ultimate regeneration from wrong,or error, as she preferred to call it. She never wavered in her faith that sooner or later her "lost lamb" would return to the fold.
It was probable that only her strange faith in the Bull had kept him from doing her physical harm. Harsh and gruff and neglectful, he had never been actually cruel to her, and to himself he liked to boast defiantly that he had "never raised his hand" to his wife.
Now, as she begged for Nettie's confidence, she never dreamed of connecting her husband with the girl's trouble; that was a crime she never could have suspected.
"Do you realize, Nettie, what is about to happen to you?"
"I expect you'll want to turn me out now," said Nettie dully, and then turning swiftly, she added with sudden force: "But don't do it till the spring, Mrs. Langdon, because you ain't strong enough to do the work this winter, and it's nothing to me, and I want to stay and take care of you."
"Don't you know me better than that? Turn your face around, Nettie. Do you think I'm the kind of woman to turn a girl out because she is going to be what I have all my life longed to be—a mother?"
"Don't! Oh, don't, don't!" cried the girl, loudly, rocking to and fro in tearless anguish. "I wisht I were dead. I wisht I'd had the nerve to drown myself in the Ghost River, but now it's all froze over."
"It's wicked to talk in that way. Why should you wish to drown yourself? I am not judging you. I only want to help you. Things are clear to me now. Cyril——"
"Please don't, Mrs. Langdon——"
"Don't what?"
"Don't speak his name even."
"Why not? Why should you carry this burden alone? If there's any blame, it belongs to him, not you."
"No! No! He never done anything wrong. He's not capable of doing wrong to a girl. Please don't say anything about him. I can't bear it!"
"But we must face this thing fairly. You are in an abnormal condition of mind. It's not an uncommon thing. Some women lose their minds at this time. I appreciate all that you have been suffering, and I pity you from the very bottom of my heart."
Nettie said nothing now, but she wrung her hands and clenched them together as if in physical pain.
"Listen to me, Nettie dear. I want you to know thatIknow what it means to be as you are." Her voice dropped to a wistful whisper. "Eight times, dear, just think of that. You know we pioneered in the early days. We didn't always have a grand place like this, and—and—well, in those days the distances were so great. We were so far from everything—it was just as if we were on the end of the world, and we didn't have the conveniences, or even vehicles to carry us places, and the doctors always came too late, or not at all. I lost all of my babies. They just came into the world to—to go out again; but I always thought that even the weakest of them had not lived in vain, because you see, they brought something lovely into my life. It was just as if—as if—an angel's wing had touched me, don't you see? It brought to me a knowledge of Love—love eternal and everlasting. No woman who bears a child can fail to feel it."
She broke off, in strange, breathless, smiling pause, as if she sought to conquer her present pain with the elusive joy that she believed had come with her dead children into her life. "So you see, Nettie, I don't hold anything against any woman who bears a child, no matter how or where. It doesn't matter what you orCyril have done. I have great faith in that boy, and I feel he will make it right."
"Mrs. Langdon," said Nettie in a suffocating voice, "I ask you not to believe that he is to blame for anything wrong about me."
"I won't, then. I'll believe the best of you both. We are going to be very happy, all of us. Just think, you are going to be a mother! It's the sublimest feeling in life. I know it, because all my life I've heard baby voices in my ears and in my heart, Nettie, and my arms have ached and yearned to press a little baby to my breast. My own dear little ones have passed, but, Nettie, I'll hold yours, won't I, dear?"
"Oh, Mrs. Langdon, when you talk like that, I feel just as if something was bursting all up inside me. I don't know what to do."
"Do nothing, dear; but look out at God's beautiful world. Lift your eyes to the skies, to the sun, to the hills' hills!"
"There's no sun no more," said Nettie. "The days are all dark and cold now, and the hills are all froze, too. They're like me, Mrs. Langdon. I'm all froze up inside."
"Oh, but you'll change now. Look, Nettie, it won'tbe long before they'll be back—my husband and your Cyril. I had a letter. Where is it, now? I put it in my book—no, under my pillow. See, what they write." The paper fluttered in her hand, and she looked up to smile at Nettie. "It was thoughtful of Bill, wasn't it, to have the letter typed? You know he hates to write letters. Poor fellow hasn't much of an education—You know, Nettie, he came to the school when I was teaching, to learn. It was pathetic, really it was. But now, he's had some stenographer write to tell me that they'll be home in a couple of weeks. They should have been home two months ago, but they've had a terrible time of it in the States. You see there's a kind of sickness over there—a plague that's running around. It's all over Europe and now the States. People, he writes, are afraid to go to public places, and everything is closed up. It's a great disappointment for him, poor fellow. He expected so much from the Prince, and he's hung on from week to week, and been through all sorts of aggravating times. You know they even quarantined his herd on a false suspicion of disease, when they were inperfecthealth. But, never mind, we have to havedisappointments in life. All I'm thankful for now is that he's coming back—he and Cyril."
Nettie said in a low voice:
"Mrs. Langdon, I don't want to see neither of them again. I can't."
"That's the way you feel now. It's natural in your condition. I had notions, too. Wanted the strangest things to eat, and hadsuchfits of crying about nothing at all. You'll be all over these moods by the time Cyril rides in. My! I'm going to scold that boy. Yes, yes, you may be angry if you want, but I'm going to give him a real piece of my mind, and then—well, it's never too late to mend a wrong, Nettie."
"Mrs. Langdon," said Nettie violently, "I tell you Cyril Stanley never done me no wrong."
"Well, that's how you look at it, Nettie, and maybe you are right. I'm the last person to judge you."
Nettie bent down suddenly and grasping Mrs. Langdon's thin hand tightly, she kissed it. Then as quickly dropping it, she got up, threw her apron over her face and ran from the room.
In the winter the Bar Q outfit in the foothill ranch had dwindled down to eight men. These were all riders, men who "rode the fences" and kept them in repair; men who rode the range, and made the rounds of the fields, counted and kept account of the cattle remaining on the ranch, and reported sick or crippled cattle to the veterinary surgeon maintained at the ranch.
The breeding stock had been despatched to the prairie ranch in the fall, where they were especially housed and cared for. The beef stock, three-year-old steers, were also disposed at the grain ranch, where they were fed on chop and green feed and hay, to fatten them for the spring market.
The purebred heifers and cows had their own home at Barstairs, where also was the camp of the purebred bulls.
At the foothill ranch only the younger stuff was left, the yearling and rising two-year-old heifers and steers,and these sturdy young stuff "rustled" over the winter range, finding sufficient sustenance to carry them through the winter. The cook car was closed, and the men "batched" in the bunkhouses but came to the main ranch house for bread, butter and general supplies.
Nettie, long ignorant of her condition, had from day to day passed out the supplies to the men, unconscious of and indifferent to their scrutiny. She failed to realize that what had become apparent to her mistress, had also been revealed to the cunning eyes of the Bar Q "hands."
Bunkhouses in a ranching country are breeding places for the worst kind of gossip and scandal, to which disgusting commerce men even more than women are addicted. It was, therefore, not long before Nettie's name became first whispered and then carelessly bandied among them. At her name eyes rolled, winks and coarse laughter were the rule where but a little while ago she had been the object of admiring respect and aspiration.
Cyril Stanley's name was also on each man's tongue, and they all took it for granted that he was responsible for Nettie's condition. A change in their mannertoward the girl followed the loose talk about her; there were certain meaning looks, a new familiarity of speech, and presently worse than that. "Pink-eyed" Tom, a man whose dirty boasts concerning women were a source of endless fun among the men, came to the house one day for a side of bacon. He followed Nettie into the big storeroom, where the Bar Q meat supply hung. As she passed the bacon to him, Pink-Eye managed to seize her hand, and with a broad grin, he squeezed it, and attempted to draw her to him. It was only a momentary grasp, but with the chuckle that went with it the girl understood and turned first deathly white and scarlet with anger.
"Guess you ain't used to man-handling—oh, no!" said Tom, and as she fiercely withdrew from his grasp, he laughed in her face, with an ugly meaning leer that set her heart frantically beating.
She flew from the storeroom to the kitchen, and stood with her back pressed against the door, holding it closed. A sickening fear of the whole race of men consumed her. She longed to escape to some place beyond their sight or ken where she might at least hide herself and be allowed the boon of suffering unmolested and unseen. She had a passionate longing to escapefrom the Bar Q—to leave forever the hateful place where she had been so cruelly betrayed, where she had suffered almost beyond endurance. But the thought of leaving Mrs. Langdon hurt her more than the thought of staying, and her mind wandered in the hopeless search of a solution to her appalling problem. She thought of her friend "Angel" Loring, with her cropped hair and men's clothing, and for the first time comprehended what might drive a woman to do as the Englishwoman had done.
"A bad report runs a thousand miles a minute," says an oriental proverb. Certainly that is true of a ranching country. From bunkhouse to farm and ranch house raced the tale of a girl's fall; it was a morsel of exciting news to those dull souls shut in by the rigid hand of the winter.
On the first Chinook day, women harnessed teams to democrats and single drivers to buggies, and took the road to Bar Q. Never had that ranch been favored with so many visitors. Neither Nettie nor her mistress suspected that their guests had come to see for themselves whether there was truth in the story concerning the girl which had percolated over the telephone and been carried by riders intent upon retailing the latestsensation of the foothills. Caste exists not in a ranching country like Alberta, save among a few rare and exclusive souls, and a hired girl on a ranch has her own social standing in the community, especially if she is that rarity, a pretty girl. So Nettie's plight was of as supreme an interest to the ranch and farm wives as if instead of a poor servant girl she had been any prosperous farmer's daughter. Hired girls are potential wives for the best of the ranchmen, and many a farmer's wife has begun her career on a cook car.
Nettie, cutting cake and brewing tea in the kitchen, paused, tray in hand, white-faced, behind the door, as the voices of the women close at hand floated through.
"Looked me right in the face, innocent as a lamb, and she——"
"She's six months gone if a day."
"Seem's if she might've gone straight, being the oldest in the family. You'd thought she'd want to set an example to her little brothers and sisters."
"Pshaw! she should worry."
"Ain't girls awful today!"
"When you told me on the 'phone, I couldn't b'lieve it, and I come along on purpose to make sure for myself."
"Well, now you see, though I'm not used to havin' my word doubted."
"Why, Mrs. Munson, I hadn't the idea of questioning your word; but I thought as you hadn't seen for yourself, and got it third-hand."
"I got it straight—straight from Batt Leeson, andheought to know after workin' more'n ten years at the Bar Q."
"Personally, I make a point of standing up for the girl."
The voice this time was a shade gentler, but it was also flurried and apologetic.
"You know as well as I do, Mrs. Young, if a girl acts decent, men let her alone. You can tell me!"
Her face stony, her head held high, Nettie pushed the door open with her foot, and came in with the tray. She silently served them, but her glance flickered toward her mistress, who was leaning forward listening to the whispered words of Mrs. Peterson, cringing toward the rich cattleman's wife. For the first time since she had known her, Mrs. Langdon's voice sounded sharp and cold.
"I'll thank you not to repeat a nasty tale like that.Nettie Day has just as much right to have a child as you have."
"Why, I'm a married woman," blurted the outraged farm wife.
"How do you know Nettie isn't married?"
Chairs were hunched forward. The circle leaned with pricked-up ears toward the speaker.
"Isshe, now?"
"Well, that accounts for it!"
"You couldn't make me believe Nettie was that kind. We all thought—well, you know how girls carry on today. I'm sure you'll excuse us. We're all li'ble to make mistakes."
The Inquisition turned to Nettie.
"My word, Nettie Day, why didn't you let us know? What on earth did you want to keep it secret for? The whole country'd turned out to Chivaree for you. We haven't had a marriage in a year, and Cyril Stanley is mighty popular with the boys."
Nettie's gaze went slowly around that circle of faces. She wanted to make sure that all might hear her words.
"I ain't married to Cyril Stanley, and he done me no wrong. You got no right to talk his name loose like that."
An exclamatory silence reigned in the room. Mrs. Langdon, her cheeks very flushed, was sitting up, her bright eyes, like a bird's, scanning the faces of her visitors.
"Nettie," her thin, piercing voice was raised, "you forgot my tea, and—and—maybe you ladies'll excuse me today. I'm not well, you know."
For the first time since she had become a convert to her strange philosophy she was admitting illness; but she was doing it in another's behalf.
As the last of the women disappeared through the door, and before the murmur of their voices outside had died out, Mrs. Langdon made a motion of her hands toward Nettie, and the girl ran over, dropped on her knees by the couch and hid her face in her mistress's lap.
"Nettie, don't you mind what they say. Women are terribly cruel to each other. I don't know why they should be, I'm sure, for I believe that we all have in us the same capacities for sinning, only most of us escape temptation. It's almost a gamble, isn't it, Nettie; and I'm so sorry, poor child, that you should have been the one to lose." Her voice dropped to awhisper. "I'll confess something to you now, Nettie.I—yes, I—almost——"
"If you're goin' to say something against yourself," said Nettie hoarsely, "I don't want to hear it. You ain't capable ever of doing anything wrong."
On the road, the carriages were grouped together. Their occupants leaned out and called back and forth to each other.
"What do you know of that?"
"I'm certainly surprised at Mrs. Langdon. I didn't think she'd hold to anything like that."
"I did, and I'm not a bit surprised. I could've told you a thing or two. Birds of a feather flock together, and she——"
Voices were lowered, as another woman's reputation was pulled to shreds.
"Well, Mrs. Munson, you don't say so."
"I certainly do."
"I remember when the Bull first married her. Sa-ay, there was all kinds of talk. Ask anyone who was here in them times."
Murmurs and exclamations, and a woman's voice rumbling out a tale that should never have been told.
"Would you've believed it! And she so sweet and sly of tongue."
"Still waters run deep. You can't trust them quiet kind. I had it direct from Jem Bowers. You know Jem. He was right along when it happened. They were shut in that schoolhouse for two whole days, and the door locked and bolted. The Bull himself asked Jem to go for the missionary, and everyone knows Jem was one of the witnesses at the Langdon wedding. Said she looked just like a little scared bird, and her eyes were all screwed up with crying, so I guess doin' wrong did bringherno happiness."
"Well, I'd never have believed it if you hadn't told me. I'm going to hustle right off now. I want to stop and see Mrs. Durkin on my way. She couldn't get off to come, as they've had the mumps up to their house, and I promised to let her know, and I'll bet her tongue's hangin' out waitin'."
"Well, don't say I said it."
"I won't. I'll say I got it from—from—I'll not name the party. Get ap, Gate! My, that mare's smart."
"I like geldings for driving. They aren't so quick,but they're dependable and strong. Good-by. Will you be at the box social?"
"Sure, what's it for?"
"Oh, them sick folks in the east. Did you hear that that plague sickness they got in the States has sneaked across to Canada, and everybody's scared nearly to death. They've got it awful out in Toronto and Montreal."
"Didn't know it was as bad as that."
"It's something awful out east I heard. My husband brought home a paper from Calgary, and they had the whole front page in headlines about it. Them Yankees brought it in with them when they run away to escape from it in their own country. Wish they'd stay home and look after their own sicknesses, 'stead of coming across the line and carrying it along with them. Others have been flying out west here, and they say if we don't look out, first thing we know Calgary'll have it, and then—well, it'll be our turn. I heard they were shipping all the sick ones out of the city to the country."
The women looked at each other waveringly, licking their lips and turning white with dread. They drew their rugs closer about them and said they had to be off, as it was getting dark and they didn't want to catchcold, and no one ever knew when a change might blow up in the weather and that cloud off to the north looked mighty threatening. In the sudden panic of the approaching plague, Nettie was for the time being forgotten. The clatter and rattle of their wheels was heard along the road, as with whip and tongue they urged their horses homeward.
All night long the wind blew wildly. It raved like a live, mad thing, tearing across the country with tornado-like force.
The house shock and rocked upon its foundations, the rattling windows and clattering doors ready to be burst open every moment.
To the girl, lying wide-eyed throughout the night, it seemed almost as if the voice of the wild wind had the triumphant, mocking tone of the man she loathed. It seemed to typify his immense strength, his power and madness. It was gloating, triumphing over her, buffeting and trampling her down.
Nettie was not given to self-analysis, but for all her simplicity she was capable of intense feeling. Behind her slow thought there slumbered an unlimited capacity for suffering. Now even the elements were preying upon her morbid imagination. She could not sleep for the raging of the terrific wind, the incessant shaking of windows and doors, and all the sounds of a looselybuilt old ranch house, rattling and trembling in the furious tempest. As she lay in bed, her face crushed into her pillow, her hands over her ears, as though to deaden the roar of the wind, she could not rid her mind of the thought of the man she hated. She was doomed that night to relive the hideous hours spent with him, until, the vision becoming intolerable to her fevered mind, she sprang up in bed, and rocking herself to and fro like one half demented, sat in judgment upon her own acts.
Why had she not killed herself? Why was she living on? Why was she crouched here now upon her bed, when the Ghost River was at hand? True, it was frozen over, but there were great water holes, where the cattle came to drink, and into one of these she might throw herself as into a deep well. Oblivion would come then. Her sick mind would no longer conjure up the loathsome vision of Bull Langdon, and her ears would be deaf to the taunting, beating challenge of the wind, calling to her with its roaring voice to come forth and fight hand to hand with the fates that had crushed her.
"I got to go out!" she moaned. "I got to go out! I can't live no longer."
She put her foot over the side of the bed, and with her head uplifted she listened to what her disordered mind fancied was a voice out of the river, calling to her above the raging of the wind. And as she sat in the dark room, above the raving of the wind, she heard indeed a call—a living voice. Instantly she drew up tensely, holding her breath the more clearly to catch the faint cry.
"Nettie! Nettie!"
It was her mistress. She was out of bed, fumbling for the matches.
The Bar Q was equipped with electricity, but the wires were not connected with the hired girl's room. It was a pitch-dark night. Frightened as she was of the darkness and the storm, the cry of her well-loved mistress awoke all the defensive bravery of her nature, and she called aloud in reply, feeling along the walls, groping her way to the door.
"I'm coming, Mrs. Langdon! I'm coming! I'm coming!"
In the hall she found the electric button, and hurried across to Mrs. Langdon's room. She found the cattleman's wife propped high up on her pillow, breathing with the difficulty of an asthmatic. The window waswide open, and the shades flapped angrily and tore at the rollers. The face on the bed smiled up wanly at Nettie in the reflected light from the hall.
"Oh, Mrs. Langdon, did you call me? Do you want something?"
"Yes, dear. I thought maybe you wouldn't mind closing my window for me. I tried to get up myself, but I had a sort of presentiment that—that you were awake and that perhaps you would—would like to come to me."
"Oh, I was awake, wide, wide awake. I couldn't sleep to save myself. Isn't the wind terrible!"
"It's dying down, I think."
"Oh, it's fiercer than ever," cried the girl wildly. "It's just terrible. I can't bear to hear it. I been awake all night. Just seems as if that wind was shoutin' and screamin' and makin' mock of me, Mrs. Langdon. It's banging upon my—heart. Ihatethe wind. I think it's alive—a horrible, wild thing. It fights and laughs at me. It's driving me mad."
"Ah, Nettie, you are not yourself these days. It is not the wind, but what is in your heart that speaks. We can even control the wind if we wish. Christ did,and the Christ spirit is in us all, if we only knew how to use it."
Nettie had closed the windows. On her knees by Mrs. Langdon's bed, she was pulling the covers up and tucking them closely about her, and chafing the thin, cold hands.
"You're cold. Your hands are just like ice. I'm going downstairs to heat some water and fill the hot-water bag for you."
"No, no, Nettie. You go right back to bed. I'll go down myself by and by, if I feel the need of the bag."
But though Nettie promised to go back to bed, she hurried down to the lower floor. She had no longer fear of the wind or the darkness. Her mind was intent upon securing the hot-water bag, and she built up a fire in the dead range, and set the kettle upon it.
She was bending over the wood-box, picking but a likely log, when something stirred behind her. Still stooping, she remained still and tense. Slowly the Bull's great arms reached down from behind and enfolded her.
The noise of the wind had deadened his approach to the house. He had come through the living room tothe opened kitchen door, by the stove of which was the bending girl.
She twisted about in his arms, only to bring her face directly against his own. She was held in a vise, in the arms of the huge cattleman. His hoarse whispers were muttered against her mouth, her cheek, her neck.
He chuckled and gloated as she fought for her freedom, dumbly, for her thoughts flew up to the woman upstairs. Above all things, Mrs. Langdon must be spared a knowledge of that which was happening to Nettie.
"Ain't no use to struggle! Ain't no use to cry," he chortled. "I got you tight, and there ain't no one to hear. I been thinkin' of you day and night, gell, for months now, and I been countin' off the minutes for this."
She cried in a strangled voice:
"She's upstairs! She'll hear you! Oh, she's coming down. Oh, don't you hear her? Oh, for the love of God! let me go."
The man heard nothing but his clamoring desires.
"Gimme your lips!" said the Bull huskily.
The clipclop of those loose slippers clattering on the stairs broke upon the hush that had fallen in the kitchen.Through all her agony Nettie heard the sound of those little feet, and she knew—she felt—just when they had stopped at the lower step as Mrs. Langdon clung to the bannister. Slowly the wife of the cowman sank to the lowest step. She did not lose consciousness, but an icy stiffness crept over her face; her jaw dropped, and a glaze came like a veil before her staring eyes.
With a superhuman effort Nettie had obtained her release. She sprang to Mrs. Langdon, and groveled at her feet.
"Oh, Mrs. Langdon, it 'twant my fault. I didn't mean to do no harm. Oh, Mrs. Langdon, I wisht I'd heeded the wind! It must've been warning me. I wisht I'd gone to the Ghost River, when it called to me to come."
Mrs. Langdon's head had slowly dropped forward, just as if the neck had broken. Nettie, beneath her, sought the glance of her eyes, and saw the effort of the moving lips.
"God's—will," said the woman slowly. "A dem-on-stration—of—God. I—had—to leave, Nettie. God's will you—take—my—place."
Across the half-paralyzed face something flickeredstrangely like a faint smile. Then the girl saw her mistress fall, inert and still against the staircase.
A loud cry broke from the frantic Nettie.
"We've killed her! We've killed Mrs. Langdon!"
"Killed her—nothing," said the man hoarsely, his face twitching and his hands shaking. "I told you she was 'bout ready to croak, and you heard what she said. You was to take her place. That means——"
Nettie had arisen, and her eyes wide with loathing she stared at him in a sort of mad fury. Somehow she seemed to grow strong and tall, and there was a light of murder in her eyes.
"I'd sooner drown myself in the Ghost River," she said.
Like one gone blind she felt her way to her room, and this time the man did not follow her.
The wind raved on; the windows shook; the door easements creaked as if an angry hand were upon them; the white curtains flapped in and out. There was the heavy tramp of men's feet upon the stair; the rough murmur of men's voices in the hall. She knew they were carrying the dead woman to her room.
Hours of silence followed. The Bull had gone with his men to the bunkhouse, and she was alone in thehouse with the dead woman. For the first time, a sense of peace, a passionate gladness swept over the tortured girl. Mrs. Langdon would know the truth at last! She would have no blame in her heart for Nettie—— Nettie, who had a psychic sense of the warm nearness and understanding of the woman who had passed away.
As she dressed in the darkness of the room, Nettie talked to her, she believed was with her, catching her breath in trembling little sobs and laughs of reassurance.
"You understand now, don't you, and you don't hold it against me? I didn't mean no wrong.... I done the best I could. You don't ask me to stay now that you know, do you, dear?"
The plaid woolen shawl, a Christmas gift from Mrs. Langdon, covered her completely. The gray light of dawn was filtering through the house; the wind had died down. In its place the snow was falling upon the land, spotless and silent. Nettie's face was whiter than the snow as she left her room. Mrs. Langdon's door was closed, and, hesitating only a moment, Nettie stole to it on tiptoe. With her face pressed against it, she called to the woman inside.
"Good-by, Mrs. Langdon. Nobody will ever be so kind to me in this world as you have been."
She listened, almost as if she heard that faint, sweet voice in reply. Then, strangely comforted, she wrapped her cape closer about her, and in her rubbered feet Nettie Day stole down the stairs and went out into the storm.
The veteran geldings that had pulled Dr. McDermott for years over the roads of Alberta had long since been replaced by a gallant little Ford, that purred and grunted its way along the roads and trails in all kinds of weather, and performed miraculous feats over the roughest of trails, across fields, plowed land, chugging sturdily through to the medical man's goal.
Many of the farmers belonged to that type that seemed to believe implicitly in the proverb, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." They laughed or poohpoohed the doctor's warning admonitions in regard to the plague, already as far west as Winnipeg. They "joshed" and "guyed" him, and asked: "Lookin' for trade, doc? You can't make me sick with your pills, so you better keep them to home. Haw, haw!" And they threw the disinfectant and pills (to be taken should certain symptoms develop) away out of sight and mind, and made jokes when he was gone about,"Doc gettin' cold feet like the city guys. If he don't look out he'll be gittin' just like them paper collar dudes in town and want soothin' syrup for white liver." They hugged to themselves the imbecile delusion that since they lived a cleaner and healthier life than mere city dwellers, they would prove immune to diseases that were a peculiarity of the city.
It may not be out of place to mention here that county and city hospitals numbered among their patients far more people from the country than the cities, and that the insane asylums were almost wholly recruited from the lone farm and ranch houses, where the monotonous pressure of the long life of loneliness took its due toll of those condemned, as it were, to solitary confinement.
Howbeit, the "doc" kept his stubborn vigil. He did not propose to be caught "napping," and he traveled the roads of Alberta, going from ranch to ranch, with his warnings and instructions and despised pills.
While returning from some such expedition into the foothills he stopped, in the dawn of the day, to fasten the curtains about his car, as the wind of the wild night before had turned with the morning into a snowstorm. A straight, level road was before him, and the doctorfigured on making Cochrane in half an hour. Up to this time, in spite of the weather and the perilous trail to Banff, he had had no trouble with the engine. Now, however, as he cranked, the Ford, a peculiarly temperamental and uncertain car, refused to produce the spark. He lifted the hood, made an inspection, cranked again and again; held his side, and groaned and grunted with the exertion, raged and cussed a bit, regretted the old veterans; then, throwing his dogskin coat over the engine, he searched for the trouble underneath. He was lying on his back, a sheepskin under him, tinkering away with the "dommed cantankerous works," when, putting out his head to look for his wrench, he saw something approaching on the road that caused him to sit bolt upright in blank astonishment.
Her cape flapping about her, her head weighed down with the falling snow, her eyes wide and blank, snow-blind, Nettie Day swept before the wind on the Banff trail. The doctor, on his feet now, blocked her further passage, for she seemed not to see him but to be walking in a somnambulist's trance.
"What are you doin' on the road at this hour, lass?"
She did not answer, but stared out blankly before her, shaking her snow-crowned head.
A quick professional glance at the girl and the doctor realized her condition and the need for immediate action. She made no demur; indeed, was touchingly meek, as he assisted her into the car. He tucked the fur robe about her, buttoned the curtains tightly, and, his face puckered with concern, he poured out a stiff "peg" of whisky. She drank mechanically, gulping slightly as the spirits burnt her throat. Her eyes were drooping drowsily, and when the doctor put his sheepskin under her head, she sighed with intense weariness, and then lay still at the bottom of the car.
The doctor "doggoned" that engine, shoved the crank in, and, miraculously, there was the healthy chug-chug of the engine, and the little car went roaring on its way.
"You're a dommed good lad!" gloated Dr. McDermott and pulled on his dogskin gloves, wiped the frost from the glass, threw a glance back to make sure the girl was all right, and put on top speed.
The Lady Angella Luring arose at five in the morning, put on overalls, sheepskin coat, woolen gauntlets, and heavy overshoes. She tramped through the steadily falling snow to her barn, which housed a cow, a sow, a mare heavy in foal, a saddle horse and the poultry.
The March winds that had raged all the previous night had turned with the morning to a snowstorm, and the flakes were now falling so heavily that the barn was only just visible from the house as the woman rancher plodded through the blinding flakes.
First she threw into the pig-pen the pails of swill and mush she had brought from the house, then watered the stock, no easy matter, for the pumped water froze quickly in the trough, and she was forced to refill it several times. That done, she climbed into the hayloft, and with her pitchfork thrust down through the openings the morning feed for the cow, carefully measured chop from the bin for the mare, allowing half apail of oats and a bunch of hay for the saddle horse; she threw to the chickens, hens that had followed hungrily in her wake, a pan full of ground barley and wheat seasoned with cayenne pepper, epsom salts and bits of bones and eggshells.
Finally she went to her milking. The cow was fresh, and she had a full pail. Half of this, however, she fed to the restless little calf, nosing near its mother, and trying to shake off the muzzle that Angella had snapped on the night before in order to wean it. The task of feeding the calf required patience and time, for the restive little "dogie" nearly knocked over the pail, and had to be taught how to drink by feeling the woman's fingers thrust, wet with the milk, into its mouth. She was more than an hour about her chores. With the half-filled pail in one hand, she tramped back to the house through the snow, falling now more heavily than before.
Before leaving the house Angella had lit her fire, and now the place was warm and snug, and the singing kettle lent it an air of cheer. There was a certain attractiveness about the poor shack on the prairie, in spite of its rough, bare log walls and two wee windows. Though she chose to wear men's clothing, and had cuther hair like a man's, yet one had only to look about that room to perceive that the eternal feminine had persisted notwithstanding her angry and pitiful attempt to quench it.
She had made most of the furniture herself, crude pieces fashioned from willow fence posts and grocery boxes, yet they betrayed a craftsman's talent, for the chairs, though designed for use, were rustic and pretty, and she had touched them in spots with bright red paint. The table, over which a vivid red oilcloth was nailed, made a bright patch of color in the room. Red, in most places, for decorative purposes, can be used only sparingly, but in a bleak log shack a splash of this ruddy color gives both warmth and cheer. The floor had been scrubbed until it was almost white, and a big red-brown cowhide made a carpet near the couch, which was covered with a calfskin. Indian ornaments and beadwork, bits of crockery and pewter were on the shelves that lined one side of the shack, and where also she kept her immaculately shining kettles, cooking utensils and dishes. A curtain of burlap sacks, edged with scarlet cloth, hung before the bedroom doorway. The pillows on the spotless bed were covered with cases made of flour bags. A large grocers' box, into which shelveshad been nailed, was also covered with similar cloth and served as a sort of dressing table. Two chairs, made from smaller boxes, were padded with burlap, and a triangular shelf with a curtain before it made a closet in the corner of the room.
A huge gray cat followed the woman recluse about the room, sleepily rubbing itself against her, and purring with contentment when she picked it up in her arms.
Angella made her breakfast of oatmeal and tea, serving from the stove directly onto her plate. Her cat nestled in her lap while she breakfasted, and she smoothed it absently as she ate.
Time had smoothed out the lines on her face instead of adding to them, and the strained look of suffering in her eyes had given way to a healthy gaze. Her skin had almost the fresh color of a girl's. Her hair had grown abundantly, though it still was short and almost gray, but its natural curliness lent her face a soft and youthful air. There was no sign of the dread disease which had once threatened her life. She looked normal and wholesome as she sat at her table, her cat in her lap, deep in a brown study. It would be hard to say what filled Angella's thoughts when she was thus shut inalone in her shack upon the prairie. She had ceased long since to conjure up bitter visions of the man who was responsible for her father's death and her own exile. Her thoughts, at least, were no longer unbearably painful as in those early days when first she had come to Alberta, and many a day and night, shut in alone with her dismal secret, she had wrestled in bitter anguish with the crowding thoughts that came like ghosts to haunt her.
However, even in winter she had little enough time for thinking. Her life was crowded with work. When she had finished her meal, she washed her dishes, made her bed, kneaded the dough for her weekly baking, set a pot of beans, soaked overnight, into the oven, and prepared to go out again, this time to the pasture, where her few head of stock "rustled" for their feed all winter. A snowstorm at this time of year is always dangerous for the breeding stock dropping their calves with the approach of the spring. There were water holes, too, in the frozen slough that had to be broken in every day so that the cattle might have the water they needed. Angella, ax in hand, opened the door of her shack. A gale of wind and snow almost blinded her, so that at first she did not see the Ford that wasplowing its way noisily and pluckily down the road allowance that led to her house. At the honk of the doctor's horn, which he worked steadily to attract her, she peered out through the storm, and she turned to the gate, where the car had now stopped.
She never encouraged the visits of Dr. McDermott, who had saved her life when first she had come to Alberta; but neither was she ever uncivil when he did come. Time had accustomed her to his regular calls, and, in truth, though she would not have admitted it for anything in the world, she had come to look forward to these visits, and to depend upon them for her news of the world, which she so bitterly told herself she had cast off forever.
Now, as his ruddy face was thrust through the curtains, Angella, frowning slightly, tramped to the car.
"Are you strong enough to lend me a hand lifting something?" asked the doctor.
"Certainly I'm strong enough. What do you mean?"
Dr. McDermott, out of the car now, unbuttoned the back curtains, and revealed to the amazed Angella the still heavily sleeping Nettie.
"There's a sick lass here," he said solemnly, "and a lass in sore trouble, I'm thinking."
A strange expression had come into the face of Angella Loring. Not so long since, it seemed to her, she had seen as in a dream this girl now lying on the floor of the doctor's car leaning over her, and had regarded her with the tender, compassionate gaze of her own mother. In the days of semi-consciousness that had followed her first seizure, the Englishwoman could endure the sight and touch of no one but the girl with the Madonna face. Without realizing what was amiss, all she knew was that Nettie was now as helpless as she had been when the girl had cared for her, and without a word or a question she helped the doctor lift Nettie out of the car and to carry her into the house.
Angella Loring believed that there was nothing about her of which this Scotch doctor approved. He came, she thought, merely to exercise his abnormal habit of interference in other folks' affairs and to find fault with her chosen manner of life. She had at first, in her desire to be alone, not hesitated to tell him she preferred her own company to any other. He had barked back that her taste was unnatural, and it would take more than "a bitter-tongued lass" to drive him from his duty. Questioned sarcastically as to what he conceived his duty to be, he had replied solemnly, "Tokeep an eye on you, lass, and to see that you come to no harm."
Furious as this gratuitous resolve to care for her had made the woman who believed she could fend for herself in the world, his answer had nevertheless brought the bitter tears to her angry eyes, so that she could not find words for a retort. The doctor's intention to protect the woman by no means made him lenient in his judgment of her; he denounced her cut hair as outrageous; her men's clothes as disgraceful, and her work in the field as against nature. She secretly enjoyed his explosion of rage when she took service at Bar Q.
No lass, declared the doctor, in her sober senses would disfigure herself by cutting off her head the hair that her Maker had planted there. No true woman would wear a mon's clothes. Mere contact with a wild brute like Bull Langdon would muddy any pure woman in the land. Her obsession—which is what he termed her aversion to his own sex—and her unnatural life alone was a pathological matter, for which she needed to be treated as for the unfortunate illness she had contracted in London. Some day, he warned her, she would thank him for the one cure as well as for the other.
She let him talk on, usually disdaining to answer, and she pursued her way undeterred by his wholesale condemnation of her and her course of life.
Yet Angella Loring, holding a little baby in her arms for the first time in her life, and looking down with dewy eyes upon the small blonde head resting so helplessly against her breast, could she have seen the face of the country doctor as he looked at the cropped bent head, would have known that all his thoughts of her were not wholly hard.
Glaring up at him to hide the impending tears, she almost surprised that look of grave tenderness on the rough face of the man who had known her as a child.
"She doesn't want it," said Angella Loring. "Her own child! Well, then, I'll keep it! It shan't want. I'll care for it."