While Angella did her chores in the morning, Jake looked after Nettie's laughing, fair-haired baby. The breed adored the child, and the hours he spent playing with him were the happiest of his life. Angella had built a small "yard" for the baby to play in safely while Jake, on his hands and knees, would play "cat and dog" outside the railings, to the baby's unbounded delight.
He had grown into a beautiful child, with his mother's fair skin and blue eyes, and his blonde hair curled in tiny ringlets all over his small, round head. He was the soul of good humor, and though not robust, his health was rapidly improving.
Life had assumed a new meaning for the woman recluse and the change was reflected in her expression. The defiant look was almost gone from the bright eyes, the lips were no longer bitterly compressed; with a faint color in her cheeks, and her soft gray hair curling about her face, Angella Loring was almostbeautiful, as she held the baby close in her arms, and murmured foolish endearments over it.
By the time she finished her milking and chores in the early morning, the baby would be awake, and as soon as she came into the house, he would set up a loud demand for bath and food. Before either Jake or Angella breakfasted, he must first be cared for. Satisfied, rosy and clean, he would then be put in his "yard," to tumble happily about among his favorite "toys," the clothes pins and empty thread spools, which he rolled around the yard in high glee, or sucked and chewed upon with relish.
One morning in March Angella's chores took longer than usual. As hard as she pumped, the water froze before it could fall from the spout, and the barn was full of stock, which had come up from the frozen pastures to the shelter of the sheds. There were twenty or thirty head waiting hungrily for their share of the feed and water, which was generally reserved for the special milking stock and weak stuff interned in the barn. Angella worked hard and valiantly, driving back the greedy steers, and rescuing a half frozen calf, which barely escaped death under the scampering heels.
Upon examining the little creature, she saw that ifits life was to be saved she would have to take it to some warmer place than the barn. Throwing together a rough sled made out of a couple of boards, she managed to shove it underneath the motionless animal, and pull the litter with a lariat over the frozen ground to the house.
Jake did not answer her calls to open the door and she had to push it open herself, letting in an icy gust of wind. She tugged and pulled at the sled till it slid into the kitchen, and at last deposited the calf in front of the roaring fire. Breathing heavily from the exertion and holding her sides, she leaned against the table, and suddenly caught sight of Jake lying face downward on the floor. Her first thought was that it was an attack of his periodical convulsions, but a moment later she saw the empty "yard" as well. Her senses reeled; it seemed as though the whole room began to swim around her, as slowly her knees gave way, and for the first time in her life Angella Loring fainted. But it was only for a moment; she came back to consciousness almost at once and crawled on her knees to where Jake, now moaning and moving his head, still lay stretched upon the floor. His contorted face was horribly bruised and deathly pale, and when he openedhis eyes the blood ran out of them. She saw then that Jake had been struck down and beaten.
"Him! Him!" gibbered the breed.
"Jake, what has happened? Where's the baby? Oh-h!"
"Bobby—all—a—gone. Him—the Bull take a baby! Him gone away."
Again the universe began to spin about her, but she refused to faint a second time. Feeling her way to the door, Angella Loring went out again into the bitter cold to the barn, where the mare with her new colt whinnied as she slipped the stock saddle across its back. She trapped the colt in an adjoining stall, and then as she got on the mare's back, she whispered:
"Go quickly, Daisy, or you'll not get back to your baby soon."
There was a long snorting whinny from Daisy—a cry of protest at being taken from her colt—indignantly answered by the little one.
The nearest telephone was five miles from Angella's ranch, and when she rode into the farm yard, in spite of the intense cold, the mare was sweating from her wild race across the country. The astonished farmer who led Angella to the 'phone—it was the first timeshe had been known to step inside any of their houses—stayed by the door and listened with pricked-up ears as the excited woman called Dr. McDermott at Springbank. By a merciful chance he was there, and a few moments later the farmer was helping his strange visitor to a seat, and calling loudly to his wife for help. For again Angella Loring had fainted. Her first question when she opened her eyes and looked up at her neighbors' faces was:
"Has he come? Has Dr. McDermott come?"
And when they replied that he had not, she wrung her hands and broke into weak tears.
The unexpected return of the "Governor," as the Englishmen had named Bull Langdon, was an exciting event in their hitherto pleasant lives. He arrived late on a March afternoon, the snort of his engine and the honk of his horn arousing the "hands" from a siesta, where, stretched before a raging wood fire, they drowsily smoked and read.
They dressed leisurely in warm fur coats and overshoes, before answering his impatient summons, and sauntering out in their own good time, smiled good-humoredly at the shouting cowman.
"Here, you! Take this in. Ain't no fire to the house. Want it thawed out."
The first of the Englishmen, whose long name need not appear here—"Bo" is what Bull Langdon called him—took the bundle in his hands and then almost dropped it, for something moved inside it, and a sound that was like a suffocated moan arose from its mysterious depths.
"My word! The thing's alive, d'you know,"exclaimed the startled Englishman. "Hang it all, man, I believe it's a baby."
"Take it to the bunkhouse," roared the Bull, backing into the garage. "Thaw it out."
Gingerly carried into the bunkhouse by the amazed "Bo" and deposited upon the cot that he himself had but recently reposed upon, the baby continued its low, moaning cries. Both the little bare feet had kicked out from the sheepskin coat, and were frozen stiff. One minute fist stuck out of the coat, and there was a great swelling on the forehead, where he had fallen off the seat of the car to the floor. Its whole body, in fact, was bruised from the cruel bumping of that long mad ride from Yankee Valley, a distance of thirty-five miles.
"Cutie," the name sneeringly imposed upon the other Englishman by Bull Langdon, because of his natty dress and his monocle, now stuck that despised piece of glass in his right eye, and surveyed the child with amazement. Its cries were growing fainter, and a kind of frozen rigor was creeping over it.
"Well, what're you gapin' at?" Bull Langdon was glowering in the doorway.
"Where in the world did you pick the little beggar up?" inquired "Bo."
"It ain't none o' your business," was the surly retort. "He's here, and he's here to stay. He's mine, and he's got my brand on him."
"You don't mean to say that you brand babies in this country! Never heard of such a thing! It's damned inhuman, I should say."
"Don't matter what you say or think. I want that kid thawed out. Give 'im something to eat. He's cold and hungry, but he's healthy young stuff and 'll pull through. Kids ain't no different to cattle. Feed 'em and keep 'em warm. That's all they need. He's bawlin' now for feed. You got something handy?"
"Nothing but a bite of cold venison. Hardly the stuff for a baby."
"He ain't no baby. He's a yearling. Here!"
He had torn a strip of the venison from the piece, and had thrust it into the child's hand. The tiny fingers closed feebly about the meat and then feebly unclosed. The bright eyes, so like his mother's, opened in one wide, blind stare, then the white lids came down over them, closing the light out forever.
"Gone to sleep," grunted the cowman. "Keep the fire goin'. Thaw him out and feed him. That's the stuff. He'll come round. He's good stuff. I'm off forthe timber. Be back soon. You ain't much good neither of you at tendin' to cattle. So I'll give you a nurse maid's job. Let the cattle rustle for themselves. You concentrate on—". He indicated with a jerk of his thumb Nettie's child, now quite still where it lay.
Alone, the two Englishmen continued to look at each other, astonished out of speech.
"Well, I'm hanged," said "Bo" at last, "absolutely hanged. What's to do?"
"Carn't say any more than you can. Blessed if I know the first thing about a baby."
"Cutie" was looking down sentimentally now at the small blonde head.
"It's awfully quiet, isn't it? Doesn't seem—" He touched the tiny hand. It was cold as ice, and all of a sudden the two men looking down on that little frozen thing realized the truth.
"By Jove!" whispered the one. "The little beggar's dead, d'you know."
Their eyes met apprehensively.
"What's to do?"
"Gad, I wish I knew."
"It's a dashed serious matter."
"Rather!"
"I'll plug over to the house and telephone. Where'd he say he was going?—er to timber something. I wonder what his telephone number might be."
"Try Information. She should know."
But Information knew of no timber number, but when the stuttering Englishman made clear to her that there was a dead baby at Bar Q, she connected him swiftly with the Provincial Police Station at Cochrane, and a voice at that end promised after a series of impatient questions to "look into it," and "Bo" hung up.
The charm of "rawnching" was over for the Englishmen. All the rest of that afternoon they sat in somber silence in the bunkhouse, carefully averting their eyes from the small covered head. They had no heart for their usual evening meal, but contented themselves with strong tea and smoking steadily upon their pipes.
It was nearly dark when the sound of a motor along the road was heard, and then the labored panting of the engine as it made the steep grade to the ranch. The two young men hoped the police had come, not knowing that the solitary mounty who had been despatched upon the case was coming by horse twenty-eight milesfrom the ranch, and could not arrive for several hours. When the Englishmen opened the door of the bunkhouse, they were surprised to see a woman running swiftly ahead of the fur-coated doctor, whose acquaintance they had already made.
Their first thought was that Angella was the mother, and indeed she might well have been as she threw herself down beside Nettie's baby, and burst into uncontrolled, despairing sobs over the little dead body.
Chum Lee packed everything he possessed in the world in his capacious bamboo bag, slipping in between the articles of clothing bottles and pipes and boxes filled with redolent odors. He muttered and chattered frantically to himself as he packed, and his hands shook as if with ague. He tied and knotted a stout rope about the bag and, trembling and shivering, put on his old sheepskin coat, muskrat cap and fur mittens. Hoisting the bag upon his back, Chum Lee hastened on panic-winged feet away from the camp at Barstairs.
He had awakened from a long doze, in which he dreamed of summer seas, green as jade, of colorful sampans, alive with moving, friendly faces; of a girl's face, oval and soft, with gentle almond eyes, and a smile like a caress, whose hair was black and smooth as the wing of a teal, and decked with bridal flowers. That fair vision of his home and the young wife he had left in China vanished into the cruel mists of memory. He awoke to intense cold, the bleakness of deathitself in the one-room bunkhouse. With a sob, the Chinaman crept out of bed, scurried across the room, only to find the fire was out, then staggered to the woodbox. On his way back to the stove, his arms loaded, he stumbled across something that lay upon the floor in his path. A loud cry escaped the Chinaman. The wood dropped from his shivering arms and clattered down upon the Bar Q "hand." Batt Leeson lay upon his back, where he had rolled out of his bunk overnight. His mouth and eyes were wide open, but did not move or flicker, for Batt was in his last long sleep.
The sight of the dead man, the last of the "boys" to succumb to the "black plague," was too much for the overwrought and drug-weakened Chinaman. Even the terrors of the zero weather were less appalling to face than what was inside that shack. Between his chattering teeth, Chum Lee sent up frantic appeals to the gods of his ancestors to lift the dreaded curse which had befallen the land in which he had sojourned too long.
As he went out of the gate, the long-drawn savage roar of hungry bulls followed him and, turning back upon a sudden resolution, Chum Lee shoved the barsalong the sliding doors. He would perform a last act of charity and win the favor of the gods. The famished brutes within would come up presently against the loosened door, and find themselves free from the prison where they had been confined for days.
That day, bellowing and moaning their unceasing demands for feed and water, the bulls crashed against the doors, as the Chinaman had foreseen, and they gave. The animals crossed a barrier of logs, and with heads lifted, they sniffed along the corrals and found the bars which the Chinaman had left down, and strayed out into the lower pasture. The gate stood wide open to the highway, and the vast country stretched beyond, unspeakably desolate under its mantle of deep snow. Out into the world, in search of that which had been denied them in their luxurious and costly sheds, went the famous Hereford bulls.
Pampered and petted, used to being fed almost by hand, and knowing no range save the sweet home pastures, how were they likely to fare in the wilderness? Now the merciless cold of the implacable winter smote them to the bone, and the unbroken expanse of frozen snow rose four feet deep in mounds and hillocks on all sides of them.
There were no nibblings. Streams and rivers were frozen hard. The wretched cattle swept along the road huddled together before a blinding wind out of the hill country, forerunner of a coming Chinook, but with its first blast intensifying the cold and lashing the last ounce of strength out of the lost and famished cattle.
They drifted blindly before the wind, driven against fence lines and trapped in coulee and gulch. Great white flakes began to fall like fairy birds drifting in the dazzling sunlight; like millions of feathers they fell upon the huddled herd, burying them under a mighty mound.
The only survivor of all that noble herd was the bull once known as "Prince Perfection Bar Q the IV," of whom the great specialist had predicted that he would startle the purebred world. Facing the west wind like a gladiator, the Prince turned from his fellows, and defiantly trod his way through the storm to where the outline of the hill country loomed up with its promise of shelter and food. Sniffing along the road allowances, pausing only to bellow his immense complaint, the massive brute pressed on his way.
There was a celebration at Bow Claire. Lanterns hung from rafters and eaves to give the place an air of festivity. Across the back of the big lumber camp, where the fifty-five men who had pulled through were now convalescent, bunting and bright Indian blankets were hung.
Now that the last of the men had been pronounced out of danger, the lumber-jacks, with the connivance of the doctor and an Indian, had smuggled into the camp the provisions for the intended festival.
When Nettie came from the foreman's house that evening, to make her nightly rounds of her emergency camp hospital, the surprise party awaiting her almost frightened her. A dozen accordions all struck up at the same moment; mouth organs joined in; Jim Crow, the only darky in the camp, grinning from ear to ear, was twanging a real banjo, and Mutt, a giant Russian, with a voice like a great bell, led all hands in a deafening cheer for Nettie, a cheer that, in spiteof their weakness, the men kept up for a long time.
Astonished and moved beyond speech, Nettie looked at her "boys," and smiled her thanks, though the tears ran down her cheeks. But the ceremonies were by no means over with the cheering and singing. Thin and pale, his eyes dark with a look of tragedy that wrung the girl's heart, Cyril Stanley stepped forward, a bouquet of flowers in his hands.
He alone in all the camp had been unable to find the courage to speak to Nettie. Those flowers, ragged from their journey on horseback, had cost the Bow Claire Camp more than the bouquet of a prima donna; and were intended to speak a message to the girl that the men lacked eloquence to say. Cyril had begged for the privilege of being the one to present the flowers. He came slowly forward, daring to look Nettie steadily in the face for the first time, and put out the hand that held the flowers; but the words he had planned to speak died on his lips. He could not even whisper her name.
She took the flowers from him and looked deep into his eyes. While the camp looked on in bewildered silence, the two estranged lovers gazed at one another for a long moment and when it had passed it had taken with itall the doubt and misunderstanding that had clouded Cyril Stanley's mind. Something within him seemed to burst, breaking down all the dikes of hatred he had built up in bitterness against her. He knew, as he looked into Nettie Day's clear eyes, that he loved her still beyond anything else on earth, and that he could have sworn by the living God above them that she could do, and had done, no wrong; that her heart was clean and pure and unstained.
Suddenly a sharp sound broke upon the hush that had fallen so strangely in the camp. The crisp metallic ring of a horse's hoofs sounded outside, and slowly the girl, her flowers still in her arms, turned as pale as death.
His chin thrust out, his big knotted hands swinging like a prize fighter's, half drunk with alcohol and mad desire, Bull Langdon burst into the camp. His glance swept that circle of feeble, motionless men, then turned to transfix the unhappy girl, whose flowers now lay where they had fallen to the floor. Before a word was said the truth flashed like a miracle over Cyril Stanley's mind. Now Nettie Day would never need to say one word in explanation to her lover. A flood of memories rushed over the boy, shaking him to his depthsas he realized the damnable crime that had been wrought against the girl he loved, and which death alone could now wipe out.
"So here y'are," cried the cattleman, towering above the cowering Nettie. "You come along home with me, gell. Your baby—andmine, gell, is at Bar Q. He's needin' you more'n this bunch of bos."
An inarticulate cry broke from Cyril's throat as he leaped fairly into the face of Bull Langdon. Staggered by the unexpected onslaught, and then seeing who it was that had attacked him, his lips drawn back like a gorilla's, Bull Langdon, with a sweep of his arm, felled the boy to the ground. He tried vainly to rise, but, weakened by his recent long illness, he had hardly struggled to his knees before the cattleman sent him spinning to the floor again.
A low murmuring passed over the crowd of lumbermen, a hoarse cursing protest, that grew in volume and fury as the Bull laid his hand on Nettie Day. It burst like a tidal wave when the frenzied girl broke from his grasp and fled through the open door.
The Bull found himself surrounded by a mob of mad men, cursing and weeping because of their weakness and inability to pull down the man they longed tokill, they leaped and struck at him. With his back to the wall he struck out right and left with his mighty fists, sending one man after another staggering to the floor, meanwhile edging craftily nearer and nearer to the door through which Nettie Day had fled.
It was a still, cold night. Nettie Day rushed blindly on horseback through the pathless dead timber lands. With amazing presence of mind she had mounted the Bull's own mare, which he had left standing outside the camp. On and on she urged the great animal, heedless of snow-laden brush and boughs that snapped back and lashed her as she rode.
The dense woods lay wrapped in a vast silence. Not a twig stirred on the frost-bowed trees. No living foot seemed to move within the depths of the forest. All that she heard, if indeed she heard anything, as she fled like the wind through the timber land, was the crunch of her horse's hoofs on the frozen snow. On and on, indifferent to the piercing cold; intent on one purpose only, to reach Bar Q and get her baby before the Bull could overtake her.
The mare was built on big, slim lines. Of thoroughbred racing stock by her sire, she was the foal of a Percheron mare, and therefore swift as well as strong. She carried the girl throughout that night withoutonce stopping, all of the twenty miles to the Bar Q.
Dawn was breaking over the still sleeping land, and a great shadowy arch spread like a rainbow across the sky, the long-prayed-for symbol of Chinook weather. Before the day was half gone a wind would blow like a bugle call from the mountains, and, racing with the sun, would send its warm breath over the land. But Nettie Day was blind to the omen of spring. Cramped and cold from her long ride, with a speechless terror tearing at her heartstrings, she fell rather than dismounted from her horse, and staggered toward the house, at the door of which Angella Loring stood, with empty arms.
Meanwhile another kind of drama had taken place in the timber land. Bloody and battered from his fight with the lumber-jacks and loggers, Bull Langdon sought the trail. In those deep woods, so still and silent, with the spell of the night upon them, in spite of the deep silence, there was a feeling of live, wild things hidden in bush and coolie, crouching and peering through the snow-laden brush.
He knew the country well, and had almost as keen a sense of smell as the cattle themselves. He had boasted that he could "sniff his way" anywhere throughthe foothill country, and that his long years of night riding had given him a cat's eyes. Where the dense forests broke here and there, the clearings were as bright as day in the moonlight.
It was twelve miles to Morley, an Indian trading post on the edge of the Stony Indian Reserve, and the Bull calculated that by turning off the main trail and following an old cattle path, he could cut the distance down a third.
The white moon behind moving clouds lighted his way one moment and plunged him in darkness the next. The cattle trail went in a wavering line toward a valley that ran along the Ghost River, where lay the summer range of the foothill cattle.
If the woods were still and dark, the valley, flooded with moonlight, looked like a great pool on whose farther bank dark forms were vaguely moving. These were the stray cattle that had escaped the fall round-up, and found shelter from the inclement weather in the seclusion of this deep valley, protected by the hills on one side, and the rapidly flowing Ghost on the other.
The first impulse of a cattleman upon spotting stray cattle on the range is to ride close enough tothem to read the brand upon their ribs; no easy matter at night, but the Bull was used to this. He was halfway across the valley when a certain restless stirring made him aware that he had been seen. Range cattle will move blindly before a man on a horse, but it is a reckless man who will risk himself near range cattle afoot. The roar of one of the leaders sent the cowman cautiously back into the shelter of the brush. He was unprepared to meet a stampede, but he marked the place to which the cattle had strayed, and made a mental note to round them up in a few days.
He was now but four miles from Morley, still traveling along the edges of the woods, when suddenly a low moaning call, growing ever in volume and power, until it swelled into a mighty roar that shook the bristling branches of the trees, smote the still night, and reverberated in the surrounding hills.
The cattleman stood stock-still, his head lifted and his face strained upward, his ears alert to catch the sound again. For he well knew that great far-reaching bellow which had once swelled his breast with pride; it was the furious challenge of the champion bull. Somewhere, close at hand, but hidden in those dense woods, Prince Perfection Bar Q the IV was at large.
The sound was not repeated and Bull Langdon came at last out of the sheltering woods. A wide field that flanked on one side the Banff Highway lay before him, on the other side of which were the fenced lands of the Indian Reserve.
As he moved through the thick woods, pausing every now and then to listen for treading hoofs behind him or for a breath of that low, menacing murmur that preceded the terrible roar, the cattleman's overwrought fancy had pictured the bull upon his trail, nor was it premonition that held him, but the fearful certainty that the savage animal was following close upon his tracks.
Bull Langdon considered the open space of the field and reckoned up his chances of making a swift dash across to the road, and across the road to the line of Indian fencing. A certain safety from his pursuer. For an instant he hesitated, then with lowered head, like one of his own blindly driven cattle, the cowman sped across the field. Not, however, swiftly enough for the Hereford bull that had trailed him.
On the edge of the timber land, Prince Perfection Bar Q the IV stood in a proud and questioning attitude with his stern eyes fixed upon the moving speckbefore him. Slowly he marked his prey, then his head dropped, and with a lumbering gait, yet incredibly swift, he made straight for his quarry. The cowman, his back to the oncoming bull, intent only on reaching the shelter of the barbed wire fences on the south side of the Banff Highway before it was too late, did not dare look round, as like a missile released from a colossal catapult the great bull shot across the field. Sideways and still on the run, with his lowered head swinging from side to side, he drove his horns clear through the cowman's ribs. There was a horrible rending sound, and suddenly Bull Langdon was tossed into the air to fall to earth like a stone. Again and again the savage bull gored and tossed him until he was rent into pieces.
A master vengeance was in that act of justice, though no torture of Bull Langdon's body could atone for the torture he had inflicted upon Nettie Day's soul.
"Hear me, lass," said Dr. McDermott, his hands resting upon the bent shoulders of Angella Loring. "In the old land, I was a stable lad and you the grand young lady of the manor house; my father was your father's groom, and all the McDermotts before me served the Lorings; but here in Alberta we're naught but mon and woman, and as mon to woman, lass, I'm asking you to be my wife."
She answered without words, laying her hands in his, but as he looked into her eyes, the doctor saw all the shadows of the sad years fade away like ghosts before the dawn, and love like the sunlight of the land of their adoption had taken their place.
"It's a puir rough sort of man you're getting," said the doctor huskily, but she laid her hands upon his lips and answered:
"Dr. McDermott, I'll be getting the salt of the earth!"
Hat twisting in his hands, outside the barn Cyril waited for Nettie. As she came out, a pail of milk in either hand, he gently took them from her and set them upon the ground. He had learned that speech by heart—the speech he was going to say to Nettie, but now as they looked into one another's eyes, no words were needed. As instinctively as life itself, they moved to each other. Nothing on earth now mattered save that they were in each other's arms.
In the house, hand in hand, they faced their friends, and immersed in their own joy noted not that the doctor's arm was about Angela's shoulders.
"Nettie and I are going to get married in the summer," said Cyril simply.
"Why wait for the summer?" rumbled their doctor friend. "Angel and I are going to Calgary tonight. Come with us."
"'Twill take a month or two to rebuild the home again," said Cyril wistfully.
"Why build again," said Angella, softly. "There'sthishouse for you, Cyril. It's our wedding gift to youand Nettie. I'll be going—" She smiled and blushed like a girl, but finished the words bravely—"to my husband's house," she said.
THE END