More than a year had passed since that day in
March when Nettie, the doctor and Cyril
Stanley had driven along the trail to the cabin on
the C. P. R. quarter. Slowly but surely, the place
had changed. The sturdy log house that had grown
into being represented the efficient labor of young Cyril
Stanley's hands. He had built it in the "lay-off time"
he had taken that summer. Slowly the holes for the
fence posts were going into the ground around the
entire quarter. Soon the "home" would be ready for
the radiant Nettie, and in a few more months Cyril
would leave the Bar Q, with savings enough to give him
and Nettie a fair start in life.
Things had moved also upon the quarter section of
C. P. R. land where lived in defiant solitude the woman
who had resented and fought the help forced upon her
by the gruff Scotch doctor and Nettie Day.
Her name, it seemed, was Angella Loring, but some
wag had named her "Mr." Loring, because of her
clipped hair and her workingman's attire, and this
name had stuck, though Nettie Day called her "Angel."
Her appearance in Yankee Valley had caused the
usual sensation always created by a strange newcomer.
There had been the usual wagging of heads and tongues,
and tapping of foreheads. The woman was a "bug,"
the farm people of Yankee Valley had decided. At all
events, she was the kind of "bug" they found it prudent
to keep at a safe distance. She had met all overtures
of friendship with hostility and contempt. She was on
her own land; she desired no commerce with her neighbors;
and needed no help. It was nobody's business
but her own why she chose to dress and live as she did.
That was the substance of her replies to those who ventured
to call upon her, and when some jocular fellows,
intent on being smart, pressed their company upon her,
she demonstrated her ability to shoot straight--at their
feet, so that for a time a joke ran around the country
about the number of young "bucks" who limped, and
for a time the jeering taunt, "Mr. Loring'll git you if
you don't watch out," was often heard. Thus she became
a sort of bugaboo in the popular imagination, but
as time passed the country grew accustomed to its
woman hermit and gave her the wide berth she asked for.
She broke her own land and put in her own crop,
inadequately it is true, but with a certain persistence
and intensity which at first amused, then slowly won
the grudging respect and wonder of her neighbors. She
had few implements, and those the antiquated affairs
used by Dr. McDermott when first he had homesteaded
in Alberta. Her horses were poor, scrub stock, palmed
off upon her by Bull Langdon, who sent them down
with the proposition that she could have the four head
in exchange for her services on the Bar Q cook car over
the harvesting period on his grain ranch. Cooks were
rare and precious in those years when not even a Chinaman
was to be had for love or money. The woman
hermit considered the terms for a moment, and then,
to the surprise of the grinning "hand" who had brought
both the horses and the proposition, she accepted it.
She understood horses well enough, but not the kind
used in Alberta for farming purposes. Her acquaintance
had been with the English saddle horses. How
should she know the type of draught horse necessary
for the plow, the disc, the harrow and the seeder? So
she harnessed up the poor stock advanced her by the
Bull, obtained her seed by application to the Municipality,
and her crop went in. Cutworms ate it to the
ground before it had shown fairly above the soil.
Grimly and without altering her air of inimical aloofness,
she went to the Bar Q ranch, and over the harvest
period cooked for thirty or forty men. Throughout
that time she dealt with the crew in absolute silence,
cooking and dishing up the "grub" and passing it out
to them without a word. She had never been known to
address a voluntary sentence or question to a soul on
the place, with the single exception of the half-breed
Jake, who did her chores and wiped the dishes for her.
When Mrs. Langdon made overtures of friendship to
her, she curtly told her that she would "quit" if she were
"interfered" with; she was in charge of the cook car
and was to be let alone.
In the fall she broke more land, and in winter she
shut herself in her shack, and no one, save Dr. McDermott
who persisted in calling upon her on his monthly
rounds, saw her again till the spring, when she put in
a larger crop than the year before.
However, time allays even if it does not satisfy the
hungriest curiosity, and in a country like Alberta, even
in the present day, we do not scrutinize too closely the
history or the past of the stranger in our midst.
Alberta is, in a way, a land of sanctuary, and upon its
rough bosom the derelicts of the world, the fugitive, the
hunted, the sick and the dying have sought asylum and
cure. The advent of a newcomer, however suspicious
or strange, causes only a seven days' wonder and stir.
Human nature is, of course, the same the world over,
and in the wake of curiosity, surmise, invention, slander
reach forth their filthy fingers to bespatter the lives of
those we do not know. Fortunately, however, curiosity
is an evanescent quality in the ranching country, partly
for reasons of time and distance. We cannot shout our
gossip of a neighbor across hundreds of miles of territory,
and he who toils upon the land from sunrise until
sunset has no leisure to hustle from door to door with
evil tales.
Nevertheless, there was one man in Alberta who knew
something of the history of this strange woman's past,
even if he did not understand why she had sought this
strange isolation from her fellowmen.
She had failed to recognize in the country doctor
who stubbornly forced his society upon her, the stable
lad who twenty-five years before her father had sent
away to college in Glasgow.
Dr. McDermott was one of Alberta's pioneer workers.
When settlers followed upon the heels of the missionary
and the C. P. R., and planted their homesteads on the
big raw land, Dr. McDermott was there to care for and
scold and direct them. He had attended his patients
all over the country, traveling in those days by any and
all kinds of primitive vehicle, on horseback, by ox
wagon, by dog sled, and often on foot, before the roads
were staked, when there were no lines of barbed wire
fencing to mark the trail, and when a blizzard meant
possible blindness and death. He had gone to remote
places to bring babies into the world, not only gave
medical aid to the mother but looked after the whole
household. He knew Alberta as a child knows his
mother--knew that this "last of the big lands," as they
called it, was for those only who were capable of seizing
life with strong, eager hands. It was no place for the
weakling, or the feeble of heart, for Alberta was the
Land of Romance, the Land of Heartbreak, cruel and
tender, remorseless and kind.
Free and independent by nature, it seemed incredible
that the doctor should have come of a race of servitors,
men who for several generations had served a single
family, as groom and servant, and always he experienced
a deep sense of gratitude to the man who had
picked him out from amongst the humble McDermotts
and given him the opportunity for an education. He
had worked with the purpose of justifying by his
achievements his master's faith in his abilities, and it
had been a proud day for Angus McDermott when,
cleared of all encumbrances, free of mortgages and
taxes paid to date, his land broken and his rugged cabin
planted upon it, he had deeded the beloved quarter section
back to the man who had paid for his education.
Now after the passage of the years, the daughter of
his former master had come to that bit of Alberta soil,
seeking in her turn to wrest a living from the land,
fighting a desperate fight with poverty, disease and the
blows and buffets of the wild new land which "makes or
breaks" a man.
As he rode along the rough roads, chirping absently
to the old geldings that plugged slowly along, the doctor's
mind persistently traveled back to a sunny day in
June in the old land. He was a barefooted boy in a
large stable yard. A little girl was there--a very little
girl, with thick, brown, curly hair, crushed under a
Derby hat, and she was leaning over from her seat on
her pony's back to coax--to command favors of the
stable boy. She wished to ride Spitfire. Angus was
not to tell "Pop," which was her inelegant term for the
Earl of Loring. He was to bring the animal around to
the far end of the south garden that evening, and she
would be there under the bushes. He was not to forget,
mind! He'd be sorry if he did.
He did not forget. He kept the tryst with the
daughter of the earl, but he brought not the forbidden
horse. He well recalled the furious, passionate little
figure that crawled from out the bush and assailed him
with bitter reproach and blows. Mechanically, Dr.
McDermott's hand went up to the cheek where her crop
had flashed, and he was moved afresh by the memory
of the child's wild imploring voice, begging forgiveness,
the touch of the small impetuous hand upon his hurt
face, and the soft smudge of her tear--drenched face
against his own.
Twenty-five years ago! He rode on and on through
the Alberta sunshine, his wide Stetson tilted above a
rugged face, whose chief charm lay in the sturdy honesty
of its expression.