Nettie sat listlessly on the single step of the
Day shack, her hands loosely clasped in her
lap. The ripening grain gleamed in the sunlight,
golden as her own thick braids. The field seemed to
ripple and stir under the breeze that moved over the
heavily laden stalks.
This was a crop year, and even upon the rocky land
of the D. D. D. the grain pushed up resistlessly. Yet
as she looked out upon those waving fields, which represented
largely the labor of her own and her brothers'
hands, Nettie felt no sense of gratification or pride.
For suddenly her world had changed and darkened.
The poor, shiftless, happy-go-lucky homesteader of
the D. D. D. was dead, and of all that family of twelve
only she remained. County officials had taken away
the younger ones, who were to be "put out" for adoption,
while neighboring farmers had snapped up the
growing boys, as "likely timber for hard work."
The girl was quite alone, not knowing what was to
become of her, nor whither she could go. She thought
vaguely of the great city of Calgary. There she could
surely find work, but Nettie was a farm girl, and to
her mind the city meant eternal speed and noise, a
feverish, rushing activity which would only bewilder and
terrify her.
She was a silent girl, given to day-dreaming, and the
dreams of Nettie Day were humble and simple enough.
A clean, small cabin on a quarter section of land; a
cow or two; a few pigs; chickens; fields of grain, oats,
thick and tall; gleaming, silvery barley; the blue-flowering
flax; waves of golden wheat. Overall men upon the
implements, and herself in a clean kitchen, cooking a
meal for the harvest hands, and always her dream embraced
within its circle one whose friendly face was
tanned and freckled by the sun, whose smile was wide
and all-embracing, and who looked at Nettie with eyes
that spoke a language that needed no tongue.
"Some day soon," he had said to Nettie, "you and
me will be in our own home, girl."
"Soon" to the Scotch-Ontario boy meant a year or
two,' maybe a year' or two more than that; by which time
the home for Nettie would be snug and complete, with a
safe nest-egg in the bank or on the range.
But now everything had changed. Her home had
been broken up. There was to be an auction of the
poor stuff upon the place, to raise the price of the
mortgage upon the land.
Nettie felt helpless and forsaken. She missed her
father and her little brothers and sisters cruelly, and
dreaded to think how the baby might be faring, so dependent
had it been upon her own care. Her gaze wandered
irresistibly off to the hills, watching, a lump in
her throat, for Cyril to come.
Though unable herself to read or write, Nettie had
contrived to dispatch word to the rider of the Bar Q,
through the medium of the half-breed, Jake, who had
ridden by on the day after her father's death. She
could not know that he had been stricken down by a
fit of the epilepsy, to which he was subject, and long
delayed on the trail.
With the noon hour came the farmers and ranchers,
riding in from far and near, for a country auction in
Alberta, will bring out the people as to a celebration
or a fair. They came to the Day auction with picnic
baskets and hampers, in all kinds of vehicles, even by
automobile or on horseback.
The auctioneer was a little man, with a barking
voice. He hustled about the place, appraising the stock
and implements, the household effects and furniture.
The few head of cattle and horses were driven into a
hastily constructed corral of large logs. Bull Langdon
held the mortgage upon the D. D. D., and he expected
to get his money back with compound interest.
The sale began at the house, the home-made bits of
furniture telling their own tale of how Nettie and her
mother had been forced to work. These sold for practically
nothing, and some of them created coarse laughter,
as they were shoved out into the jovial circle of
farm folk. As bit by bit the familiar pieces were
brought from the house and dumped upon the ground
for the amusement and inspection of the farmers, Nettie,
unable to bear the pain of that pitiful sale, sought
refuge in the barn, where she stood looking down at the
fat sow, her father's especial pride and care, and the
thirteen young ones that had come with the spring.
Dry sobs tore her heart, and when a Bar Q "hand"
spoke to her, she looked up with her drenched face all
twisted like that of a wounded child's.
"'Tain't no use to cry about nothin'," said Batt
Leeson, with affected roughness. "Them pigs'll fetch
a fancy figger, though five of 'em's runts."
"I w-wasn't thinkin' of the pigs," said Nettie. "I
was w-wondering when Cyril Stanley would come. He's--a
friend of mine," she added with a gulp of pride
through all her grief.
"Him? Say, he's up at the purebred camp at
Barstairs. Gittin' the herd in shape for the annual
fair circuit. We got the greatest champeen bulls in
the world, take it from me. You needn't look for him,
girl. He's on his job."
She turned pale at this news, though Cyril had warned
her of the possibility of his being dispatched to the
Bull camp at Barstairs. She knew now that it would
be impossible for him to come.
With a sickening sense of utter desertion, she returned
to where the auction was continuing briskly, and
with considerable hilarity. The auctioneer was jumping
up and down, as a small hull was driven into the
circle of log fencing.
"Oh, boys!" yelled the auctioneer (a one-time showman),
"what have we here? This ain't no scrub bull!
Betchu he's almost pure Hereford! Betchu he's got a
good strain of Bar Q in him! Betchu he's an A No. 1
calf-thrower. What am I offered? Gentlemen, here's
the chance o' your lifetime."
A loud laugh burst from the circle of farmers, and
Bull Langdon came closer to the fence, and squinted
appraisingly at the animal.
"Dare say he ain't in prime shape--poor nibblings
on the D. D. D. as you know, gentlemen, but betchu you
turn 'im out on some reglar grass, he'll turn yound and
'sprize you. They's the makin's of a smooth Bull in
that fellow!"
"How old is he?" yelled a wag, making a horn of his
hands. "Seems like I seen him at D. D. D. when Dan
Day first pulled in."
Before the laughter that swelled up from this sally
had half died down, a girl's young savage voice broke
upon the gathering. Eyes blazing, breathlessly facing
the circle of rough men, Nettie sprang to the defense
of the home product.
"It's a lie, Jem Bowers, and you know it! He ain't
old. He ain't more'n six year old, and he just looks
that way--spare and done, 'cause we never had enough
feed for our stock. Dad listened to you-all, and staked
his land on this rocky part, while you got the fat places.
That bull ain't old, and don't you dare say he is. I
guess I ought to know, 'cause I raised him myself from
a calf."
A silence greeted this outburst from the girl. Eyes
shifted, tongues were stuck into cheeks. Compunction
not unmixed with admiration showed on the faces of
the farmers, aware possibly for the first time of the
existence of Nettie, who until then had shrunk into the
background. Bull Langdon, arms akimbo, had moved
from his position by the fence, and for the first time
his appraising eye fell fully upon Nettie. He looked
the girl over slowly from head to foot, and as his bold
gaze swept her his eyes slightly bulged and he licked
his lips.
Her outburst, probably the first in all her gentle life,
had left her flushed and breathless, and as her anger
subsided, she shrank before the united gaze of that
crowd of rough men gathered to buy up their poor possessions.
She drew back into the shadow of the house
and the sale went on.
Soon it was over. Auctioneer and buyers tramped
across the muddy barnyard to the house, to make their
reckoning there. As they came to the step Nettie met
them, her hands spasmodically clasped.
"Is--everything--sold?" she asked the auctioneer
quaveringly.
"Every last thing upon the place gone under the
hammer. Did pretty well, I'll say. Not too bad
prices."
"Then there'll be something for my brothers and
sisters?"
"Not on your life they won't. Scarcely enough to
satisfy the mortgage and pay up the debts. You ask
Mr. Langdon there. He holds the mortgage, and he's
bought in most o' the truck hisself."
Nettie turned her head slowly and looked in the face
of Bull Langdon. Then her head dropped. The Bull
had stepped forward. One big, thick forefinger went
up to the auctioneer, as it had risen when he had bought
head by head the stock and cattle.
"How about the gell? My wife needs a good strong
gell for the housework, and I'm willin' to take her along
with her dad's old truck."
One of the farmers' wives, a pale, anemic creature
who had sidled next to Nettie, whispered:
"Don't chu go with him, Nettie. He ain't no good."
As the eye of the Bull fell upon her, the woman
quailed and, in a panic, she said aloud:
"Mrs. Langdon's the kindes' woman in this country.
You'd be workin' for a good woman, Nettie. You're
a lucky girl to get the chance."
All that Nettie was thinking then was that Cyril
Stanley worked for the Bar Q. She would be near
Cyril; they would meet, perhaps, daily. That thought
sent her toward Bull Langdon with a hopeful light in
the eyes she raised shyly, though fearfully, toward him.
"I'll go, Mr. Langdon," said Nettie Day. "I got to
get a place anyway, and I might as well go along with
you."
The Bull withdrew his glance. Finger up again he
summoned his "hands."
"Round up them dogies, you Buzz. You, Batt, bring
along the pigs in the wagon. Damn you, Block, git
them horses back. Where in the h---- d'yer think we're
rangin'? You, Boob, roll off o' your horse there. Saddle
that pinto for the gell. Here, tighter on the cinch.
Shorten them stirrups. Here, gell!"
His big hand went under her arm, helping her to
mount the horse, but it closed over the smooth yielding
flesh, pressing it hard. As he tested the length of the
stirrups, he looked up into her face with such an expression
that she was suddenly filled with alarm and
terror. His big hand continued to tug at the stirrup
strap, his arm pressing against her knee, and she said
hastily:
"Let 'em alone. Them stirrup's is all right. I like
them long."
She shoved her foot into the leather thong and, slapping
the horse across the neck with the reins, she urged
it along. She had a sudden impulse to flee, though
from what she could not have said; she was possessed
with a furious urge to leave far behind her the huge
cowman, with his wild, possessive eyes.
She flew along the trail at a breathless gallop, and
it was only when his hand reached across the neck of
her horse and planted itself upon the pummel of her
saddle that she realized that he had never left her side.
"Hi, there, you don't want to run as a starter. Take
it easy."
On and on they went, across country, past the widespreading
pasture and grain fields, odorous of the bumper
crop which that year was to put Alberta upon the
grain map of the world, past the homely little log cabin
that Cyril had built for her, and past the C. P. R.
quarter, where the cropped-haired woman lived in her
hermit-like seclusion. On and on, till the higher grades
began and they climbed gradually upward toward the
hill country.
Straight ahead, under a sunset that overspread the
whole sky with a glow of red and gold, the mighty
Rocky Mountains rose like a vast dream before them.
The girl and the man rode side by side into that sunset,
while the perfect stillness of the Alberta evening closed
in about them. Nettie lost herself once more in her old
aspirations as the nearness of the long-yearned-for
hills drew nearer. Sweet and wistful thoughts of
Cyril calmed and reassured her. The man riding beside
her was forgotten, forgotten everything but the
spell of the Alberta twilight, and the dear thoughts of
her love.
At last they drew up before one of those great
Alberta ranch gates, with log rails ten feet long. The
Bull had alighted and opened the gate, and they were
cantering up the hill.
In Alberta the sunlight lingers till late into the night,
and a mellow glow suffuses the land, gilding even the
meanest spots and turning all the country into dim
oceans and atolls of beauty. Under this light, the
white and green ranch buildings of the Bar Q shone like
a little city planted upon a hilltop, and at this first
sight of the great Bar Q the girl from the Dan Day
Dump caught her breath in awe and admiration.
The Bull had again dismounted, and Nettie, with his
hand under her arm, also found herself lifted to the
ground; but instead of withdrawing his arm, the cowman
kept it about her possessively, and drew her closely
to his side. She stared, fascinated, into the face so
close to her own.
"That pinto's yours, gell," said Bull Langdon, "and
if you're the right kind o' gell, and treat the Bull right,
it's the first o' the presents you'll be gettin'!"
Nettie shrank back, but she tried valiantly to hide
her fear and repulsion. She said breathlessly:
"I don't want nothing that I don't earn."
At that the Bull laughed--a big, coarse chuckle.
"You'll get all that's comin' to you, gell," he said.