"Jake, I want you to ride like 'hell on fire' to
Springbank, where you'll find Dr. McDermott.
Ask at the post office for him, and you may meet
him on the trail. Don't spare Daisy, even if you
have to kill her riding. Leave her at Springbank to
rest up, and come back with the Doc. And Jake, if
you get back by tomorrow night, I'll--I'll give you a
whole pound of brown sugar and a can of molasses.
Now skedaddle, and for God's sake, don't fail us."
"Me go! Me fly on the air!" cried the breed excitedly.
Without saddle or bridle--nothing but a
halter rope, Jake was on the Indian broncho, and was
off like a flash over the trail.
Angella concealed her fears from the white and
trembling Nettie.
"Nothing to worry about," she said carelessly. "He's
afraid of my gun, Nettie, the big coward!"
"Oh, Angel, I'm not afraid for myself, but for the
baby. He's a terrible man when he's in a passion, and
he never gives up nothing that's his."
"But you're not his," said Angel sharply, "and
neither is the baby. He's mine. You said I could have
him, and I won't give him up."
"Oh, Angel, I don't want you to. He's better with
you than anyone else, and although I do love him--"
Nettie's voice was breaking piteously--"yet there are
times when I can't forget that he's the Bull's----"
"He's not. He's all yours, Nettie. There's not a
trace of that wild brute in our baby. I don't see how
you can even think it. Just look at the darling," and
she held up the laughing, fair-haired baby at arm's
length. The days spent out of doors in the field had
done much to give him the health and strength that had
not been his at birth. He had Nettie's eyes and hair,
but not her seriousness, for he crowed and laughed all
day long, the happiest and most contented baby in the
world.
Nettie looked at him now with swimming eyes.
"He is sweet!" she said in a choking voice, and kneeling
beside Angella, on whose lap the baby lay, she buried
her head in his little soft body.
Jake did not return the following night, nor the
night after. Though each sought to hide her anxiety
from the other, the two women kept a constant look-out
along the trail, straining their ears for the comforting
sound of the motor, which on a still day could sometimes
be heard at two or even three miles' distance.
They would have gone away somewhere, but for the
fact that the threshers were due in a few days' time, and
it would have meant ruin to leave the crop unthreshed.
Once the threshing was done, and the grain safely
stored in the granary, or sold direct to the commission
men who had already called upon Angella, they would
be free to make a trip to Calgary, and there seek counsel
and protection.
Meanwhile, every night they bolted and barricaded
their door, and with the baby between them, with
loaded guns side by side on the bed, hardly slept
through the night. Wide-eyed and silent in the darkness
they kept their vigil, each hoping that the other
slept.
On the third night, toward morning, Nettie started
up with a cry. She had heard something moving outside
the shack. They gripped their rifles and sat up
listening intently. Then Angella declared that it was
only the wind, and Nettie said:
"It sounds like thunder, doesn't it? Maybe we're
goin' to have another storm."
"Let it storm," said Angella, glad of the other's
voice in the darkness. "Our crop's harvested, and no
hail can hurt us now. Is the light still going in the
kitchen?"
"Yes." After a moment, Nettie said:
"I ain't afraid of nothing now for myself, but I
don't want nothing to happen to you--and my baby."
"My baby you mean," corrected Angella, pretending
to laugh. But with all the tenderness of her maternal
heart, she drew the baby close to her side.
After another long tense pause, when they again
imagined things stirring about the place, Angella said
suddenly:
"Let's talk. I can't sleep and neither can you, and
we never do talk much."
"I expect that's because we've always had to work
most o' the time," said Nettie. "Isn't it queer that you
and me should be such friends."
"Why queer?"
"I'm what they call 'scrub' stock--and you----"
"So'm I--scrub. That's the kind worth being. The
common clay, Nettie. The other kind is shoddy and
false and----"
"Oh, Angel, I think you're so sweet and good."
"I'm not sweet and good," said Angella stoutly,
"and there's nothing heroic about me."
"I don't care what you are," said Nettie, "I'll always
love you. Sometimes when I get thinkin' of how hard
everything's been for me in this life, I think of you
and Mrs. Langdon, and I say to myself: You're a
lucky girl, Nettie. Not everybody in the world has got
a friend! Have they, Angel?"
"No--very few of us have," said Angella sadly.
"Nettie, did you hear that!"
"What?"
"It sounded like--like a moan. Listen!"
In the dark silence of the night, the long-drawn moaning
sound was repeated.
"It's cattle," said Nettie.
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, yes, I know their calls, though I didn't know
there was any near us."
"Passing along the trail probably. It's getting
toward the fall, you know."
"Angel, do you believe in God?"
"No--that is, yes--in a way I do. Do you?"
"Yes. Mrs. Langdon used to say that God was in
us--in our hearts. He can't be in every heart, can
he?"
"Why not?"
"Well, Bull Langdon's for instance. God couldn't
abide in his heart, could he?"
"No, I should think not."
"But Mrs. Langdon believed it. She used to say
that God loved him as well as any of us, but that Bull
was 'in error,' and that some day God would open his
eyes, and then he would be powerful good."
"Hm! He'd have to open his eyes pretty wide, I'm
thinking," said Angel. "But try and sleep now, Nettie.
I'm feeling a bit drowsy myself. Maybe we can snatch
a wink or two before morning. Good-night, Nettie."
"Good-night, Angel. I think it's true. God is in
our hearts. I believe it."
"I believe he's in yours, anyway," said Angella softly.
"Good-night, old girl."
But God dwelt not in the heart of Bull Langdon.
Under the silver light of the moon, that lay like a spell
upon the sleeping land, and across the shining valley,
came the cowman, driving a great herd of steers.
Penned in corrals for shipment to the Calgary stockyards,
they had been without food for two days, and
now they came down the hill, eager and impatient for
the feed that had been too long denied them.
The Bull, on his huge bay mare, drove them rapidly
before him whirling and cracking his long whip over
their heads. The Banff highway was deserted. He
chose the gritty roads, and, heads down, the hungry
steers nosed the bare ground, till they came to the level
lands, and turned into the road allowances between the
farms. The grain fields, odorous of cut hay and grain,
inflamed the hunger-maddened steers, and they moaned
and sniffed as they were driven mercilessly along.
All day and most of the night they traveled without
pause and in the first gray of the dawn they arrived
at the frail fences of the Lady Angella Loring. Down
went the two insecure lines of barbed wire that the
women had set up, never counting they would be needed
to withstand the impetuous stampede of wild cattle.
When Angella and Nettie stepped out of their shack
later that morning their shocked eyes were greeted with
Bull Langdon's vindictive work. The road was still
gray with the raised dust of the departing animals
turning off the road allowance for the main trail, the
Bar Q brand showing clearly on their left ribs. Filled
to the neck with the reaped grain, they were rolling
heavily along the way into Calgary.
The two girls stood before their barren fields, overwhelmed
by the magnitude of the disaster that had
befallen them. Not a word was said, but Angella, as if
grown suddenly old, turned blindly to the house, while
Nettie threw herself down desperately upon the ground
and burst into bitter tears.
Her little work-roughened hands fallen loosely by
her side, Angella sat at the crude wooden table of her
own making, and tried to figure a way out of the
appalling problem now facing her. She had bought
her implements on the installment plan, and the money
was now due; she owed the municipality for her seed; a
chattel mortgage was on her stock. That year's crop
would have wiped out all her indebtedness, and left her
free and clear.
When her crops had failed before, she had made up
her losses by working at the Bar Q, and the small proceeds
of the sale of eggs and butter; but now she had
not only herself to consider. There were two other
living creatures entirely dependent upon her. To the
desolate, heart-starved woman, Nettie and her baby had
become nearer and dearer to her than her own kin.
Nettie, still lying on the bitten down stubble, was
roused from her stupor of grief by a pulling at her
sleeve, and looking up, she saw the half-breed Jake. He
was kneeling beside her, holding out a little bunch of
buttercups, and in the poor fellow's face she read his
grief and anxiety. Nettie tried to smile through her
tears, and she took the flowers gratefully.
"Thank you, Jake. Where'd you come from?" she
asked, wiping her eyes, though her breath still came in
gasping sobs, and she could not hide her tears.
"Jake come out like 'Hell on fire' in Doctor's nortermobile.
Beeg, beeg ride--run like wind--run like hell
on road. Doc"--he jerked his thumb back--"go into
house. He eat foods. Jake got a hongry inside too.
She tell Jake she give'm molasses and sugar." He
smacked his lips at thought of his favorite food, but the
next moment he was studying Nettie's wet face in
troubled bewilderment.
"What's matter, Nettie? Him hurt Nettie yes
again?"
"Oh, yes, Jake, again." Her lip quivered.
The half-breed's face flamed savagely.
"The Bull! He no good! Jake kill 'im some day
sure."
He waved his arms wildly, and Nettie shook her head,
smiling at him sadly.
"Keep away from him, Jake. He's powerful strong,
and there wouldn't be nothing much left of you if he
once got his hands on you."
"Jake not afraid of the Bull," said the half-breed,
shaking his head. "Listen, Nettie. Me--Jake Langdon--me
take a peech fork, beeg long likea this, and
me jab him in the eye of the Bull, yes? That's kill
him."
"Oh, no, Jake. He'd get it from you. He'd rastle
it out of your hands."
"Then me--Jake steal on house when he's sleep. Get
a long big nail--like this big--hammer him into ear.
That same way many Indian do."
"Keep away from him, Jake. You'll only get the
worst of it."
"Jake don't mind worst. That's nothing. Jake no
like see cry on Nettie."
"Well, then, I'll not cry any more. You pick me
some more buttercups, Jake, and--and don't you worry
about me. I'm all right."
Inside the shack, Dr. McDermott had broken his
habitual Scotch reticence and blazed into fluent fury.
He had met the Bar Q herd along the road, and had
suspected something wrong. As he drove by Angella's
fields he realized what had happened, and her first words
confirmed his suspicions.
"Bull Langdon turned his steers into my crop. He
has ruined us."
"The hound! The dirty, cowardly hound! I'll have
him jailed for this."
"You can't, doctor," said Angella wearily, "we didn't
have the legal fence--just two wires. You warned us.
I wish I had taken your advice."
"Then I'll beat him to a pulp, with my own hands!"
said the enraged doctor.
Angella looked up at him with a pitying smile.
"No, man you shan't do that. I wouldn't have you
soil your hands touching him."
Her head dropped, and for a long time no word was
spoken in the little shack. Dr. McDermott, tongue-tied,
stared down at the bowed head of Angella. Presently
she said, without looking up, but in a sort of hopeless,
dead way:
"Dr. McDermott, I'm through. I can't go on fighting.
I'm beat."
"Through!" roared her friend, who had once
preached so violently against her laboring as a man,
"lass, you've only begun! You're of a fighting race--a
grand race, and you'll go down fighting. You're not
of the breed to admit you're beat."
"Little you know of my breed," she said sadly.
Dr. McDermott took the chair opposite her, thrust
out his chin and forced her to look at him.
"Do you remember the stable lad ye whipped because
he'd not let you ride the young Spitfire?" he said.
"Don't you remember the lad that twenty-five years
ago your father sent away to college in Glasgow?"
Her eyes grew wide and bright as she stared at him
as though she saw him for the first time. Color touched
her cheeks, she looked like a girl again. For a moment
she could not speak, but only stare at him. Out of the
mists of memory she was seeing again the barefooted
boy she had stolen away many a time to play with; it
was incredible that he and this rugged Scotch doctor,
who had forced his friendship upon her out in the wilds
of Canada, should be one and the same.
"Are you really that boy?"
And then, with a catch in her voice:
"Why, I must have been blind." A little sob of
delight at this miraculous encounter rose in her throat.
"Then you are--Angus. That was your name,
wasn't it. Oh, I have been blind!"
"Twenty-five years is a long time, my lady."
"Don't call me, my lady. I hate it."
"I'm glad of that, ma'am," said the doctor solemnly,
which made her laugh.
"And now," he pleaded, roughly, though in desperate
earnest, "you'll be taking back the money that your
father spent to make a doctor of a stable lad, will you
not? You'll let me stake you, lass?"
"Oh, you've more than paid that debt. This ranch
alone----"
"It's a homestead--a free gift of the Canadian Government.
It'll not begin to pay for the cost of a mon's
education. A debt's a debt, and I trust you'll allow
a mon to wipe out a heavy obligation."
At that Angella smiled, but her eyes were wet.
"If you put it that way, Dr. McDermott, of course,
there's nothing else for me to do but let you--let you--stake
me--will you?"
"I will!" said the man, scowling at her angrily, then
he cleared his throat, and asked for a "bite of food for
a hungry mon who's been working day and night to
hammer a bit of common sense into a bunch of farmers
whose heads are made of wood."
Angella even laughed as she bustled about the kitchen,
preparing a quick meal for the doctor, and when she
set it before him she asked:
"Who's sick now, doctor?"
"The whole country's nigh down," he muttered. "If
they don't heed the warning I've been trying to hammer
into their systems for months now, there'll be a sad lot
of sick and dead folk before the winter's out, I tell
you."
"As bad as all that?"
He replied solemnly:
"Couldn't be worse. Mark my words, if the plague
comes up to the country from Calgary, where it's got
a foothold already, our population will be cut in half."