The meeting with Nettie on the road doubled the
Bull's determination to possess her again The
exhilaration of the chance encounter and the frustration
of his plans when, returning, he found the little
car gone, had roused his desire to a pitch of insanity.
Everything else was forgotten; his cattle, his
ranches, his great money losses, the impossibility of
obtaining help, even the deterioration of his prized bulls
at Barstairs--all these cares and anxieties ceased to
exist in the overpowering passion that consumed him.
Bull Langdon was incapable of love in its finer sense,
but in his blind and brutal way, he was madly in love
with Nettie Day. His passion for the girl was like a
fire that burned and raged within him, seeking an outlet
where there was none and for the time being the man
was like a maniac.
He thought of the girl ceaselessly, chortling with
delight as he pictured her beauty, now sweeter than
ever before in its young maturity. He had not noticed
a new quality of spirituality that suffering had added
to her loveliness, a certain light that seemed to radiate
from her; all he had seen was that the summer's work
in the fields had reddened her cheeks and brightened
her eyes, and that her lips were like a scarlet flame.
If he pictured Nettie as she had looked at him from
her seat in the doctor's Ford with her wide frightened
eyes, his mind went back also to those other days, when
he had held the girl in his arms. Many a night as he
tramped the floor of the empty ranch house, his half-crazed
mind lived over and over the joy of those days
when he had held her in his power--"like purebred stuff
in the Squeezegate." She had been weak and docile
then, a timid, terrified captive; but now there was a
new expression in her face, a look that was like a
shield--a warning guard that held him back and warned
him that if trapped again she would struggle to the
death. He told himself he had no desire to hurt her--he
wanted only to have her back, where he believed
she belonged by right; he would make her the second
Mrs. Langdon. And at the thought of Nettie, at the
Bar Q, reigning in the great ranch house, keeping the
place clean and sweet as his first wife had done, the
Bull threw out his arms and clinched them to him,
as if in fact the struggling girl were actually in their
grasp, and he crooned words of savage tenderness to
his vision, only to moan and whimper the next moment
as he came back to reality again.
His desperation made him resourceful and cunning.
He looked for Nettie Day at every farm and ranch in
the foothills and in the adjoining prairie country. His
car no longer tore along the roads from Bar Q to Barstairs,
as he superintended the care of his demoralized
herd. He had started now upon another hunt, and
was running to earth a quarry whose price he set above
all else.
His spying at the Loring ranch had revealed the
fact that Nettie was not there, but, laying in wait
for the unfortunate Jake, his son of an earlier passion,
in due time he captured and tortured the half-breed.
He had picked him up on the trail, racing bare-back
upon some errand into the hills, and his questions as
to the whereabouts of Nettie, accompanied by prods
and kicks, had brought the stuttered information that
she was "far way off on the hills. She at lumber camp.
Everybody gone die on Bow Claire."
That was enough for the Bull. He knew now where
the girl was, but the knowledge, instead of satisfying
and calming him, did the very reverse when he realized
that Nettie and Cyril were once more together. That
thought obsessed him, and filled his mind with murderous
designs.
In the midst of his fury he reminded himself of
Nettie's baby and a new idea, charged with possibilities,
occurred to him. If he could not take the girl
by force, there was one way by which she could be lured
to Bar Q. He was amazed that he had not thought
of it before. Human nature, he knew, was no different
from cattle nature, where the young ones were
concerned. The cattle mother would go, if necessary,
through walls of fire and stone to reach her offspring,
and what would keep Nettie Day from going to Bar Q,
if she knew her baby was there? It was never necessary
to throw the lariat upon the mother's neck; the roping
of her child was always enough. Bull Langdon swung
his car around.