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 without
once 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 through
the 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 to
them 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 speck
before 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.