Читать книгу Cattle - Onoto Watanna - Страница 7

Table of Contents

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.