Never had the ranch house seemed so large or so empty. A wave of homesickness overwhelmed the lonely girl, a terrible longing to see her little brothers and sisters, now so widely scattered about the country, and be with them once again.

The days were gradually shortening and when the light faded about ten o'clock darkness closed silently in upon the hill country. Though the days were sunny the nights were very quiet and somewhat chilly.

Nettie Day knelt by her window. She could see the lights in the row of bunkhouses and someone moving about the corrals with a lantern in his hand. How long she knelt by her window she could not have said, but she felt no inclination for sleep and put off preparing for bed as long as possible.

The vast silence of the hills seemed to press down about the place and in the utter stillness of the night the low wailing of a hungry coyote in the hills awakened weird echoes. A healthy, placid girl, nerves had never troubled Nettie; yet on that night she experienced a psychic premonition of disaster, and when the depression weighed unbearably down upon her she called to Jake from her window.

Stick on shoulder, the breed came from the kitchen door and grinned up at her in the dusk. Jake was in one of his periods of delusions and as sentry before an Indian war camp he patrolled fearlessly but with catlike caution. His mere presence, however, comforted her, but her cheek blanched as the breed returned to the house, gave a startled cry—the cry of a man struck suddenly. She said to herself:

"Jake's playing! I guess he's shootin' at himself with his old arrows. My, he's a queer one."

Long since the twinkling lights in the bunkhouses had disappeared one by one as the men "turned in." The "hands" of the Bar Q were early risers and "hit the bunks" as soon as the light left the sky.

The last sign of life had vanished. Even the coyote was silent and the darkness grew ever deeper.

Nettie turned from her window at last. Her long plaits of hair hung down, like a Marguerite's, on her shoulders. In her white night dress she looked very virginal and sweet. She had raised her hands and begun to coil up the golden braids when something—a stealthy, cautious motion—caused her to pause. She stood still in the middle of the room, her eyes wide and startled, staring at the door.

The bureau stood by the door and a lamp burned on it. Slowly the knob turned and she felt something push against the frail door which she had, however, locked.

Though well-nigh paralyzed with fear she found strength to seize her one chair and thrust its back underneath the knob so that its two back legs firmly on the floor might help the now loudly cracking door to resist the force that was slowly pushing it in. She blew out the light and retreated towards the window.

There was the sound of snapping steel and the lock was burst. The upturned chair quivered on its two back feet, held sturdily in place a moment and then splintered under the iron strength of the man without.

As the door gave way a numbness came upon her and, without power to move, like some fascinated thing, she watched the approach of the Bull. She knew that she was trapped and clutching her throat with both hands she tried to force to her lips the cry that would not come.

She was in a black dream, a merciless nightmare.

She awoke, screaming wildly:

"Cyril, Cyril, Cyril! Cyril! Cyril!" and over and over again, "Cyril!"

Like one gone stark mad she groped her way to the window and threw herself out.

When she regained consciousness the bright, hard sun was in her eyes. She stared up at a brilliant blue sky. Jake knelt on the grass beside her and tried to move her to the shadow of the house. She moaned:

"Leave me be. I want to die."

Jake muttered excitedly:

"Him! Him! Him see—him hurt Nettie. Last night him hurt Jake bad."

"Him!" She knew whom Jake meant by "him" and threw up her arm as if to shield herself from a blow. At that moment his shadow loomed above her and she cowered and cringed from it.

"How'd you git here?" He looked up at the window. "You got to cut out this damn nonsense. I ain't aimin' to hurt you, but you can't lay out here. Here, I'll carry you into the house. Keep still, will yer? D'you want me to tie you?"

Her struggles ceased. Eyes closed, she submitted limply as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the house. Jake followed, wringing his hands and whimpering like a dog.

On the fourth day, holding to the bannisters, she managed to limp downstairs. For a long time she sat on the hard kitchen chair, staring with unseeing eyes before her. Even when she heard the heavy tramp of the Bull's feet on the outside porch she did not raise her head and as he came in her hopeless gaze remained still fixed on space.

"Hello! Whatchu doin' down here? How'd you get down here?"

"I come down myself," said Nettie listlessly. "My ankle ain't hurtin' me no more."

"I'd a' carried you down if you asked me," he grunted angrily. "I done everything a man could for a girl. Who's been waiting on you hand and foot these last four days just's if you was a delicate lady instead of a hired girl on a ranch. What more d'you want? The more you do for some folks the more they want."

Nettie said nothing, but two great tears suddenly rolled out of her eyes and splashed slowly down her cheeks. She resented those tears—a sign of weakness, where she felt hard and frozen within, and she peevishly brushed them away.

"What you cryin' about?"

"I jus' want that you should let me alone," said Nettie.

"You'll be let alone soon enough now. I got to go to Barstairs, and I got to go on to the States. We're billed up at the fairs over there, and I got to go along with my bulls. I'd take you with me if it wasn't for that young buck at Barstairs. I ain't plannin' on sharing you with no one, do you get me? You belong to Bull Langdon. I got you at the sale, same's I got the rest of your dad's old truck, and what the Bull gets his hands on he keeps. It's up to yourself how you git treated. I'm free handed with them that treats me right. My old woman ain't strong. She'll croak one of these days and 'twon't be long before they'll be another Mrs. Langdon at Bar Q. You treat the Bull right and you'll be the second Mrs. Langdon."

Nettie twisted her hands in her apron. Her heart ached dully and at the mention of her mistress's name a fierce lump rose persistently in her throat.

"Well, what you got to say to that?"

She did not answer and he pursued wrathfully:

"You're sulking now and you're sore on me, but you'll get over that, gell. I'll knock it out of your system damn soon if you don't, and you'll find out that it'll pay you to be on the right side of the Bull rather than the wrong."

"I ain't aiming to make you mad," said Nettie piteously, shrinking under the implied threat. He chuckled, relishing his power.

"Well, I'll be off. If it weren't for them bulls nothing could take me from you now, gell, but I ain't fool enough to neglect my bulls for a gell. I'm goin' along with the herd far as St. Louis, and I'll be back to you before the month is out."

His big lips closed over hers. The loathsome embrace seemed to strangle her. Then she was alone again.

She sat in the kitchen for more than an hour after the departure of the Bull, still in that attitude of stupefied apathy, then limped upstairs, into her room, closed the battered door, and sat down on the edge of her bed, holding her head in her hands. She had no feeling save that of intense weariness and dead despair. Presently, still dressed, she fell sideways upon the bed and slept the long, unbroken sleep of one physically and mentally exhausted.