Spring came late to Alberta that year, and it was May before the farmers were upon the land.

Zero weather followed the heavy March snowfalls, and May was well advanced before the first thaw began.

Angella Loring was particularly anxious that year to be upon her land early, for she wished to keep Nettie with her, and had conceived an ambitious scheme which she believed would tempt the girl to remain. Ever since her recovery Nettie had been waiting for the weather to break, so that she might go to Calgary and try to find work there, where she would be unknown, and Dr. McDermott had told her how great was the scarcity of help in the city. Angella, from the first day, had taken charge of the baby, and indeed it might have been her child rather than Nettie's. For Nettie was afraid of this child of the Bull's. Before the cold spell had broken, and while she was still weak, she would sit at the window and stare out over the bleak landscape with unseeing eyes. Spring is always an unpleasant season in Alberta, and that year it was even worse than usual. While Angella was away at the barns or the fields busy with her work, Nettie found herself shut in alone with her baby, but she never went near it, or attempted to take it in her arms or caress it.

The child was undersized and frail, but it cried very little, and its tiny, weird face looked curiously like a bird's. There was something pitifully unfinished about it although it was in no way deformed. It had simply been forced into the world before its time, and denied the sustenance of its mother's breast—for Nettie was unable to nurse her child—it made slow progress. At the end of April it weighed no more than the day it was born.

If Nettie, immersed in her own sorrow, was oblivious of her child's condition, its foster-mother was filled with alarm and anxiety. Dr. McDermott was no longer an unwelcome visitor at the shack, indeed he was often sent for when Jake, who had taken to haunting the ranch, and sleeping in Cyril's deserted sheds, could be despatched upon such an errand. No matter where he was, or what he was doing, the doctor seldom failed to respond to Angella's summons. Tramping into the shack, stamping the snow off his feet, he would look with pretended fierceness at the two women, looking for something to scold about and always, finding it, but although his words were rough, his hands were gentle as a mother's as he took the baby in his arms. He would gaze intently at the little creature with all a parent's anxiety while its mother held aloof, keeping her gaze riveted upon the window.

More than once, Angella Loring found herself very close to the doctor, and looking up, he would see her eyes were misty with solicitude over "her" baby. To cover his own feelings, he would ask her to fetch this and that and she waited upon him meekly. Once kneeling by his side, as the baby lay upon his knees, she saw its little wan face puckered into something that she firmly declared was a smile. In her delight and excitement she put her arms around the baby on his knee, and before she realized what was happening she found her hand enclosed in the doctor's warm clasp. Their eyes met, and the color slowly receded from her cheeks.

That night, she went into the bedroom, carefully closing the burlap curtain between it and the outer room, and searching amongst the contents of the box she had brought with her from England, Angella Loring found something that was no familiar object in that prairie shack—a mirror—a woman's hand mirror, of tortoiseshell, with a silver crest upon it. For some time she held it in her hand, face down, before she mustered courage to lift it slowly to her face. For a long time she gazed into the glass, the bright, haunted eyes slowly scanning the strange face, with its crown of soft gray curls. She was kneeling on the floor by her bed, and suddenly the hand holding the mirror fell into her lap, and Angella Loring said in a choking whisper looking down at her reflection, "I'm an old fool! God help me!"

Her program for that season was an ambitious one for a fragile woman; she purposed to put in one hundred and fifty acres of crop, and to hay over sixty more acres, and not content with working her own land, she intended to work and seed Cyril's as well. This latter was the stake to which she hoped to tie Nettie to her. She felt sure that the girl would not fail to respond to this opportunity to help the man she loved, for according to the homestead law of that time, land had to be fenced, worked and lived upon for a certain term of years, and by abandoning his homestead, Cyril stood to lose the quarter, besides the waste of all the work and money already expended upon the place. When Angella laid her proposition before Nettie, she was rewarded by the first sign of animation the girl had shown since the doctor had brought her to the ranch. Her apathy and despair fell from her, and when Angella told her that unless Nettie would give her the help she needed she would be obliged to employ hired hands which she could not afford, Nettie's eagerness knew no bounds.

"Oh my, yes, Angel, I just wisht you'd give me the chance. I'd love to do the work. I'll do it alone if—you'll let me—I'll work my fingers to the bone to—to—make up to him—and to you, Angel."

"That's all right. I'm glad you feel that way, because I need your help badly. I believe it's going to be a crop year anyway, because the snow when it does melt is bound to mean all sorts of moisture for the land. Meanwhile, we can do a bit of fencing. Mine need repairing badly, and so do parts of Cyril's. We've got to cross fence between his pasture land and where the crop is to go in. He's got quite a few head of horses and cattle running loose, I see, and they've got to be driven off the grain land. I'm going out after a couple of heavy horses of his I saw the other day on his land. I think I can corral them, and they'll come in first rate for the plow."

"Oh, Angel, let me go. I understand horses better'n you do. It's awful hard to drive them when they've been loose like that all winter. So let me go along."

"You'll stay right here. Look here, now, I'm going to run things here, and you do as you're told."

"Well, don't forget to take a halter, will you, and Angel, you want to keep away from their hind feet—even if you are on horse. Sometimes they kick right out. Dad was lamed that way, drivin' in wild horses. Got kicked while on horse-back, right in the shin. My, it was awful!"

"I'm all right. Don't you worry about me," said Angella. "Mind the baby while I'm gone, and look here, if he cries, there's barley gruel in that bottle. Heat it by standing it in hot water—but don't let it get too hot. I think he'll be all right till I get back."

Nettie did a curious thing that day when Angella had left her alone. She went over to the rough cot that Angella had made out of a grocery box for the baby, and for a long time she stood looking down at the little sleeper. Almost unconsciously her hand touched her baby's tiny hand that clung at once to her finger and at that warm contact a flood of emotion overwhelmed Nettie's heart. It was as if tentacles had reached out and fastened upon her very soul; the little curled up fist seemed to scorch her with its mute reproach and appeal for her affection. Nettie pulled her hand fiercely away, and fled into the adjoining room, her breath coming and going tumultuously.

"I don't want to love him," she cried. "I don't want to. He's his, and I wisht I'd died before I—I—come to this."

Seeking some physical outlet for her pent-up feelings she looked about her, and saw a pair of scissors on Angella's dressing table. A moment later she found herself slashing into her long hair. The heavy blonde braids dropped to the floor with a soft thud. Nettie, shorn of her beautiful hair, was not, however, disfigured, in fact her childlike, simple beauty seemed almost lovelier for the cropped head, accentuating her extreme youth. But when Angella coming in stopped on the threshold and stared at her condemningly, Nettie knew that she had done wrong.

"Nettie Day, what you have done is an act of sheer vandalism," said the woman, who herself had cut her own hair to the scalp.

"Oh, Angel, I wanted to be like you. I didn't want no more to be like a woman——"

Angella's face paled.

"So I am not like a woman, then?"

"I didn't mean that, Angel. You're more like a woman in your heart than anyone I ever knew, 'cept Mrs. Langdon, and I just wanted to make myself so that—so that no one would ever want to look at me again. Just 's if I was same as a man and——"

"And I suppose you think you've succeeded," said Angella dryly. "Never fear. It will take more than the cutting of your hair to keep men from you, Nettie Day. However, it's your own hair, and I suppose you meant all right. They say 'Hell is paved with good intentions.' But you needn't think that because I—was fool enough to—to—make a freak of myself, that I approve of you or anyone else doing it."

"I'm sorry, Angel. I'm awfully sorry. I—I want to be as much like you as I can be. I want to wear them men's overalls too and do——"

"As for the overalls, that's all right, they're sensible; but, look here, Nettie, don't let me catch you doing anything like that to disfigure yourself again, and don't you go slashing any more into your hair. It doesn't look bad now, but even you would look a fright if you had cut it as I did—right to the scalp."

"It's growing in now. And it looks—right pretty, Angel," said Nettie wistfully. "D'you know, you ain't nearly as ugly as you think you are," she added with girlish naÏvetÉ, which brought a chuckle from Angella, warming the baby's bottle at the stove.

They began to fence in mid-April. The ground was hard, and having no proper hole diggers they were at a still greater disadvantage. However, Angella said she did not want to waste any time on repairing fences, once the land was ready for the crop. Cyril's quarter was already fairly well fenced, but the dividing line between the two quarters had never been completed. Now that the two places were to be worked as one the line-fence had become unnecessary. By persistent labor upon their first task of the season, they achieved an inadequate protection for the proposed crop. The uneven line of barbed wire, set on unsteady posts, aroused the derisive condemnation of Dr. McDermott, who warned them that cattle would have no trouble in breaking through and that the two wires did not constitute a legal fence, three being the required number. Angella, colder and more unbending than ever in her attitude to the doctor, rejoined that "they would take their chances this year."

The herd law was in force, and it was against the law for cattle to be at large on the road or road allowances in that particular part of the country. The doctor grouchily warned them that that concerned stray cattle, but there was absolutely nothing to prevent a herd driven by riders from going through. Nothing, returned Angella indignantly, except the fact that reputable riders had a professional sense of honor, so far as other people's grain fields were concerned, and she knew none that would be likely to turn driven cattle into a grain field. Such things were not done in a country like Alberta. Besides, cattle were unlikely to be moved in the summer time, and by the fall, the harvest would be in, and the grain safe.

"Have it your way," returned the doctor. "But if you want to do a mon's work, you ought to do it in a mon's way." This gratuitous remark was received in the disdainful silence it deserved.

They had a truly gigantic task before them, the putting in of over one hundred and fifty acres of grain—flax, barley, oats, wheat, green feed and rye.

As soon as the land was in condition to be worked, they began. For days they had been sorting over and mending harnesses and bridles, sharpening the implements and getting everything into shape. Eight work horses had been brought up from the pasture, and for a few days had been fed oats and given especial care. Nettie had regained her strength and was invaluable to the less experienced, though self-reliant Angella because of her long familiarity with farm work and horses too.

The baby went into the field with them, carried in a large box, where among its pillows, Nettie's child slept in blissful unconsciousness of the tragedy of his existence. In the latter weeks he had been gaining strength, and his roving blue eyes had smiled more than once at the adoring Angella.

Nettie went on the plow, the hardest of the implements to ride. There had been some argument between the girls as to which implement each should ride, Angella contending that Nettie was not yet in a fit condition to stand the rough shaking on the plow; and Nettie stubbornly insisting that she felt "strong as an ox," and that she had ridden the plow since she was a little girl. "Dad put me into the field when I was just ten," she told Angella. "You know he couldn't afford to stay home to work our quarter, because our land was so poor; he had to go out on other farms to make some wages, because we was such a hungry family, and it took sights of food to fill us all."

So Nettie rode the plow, and then the disc, while Angella took the harrow and the seeder. Angella only yielded the plow to Nettie when the girl pointed out that the seeder required "brains," of which she sadly admitted she had little. She had never seeded, not even at home; Dad had always come back in time to do that. So Angella, feeling the importance of her two seasons' experience in seeding, argued no more, and, seeded six inches deep, a precautionary measure, she told Nettie, against a dry year. The weather favored them; intermittent rains and flurries of snow kept the ground damp enough for fertilization, but not too wet for sowing. Nevertheless, said Angella, you never could tell about Alberta's climate. Drought might start with June, and then where would the careless farmers be?

This period of hard work diverted Nettie's mind from its obsession of sorrow; for mind and body are alike exhausted at the end of a day from sunrise to sunset. Intent upon being a first-rate helper, her mind ceased to dwell upon her troubles.

Having finished the preparation of the ground and the seeding, they spent the next few weeks bringing their few head of stock to the corrals and all alone they branded, dehorned and vaccinated them against blackleg. Nettie then went over to Cyril's quarter with the plow and broke new land, by no means an easy job, since the ground was rough virgin soil, where rocks and bushes and tree stumps abounded. Meanwhile Angella summer fallowed on her own quarter.

July came in on a wave of intense heat. There was haying to be done on Cyril's quarter; Angella's fields had been overpastured, and she proposed to let them lie fallow for that year. The two girls put up seventy-five tons of hay. Angella was on the rake, an easy implement to ride, Nettie on the mower. Then Angella ascended the buck, and Nettie did the stacking, and as the big golden pile grew from day to day under their hands, their pride and satisfaction in their work was great. Angella felt that she had something to show for her work at last and pinned her faith upon a sure crop—the first since her arrival in Alberta.

Before and after their field work, they had plenty of chores and housework to do. Nettie milked, looked after the sitting hens and spring chicks, and the great sow with her litter; she watered and fed the horses and cleaned the barns and stables. Meanwhile, Angella prepared the meals, made the butter, cleaned the house, and took full charge of the baby.

In Nettie's avoidance of her child there was fear rather than aversion. This child that had been forced upon her by the man she hated aroused strange tumults within her. At the thought of its father, she would shudder and tell herself she hated it because it was his; but there were moments when melting, passionate impulses consumed her, and then it took all her strength not to snatch her baby up and clasp it tightly to her breast.

Throughout the long day she sat on the hard seat of the implement, rocked and shaken from side to side, as the four-horse plow broke up the rough land, and she tried hard to keep her mind upon her work. As her expert hand guided her horses, making a clean, workmanlike job of which not even a man could have been ashamed, she found a certain comfort in the thought that she was working for Cyril Stanley. Yet, as the implement swept on its circular path over the field, each time it passed near the box beside the straw stack where the baby slept, a sob of anguish would tear her heart anew.

The harvest was close at hand, and for the first time since she had come to Alberta, Angella Loring was to have a crop.

Billowing waves of golden wheat, going forty bushels or more to the acre, lay spread out before her, barley, glistening, and silvery, oats as tall as a man and thick and heavy, the grain, like living creatures, stirring and murmuring drowsily in the sunshine as the warm wind passed over it.

"Come, we are waiting to be reaped," it seemed to chant. "Gather us in, before the cold breath of the northland shall come shivering over the land, and freeze our strength with the touch of its icy finger."

Their labors over the two women who had put in the crop would walk slowly in the cool of the day through the grain, and the soft swishing of their skirts brushing a pathway through the thick grain sounded like a whisper of peace in the quiet evening. The marvelous harvest moon hung like a great orange ball above the fields; the prairie land seemed to stretch illimitably into the distance; the far horizons disappeared into a chain of white hills, rising like a mist against the sky still resplendent with the incomparable prairie sunset.

They talked little for the one was shy and reticent by nature, and in the other reticence and brevity of speech had become a habit. Yet each felt and understood the thought of the other, as they looked across at the moving grain, which was the visible sign of their long and arduous labor.