In a country like Alberta, especially in the ranching sections, it is not difficult for a person to disappear, if he is so minded.

Nettie had lived several months with Angella Loring before her presence there was discovered. On one side of Angella's quarter was a municipality of open range, and on the other, Cyril Stanley's quarter section. Beyond Cyril's ranch was bush stretching for several miles to the Elbow River that intersected, south and north, the land towards the foothills fifty miles out of which was the Bar Q hill ranch. Beyond this dense timber land began, and in its very heart stood the Bow Claire Lumber Camp on the banks of the Ghost and Bow Rivers. Past the timber land the foothills still continued, growing higher and higher till they merged into the chain of Rocky Mountains.

Gossip about Nettie Day had been confined to the foothill ranching country. Her story had run from ranch to ranch, and the general comment was expressed in the customary country phrases of: "I never would have believed it" or "I told you so." But Nettie disappeared from the foothills, and curiosity, in a ranching country as has been said above, is short-lived. Besides, the death of Mrs. Langdon provided the ranchers with fresh excitement, and questions as to Nettie's whereabouts were rarely heard.

At this time new cares had begun to take possession of the country people of Alberta. Even as early as the spring, strange symptoms of unrest might have been observed, and here and there fear seemed to look out of the ranchers' eyes. Strange stories were percolating into the ranches of sickness in the cities, a certain sickness which the authorities purposely misnamed in order that the danger of panic might be averted. The ranch people stuck closely to their homes that spring and summer and were not cordial to strangers or of the usually welcome regular visitors from the city—the insurance and real estate men, the drug seller and the sly affable stranger who sold his Pain Killer to the hands with a wink. All these "paper-collar dudes" as the farmers called them, and the motor hoboes and camp-tramps, who stopped at the ranches to ask for anything from a measure of milk to a night's lodging, experienced that summer a cold reception, for the ranch people were shrewd enough to appreciate the fact that the plague might be carried to them through just such mediums as these. So they stuck close to home, and although the papers were filled with scare-head accounts of the fearful scourge in the east, Alberta believed or hoped it would prove immune.

In Yankee Valley, no one knew that the girl from the D. D. D. had returned, or that, with her child, she had found a refuge in the home of the Englishwoman who preferred to live like a hermit rather than accept the friendship of her neighbors. Angella's land lay well back from the main road and trails and there Nettie had found a true sanctuary. One day, Batt Leeson, who had taken Cyril's place at the Bull camp, was riding by Cyril's quarter, en route to the foothills and paused at the sight of a girl in a man's blue overalls, driving a six-horse plow team over new breaking.

Nettie, at a pause in the harvesting, while they were waiting for a field of oats to ripen, was filling in the time by breaking new land on Cyril's quarter.

Batt, gazing at her with his mouth open and his eyes blinking incredulously, could not believe it possible. To make doubly sure, he rode close to the fence line, and from behind the shelter of a tree, he waited for the plow to make its next round of the field. On and on it came, its dull rumble and clatter of iron the louder for the stillness of the prairie. Over a piece of rising ground came Nettie Day upon the implement. Her head was bare, and her hair shone red-gold in the sunshine, seeming to radiate light like a halo. It had been cropped close as a boy's, and the gentle wind lifted and blew it back from her flushed face as she drove.

"Well, I'll be switched!" said the ranch hand.

He was, in fact, overjoyed at his discovery and would go back to the foothills with a rich morsel of news. He imagined himself saying, "What d'you think? That there girl that got into trouble at Bar Q is workin' on the land of the fellow that—" Once Cyril Stanley had punched his face for a much slighter offense than mentioning his (Cyril's) name in connection with a girl, and Batt hit his tongue upon the name of the man he suspected as the cause of Nettie Day's downfall.

Chuckling with satisfaction, he followed the girl with his gloating eyes, but she was looking straight ahead and never turned her head to where the rider watched her from the trail.

Things had been going from bad to worse at Bar Q. More than the usual number of calves had died from blackleg, and a number of first-class heifers had perished in the woods where the larkspur poison weed grew wild. A Government veterinary surgeon, after a hurried survey of the animals on the home range, had put a blanket quarantine on all the cattle, which prevented their removal for months—in fact, until the "vet" gave them a clean bill of health.

The cowman's stock and ranch had been badly neglected in his absence. His cattle had been allowed to go at large; the fences were out of repair and the customary careful segregation of each different grade was a thing of the past. He found the whole ranch at sixes and sevens, and raged at the foremen for their neglect, swearing that not "a stitch of work" had been done all the time he had been away. He celebrated his return by "firing" all hands at the foothill ranch, and the new outfit who took their places proved worse than the old. Their term at the ranch was soon over, and the constant changing of hands that now began had an exceedingly bad effect upon the place. Good help was very scarce at that time, and wages had been as high as one hundred dollars a month with board, so Bull Langdon had his hands full at Bar Q.

He went about in a state of chronic evil humor in these days, and found nothing about the place to suit him. Without his wife, the big ranch house got upon his nerves, for with the genius of the born home-maker she had created an atmosphere of comfort and peace that had made it impressive even on her husband's insensitive mind. She had catered to his appetite and his whims, and he had become used to having a woman's tender care about him; indeed, he had grown to depend upon the very services he had so roughly rewarded in the past. He could neither accustom himself to the empty house not endure the meals at the cook car.

In these days he slept on the ground floor of the house, in the dining room. During his wife's lifetime the room had shone with orderliness and cleanliness; now boots, rough coats and trousers, shirts, and the cattlemen's riding accessories were strewn all over it, while the unmade bed, the unwashed pots and pans, the traces of muddy boots upon the floor, and the dust of weeks had turned it into a place of indescribable dirt and confusion.

The Bull had refused to sleep upstairs since his wife's death; her bedroom door remained closed. Nettie's, too, still hung on its broken hinges, and sometimes on a windy night the knocking of that broken door, screeching and swinging upon its single hinge, was more than the overwrought cattleman could stand, and he would tramp out to the bunkhouse, and sleep there instead. He felt the need of his home more and more, however, and like a spoiled child whose favorite toy had been taken from him, he fumed and stormed at the ill-luck that had robbed him.

One day he returned to the house after a hard day's riding, and the sight of its grime and disorder set a spark to his already smoldering rage. His thoughts turned, as always at such moments, to the girl whose place he honestly believed was there in his house where he had intended to install her. She had been gone long enough. He had put up with enough of her damned nonsense now, and it was time to round her up. He regarded Nettie as a stray head of stock, that had slipped from under the lariat noose, and was wandering in strange pastures. True, she was a prized head, but that only strengthened the Bull's determination to capture her. He considered her his personal stuff; something he had branded, and he was not the man to part with anything that belonged to him, as doggedly and repeatedly he assured himself she did, having been bought with the rest of her dad's old truck.

Batt Leeson riding in from Barstairs brought him the first news of the girl that he had had since the night she had fled in terror from his house.

"Say, boss, who d'you suppose I seen when I rode by Yankee Valley?"

"How the h—— should I know?"

"Well, I seen that Day girl that used to work up here."

Bull Langdon, busy making of a bull-whip, twisting long strips of cowhide about a lump of lead, stopped short in his work, and looked up sharply at the slowly chewing, slowly talking ranch hand.

"What's that you say?"

"I was sayin' that I seen her—Nettie Day—over to Yankee Valley, and where d'you suppose she's living? Say, she must be tied up now to that Stanley fellow, because I seen her on his land and——"

"That's a damned lie!" shouted the cattleman, and dashed the loaded cowhide to the floor with a foul oath. Batt, his knees shaking with terror, retreated before the advance of the enraged cowman.

"It's true as God what I'm telling you. I seen her with my own eyes. She was breakin' land on Stanley's quarter."

Bull Langdon's eyes were bloodshot and his face twitched hideously.

"That young scrub's at Bow Claire. His homestead's burned to the ground. You can't come to me with no such tale as that."

"B—b-b-b—but I tell you she's workin' his land. I seen her. I stopped right close and looked her over to make sure. I ain't makin' no mistake. Thought at first I might be, cause I figure that a girl in her condition wouldn't be——"

"What-cha mean by her condition?"

"Sa-ay boss." Batt scratched his head, uncertain whether to proceed; itching to tell the tale of the girl's fall, but fearing the menacing spark in the cattleman's eyes. "I thought you knew."

"Knew what?"

"'Bout her condition."

Batt essayed a sly, ingratiating wink, but it had no placating effect upon the man before him.

"I don't know what the devil you're talking about."

"Gosh, boss, everyone knows 'bout Nettie Day. She's agoin' to have a baby—mebbe she's got it now. I expect she has."

"What-t!"

The Bull's eyes bulged; a tidal wave of unholy joy threatened to overwhelm him.

A baby! His! His! His own! His and that gell's!

He threw back his head and burst into a storm of laughter. His wild mirth shook the beams and rafters of the old room, and seemed to reverberate all through the great house.

"Well, by G——!" said the cowman and reached for his riding boots. He pulled them savagely on, still chuckling and chortling, and pausing ever and anon to smack his hip.

"Goin' riding, boss?"

"You betcher life I am."

"Where you goin'?"

"I'm going to a round up," said Bull Langdon, clicking his lips.

"After some loose stock?"

"A purebred heifer with a calf at heel," said Bull Langdon. "They've got my brand upon them."