The Englishwoman stood in the doorway of her shack, rifle in hand, and gazed calmly at the blustering cowman, who had dismounted, and, fists on hips, was standing before her. For the first time in his life Bull Langdon found himself face to face with a woman who was not afraid of him. Her cold, unwavering glance traveled over him, from his flat head down to his great, coarse feet, and back with cool disparagement straight into his flinching eyes.

"You seen anything of that gell, Nettie Day?"

Angella disdained to answer. She was looking over his head, and presently she said:

"Will you kindly remove yourself from my place? I don't want you here."

"You don't, heh? Well, I'm here to get something of my own, do you get me?"

"Oh, yes, I get you all right; but you'll take nothing off my place, you may be sure of that."

He stood his ground with bravado, and blurted out his errand; he had come for Nettie, and intended to have her and his kid. She belonged to him; was his "gell," and he had bought her along with her "dad's old truck." He'd have been over sooner, but his cattle had tied him down since his return from the States, and he "wan't the kind o' man to neglect his cattle for a woman."

As he spoke, Angella's level gaze rested coolly upon him, and met his blustering outburst with a half-smile of detached and amused contempt. But when he made a movement as if to enter the house, Angella Loring slowly brought her rifle to her shoulder, and aimed straight at him. With the practiced eye of a dead shot, she squinted down the length of the barrel, and the Bull sprang back, when he saw her finger crooked upon the trigger.

"What the h—— you tryin' to do?"

She answered without lowering the gun or moving her finger.

"You clear off my place! If you attempt to enter my house I'll shoot you down with less compunction than I would a dog."

He slouched a few paces farther back, and an evil laugh broke from his lips. Once he had reached his horse's side, his bravado returned.

"Guess there ain't goin' to be no trouble gettin' what's my own. The law's on my side. I've got as much right to that kid, that's my own stuff, as the gell has."

"Oh, have you?" said Angella coolly. "Unfortunately for you, the child is no longer even Nettie's. It's mine. She gave me her child for adoption."

"She hadn't no right to do that," said the Bull in a sudden access of rage. "It ain't hers to give away."

"Oh, isn't it, though?"

"No, it ain't, and I'll show you a thing o' two. There won't be no funny business with guns neither when a couple of mounties come up here after what's mine."

"I wouldn't talk about the law if I were you. You see, when you committed that crime against Nettie, she happened to be a minor. I don't know just how many years in the penitentiary that may mean for you. Her lawyers will know."

At the word "penitentiary," his face had turned gray. Nettie's youth had never occurred to him before, nor what it might mean for him.

"Besides," went on the Englishwoman, "apart from the legal aspects of the case, I wonder that you take a chance in a country like this. Consider what is likely to happen to you, if the truth about Nettie becomes known in this ranching country. We have an unwritten law of our own in such cases, you know, and everybody has been blaming an innocent boy. What will they say—what will they do, when they know that the most detested and hated man in the country attacked a young, defenseless girl when she was alone in his house? I wouldn't care to be in your shoes when that fact leaks out, as you may be sure it will. I'll take care of that! You can trust me to denounce you without reserve!"

The Bull shouted, purple with rage:

"There ain't no man livin' I'm afraid of, and there ain't no man in the country strong enough to lay a finger on me, see. I could beat every son of a gun in Alberta to a pulp."

"I don't doubt that. You look as if you might have the strength of a gorilla; but then where a hand will not serve a rope will, and you know it will be short work for your own men to hang you to a tree when young Cyril Stanley ropes you. Now I've talked to you enough. You get off my place, or I'll put a shot in that ugly fist of yours that'll lame you for the rest of your days."

He had remounted and she laughed at his haste; yet as he rode off, the venomous expression on his face turned her heart cold with a new fear, and her ears rang ominously with his parting words.

"So long, old hen, you'll sing another tune when we meet again."