Two "green" hands were now at Bar Q. They had been sent out by the Government Employment office, and for several days before his search for Nettie had begun Bull Langdon had been trying to break them into the cattle "game." They were English, guileless, clean-cut youngsters of good family, who looked upon the foully swearing cowman as a pathological subject that both interested and amazed them.

Their knowledge of ranching or "rawnching," as they called it, was of the vaguest, but they were good riders and the life appealed to them as sportsmen.

One of the anomalies of the ranching population of Alberta is its tremendous variety of types. Here you will find a man who can neither read nor write, and his neighbor, often his chum, will be the son of an English lord, one of those odd derelicts that drift over from the Old Country and take so kindly to the ranch life that more often than not they return unwillingly to their homes. University men and agriculturists experimenting with irrigation projects and intensive cultivation live side by side with business men and men from New York and other great cities in the States, who for diverse reasons have broken away from the cities, and gone in for farming on a big scale, raising the business of farming to the level of great enterprises rather than the slovenly and weary process it usually is. For the most part, however, the farming population of Alberta is made up of that solid, plodding type that have trekked out from eastern Canada or the midwestern states, tempted by the cheapness of the land and the richness of the soil. These are the backbone of the country and between these and the others are sandwiched colonies of peasants from Scandinavia and other parts of Europe.

It is with the hired man as with the owner. He may be an illiterate clod of the old type, or a fresh-faced college-bred son of a man of wealth, even of title, or again some chance wanderer, gone "broke" in the colony, and using up the remittance from home on drink and cards. Besides these there is also the type of English student and sportsman, who enjoys "roughing it" and hires out partly for experience and partly for a lark.

To this latter type the men at Bar Q belonged. They had come up largely to escape a city of gloom and plague, and were extremely anxious to remain at the great ranch. The Bull, intent on getting away, endeavored in a few days to teach them what he called the "A B C" of ranching. They demonstrated their ability to remain in the saddle eight or ten hours at a stretch, and to ride over thirty or forty miles without undue fatigue.

The Bull showed them "the ropes"; pointed out where certain cattle were to be gathered in; indicated the fields where they were to be driven, and promising to return "in a few days," as he rode off and left the "tenderfeet" in charge of the great ranch.

After his departure, the two young Englishmen rode over the place, marked the likely places for big game, took a "pot" or two at the yowling coyote on a hill; rode over the pleasant hills and pasture land, back to the comfortable bunkhouse, and decided that they had a "snap" and that "rawnching" was the life for them. It was a jolly sight better than hanging around a small city up to its neck in sickness. In the warm spell that followed soon after the departure of Bull Langdon, the Englishmen "rode the range" like hunters, and their methods of rounding up cattle, though weird, were highly effective. They raced and chased the cattle, galloping along at top speed, thrilled by the spectacle of the fleeing herd which they persistently and doggedly tried to overtake. The experienced cowpuncher lopes along leisurely behind or alongside a bunch of cattle, taking care not to hurry them, for to run cattle is to "knock the beef" off them. That spring the lean cattle of the Bar Q amazed even the least sophisticated ranch folk, and it is certain that the guileless Englishmen never dreamed they were to blame for the animals' emaciated condition.

When a cold spell followed the thaw, the Englishmen gaped at the thermometer, which was dropping rapidly towards thirty below zero, and retreated hastily into the warm bunkhouse, firmly convinced that no creature living could survive such a temperature. The rapid change from cold to warm and back to cold again is a peculiarity of the Alberta climate, but the Englishmen had thought that the Chinook was the first warmth of an early spring. The unexpectedly bitter weather alarmed and appalled them; they spent the day shut up in the house, piling huge logs into the great square wood stove, that spluttered and sent off an enormous heat. They concocted toothsome dishes for their entertainment, for, like most Englishmen, they were expert hands at "batching" and camping, and knew how to cook. Their fare included such game as venison, moose, mountain goat and sheep, to say nothing of the small game, mallard duck, prairie chicken, partridge, grouse and quail which abounded in the wild woods of Bar Q, and the Englishmen had prudently "brought them down" while rounding up the cattle, not knowing that the shooting had contributed considerably to the flight of the terrified herd.

This game, expertly drawn to the ranch by horse sleds, was piled up frozen in the immense storeroom adjoining the bunkhouse, where they also found an ample supply of stores. It was certain that no matter how long the siege of Arctic cold might last, the hands of the Bar Q would survive starvation.

Shut in the bunkhouse, their days were by no means empty, for when not engaged in cooking or feeding the wood stove, they wrote articles on "ranching in the wild northwest," or indited epistles home to thrilled relatives, who received from their letters a vague notion that their dear boys were sojourning in polar regions. Sometimes they would find in the letters from their English friends, whose knowledge of Canada was of the weirdest, warnings to be careful of the treacherous Esquimaux, and reminders to call, when they found time, upon some relative whose address was somewhere in their neighborhood, in Ontario or Nova Scotia. The ignorance abroad of the immense extent of the Canadian provinces was almost unbelievable. To all their folks at home the young Englishmen took delight in concocting thrilling romances in which they figured as big game hunters and fishermen, and through which they moved heroically, followed by bands of noble red men.