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?"