His chin thrust out, his big knotted hands swinging like a prize fighter's, half drunk with alcohol and mad desire, Bull Langdon burst into the camp. His glance swept that circle of feeble, motionless men, then turned to transfix the unhappy girl, whose flowers now lay where they had fallen to the floor. Before a word was said the truth flashed like a miracle over Cyril Stanley's mind. Now Nettie Day would never need to say one word in explanation to her lover. A flood of memories rushed over the boy, shaking him to his depths as he realized the damnable crime that had been wrought against the girl he loved, and which death alone could now wipe out.
"So here y'are," cried the cattleman, towering above the cowering Nettie. "You come along home with me, gell. Your baby—and mine, gell, is at Bar Q. He's needin' you more'n this bunch of bos."
An inarticulate cry broke from Cyril's throat as he leaped fairly into the face of Bull Langdon. Staggered by the unexpected onslaught, and then seeing who it was that had attacked him, his lips drawn back like a gorilla's, Bull Langdon, with a sweep of his arm, felled the boy to the ground. He tried vainly to rise, but, weakened by his recent long illness, he had hardly struggled to his knees before the cattleman sent him spinning to the floor again.
A low murmuring passed over the crowd of lumbermen, a hoarse cursing protest, that grew in volume and fury as the Bull laid his hand on Nettie Day. It burst like a tidal wave when the frenzied girl broke from his grasp and fled through the open door.
The Bull found himself surrounded by a mob of mad men, cursing and weeping because of their weakness and inability to pull down the man they longed to kill, they leaped and struck at him. With his back to the wall he struck out right and left with his mighty fists, sending one man after another staggering to the floor, meanwhile edging craftily nearer and nearer to the door through which Nettie Day had fled.
CHAPTER XXXIII
It was a still, cold night. Nettie Day rushed blindly on horseback through the pathless dead timber lands. With amazing presence of mind she had mounted the Bull's own mare, which he had left standing outside the camp. On and on she urged the great animal, heedless of snow-laden brush and boughs that snapped back and lashed her as she rode.
The dense woods lay wrapped in a vast silence. Not a twig stirred on the frost-bowed trees. No living foot seemed to move within the depths of the forest. All that she heard, if indeed she heard anything, as she fled like the wind through the timber land, was the crunch of her horse's hoofs on the frozen snow. On and on, indifferent to the piercing cold; intent on one purpose only, to reach Bar Q and get her baby before the Bull could overtake her.