The mare was built on big, slim lines. Of thoroughbred racing stock by her sire, she was the foal of a Percheron mare, and therefore swift as well as strong. She carried the girl throughout that night without once stopping, all of the twenty miles to the Bar Q.
Dawn was breaking over the still sleeping land, and a great shadowy arch spread like a rainbow across the sky, the long-prayed-for symbol of Chinook weather. Before the day was half gone a wind would blow like a bugle call from the mountains, and, racing with the sun, would send its warm breath over the land. But Nettie Day was blind to the omen of spring. Cramped and cold from her long ride, with a speechless terror tearing at her heartstrings, she fell rather than dismounted from her horse, and staggered toward the house, at the door of which Angella Loring stood, with empty arms.
Meanwhile another kind of drama had taken place in the timber land. Bloody and battered from his fight with the lumber-jacks and loggers, Bull Langdon sought the trail. In those deep woods, so still and silent, with the spell of the night upon them, in spite of the deep silence, there was a feeling of live, wild things hidden in bush and coolie, crouching and peering through the snow-laden brush.
He knew the country well, and had almost as keen a sense of smell as the cattle themselves. He had boasted that he could "sniff his way" anywhere through the foothill country, and that his long years of night riding had given him a cat's eyes. Where the dense forests broke here and there, the clearings were as bright as day in the moonlight.
It was twelve miles to Morley, an Indian trading post on the edge of the Stony Indian Reserve, and the Bull calculated that by turning off the main trail and following an old cattle path, he could cut the distance down a third.
The white moon behind moving clouds lighted his way one moment and plunged him in darkness the next. The cattle trail went in a wavering line toward a valley that ran along the Ghost River, where lay the summer range of the foothill cattle.
If the woods were still and dark, the valley, flooded with moonlight, looked like a great pool on whose farther bank dark forms were vaguely moving. These were the stray cattle that had escaped the fall round-up, and found shelter from the inclement weather in the seclusion of this deep valley, protected by the hills on one side, and the rapidly flowing Ghost on the other.
The first impulse of a cattleman upon spotting stray cattle on the range is to ride close enough to them to read the brand upon their ribs; no easy matter at night, but the Bull was used to this. He was halfway across the valley when a certain restless stirring made him aware that he had been seen. Range cattle will move blindly before a man on a horse, but it is a reckless man who will risk himself near range cattle afoot. The roar of one of the leaders sent the cowman cautiously back into the shelter of the brush. He was unprepared to meet a stampede, but he marked the place to which the cattle had strayed, and made a mental note to round them up in a few days.
He was now but four miles from Morley, still traveling along the edges of the woods, when suddenly a low moaning call, growing ever in volume and power, until it swelled into a mighty roar that shook the bristling branches of the trees, smote the still night, and reverberated in the surrounding hills.
The cattleman stood stock-still, his head lifted and his face strained upward, his ears alert to catch the sound again. For he well knew that great far-reaching bellow which had once swelled his breast with pride; it was the furious challenge of the champion bull. Somewhere, close at hand, but hidden in those dense woods, Prince Perfection Bar Q the IV was at large.