The girl was quite alone, not knowing what was to become of her, nor whither she could go. She thought vaguely of the great city of Calgary. There she could surely find work, but Nettie was a farm girl, and to her mind the city meant eternal speed and noise, a feverish, rushing activity which would only bewilder and terrify her.
She was a silent girl, given to day-dreaming, and the dreams of Nettie Day were humble and simple enough. A clean, small cabin on a quarter section of land; a cow or two; a few pigs; chickens; fields of grain, oats, thick and tall; gleaming, silvery barley; the blue-flowering flax; waves of golden wheat. Overall men upon the implements, and herself in a clean kitchen, cooking a meal for the harvest hands, and always her dream embraced within its circle one whose friendly face was tanned and freckled by the sun, whose smile was wide and all-embracing, and who looked at Nettie with eyes that spoke a language that needed no tongue.
"Some day soon," he had said to Nettie, "you and me will be in our own home, girl."
"Soon" to the Scotch-Ontario boy meant a year or two,' maybe a year' or two more than that; by which time the home for Nettie would be snug and complete, with a safe nest-egg in the bank or on the range.
But now everything had changed. Her home had been broken up. There was to be an auction of the poor stuff upon the place, to raise the price of the mortgage upon the land.
Nettie felt helpless and forsaken. She missed her father and her little brothers and sisters cruelly, and dreaded to think how the baby might be faring, so dependent had it been upon her own care. Her gaze wandered irresistibly off to the hills, watching, a lump in her throat, for Cyril to come.
Though unable herself to read or write, Nettie had contrived to dispatch word to the rider of the Bar Q, through the medium of the half-breed, Jake, who had ridden by on the day after her father's death. She could not know that he had been stricken down by a fit of the epilepsy, to which he was subject, and long delayed on the trail.
With the noon hour came the farmers and ranchers, riding in from far and near, for a country auction in Alberta, will bring out the people as to a celebration or a fair. They came to the Day auction with picnic baskets and hampers, in all kinds of vehicles, even by automobile or on horseback.
The auctioneer was a little man, with a barking voice. He hustled about the place, appraising the stock and implements, the household effects and furniture. The few head of cattle and horses were driven into a hastily constructed corral of large logs. Bull Langdon held the mortgage upon the D. D. D., and he expected to get his money back with compound interest.
The sale began at the house, the home-made bits of furniture telling their own tale of how Nettie and her mother had been forced to work. These sold for practically nothing, and some of them created coarse laughter, as they were shoved out into the jovial circle of farm folk. As bit by bit the familiar pieces were brought from the house and dumped upon the ground for the amusement and inspection of the farmers, Nettie, unable to bear the pain of that pitiful sale, sought refuge in the barn, where she stood looking down at the fat sow, her father's especial pride and care, and the thirteen young ones that had come with the spring. Dry sobs tore her heart, and when a Bar Q "hand" spoke to her, she looked up with her drenched face all twisted like that of a wounded child's.