"Let 'em alone. Them stirrup's is all right. I like them long."
She shoved her foot into the leather thong and, slapping the horse across the neck with the reins, she urged it along. She had a sudden impulse to flee, though from what she could not have said; she was possessed with a furious urge to leave far behind her the huge cowman, with his wild, possessive eyes.
She flew along the trail at a breathless gallop, and it was only when his hand reached across the neck of her horse and planted itself upon the pummel of her saddle that she realized that he had never left her side.
"Hi, there, you don't want to run as a starter. Take it easy."
On and on they went, across country, past the widespreading pasture and grain fields, odorous of the bumper crop which that year was to put Alberta upon the grain map of the world, past the homely little log cabin that Cyril had built for her, and past the C. P. R. quarter, where the cropped-haired woman lived in her hermit-like seclusion. On and on, till the higher grades began and they climbed gradually upward toward the hill country.
Straight ahead, under a sunset that overspread the whole sky with a glow of red and gold, the mighty Rocky Mountains rose like a vast dream before them. The girl and the man rode side by side into that sunset, while the perfect stillness of the Alberta evening closed in about them. Nettie lost herself once more in her old aspirations as the nearness of the long-yearned-for hills drew nearer. Sweet and wistful thoughts of Cyril calmed and reassured her. The man riding beside her was forgotten, forgotten everything but the spell of the Alberta twilight, and the dear thoughts of her love.
At last they drew up before one of those great Alberta ranch gates, with log rails ten feet long. The Bull had alighted and opened the gate, and they were cantering up the hill.
In Alberta the sunlight lingers till late into the night, and a mellow glow suffuses the land, gilding even the meanest spots and turning all the country into dim oceans and atolls of beauty. Under this light, the white and green ranch buildings of the Bar Q shone like a little city planted upon a hilltop, and at this first sight of the great Bar Q the girl from the Dan Day Dump caught her breath in awe and admiration.
The Bull had again dismounted, and Nettie, with his hand under her arm, also found herself lifted to the ground; but instead of withdrawing his arm, the cowman kept it about her possessively, and drew her closely to his side. She stared, fascinated, into the face so close to her own.