Next to my place is a quarter section of homestead land, owned by a young man named Stanley. One day I was fencing, when this young fellow, who had made attempts upon several occasions to speak to me, came over and watched me at my work. I ignored him, but like my doctor friend, above mentioned, he is Scotch and thick. He didn't even know he was being ignored, and presently in a disgustingly friendly way he had the colossal nerve to attempt to instruct me in the art of making post holes. At that juncture I turned around and looked at him. Now I may seem as that Bar Q hand said, like a "tough old nut." No doubt I look like one, but I know the English trick of freezing ordinary people by a mere look. It is a trick, like the Englishman's monocle and the strange part is only an English person can do it. You just stare, stonily, at the insignificant atom before you. I begin at the feet, and travel contemptuously up the whole despised body, till I reach the abashed and propitiating face. One need not say a single word. That look—if you know the technique of the act—is enough. This young Stanley dropped his hammer in a hurry and turned very red.
"I say, you're not mad at me, are you?" he stammered.
And just then Nettie, whom the doctor had dropped at my house that day, came from out the house, and something about that boy's face, just a flicker of the eye and the deepening red about his ears apprised me of the reason why he was so keen on being friends with me. I turned just in time to see on Nettie's guilty face the identical flicker I had noted on Stanley's. As cross as two sticks, I grabbed that girl by the arm and shoved her along the field to the house.
Once inside, I made her sit down, while I told her in detail all of the miseries and pitfalls and deceits and heartbreaks, the general unhappiness that befalls one foolish enough to fall in love. Love I told her was an antiquated emotion which had been burned out by the force of its own mad fire. I said something like that, for I was talking with feeling, upon a topic I understood, and as I talked, becoming more and more moved and excited as my subject warmed me, suddenly I observed that Nettie's eyes were fixed on space, as if on something very far away. She had her large, white hands unconsciously clasped upon her bosom; she was kneeling beside me, and something about her pose struck me at that moment as so divinely beautiful, so exquisitely madonna-like and lovely, that I choked upon my words and could go no further.
Then Nettie came out of her dream—I am sure she had heard not a word of my discourse—and said:
"Thank you, Angel." That girl calls me—Angel. God alone knows why. There is little of the angel in me.
I have not seen her since that day. Life has played strange tricks upon my little friend since then. Her father dead, her brothers and sisters scattered about in institutions and on farms, Nettie herself—at the Bar Q—of all places in the world, the last I would have wished to have seen her go!
Sometimes in the evening, when my work is done, I can recall to my mind Nettie as I last saw her with almost photographic clearness, and I experience a sense of nearness to her. The other night I had an impulse to start out then and there for the Bar Q. I felt that she needed me.
That young man on the adjoining quarter section sings a great deal as he works. I can hear him clear across the field—he has a real voice, a full, fine baritone, and in the still evenings, I confess there is something uplifting about that fresh young voice as it rings across the prairie. His home is nearing completion, he says, and that is why he sings. The thought of home and Nettie warms his heart till it bursts into song. Ah—well, who am I to judge what is best for these young people? So, sing on, young Cyril. I hope that that clear brave voice of yours, as full of melody as a lark's, will never falter.
Last night, when I came in from the field, the half-breed Jake sidled along from behind my house. It gave me a start to see the poor idiot with his wild, witless face. He wanted to tell me something about the Bar Q. He jabbered and gibbered, and I could hardly make head or tail of what he was saying, save that Bull Langdon was eating something up.