"Who's talking?" growled the cattleman, spitting with amusement. "Are you trying to teach Bull Langdon the cattle game, you young whelp? I knowed it before the day you was born."
The young bull's head had suddenly uplifted. He sniffed the air, his neck bristling. Slowly, growing in depth and power, there burst from his throat a mighty roar that shook the tent, and drove the color from the faces about that ring, as with an almost concerted movement there was a backing from the lines and an exodus from the tent. Bull Langdon, as swiftly as a cat, had backed to the lines and was over them. Cyril was alone in the inclosure with the roaring bull. Half talking, half singing, not for a moment did his hand relax its grip upon the chain. Slowly the animal's head turned in his direction and again dropped submissively. There was a breath of relief about the lines, and Cyril led the bull back to his stall, fastening him securely to his post by the ring in his nose.
Bull Langdon was swearing foully, but his fury against Cyril and the Prince subsided at the approach of Professor Calhoun, the greatest authority on pure bred cattle in the world.
"Sir," said the little man, glaring at Bull Langdon through double-lensed glasses, scrutinizing the cattleman with the scientific air with which he examined cattle, "I will not hesitate to predict that your animal's progress throughout the United States—I will go farther and say, throughout the world—will be one of unbroken triumph. It has been my pleasure to look upon the most perfect Hereford specimen in the world. I congratulate you, sir."
Bull Langdon grunted, rose on the balls of his feet, chewed on the plug in his cheek, spat, and, his chest swelling, roared across at one of the Bar Q "hands."
"Take the gentleman—take all of the gentlemen—" he added, with a sweeping gesture of his arm toward the crowd, "to the booze tent. The treat's on Bull Langdon. Fill up, gentlemen, on the Bar Q."
Meanwhile, satiated with gloating over his great treasure, he bethought of another possession and upon which at this stage he set if possible an even greater value. True, he reckoned Nettie as "scrub" stock, while the Prince was of lordly lineage. On the auction block, the prince might bring a price that was worth a king's ransom; yet as he thought of the big, white-skinned, blue-eyed girl, the cowman knew that he would not give her up for all the champions in the cattle world. He owned the Prince; but though he had held the girl in his arms, he knew in his heart of hearts that she had never been his. That was what fretted and tormented him—the thought that his brand upon Nettie could never be permanent.
It was a boast of the cowman that what he wanted he took, and what he took, he held. He had wanted Nettie Day. He had taken her by mad force, as a barbarian might have fallen upon a Christian slave, yet he knew, with a sense of smoldering hatred and fury that a single hair upon the head of the young Bar Q hand was more to her than the Bull and all his possessions. He was torn with a desire to return to Bar Q, and again take forcible possession of the girl; but the prize herd was now almost ready for the tour. It would be disastrous, ruinous to his reputation and career, if, at this psychological moment, anything should interfere with the departure of the herd, and there was no man in the outfit who could be trusted to take the place of Bull Langdon himself. Well, it would be the matter of a month or two only, and he would be back.
He found himself at the Prince's stall, glowering down upon the back of the kneeling Cyril, who was brushing down his charge's legs with an oiled brush. Presently Cyril looked up, and seeing his employer, he arose. The Bull cleared his throat noisily.
"Well, how about it, bo? You goin' along with Prince to the States?"