CHAPTER XIX
The tour of the Bar Q purebred bulls had been a disastrous and costly one. From city to city, at a staggering expense, went the prize herd, from which extraordinary things had been expected. Wherever they touched it was their misfortune to be turned back or shunted farther afield. That winter the country was suffering from the fearful scourge, which having stricken down its victims by the thousands in Europe had passed over the sea to America.
Then there was a time when the Bar Q herd was condemned by a harassed and irritated authority who, upon the diagnosis of an incompetent veterinary surgeon, pronounced the cattle to be suffering from foot and mouth disease, and an order was issued for the slaughter of the entire herd, and the burning of all sheds, cars or other houses in which they had been penned. Bull Langdon found himself held indefinitely in the States, as he fought by injunction proceedings the destruction of his herd, which would have meant an incalculable loss—even ruin—to him.
The adjournments and delays, the long, drawn-out legal processes, kept the herd in the States from December till February, and when at last they were freed the penned-in brutes were in a deteriorated condition. Their long confinement, the unaccustomed traveling, and the lack of proper care, made the once smooth bulls difficult to handle and dangerous, so that by the time the herd was ready to start back for Canada more than one of the "hands" who had come to the States with them deserted the outfit rather than risk looking after the uncertain animals on tour.
Bull Langdon, raging and fretting over the enforced delays in the States, harassed by his losses and his failure to obtain a showing of the famous herd, was in a black mood when at last the outfit reached Barstairs.
Here fresh trouble awaited him. Of all the bulls, the Prince had proved the most dangerous and erratic of temper; his ceaseless bellowing and attempts to break loose had done much to make the outfit unpopular throughout their travels. Always uncertain and dangerous, back at Barstairs he became well-nigh uncontrollable, and there was no "hand" of the entire outfit, save Cyril, who dared approach the raging beast, as behind heavily barred fences he ranged up and down restlessly, calling his resounding cries to the cattle that he could smell even if he could not see them in adjoining pastures, and something of the wild spirit of the animal appealed to his owner, whose own pent-up rage seemed to find vent in a savage roaring voice. A kindred spirit bound them together. Often, when the exasperations of the tour threatened to overwhelm him, he would go to where the Prince ranged up and down within the narrow space of his shed bellowing and moaning his demands for freedom. At such times Bull Langdon, from the other side of the bars, would call to the bull, not soothingly, but in a tone of encouragement, as though cheering and "rooting" for the rebellious brute.
"Go to it!" he would snarl through the bars. "Let 'em know you're here! Keep 'em awake. Make their nerves jump. Go to it, bull!"
Up to the time of their return to Barstairs, Cyril Stanley had looked after the animal, and so long as he was at hand the Prince remained fairly well under control. But Cyril, who had been silent and morose all through the tour in the States, suddenly decided, once back in Canada, to quit the outfit. The cattleman received his quiet request to be relieved of his job with consternation and fury.