The cattle were now pouring into the corrals and the riders by the gates were cutting out such of the mothers as had gotten through, besides certain weaklings of the herd that were to be spared the branding. These, temporarily driven to adjoining corrals, set up the most deafening outcries and calls for their young, while in the calf corrals these sturdy young creatures voiced their indignant and anguished protests.
Darting in and out of the clamouring herd, the experienced “hands” bunched and separated them according to the bellowing orders of Holy Smoke.
The scorching crunch of the closing Squeezegate and the first long bawl of agony swept the pink from the cheeks of the Englishman. He was seized with a sudden, overwhelming impulse to flee from this Place of Horrors, but as he turned instinctively toward the gate, he saw Hilda standing upon it. She had climbed to the third rung and, hands holding lightly to the top rail, she watched the operations with professional curiosity. For a moment, Cheerio suffered a pang of revolting repugnance. That one so young and so lovely should be thus callous to suffering seemed to him an inexcusable blemish.
It may be that Hilda sensed something of his judgment of her, for there was a pronounced lifting of that dangerous young chin and the free toss of the head so characteristic of her wild nature, while her dark eyes shone defiantly. Almost unconsciously, he found himself excusing her. She had been born to this life. Since her baby years she had been freely among cattle and horses and men. Daughter of a cattleman, Hilda knew that the most painful of the operations, namely, the dehorning, was, in a measure, a merciful thing for the cattle, who might otherwise gore each other to death. The vaccination was but a pin prick, an assurance against the deadly blackleg. As for the branding, it was not nearly as painful as was generally supposed, and first aid was immediately administered to relieve the pang of the burning. It was the only means the cattlemen had for the identification of their property. She resented, therefore, the horror and reproach which she sensed in the stern gaze of the Englishman. Her cool, level glance swept his white, accusing face.
“Pretty sight, isn’t it?” she taunted. “If there’s one thing I love,” she went on, defiantly, “it is to see a brand slapped on true!”
With a nonchalant wisp of a smile, her tossing head indicated the stake, to which a three-month-old calf was bound, its head upturned as the red-hot branding iron smote with a firm, quick shot upon its left side.
The odour of burnt hide nauseated Cheerio. He felt the blood deserting his face and lips. His knees and hands had a curiously numb sensation. He was dizzy and almost blind. He found himself holding to the gate rail, the critical, judging glance of the girl fixed in question upon his face.
Like one hypnotized, he forced his gaze toward the branded calf and he saw something then that brought his trembling hand out in a gesture of almost entreaty and pain. A long, red spurt of blood was trickling down the animal’s side. The old terror of blood swept over him in a surge—a terror that had bitten into his soul upon the field of battle. It was something constitutional, pathological, utterly beyond his control.
Cheerio no longer saw the girl beside him, nor felt the stab of her scornful smile. He had the impulse to cry out to her, to explain that which had been incomprehensible to his comrades in France.
Hilda’s voice seemed to come from very far away and the tumult that made up the bawling voices of Holy Smoke and the raging hands of the O Bar O was utterly unintelligible to him; nor could he comprehend that the shouts were directed at him. In a way, the shouting brought him stark back to another scene, when, in wrath, men seemed to rush over him and all in a black moment the world had spun around him in a nightmare that was all made up of blood—filthy, terrifying, human blood.