The rivulet gurgled under the overhanging willows and alder brush. A belated kildeer broke the night stillness with its cry. The hobbles clanked as the horses thumped their fore feet in working their way slowly to the top of the gulch. Bowers fired his evening salute before retiring as a hint to the coyotes, and, sometimes, when the wind veered, a far-off tinkle as a bell-sheep stirred on the bed-ground came to Kate's ears--all were familiar sounds, so familiar that she heard them only subconsciously. In the same way she saw the dark outlines of objects inside the sheep wagon--the turkey-wing duster thrust between an oak bow and the canvas, the outline of the coffee pot on the stove, the cherished frying pans dangling on their nails, her rifle standing on the bench within reach. So far as she knew, she and Bowers were the only human beings within miles, yet she felt no fear; to be alone in the sheep wagon in the dusk of the gulch held no new sensation for her.

She was thinking of Disston as the door of the wagon swung gently to and fro, rattling the frying pan which hung on a nail on the lower half of it, of her brusque and ungracious reply when he had told her he was coming again to see her, of the sorry figure she had cut beside the girl he had brought, and of her fierce resentment at the girl's covert ridicule. She had shocked and disgusted Disston beyond doubt by the manner in which she had retaliated, yet she knew that in similar circ.u.mstances she would do the same again, for her first impulse nowadays was to strike back harder than she was struck.

It seemed, she reflected, as though everything about her, her disposition, her history, her environment and work forbade any of the pleasant episodes, which the average woman accepted as a matter of course, ever happening in her life. To be an object of ridicule, the target of somebody's wit, appeared to be her lot. At odds with humanity, engaged almost constantly in combating the handicaps imposed by Nature, the serenity of the normal woman's life was not for her.

Anyway, one thing was certain; her poor little romance, builded upon so slight a foundation as an impulsive boy's ephemeral interest, was over.

He would not come again--and she cared. She put her hand to her throat.

It ached with the lump in it--yes, she cared.

The tears slipped down and wet the flour-sack pillow case. The outlines of the coffee pot on the stove and the frying pan dangling on the door grew blurred. Her eyes were still swimming when she suddenly held her breath.

An unfamiliar sound had caught her ear, a sound like a stealthy footstep. In the instant that she waited to be sure, a hand and forearm reached inside the door and laid something on the floor.

"Who's there?"

There was no response to the imperative interrogation.

With the same movement that she swung her feet over the edge of the bunk she reached for her rifle and ran to the door. There was not a sound or sign that was unusual save that the horses had stopped eating and with ears thrown forward were looking down the gulch. She picked up the paper that lay on the floor, struck a match and read a scrawl by its flare:

WARNING

Stop where you are if you ain't looking for trouble. Them range maggots of yourn ain't wanted on the mountain this summer.

What did it mean? The match burned to her fingers while she conjectured.

Who was objecting? Neifkins? Since there was ample range for both, and each had kept to the boundaries which he tacitly recognized, there had been no dispute. A horse outfit grazing a small herd of horses during the summer months, and a dry-farmer with a couple of milch cows, who, while he plowed and planted and prayed for rain, was incidentally demonstrating the exact length of time that a human being could live on jack-rabbit and navy beans, were the only other users of the mountain range. Was it the hoax of some local humorist? Or an attempt to intimidate and worry her by someone whose enmity she had incurred?

Whatever the motive, was it possible that any one knew her so little as to believe they could frighten her in any such manner? Her lip curled as she asked herself the question. She had imagined that she had at least proved her courage.

Bowers, she knew, would stand by her; the others, perhaps, would use the familiar argument that it cost too much for repairs to be shot up for forty-five dollars a month.

Finally, she tossed the note on the sideboard and stepped out on the wagon tongue. The stars glimmered overhead and the shadows lay black and mysterious in the gulch, but she felt no fear as she stood there straight and soldierlike, her eyes sparkling defiance. She had, rather, a feeling of grat.i.tude for the diversion--a hope that the threatened "trouble" might act as a kind of counter-irritant to the dull ache of her heavy heart.

CHAPTER XIX

AN OLD, OLD FRIEND

Bowers lay slumbering tranquilly in the shade of the wagon, his saddle blanket beneath him and his folded arms for a pillow as he slept on his face. The herd chewed its cud drowsily under the quaking asp nearby, out of the mid-day heat and away from pestiferous flies, while under a bush not far from the wagon a lamb lay with eyes half closed, waggling its narrow jaw, and grinding its sharp white teeth noisily.

Quite as though some thought had come to it forcibly, the lamb got up and stood regarding Bowers reflectively with its soft black eyes. Then it swallowed its cud with a gulp and, making a run the length of the herder's legs and spine, planted its forefeet in his neck, where it stopped.

"Mary! You quit that!" Bowers murmured crossly.

The lamb merely reached down and chewed energetically on Bowers's ear.

"Confound you--can't you let a feller sleep?" The hand that pushed the lamb away was gentle in spite of the exasperation of his tone.

The lamb backed away, eyed him attentively for several minutes as he lay prostrate, and then quite as though a tightly coiled spring had been released, leaped into the air and landed with all four feet bunched in the small of Bowers's back.

Bowers sat up and said complainingly as he grabbed the lamb by the wool and drew it towards him:

"There ain't a minute's peace when you're awake, Mary! If I done what I ort, I'd work you over. You're the worst nuisance of a b.u.m lamb ever raised on canned milk."

The lamb, which Bowers had named regardless of its s.e.x, stood motionless with bliss as he rubbed the base of what would some day probably be as fine a pair of horns as ever grew on a buck. At present they were soft and not more than an inch and a half in length as they sprouted through its dingy wool. Thin in the shoulders and rump, yet "Mary's" sides were distended until their contour resembled that of a toy balloon inflated to the bursting point.

Now as the lamb's long white lashes drooped until he seemed about to go to sleep and fall down under Bowers's soothing ministrations, the latter continued the one-sided conversation which was a part of their daily life together:

"You're a smart sheep, Mary--no gittin' away from it--but you're a torment, and you ain't no grat.i.tude. Whur'd you been at if I hadn't heard you blattin' and went after you? A coyote would a ketched you before sundown. And ain't I been a mother to you, giving up all my air-tight milk to feed you? Warmin' it fer you and packin' you 'round like you was a million-dollar baby so the bobcats won't git you--kin you deny it? An' this is my thanks fer it--wake me up walkin' on me, to say nothin' of mornin's when you start jumpin' on my tepee, makin' a toboggan slide out'n it before any other sheep is stirrin'. Ain't you no conscience a-tall, Mary?"

"Ma-a-a-aa!"

The quavering plaintiff bleat evoked a look of admiration.

"Oh, you have--have you? I more'n half believe you know what I'm sayin'. You're some sheep, Mary, an' if you jest stick 'round with me till you're growed I'll make a man of you. How'd you like a cigarette?"

"Ma-a-aa-aa!"

Bowers chuckled.

"Wait till I have my smoke an' then you kin have yourn, young feller."

He rolled and smoked half a cigarette while the lamb stood looking up into his face wistfully.

"I'll jest knock the fire out fer you first, then you kin have your whack out of it."

He shook the tobacco from the paper into his hand and the lamb ate it to the last fleck with gusto.

Bowers cried gleefully:

"You're a reg'lar roughneck, Mary! Doggone you! As you might say--you ain't no lady!"

The herder laughed aloud at his witticism and might have rambled on for some time longer if the crashing of brush had not attracted his attention. A man on horseback was picking his way through the quaking asp and Bowers awaited his approach with keen interest.

"How are you?" the stranger nodded.

"Won't you git off?"

Bowers strained his eyes to read the brand on the shoulder of the horse the man turned loose, but it told him nothing. While the stranger squatted on his heel, Bowers rubbed Mary's horns during an interval of unembarra.s.sed silence.

"b.u.m?" inquired the stranger, eying Mary with a look which could not be called admiring.

"Yep." The garrulous Bowers had become suddenly reticent. The notion was growing that he did not like his visitor. He asked finally:

"Et yet?"