Read Ebook: The Fighting Shepherdess by Lockhart Caroline Bracker M Leone Illustrator

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Ebook has 3138 lines and 102560 words, and 63 pages

"The trapper you were playing tag with when I came looks as if he might be ugly when he'd had too much."

He was startled by the intensity of the expression which came over her face as she said, between her clenched teeth:

"I hate that 'breed'!"

"He isn't just the pardner," dryly, "that I'd select for a long camping trip."

Her pupils dilated and she lowered her voice:

"He's ornery--Pete Mullendore."

As though in response to his name, that person came around the corner with his bent-kneed slouch, giving to the girl as he passed a look so malignant, and holding so unmistakable a threat, that it chilled and sobered the stranger who stood leaning against the water barrel. The girl returned it with a stare of brave defiance, but her hand trembled as she returned the dipper to its nail. She looked at him wistfully, and with a note of entreaty in her voice asked:

"Why don't you camp here to-night, Mister?"

The sheepherder shook his head.

"I've got to get on to the next water hole. I have five hundred head of ewes in the road and they haven't had a drink for two days. They're getting hard to hold."

Kate volunteered:

"You've about a mile and a half to go."

"Yes, I know. Well--s'long, and good luck!" He reached for his sheepherder's staff and once more raised his hat with a manner which spoke of another environment. Before he turned the corner of the house an impulse prompted him to look back. Involuntarily he all but stopped. Her eyes had in them a despairing look that seemed a direct appeal for help. But he smiled at her, touched his hat brim and went on. The girl's look haunted him as he trudged along the road in the thick white dust kicked up by the tiny hoofs of the moving sheep.

"She's afraid of that 'breed,'" he thought, and tried to find comfort in telling himself that there was no occasion for alarm, with her mother, hard-visaged as she was, within call. Yet as unconsciously he kept glancing back at the lonely roadhouse, sprawling squat and ugly on the desolate sweep of sand and sagebrush, the only sign of human habitation within the circle of the wide horizon, he had the same sinking feeling at the heart which came to him when he had to stand helpless watching a coyote pull down a lamb. It was in vain he argued that there was nothing to do but what he had done--go on and mind his own business--for the child's despairing, reproachful eyes followed him and his uneasiness remained with him after he had reached the water hole. While the sheep grazed after drinking he pulled the pack from the burro that carried his belongings. From among the folds of a little tepee tent he took out a marred violin case and laid it carefully on the ground, apart. A couple of cowhide paniers contained his meager food supply and blackened cooking utensils. These, with two army blankets, some extra clothing and a bell for the burro, completed his outfit.

The sheep dog lay with his head on his paws, following every movement with loving eyes.

The sheepherder scraped a smooth place with the side of his foot, set up his tepee and spread the blankets inside. Then he built a tiny sagebrush fire, filled his battered coffee pot at the spring in the "draw," threw in a small handful of coffee, and, when the sagebrush was burned to coals, set it to boil. He warmed over a few cooked beans in a lard can, sliced bacon and laid it with great exactness in a long-handled frying pan and placed it on the coals. Then unwrapping a half dozen cold baking-powder biscuits from a dish towel he put them on a tin cover on the ground near a tin cup and plate and a knife and fork.

The man moved lightly, with the deftness of experience, stopping every now and then to cast a look at the sheep that were slowly feeding back preparatory to bedding down. And each time he did so, his eyes unconsciously sought the road in the direction from which he had come, and as often his face clouded with a troubled frown.

When the bacon was brown and the coffee bubbled in the pot, he sat down crosslegged with his plate in his lap and the tin cup beside him on the ground. He ate hungrily, yet with an abstracted expression, which showed that his thoughts were not on his food.

After he had finished he broke open the biscuits which remained, soaked them in the bacon grease and tossed them to the dog, which caught them in the air and swallowed them at a gulp. Then he got to his feet and filled his pipe. He looked contemplatively at a few sheep feeding away from the main band and said as he waved his arm in an encircling gesture:

"Way 'round 'em, Shep! Better bring 'em in."

The dog responded instantly, his handsome tail waving like a plume as he bounded over the sagebrush and gathered in the stragglers.

While he poured out his soul with only the sheep and the tired collie sleeping on its paws for audience, the gorgeous sunset died and a chill wind came up, scattering the gray ashes of the camp fire and swaying the tepee tent. Suddenly he stopped and shivered a little in spite of his woolen shirt. "Dog-gone!" he said abruptly, aloud, as he put the violin away, "I can't get that kid out of my thoughts!" Though he could not have told why he did so, or what he might, even remotely, expect to hear, he stood and listened intently before he stooped and disappeared for the night between the flaps of the tent.

He turned often between the blankets of his hard bed, disturbed by uneasy dreams quite unlike the deep oblivion of his usual sleep.

"Oh, Mister, where are you?"

The sheepherder stirred uneasily.

"Please--please, Mister, won't you speak?"

The plaintive pleading cry was tremulous and faint like the voice of a disembodied spirit floating somewhere in the air. This time he sat up with a start.

"It's only me--Katie Prentice, from the Roadhouse. Don't be scart."

The wail was closer. There was no mistake. Then the dog barked. The man threw back the blanket and sprang to his feet. It took only a moment to get into his clothes and step out into a night that had turned pitch dark.

"Where are you?" he called.

"Oh, Mister!?" The shrill cry held gladness and relief.

Then she came out of the blackness, the ends of a white nubia and a little shoulder cape snapping in the wind, her breath coming short in a sound that was a mixture of exhaustion and sobs.

"I was afraid I couldn't find you till daylight. I heard a bell, but I didn't know where to go, it's such a dark night. I ran all the way, nearly, till I played out."

"What's the row?" he asked gently.

She slipped both arms through one of his and hugged it convulsively, while in a kind of hysteria she begged:

"Don't send me back, Mister! I won't go! I'll kill myself first. Take me with you--please, please let me go with you!"

"Tell me what it's all about."

She did not answer, and he urged:

"Go on. Don't be afraid. You can tell me anything."

She replied in a strained voice:

"Pete Mullendore, he--"

A gust of wind blew the shoulder cape back and he saw her bare arm with the sleeve of her dress hanging by a shred.

"--he did this?"

"Yes. He--insulted--me--I--can't--tell--you--what--he--said."

"And then?"

"I scratched him and bit him. I fought him all over the place. He was chokin' me. I got to a quirt and struck him on the head--with the handle. It was loaded. He dropped like he was dead. I ran to my room and clum out the window--"

"Your mother--"

"She--laughed."

"God!" He stooped and picked up the little bundle she had dropped at her feet. "Come along, Partner. You are going into the sheep business with 'Mormon Joe.'"

AN HISTORIC OCCASION

The experienced ear of Major Stephen Douglas Prouty told him that he was getting a hot axle. The hard dry squeak from the rear wheel of the "democrat" had but one meaning--he had forgotten to grease it. This would seem an inexcusable oversight in a man who expected to make forty miles before sunset, but in this instance there was an extenuating circumstance. Immediately after breakfast there had been a certain look in his hostess's eye which had warned him that if he lingered he would be asked to assist with the churning. Upon observing it he had started for the barn to harness with a celerity that approached a trot.

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