The Fighting Shepherdess Part 42

He'd have to stir up a batch of light bread to-morrow. It was curious, though--that strong impression of having heard something. He returned to his blankets and was puffing again almost immediately.

It was not much after half-past three when the first ewe got up, bleated for her lamb, and moved off slowly. Others rose, stood a moment as though to get the sleep out of their eyes, and followed her example.

Ewes bleated for their lambs, lambs for their mothers, until quavering calls in many keys made a din to awaken any sleeper, while the whole ma.s.s of dingy, rounded woolly backs started moving from the bed-ground.

"Workin' like angels," Bowers muttered as he came out of the tepee dressed in his erstwhile pillow, to see the sheep spreading out before him.

He extinguished the lantern, replaced it in the tepee, and tied the flap, while the faint, gray streak in the east grew brighter.

"Ouhee! You pinto gypsy! Whur you roamin' to now? Think I want to climb up there and pry you out o' the rocks? Come back here 'fore I git in your wig. Ouhee! Mother Biddies! I'll whittle on your hoofs, first thing you know. You won't enjoy traveling' so fast, if you're a little tender footed.

"That's better--now you're actin' like ladies!"

The air was redolent of sheep and sagebrush, and pink and amber streaks shot up to paint out the dimming stars. Bowers drew a deep breath of satisfaction. O man! but sheep-herding was a great life in summer--like drawing, wages through a vacation. If those "High Society" folks that the Denver _Post_ told of, them worse than Sodomites, steeped in sin and extravagance, could know the joys of getting up at half-past three in the morning and going down at ten to eat off a fat mutton--

Bowers's rhapsody ended abruptly. He drew a hand across his eyes to clear his vision. Down below, where he was wont to look for the white top of the wagon, there was nothing but scattered wreckage! He heard the sound now that had awakened him--the detonation of a charge of dynamite! There was no need to go closer to learn the rest of the story.

Bowers's face twisted in a queer grimace. He cried brokenly in a grief that can be understood fully only by the lonely:

"Pore little Mary! Pore little feller! Pore little innercent sheep that never done no harm to n.o.body!"

CHAPTER XX

THE FORK OF THE ROAD

It would have looked, to any casual pa.s.serby, a pleasant family group that occupied the front porch at the Scissor Ranch house one breezy morning.

There was Mrs. Rathburn in a wide-brimmed hat, plying her embroidery needle and looking, from afar, the picture of contentment. Equally serene, to all outward appearances, was her daughter, with her head swathed in veiling against the complexion-destroying wind as she rocked to and fro while bringing her already perfect nails to the highest degree of polish with a chamois-skin buffer. Hugh Disston sat on the top step cleaning and oiling his shotgun with the loving care of the man who is fond of firearms.

But if the Casual Pa.s.serby had ridden closer he might have observed that Mrs. Rathburn was thrusting her needle back and forth through the taut linen inside the embroidery hoop with a vigor which amounted to viciousness; that Miss Rathburn drew the buffer so briskly across her nails that the encircling flesh was all but blistered with the friction; and that Disston as he oiled and rubbed let his gaze wander frequently to the distant mountains and rest there wistfully.

Furthermore, the Casual Pa.s.serby--a blood relative of the Innocent Bystander--would have been apt to notice that this act of Disston's seemed automatically to accelerate the movements of the embroidery needle and the chamois buffer, and speed up the rocking chairs.

Propinquity was not doing all that Mrs. Rathburn had antic.i.p.ated. There were moments like the present when, with real pleasure, she could have run her needle to the hilt, as it were, in any convenient portion of Disston's anatomy. She seethed with resentment, and took it out upon the climate, the inhabitants, the customs of the country, and Teeters--who gave her the careful but unenthusiastic attention he would have given to a belligerent porcupine.

Pique and disappointment smouldered also in the bosom of her fair daughter, who, if she had been less fair, might have been called sullen, since these emotions evidenced themselves in a scornful silence, which was not alleviated by the fact that Disston did not appear to notice it.

While the ladies attributed their occasional temperamental outbursts to the alt.i.tude, which was "getting on their nerves," it was no secret between them that their irritability was due to exasperation with Disston. With scientific skill and thoroughness they dissected him privately until he was hash, working their scalpels far into the watches of the night with unflagging interest. His words, his actions, his thoughts, as indicated by his changing expressions, were a.n.a.lyzed, yet, to the present, Mrs. Rathburn, trained specialist that she was in this branch of psychology, was obliged to confess herself baffled to discover his real feelings and intentions toward her daughter.

From the first, Mrs. Rathburn had suspected the "sheep person," and had cultivated Mrs. Emmeline Taylor who called for the purpose of obtaining supplementary details to the brief history that she had been able to extract from Disston and Teeters. What Mrs. Rathburn learned from that source was, temporarily, eminently satisfactory and soothing. It was too much to believe that Disston could be seriously interested in a woman of Kate Prentice's reputation and antecedents. Her daughter's account of her visit was equally gratifying, for Hugh Disston certainly was too fastidious to be attracted by a woman so uncouth of appearance and manner as portrayed in the vivid description the lady had received of her from Beth.

Yet as she looked back it seemed to her that some subtle change had come over Hugh from the very first day in Prouty, when he had seen the Prentice person and colored. He had been eager to go and see her, and had not been too keen for Beth's company upon the occasion, she had imagined.

It was all a mystery, and, thoroughly discouraged, she was about convinced that they were wasting precious time and ruining their complexions.

Disston continued to polish vigorously, using the gun grease and cleaner until the barrels through which he squinted were spotless and shining.

When it was to his satisfaction, Disston put the gun together and sat with it across his knees, staring absently at the spur of mountains which Beth Rathburn had come to feel she detested. She tingled with irritation. She wanted to say something mean, something to make him feel sorry and apologetic.

She did not quite dare to speak sneeringly of Kate with no apparent provocation, but a violent gust of wind that s.n.a.t.c.hed off her veil and disarranged her carefully dressed hair furnished an excuse to rail against the country.

"Goodness!" she cried explosively, as she lifted the short ends of hair out of her eyes and replaced them. "Will this everlasting wind _never_ stop blowing!"

The fact that Disston did not even hear added to her exasperation. The soft voice, which was one of her many charms, was distinctly shrill as she reiterated:

"I say, will this everlasting wind _never stop blowing_?"

"It is disagreeable," he murmured, without looking at her.

"Disagreeable? It's horrible! I detest the country and everybody in it!"

Mrs. Rathburn shook her head reprovingly, but at the same moment another violent gust swept around the corner and lifted not only that lady's broad-brimmed hat, but her expensive "transformation."

Mrs. Rathburn replaced it with guilty haste, and declared furiously:

"I must say I agree with my daughter--the country and its people are equally impossible."

"I'm sorry," Disston replied contritely. "I shouldn't have urged you to come, but I was hoping you would like it--its picturesqueness, the unconventionality, and the dozen-and-one other things which appeal to me so strongly. In my enthusiasm, perhaps I exaggerated."

"I can't see anything picturesque in discomfort," Miss Rathburn retorted. "There's nothing picturesque in trying to bathe in water that curdles when you put soap in it, and makes your hands like nutmeg graters; or in servants who call you by your first name; or in trying to ride scraggly horses that have no gaits and shake you to pieces; or anything even moderately interesting about a country where there are no trees to sit under and nothing to look at but sagebrush, and rocks, and prairie dogs, and mountains, and not a soul that one can know socially!"

"I had no notion you disliked it out here so much, Beth," he replied gravely.

But he was not sufficiently apologetic, not sufficiently humble. She went on in a tone in which spite was uppermost:

"And furthermore, if unconventionality could ever make me look and act like that 'Sheep Queen' over there," she nodded towards the mountain, "I hope to leave before it happens."

"Hush, Beth!" Her mother's expostulation was lost upon her for, looking at Disston, she was a little dismayed by the expression upon his face when he turned and, leaning his back against the porch post, faced her, saying with a sternness which was foreign to him:

"It's quite impossible for you to understand or appreciate a woman like Kate Prentice, and you will oblige me, Beth, by refraining from criticising her, at least in my presence."

Hugh would as well have slapped her. She scattered the manicure articles in her lap as she sprang up and stamped a tiny foot at him:

"She is impossible! Unspeakable! And I believe you are in love with her!"

For an instant Disston looked at her with an expression which was at once angry and startled, but before he had framed an answer Teeters appeared in the doorway behind them and said soberly:

"Looks like somethin' serious is startin' over yonder." He nodded toward the mountains.

"What do you mean?" Disston asked quickly.

"One of Kate's sheep wagons was blowed up a few nights ago, and there's a story circulatin' that somebody's goin' to shoot up the Outfit."

Disston's face wore a frown of concentration.

"Teeters," in sudden decision, "I'm going up to see her. She may need us."