The Fighting Shepherdess | Page 2

pulled it open to herd a saddle horse and pack ponies through, she called out in her harsh croak:
"Hello, Pete!"
"Hello yourself," he answered, but he looked at her daughter.
As soon as they were through the gate the pack ponies stopped and stood with spreading legs and drooping heads while Mullendore sauntered over to Kate and laid a hand familiarly on her shoulder.
"Ain't you got a howdy for me, kid?"
She moved aside and began stripping the harness from the horse for the quite evident purpose of avoiding his touch.
"You'd better get them packs off," she replied, curtly. "Looks like you'd got on three hundred pounds."
"Wouldn't be surprised. Them bear traps weigh twenty poun' each, and green hides don't feel like feathers, come to pack 'em over the trail I've come."
Kate looked at him for the first time.
"I wisht I was a man! I bet I'd work you over for the way you abuse your stock!"
Mullendore laughed.
"Glad you ain't, Katie--but not because I'd be afraid of gettin' beat up."
He looked her up and down with mocking significance, "Say, but you'll make a great squaw for some feller. Been thinkin' I'd make a deal with your mother to take you back to the mountings with me when I go. I'll learn you how to tan hides, and a lot of things you don't know."
The girl's lip curled.
"Yes, I'd like to tan hides for you, Pete Mullendore! When I get frost bit in August I'll go, but not before."
He replied easily:
"You ain't of age yet, Katie, and you have to mind your maw. I've got an idee that she'll tell you to go if I say so."
"A whole lot my mother would mind what you say!" Yet in spite of her defiance a look of fear crossed the girl's face.
She slipped her arm through the harness and started towards the shed, Mullendore following with his slouching walk, an unprepossessing figure in his faded overalls, black and white mackinaw coat and woolen cap.
The trapper was tall and lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of Apache-Mexican blood "with a streak of white."
While Kate hung the harness on its peg, Mullendore, waited for her outside. "My! My! Katie," he leered at her as she came back, "but you're gettin' to be a big girl! Them legs looked like a couple of pitchfork handles when I went away, and now the shape they've got!"
He laughed in malicious enjoyment as he saw the color rise to the roots of her hair; and when she would have passed, reached out and grasped her arm.
"Let me be, Pete Mullendore!" She tried to pull loose.
"When you've give me a kiss." There was a flame in the muddy eyes.
With a twist she freed herself and cried with fury vibrating in her voice, "I hate you--I hate you! You--" she sought for a sufficiently opprobrious word--"nigger!"
Mullendore's face took on a peculiar ashiness. Then with an oath and a choking snarl of rage he jumped for her. Kate's long braid just escaped his finger tips.
"Mother! Mother! Make him quit!" There was terror in the shrill cry as the girl ran towards the freight wagon. The response to the appeal came in a hard voice:
"You needn't expect me to take up your fights. You finish what you start."
Kate gave her mother a despairing look and ran towards the pack ponies, with Mullendore now close at her heels. Spurred by fear, she dodged in and out, doubling and redoubling, endeavoring to keep a pony between herself and her pursuer. Once or twice a fold of her skirt slipped through his grasp, but she was young and fleet of foot, and after the game of hare and hounds had kept up for a few minutes her pursuer's breath was coming short and labored. Finally, he stopped:
"You little----!" He panted the epithet. "I'll get you yet!"
She glared at him across a pony's neck and ran out her tongue. Then, defiantly:
"I ain't scart of you!"
A drawling voice made them both turn quickly. "As an entirely impartial and unbiased spectator, friend, I should say that you are outclassed." The man addressed himself to Mullendore. The stranger unobserved had entered by the corral gate. He was a typical sheepherder in looks if not in speech, even to the collie that stood by his side. He wore a dusty, high-crowned black hat, overalls, mackinaw coat, with a