The Fighting Shepherdess | Page 4

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.
By the time the herder had washed his dishes and finished his pipe the
sun was well below the horizon and the sky in the west a riot of pink
and amber and red. The well-trained sheep fed back and dropped down
in twos and threes on a spot not far from the tepee where it pleased
their fancy to bed. Save for the distant tinkle of the bell on the burro,
and the stirring of the sheep, the herder might have been alone in the
universe. When he had set his dishes and food back in the paniers and
covered them with a piece of "tarp," in housewifely orderliness, he
opened the black case and took out the violin with a care that amounted
to tenderness. The first stroke of the bow bespoke the trained hand. He
did not sit, but knelt in the sand with his face to the west as he played
like some pagan sun-worshiper, his expression rapt, intent. Strains from
the world's best music rose and fell in throbbing sweetness on the
desert stillness, music which told beyond peradventure that some
cataclysm in the player's life had shaken him from his rightful niche. It
proclaimed this travel-stained sheepherder in his faded overalls and
peak-crowned limp-brimmed hat another of the incongruities of the far
west. The sagebrush plains and mountains have held the secrets of
many Mysteries locked in their silent breasts, for, since the coming of
the White Man, they have been a haven for civilization's Mistakes,
Failures and Misfits.
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