Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/172

 The northeast wind lifted Kate's shabby riding skirt and flapped it against her horse's flank as she sat in the saddle with field glasses to her eyes looking intently at a covered wagon that was crawling over the sagebrush hummocks, its top swaying at perilous angles. She shivered unconsciously as the loose ends of her silk neckerchief fluttered and snapped in front of her and the limp brim of her Stetson blew straight against the crown of it.

"There are certainly two of them," she murmured, "and they must be lost or crazy to be wandering through the hills at this season. They had better get back to the road, if they don't want to find themselves snowed up in a draw until summer."

She replaced the glasses in the case that she wore slung by a strap over her shoulder, and looked behind her. They were undoubtedly snow clouds that the wind was driving before it from the distant mountains.

"Good thing I brought my sour-dough," she muttered as she untied the sheepskin-lined canvas coat from the back of her saddle. "We'd better sift along, Cherokee, and turn the sheep back to the bed-ground."

By the time the sheep had fed slowly back and settled themselves for the night on the gently sloping side of a draw above the sheep wagon there was just daylight enough left for her to feed and hobble the horse and cut wood without lighting a lantern. From half a mutton