Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/216

 To remind Disston of his remissness she walked over to a pen where Bowers, astride a powerful buck, saw in hand, was having his own troubles. She returned almost immediately, shuddering prettily:

"He's sawing that sheep's horn off! Doesn't it hurt it?"

"Not nearly so much as letting it grow to put its eye out."

"I presume you do that, too?" The girl's eyes and tone were mocking.

"Oh, yes, I do everything that's necessary." There was something savage in Kate's composure as she turned directly and looked at her. "I have sheared sheep when I had no money to pay herders, slept out in the hills on the ground on a saddle blanket with my saddle for a pillow. I've made my underwear out of flour sacks and my skirts of denim. I've lived on corn meal and salt pork and dried apples and rabbits for months at a time. I eat and hobnob with sheepherders from one year's end to the other. I'm out with a drop bunch in the lambing season, and I brand the bucks myself—on the nose—burn them with a hot iron. I'll send you word when I'm going to do it again and you can come over—it's enormously amusing. Just wait a minute—come over to the fence here—and I'll show you something. I'm even more deliciously unique than you imagine."

She walked to the gate and vaulted it easily. Hughie and Beth could do no less than follow as far as the fence, while Kate stood searching the band of sheep that milled about her. When she found what she sought, she made one of her swift swoops, caught the sheep by the hind leg and threw it with a dextrous twist. Then holding it between her knees, she took a knife from her pocket and tested the edge of the blade with her thumb.