Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/218

 "Bowers!" Her tone was energetic and businesslike as she turned sharply. "Come here and help me ear-mark the rest of these yearlings."

Disston stood for a moment, feeling himself dismissed and already forgotten, yet conscious with a rush of emotion which startled him, that in spite of the fact that her dress, speech, manner, occupation, mode of life violated every ideal and tradition, she appealed to him powerfully, stirred him as had no other woman. She aroused within him an enveloping tenderness—a desire to protect her—though she seemed the last woman who needed or cared for either.

When Oleson with the ewes and lambs was well up the creek, Kate gave Bunch his parting instructions:

"Let them spread out more. You Montana herders feed too close—it's a fault with all of you. Can't you see the grass is different here? Use your head a little. Got plenty of cartridges? I saw cat tracks in a patch of sand along the creek yesterday. He got eight lambs in his last raid on Oleson's band. I'll have to put out some poison."

She walked slowly across the foot log after the last lamb had leaped bleating through the gate. She inspected her boots, noting that one heel had run over, and looked at her gauntlets, with the fingers protruding. Then, when she stepped inside the wagon, she walked straight to the mirror and stared at her reflection—dishevelled, her face frankly dirty, about her neck a handkerchief that was faded and unbecoming, a mouth that drooped a little with fatigue, her whole face wearing an expression of determination that she realized might very easily become hard. A few more years of work and exposure and she would grim-featured and hopelessly weather-beaten. No wonder that girl had looked