Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/223



"I can't hold dem ewes and lambs on de bed-ground no morel Dey know it's time to be gettin' up to deir summer range; nobody has to tell a sheep when to move on."

The Swede swirled his little round hat on his equally round little head and winked rapidly as he gave vent to his indignant protest. Kate looked at him in silence for a moment and then said in sudden decision:

"You can start to-morrow, Oleson."

The early summer was fulfilling the promise of a hot rainless spring. Bitter Creek was drying up rapidly and the water holes, stagnant and strongly alkaline, had already poisoned a few sheep. The herders could not understand the sheep woman's delay in moving to the mountains.

"I'm runnin' myself ragged over these hills tryin' to hold back them yearlin's," Bunch declared. Bowers, too, having his own special brand of grief with the buck herd, had looked the interrogation he had not voiced. Kate herself knew that the sheep should have been higher up, away from the ticks and flies and on good food and water all of two weeks ago, but, on one pretext or another, had postponed giving the order to start, though she knew in her heart that the real reason was because Disston had said he was coming again.