Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/228



Bowers lay slumbering tranquilly in the shade of the wagon, his saddle blanket beneath him and his folded arms for a pillow as he slept on his face. The herd chewed its cud drowsily under the quaking asp nearby, out of the mid-day heat and away from pestiferous flies, while under a bush not far from the wagon a lamb lay with eyes half closed, waggling its narrow jaw, and grinding its sharp white teeth noisily.

Quite as though some thought had come to it forcibly, the lamb got up and stood regarding Bowers reflectively with its soft black eyes. Then it swallowed its cud with a gulp and^ making a run the length of the herder's legs and spine, planted its forefeet in his neck, where it stopped.

"Mary! You quit that!" Bowsers murmured crossly.

The lamb merely reached down and chewed energetically on Bowers's ear.

" Confound you — can't you let a feller sleep? " The hand that pushed the lamb away was gentle in spite of the exasperation of his tone.

The lamb backed away, eyed him attentively for several minutes as he lay prostrate, and then quite as though a tightly coiled spring had been released, leaped into the air and landed with all four feet bunched in the small of Bowers's back.

Bowers sat up and said complainingly as he grabbed the lamb by the wool and drew it towards him: