Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/229



"There ain't a minute's peace when you're awake, Mary! If I done what I ort, I'd work you over. You're the worst nuisance of a bum lamb ever raised on canned milk."

The lamb, which Bowers had named regardless of its sex, stood motionless with bliss as he rubbed the base of what would some day probably be as fine a pair of horns as ever grew on a buck. At present they were soft and not more than an inch and a half in length as they sprouted through its dingy wool. Thin in the shoulders and rump, yet "Mary's" sides were distended until their contour resembled that of a toy balloon inflated to the bursting point.

Now as the lamb's long white lashes drooped until he seemed about to go to sleep and fall down under Bowers's soothing ministrations, the latter continued the one-sided conversation which was a part of their daily life together:

"You're a smart sheep, Mary — no gittin' away from it — but you're a torment, and you ain't no gratitude. Whur'd you been at if I hadn't heard you blattin' and went after you? A coyote would a ketched you before sundown. And ain't I been a mother to you, giving up all my air-tight milk to feed you? Warmin' it fer you and packin' you 'round like you was a million-dollar baby so the bobcats won't git you — kin you deny it? An' this is my thanks fer it — wake me up walkin' on me, to say nothin' of mornin's when you start jumpin' on my tepee, makin' a toboggan slide out'n it before any other sheep is stirrin'. Ain't you no conscience a-tall, Mary?"

"Ma-a-a-aa!"

The quavering plaintiff bleat evoked a look of admiration.

"Oh, you have — have you? I more'n half believe