Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/25

 THE SAND COULEE ROADHOUSE

set it to boil. He warmed over a few cooked beans in a lard can, sliced bacon and laid it with great exactness in a long-handled frying pan and placed it on the coals. Then unwrapping a half dozen cold baking-powder biscuits from a dish towel he put them on a tin cover on the ground near a tin cup and plate and a knife and fork.

The man moved lightly, with the deftness of experience, stopping every now and then to cast a look at the sheep that were slowly feeding back preparatory to bedding down. And each time he did so, his eyes unconsciously sought the road in the direction from which he had come, and as often his face clouded with a troubled frown.

When the bacon was brown and the coffee bubbled in the pot, he sat down cross-legged with his plate in his lap and the tin cup beside him on the ground. He ate hungrily, yet with an abstracted expression, which showed that his thoughts were not on his food.

After he had finished he broke open the biscuits which remained, soaked them in the bacon grease and tossed them to the dog, which caught them in the air and swallowed them at a gulp. Then he got to his feet and filled his pipe. He looked contemplatively at a few sheep feeding away from the main band and said as he waved his arm in an encircling gesture : " Way 'round 'em, Shep ! Better bring 'em in."

The dog responded instantly, his handsome tail waving like a plume as he bounded over the sagebrush and gath-ered in the stragglers.

By the time the herder had washed his dishes and finished his pipe the sun was well below the horizon and the sky in the west a riot of pink and amber and red. The well-traired sheep fed back and dropped down in twos