Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/259

 table? By God—he wanted her, and that was all there was to it!

He was breathless when he reached the top of the ridge and his heart was pounding with the exertion in the high altitude, but he gave a gasp of relief when he saw her standing in the moonlight with dead and dying sheep around her.

"What's the matter?" he called, when his breath came back to him sufficiently.

"Poison. Somebody has scattered little piles of saltpeter all over the summit. There's no cure for it, so I shot some of them to put them out of their agony."

In his relief at finding her unharmed, the loss of the sheep seemed of no moment and he did not realize what it meant to her until she said with a choke in her voice:

"They knew just where to hit me. I've scrimped and saved and sacrificed to buy those sheep—"

Her grief sent a flood of tenderness over him. He went to her swiftly, and taking the six-shooter gently from her hand laid it upon the ground.

"Come here," he said authoritatively, and drew her to him.

She did not resist, and her head dropped to his shoulder in a movement of disheartened weariness.

"Oh, Hughie—I'm so tired of fighting—so tired—of everything."

He smoothed her hair as he would have soothed a child, and said decisively—yet with a big tenderness:

"And you shan't do any more of it!"

He felt his heart breaking with the love he felt for her.

"Kiss me—Honey! " he said softly.

She winced at the old sweet term of endearment, then with a sharp intake of breath she raised her lips to his.