Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/26

THE FIGHTING SHEPHERDESS

and threes on a spot not far from the tepee where it pleased their fancy to bed. Save for the distant tinkle of the bell on the burro, and the stirring of the sheep, the herder might have been alone in the universe. When he had set his dishes and food back in the paniers and covered them with a piece of " tarp," in housewifely orderliness, he opened the black case and took out the violin with a care that amounted to tenderness. The first stroke of the bow bespoke the trained hand. He did not sit, but knelt in the sand with his face to the west as he played like some pagan sun-worshiper, his expression rapt, intent. Strains from the world's best music rose and fell in throbbing sweetness on the desert stillness, music which told beyond peradventure that some cataclysm in the player's life had shaken him from his rightful niche. It pro-claimed this travel-stained sheepherder in his faded over- alls and peak-crowned limp-brimmed hat another of the incongruities of the far west. The sagebrush plains and mountains have held the secrets of many Mysteries locked in their silent breasts, for, since the coming of the White Man, they have been a haven for civilization's Mistakes, Failures and Misfits.

While he poured out his soul with only the sheep and the tired collie sleeping on its paws for audience, the gorgeous sunset died and a chill wind came up, scattering the gray ashes of the camp fire and swaying the tepee tent. Suddenly he stopped and shivered a little in spite of his woolen shirt. " Dog-gone I " he said abruptly, aloud, as he put the violin away, ** I can't get that kid out of my thoughts I " Though he could not have told why he did so, or what he might, even remotely, expect to hear, he stood and listened intently before he stooped and disap- peared for the night between the flaps of the tent.

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