Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/293

 "I shouldn't care to go there, Clarence.'* Seeing that his face clouded, she added: " Of course, if your heart is set upon it' — the woman wouldn't construe it as a ' call ' and return it, would she ? "

"I hardly think so," replied Teeters dryly.

As a result of this conversation, the following morn- ing Kate saw Teeters driving up Bitter Creek with a sec- ond person on the seat beside him. She had just come down from Burnt Basin and was not in too good a humor. Bowers, who was staying with MuUendore, came out of the wagon when he heard her and asked:

"How was it lookin'?"

"The spring was trampled to a bog," she said in an exasperated voice, " and the range is covered with bare spots where that dry-farmer has salted his cattle. PU throw two bands of sheep in there, and when I take 'em oflF there won't be roots enough left to grow grass for five years. If it's fight he wants, I'll give him all he's looking for." Her brow cleared as she added :

"Teeters is coming up the road and bringing some one with him." She nodded towards the wagon, " How is he?"

"I doubt if he lasts the day out."

Kate frowned when she recognized Mrs. Taylor. They passed occasionally on the road to Prouty, but always without speaking. Kate never had forgiven the affront at the Prouty House, while Mrs. Taylor pre- served her uncompromising attitude towards " rough characters."

Mrs. Taylor looked like a grenadier in a long snuff- brown coat and jaunty sailor hat as she descended from the buckboard without using the step. The benign cow- like complacency of her face always had irritated Kate,