Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/344

 to forget a man like that. It seemed as if—" there was bewilderment in her face as she laid her hand upon her heart — " as if, somehow, I knew him here."

Kate's belief that no better sheep of their class than hers would be found in the stockyards was justified by subsequent events. Her shipment not only " topped the market," but she received for her yearling lambs fourteen dollars and sixty-five cents a head — the highest paid since the Civil War. This high rate was due not only to European disturbances, but to the quality and condition of the sheep ; and, therefore, apart from the attention which she naturally would have attracted, she was, as the owner, an object of interest in the yards as well as in the stock exchange offices and the bank.

Basking in the reflected sunshine of his employer's success. Bowers came as near strutting as was possible for one of his retiring temperament.

Kate was finding a new experience in her meeting with the members of the firm to which she had consigned her sheep, and others with whom her business brought her in contact about the crowded Exchange. These prosperous, clean-cut men, alert, incisive of speech and thought, were an unfamiliar type. Their undisguised approbation, their respect, their eagerness to be kind brought a new sensation to Kate, who had grown up and lived in an atmosphere of prejudice. There were moments when the tears were absurdly close to her eyes.

Aside from the circumstances which in any event would have attracted more than a little attention to Kate, the extent of the recognition and the courtesy extended to her was a personal triumph. Her simplicity and good sense, her reserve, together with a kind of timid, questioning friendliness, her unconsciousness of being in any way un-