Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/202

194. It was true that the herbage was dry and tasteless, but the sheep are a breed that has learned to fare well where cattle would die. They nibbled the leaves and twigs; Hugh led them to the greenest glens, the richest meadows, and his weekly change of camp site found them ever higher on the range where the effects of drought were less. And in the last days of September they were so high that the old leader of the bighorn flock could look down and see these tame brethren, like moving fields of snow, on the slopes beneath.

These days had been good to Hugh. Every one had been a fresh delight, every night had fallen to find a greater strength and a higher peace in his spirit. Was not this his destiny? Had he not come to his Lost Land, after many years of wandering on dark and unknown trails? Could his home be elsewhere than on these rugged mountains, the shadow of the forest upon him, and the green glades lying in the beauty of the moon? All his life, it seemed to him, his spirit had gone groping—here and there—for something it could never find; and here, behind the flocks, it had found it at last.

He loved the long days of wandering, the nights of vigil, the cool camps in the forest shadow, the little daily adventures that were all part of the eternal war that the powers of the wilderness waged upon the dominance and works of man. Sometimes these took the form of a