Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/219

Rh marked the lamb's coloring and size. "Here's a little devil that would be worth watching if his ewe were just alive to keep him fed. I'd like to see just what kind of a ram he'd grow to be."

He supposed that Spot would die; a motherless lamb in western flocks can't be counted on to survive. But in this case Spot obviously had other plans. Before the end of his first day he had attached himself—with an instinct that was seemingly miraculous—to the largest, strongest ewe in the flock, one whose own lamb had died. Crowson himself fastened the skin of the dead lamb on his back until the ewe gave him her breast.

It was as if he already knew his destiny and needed full-feeding and rich milk to attain it. Spot grew fast. And in the castration and docking season little Spot was spared,—just to see what kind of a white-rumped, miscolored, heavy-headed ram he would grow to be.

And almost from the first day he had had those strange, haunting dreams. Mostly they were thrilling, breath-taking, joyous dreams, but sometimes they were simply nightmares. The earliest one of all, perhaps, concerned some sort of a terrible enemy that always seemed to be menacing him from above. It was something that could drop with the speed of a waterfall leaping down a cliff, or the morning light chasing the shadows down a snow-capped peak as the sun came up. Spot