Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/43

Rh he had told the truth for once. Hugh's eyes leaped from peak to peak, and he began to realize something of the vast, tremendous distances of the region. They pushed on, over the ridge and through the last of a heavy wall of brush.

They came out on the edge of a small meadow,—one of those grassy, treeless stretches that are so often encountered in the high ranges. Silver Creek ran through it: a stream that was a "creek" only in the Western sense. In reality it carried more water than many a famous river. It was narrow, however, lined with thickets, and evidently deep and swift. Five hundred yards beyond the great forest encroached again, and the meadow was even more narrow, parallel to the creek. And at the first glance Hugh might have thought that the meadow was covered with deep snow.

It was the sheep. They were bedding down for the night,—a flock that could not contain less than three thousand ewes and lambs. They had crowded so close together that they occupied, in all, a space hardly more than a hundred yards square, and the only break in the white drift was an occasional spot of inky black. These, in a moment's inspection, revealed themselves as black sheep,—animals that occur in every western flock and are generally used by the herdsmen as markers.

Their numbers staggered Hugh. He wondered how any one herder could care for them.