Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/103

 NOW COMES A VALIANT MAN gt to find a pair of shoes or boots on the place that would fithim. Peck's feet were extensive. If traction would get him there, Peck was equipped to go to the top. His pride increased as he tried and rejected the puny footgear handed him by Mrs. Duke where he sat on the kitchen steps in his stockinged feet. If they had any man's shoes, he said, bring them along.

Mrs. Duke was greatly impressed by the size of Peck's feet, although she seemed a little disappointed when one of the late Duke's hats fitted him exactly. It was an old black hat, low in the crown, broad in the brim, flapping, greasy, bandless and forlorn. But it fitted Peck as if it had been modeled to his head.

"Yes, Mr. Duke was a sharp-headed man like you," she said, softly reminiscent. "He didn't have a business head, but he was a tender-hearted man."

Peck did not present a very engaging figure in the sheep-herder outfit. The overalls had been designed for a broad man, the jumper for a short one, but Peck appeared to get a good deal of fun out of the rig, posturing and posing to the great edification of Mrs. Duke. She said he was the comicalest feller she ever saw, and poked him in the back, and told him to go on.

Tippie delegated Peck to the business of driving the sheep out of a little pen which held only about a dozen, into the trough of dip. It was not a very savory mixture, the sheep were not disposed to plunge into it for the little swim, Rawlins standing aloft to shove their heads under as they passed. Nothing but coercion availed against the creatures' antipathy for the dip. Peck did not spare himself the labor. He pushed them along, calling "Yo, yo, yo!" after the example of Tip-