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 scarecrow in a garden, a stewpan in his hand, and shouted a delighted greeting as Graball came skating down the steep hillside behind the tattered canvas spread over a bush which formed Peck's tent.

"Well, of all men!" said Rawlins, greatly surprised.

"Yes, it's me," Peck admitted, in that fatuous way a man does when he would deny the obvious fact if he felt there was any chance of making it go.

"But I thought you'd jumped the range, I thought you were back in St. Joe listening to the music of a sewing machine by this time, Peck. How come? What happened?"

"I thought at first you was a bear comin' at me down that hill," said Peck, evading the friendly inquiry. "Did you see anything of a gang of stews over that way?"

"Yes, they're right over the hill. Where's your dog?"

"Darned if I know," Peck said, looking around for the animal with hostile eye; "him and me don't mix. He thinks he's boss of them sheep, tries to go over my head every move I make. If I had a gun I'd plug him, and plug him right!"

Rawlins dismounted, Graball standing docilely by after turning his wise eye around to mark the entirely denuded and stripped condition of that particular spot. Peck doubtless was not ranging the sheep very far from his camp. They had gnawed the bushes to the wood, the grass to the ground.

"So Mrs. Peck is making a sheepwoman's man out of you after all?"