Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/27

 dun splotch in the bottom of the bowl, when the shepherd called off his dogs and came to the wagon, where his visitor had stood watching the bedding of the sheep, taking his first lesson of the many unlearned ones shut up in the grim book of that morose and sullen land.

The shepherd was a grimy, smoky, dirty old grub of a man, spare of frame, narrow in the shoulders. He looked as if he had been dried in smoke. His scrubby grey beard grew almost to his eyes, which were sharp and clear, drawn to a squint as from a habit of peering into great distances. He wore an old duck coat that flared at the skirt as if he had all his portable possessions concealed in its lining, as a hunter appears when he comes home with rabbits in his jacket. His fingers were fixed in a grasping position, and they were knotted and gnarled as if he had fought hard to retain the fortune that had been wrenched away from his hold at last, but had left his hands set in lasting memory of the fight.

He greeted Rawlins in a friendly way, no curiosity apparent in him, no concern whether the traveler meant to remain or pass on about his business. He took some whittlings out of his pocket and kindled a fire in a little sheet-iron camp stove that he brought from the wagon, while directing Rawlins to the spring down the ravine near the sheep.

When Rawlins came back from refreshing himself inwardly and outwardly at the spring, the old man was slicing bacon on a table made by propping up the broad end-gate of the wagon. He had lit his lantern, which was dirty, dim and smoky like himself, and he seemed