Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/67

 honest, ready grin. "It's something to know even a little bit of sense shows through."

"Them onery cowboys and cowmen throw the slur at us sheepmen that we ain't got the courage to come out and fight, just like there was only one kind of courage in this world, the kind that makes a man brawl and booze and yelp around a-straddle of a horse where gittin' away's easy. They hole up in the winter time, never showin' their noses outside the door when a blizzard hits the range, leavin' their stock to shift the best they can.

"When the blow's over they go out and see how many head they've lost, instead of headin' 'em around to some sheltered place the way a sheepman does. Hot or cold, snow or dry, you'll find a sheepman with his flock, takin' the weather the same as they take it, workin' 'em to some shelter in a storm if there's any to be reached."

"Yes, I've had other sheepmen tell me the same thing, Mrs. Duke."

"They say up here a handful of corn a day will carry a sheep through a blizzard and save its life. I've never had to try it, but I've got the corn, right there in that barn. I'd wade in snow up to my neck, forty below, to a band of blizzard-bound sheep. Show me a cowman that'd do as much for his starvin' herd. Oh, here and there you'll find one that'll drive out with a little jag of hay and pitch it off, tryin' to save enough cows to breed him another start, but there ain't many of 'em.

"If you'd 'a' been here two years ago you'd 'a' got a sight of what the cowmen's courage and common sense