"So long as you could swagger around with Andy P. Symes to bolster you
up and a crowd of old women to flatter you, you could put up a front,
but you ain't the kind, Harpe, that can turn your back to the wall, fold
your arms, and sling defiance at the town if they all turn on you."
"But they won't."
"You've got a kind of mulishness, and you've got gall, and when things
are goin' your way you'll take long chances, but they ain't the traits
that gives a person the sand to stand out in the open with their head up
and let the storms whip thunder out of them without a whimper."
"It's my nerves, I tell you; they're shot to pieces--the strain I've
been under--everything goin' wrong--pilin' on me like a thousand of
brick."
"Is it goin' to be any better?"
"Some of my friends will stick," Dr. Harpe repeated stubbornly.
"Sure, they will. A woman like you will always have a followin' among
the igner'nt and weak-minded."
"What you roastin' me for like this?" The woman's brutal frankness
touched her at last. "Who and what do you think you are yourself?"
"Nothin'," Nell Beecroft returned composedly. "Nobody at all. Just the
wife of a horse-thief that's doin' time. But," and her hard, gray eyes
flashed in momentary pride, "he learnt me the diffrunce between sand and
a yellow-streak. They sent fifty men to take him out of the hills, and
when he was handed his medicine he swallowed the whole dose to save his
pardner, and never squeaked."
Nell Beecroft walked to the window swallowing hard at the lump which
rose in her throat.
"If I could sleep--get one night's decent sleep----"
"When you collapse you'll go quick," opined the woman unemotionally.
"But I'm goin' to see it through--I'll stick to the bitter end--I'm no
coward----"
"Ain't you?" Sudden excitement leaped into Nell Beecroft's voice and she
stared hard down the street. "Unless I'm mistaken you're goin' to have
as fine a chance to prove it as anybody I ever see. Come here." She
pointed to a gesticulating mob which was turning the corner where the
road led from the Symes Irrigation Project into town.
"The dagos!" Dr. Harpe's voice was a whisper of fear.
"They're on the prod," Nell Beecroft said briefly, and strode to the
cellar-door. "Cache yourself!" She would have thrust Dr. Harpe down the
stairway.
"No--no--not there! I can't! I'd scream!" She shrank back in unfeigned
horror. "I'm goin' to run for it, Nell! The Dago Duke has ribbed this up
on me!" From force of habit she reached for her black medicine case as
she swung her Stetson on her head. "If I can get to Symes's house--down
the alley--they can't see me----"
Nell Beecroft, with curling lips, stood in the kitchen doorway and
watched her go. Crouching, with her head bent, she ran through the
alley, panting, wild-eyed in her exaggerated fear.
A big band of bleating sheep on the way to the loading pens at the
station blocked her way where she would have crossed the street to
Symes's house. She swore in a frenzy of impatience as she waited for
them to pass in the cloud of choking dust raised by their tiny, pointed
hoofs.
"Way 'round 'em, Shep!" The voice was familiar. "Hullo, Doc!" The Sheep
King of Poison Creek waved a grimy, genial hand.
"Hurry your infernal woolers along, can't you?" she yelled in response.
That other cloud of dust rising above the road which led from the Symes
Irrigation Project into town was coming closer. She plunged among the
sheep, forcing a path for herself through the moving mass of woolly
backs.
"You're in a desprit rush, looks like. They won't die till you get
there!" The Sheep King was not too pleased as he ran to head the sheep
she had turned.
"Like the devil was after her." He watched her bound up the steps of
Symes's veranda and burst through the doorway.
The engineer had steam up and the last half dozen sheep were being
prodded into the last car of the long train bound for the Eastern
market when the Sheep King of Poison Creek drew his shirt sleeve across
his moist forehead in relief and observed with feeling:
"Of all the contrary--onery--say, Bill, there's them as says sheep is
fools!"
It took a moment for this surprising assertion to sink into his helper's
brain.
"They as says sheep is fools----" Bill, the herder's voice rang with
scorn, "them as says sheep is fools----" great mental effort was visible
upon his blank countenance as he groped for some word or combination of
words sufficiently strong to express his opinion of those who doubted
the intelligence of sheep--"is fools themselves," he added lamely,
finding none.
"Guess we're about ready to pull out. Get aboard, Bill." The Sheep King,
squinting along the track where the banked cinders radiated heat waves,
was watching, not the signalling brakeman, but a figure skulking in the
shade of the red water-tank. "It looks like----"
The heavy train of bleating sheep began to crawl up the grade. The Sheep
King stood at the door of the rear car looking fixedly at the slinking
figure so obviously waiting for the caboose to pass.
Dr. Harpe threw her black medicine case upon the platform.
"Give us a hand." The words were a demand, but there was appeal in the
eyes upturned to his as she thrust up her own hand.
"Sure." The cordiality in the Sheep King's voice was forced as he
dragged her aboard; and in his curious looks, his constraint of manner,
the sly glances and averted, grinning faces of his helpers inside, Dr.
Harpe read her fate.
"Your name," Essie Tisdale had said, "will be a byword in every
sheep-camp and bunk-house in the country."
Sick with a baffled feeling of defeat and the realization that the
prophecy of the girl she hated already had come true, Dr. Harpe sat on
the top step of the caboose, her chin buried in her hands, with moody,
malignant eyes watching Crowheart fade as the bleating, ill-smelling
sheep train crept up the grade.