A WARNING
"I can't hold dem ewes and lambs on de bed-ground no more! Dey know it's
time to be gettin' up to deir summer range; nobody has to tell a sheep
when to move on."
The Swede swirled his little round hat on his equally round little head
and winked rapidly as he gave vent to his indignant protest. Kate looked
at him in silence for a moment and then said in sudden decision:
"You can start to-morrow, Oleson."
The early summer was fulfilling the promise of a hot rainless spring.
Bitter Creek was drying up rapidly and the water holes, stagnant and
strongly alkaline, had already poisoned a few sheep. The herders could
not understand the sheep woman's delay in moving to the mountains.
"I'm runnin' myself ragged over these hills tryin' to hold back them
yearlin's," Bunch declared. Bowers, too, having his own special brand of
grief with the buck herd, had looked the interrogation he had not
voiced. Kate herself knew that the sheep should have been higher up,
away from the ticks and flies and on good food and water all of two
weeks ago, but, on one pretext or another, had postponed giving the
order to start, though she knew in her heart that the real reason was
because Disston had said he was coming again.
Now she told herself contemptuously that she was no different from the
homesick Nebraskan, and, having made up her mind, lost no time in giving
each herder his instructions as to when and where to move his sheep.
Kate never paid wages for anything that she could do herself, so the
morning after her decision to start for the mountains she was in the
saddle and leading two work horses on the way to move Oleson's and
Bowers's camps before the sun was up.
The two sheep wagons were a considerable distance apart and the road
over the broken country to the spot where Kate wished Oleson to make his
first camp was a rough one, therefore it was late in the afternoon when
Kate reached Bowers's camp--too late to pull the wagon toward the
mountains that night.
She pulled the harness from the tired horses, slipped on their nose bags
with their allowance of oats, and, when they had finished, hobbled and
turned them loose to graze in the wide gulch where the wagon stood. Then
she warmed up a few pieces of fried mutton--and this, with a piece of
baking-powder bread and a cup of water from the rivulet that trickled
through the gulch, constituted her frugal supper.
While driving the sheep wagon it had required all her attention to throw
the brake to keep the wagon off the horses' heels, and release it as
quickly, to select the best of a precarious road and maintain the
wagon's equilibrium, but immediately the strain was over and her mind
free to ramble, her thoughts reverted at once to Disston, in spite of
her efforts to direct them elsewhere.
Activity is the recognized panacea for a heavy heart, and efficacious
while it lasts, but with a lull it makes itself felt like the return of
pain through a dying opiate; and so it was with Kate as she lay
wide-eyed on the bunk to-night with both the door and window open,
while a warm wind, faintly scented with the wild peas that purpled the
side of the gulch, blew across her face.
The rivulet gurgled under the overhanging willows and alder brush. A
belated kildeer broke the night stillness with its cry. The hobbles
clanked as the horses thumped their fore feet in working their way
slowly to the top of the gulch. Bowers fired his evening salute before
retiring as a hint to the coyotes, and, sometimes, when the wind veered,
a far-off tinkle as a bell-sheep stirred on the bed-ground came to
Kate's ears--all were familiar sounds, so familiar that she heard them
only subconsciously. In the same way she saw the dark outlines of
objects inside the sheep wagon--the turkey-wing duster thrust between an
oak bow and the canvas, the outline of the coffee pot on the stove, the
cherished frying pans dangling on their nails, her rifle standing on the
bench within reach. So far as she knew, she and Bowers were the only
human beings within miles, yet she felt no fear; to be alone in the
sheep wagon in the dusk of the gulch held no new sensation for her.
She was thinking of Disston as the door of the wagon swung gently to and
fro, rattling the frying pan which hung on a nail on the lower half of
it, of her brusque and ungracious reply when he had told her he was
coming again to see her, of the sorry figure she had cut beside the girl
he had brought, and of her fierce resentment at the girl's covert
ridicule. She had shocked and disgusted Disston beyond doubt by the
manner in which she had retaliated, yet she knew that in similar
circumstances she would do the same again, for her first impulse
nowadays was to strike back harder than she was struck.
It seemed, she reflected, as though everything about her, her
disposition, her history, her environment and work forbade any of the
pleasant episodes, which the average woman accepted as a matter of
course, ever happening in her life. To be an object of ridicule, the
target of somebody's wit, appeared to be her lot. At odds with humanity,
engaged almost constantly in combating the handicaps imposed by Nature,
the serenity of the normal woman's life was not for her.
Anyway, one thing was certain; her poor little romance, builded upon so
slight a foundation as an impulsive boy's ephemeral interest, was over.
He would not come again--and she cared. She put her hand to her throat.
It ached with the lump in it--yes, she cared.
The tears slipped down and wet the flour-sack pillow case. The outlines
of the coffee pot on the stove and the frying pan dangling on the door
grew blurred. Her eyes were still swimming when she suddenly held her
breath.
An unfamiliar sound had caught her ear, a sound like a stealthy
footstep. In the instant that she waited to be sure, a hand and forearm
reached inside the door and laid something on the floor.
"Who's there?"
There was no response to the imperative interrogation.
With the same movement that she swung her feet over the edge of the bunk
she reached for her rifle and ran to the door. There was not a sound or
sign that was unusual save that the horses had stopped eating and with
ears thrown forward were looking down the gulch. She picked up the paper
that lay on the floor, struck a match and read a scrawl by its flare:
WARNING
Stop where you are if you ain't looking for trouble. Them range maggots
of yourn ain't wanted on the mountain this summer.
What did it mean? The match burned to her fingers while she conjectured.
Who was objecting? Neifkins? Since there was ample range for both, and
each had kept to the boundaries which he tacitly recognized, there had
been no dispute. A horse outfit grazing a small herd of horses during
the summer months, and a dry-farmer with a couple of milch cows, who,
while he plowed and planted and prayed for rain, was incidentally
demonstrating the exact length of time that a human being could live on
jack-rabbit and navy beans, were the only other users of the mountain
range. Was it the hoax of some local humorist? Or an attempt to
intimidate and worry her by someone whose enmity she had incurred?
Whatever the motive, was it possible that any one knew her so little as
to believe they could frighten her in any such manner? Her lip curled as
she asked herself the question. She had imagined that she had at least
proved her courage.
Bowers, she knew, would stand by her; the others, perhaps, would use the
familiar argument that it cost too much for repairs to be shot up for
forty-five dollars a month.
Finally, she tossed the note on the sideboard and stepped out on the
wagon tongue. The stars glimmered overhead and the shadows lay black and
mysterious in the gulch, but she felt no fear as she stood there
straight and soldierlike, her eyes sparkling defiance. She had, rather,
a feeling of gratitude for the diversion--a hope that the threatened
"trouble" might act as a kind of counter-irritant to the dull ache of her
heavy heart.