Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
Douglas saddled him and led him softly out of hearing of the wagon, then sprang upon his back and put him to the canter. Two hours later, Douglas was banging on the door frame of Fowler's sheep-wagon. "It's just me, Douglas Spencer," he replied to the preacher's startled query. "I had to come over to ask you something." A light flashed through the canvas. Then the door opened. "Come in! Come in!
He brought her out here from Omaha, and left her up there on the side of the mountain in a little log cabin above Meander while he went off foolin' around with them sheep, the way them fellers does. I tell you when you git sheep on the brain you don't eat at home more than once in three months. You live around in a sheep-wagon, cuttin' tails off of lambs, and all such fool things as that."
An hour after midday there came riding over the hills Tim Sullivan and a stranger. They stopped at the ruins of the sheep-wagon, where Tim dismounted and nosed around, then came on down the draw, where Mackenzie was ranging the sheep. Tim was greatly exercised over the loss of the wagon. He pitched into Mackenzie about it as soon as he came within speaking distance.
She chose "dark" at random, hating to display her ignorance of the alternatives, with the happy result that her bed was made up to leeward of the great sheep-wagon, in a nice little corner of the State of Wyoming. Mary was grateful that she had chosen dark.
Somebody was calling on the hill behind the sheep-wagon. Mackenzie sat up, a chill in his bones, for he had fallen asleep on watch beside the ashes of his supper fire. He listened, the rack of sleep clearing from his brain in a breath. It was Dad Frazer, and the hour was past the turn of night. Mackenzie answered, the sound of a horse under way immediately following.
She dropped her bridle-reins, springing back a quick step, turning her eyes about for some weapon by which she might retaliate. Hector Hall's pistols hung on the end-gate of the sheep-wagon not more than twenty feet away. It seemed that Joan covered the distance in a bound, snatched one of the guns and fired.
He was sitting in a gully, his back against the bank, feeling a weariness over him that he blamed mainly to the weight of the revolvers and cartridge belt in his weakened state, when he saw Reid coming back. Reid broke over the hill beyond the sheep-wagon at a gallop, hatless, riding low, and the sound of shots behind him beat the tune to which he traveled.
And so Joan believed it to be, also, after sitting for hours in the hot sheep-wagon beside the mangled, unconscious schoolmaster, who did not move in pain, nor murmur in delirium, nor drop one word from his clenched, still lips to tell whose hand had inflicted this terrible punishment. And the range seemed bent on making a secret of it, also.
How he found his way to Dad Frazer's camp Mackenzie never could tell. It was long past dark when he stumbled to the sheep-wagon wherein the old herder and his squaw lay asleep, arriving without alarm of dogs, his own collies at his heels. It was the sharp-eared Indian woman who heard him, and knew by his faltering step that it was somebody in distress. She ran out and caught him as he fell.
She mounted the hill-crest for a wider survey, and there in a little valley below her she saw a flock of sheep grazing, while farther along the ridge stood a sheep-wagon, a strange and rather disconcerting figure striding up and down beside it. Doubtless it was the shepherd, she understood.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking