Chapter 17. Extremes Meet

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_ CHAPTER XVII. EXTREMES MEET

Kate raised herself on an elbow and looked out through the open window above her bunk where the first streak of dawn was showing. The soft air was redolent of things growing and the pungent odor of sagebrush. The bush birds were chirping furiously; all the soul-stirring magic of spring in the foothills was in its perfection; but it conveyed nothing to Kate save the fact that another day was beginning in which to get through the work she had outlined.

She was like that now--practical, driving, sparing neither herself nor others--apparently without sentiment or any outside interest. Her sheep and that which pertained to them seemed to fill her whole horizon.

The interior of the wagon alone was sufficient to disclose the change in Kate. As the growing light made the dim outlines clearer it brought out on the floor and side benches a promiscuous clutter that contained nothing suggesting a feminine occupant. There was no scrollwork in soap on the window now. On the contrary, the glass badly needed washing. No decorative advertisement, no bouquet above the mirror, or festal juniper thrust between the oak bows and the canvas. A pile of market reports and Sheep Growers' Journals replaced the fashion magazines, while the shelves that had contained romances and histories were filled with books on wool-growing.

The floor space and side benches were occupied by new horse shoes, a can of paint, sheep shears, a lard bucket filled with nails and staples, boxes of rifle ammunition, riding boots and arctics, a halter and a broken bridle.

It all said plainly that the wagon represented only a place for sleep and shelter, yet, since she had no other, it was home to the sheep woman.

Kate raised herself higher on her elbow and called sharply:

"Bowers?"

A sleepy response came from somewhere.

"It's daylight--hurry!"

Bowers's voice, plaintive but stronger, answered:

"I'd be ten pounds heavier if it wasn't for that word 'hurry.'"

Kate smiled faintly. Complaining and threatening to mutiny was to Bowers merely a form of recreation and Kate knew that nothing short of a charge of dynamite could blast Bowers loose from his beloved wagon. He spoke invariably of the ranch as "Our Outfit" and he could not have been more faithful if their interests had been identical, though he missed no occasion to declare that it robbed a man of his self-respect to work for a woman.

The chief complaint of Kate's herders was against her brusque imperious manner and her exactions, which took no account of their physical limitations. Fatigue, weather, long hours without food or sleep under trying conditions, were never excuses to satisfy her for the slightest neglect of duty, or any error of judgment which worked to her disadvantage. She seemed to regard them as human machines and they felt it. All save Bowers obeyed without liking her.

"Headquarters" were still on the original homestead, but they had grown since they had consisted of Kate's sheep wagon, Mormon Joe's tepee and a ten-by-twelve cook tent. Now it looked like a canvas village when first seen through the willows, for there was a dining tent connected with the cook tent by a fly, and near it a commissary tent where were heaped supplies, saddles, harness and all that it was needful to keep under shelter, while around the tents was a semicircle of sheep wagons. There was a substantial horse corral, and across the creek the sheep-pens had tripled in size, with a row of well-built shearing-pens beside them. Under a long shed with a corrugated-iron roofing there were sacks of wool piled to a height which gave Kate a feeling of deep satisfaction each time she passed them.

Everything showed thrift, economy, a practical intelligence and a Spartan disregard for personal comfort. The camp was as devoid of luxuries and superfluities as an Indian village. And on a hillside where the afternoon sun lay longest there was a sunken grave enclosed in wire. Here Mormon Joe was turning to dust, unavenged, forgotten nearly, by all save a handful.

Kate felt that she had every reason to be satisfied with her progress and to congratulate herself upon the judgment she had displayed in continuing to raise sheep for their fleece when the price of wool was nil, practically, and every discouraged grower in the state, including the astute Neifkins, was putting in "black-faces" that were better for mutton. Now a protective administration was advancing the price of wool, and when she sold she would have her reward for her courage. She had been the first to import a few of the coarser wool sheep from Canada and the experiment had proved that they were especially adapted to the rocky mountainous range of that section. The Rambouillets she purchased had kept fat where the merinos had lost weight on the same feed. The ewes had sheared on an average of close to twelve pounds and the bucks more than fifteen, a few as high as twenty-five. And now she wanted more of them.

Thus circumstances seemed to have diverted her tastes into new channels entirely. As she had once yearned for clothes, and companionship, and happiness, she now with the same intensity wanted sheep, and more sheep, and better sheep. Little by little, too, and unobtrusively, she was acquiring script land, lieu land, long-time leases, patented homesteads, and the water holes which controlled ranges. To do all this meant the elimination of every unnecessary expenditure and she denied herself cheerfully, wearing clothes that were no better than her herders', shabby sometimes to grotesqueness.

The coming autumn she would have old ewes and wether lambs to ship sufficient to cover her expenses, while the sale of her wool at present prices would enable her to grade up her herds to a point that would be approximately where she would have them. She had seen too many hard winters and short ranges ever again to be over-sanguine, but she knew that unless some unprecedented loss came to her she was well on the way to the fulfillment of her ambition. A few good years and the "Sheep Queen of Bitter Creek" would no longer be a title of derision. But these thoughts were her secrets and she had no confidants. Bowers was the nearest approach to one, but even he knew nothing of the incentive which made her seemingly tireless herself and possessed of a driving energy that made all who worked for her fully earn their wages.

Bowers was preparing breakfast by lamplight when Kate clanged the triangle of iron to awaken two herders asleep in their "tarps" under the willows. They crawled out in the clothes in which they had slept, dishevelled and grumbling.

They breakfasted by lamplight, seated on benches on either side of the long table improvised from boards and cross-pieces of two-by-fours. There was no tablecloth and the dishes were of agate-ware as formerly. Kate ate hurriedly and in silence, but the usual airy persiflage went on between Bowers and the herders.

"It near froze ice this mornin'," Bowers observed by way of making conversation. "I was so cold that I had to shiver myself into a pressperation before I could get breakfast."

"I slept chilly all night," said Bunch, and added, looking askance at his erstwhile bed-fellow, "They ain't no more heat in Oleson than a rattler."

"Looks like you'd steal yurself a blanket somewhur," Bowers commented.

"I wouldn't a slept the fore part of last night anyhow," Bunch said pointedly.

"I hope I didn't keep you awake with my singin'?" Bowers's voice expressed a world of solicitude.

"Was that you makin' that comical noise?" Bunch elevated his brows in astonishment. "I thought one of the horses was down, and chokin'."

Bowers slammed a pyramid of pancakes upon the table.

"Why don't you take a shovel, Bunch?" he demanded. "You're losin' time eatin' with your knife and fingers."

"These sweat-pads of yourn would be pretty fair if 'twant fur the lumps of sody a feller's allus bitin' into," the herder commented.

"Maybe you'd ruther do the cookin' so you kin git 'em to suit you," Bowers retorted, nettled.

"Oh, I ain't kickin'--I lived with Injuns a year and I kin eat anything."

"You got manners like a pet 'coon," Bowers eyed the herder with disfavor as that person shoved a cake into his mouth with one hand and reached for the molasses jug with the other.

Kate paid no attention to this amiable exchange of personalities, for while she ate with the men she seldom took part in the conversation. Now she said, rising:

"Stack the dishes, Bowers, and come over and help us."

"Yes, Bowers," Bunch mocked when Kate was well out of hearing, "come over and run down fifty or sixty sheep and wrastle a few three-hundred poun' bucks and drag around several wool sacks and halter-break that two-year-ol' colt while you're restin'."

Bowers resented instantly any criticism of Kate by her herders. But he himself saw and regretted the change in her. Occasionally he wished that he dared remind her of the old adage that "Molasses catches more flies than vinegar," for there were times when she made difficulties for herself by her brusqueness, antagonizing where it would have been as easy to engender a feeling of friendliness. She was more interesting, perhaps, but less lovable, and this Bowers felt vaguely.

The work that morning went slowly. Bunch and Oleson moved with exasperating deliberation and made stupid blunders. The brunt of the labor fell upon Bowers and Kate, who soon were grimy with dust and perspiration. As the sun rose higher, so did Kate's temper, and her voice grew sharper and more imperious each time she spoke to the shirkers. The fact that the present task was necessary, because of carelessness on their part, did not tend to increase her tolerance. Bunch, herding a band of yearlings, had allowed them to get back to their mothers. To allow a "mix" was one of the supreme offenses and the herders knew that only necessity ever made Kate overlook it. If new men had been available, both Bunch and Oleson would have received their time checks quickly.

Kate had been at the "dodge gate" until she was dizzy. Her eyes ached with the strain of watching the chute and her arm ached with the strain of slamming the gate to-and-fro, which cut them into their proper divisions. The last sheep was through finally, but not until the sun was high and the heat made exertion an effort.

"There are some yearlings in there that belong in the 'bum bunch,' and six or eight with wrong earmarks. We'll have to catch them." Kate set the example by walking in among them, and immediately a cloud of dust arose as the frightened sheep ran bleating in a circle. Above the din Kate's voice rose sharp and imperative as her trained eye singled out the sheep she wanted.

"There, Oleson, that one! Bowers, catch that lame one! Hold that sheep with the sore mouth, Bunch, till I look at it."

The sheep dodged and piled up in one end of the corral to the point of suffocation, then around and around in a dizzy circle, with Kate and the herders each intent on the particular sheep he was bent on catching.

In the midst of it a laugh, feminine, musical, amused, rang out above the turmoil. Kate looked up quickly. Her swift glance showed her the figure of a man and a girl leaning over the gate at the far end of that division.

She frowned slightly.

"Bunch," curtly, "tell those people to stand back."

Bunch waved his hand and yelled bluntly:

"Git back furderer!"

Again the light feminine laugh reached Kate and her lips tightened as she thought cynically:

"Dudes from the Scissor Ranch over to look at the freak woman sheepherder."

Disston winced a little. Kate might misunderstand and take offense at Beth Rathburn's laughter.

But Kate ignored, then forgot them, until Bowers, working at that end of the corral, came back and jerked his thumb over his shoulder:

"That feller wants to speak to you."

Kate looked up impatiently, hesitated, wiped her face on the sleeve of her forearm and walked over without great alacrity.

As she went forward Kate looked only at the girl, who, cool and dainty in her sheer white muslin, her fair face reflecting the glow from the pink silk lining of her parasol, small of stature and as exquisitely feminine as a Dresden china shepherdess, was her direct antithesis.

Kate's divided skirt was bedraggled, a rent showed in the sleeve of her blouse, her riding boots were shabby, and the fingers were out of her worn gauntlets. Her hat was white with the dust of the corral, her hair dishevelled and her face, still damp with perspiration, was grimy. But somehow she managed to be picturesque and striking. Her clothes could not hide the long beautiful curves of her tall figure and she carried herself very erect, with something dignified and authoritative in her manner, while her wide free gestures were the movements of independence and self-reliance.

Disston looking at her eagerly and intently as she came closer noted that the changes the years had made were chiefly in her expression. The friendly candor of her eyes was replaced by a look that was coldly speculative, and her lips that had smiled so readily now expressed determination. Her whole bearing was indicative of concentration, singleness of purpose and patience or, more strictly, a dogged endurance. These things Disston saw in his swift scrutiny before she recognized him.

She stopped abruptly, her eyes widened and her lips parted in astonishment.

"Hughie!" She went forward swiftly, her eyes shining with the glad welcome he remembered and all her old-time impetuosity of manner. Then she checked herself as suddenly. She did not withdraw the hand she had extended, but the smile froze on her lips and all the warmth went out of her greeting. She added formally, "I wasn't expecting to see any one I knew--you surprised me."

Wondering at her change of manner, he laughed as he shook hands with her.

"I hoped to--it's one of the things I've been looking forward to."

Beth Rathburn was looking, not at Kate, but at Disston, when he introduced them; she could not remember when she had seen him so animated, so genuinely glad.

"I've been enormously interested--however do you do it?" Miss Rathburn said in her cool drawl, while she studied Kate's face curiously.

"It's my business," Kate replied simply, regarding her with equal interest.

"And you live out here by yourself, without any other woman? Aren't you lonely?"

"I'm too busy."

"You work with the men--just like one of them?"

"Just like a man," Kate repeated evenly.

"It is quite--quite wonderful!" Beth subtly conveyed the impression that on the contrary she thought it was dreadful.

Kate drew back her head a little and looked at her visitor.

"Is it?" coolly.

"And Hugh never has told me a word about you--he's been so reticent." She laid her finger tips upon his arm in proprietory fashion while a sly malice shone through the mischievousness of her smile.

Disston colored.

Kate replied ironically:

"Perhaps he is one of those who do not boast of their acquaintance with sheepherders."

"Kate!" he protested vigorously.

She regarded him with a faint inscrutable smile until Bowers interrupted:

"How many bells shall I put on them yearlin's?"

"One in fifty; and cut those five wethers out of the ewe herd. Catch those yearling ewes with the wether earmark and change to the shoe-string."

"What do you want done with that feller in the pen?"

"Saw his horn off and I'll throw him into the buck herd later."

"Where'll Oleson hold his sheep?"

"Well up the creek; and if he lets them mix again--"

"He says he can't do nothin' without a dog," Bowers ventured.

"Then he'd better quit right now--you can tell him." Kate's voice was curt, incisive, her tone final. "He can't use a dog on these Rambouillets--they're high-strung, nervous, different from the merinos. Anyway, I won't have it." She swung about to indicate that the conversation was ended.

"That's all Greek to me. Do you understand it, Hugh?" Miss Rathburn's lofty drawl, her faintly patronizing manner, all indicated amusement.

"I don't know much about sheep," he admitted.

"Do you know--" to Kate, with all her social manner--"you are deliciously unique?"

Kate, who detected the sneer, but had no social manner to meet it, asked brusquely:

"In what way?"

"You're so--" she hesitated for a word and seemed to search her vocabulary for the right one--"so strong-minded."

Kate's eyes were sparkling.

"If by that you mean intelligent, I thank you for the compliment, and I'm sorry that I can't--" She checked herself, but the inference was clear that she intended to add--"return it."

Miss Rathburn's fair skin became a deeper pink than even a pink-lined parasol warranted, while Kate addressed herself to Disston exclusively.

Disston had listened in dismay. Whatever was the matter? In truth, it must be, he told himself, that women were natural enemies. He never had seen this feline streak in Beth to recognize it, and he had felt instinctively that, on Kate's side, from the first glance she had not liked her visitor.

To Beth Rathburn, it was ridiculous that Disston should take seriously this girl who, at the moment, was considerably less presentable than any one of their own servants--that he should treat her with all the deference he showed to any woman of his acquaintance, as if she were of his own class exactly! And a worse offense was his obviously keen interest in her. It was a new sensation for the southern girl to be ignored, or at least omitted from the conversation, and each second her resentment grew, though the underlying cause was that she felt herself overshadowed by Kate's stronger personality.

To remind Disston of his remissness she walked over to a pen where Bowers, astride a powerful buck, saw in hand, was having his own troubles. She returned almost immediately, shuddering prettily:

"He's sawing that sheep's horn off! Doesn't it hurt it?"

"Not nearly so much as letting it grow to put its eye out."

"I presume you do that, too?" The girl's eyes and tone were mocking.

"Oh, yes, I do everything that's necessary." There was something savage in Kate's composure as she turned directly and looked at her. "I have sheared sheep when I had no money to pay herders, slept out in the hills on the ground on a saddle blanket with my saddle for a pillow. I've made my underwear out of flour sacks and my skirts of denim. I've lived on corn meal and salt pork and dried apples and rabbits for months at a time. I eat and hobnob with sheepherders from one year's end to the other. I'm out with a drop bunch in the lambing season, and I brand the bucks myself--on the nose--burn them with a hot iron. I'll send you word when I'm going to do it again and you can come over--it's e-normously amusing. Just wait a minute--come over to the fence here--and I'll show you something. I'm even more deliciously unique than you imagine."

She walked to the gate and vaulted it easily. Hughie and Beth could do no less than follow as far as the fence, while Kate stood searching the band of sheep that milled about her. When she found what she sought, she made one of her swift swoops, caught the sheep by the hind leg and threw it with a dextrous twist. Then holding it between her knees, she took a knife from her pocket and tested the edge of the blade with her thumb.

The girl at the fence cried aghast:

"Oh, what's she going to do?" Then she clutched Disston's arm and stared in fascinated horror while Kate ear-marked the sheep and released it.

"She's barbarous--horrible--impossible!"

"You brought it on yourself, Beth," he reminded her in a low tone. "You--goaded her,"

"And you defend her?" she demanded, furiously. "Take me away from here--I'm nauseated!"

"I'll say good-bye--you go on, and I'll join you."

He vaulted the fence and went up to Kate, who was going on with her work and ignoring them.

"Kate," he put out his hand, "I'm sorry."

She disregarded it and turned upon him, her eyes blazing:

"Don't you bring any more velvet-pawed kittens here to sharpen their claws in me!"

"Kate," earnestly, "I wouldn't have been the means of hurting you for anything I can think of."

"I'm not hurt," she retorted, "I'm mad."

"I'm coming to see you again--alone, next time. I want to know why you did not answer my letters--I want to know lots of things--why you're so different--what has changed you so much."

"And you imagine I'll tell you?" she asked dryly.

"You wouldn't?"

She shrugged a shoulder. "I don't babble any longer."

"It's nothing to you whether I come or not?"

"I'm very busy."

He looked at her for a moment in silence, then he held out his hand once more.

"I am disappointed in you!"

"Are you, Hughie?" she said indifferently, as she took his hand without warmth.

"Bowers!" Her tone was energetic and businesslike as she turned sharply. "Come here and help me earmark the rest of these yearlings."

Disston stood for a moment, feeling himself dismissed and already forgotten, yet conscious with a rush of emotion which startled him, that in spite of the fact that her dress, speech, manner, occupation, mode of life violated every ideal and tradition, she appealed to him powerfully, stirred him as had no other woman. She aroused within him an enveloping tenderness--a desire to protect her--though she seemed the last woman who needed or cared for either.

When Oleson with the ewes and lambs was well up the creek, Kate gave Bunch his parting instructions:

"Let them spread out more. You Montana herders feed too close--it's a fault with all of you. Can't you see the grass is different here? Use your head a little. Got plenty of cartridges? I saw cat tracks in a patch of sand along the creek yesterday. He got eight lambs in his last raid on Oleson's band. I'll have to put out some poison."

She walked slowly across the foot log after the last lamb had leaped bleating through the gate. She inspected her boots, noting that one heel had run over, and looked at her gauntlets, with the fingers protruding. Then, when she stepped inside the wagon, she walked straight to the mirror and stared at her reflection--dishevelled, her face frankly dirty, about her neck a handkerchief that was faded and unbecoming, a mouth that drooped a little with fatigue, her whole face wearing an expression of determination that she realized might very easily become hard. A few more years of work and exposure and she would be grim-featured and hopelessly weather-beaten. No wonder that girl had looked at her as though she were some curious alien creature with whom she had nothing at all in common! And Hughie had said he was disappointed in her.

This was Katie Prentice, she said to herself--Katie Prentice for whom the future, to which she had looked forward eagerly, had been another word for happiness--the Katie Prentice who had tripped in and out of that air castle of her building, looking like this girl that Hugh had brought with him. Now this image was the realization!

Just for the fraction of a second the corners of her mouth twitched, her chin quivered--then she raised it defiantly:

"To do what you set out to do--that's the great thing. Nothing else matters."

She slammed the door behind her and untied her horse from the wagon wheel.

"Come on, Cherokee, we'll go and see what that Nebraskan's doing."

The Nebraskan was standing on a hilltop when she first saw him, facing the east and as motionless as the monument of stones beside him. His sheep were nowhere visible.

As Kate rode closer the same glance that disclosed the band of sheep showed her a coyote creeping down the side of a draw in which they were feeding. She reached instantly for her carbine and drew it from its scabbard, but she was not quick enough to shoot it before it had jumped for the lamb it had been stalking. The coyote missed his prey, but the lamb, which had been feeding a little apart from the others, ran into the herd with a terrified bleat and the whole band fled on a common impulse.

The coyote followed the lamb it had singled out, through all its twistings and turnings, but maneuvering to work it to the outside where it could cut the lamb away from the rest and pull it down at its leisure.

Kate dared not shoot into the herd, and after a second's consideration as to whether or not to follow, she thrust the rifle back in its scabbard and turned her horse up the hill.

Even the sound of hoofs did not rouse the herder from his deep absorption. His hands were hanging at his sides, and his mouth was partially open. He was staring towards the east with unblinking eyes, and with as little evidence of life as though he had died standing.

"What are you looking at, Davis?"

He whirled about, startled.

"I was calc'latin' that Nebrasky must lay 'bout in that direction." He pointed to a pass in the mountains.

"A little homesick, aren't you?" Her voice was ominously quiet.

"Don't know whether I'm homesick or bilious; when I gits one I generally gits the other."

"You were wondering just then what your wife was doing that minute, weren't you?"

Her suavity deceived him and he grinned sheepishly.

"Somethin' like that, maybe."

"You are married, then?"

The herder began to see where he was drifting.

"Er--practically," he replied ambiguously.

"So you lied when you joined the Outfit and I asked you?"

The herder whined plaintively.

"I heerd you wouldn't hire no fambly man if you knew it."

"When I make a rule there's a reason for it. 'Family men' are unreliable--they'll quit in lambing time because the baby's teething; they'll leave at a moment's notice when a letter comes that their wife wants to see them; their mind isn't on their work and they're restless and discontented. I knew you were married the first time I found you with your sheep behind instead of ahead of you."

"You can't understand the feelin's of a fambly man away from home." He rolled his eyes sentimentally. The subject was one which was dear to the uxorious herder. He pulled out the tremolo stop in his voice and quavered: "You feel like you're goin' 'round with nothin' inside of you--a empty shell--or a puff-ball with the puff out of it. You got a feelin' all the time like somethin's pullin' you." He looked so hard towards Nebraska that he all but toppled. "Somethin' here," he laid a hand on his heart, approximately, "like a plaster drawin'. Love," eloquently, "changes your hull nature. It makes lambs out o' roughnecks and puts drunks on the wagon. It turns you kind and forgivin' and takes the fight out o' you. It makes you--"

"Maudlin! And weak! And inefficient!" Kate interrupted savagely. "It distracts your thoughts and dissipates your energy. It impairs your judgment, lessens your will power. It's for persons who have no ambition or who have achieved it. For the struggler there's nothing worth bothering with that doesn't take him forward."

"That's a pretty cold-blooded doctrind," declared the shocked herder. "If 'twant for love--"

"If 'twant for love," Kate mimicked harshly, "you wouldn't be indulging in a spell of homesickness and leaving your sheep to the coyotes! Sentiment is lovely in books, but it's expensive in business, so I'm going to fire you. Bowers will be here with the supply wagon to-morrow, so I'll take the sheep until he can relieve me. I'll pay you off and you can walk back to the ranch or," grimly, "take a short cut through the Pass up there--to 'Nebrasky.'" _

Read next: Chapter 18. A Warning

Read previous: Chapter 16. Straws

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