ht. When, at last, she turned and started back, she
carried, as trophies of her search, her mother's wooden chopping-bowl,
dusty and unharmed, and, thrust in her hat-band, a solitary memento of
the vanished crowing hen, a broken, soiled white feather.

XVI

THE RESERVATION TRIP

A HUGE pen with V-shaped wings, patterned after those built by the
Indians to imprison antelope, thrust its long, high neck over the
railroad embankment and against the open doors of the cattle-cars as
they were rolled along the siding. Through the pen and up the jutting
neck into the stifling, wheeled boxes, lowing in fright and advancing
unwillingly, were driven the Dutchman's fat steers and the beeves
belonging to the cattleman. When a long train was filled with them, a
wildcat engine backed down from the station, coupled on to the waiting
freight, and went lumbering away with its hungry, thirsty load, bound
for a packing-house in a distant city.

The little girl watched the shipping of the stock, her heart sore with
the thought that only a short week stood between the home herd and the
shambles. Never before had she mourned the departure of the cattle, for,
spared the long ride in foul, torturing confinement, they had simply
disappeared across the prairie in the direction of Sioux Falls or
Yankton, contentedly feeding as they went, and with the three big
brothers riding slowly behind them. It had always been the same with the
sheep. But now there rang continually in her ears the piteous bleating
of the little flock she had learned to love through the summer months,
and that, lured by a treacherous bell-wether, had passed through the
pen, some days before, and crossed the long, high Bridge of Sighs.

But what she feared for the animals yet to be sold never came to pass.
The morning before the big brothers were to round-up, a trooper rode in
from the reservation with an urgent message from the new commandant,
asking that as many head of beeves as possible be sent to the post. The
letter stated that a stock-raiser, with whom negotiations had been all
but closed, had received an offer from a Kansas City buyer that advanced
the army terms by a fraction of a cent per pound on the hoof. The
commissary, therefore, was compelled to look elsewhere for meat.

A reply was at once sent back, promising a drove from the farm-house
within a week. And as the little girl saw the cavalry horse speeding
westward with the message, she flew into the