ticulating figure.

At first, as she obeyed the summons, she thought the summoner a man, but
on near view it proved itself a woman, of broad, massive hips and
shoulders, dressed in a man's flannel shirt and a pair of large corduroy
trousers, their legs tucked into high cowboy boots. She wore no hat, and
her hair was cut square across her neck and forehead; hair of a dark
rusty red, it was, and matched eyes like dark panes of glass before a
fire, red-brown and very bright, ruddy eyes in a square, ruddy face,
which, with its short, straight, wide-bridged nose, well-shaped lips,
square chin, and brilliant teeth, made up a striking and not unattractive
countenance.

"I've got a horse here; won't stand," said the woman. "Will you hold
his head? Can leaking back here in my wagon, leaking all over my
other stuff."

The horse came round the corner. He moved resolutely to meet them. He
was the boniest, small horse Sheila had ever seen--a shadow of a horse,
one-eyed, morose, embittered. The harness hung loose upon his meagerness;
the shafts stuck up like the points of a large collar on a small old man.

"He's not running away," explained the owner superfluously. "It's just
that he can't stop. You'd think, to look at him, that stopping would
be his favorite sport. But you'd be mistaken. Go he must. He's kind of
always crazy to get there--Lord knows where--probably to the end of
his life."

Sheila held the horse, and rubbed his nose with her small and gentle
hand. The creature drooped under the caress and let its lower lip, with a
few stiff white hairs, hang and quiver bitterly. It half-closed its one
useful eye, a pale eye of intense, colorless disillusionment.

When the wagon stopped, a dog who was trotting under it stopped too
and lay down in the dust, panting. Sheila bent her head a little to
see the dog. She had a child's intense interest in animals. Through
the dimness she made out a big, wolfish creature with a splendid,
clean, gray coat, his pointed nose, short, pointed ears, deep, wild
eyes, and scarlet tongue, set in a circular ruff of black. His bushy
tail curled up over his back.

"What kind of dog is that?" asked Sheila, thinking the great animal under
the wagon better fitted to pull the load than the shadowy little horse in
front of it.

"Quarter wolf," answered the woman in her casual manner of speech, her
resonant voice falling pleasantly on the light coolness of the evening
air; "Malamute. This fellow was