home and stayed there. The redsides and the bull
trout in the river would no longer bite, and he remembered now that the
coyote who denned among the rocks well up the mountain had howled last
night as if possessed: all signs of storm and winter.

By noon a penetrating chill had crept into the air, and Bruce looked
oftener across the river.

"It's just like him to stay out and sleep under a rock all night with a
storm coming," he told himself uneasily.

This would be no new thing for Slim in one of his ugly moods, and
ordinarily it did not matter, for he kept his pockets well filled with
strips of jerked elk and venison, while in the rags of his heavy flannel
shirt he seemed as impervious to cold as he was to heat.

Chancing to glance over his shoulder and raise his eyes to the side of
the mountain, which was separated from the one at the back of the bar by
a canyon, a smile of pleasure suddenly lighted Bruce's dark face, and he
stopped rocking.

"Old Felix and his family!" he chuckled. Whimsically he raised both arms
aloft in a gesture of welcome. "Ha--they see me!"

The band of mountain sheep picking their way down the rough side stopped
short and looked.

"It's all of a month since they've been down for salt." Then his face
fell. "By George, we're shy on salt!"

He turned to his rocker, and the sheep started down again, with Old
Felix in the lead, and behind him two yearlings, two ewes, and the
spring lamb.

Their visits were events in Bruce's uneventful life. He felt as
flattered by their confidence as one feels by the preference of a
child. His liking for animals amounted to a passion, and he had been
absurdly elated the first time he had enticed them to the salt, which he
had placed on a flat rock not far from the cabin door. For the first few
visits their soft black eyes, with their amber rims, had followed him
timorously, and they were ready to run at any unusual movement. Then,
one afternoon, they unexpectedly lay down in the soft dirt which banked
the cabin, and he was so pleased that he chuckled softly to himself all
the time they stayed.

Now he laid down his dipper, and started toward the house.

"I'll just take a look, anyhow, and see how much there is."

He eyed uncertainly the small bag of table salt which he took from the
soap-box cupboard nailed to the wall.

"There isn't much of it, that's a fact. I guess they'll have to wait."
He slammed the door of the improvised cupboard hard upon it