s leather
hinges made of a boot-top, and turned away.

"Aw, dog-gone it!" he cried, stopping short. "I haven't got the heart to
disappoint the poor little devils." He turned back and took the salt.

The sheep were just coming out of the canyon between the mountains when
Bruce stepped through the cabin door. Old Felix stopped and stood like a
statue--Old Felix, the Methuselah of the Bitter Roots, who wore the most
magnificent pair of horns that ever grew on a mountain sheep. Solid and
perfect they were, all of nineteen and three-quarters inches at the base
and tapering to needle points. Of incredible weight and size, he carried
them as lightly on his powerful neck as though they were but the shells
of horns. Now, as he stood with his tremulous nozzle outstretched,
sniffing, cautious, wily, old patriarch that he was, he made a picture
which, often as Bruce had seen it, thrilled him through and through.
Behind Old Felix were the frisking lamb and the mild-eyed ewes. They
would not come any closer, but they did not run.

"It wouldn't have lasted but a few days longer anyhow," Bruce murmured
half apologetically as he divided the salt and spread it on the rock. He
added: "I suppose Slim will be sore."

He returned to his work at the river, and the sheep licked the rock
bare; then they lay down in leisurely fashion beside the cabin, their
narrow jaws wagging ludicrously, their eyelids drooping sleepily, secure
in their feeling that all was well.

Bruce had thrust a cold biscuit in the pocket of his shirt, and this he
crumbled for the little bush birds that twittered and chirped in the
thicket of rosebushes which had pushed up through the rocks near the
sand bank.

They perked their heads and looked at him inquiringly when it was gone.

"My Gawd, fellers," he demanded humorously, "don't you ever get filled
up?"

As he rocked he watched the water ouzel teetering on a rock in the
river, joyously shaking from its back the spray which deluged it at
intervals. Bruce observed.

"I'd rather you'd be doing that than me, with the water as cold as it is
and," with a glance at the fast-clouding sky, "getting colder every
minute."

The sheep sensed the approaching storm, and started up the gulch to
their place of shelter under a protecting rim rock close to the peak.

When they were no longer there to watch and think about, Bruce's
thoughts rambled from one subject to another, as do the minds of lonely
persons.

While the w