of the mountains. They were wonderfully beautiful so, but the woman
looking out at them was not thinking of them as beautiful. She was
thinking of them as monuments of coldness. To her it was as if they had
locked that valley in to merciless cold.

But it was not the sunset colors that really marked coming night for
her. All through that winter something else had marked night, something
she tried to keep from looking out at, but which she was not able to
hold away from. She was looking at it now, looking off into the
adjoining field where the sheep were huddling for the night.

They had begun their huddling some time before. With the first dimming
of the light, the first wave of new cold that meant coming night, a few
of them would get together; others would gather around them, then more
and more. Now there was the struggle not to be left on the outside. The
outer ones were pushing toward the center; they knew by other nights
that this night would be frigid, that they could only keep alive by that
warmth they could get from one another. Yet there were always some that
must make that outer rim of the big circle, must be left there to the
unbroken cold. She watched them; it had become a terrible thing for her
to see, but she could not keep from looking. Many of those unprotected
sheep had died that bitter winter; others would die before spring came.
It was a cruel country, a country of cold.

That was their flock of sheep. They had been driven there the summer
before from the lambing grounds in the mountains. The day they got there
the lambs were exhausted from the long journey. One of them had dropped
before the house and died right there beside the field it had come the
long way to gain. Her efforts to revive it were useless; the little
thing was worn out. They were all of them close to worn out. And now
they had the winter to fight; night after night she watched them
huddling there, the big pitiful mass of them out in the bitter cold. It
was the way of the country to leave them so; the only way, the sheep men
said, that sheep could be made to pay. They estimated that the loss by
freezing was small compared with what would be the cost of shelter for
droves that ran into thousands, into tens of thousands.

Ruth would wake at night and think of them huddled out there, would lie
thinking of them as she drew the covers around herself, think of them
when the wind drove against the house, and often, as tonight, when it
was