es a week. Not only did this Mexican bring fresh-baked
bread, cold meat, and condensed milk to add to the campers' stock of
salt pork, lentils, and coffee, but he brought messages from the outside
world; gossip from the other herders; and now and then a letter from
Donald's father. These visits were as exciting as to meet an ocean liner
at sea. Gradually, however, Donald looked forward less and less to
seeing the tiny Mexican burros with their loaded paniers wend their way
up the hillsides. He grew into the shepherd life until like Sandy he
found himself courting the sense of isolation and almost resenting the
intrusion of the camp-tender.

He could now understand why the herders who had lived on the range for
years were such a silent lot of men. When his father and he had first
arrived at Crescent Ranch the shepherds had had so little to say that
Donald, who was a sensitive lad, had felt sure that the men did not like
to have them come. Later, however, he had found the herders kindly
despite their taciturn manner. It was not ill-will but habitual silence.

"What a lot of things people say that they don't need to, Sandy," he
observed to the Scotchman one day.

Sandy chuckled outright.

"So you have come to that way of thinking, have you? We'll make a
shepherd of you yet! Well, well, it is true enough. Folks chatter and
chatter and what does it amount to? Many's the time they wish afterward
they had held their tongues. But it is all as we're made. Some drop into
being contented on the range; others cannot bear the stillness. I was
ever happy alone in the open; but my brother Douglas was uneasy as a
colt."

"I didn't know you had a brother, Sandy!" exclaimed Donald, in surprise.

"Aye, a little lad, five years younger than myself."

"What--what became of him, Sandy?"

"What became of him--that's a question that I wish I could answer! He
came to Crescent Ranch years ago with my father and me and was about
the place for a long time. But he was all for the city. He hated the
quiet of the hills. He wanted to be seeing people and to be around in
the rush of things, and he begged my father to let him go to some big
place and find a job. My father was ever a strict man and he would have
none of the youngster's going off by himself. There came a day, though,
when the lad was so sore and unhappy that my father bid him set off for
the East. There was no other way to satisfy the boy. But it was a sad
time for my father--and