alculated that the sheep had passed there the day
before.

An unreasonable antipathy seemed born in him. To be sure he had been
prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable. But
on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath,
weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed
they destroyed. That was what Jean had against them.

An hour later he rode to the crest of a long parklike slope, where new
green grass was sprouting and flowers peeped everywhere. The pines
appeared far apart; gnarled oak trees showed rugged and gray against
the green wall of woods. A white strip of snow gleamed like a moving
stream away down in the woods.

Jean heard the musical tinkle of bells and the baa-baa of sheep and the
faint, sweet bleating of lambs. As he road toward these sounds a dog
ran out from an oak thicket and barked at him. Next Jean smelled a
camp fire and soon he caught sight of a curling blue column of smoke,
and then a small peaked tent. Beyond the clump of oaks Jean
encountered a Mexican lad carrying a carbine. The boy had a swarthy,
pleasant face, and to Jean's greeting he replied, "BUENAS DIAS." Jean
understood little Spanish, and about all he gathered by his simple
queries was that the lad was not alone--and that it was "lambing time."

This latter circumstance grew noisily manifest. The forest seemed
shrilly full of incessant baas and plaintive bleats. All about the
camp, on the slope, in the glades, and everywhere, were sheep. A few
were grazing; many were lying down; most of them were ewes suckling
white fleecy little lambs that staggered on their feet. Everywhere
Jean saw tiny lambs just born. Their pin-pointed bleats pierced the
heavier baa-baa of their mothers.

Jean dismounted and led his horse down toward the camp, where he rather
expected to see another and older Mexican, from whom he might get
information. The lad walked with him. Down this way the plaintive
uproar made by the sheep was not so loud.

"Hello there!" called Jean, cheerfully, as he approached the tent. No
answer was forthcoming. Dropping his bridle, he went on, rather
slowly, looking for some one to appear. Then a voice from one side
startled him.

"Mawnin', stranger."

A girl stepped out from beside a pine. She carried a rifle. Her face
flashed richly brown, but she was not Mexican. This fact, and the
sudden conviction that she had been watching him, somewhat di