ng enough I'll pay
back every blow you've ever given me, one by one, and collectively--no
matter what it costs me!"

CHAPTER XIV

LIKE ANY OTHER HERDER

The northeast wind lifted Kate's shabby riding skirt and flapped it
against her horse's flank as she sat in the saddle with field glasses to
her eyes looking intently at a covered wagon that was crawling over the
sagebrush hummocks, its top swaying at perilous angles. She shivered
unconsciously as the loose ends of her silk neckerchief fluttered and
snapped in front of her and the limp brim of her Stetson blew straight
against the crown of it.

"There are certainly two of them," she murmured, "and they must be lost
or crazy to be wandering through the hills at this season. They had
better get back to the road, if they don't want to find themselves
snowed up in a draw until summer."

She replaced the glasses in the case that she wore slung by a strap over
her shoulder, and looked behind her. They were undoubtedly snow clouds
that the wind was driving before it from the distant mountains.

"Good thing I brought my sour-dough," she muttered as she untied the
sheepskin-lined canvas coat from the back of her saddle. "We'd better
sift along, Cherokee, and turn the sheep back to the bed-ground."

By the time the sheep had fed slowly back and settled themselves for the
night on the gently sloping side of a draw above the sheep wagon there
was just daylight enough left for her to feed and hobble the horse and
cut wood without lighting a lantern. From half a mutton hanging outside
at the back of the wagon she cut enough for her own supper, and fed the
young collie she was training. Then, she dipped a bucket of water from
the barrel, made a fire in the tiny camp stove and put on the tea
kettle. She looked with distaste at a pile of soiled dishes that
remained from Bowers's breakfast, and at the unmade bunk with a grimy
flour sack for a pillow case.

"Thank goodness, Bowers will be back to-morrow!"

She swept the untidy floor with a stump of a broom and replaced it in
its leather straps outside the wagon. When the water was heated, she
washed the dishes and scoured the greasy frying pan with a bit of
sagebrush, for there was no makeshift of the west with which she was not
familiar. Then she made biscuits, fried bacon and a potato, and boiled
coffee, eating, when the meal was ready, with the gusto of hunger.

Her hair glistened with flakes as she withdrew her hea