pens had
tripled in size, with a row of well-built shearing-pens beside them.
Under a long shed with a corrugated-iron roofing there were sacks of
wool piled to a height which gave Kate a feeling of deep satisfaction
each time she passed them.

Everything showed thrift, economy, a practical intelligence and a
Spartan disregard for personal comfort. The camp was as devoid of
luxuries and superfluities as an Indian village. And on a hillside where
the afternoon sun lay longest there was a sunken grave enclosed in wire.
Here Mormon Joe was turning to dust, unavenged, forgotten nearly, by all
save a handful.

Kate felt that she had every reason to be satisfied with her progress
and to congratulate herself upon the judgment she had displayed in
continuing to raise sheep for their fleece when the price of wool was
nil, practically, and every discouraged grower in the state, including
the astute Neifkins, was putting in "black-faces" that were better for
mutton. Now a protective administration was advancing the price of wool,
and when she sold she would have her reward for her courage. She had
been the first to import a few of the coarser wool sheep from Canada and
the experiment had proved that they were especially adapted to the rocky
mountainous range of that section. The Rambouillets she purchased had
kept fat where the merinos had lost weight on the same feed. The ewes
had sheared on an average of close to twelve pounds and the bucks more
than fifteen, a few as high as twenty-five. And now she wanted more of
them.

Thus circumstances seemed to have diverted her tastes into new channels
entirely. As she had once yearned for clothes, and companionship, and
happiness, she now with the same intensity wanted sheep, and more sheep,
and better sheep. Little by little, too, and unobtrusively, she was
acquiring script land, lieu land, long-time leases, patented homesteads,
and the water holes which controlled ranges. To do all this meant the
elimination of every unnecessary expenditure and she denied herself
cheerfully, wearing clothes that were no better than her herders',
shabby sometimes to grotesqueness.

The coming autumn she would have old ewes and wether lambs to ship
sufficient to cover her expenses, while the sale of her wool at present
prices would enable her to grade up her herds to a point that would be
approximately where she would have them. She had seen too many hard
winters and short ranges ever again to be ov