here's a reason for it. 'Family men' are
unreliable--they'll quit in lambing time because the baby's teething;
they'll leave at a moment's notice when a letter comes that their wife
wants to see them; their mind isn't on their work and they're restless
and discontented. I knew you were married the first time I found you
with your sheep behind instead of ahead of you."

"You can't understand the feelin's of a fambly man away from home." He
rolled his eyes sentimentally. The subject was one which was dear to the
uxorious herder. He pulled out the tremolo stop in his voice and
quavered: "You feel like you're goin' 'round with nothin' inside of
you--a empty shell--or a puff-ball with the puff out of it. You got a
feelin' all the time like somethin's pullin' you." He looked so hard
towards Nebraska that he all but toppled. "Somethin' here," he laid a
hand on his heart, approximately, "like a plaster drawin'. Love,"
eloquently, "changes your hull nature. It makes lambs out o' roughnecks
and puts drunks on the wagon. It turns you kind and forgivin' and takes
the fight out o' you. It makes you--"

"Maudlin! And weak! And inefficient!" Kate interrupted savagely. "It
distracts your thoughts and dissipates your energy. It impairs your
judgment, lessens your will power. It's for persons who have no ambition
or who have achieved it. For the struggler there's nothing worth
bothering with that doesn't take him forward."

"That's a pretty cold-blooded doctrind," declared the shocked herder.
"If 'twant for love--"

"If 'twant for love," Kate mimicked harshly, "you wouldn't be indulging
in a spell of homesickness and leaving your sheep to the coyotes!
Sentiment is lovely in books, but it's expensive in business, so I'm
going to fire you. Bowers will be here with the supply wagon to-morrow,
so I'll take the sheep until he can relieve me. I'll pay you off and you
can walk back to the ranch or," grimly, "take a short cut through the
Pass up there--to 'Nebrasky.'"

CHAPTER XVIII

A WARNING

"I can't hold dem ewes and lambs on de bed-ground no more! Dey know it's
time to be gettin' up to deir summer range; nobody has to tell a sheep
when to move on."

The Swede swirled his little round hat on his equally round little head
and winked rapidly as he gave vent to his indignant protest. Kate looked
at him in silence for a moment and then said in sudden decision:

"You can start to-morrow, Oleson."

The early summer was fulfill