sparkling defiance. She had, rather,
a feeling of gratitude for the diversion--a hope that the threatened
"trouble" might act as a kind of counter-irritant to the dull ache of her
heavy heart.

CHAPTER XIX

AN OLD, OLD FRIEND

Bowers lay slumbering tranquilly in the shade of the wagon, his saddle
blanket beneath him and his folded arms for a pillow as he slept on his
face. The herd chewed its cud drowsily under the quaking asp nearby, out
of the mid-day heat and away from pestiferous flies, while under a bush
not far from the wagon a lamb lay with eyes half closed, waggling its
narrow jaw, and grinding its sharp white teeth noisily.

Quite as though some thought had come to it forcibly, the lamb got up
and stood regarding Bowers reflectively with its soft black eyes. Then
it swallowed its cud with a gulp and, making a run the length of the
herder's legs and spine, planted its forefeet in his neck, where it
stopped.

"Mary! You quit that!" Bowers murmured crossly.

The lamb merely reached down and chewed energetically on Bowers's ear.

"Confound you--can't you let a feller sleep?" The hand that pushed the
lamb away was gentle in spite of the exasperation of his tone.

The lamb backed away, eyed him attentively for several minutes as he lay
prostrate, and then quite as though a tightly coiled spring had been
released, leaped into the air and landed with all four feet bunched in
the small of Bowers's back.

Bowers sat up and said complainingly as he grabbed the lamb by the wool
and drew it towards him:

"There ain't a minute's peace when you're awake, Mary! If I done what I
ort, I'd work you over. You're the worst nuisance of a bum lamb ever
raised on canned milk."

The lamb, which Bowers had named regardless of its sex, stood motionless
with bliss as he rubbed the base of what would some day probably be as
fine a pair of horns as ever grew on a buck. At present they were soft
and not more than an inch and a half in length as they sprouted through
its dingy wool. Thin in the shoulders and rump, yet "Mary's" sides were
distended until their contour resembled that of a toy balloon inflated
to the bursting point.

Now as the lamb's long white lashes drooped until he seemed about to go
to sleep and fall down under Bowers's soothing ministrations, the latter
continued the one-sided conversation which was a part of their daily
life together:

"You're a smart sheep, Mary--no gittin' away from it--but you'