ood many days before the incident was out of Bowers's mind for
any length of time. He kept his shotgun handy and was on the alert
constantly, listening, searching the surrounding country for a moving
object, and muttering frequently, "What was he doin' here,
anyhow--moggin' round the mountains--comin' from nowhur, goin' nowhur!"

But a month passed and nothing happened, either in Bowers's camp or at
the others. Since the warning had implied that any attempt to move
further would be stopped immediately, and yet all the wagons were now
well up the mountain, both Kate and Bowers concluded that the
threatening scrawl was intended only to annoy her.

"Ma-aa-aa!" Mary bleated like a fretful teething child, and held up his
head for Bowers to rub the feverish horns as his foster parent sat on a
box beside the wagon one lazy afternoon.

"I declare, Mary, I'll be most as glad when them horns cut through as if
they growed on me! I could raise a baby by hand 'thout any more trouble
than it's took to bring you up." The lamb stood stock still as he
yielded to his importunities, and Bowers continued whimsically: "I been
a father and mother to you, Mary, an' you might a-been an orphing
through your own orn'riness if I hadn't throwed down on that feller
pretty pronto.

"No denyin' 'twould have made a preacher peevish to have you land in
the pit of his stummick with them sharp hoofs of yourn. But you're only
an innercent little sheep, and they wan't no sense in his tryin' to
stomp on you.

"Well, I got to be stirrin' up them woolies. Sorry I got to tie you, but
you're gittin' such a durned nuisance, with playin' half the night and
slidin' down my tepee. I'll give you the big feed when I come down in
the mornin', so say your prayers and go to bed like a good lamb orta."

Bowers tied Mary to the wagon wheel, and, with a final rub and pat and
admonition, left the lamb, to start the herd feeding toward their
bed-ground on the summit.

"Come out o' that, Mother Biddies! Better start now and go to fillin'
up. I want them children of yourn to weigh sixty poun' each, come fall."

The sheep, which had been lying in the shade or standing in a circle
with their heads together as a protection against the flies, obeyed
slowly, and Bowers followed as they grazed their way toward his tepee
gleaming white among the rocks on the top of the mountain.

Occasionally he stopped to pick up something and examine it--a curious
pebble, a rock that migh