d each contributed its weight to turn the
scales in this crisis.

"It's the fork of the road," she said in curt decision, "and I've
chosen."

There was something so implacable in her face and voice and manner that
Disston felt like one shut out behind a door that is closed and bolted;
he had a sensation as though his heart while warm and beating had been
laid upon the unresponsive surface of cold marble. The chill of it went
all through him. With another woman than Kate he might still have
argued. But he could only look at her sorrowfully:

"When you are older, and have grown more tolerant and forgiving, I'm
afraid you will find that you have chosen wrongly."

"If ever I should grow tolerant and forgiving," she cried fiercely,
"then I will have failed miserably."

CHAPTER XXI

"HEART AND HAND"

"Come in, Bowers." Kate looked up from the market report she was reading
as her trusted lieutenant scraped his feet on the soap box which did
duty as a step to the tongue of the sheep wagon.

After a final glance at the report, during which Bowers eyed the mail
sack with interest, she folded the sheet and turned to him inquiringly.

"I wisht you'd order some turpentine--'bout two quarts of it," he said.

"What do you want with so much?" She reached for a pad and pencil to
make a note.

"Ticks. I never seen the beat of 'em. I bet I picked a thousand off me
a'ready this season. They ain't satisfied with grabbin' me from a
sagebrush as I go by, but when they gits wind of me they trails me up
and jumps me. All the herders is complainin'."

"How's the new herder doing?"

Bowers's face clouded. "Dibert's havin' trouble with Neifkins's
herder--says the feller does most of his herdin' in the wagon, and there
would a been a 'mix' a dozen times if he hadn't been with his sheep
every minute. Dibert says it looks to him like the feller's doin' it on
purpose."

"I don't know but what I'd rather have it that way than for them to be
too friendly. More 'mixes' come from herders visiting than any other
cause, and I wouldn't run that band through the chutes for three hundred
dollars. It would take that much fat off of them, to say nothing of the
bother. Who is Neifkins's herder?"

"I ain't seen him. Dibert says he's an o'nery looker."

"Next time you go over, notify him that he's to herd lines closer. If he
keeps on crowding, I'll take a dog and set his sheep back where they
belong so they won't forget it. You can tell