, and instantly the driver was
alert. And while she alternately admonished and upbraided, with a firm
manipulation of the reins, the humor began to play again in Tisdale's
face. They were approaching the point where the road met the highway from
Ellensburg, and in the irrigated sections that began to divide the
unreclaimed land, harvesters were reaping and binding; from a farther
field came the noise of a threshing machine; presently, as the bays turned
into the thoroughfare, the way was blocked by a great flock of sheep.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "there must be thousands of them; how can the ones in
the center breathe? Whoa, Nip, whoa now! Do you think you are one of those
lambs? And there's no chance to go around; it is fenced with barbed wire
on both sides; we simply must drive through, No, let me, please. Steady,
now, Tuck, steady, whoa."

They had passed the mounted herders, and the colts broke their way
playfully, dancing, curveting with bowing necks, into the midst of the
flock. Soon the figures of the advance shepherds loomed through the dust.
They were turning the sheep into a harvested field. They rolled in over
the yellow stubble like a foaming sea. Far away, outlined like a sail
against an island rick, the night tent of these nomads was already
pitched.

Tisdale laughed softly. "Well, madam, that was skilful piloting. A bidarka
couldn't have been safer riding in a skiddery sea."

"A bidarka?" she questioned, ruffling her brows.

Tisdale nodded. "One of those small skin canoes the Alaskan natives use.
And it's touchy as a duck; comes bobbing up here and there, but right-side
up every time. And it's frail looking, frail as an eggshell, yet I would
stake a bidarka against a lifeboat in a surf. Do you know?"--he went on
after a moment--"I would like to see you in one, racing out with the
whitecaps up there in Bering Sea; your face all wet with spray, and your
hair tucked away in the hood of a gray fox parka. Nothing else would show;
the rest of you would be stowed below in a wonderful little water-tight
compartment."

"It sounds delightful," she said, and the sparkles broke in her eyes.

After that there was a long silence. The bays fell into an even trot. The
mountains loomed near, then before them, on the limits of the plain, a
mighty herd of cattle closed the road. The girl rose a little in her place
and looked over that moving sea of backs. "We must drive through again,"
she said. "It's going to be stifli