."

"You let that fence alone." Tisdale had started to cross the field, and
she followed, railing, though the gun still rested in the hollow of her
arm. "If one of those goats breaks away, the whole herd'll go wild. I
can't round 'em in without my dog. He's off trailing one of the ewes. She
strayed yesterday, and he'll chase the mountain through if he has to. It's
no use to whistle; he won't come back without her. You let that fence be.
You wouldn't dare to touch it," she finished impotently, "if I had a man."

"Haven't you?" Tisdale swung around, and his voice dropped to its soft
undernote. "That's mighty hard. Who laid all that water-pipe? Who built
your house?"

"I did," she answered grimly. "The man who hauled my load of lumber
stopped long enough to help set the posts, but I did the rest."

"You did?" Tisdale shook his head incredulously. "My! My! Made all the
necessary improvements, single-handed, to hold your homestead and at the
same time managed these goats."

The woman's glance moved to the shack and out over the barren fields, and
a shade of uncertainty crept into her passionate eyes. "The improvements
don't make much of a show yet; I've had to be off so much in the
mountains, foraging with the herd. But I was able to hire a boy half a day
with the shearing this spring, and from now on they're going to pay. There
are twenty-eight in the bunch, counting the kids, and I started with one
old billy and two ewes."

"My! My! what a record!" Tisdale paused to look back at Miss Armitage, who
had turned the bays, allowing them to pace down a length of road and back.

"But," he added, walking on, "what led you to choose goats instead of
sheep?"

"I didn't do the choosing"; she moved abreast of Hollis, "it was a fool
man."

"So," he answered softly, with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, "there
is a man, after all."

"There was," she corrected grimly. "The easiest fellow to be talked over
under the sun; the kind always chasing off after a new scheme. First it
was a mineral claim; then he banked the future on timber, and when he got
tired waiting for stumpage to soar, he put up a dinky sawmill to cut his
own trees. He was doing well, for him, getting out ties for a new
railroad--it was down in Oregon--when he saw the chance to trade for a
proved-up homestead. But it was the limit when he started out to buy a
bunch of sheep and came back with that old Angora billy and two ewes."

"I see." They were near the