DELLE let the reins fall loose on the neck of her horse, and studied the landscape carefully, though with manifest impatience. All about her lay the range land, brown and far-horizoned and silent, steeped in the haze of such a still, smoky day as comes sometimes upon the land in late November. Range cattle—bearing, for the most part, her father's brand—loitered lazily over the hills or trailed listlessly down to the coulée bottoms. Far to the east, a high-piled mass of violet and purple shadows hovered between the brown of the range and the coppery blue of the sky, and seemed on the point of fading into nothing at all, they were so vague and unreal; those were the Bear Paws.
She turned and looked behind, sniffed tentatively a moment, and faced to the front again. There was the tang of distant prairie fires in the air—so distant that she gave them no thought whatever. She studied again the low-lying hills and the shallow, yellow-rimmed coulées, drew her forehead into three distinct, straight-up-and-down lines, and tightened the reins suggestively. Tendoy perked his ears inquiringly forward and back, and stepped out leisurely.
Once down the hill, she put him to a lope, following, it would seem, the sense of smell—though of a truth it was not the pleasantest scent to follow. It was the rank, musty, never-forgotten or mistaken odor of sheep. From the direction of the smell, she judged they were grazing on forbidden ground. Down a certain coulée flowed a broad, shallow creek, and she headed toward it indignantly, guided by her protesting olfactory nerves. Sheep in that coulée and on that creek came near being the unforgivable sin, in her opinion; for the coulée was her father's, and her father was a cattleman. Cattle and sheep do not mix well on the range, as everyone knows.
Far up and down the coulée, on either side the creek, straggled the band, taking solid comfort in the clear water and the thick tangle of grass. The lambs—half grown, they were, round-bodied and with tight-curled wool and an effervescent joy in living—raced up and down the bank and bleated impertinently, with due attention to the grating tremolo in their voices, at their long-suffering mothers.
Idelle clicked her teeth together and galloped toward them, and came near running over the herder, stretched luxuriously on his back in the dim sunshine, with a disreputable slouch hat tilted over his nose and his hands clasped under his head. She pulled up Tendoy and regarded the fellow sternly.
He raised to an elbow, questioned her with his eyes and got up and bowed all with an unblushing assumption of innocence which made her long to shake him—only, he was so very big.
“Are you the man that herds these sheep?” she asked him in what might be considered a belligerent tone.
“I have that honor.”
She took a second look at him. He was dressed like a tramp—or the typical sheep herder; but his speech!
“Then you must know that you are trespassing. We don't allow sheep this side the ridge.”
“Then you ought to have your ridge fenced.”
“Well, I like your nerve!” she blazed, with very red cheeks.
“Oh, don't mention it!” he returned, deprecatingly, as if she had paid him a compliment.
Idelle hesitated, and in the interval glared at him in a way that should have humbled him much, but which, unfortunately, seemed only to amuse him. She did not quite know how to deal with a herder of this sort; it was not the first time she had ordered sheep out of this coulée, but it was the first time the herder in charge had shown the slightest symptom of facetiousness or defiance. Always before they had gone humbly, without word of protest. Sheep herders knew quite as well as anyone when they were trespassing. Her anger grew under this one's assurance.
“I shall probably mention several things before I'm done,” she warned, haughtily.
“Oh, thanks!” he smiled, quite undisturbed.
“I should like to know why you've got your sheep down here in our coulée,” she began anew.
The man looked at her with a certain pained surprise at her stupidity. “Why, to let them drink. Sheep do need water occasionally, you know.”
“Oh, indeed! And who gave you permission to let them drink here?”
“Nobody. I didn't ask.”
“I suppose”—ironically—“it never occurred to you that the owner of the land might object. Now that the fact is brought to your notice, you will get your dogs and drive your sheep back where they belong—at once!”
The herder sat down on a rock and regarded his charges with affectionate indulgence. “Oh, let the poor things be! I can't see that they're despoiling your lawn—and they do enjoy this grass.”
“Do you mean that you won't go?”