“That’s all right. You’ve probably
caught the habit from me. I’m simply going
out to look about for excitement.”
“A feller gener’ly finds what he’s
lookin’ for. Maybe you won’t be disappointed.
I’ve knowed places on the range where excitement
growed like fruit on a tree. It was like that
there manna in the Bible. You didn’t have
to work none for it. You jest laid still an’
it sort of dropped in your mouth.”
He added with a sigh: “But them times ain’t
no more.”
“That’s hard on me, eh?”
“Don’t start complainin’ till you
miss your feed. Things are gettin’ pretty
crowded, but there’s ways of gettin’ elbow
room—even at a bar.”
“And you really think there’s nothing
which distinguishes the Westerner from the Easterner?”
“Just the Western feeling, partner. Get
that an’ you’ll be at home.”
“If you were a little further East and said
that, people might be inclined to smile a bit.”
“Partner, if they did, they wouldn’t finish
their smile. But I heard a feller say once that
the funny thing about men east and west of the Rockies
was that they was all—”
He paused as if trying to remember.
“Well?”
“Americans, Mr. Bard.”
“This place for rest”
As the white heat of midday passed and the shadows
lengthened more and more rapidly to the east, the
sheep moved out from the shade and from the tangle
of the brush to feed in the open, and the dogs, which
had laid one on either side of the man, rose and trotted
out to recommence their vigil; but the shepherd did
not change his position where he sat cross-legged
under the tree.
Alternately he stroked the drooping moustache to the
right and then to the left, with a little twist each
time, which turned the hair to a sharp point in its
furthest downward reach near his chin. To the
right, to the left, to the right, to the left, while
his eyes, sad with a perpetual mist, looked over the
lake and far away to the white tops of the Little
Brothers, now growing blue with shadow.
Finally with a brown forefinger he lifted the brush
of moustache on his upper lip, leaned a little, and
spat. After that he leaned back with a sigh of
content; the brown juice had struck fairly and squarely
on the centre of the little stone which for the past
two hours he had been endeavouring vainly to hit.
The wind had been against him.
All was well. The spindling tops of the second-growth
forest pointed against the pale blue of a stainless
sky, and through that clear air the blatting of the
most distant sheep sounded close, mingled with the
light clangour of the bells. But the perfect
peace was broken rudely now by the form of a horseman
looming black and large against the eastern sky.
He trotted his horse down the slope, scattered a group
of noisy sheep from side to side before him, and drew
rein before the shepherd.
