o sheets of tablet paper to find out how
much hay she had to winter the stock on. She must hold herself rigidly
to facts, and tend fences and watch irrigating ditches, and pay
interest on notes three or four years old, and ride the hills and work
her way through rocky canyons, keeping watch over the cattle that meant
so much. She had meant to talk over things with Ward and ask his
advice about certain details that required experienced judgment. But
Ward had precipitated her thoughts into strange channels and so had
unconsciously thwarted her counsel-seeking intentions. She had wanted
to talk things over with Marthy, and Marthy had also unconsciously
prevented her doing so and had filled Billy Louise with uneasiness and
doubt which in no way concerned herself.

These doubts persisted, and so did the tantalizing little puzzles.
They weaned Billy Louise's thoughts from her own ranch worries and
nagged at her with the persistence of a swarm of buffalo gnats.

"Well, if he doesn't use poison, for goodness' sake, what does he use?"
she asked indignantly aloud, after a period of deep thought. "I don't
see why he wants to be so terribly secretive. He might be human enough
to tell a person what he means. I'm sure I'd tell him, all right. I
don't believe it's wolves at all. I don't see how--and still--I don't
believe Ward would really lie to me."

She was in this particularly dissatisfied mood when she rode out of the
canyon at its upper end, where the hills folded softly down into grassy
valleys where her cattle loved best to graze. Since the grass had
started in the spring, she had kept her little herd up here among the
lower hills; and by riding along the higher ridges every day or so and
turning back a wandering animal now and then, she had held them in a
comparatively small area, where they would be easily gathered in the
fall. A few head of Seabeck's stock had wandered in amongst hers, and
some of Marthy's. And there was a big, roan steer that bore the brand
of Johnson, over on Snake River. Billy Louise knew them all, as a
housewife knows her flock of chickens, and if she missed seeing certain
leaders in the scattered groups, she rode until she found them. Two
old cows and one big, red steer that seemed always to have a following
wore bells that tinkled pleasant little sounds in the alder thickets
along the creek, as she passed by.

She rode up the long ridge which gave her a wide view of the
surrounding h