ense of the man, inherent in every
woman who loves, came to the rescue, and she told herself vehemently that
Bud was honorable, if nothing else. Then the sentence concerning the
United States officers wanting him on another charge recurred to her, and
she found her defense punctured at the outset. If he were honorable, how
could it be that the officers were after him?

In despair at the quandary, but still clinging to her faith, she fell back
on the unanswerable fact of feminine intuition. Bud _seemed_ good and
true; it was in his eyes, in his voice, in his very manner. He looked at
the world squarely, but with a kind of patient endurance that bespoke some
deep trouble.

Then for the first time the thought came to Juliet that perhaps he was
shielding someone else.

But who? And, if so, why did Caldwell write this letter?

Unable to answer these questions, but confronted by the thought that Bud's
love was the sweetest thing in the world to her, she at last fell asleep
with a smile upon her lips.

CHAPTER XVII

A BATTLE IN THE DARK

"Everything ready?"

Bud Larkin sat his horse beside Hard-winter Sims and looked back over the
white mass that grew dimmer and dimmer in the dark.

"Yes." Sims lounged wearily against the horse's shoulder. It had been a
hard day.

"Get 'em on the move, then."

Sims, without changing his position, called out to the herders. These in
turn spoke to the dogs, and the dogs began to nip the heels of the leader
sheep, who resented the familiarity with loud blatting and lowering of
heads. But they knew the futility of resisting these nagging guardians and
started to forge ahead. Other dogs got the middlers in motion, and still
others attended to the tailers, so that in five minutes from the time
Larkin gave the word the whole immense flock was crawling slowly over the
dry plain.

Eight thousand of them there were; eight thousand semi-imbecile creatures,
unacquainted with the obstacles they must encounter or the dangers they
must face before they could be brought to safety or lost in the attempt.
And to guard them there were nearly seventy men whose fear lay not in the
terrors to be met, but in the sheep themselves: for there is no such
obstacle to a sheep's well-being as the sheep himself.

The last flock had arrived the night before, well-fed and watered. The
preceding six thousand were in good condition from days and weeks of
comfortable grazing in the hills; all were in goo