glad. I kneel down by that log in the ford and watch Filon. He speak to
me very quiet:

"You must get a rope and make fast to that pine and throw the end to me.
There is a rope in my pack."

"Yes," say I, "there is a rope."

So I take my flocks across the ford, since Filon is in the water, and
take all those silly ones toward La Crevasse, and after I think about
that business. Three days after, I meet P'tee Pete. I tell him I find
the sheep of Filon in the pine wood below Sentinel Rock. Pete, he say
that therefore Filon is come to some hurt, and that he look for him.
That make me scare lest he should look by the ford of Crevecoeur. So
after that, five or six days, when Narcisse Duplin is come up with me, I
tell him Filon is gone to Sacramento where his money is; therefore I
keep care of his sheep. That is a better tale--eh, M'siu,--for I have to
say something. Every shepherd in that range is know those sheep of
Filon. All this time I think me to take the sheep to Pierre Jullien in
the meadow of Black Mountain. He is not much, that Pierre. If I tell him
it is one gift from _Le bon Dieu_, that is explain enough for Pierre
Jullien. Then I will be quit of the trouble of Filon Geraud.

So, M'siu, would it have been, but for that dog Helene. That is Filon's
she-dog that he raise from a pup. She is--she is _une femme_, that dog!
All that first night when we come away from the ford, she cry, cry in
her throat all through the dark, and in the light she look at me with
her eyes, so to say:

"I know, Raoul! I know what is under the water of Crevecoeur." M'siu, is
a man to stand that from a dog? So the next night I beat her, and in the
morning she is gone. I think me the good luck to get rid of her. That
Helene! M'siu, what you think she do? She have gone back to look in the
water for Filon. There she stay, and all sheepmen when they pass that
way see that she is a good sheepdog, and that she is much hungry; so
they wonder that she will not leave off to look and go with them. After
while all people in those parts is been talkin' about that dog of
Filon's that look so keen in the water of Crevecoeur. Mebbe four, five
weeks after that I have killed Filon, one goes riding by that place and
sees Helene make mourn by the waterside over something that stick in the
sand. It is Filon. Yes. That quick-sand have spit him out again. So you
say; but me, I think it is the devil.

For the rest the sheriff has told you. Here they have broug