that, nipping, yelping now and then, until they had
joined the others. Then he went on to the further fringes of the hand,
which evened like the edge of a pie crust under the practised fingers of
a good cook.

"Well, would you look at that!" Helen May never having watched a good
sheep-dog at work, spoke in an awed tone. "Vic, please write!"

Vic, watching open-mouthed, actually forgot to resent the implication
that Pat had left him hopelessly behind in the art of handling goats.

"Seems to have the savvy, all right," Starr observed, just as though he
had not paid all those dollars for the "savvy" that made Pat one of the
best goat dogs in the State.

"Savvy? Why, that dog's human. Now, I suppose he's stopping over there to
see what he must do next, is he?"

"Wants to know whether I want 'em all rounded up, or just edged up outa
the Basin. G' round 'em, Pat," he called, and made a wide, circular sweep
with his right arm.

Pat gave a yelp, dropped his head, and scurried up the ridge, driving all
stragglers back toward the center of the flock. He went to every crest
and sniffed into the wind to satisfy himself that none had strayed beyond
his sight; returned and evened up the ragged edges of the hand, and then
came trotting back to Starr with six inches of pink tongue draped over
his lower jaw and a smile in his eyes and a waggle of satisfaction at
loved work well done. The goats, with a meek Billy in the foreground,
huddled in a compact mass on the slope and eyed the dog as they had never
eyed Vic, for all his hoe-handle and his accuracy with rocks.

Helen May dropped her hand on Pat's head and looked soberly into his
upturned eyes. "You're a perfect miracle of a dog, so you can't be my
dog, after all," she said. "Your owner will be riding day and night to
find you. I know I should, if you got lost from me." Then she looked at
Starr. "Don't you think you really ought to take him back with you?
It--somehow it doesn't seem quite right to keep a dog that knows so
much. Why, the man I bought the goats from had a dog that could herd
them, and he wanted twenty-five dollars for it, and at that, he claimed
he was putting the price awfully low for me, just because I was a lady,
you know."

Starr, was (as he put it) kicking himself for having lied himself
into this dilemma. Also he was wondering how best he might lie
himself out of it.

"You want to look out for these marks that say they're giving you the big
end of a b