familiar. "Hullo, Doc!" The Sheep
King of Poison Creek waved a grimy, genial hand.

"Hurry your infernal woolers along, can't you?" she yelled in response.

That other cloud of dust rising above the road which led from the Symes
Irrigation Project into town was coming closer. She plunged among the
sheep, forcing a path for herself through the moving mass of woolly
backs.

"You're in a desprit rush, looks like. They won't die till you get
there!" The Sheep King was not too pleased as he ran to head the sheep
she had turned.

"Like the devil was after her." He watched her bound up the steps of
Symes's veranda and burst through the doorway.

The engineer had steam up and the last half dozen sheep were being
prodded into the last car of the long train bound for the Eastern
market when the Sheep King of Poison Creek drew his shirt sleeve across
his moist forehead in relief and observed with feeling:

"Of all the contrary--onery--say, Bill, there's them as says sheep is
fools!"

It took a moment for this surprising assertion to sink into his helper's
brain.

"They as says sheep is fools----" Bill, the herder's voice rang with
scorn, "them as says sheep is fools----" great mental effort was visible
upon his blank countenance as he groped for some word or combination of
words sufficiently strong to express his opinion of those who doubted
the intelligence of sheep--"is fools themselves," he added lamely,
finding none.

"Guess we're about ready to pull out. Get aboard, Bill." The Sheep King,
squinting along the track where the banked cinders radiated heat waves,
was watching, not the signalling brakeman, but a figure skulking in the
shade of the red water-tank. "It looks like----"

The heavy train of bleating sheep began to crawl up the grade. The Sheep
King stood at the door of the rear car looking fixedly at the slinking
figure so obviously waiting for the caboose to pass.

Dr. Harpe threw her black medicine case upon the platform.

"Give us a hand." The words were a demand, but there was appeal in the
eyes upturned to his as she thrust up her own hand.

"Sure." The cordiality in the Sheep King's voice was forced as he
dragged her aboard; and in his curious looks, his constraint of manner,
the sly glances and averted, grinning faces of his helpers inside, Dr.
Harpe read her fate.

"Your name," Essie Tisdale had said, "will be a byword in every
sheep-camp and bunk-house in the country."

Sick with a baffled