hen he came home. So I knew
that he thought it important, and I went. But I rode the greater part of
the day with the old hunter, and long before he reached the place where
the man was who needed me, all my objections had vanished and I was
eager to begin."

"That's just the way that Rifle-Eye does," said the boy, "he makes it
seem that what he wants you to do is just what you want to do yourself."

"When I got to the place," she went on, "I found that it was a Basque
shepherd, who had been hurt by some of the cattlemen. That made it much
more interesting for me, for you know, my people were Basques, that
strange old race, who, tradition tells, are all that are left of the
shepherds on the mountains of the lost Atlantis. So I nursed him as best
I could, and presently, from far and wide over the Rockies I would get
messages from the Basque shepherds."

"Didn't you put a stop to the feuds at one time?" asked Wilbur. "The old
hunter told me something about 'the little white lady' and the sheep
war."

"I helped in many of them," she said simply, "and when they came to me
for advice I tried to give it. Doctor Davis was always there to suggest
the more advisable course, and I put it to these Bascos, as they called
them, so that they would understand."

"How about Burleigh?" asked Wilbur.

But the doctor's wife disclaimed all knowledge of a sheep-owner called
Burleigh.

"All right," said Wilbur, "then I'll give my share of the story, as the
old hunter told it to me. That is, if you don't mind."

"Tell it," she smiled, "if you like."

"Well," said Wilbur, "one Sunday afternoon a Ranger, whose cabin was
near a lookout point, said to his wife, 'I'll ride up to the peak, and
be back in time for supper.' He went off in his shirt-sleeves,
bare-headed, for an hour's ride, and was gone a week. Up in the brush he
found the trail of a band of sheep, and although he was cold and hungry
and his horse was playing out, he stuck right on the job until it got
too dark to see. The second day he smashed in the door of a miner's
cabin, got some grub, and nailed a note on the door saying who'd taken
it, and kept on. He tired his horse out, and left him in another
fellow's corral, but kept on going on foot. The sheepman was known as
dangerous, but this little Ranger--did I tell you he was Irish--stuck to
it, trusting to find some way out even if the grazer did get ugly.

"At last he came on the sheep in a mountain meadow, and Burleigh