ription,"
replied Lingle, sarcastically.

"I think I see a woolie movin'." Bowers squinted across the white
expanse and the deputy endeavored to follow his gaze, but could see
nothing but dancing specks due to a mild case of snow blindness.
"Yep--that's a woolie. I'm so used to 'em I kin tell what a sheep is
thinkin' from here to them mountains."

Reining their horses at the top of a "draw" a quarter of an hour later
they looked down upon the sheep wagon in a clearing in the sagebrush,
together with the tepee and cook tent. Urging their horses down the
steep side they dismounted and went inside the latter, where soiled
breakfast dishes sat on the unplaned boards which served as a table. In
the way of food there was only a can of molasses and a half dozen
biscuits frozen solid.

"Real cozy and homelike," Lingle commented, as he tried to pour himself
some cold coffee and found it frozen. "I'll look around a bit and then
go up and tell her."

"I'd ruther it ud be you than me," Bowers observed grimly. "Can't abide
hearin' a female take on and beller. I don't like the sect, noway. You
kin bet I don't aim to stay no longer than she kin git another herder,
neither."

But Lingle was already out of hearing of the querulous voice of the
misogynist, and peering into the tepee which was as Mormon Joe had left
it he noted that it contained an unmade bed, and extra pair of shoes,
and a few articles of wearing apparel--that was all.

The door of the sheep wagon was unlocked, yet he hesitated a moment
before opening it. Its examination was in line with his duty, however,
so he opened it and looked about with a certain amount of curiosity. The
bare, cold stillness of it went to his marrow.

There was something pathetic to him in the pitiful attempts at home
making shown in the few crude decorations. A feminine instinct for
domesticity evidenced itself in the imitation of the scalloped border of
a lace curtain made in soap on the glass of the small window in the back
of the wagon, in a pin cushion of coarse muslin worked in blue worsted
yarn, in the bouquet of dried goldenrod in a bottle, in the highly
colored picture of an ammunition company's advertisement pinned to the
canvas wall. A snag of a comb and a brush were thrust in a wooden strip
near the small cheap mirror.

Above the bunk two loops of wire were suspended from an oak bow of the
wagon top, which obviously was where the occupant kept her rifle. There
was a tiny sto