s thoughts were not on his food.

After he had finished he broke open the biscuits which remained, soaked
them in the bacon grease and tossed them to the dog, which caught them
in the air and swallowed them at a gulp. Then he got to his feet and
filled his pipe. He looked contemplatively at a few sheep feeding away
from the main band and said as he waved his arm in an encircling
gesture:

"Way 'round 'em, Shep! Better bring 'em in."

The dog responded instantly, his handsome tail waving like a plume as he
bounded over the sagebrush and gathered in the stragglers.

By the time the herder had washed his dishes and finished his pipe the
sun was well below the horizon and the sky in the west a riot of pink
and amber and red. The well-trained sheep fed back and dropped down in
twos and threes on a spot not far from the tepee where it pleased their
fancy to bed. Save for the distant tinkle of the bell on the burro, and
the stirring of the sheep, the herder might have been alone in the
universe. When he had set his dishes and food back in the paniers and
covered them with a piece of "tarp," in housewifely orderliness, he
opened the black case and took out the violin with a care that amounted
to tenderness. The first stroke of the bow bespoke the trained hand. He
did not sit, but knelt in the sand with his face to the west as he
played like some pagan sun-worshiper, his expression rapt, intent.
Strains from the world's best music rose and fell in throbbing sweetness
on the desert stillness, music which told beyond peradventure that some
cataclysm in the player's life had shaken him from his rightful niche.
It proclaimed this travel-stained sheepherder in his faded overalls and
peak-crowned limp-brimmed hat another of the incongruities of the far
west. The sagebrush plains and mountains have held the secrets of many
Mysteries locked in their silent breasts, for, since the coming of the
White Man, they have been a haven for civilization's Mistakes, Failures
and Misfits.

While he poured out his soul with only the sheep and the tired collie
sleeping on its paws for audience, the gorgeous sunset died and a chill
wind came up, scattering the gray ashes of the camp fire and swaying the
tepee tent. Suddenly he stopped and shivered a little in spite of his
woolen shirt. "Dog-gone!" he said abruptly, aloud, as he put the violin
away, "I can't get that kid out of my thoughts!" Though he could not
have told why he did so, or what he