savage
in Kate's composure as she turned directly and looked at her. "I have
sheared sheep when I had no money to pay herders, slept out in the hills
on the ground on a saddle blanket with my saddle for a pillow. I've made
my underwear out of flour sacks and my skirts of denim. I've lived on
corn meal and salt pork and dried apples and rabbits for months at a
time. I eat and hobnob with sheepherders from one year's end to the
other. I'm out with a drop bunch in the lambing season, and I brand the
bucks myself--on the nose--burn them with a hot iron. I'll send you word
when I'm going to do it again and you can come over--it's e-normously
amusing. Just wait a minute--come over to the fence here--and I'll show
you something. I'm even more deliciously unique than you imagine."

She walked to the gate and vaulted it easily. Hughie and Beth could do
no less than follow as far as the fence, while Kate stood searching the
band of sheep that milled about her. When she found what she sought, she
made one of her swift swoops, caught the sheep by the hind leg and threw
it with a dextrous twist. Then holding it between her knees, she took a
knife from her pocket and tested the edge of the blade with her thumb.

The girl at the fence cried aghast:

"Oh, what's she going to do?" Then she clutched Disston's arm and stared
in fascinated horror while Kate ear-marked the sheep and released it.

"She's barbarous--horrible--impossible!"

"You brought it on yourself, Beth," he reminded her in a low tone.
"You--goaded her,"

"And you defend her?" she demanded, furiously. "Take me away from
here--I'm nauseated!"

"I'll say good-bye--you go on, and I'll join you."

He vaulted the fence and went up to Kate, who was going on with her work
and ignoring them.

"Kate," he put out his hand, "I'm sorry."

She disregarded it and turned upon him, her eyes blazing:

"Don't you bring any more velvet-pawed kittens here to sharpen their
claws in me!"

"Kate," earnestly, "I wouldn't have been the means of hurting you for
anything I can think of."

"I'm not hurt," she retorted, "I'm mad."

"I'm coming to see you again--alone, next time. I want to know why you
did not answer my letters--I want to know lots of things--why you're so
different--what has changed you so much."

"And you imagine I'll tell you?" she asked dryly.

"You wouldn't?"

She shrugged a shoulder. "I don't babble any longer."

"It's nothing to you whether I come or not?