"

"I'm very busy."

He looked at her for a moment in silence, then he held out his hand once
more.

"I am disappointed in you!"

"Are you, Hughie?" she said indifferently, as she took his hand without
warmth.

"Bowers!" Her tone was energetic and businesslike as she turned sharply.
"Come here and help me earmark the rest of these yearlings."

Disston stood for a moment, feeling himself dismissed and already
forgotten, yet conscious with a rush of emotion which startled him, that
in spite of the fact that her dress, speech, manner, occupation, mode of
life violated every ideal and tradition, she appealed to him powerfully,
stirred him as had no other woman. She aroused within him an enveloping
tenderness--a desire to protect her--though she seemed the last woman
who needed or cared for either.

When Oleson with the ewes and lambs was well up the creek, Kate gave
Bunch his parting instructions:

"Let them spread out more. You Montana herders feed too close--it's a
fault with all of you. Can't you see the grass is different here? Use
your head a little. Got plenty of cartridges? I saw cat tracks in a
patch of sand along the creek yesterday. He got eight lambs in his last
raid on Oleson's band. I'll have to put out some poison."

She walked slowly across the foot log after the last lamb had leaped
bleating through the gate. She inspected her boots, noting that one heel
had run over, and looked at her gauntlets, with the fingers protruding.
Then, when she stepped inside the wagon, she walked straight to the
mirror and stared at her reflection--dishevelled, her face frankly
dirty, about her neck a handkerchief that was faded and unbecoming, a
mouth that drooped a little with fatigue, her whole face wearing an
expression of determination that she realized might very easily become
hard. A few more years of work and exposure and she would be
grim-featured and hopelessly weather-beaten. No wonder that girl had
looked at her as though she were some curious alien creature with whom
she had nothing at all in common! And Hughie had said he was
disappointed in her.

This was Katie Prentice, she said to herself--Katie Prentice for whom
the future, to which she had looked forward eagerly, had been another
word for happiness--the Katie Prentice who had tripped in and out of
that air castle of her building, looking like this girl that Hugh had
brought with him. Now this image was the realization!

Just for the fraction of