"Them dogs Joan give you's
breakin' in to the sound of your voice wonderful, ain't they?"

"They're getting used to me slowly."

"Funny about dogs a woman's been runnin' sheep with. Mighty unusual
they'll take up with a man after that. I used to be married to a
Indian woman up on the Big Wind that was some hummer trainin'
sheep-dogs. That woman could sell 'em for a hundred dollars apiece as
fast as she could raise 'em and train 'em up, and them dad-splashed
collies they'd purt' near all come back home after she'd sold 'em.
Say, I've knowed them dogs to come back a hundred and eighty mile!"

"That must have been a valuable woman to have around a man's camp.
Where is she now, if I'm not too curious?"

"She was a good woman, one of the best women I ever had." Dad rubbed
his chin, eyes reflectively on the ground, stood silent a spell that
was pretty long for him. "I hated like snakes to lose that woman--her
name was Little Handful Of Rabbit Hair On A Rock. Ye-es. She was a
hummer on sheep-dogs, all right. She took a swig too many out of my
jug one day and tripped over a stick and tumbled into the hog-scaldin'
tank."

"What a miserable end!" said Mackenzie, shocked by the old man's
indifferent way of telling it.

"Oh, it didn't hurt her much," said Dad. "Scalded one side of her till
she peeled off and turned white. I couldn't stand her after that. You
know a man don't want to be goin' around with no pinto woman, John."
Dad looked up with a gesture of depreciation, a queer look of apology
in his weather-beaten face. "She was a Crow," he added, as if that
explained much that he had not told.

"Dark, huh?"

"Black; nearly as black as a nigger."

"Little Handful, and so forth, must have thought you gave her a pretty
hard deal, anyhow, Dad."

"I never called her by her full name," Dad reflected, passing over the
moral question that Mackenzie raised. "I shortened her down to Rabbit.
I sure wish I had a couple of them sheep-dogs of her'n to give you in
place of them you lost. Joan's a good little girl, but she can't train
a dog like Rabbit."

"Rabbit's still up there on the Big Wind waiting for you, is she?"

"She'll wait a long time! I'm done with Indians. Joan comin' over
today?"

"Tomorrow."

"I don't guess you'll have her to bother with much longer--her and
that Reid boy they'll be hitchin' up one of these days from all the
signs. He skirmishes off over that way nearly every day. Looks to me
like Tim laid it