The Fighting Shepherdess

"Come in, Bowers." Kate looked up from the market report she was reading as her trusted lieutenant scraped his feet on the soap box which did duty as a step to the tongue of the sheep wagon.

After a final glance at the report, during which Bowers eyed the mail sack with interest, she folded the sheet and turned to him inquiringly.

"I wisht you'd order some turpentine--'bout two quarts of it," he said.

"What do you want with so much?" She reached for a pad and pencil to make a note.

"Ticks. I never seen the beat of 'em. I bet I picked a thousand off me a'ready this season. They ain't satisfied with grabbin' me from a sagebrush as I go by, but when they gits wind of me they trails me up and jumps me. All the herders is complainin'."

"How's the new herder doing?"

Bowers's face clouded. "Dibert's havin' trouble with Neifkins's herder--says the feller does most of his herdin' in the wagon, and there would a been a 'mix' a dozen times if he hadn't been with his sheep every minute. Dibert says it looks to him like the feller's doin' it on purpose."

"I don't know but what I'd rather have it that way than for them to be too friendly. More 'mixes' come from herders visiting than any other cause, and I wouldn't run that band through the chutes for three hundred dollars. It would take that much fat off of them, to say nothing of the bother. Who is Neifkins's herder?"

"I ain't seen him. Dibert says he's an o'nery looker."

"Next time you go over, notify him that he's to herd lines closer. If he keeps on crowding, I'll take a dog and set his sheep back where they belong so they won't forget it. You can tell him. You think Dibert's all right, do you?"

"Well," Bowers replied judicially, "he's one of these fellers that would fight like hell fer his sheep one day, and the next, if you brought him prunes instead of the aprycots he'd ordered, he'd turn 'em loose to the coyotes to git hunks with you. He's all right, only he's crazy."

Kate shrugged a shoulder.

"Is there much water-hemlock in the gulch this summer?"

"Quite a bit of it--it's spreadin'. Neifkins has lost several sheep a'ready by poison, but it's careless herdin'."

"I should own that section," Kate commented. "It's public land. I could have it put up at auction and buy it in, but I suppose they'd run the price up on me just to make me pay for it. How are Svenson's lambs doing?"