The Fighting Shepherdess

From the summit he could see the white canvas top of Neifkins's wagon gleaming among the quaking asp well down the other slope of the mountain. No one was visible, but as he got closer he saw Dibert's horse tied to the wheel. Bowers felt "hos-tile."

"What you doin' here?" he demanded unceremoniously, as Dibert, hearing the rocks rattle, all but tumbled out of the wagon in his eagerness.

"I never was so tickled to see anybody in my life!" he cried.

"I'm about as pleased to see you as a stepmother welcomin' home the first wife's children," Bowers replied, eyeing him coldly. "You ain't answered my question."

The herder nodded towards the wagon: "He's come down with somethin'. Clean off"--he touched his forehead--"I dassn't leave him."

Bowers immediately went into the wagon, where, after a look at the man mumbling on the bunk, he said laconically: "Tick bite."

The brown blotches, flushed forehead, and burning eyes told their own story.

As Bowers continued to look at the sick man, with his unshaven face and mop of oily black hair, so long that it was beginning to curl, Dibert commented: "He ain't what you'd call pretty--I've no idee he has to keep a rock handy to stone off the ladies."

But Bowers was searching his mind in the endeavor to recall where he had seen those curious eyes with the muddy blue-gray iris. It came to him so suddenly that he shouted it: "I know him! It's the feller that blowed up my wagon! It's the--that killed Mary!"