The Fighting Shepherdess

"They're a means to an end; they keep me in the hills out of mischief and furnish a living for us both."

"I wonder that you haven't more ambition, Uncle Joe."

"That died and was buried long ago. The little that I have left is for you. I want you to have the benefit of what I have learned from books and life; I want you to be happy--I can't say that I'm interested in anything beyond that."

She threw him a kiss.

"You're too good to be true almost." Then, with a quite inexplicable diffidence she faltered, "Uncle Joe, that--that boy asked me to go to a dance."

He turned his head quickly and asked with a sharp note in his voice: "Where?"

"In Prouty."

"Do you want to go?"

"I can't tell you how much!" she cried eagerly. "I can hardly believe it is me--I--invited to a dance. I've never been out in the evening in all my life. I don't know a single woman and may be I'll never have such a chance again to get acquainted and make friends."

"I didn't know that you had been lonely, Katie," he said after a silence.

"Just sometimes," she admitted.

"You said you didn't want to go to Prouty again because the children bleated at you the last time you were in."

"But that was long ago--a year--they wouldn't do that now--they're older, and, besides, there are others who have sheep. We're not the only ones any more. But," with a quaver in her voice, "don't you want me to go, Uncle Joe?"

"I don't want you to put yourself in a position to get hurt."

"What--what would anybody hurt me for?" she asked, wide-eyed.

His answer to the question was a shrug. Then, as though to himself, "They may be bigger than I give them credit for."

He had not refused to let her go, but he had chilled her enthusiasm somewhat so they were silent for a time, each occupied with his own thoughts.

As Mormon Joe, with his hands clasped about his knee, his pipe dead in his mouth, sat motionless in the starlight, he ceased to be conscious of the beauty of the night, of the air that touched his face, soft and cool as the caress of a gentle woman, of the moist sweet odors of bursting buds and tender shoots--he was thinking only that the child who had run into his arms for safety had come to be the center of the universe to him. He could not imagine life without her. He had mended her manners, corrected her speech, bought her books of study to which she had diligently applied herself in the long hours while she herded sheep, and nothing else in life had given him so much pleasure as to watch her mind develop and her taste improve.