The Fighting Shepherdess

If only she could get ahead and turn them before they split up and scattered she could perhaps hold them until morning. Was it long until morning, she wondered? Breathless, exhausted from climbing and floundering and stumbling, the full fury of the blizzard struck her when she reached the top. The driving ice particles stung her skin and eyeballs when she turned to face it, the wind carried her soothing calls from her lips as she uttered them, her skirt whipped about her as though it would soon be in ribbons, and then with a leap and a flicker the flame went out in the smoke-blackened chimney, leaving her in darkness.

There was a panic-stricken second as she stood, a single human atom in the howling white death about her but it passed quickly. She dreaded the physical suffering which experience told her would come when her body cooled and the wind penetrated her garments, yet there was no feeling of self-pity. It was all a part of the business and would come to any herder. The sheep were the chief consideration, and she never doubted but that she could endure it somehow until daylight.

"I've got to keep moving or I'll freeze solid," she told herself practically, and added between her set teeth with a grim whimsicality: "Be a man, Kate Prentice! It's part of the price of success and you've got to pay it!"

Kate knew that hourly she was getting farther from the wagon as the sheep drifted and she followed. But daylight would bring surcease of suffering--she had only to endure and keep moving. So she stamped her feet and swung her arms, tied her handkerchief over her ears, rubbed her face with snow when absence of feeling told her it was freezing, and prayed for morning. Surely the storm was too severe to be a long one--it would slacken when daylight came, very likely, and then she could quickly get her bearings. She thought this over and over, and over and over again monotonously, while somehow the interminable hours of dumb misery passed.

Daylight! Daylight! And when the first leaden light came she was afraid to believe it. It was faint, just enough to show that somewhere the sun was shining, yet her chilled blood stirred hopefully. But there was no warmth in the dawn, the storm did not abate, and at an hour which she judged to be around nine o'clock she was able to make out only the sheep in her immediate vicinity, snow encrusted, huddled together with heads lowered, and drifting, always drifting. She had no notion where she was, and to leave the sheep was to lose them. No, she must have patience and patience and more patience. At noon it would lighten surely--it nearly always did--and she had only to hold out a little longer.