THE SHEEP CAMP

He was very tall, this stranger who seemed to have risen out of the gulch as if by magic. He was broad of shoulder, and his curly gray hair grew fully three inches long. So did his gray imperial, and above it was a gray moustache, with curly ends. His corduroy trousers were tucked into the tops of high boots, and his shirt was open at the throat, with a dark blue silk handkerchief knotted around it. Over one shoulder he carried a pickaxe, and his other hand held a bunch of wild flowers.

He smiled down at Polly’s startled face, and shifted the wild flowers, so he could catch hold of Jinks’ bridle, and steady him.

“Well, girl, where did you come from?” he demanded, in a deep, mellow voice.

“Virginia,” answered Polly, mechanically.

“Have you now? Pretty long ride, wasn’t it?” His blue eyes twinkled with appreciation.

“I just heard the ponies when they crossed the bridge. Where’s the rest?”

“They rode on. The deer frightened Jinks, and he began to back with me, and rear. Here they come.”

“Hello, Mr. Sandy,” cried Jean when she was within hearing. “So that’s why you deserted us, Polly.”

“I thought he was Zed,” laughed Polly, flushing a little. “He seemed to come up out of the gulch so suddenly. And—and—”

“Go on, finish it,” said Sandy, with relish. “And I looked rough enough to be most anybody, even old Zed. Well, well, let’s look this bunch over, Jeanie. I haven’t seen so many Eastern rosebuds in many a day. When will you be over home? My wife’s getting mighty anxious to see these girls from Calvert.”

“They must learn to ride well first.”

“Ride well? Don’t they ride well. Seems to me they look pretty well set up in their saddles. You’d better come over this week.”

“What are you doing way over here?” asked Jean.

“Blessed if I know yet myself, Jean.” He took off his broad-brimmed hat, and pushed back his gray curls doubtfully. “Bought out Zed’s claim down here in the gulch some time ago, more from sentiment than anything. Seemed too bad to see his shack and belongings taken up by strangers who wouldn’t know how much Zed thought of it all. And once in a while I ride over, and look around. It’s a mighty pretty spot he chose. Ever been down?”

“No, I haven’t. We hardly ever ride this way. It’s generally down towards town, along the old Topnotch road.”

“Where are you bound for now?”

“Over to where the boys are with the sheep. I wanted the girls to see the herder’s wagon, and how he lives. So I hardly think we had better stop to-day, but don’t be surprised if you find our trail around there before the week is up.”

“Come along any time. You’ll find a queer lot of things down here one way and another. Zed was a friend of mine, and I used to see a good deal of him about twenty years ago and more, when we and Wyoming were kind of young together. Zed was terribly well informed. There’s a lot of his books down there yet. Go in the old shack and look at them, girls, when you come over. The door’s always unlocked. You can’t miss the way if you follow the path from the bridge here. It leads up to the door.”

“Isn’t he nice,” exclaimed Polly, as they rode on. “He looks like the pictures of the old-time scouts, doesn’t he?”

“He was an old-time scout himself, and he’s never got over it,” laughed Jean. “Father says he’s a regular tenderfoot at ranching even now. But I love the Alameda place where he lives. It’s more like a mountain lodge, girls, and he’s planted flowers everywhere. He built it before he went back east after Miss Diantha, and carted rose slips and flower seeds all the way from Cheyenne and even from Omaha. Every time he’d go south with a bunch of cattle, father says, he’d bring back something for her to make her western home more like the one she had left. We’ll go over there next week. How do you stand the riding to-day? Is it easier?”

“I wish I could sit on a pillow, that’s all,” said Ted, frankly.

“You’ll be used to it in a few days, and not notice it at all. Polly, how are you? Is Jinks behaving himself now?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” cried Polly, looking back over her shoulder. “It was the deer frightened him. Girls, did I tell you, I saw a real deer back at the bridge. Brown, with a regular Molly Cottontail like a rabbit. You know what I mean, Miss Jean.”

“There are lots of them in the foothills around here. We don’t see them near home except when father finds his early vegetables nipped, but I often find their hoof prints down by the creek where they go to drink at night. Now comes a good level stretch, girls. Try and let the ponies out a little.”

“They don’t go a bit like the horses down East, do they?” Sue said. “I mean at home the horses on the river drive seem to either trot or buckle under, and their feet look bunched.”

“It’s because they have a shorter stride, and seem to go quicker,” Jean replied. “Now then, hang on, girls, and hold with your knees for your first gallop.”

Ginger, Jean’s pony, took the lead, and as he went by, the other ponies took his tracks. Before them spread the tableland in long sweeps of undulating range. The gray green of sage brush blended into distant waves of purple distance.

“See that line of hills yonder,” said Peggie, as they drew rein at last. She leaned forward in the saddle, and pointed to the hazy distances northwest, where the clouds seemed to trail their gray shadows along the hilltops. “From here the ground gets higher and more broken, doesn’t it, Jeanie? That’s Bear Lodge yonder. It looks as if it were part of the sky. The sheep are just about a mile from here. We can soon see the camp now.”

“Why is it so far from the ranch?” asked Polly.

“They travel about hunting the best feed. One spot lasts only a little while, and they keep traveling. Father says some herders will start their flocks in the spring, clear from the coast, and drive through the summer as far east as Idaho and Wyoming. They feed and fatten, and by the time they reach the market they are fat and ready to shear or kill. I like the sheep raising better than the cattle.”

“There’s a dog,” exclaimed Ted suddenly, pointing to the ridge before them, and sure enough a dog stood on it, head up, and staring.

“It’s Siwash,” gasped Peggie, out of breath after her gallop. “And he knows us, Jean, I declare.”

Siwash came to meet them in very friendly fashion. He was large and shaggy, with beautifully pointed ears, and a splendid ruff around his head.

“He used to be a puppy over at the ranch,” Jean explained. “You should have seen Peggie trying to raise the litter after the mother was killed in a wolf fight three winters ago. Mrs. Sandy has one of them now, and Siwash and his brother are here. Look, girls, yonder’s the camp.”

“Why, the wagon looks like a prairie schooner,” cried Ruth. It did, too, just like the pictures of the old-time wagons the pioneers crossed the plains in. It stood off to one side, with a cook-stove near it, conveniently set up. There was no tent. The herder did not notice them until they were near. He had a lamb on his lap, feeding it.

“Don’t stop, Randy,” Jean called. “We just rode over to look at the camp. The boys got home yesterday. I think they’ll be over soon to see you. What’s the matter with the little one?”

“Its mother won’t claim it,” Randy said, grinning, somewhat shy at finding himself the center of attention.

The girls slipped off their mounts, and hobbled them under Jean’s direction. It was their first attempt, but even Peggie said they had caught on to the trick of it very well.

Then they took a look around the camp. Not that there was much to see. Only the far-reached mass of sheep, their heads bent low to crop the grass, and only their backs visible like a lot of gray rocks. And as they munched, they moved forward, ever so little at a time, but still steadily forward.

“May we look in your wagon too, Randy?” asked Jean. “I want to show the girls how completely it is fitted up for a movable camp home.”

“Sure,” Randy told them, cheerfully. “Walk right in.”

“The door is up here in front, girls.” Jean led the way, and the girls climbed up in front. There was canvas stretched over bows to make a roof, and in the back end a window was cut. It was quite comfortable, with its bunk, and cupboard, and boxes. Randy had colored pictures tacked up here and there, and some old magazines lay in one corner on top of a pair of gray blankets.

“It makes me think of a gypsy wagon,” Polly said. “I saw one of them once at a camp up near Richmond. Aunt Evelyn lives there, you know, girls, and grandfather took me to visit her when I was about ten. The wagon was like this, only inside it was hung with yellow silk curtains, and lace over it.”

“These seats lift up like lockers,” said Peggie. “In the winter, they have a stove in here too, and it’s cosy, but pretty lonely. Sometimes there’s months and months when the herders never see a human being.”

“The boys are sure to ride over soon, Randy,” Jean promised when they were ready to leave on the home journey. “I’ll tell them to bring some stuff to read.”

“I’m out of baking powder, too,” Randy remarked, casually. “Can’t make decent pancakes without baking powder.”

“All right, I’ll remember,” laughed Jean, and they rode away.

“I should think he’d be terribly lonesome,” Ted said.

“Guess he is. Some herders get so they talk to the sheep, and I think all of them talk to their dogs. Maybe that’s why sheepdogs seem to know more than others.”

The girls were rather quiet on the ride back. They never forgot that picture, the lonely wagon, and far-reaching stone-gray masses of nibbling sheep, and Randy with the lamb on his lap, nursing it as tenderly as any baby. Day after day, for weeks at a time, he never saw any human being, nothing alive but Siwash and the other dog, and the sheep. Still he looked cheery, and contented, they thought, remembering Randy’s face, tanned and sunburnt to a brick red, and his close-shut mouth that had smiled down at the deserted lamb.

“It is much better for him here than if he were thirty or fifty miles out in the hills as some of the herders are,” said Jean. “I mustn’t forget to send over his baking powder.”

They arrived at the ranch about noon, and after dinner, Peggie agreed to show them her room and its treasures.

“It used to be Jeanie’s too, but now she’s away from home, I have it all to myself.”

It was the smaller bedroom at the large cabin. There were three all told, opening off the main sitting room. Peggie’s looked southeast over the valley. There was no plaster on the walls. There were just plain boards nailed on the uprights evenly. The ceiling was of boards too. At the small windows Peggie had hung short, pretty curtains of cream-colored cheese-cloth hemstitched by her own self. There was a deal table placed at a good angle near the best window light, and it served as a desk as well.

“Neil made that for me,” Peggie said with pride. “He can carve out of wood beautifully. It shuts up and locks, and I can put books along the top.”

“What books do you like, Peggie?” asked Polly, trying to read the titles.

“I like tales of travel, true tales I mean, and stories about children that live in the cities down East.”

“How funny that is. And we always want to read stories of girls who live ’way out West.”

“Neil made me my chairs too, and the washstand. He had to be careful about the chairs, but the stand is made of two soap boxes nailed together, and the top one has three partitions in it. I use it for a kind of bureau too. And the flounce is made from an old bed-quilt cover mother didn’t want any more. I ripped it up, and took out the lining, and made it all myself.”

“It’s dandy, Peggie,” Ruth exclaimed. “I think your pelts are the best of all though, and the Indian things.”

“The pelts should be put away in the summer time, but I like to see them around. They’re mostly gray wolf, and wild cat. Archie and Neil caught enough ’coons one year to make mother a whole coat, didn’t they, Jeanie? They were so proud over it that they wanted her to wear it all the time.”

“This skirt of doeskin belonged to Sally Lost Moon, girls,” said Jean, lifting down a beautifully fringed and beaded garment from the wall. “She beaded it herself when she was a girl. Feel how soft it is, like chamois skin. She told us she had moccasins to match, and a little short jacket.”

“How long it must have taken her to make it.”

“Yes, but when it was done, she had a spring suit that would last years, and always be in style in the hunting lands. Where is your skirt that Archie burnt for you, Peg?”

Peggie smiled, and found it, a little riding skirt of buckskin, fringed around the bottom, branded all over its surface with strange signs and symbols.

“Those are the brands of every outfit we know up here,” Jean told them. “Isn’t it a queer idea? Here is our brand, see—Cross and bar. This is Sandy’s, Double A.”

The girls thought it the most unique kind of ornamentation they had ever seen. The deep-toned brown of the burnt brands showed up richly against the cream of the buckskin.

“Mail for the girls,” called Don’s voice outside the window. “Peters brought it on his way east.”

“Jimmy Peters from Deercroft?” asked Jean, catching the letters. “Where’s he bound for?”

“Home,” replied Don, and went on.

“He’s one of the boys we saw at the station the day we came. I like him because he’s trying hard to get ahead. Sandy’s helping him.”

“He says the Bishop’s riding this way; says they’re going to meet him Saturday up past Badger Lake, and ride back with him. Mother thinks he’ll be here Sunday perhaps.”

“Is that the real Bishop?” asked Polly, eagerly.

“Indeed, we think he’s very real,” laughed Jean. “Wait till you see him. Let’s see who gets letters. Two for Polly, one for Sue and Ruth, post-cards for Isabel—oh, what a lot of them—and Ted too.”

“They’re mostly from the girls at the Hall,” Ted cried. “Isn’t that nice of them to remember us right away. I love to be missed, don’t you, Miss Jean?”

Polly had opened her letters, and was skimming them over. All at once she gave a quick exclamation.

“Girls,” she cried. “Who do you think is coming?”

“Miss Calvert,” Ruth said, soberly.

“Aunty Welcome,” Sue put in.

“You’ll never guess,” Polly declared delightedly. “And he won’t be so very far away from us, about ninety miles. He’s come up to dig for bones and things for the Museum, you know.”

“But, Polly, please, we don’t know!” protested Ted. “Tell us, can’t you?”

“Dr. Penrhyn Smith, our blessed old smuggler from Lost Island. Grandfather says here that the Doctor starts the first of next week. He says he will follow the trail of the dinosaur to the Jurassic Beds.”

“Last time he was hunting a polypus,” said Ruth.

“A dinosaur is an animal ninety feet long,” Sue added, thoughtfully. “Once they found one as small as a bantam.”

“Susan Randolph Warner,” exclaimed Polly, “you behave. We must respect any dinosaur, no matter what its size, if it brings the Doctor this way. He told grandfather he’d look in at us some day to be sure we were all right.”

“Sandy would love to meet him,” Jean said. “And so would father, and all of us.”

“I wonder where on earth the Jurassic Beds are,” Ruth meditated.

“At last,” cried Isabel, happily, “there’s one thing Grandma doesn’t know.”

“Well, Grandma’ll find out,” Ruth retorted, decidedly, “if I have to dig with the Doctor after prehistoric bones and things.”

Peggie was listening eagerly, the suit of buckskin half slipping from her lap, her chin on her hand.

“I know where there are old bones, great big ones, and they’re not cattle or buffaloes, either. They look like spools joined together.”

“VertebrÆ,” Polly suggested. “Where, Peggie?”

“Don and I found them once long ago when we were hunting down in Lost Chance Gully.”

“Wouldn’t it be queer,” Jean said, dreamily, her hands clasped behind her head, “wouldn’t it be queer, girls, if poor old Zed spent his life hunting for gold, and something better than gold lay under his feet. We’ll go over and take a look at it, and then write to your Doctor Man, Polly.”

“Dear me,” exclaimed Ted, in her comical way, “I was just beginning to feel vacationized, and now maybe we’ll be following a mission before we know it, and have to pitch in and work hard digging out old bones seventeen million years old. Polly, you’re always starting something.”

But Polly only laughed.

“What would be the good of starting things if I didn’t have you girls to fall back on when it comes to finishing up,” she said.

“Leave it to Polly to make you feel all comfy and willing,” Sue put in. “Never mind, Polly, we will stick by you even if you take to shaking up Jurassic Beds, won’t we, girls?”

And the whole Ranch Club said “Aye.”