The Fighting Shepherdess

Excerpt

THE BLOOD OF JEZEBEL

The prognostication made by the citizens of Prouty that it was “gettin’ ready for somethin’” seemed about to be verified out on the sheep range twenty miles distant, for at five o’clock one afternoon the wind stopped as suddenly as it had arisen and heavy snow clouds came out of the northeast with incredible swiftness.

Mormon Joe walked to the door of the cook tent and swept the darkening hills with anxious eyes. Kate should have been back long before this. He always had a dread of her horse falling on her and hurting her too badly to get back. That was about all there was to fear in summer time, but to-night there was the coming storm.

Kate’s sense of direction was remarkable, but the most experienced plainsman would be apt to lose himself in these foothills, with the snow falling thick and the night so black he could not see his hand before his face.

Mormon Joe shook his head and turned back to his task of peeling potatoes. While he worked he reproached himself that he had not hunted those horses himself; but she had been so insistent upon going. She did not mind the wind, she had said, but then she did not “mind” anything, when it came to that. What would have been hardships for another were merely adventures to her.

At any rate, Kate was more comfortable now than she had been the year before. He smiled a little as he recalled her delight in the sheep wagon which he had given her to be her own quarters. He had had to borrow the money at the bank in addition to what he already had borrowed for running expenses, but his circumstances justified it. He was getting ahead, not with phenomenal rapidity, but satisfactorily. With the leases, and the land he owned, he was building the future upon a substantial foundation. A few years more of economy and attention to business and he could give Kate the advantages he wished. He listened, got up from the condensed-milk box upon which he sat and walked to the entrance of the tent once more. He strained his ears, but death itself was not more still than the opaque night.

Kate had left immediately after breakfast, and since the horses had only a few hours’ start and would probably feed as they went, she had expected to be back by noon.

Kate was exceedingly resourceful—she knew what to do if caught out, he assured himself, unless she had been hurt. It was this thought that gave him a curious stillness at his heart. What would life be without her now? With the knife in his hand he stopped as he turned inside and stared at the potatoes on the box. He never had thought of that before—it left him aghast.

The girl had twined herself into every fiber of his nature from the time she had come to him as a child. She was identified with every hope. Humph! He knew well enough what the answer would be if anything happened to Kate. He would shoot the chutes, again—quick. It was she who had awakened his ambition and kept him tolerably straight. Without her? Humph!

He stoked the sheet-iron camp stove, put the potatoes to boil, cut chops enough for two and laid the table with the steel knives and forks and tin plates....