The Wrong Woman Part 14

As she got out nearer to the centre of her field of operations,--twelve hundred sheep cut a pretty wide swath,--she thought she heard the cry of a lamb. She stopped and listened. All was silence. It might have been imagination, a.s.sisted, possibly, by some rumor of the distant flock; but yet the still small voice had seemed to come from somewhere near at hand. She went forward, listening intently. Presently she heard it again; then she saw him. He was so close that she could see his little red tongue as he opened his mouth and called to her.

Poor little lamb! There was not a sheep in sight. There was just him and the prairie. He was barely managing to stand up; she could easily see that he was on his last legs as well as his first ones. As she went to him he took a step or two as if to meet her, but his legs lacked stiffening and he fell on his nose. She ran and picked him up.

As she took him in her arms he opened his mouth again and called upon his mother.

Which way to take him in search of milk became now a pressing problem.

She thought she felt him s.h.i.+ver. If he was to be saved, it would not do for him to starve much longer; nature demands that if a lamb is to live he must have his first meal without delay. She paused to decide the matter, holding his pa.s.sive little hoofs in her hand. To keep right on after the flock might prove the quickest way; but again it might not; it would be taking a chance. Back at the corral, far though it was, the services of a mother were certain. The surest way seemed the best to her, and having decided so, she turned about at once, walking rapidly.

The return trip seemed very long, and the forced pace told upon her strength. She kept it up, however, till the goal had been reached.

Having her orphan inside the bars she deposited him in a corner while she turned her attention to the row of little stalls or prison-pens which were built along the outside of the fence. This inst.i.tution she had observed with great interest. Each pen was just large enough to crowd a ewe in, being calculated to allow her no liberty in any way; they were all built so that sheep could be put into them from the inside of the corral. She opened one of them, seized upon the first lamb at hand and put it in, and when the fond mother put her nose in after it Janet gave her a good push from behind and sent her in also; then she abstracted the rightful lamb and put the other in its place.

Having closed the opening she climbed over the fence and sat down on the prairie beside the pen where she could look in between the rails and watch developments.

The lamb, probably because it had gone too long without that first drink which is the making of a lamb, did not seem able to rise. Janet put her hand in between the rails and gave it a lift. Once it had its legs under it, it managed for itself. To Janet's great satisfaction it filled up visibly. When it was done, she let out the ewe, who hastened to find her own again, knocking down the orphan in the process of getting out. As he made no effort to rise, Janet again took him in her arms.

The lamb seemed dispirited and chilled. This is a condition which is quite likely to overtake a "wet-lamb" if it is neglected from the outset, in which case its little stock of vitality is not easily regained. Despite the brightness of the weather there was a touch of chill in the air. Janet sat down in the doorway of the shack and held the lamb in her lap, doubling her skirt up over it in order to get it warm. Like any other lamb it submitted to whatever was done to it.

Now it lay so quietly in her lap, and looked so innocent and helpless, that she felt permanently responsible for it. Especially as she did not know what else to do with it. Presently she felt it growing warmer and warmer; then it went to sleep.

Janet was tired. She sat there watching the prairie. In the sky the same dark birds were soaring. The suspended effigy of Mr. Pete Harding, swayed by the slightest breeze, moved its loose-hung arms and legs as if it were being visited by the drunken spirit of its owner.

At intervals the solitude found expression in a sheep's automatic _baa_. The birds, which were buzzards, wheeled round and round as the time pa.s.sed and brought them nothing. One of them, tired of wheeling round and round, sat on one of the posts of the corral and waited for something to happen. These were the dusky angels that carried away the lamb's body of the day before; she had seen its little white bones down at the foot of the knoll. The present watcher, a stoop-shouldered, big, rusty-black bird, was quite indifferent to human presence; he sat on his post like a usurer on his high stool, calculating and immovable.

Janet knew what was in his mind. She drew the lamb a little closer and tucked her skirt in around it. Again she fell to contemplating the prairie--and the sky. The birds above seemed connected with the machinery of Time. At unexpected moments a sheep gave voice to it all "in syllable of dolour."

No, she would not really want to be a sheepherder; at least not alone.

Last night, or whenever Steve Brown was about, everything looked quite different. Even now, she reflected, it was not so bad as it might be, and she did not really mind it much; it was his place; he was just over the horizon somewhere; and as long as it was his place she did not feel so lonesome. He had long ago turned the flock about; she could picture him as he followed them along, nearer and nearer. After a while he would be home.

She sat holding the lamb till the sun began to redden; then it occurred to her that, under the circ.u.mstances, it was her duty to get supper.

It was a welcome thought; she would see what she could do. She put the orphan at the foot of the bunk, drew the quilt over it and set to work.

It had now become apparent that she was destined to spend another night at the shack; this, however, gave her no serious concern. It entered her mind only in the form of the pleasant reflection that n.o.body would be worried by her absence; the farmer's family would think she had gone to the county-seat and then reached her destination at Merrill; the folks at Merrill would think she was still at the school, all of which was very fortunate, and so she thought no more about it. She was mainly concerned with the lambs, and particularly, at the present moment, with supper. She spread down her two white napkins, which had not seen service the night before, placing them corner to corner or diamondwise on the ground; then she set the table and examined further into the resources of the provision box. While the fire was getting itself under way, she completed the effect by arranging some flowers in a cup and placing a nosegay upon the bosom of nature. Before long there was a good bed of coals in the fire-hole.

Supper was just ready when the flock reached the knoll and began streaming up the slope into the corral; then followed Steve Brown escorted by three sheep. He carried four lambs, one on each arm, and two others whose heads protruded from the breast of his coat.

"Four more!" she exclaimed, stepping forward to meet them. "Did you get all there were, Mr. Brown?"

"I got all I saw, Miss Janet," he answered, casting a bright and intelligent look at the fire-hole. "And I was afraid I had lost you.

You got supper, did n't you? That looks nice."

Steve Brown's conversation was largely illumined by the light of his eye; likewise his silences, which were many. They were direct eyes which paid close attention and shot their beams straight as along the barrel of a rifle. The live interest of his look, and the slight but expressive play of his features, made up quite well for the occasional scarcity of words.

"Yes, everything is all ready," she said.

"Well, I won't keep you waiting long."

When he had rid himself of the lambs he strode down the slope to the spring, and presently she heard him "was.h.i.+ng up" with more than his usual vigor. Pretty soon he came up and bore a beaming countenance to supper.

Janet, as she poured the coffee and pa.s.sed the hot bread, gave an account of her day's work, telling first about the orphan and how she managed with him; then she took up the other lambs, consecutively.

"I got four altogether," she ended.

"Oh, you should not have done that."

"No?"

There was mingled surprise and disappointment in her look; but mainly disappointment.

"You could never have handled them that way--if they had been really coming fast. It would take a wagon. There is no use of your working like that."

"But," she insisted, after a pause, "you could n't have carried more than those four, could you?"

"No--that was just about a load."

"And we got them all in, did n't we?"

"Oh, yes--yes. What I meant was that you ought n't to work like that.

But we certainly did get them all in. And it's the only way we could have done it. As it turned out, it was just the right thing to do--all that was necessary." After a moment's silence he felt he had not said quite enough. "You did first-cla.s.s," he added. "The fact is, n.o.body could have done better."

Janet recovered her cheerfulness at once. She resumed her story of the day, and then, as she got around to the subject of the lamb again, she went into the shack and brought him out. Having been a.s.sured that he was looking well and was likely to recover, she sat down at her place again with the lamb in her lap. He lay there contentedly while she finished her supper.

"Yes," said Steve in answer to another of her questions, "lambs are kind of cute. Sometimes I feel bad for a lamb myself when his mother won't have anything to do with him. You ought to be out here later on, Miss Janet, when the lambs have all been born and are starting to get frisky. That's when the fun begins."

"I have heard that lambs play together like children," she said.

"Oh, they do. You see they've got to learn jumping, too. And climbing--like a goat. That first lamb will soon be so lively that plain running won't be good enough for him. He 'll want to do fancy tricks."

"Nature teaches them to play," observed Janet. "That's to give them practice and make them strong."

"I should say she did," said Steve, referring thus familiarly to Nature. "She puts all sorts of notions into their heads."

"What do they do, for instance, Mr. Brown?"

"Well, for one thing, a lamb likes to practice jumping. You see, sheep don't belong on prairies, like cattle. Cattle belong on prairies the same as buffalo, but sheep don't; they belong on mountains; that's the reason the young ones are so handy with their hoofs. They like to climb and jump, but on a prairie there is n't any place to jump off of.

Well, maybe some day a lamb will be galloping and cavorting around, and he 'll come across a hunk of rock salt that has been all licked off smooth on top and hollowed out. He 'll take a running jump at that and land on it with all four hoofs in one spot and then he'll take a leap off the top. Then, when he sees what a good circus actor he is, he will gallop right around and do it over again; and the rest of his gang will start in and follow him, because what one sheep does the rest have got to do. That way they get to running in a circle round and round and taking turns at jumping."

"How perfectly funny!" exclaimed Janet.

"That's the way they do. They run races and play 'stump-the-leader'

and 'hi-spy' and 'ring-around-the-rosy.' Why, Miss Janet, if you were out here a little later on, you would think it was _recess_ all the time."

"I wish I might be," said Janet.

"A lamb likes to be on the go," he continued. "Sheep really ain't lively enough for a lamb, so he has to go off and have his own fun. He 'll gallop around with a troop of other lambs and won't stop except long enough to go home for dinner."

"I don't see," said Janet, "how a lamb can go away like that and ever find his mother again, in such a crowd. They all look alike."

"That's easy enough. Every sheep's voice is keyed up to a different pitch; they all sound different some way or another. And every lamb has a little voice of his own."

"Yes, I've noticed that. But I did n't know there was any object in it. Or that they knew each other's voices."

"Oh, certainly they do. When a lamb gets hungry he whisks right around and runs into the flock and starts up his tune. She'll hear it and she'll start up too; and that way they'll keep signaling to each other.

A lamb will run into a crowd of a thousand sheep and go right to his mother. When he has arrived, maybe she will smell him to make sure; and if he is all right, why--then it is all right."