“The Good Book tells us,” glumly expounded Fenno, mopping the sweat from his leathern face, “the Good Book tells us Job owned ‘seven thousand sheep.’ But it tells us he had seven sons to handle the measly brutes, and a multitude of men servants. So he could stay home an’ work at his trade of being patient and let his boys and that same multitude of hired men rustle the sheep. I’ll bet $9 if he’d had only one lazy young rattle-pated kid of a partner and three numbskull Basque herdsmen and three or four wuthless collies to help him work the sheep, he’d never ’a’ won the Patience Medal in his district. He’d likely ’a’ been jailed for swearin’. I—”
“Speaking of ‘worthless collies,’” interrupted Mack, who had been standing in his stirrups and staring over the gray-white sea of sheep, “what’s become of Treve? Generally, when his work’s done for a few minutes, he trots alongside me. You took him with you, didn’t you, when you rode back after that last bunch of strays? You ran the bunch into the lot that Zit is handling. Where’s Treve?”
“Oh, likely he’s barkin’ down some gopher-hole or tryin’ to make Toni play tag with him, or suthin’!” growled the old man, annoyed at Royce’s dearth of interest in the comparison between Job and his partner. “He’ll show up. He always does. You waste more time worritin’ over that four-legged flea-pasture than any sensible feller would spend on his bankbook. Treve’s all right. He always is. It’s a way he’s got. Fergit it.”
But, oddly enough, Joel himself did not forget it. Indeed, presently he made excuse to ride back to speak to Toni; who was in charge of the rearguard of the flock. Out of hearing of his partner, he bawled lustily to Treve. But there was no answering scurry of white paws.
Nor, when the party made camp, at dusk, among the foothills, had the big young collie rejoined them. Joel Fenno scoffed at Mack’s show of anxiety about the absent Treve. Yet, Joel discovered now that he had dropped his pipe, somewhere along the route; and fussily he insisted on riding back through the dark to look for it.
He was gone for three hours. On his return he grumbled at his failure to find the missing pipe—which, by the way, he had been smoking throughout his three-hour absence.
“Didn’t see or hear anything of Treve, back yonder, did you?” queried Mack, from among the blankets.
“Treve?” repeated Joel, grouchily. “Nope. Never thought to look for him. Likely he’s gone on ahead; and we’ll find him at the ranch house. He’s a lazy cuss. Likely he’s scamped his work and trotted on home. Nope, I never bothered to look for him. It was my pipe I was huntin’. Not a measly dog.”
He cleared his throat contemptuously. His throat was rough and raw from repeated shoutings of Treve’s name, during his three hours of futile hunt for the missing collie.
Treve was not at the ranch house, when the herders got there, next afternoon. Fenno was loud in derision, when Royce Mack insisted on riding back over the mountain trail in quest of the lost dog. But Mack went. And he found nothing.