“Oh, and I thought you’d won when you got them to here,” cried Ess, in dismay. “Don’t say we’re beaten after all.”
“Mebbe no just beaten,” said Scottie, cautiously, “bit I’m no sayin’ we’ve won.”
“There’s whole bunches of them strung out for a couple of miles back,” said Steve. “We might let them go if we could push these up. If not, we’ll have to kill them to save them, as the Irishman said. And the skins are all we’ll get for our trouble.”
Scottie rose stiffly to his feet and climbed into the saddle. “Ye’d better go home, Ess,” he said. “This is goin’ tae be an all-nicht job. We’ll be there by sun-up. If they’re no ower the hill by that, we’re beat.”
“I’ll wait here for a bit, uncle,” she said. “I couldn’t rest not knowing how it’s going to finish.”
Steve stood for a moment before mounting, while Scottie moved away.
“Looks like Buckley’s chance for my spec., Miss Ess,” he said.
“I’m so—so sorry,” she said.
“We’ll fight it out to the finish, anyway,” he said. “The boys are keeping at it good.”
“They must be more dead beat than the sheep,” she said, “but they still go on working. I do wish that bleating would stop for a minute. It sounds so pitiful—as if they were crying to us to save them, and wailing with the torment of thirst and fatigue.”