Disston stood for a moment, feeling himself dismissed and already forgotten, yet conscious with a rush of emotion which startled him, that in spite of the fact that her dress, speech, manner, occupation, mode of life violated every ideal and tradition, she appealed to him powerfully, stirred him as had no other woman. She aroused within him an enveloping tenderness—a desire to protect her—though she seemed the last woman who needed or cared for either.
When Oleson with the ewes and lambs was well up the creek, Kate gave Bunch his parting instructions:
“Let them spread out more. You Montana herders feed too close—it’s a fault with all of you. Can’t you see the grass is different here? Use your head a little. Got plenty of cartridges? I saw cat tracks in a patch of sand along the creek yesterday. He got eight lambs in his last raid on Oleson’s band. I’ll have to put out some poison.”
She walked slowly across the foot log after the last lamb had leaped bleating through the gate. She inspected her boots, noting that one heel had run over, and looked at her gauntlets, with the fingers protruding. Then, when she stepped inside the wagon, she walked straight to the mirror and stared at her reflection—dishevelled, her face frankly dirty, about her neck a handkerchief that was faded and unbecoming, a mouth that drooped a little with fatigue, her whole face wearing an expression of determination that she realized might very easily become hard. A few more years of work and exposure and she would be grim-featured and hopelessly weather-beaten. No wonder that girl had looked at her as though she were some curious alien creature with whom she had nothing at all in common! And Hughie had said he was disappointed in her.
This was Katie Prentice, she said to herself—Katie Prentice for whom the future, to which she had looked forward eagerly, had been another word for happiness—the Katie Prentice who had tripped in and out of that air castle of her building, looking like this girl that Hugh had brought with him. Now this image was the realization!
Just for the fraction of a second the corners of her mouth twitched, her chin quivered—then she raised it defiantly:
“To do what you set out to do—that’s the great thing. Nothing else matters.”
She slammed the door behind her and untied her horse from the wagon wheel.
“Come on, Cherokee, we’ll go and see what that Nebraskan’s doing.”
The Nebraskan was standing on a hilltop when she first saw him, facing the east and as motionless as the monument of stones beside him. His sheep were nowhere visible.