He turned to his rocker, and the sheep started down again, with Old Felix in the lead, and behind him two yearlings, two ewes, and the spring lamb.
Their visits were events in Bruce’s uneventful life. He felt as flattered by their confidence as one feels by the preference of a child. His liking for animals amounted to a passion, and he had been absurdly elated the first time he had enticed them to the salt, which he had placed on a flat rock not far from the cabin door. For the first few visits their soft black eyes, with their amber rims, had followed him timorously, and they were ready to run at any unusual movement. Then, one afternoon, they unexpectedly lay down in the soft dirt which banked the cabin, and he was so pleased that he chuckled softly to himself all the time they stayed.
Now he laid down his dipper, and started toward the house.
“I’ll just take a look, anyhow, and see how much there is.”
He eyed uncertainly the small bag of table salt which he took from the soap-box cupboard nailed to the wall.
“There isn’t much of it, that’s a fact. I guess they’ll have to wait.” He slammed the door of the improvised cupboard hard upon its leather hinges made of a boot-top, and turned away.
“Aw, dog-gone it!” he cried, stopping short. “I haven’t got the heart to disappoint the poor little devils.” He turned back and took the salt.
The sheep were just coming out of the cañon between the mountains when Bruce stepped through the cabin door. Old Felix stopped and stood like a statue—Old Felix, the Methuselah of the Bitter Roots, who wore the most magnificent pair of horns that ever grew on a mountain sheep. Solid and perfect they were, all of nineteen and three-quarters inches at the base and tapering to needle points. Of incredible weight and size, he carried them as lightly on his powerful neck as though they were but the shells of horns. Now, as he stood with his tremulous nozzle outstretched, sniffing, cautious, wily, old patriarch that he was, he made a picture which, often as Bruce had seen it, thrilled him through and through. Behind Old Felix were the frisking lamb and the mild-eyed ewes. They would not come any closer, but they did not run.
“It wouldn’t have lasted but a few days longer anyhow,” Bruce murmured half apologetically as he divided the salt and spread it on the rock. He added: “I suppose Slim will be sore.”
He returned to his work at the river, and the sheep licked the rock bare; then they lay down in leisurely fashion beside the cabin, their narrow jaws wagging ludicrously, their eyelids drooping sleepily, secure in their feeling that all was well.