The mother looked down at the little girl, still busy over her plate of bacon and eggs.
"Well, maybe she could do that," she said thoughtfully.
"Oh, I'm too little," expostulated the little girl, between two bites.
"Little! You great big thing!" scolded the eldest brother as he went out. "What are you good for, anyway? Not worth your salt."
When he was gone around the corner of the kitchen, the little girl left her high bench and sat down crossly upon the door-step. "He's always 'busing me," she complained. "When I want to do anyfing, he says I'm too little; but when he wants me to do anyfing he finks I'm big enough."
"Now, pet lamb," said her mother, "you don't have to herd if you don't want to. But I think you'd be safe on the pinto, and, perhaps, if you went the boys would all remember their promise about your birthday."
The little girl, understanding what was meant, looked up at her mother for a moment. Then she whipped through the sitting-room to her bed, pulled on a pair of beaded moccasins, took her sailor hat off a nail, and started for the smoke-house.
The eldest brother went across the reservation road to where the pinto was picketed in the grassy swale, and brought her in, with her blind black colt trotting at her heels. And when he had bridled her and girthed on the soft, woolly pelt of a sheep, he lifted the little girl to her back and fastened both bare ankles to the cinch with hame-straps. Then he put the short reins into the little girl's hands, gave the mare a good slap on the flanks, and watched horse, rider, and colt depart northward toward the cattle. For it had been settled, when the biggest brother came in, that if she would try her best to keep the cattle in the meadows so that the smoke-house could be finished, that very day her birthday would be changed from December to June.
As soon as the little girl reached the open prairie, the big brothers returned to their work on the smoke-house. And by the time that the herd, with the pinto and the dogs behind it, was but a collection of white and brown specks against the green of the plains, they were so busy that they had forgotten her. The youngest brother lifted the sods from the wagon and handed them to the biggest, who helped the eldest lay them, one layer lengthwise, the next crosswise, and always in such a way that the middle of a slab came directly above the ends of the ones beneath.