"You don't need to wait at all," she said quickly. "I'll go with you, for I am curious to see what has been done—the cause of all this."
"Then come on," said the man briefly, turning toward the corral. She kept near him, her eyes following the bright rays of the lantern that swung in his hand. She feared that the boys had aimed too low, and was nervously anxious to see just what mischief had been done. Almost anything, she thought, would have been better than permitting those thousands of sheep to be piled up at the bottom of the cut-bank and the brutes of men to ride away satisfied with their dirty work.
Livingston examined the sheep while Hope, with a glance here and there about the enclosure, went to one side and looked at the panels carefully, discovering many bullet holes which told that her brave scouts, more bloodthirsty than she suspected, had aimed too low.
"I think this one is dead," said Livingston, dragging out a sheep from the midst of a number huddled in one corner. "Judging from the blood, I should say it is shot. A few are piled up over there from fright, but so many are sleeping that it will be impossible to determine the loss until morning. The loss is small; probably a hundred piled up and hurt, not more, from the looks of the band. I heard considerable firing, which lasted about a minute. I wonder if my friends about here thought they could kill off a band of sheep so easily."
Hope had not been searching for sheep, but for dead or wounded men, and finding none breathed easier. She thought of the man whose hand she had marked and who fell in such a panic among the sheep. It struck her as being a very funny incident, and laughed a little. Livingston heard the laugh and looked around in wonderment. He could see nothing amusing. This Western girl was totally different from any girl that he had known, English or American. She must possess a sense of humor out of all proportion with anything of his conception. He thought a few minutes before that he loved her, but she seemed far removed now—an absolute stranger. The boyish laugh annoyed him. His manner as he turned to her was quite as formally polite as ever her own had been. She resented it, naturally.
"Step outside, please, until I drive in the ones near the gate, so that I may close it."
Instinctively she obeyed, with a defiant look which was lost in the dimness of the night, and hurrying past him never stopped until she drew back with a shudder at the blanket-covered form of the dead herder. A deep roar of thunder startled her into a half-suppressed scream. In the lantern's light she had not noticed the steadily increasing darkness, or the flashes of lightning. She felt herself shaking with a nervous excitement which was half fear.
Thunderstorms often made her nervous, yet she would not have acknowledged that she feared them, or any other thing. But her nervousness was only the culmination of the night, every moment of which had been a strain upon her. Another peal of thunder followed the first, fairly weakening her. She ran to her horse and, mounting, rode up near the corral. At the same instant the wagon came up, and Livingston, having placed the panel in position, turned toward it. He was close beside the girl before he saw her, and she, for an instant at a loss, sat there speechless; but as he held up the lantern, looking at her by its light, she blurted out, in a tone that she had little intention of using: "I'm going. Hope you will get along all right. Good-night."
"Wait!" he exclaimed. "I will accompany you. My horse is here now. Just a moment——"
"You don't need to go with me. Someone is waiting for me down there. I think I hear a whistle."