“Bring some beef, then,” laughed the boss.
The animal’s eyes followed her master furtively. He noted that flickering gleam with a pang--the fear and suspicion of the hunted in it. So much had three days with the wild linked up the slack chain of her blood tie. Then presently she licked his hand, and the look that answered his was soft and appealing as of old.
“Here’s enough to choke her,” announced Mit cheerily, entering with a slab of beef.
The hound sprang at him and the cook, taking no chances, hurled the raw meat into the air. She caught it as it touched the floor and tore into it with the desperate zest of the famished.
The days drifted one into another, and the Tumbling H men rose and ate and slept, and rose again, which is the sum of many lives. Of work there could be little until the spring rains fell. Would the good days of the roundup never come? Oh, the sweltering hours in the saddle, and the bellowings of mighty herds, and the choking dust of the corrals in branding!
Shiela was carefully guarded. In the first of the mild weather she contributed to the bustling cheer of the bunkhouse a litter of four lusty pups. It was as much as a man’s life was worth to go nearer than six feet to the tugging little rascals; but the boy Oscar, who did not know this, proceeded calmly to inspect and caress them. The mother flared in a sudden, quaping rage, but instantly sank back and became reconciled to the extent of permitting the baby, quite undaunted by his first reception, to stroke her progeny with his pudgy hands. She watched him jealously.
Summer rushed upon the land, and the Tumbling H outfit got to horse and rode forth. In November O’Donnell shipped seven thousand head of steers to help stay the world’s maw, and in December there were four men playing at cards again in the bunkhouse.
“Steve,”--the cook cleared his throat as he riffled the cards,--“is it my deal? Shore. Say, Steve, one of Shiela’s pups is killing chickens. He’d ’a got a turkey too, only I done seen him.”
“You ought for to have killed ’em all when they were teeny pups, Steve,” broke in the blacksmith. “What was the use of keeping two? Anyone kin see they’re more wolf than dog.”
“It’s your play,” the boss said evenly.