“And what did she say?” asked the shepherd quietly, his eyes on the girl below.
“Just said, kind o’ short like, that she reckoned I could. Then I come away.”
The girl finished her letter, and, after another long call for Dad, moved on over the shoulder of the mountain. Pete, who had withdrawn a little way from his companions, was busily talking in his strange manner to his unseen friends.
Then Young Matt opened his heart to the shepherd and told him all. It was the old, old story; and, as Mr. Howitt listened, dreams that he had thought dead with the death of his only son, stirred again in his heart, and his deep voice was vibrant with emotion as he sought to comfort the lad who had come to him.
While they talked, the sun dropped until its lower edge touched the top of the tallest pine on Wolf Ridge, and the long shadows lay over the valley below. “I’m mighty sorry I let go and cuss, Dad,” finished, the boy. “But I keep a holdin’ in, and a holdin’ in, ’til I’m plumb wild; then something happens like that letter, and I go out on the range and bust. I’ve often wished you knowed. Seems like your just knowin’ about it will help me to hold on. I get scared at myself sometimes, Dad, I do, honest.”
“I’m glad, too, that you have told me, Grant. It means more to me than you can guess. I—I had a boy once, you know. He was like you. He would have come to me this way, if he had lived.”
The sheep had begun working toward the lower ground. The shepherd rose to his feet. “Take them home, Brave. Come on, boys, you must eat with me at the ranch, to-night.” Then the three friends, the giant mountaineer, the strangely afflicted youth, and the old scholar went down the mountain side together.
As they disappeared in the timber on the lower level, the bushes, near which they had been sitting, parted silently, and a man’s head and shoulders appeared from behind a big rock. The man watched the strange companions out of sight. Then the bushes swayed together, and the mountain seemed to have swallowed him up.
The three friends had just finished their supper when Pete saw Sammy entering the ranch clearing. Young Matt caught up his hat. At the rear door he paused. “I’ve got to go now, Dad,” he said awkwardly. “I can’t see her any more to-day. But if you’ll let me, I’ll come again when things get too hot.”
The shepherd held out his hand, “I understand. Come always, my boy.”