“Guess he is. Some herders get so they talk to the sheep, and I think all of them talk to their dogs. Maybe that’s why sheepdogs seem to know more than others.”
The girls were rather quiet on the ride back. They never forgot that picture, the lonely wagon, and far-reaching stone-gray masses of nibbling sheep, and Randy with the lamb on his lap, nursing it as tenderly as any baby. Day after day, for weeks at a time, he never saw any human being, nothing alive but Siwash and the other dog, and the sheep. Still he looked cheery, and contented, they thought, remembering Randy’s face, tanned and sunburnt to a brick red, and his close-shut mouth that had smiled down at the deserted lamb.
“It is much better for him here than if he were thirty or fifty miles out in the hills as some of the herders are,” said Jean. “I mustn’t forget to send over his baking powder.”
They arrived at the ranch about noon, and after dinner, Peggie agreed to show them her room and its treasures.
“It used to be Jeanie’s too, but now she’s away from home, I have it all to myself.”
It was the smaller bedroom at the large cabin. There were three all told, opening off the main sitting room. Peggie’s looked southeast over the valley. There was no plaster on the walls. There were just plain boards nailed on the uprights evenly. The ceiling was of boards too. At the small windows Peggie had hung short, pretty curtains of cream-colored cheese-cloth hemstitched by her own self. There was a deal table placed at a good angle near the best window light, and it served as a desk as well.
“Neil made that for me,” Peggie said with pride. “He can carve out of wood beautifully. It shuts up and locks, and I can put books along the top.”
“What books do you like, Peggie?” asked Polly, trying to read the titles.
“I like tales of travel, true tales I mean, and stories about children that live in the cities down East.”
“How funny that is. And we always want to read stories of girls who live ’way out West.”