Another time they met a sheepman from Idaho, driving his flocks eastward towards the fall markets. It was a strange sight. Hundreds of sheep grazing as they went, with the dogs skirting the bunch, and the grave-eyed, unsmiling herders staring at the campers.
“When did you start, friend?” called out Mr. Murray.
“Last of May,” came back the answer. “We’re going easy. They’ll be good and fat by fall.”
“Isn’t that funny,” exclaimed Polly, when they drove on. “Four months to go a few hundred miles.”
“They camp out when they come to a good feeding ground, and let the flocks get all they want. Then by fall when they reach the market, or where they weigh up, they are in fine condition and the sheepman has saved his freightage on them. That’s the way they used to bring up cattle over the Long Trail from Texas.”
At one homestead, with evenly irrigated fields all around it in a pretty valley, there were two young girls out with a yoke of oxen, working over their alfalfa crop. They turned and waved to the Murrays and the girls.
“That is Nell Wilson and her sister,” said Mrs. Murray. “They came from Illinois last year, and took up a claim. The sister was real poorly, I heard, but she’s picked up all right, and they’re doing well. Sandy went over in the spring to see that they got along all right.”
“Are they all alone?” asked Ruth, wonderingly. “They look so young.”
“Oh, they’re both in the twenties. Yes, they’re alone. Nell was a stenographer, I believe, and Grace, the sister, tried one thing after another. Then they took what money they had, and came out here. A family called Jimpson had taken that section, and couldn’t seem to make it pay. They put in a lot of good farm implements too, and had the oxen, and a horse, but they didn’t have any luck, they said. Well, I always contend there’s no luck like pluck, and the Wilson girls came along, and bought them out for a song, and they’ve had luck, but not without steady, faithful work. Archie’s been over helping them now and then, and he says Nell’s a dear girl.”
Polly looked up quickly at Jean, and saw that she was smiling, and she wondered, for Polly sensed a story or a romance miles off, as the Admiral said. Jean saw the eager inquiry in her glance, and nodded her head.