"I don't suppose
we could work the combination on those dogs--what?" he considered
aloud, glancing back at them where they still sat upon their
haunches and watched the strange riders. "Say, Cadwalloper, you
took a few lessons in sheepherding, a couple of years ago, when
you was stuck on that girl--remember? Whistle 'em up here and set
'en to work."
"You go to the devil," Pink's curved hips replied amiably to his
boss. "I've got loss-uh-memory on the sheep business."
Whereat Weary grinned and said no more about it.
On the opposite side of the coulee, the boys seemed to be
laboring quite as fruitlessly with the other herder. They heard
Big Medicine's truculent bellow, as he leaned from the saddle and
waved a fist close to the face of the herder, but, though they
rode with their eyes fixed upon the group, they failed to see any
resultant movement of dogs, sheep or man.
There is, at times, a certain safety in being the hopeless
minority. Though seven indignant cowpunchers surrounded him, that
herder was secure from any personal molestation--and he knew it.
They were seven against one; therefore, after making some caustic
remarks, which produced as little effect as had Weary's command
upon the first man, the seven were constrained to ride here and
there along the wavering, gray line, and, with shouts and
swinging ropes, themselves drive the sheep from the coulee.
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