And the herders, sitting apart with grimy hands clasped loosely
over hunched-up knees, looked on, and talked together in low
tones, and grinned.
Irish glanced that way and caught them grinning; caught them
pointing derisively, with heaving shoulders. He swore a great
oath and made for them, calling aloud that he would knock those
grins so far in that they would presently find themselves smiling
wrong-side-out from the back of their heads.
Pink, overhearing him, gave a last swat at the waggling tail of a
burrowing buck, and wheeled to overtake Irish and have a hand in
reversing the grins. Big Medicine saw them start, and came
bellowing up from the far side of the huddle like a bull
challenging to combat from across a meadow. Big Medicine did not
know what it was all about, but he scented battle, and that was
sufficient. Cal Emmett and Weary, equally ignorant of the cause,
started at a lope toward the trouble center.
It began to look as if the whole Family was about to fall upon
those herders and rend them asunder with teeth and nails; so much
so that the herders jumped up and ran like scared cottontails
toward the rim of Denson coulee, a hundred yards or so to the
west.
"Mamma! I wish we could make the sheep hit that gait and keep
it," exclaimed Weary, with the first laugh they had heard from
him that day.
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