"Savvy? Why, that dog's human. Now, I suppose he's stopping over there to
see what he must do next, is he?"
"Wants to know whether I want 'em all rounded up, or just edged up outa
the Basin. G' round 'em, Pat," he called, and made a wide, circular sweep
with his right arm.
Pat gave a yelp, dropped his head, and scurried up the ridge, driving all
stragglers back toward the center of the flock. He went to every crest
and sniffed into the wind to satisfy himself that none had strayed beyond
his sight; returned and evened up the ragged edges of the hand, and then
came trotting back to Starr with six inches of pink tongue draped over
his lower jaw and a smile in his eyes and a waggle of satisfaction at
loved work well done. The goats, with a meek Billy in the foreground,
huddled in a compact mass on the slope and eyed the dog as they had never
eyed Vic, for all his hoe-handle and his accuracy with rocks.
Helen May dropped her hand on Pat's head and looked soberly into his
upturned eyes. "You're a perfect miracle of a dog, so you can't be my
dog, after all," she said. "Your owner will be riding day and night to
find you. I know I should, if you got lost from me." Then she looked at
Starr. "Don't you think you really ought to take him back with you?
It--somehow it doesn't seem quite right to keep a dog that knows so
much. Why, the man I bought the goats from had a dog that could herd
them, and he wanted twenty-five dollars for it, and at that, he claimed
he was putting the price awfully low for me, just because I was a lady,
you know."
Starr, was (as he put it) kicking himself for having lied himself
into this dilemma. Also he was wondering how best he might lie
himself out of it.
"You want to look out for these marks that say they're giving you the big
end of a bargain just because you're a lady," he said. "Chances are
they're figuring right then on doing you. If that fellow had got
twenty-five dollars for his dog, take it from me, he wouldn't have lost
anything."
"Well, but do you think it would he right to keep this dog?"
Since she put it that way, Starr felt better. "I sure do. Keep him anyway
till he's called for. When I go back, I'll find out where he comes from;
and when I've located the owner, maybe I'll be able to fix it up with him
somehow. You sure ought to have a dog. So let it stand that way. I'll
tell yuh when to give him up."
Helen May opened her lips, and Starr, to forestall argument and to save
his soul from further sin, turned toward the dog. "Bring 'em home, Pat,"
he said, and then started toward the corral, which was down below the
spring. "Watch him drive," he said to Helen May and so managed to
distract her attention from the ethics of the case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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