Now she told herself contemptuously that she was no different from the homesick Nebraskan, and, having made up her mind, lost no time in giving each herder his instructions as to when and where to move his sheep. Kate never paid wages for anything that she could do herself, so the morning after her decision to start for the mountains she was in the saddle and leading two work horses on the way to move Oleson's and Bowers's camps before the sun was up. The two sheep wagons were a considerable distance apart and the road over the broken country to the spot where Kate wished Oleson to make his first camp was a rough one, therefore it was late in the afternoon when Kate reached Bowers's camp--too late to pull the wagon toward the mountains that night. She pulled the harness from the tired horses, slipped on their nose bags with their allowance of oats, and, when they had finished, hobbled and turned them loose to graze in the wide gulch where the wagon stood. Then she warmed up a few pieces of fried mutton--and this, with a piece of baking-powder bread and a cup of water from the rivulet that trickled through the gulch, constituted her frugal supper. While driving the sheep wagon it had required all her attention to throw the brake to keep the wagon off the horses' heels, and release it as quickly, to select the best of a precarious road and maintain the wagon's equilibrium, but immediately the strain was over and her mind free to ramble, her thoughts reverted at once to Disston, in spite of her efforts to direct them elsewhere. Activity is the recognized panacea for a heavy heart, and efficacious while it lasts, but with a lull it makes itself felt like the return of pain through a dying opiate; and so it was with Kate as she lay wide-eyed on the bunk to-night with both the door and window open, while a warm wind, faintly scented with the wild peas that purpled the side of the gulch, blew across her face. The rivulet gurgled under the overhanging willows and alder brush. A belated kildeer broke the night stillness with its cry. The hobbles clanked as the horses thumped their fore feet in working their way slowly to the top of the gulch. Bowers fired his evening salute before retiring as a hint to the coyotes, and, sometimes, when the wind veered, a far-off tinkle as a bell-sheep stirred on the bed-ground came to Kate's ears--all were familiar sounds, so familiar that she heard them only subconsciously. In the same way she saw the dark outlines of objects inside the sheep wagon--the turkey-wing duster thrust between an oak bow and the canvas, the outline of the coffee pot on the stove, the cherished frying pans dangling on their nails, her rifle standing on the bench within reach. So far as she knew, she and Bowers were the only human beings within miles, yet she felt no fear; to be alone in the sheep wagon in the dusk of the gulch held no new sensation for her.