"You let that fence alone." Tisdale had started to cross the field, and she followed, railing, though the gun still rested in the hollow of her arm. "If one of those goats breaks away, the whole herd'll go wild. I can't round 'em in without my dog. He's off trailing one of the ewes. She strayed yesterday, and he'll chase the mountain through if he has to. It's no use to whistle; he won't come back without her. You let that fence be. You wouldn't dare to touch it," she finished impotently, "if I had a man." "Haven't you?" Tisdale swung around, and his voice dropped to its soft undernote. "That's mighty hard. Who laid all that water-pipe? Who built your house?" "I did," she answered grimly. "The man who hauled my load of lumber stopped long enough to help set the posts, but I did the rest." "You did?" Tisdale shook his head incredulously. "My! My! Made all the necessary improvements, single-handed, to hold your homestead and at the same time managed these goats." The woman's glance moved to the shack and out over the barren fields, and a shade of uncertainty crept into her passionate eyes. "The improvements don't make much of a show yet; I've had to be off so much in the mountains, foraging with the herd. But I was able to hire a boy half a day with the shearing this spring, and from now on they're going to pay. There are twenty-eight in the bunch, counting the kids, and I started with one old billy and two ewes." "My! My! what a record!" Tisdale paused to look back at Miss Armitage, who had turned the bays, allowing them to pace down a length of road and back. "But," he added, walking on, "what led you to choose goats instead of sheep?" "I didn't do the choosing"; she moved abreast of Hollis, "it was a fool man." "So," he answered softly, with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, "there is a man, after all." "There was," she corrected grimly. "The easiest fellow to be talked over under the sun; the kind always chasing off after a new scheme. First it was a mineral claim; then he banked the future on timber, and when he got tired waiting for stumpage to soar, he put up a dinky sawmill to cut his own trees. He was doing well, for him, getting out ties for a new railroad--it was down in Oregon--when he saw the chance to trade for a proved-up homestead. But it was the limit when he started out to buy a bunch of sheep and came back with that old Angora billy and two ewes." "I see." They were near the fence, and Tisdale swerved a little to reach a stout poplar that formed the corner post. He saw that the wire ends met there and felt in his pocket for his knife. "I see. And then he left the responsibility to his wife." "The wedding hadn't come off," she said sharply. "It was fixed for the seventeenth of June, and that was only May. And I told him I couldn't risk it--not in the face of those goats." "And he?" pressed Hollis gently. This thistle, isolated, denied human intercourse, was more easily handled than he had hoped.