There, encircling the house and pressing against it for warmth in a world of pitiless cold, swarmed something like three hundred sheep. On the porch--worn out and panting, her pink tongue lolling--slumped Cirenhaven Nellie. Nellie had followed Treve, as ever, into the welter of blizzard, in pursuit of the stampeded Number Six flock. Presently she had caught the scent on her own account; and had held it. When Treve had been lured aside in quest of a handful of strays that had turned back from the main stampede, Nellie had plodded heavily on. The scent of the main body of sheep had by this time become too badly obliterated by snow-swirl and cross-winds, for even Treve to pick it up. He could not scent Nellie’s own tracks through that hurricane of whizzing snow which blotted out each footstep as fast as it was made. But to Nellie the elusive scent was still strong enough for her preternaturally keen nose to follow it more or less correctly. When this was at times impossible, her uncanny instinct--the instinct of the trained blind--carried her on. Slowly, wearily, yet unfaltering, she kept up the quest. She came staggeringly upon the sheep, at last, as they wavered on the precipice edge of the coulée--as they waited for some leader to be insane enough to fling himself over the brink; so that they might follow. Nellie ran nimbly along the slippery cliff-edge; forcing them back with bark and nip; just as one panicky wether was gathering himself for the downward leap. Back she drove them, huddled and bleating and milling; rounding up the exhausted beasts and heading them away from the coulée. She had no faintest idea where they belonged; or whither to guide them. All she knew was that she was sick and suffering and that she stood in dire need of getting home. Her Hour was close upon her. So homeward she drove the flock; unaware that she had achieved a bit of tracking that no normal-eyed sheepdog could have hoped to copy. Next morning, Chris Hibben started for Santa Carlotta, to direct the unloading of freight for the Triple Bar. The snow was too deep for a car to get through it. So Hibben rode his strongest cow-pony;--a pony that made heavy enough going of it through the drifts. As Chris neared the Dos Hermanos ranch house, a man came running out of the kitchen and hailed him excitedly. The man was Joel Fenno. Never before had Hibben seen the old chap excited. Fearing something might be amiss in the house, the rider dismounted, tossed the bridle over his pony’s head and waded up the walk. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, as he came face to face with Joel. “Nuthin’s wrong,” Fenno assured him, his mouth twisted in an effort to grin. “Ev’rything’s grand--and ‘ev’rything’ incloods a bunch of three hundred sheep that Nellie yanked out’n the blizzard yest’d’y, for us. That dog sure paid her board yest’d’y. She--”