AN OLD, OLD FRIEND
sauntered after—tall, lank, neutral-tinted, his thoughts going round and round in the groove peculiar to herders—the sheep before him and their individual characteristics, the condition of the range, the weather, religion, the wickedness of "High Society," the items on the next list he would send to the mail-order house in Chicago.
And so the afternoon passed as had hundreds like it in Bowers's life until he sat down finally on a rock to watch the rays of the setting sun paint the clouds in everchanging colors and lose himself in reflections, studying the gorgeous sea surrounding him.
It would be a great place up there for a feller's soul to float—provided he had one—restin' a while in that yaller one, or the rose-colored one up yonder, or takin' a dip into that hazy purple and disappearin'. Personally, he told himself, he believed that when he was dead he was dead as a nit, and he'd never seen anything about dying folks to make him think otherwise.
That Scissor-bill from back East in Ioway that died of heart failure jest slipped and slid off his chair, slow and easy like a sack of bran—he didn't show in his eyes any visions of future glory when he stretched on the floor behind the stove in the bunkhouse and closed 'em for good. Sometimes they kicked and struggled like pizened sheep in their sufferin', and again they went off easy and comfortable, but without any glimpses of Paradise brightenin' their countenances, so far as he could notice.
If he had a soul, all right; if he didn't, all right; that's the way he figgered it.
The lead sheep started for the bed-ground.
"Kick up your dust piles good. Mother Biddies, and git comfortable. Hurry up and blow out your lights so I can git to my readin'."
The light had faded, and the dingy gray-white backs
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