THE SHEEP QUEEN
Kate saw nothing interesting or unusual in what she had done — it was all in the day's work. She was merely one of innumerable stock raisers bringing the results of months and years of patient effort to the great stock market of the west. As she looked listlessly at the dark silhouette of tanks and towers, skyscrapers and gable roofs, at countless threads of smoke going straight up in the still air from the great hive of industry and life, she wondered at her apathy, at the fact that there was ho anticipation in her mind.
Her face darkened. Had Prouty, along with other things, robbed her of the capacity for enjoyment? Had it crushed out of her the last remnant of the spirit of youth? Was she old, already hopelessly old at heart?
Her feeling toward the town gradually had crystallized into a cold animus, silent and unwavering, but now, as she suddenly whirled about and looked into the red winter sunset where, back there, beyond the Beyond, Prouty lay, a wave of hatred surged over her, to make her tingle to the finger tips.
Usually Prouty was personified in her mind as a hulking coward, bullying the weak, fawning upon the strong, with no guiding principle in life save self-interest, but to-night, as she visualized it across the intervening miles, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate, it was in the guise of a shivering pauper, miserable in his present, fearful of his future. ^
Her grip tightened on the rail of the swaying' caboose and all the envenomed bitterness of her nature was in her choking voice as she said between her teeth :
"Curse you and curse you and curse you! I hate you! You've robbed me of the happiness that belonged to
my youth. You've destroyed my faith in human kind.
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