"They're so fat they can't play--and Woods's got twenty-five hundred of the best wethers that ever blatted!"
Kate's eyes sparkled.
"I'm going to be a real Sheep Queen, Bowers, if wool and mutton keep climbing. The price of wool is the highest in its history."
Bowers looked at her in mute admiration. He was always loyal, but when she was sociable and friendly like this he adored her. Alas, however, the times when she was so were yearly growing rarer.
Kate went on tentatively: "I think I'll 'cut' for a hard winter. You know my motto, 'Better be sure than sorry.'"
"I wouldn't be surprised if 'twan't a humdinger--last winter was so open. I think we'd be safer if we ship everything that's fat enough."
Bowers always said "we" when he spoke of the Outfit, though he was still only a camptender working for wages.
Kate relied upon him to keep her informed of the details of the business, which she had less time than formerly to look after personally. His judgment was sometimes at fault, but she trusted his honesty implicitly and, though she gave him little of her confidence, it was so much more than she gave to any other person that he was flattered by it.
"Guess what that Boston woolbuyer is offering me?" She tapped a letter.
"No idee."
"Twenty-six cents."
Bowers whistled.
"Gosh a'mighty! You're goin' to take it, ain't you?"
"I'll get a quarter more, if I hold out for it."
His face fell a little.
"I'll get it!" Her voice had a metallic quality. "It's a fine long staple, and clean. If he won't, some one else will give it to me."
The sheep woman had the reputation now of being difficult to deal with, of haggling over fractions, and it was of this that Bowers was thinking. To others he would never admit that she was anything but perfect, though to himself he acknowledged the hardening process that was going on in her. He saw the growth of the driving ambition which made her indifferent to everything that did not tend to her personal interest.
Outside of himself and Teeters, Kate took no interest whatever in individuals. There was no human note in her intercourse with those who worked for her. She cared for results only, and showed it.
They resented her appraising eyes, her cold censure when they blundered, her indifference to them as human beings, and they revenged themselves in the many ways that lie in a herder's power if he cares to do so.
They gave away to the dry-farmers in the vicinity the supplies and halves of mutton she furnished them. In the lambing season they left the lambs whose mothers refused to own them to die when a little extra effort would have saved them. When stragglers split off from the herd they made no great attempt to recover them. They shot at coyotes and wildcats when it was convenient, but did not go out of their way to hunt them.