Love's Way by Joan Smith Page A

sight.”
    “What happened?”
    “ ‘Twas no accident.”
    “Foxes? Foumarts?” I asked, for if hungry enough these creatures have been known to attack even a dog.
    “A bullet,” he answered. “I saw him before they got at it,” he told me simply, with a wave towards the buzzards. “I’d have buried him, but I had no shovel, and the herd were wandering by then. You’ll have a shovel sent up,” he said.
    “It must have been an accident,” was my first reaction. No one would be so low as to shoot a shepherd’s dog on purpose. The fox hunting done in this district could account for it. It is not done primarily for sport. It is done on foot, and with guns. Someone had been hunting reynard and had accidentally hit Scout.
    “No one hunts foxes in the dead o’night,” he pointed out. “Scout was hale and hearty when I tucked in last night. This morning, I found him where you see the birds gathering, yonder. Lured far enough down the slope that I’d not hear the shot.”
    “I wonder you didn’t hear it, Ulrich,” I said, though I did not mean to condemn the man. I knew him to be faithful.
    “I’m a light sleeper usually,” he told me. I discerned some traces of sheepishness about him, strong enough almost to amount to guilt.
    “Did you sleep more soundly last night?” I urged.
    “I’ll confess I did, Miss, for it’s bothering my conscience,” he blurted out, like a little boy owning up to pilfering the sweet jar. “Last night I had summat to drink.”
    “Ulrich, that is not like you!” I charged. He likes his ale as well as anyone, but to overindulge while on the job is not at all characteristic of him.
    “Nay, Miss. It happened thus. Mr. Gamble, he came walking up the hill to talk to me.” I stiffened to complete attention, but remained silent. I could think of no innocent reason why Gamble should seek so unlikely a companion. “About the herd, you see,” he added, with a sorry eye.
    The Lake District has primarily two occupations, sheep raising, and mining. Carnforth’s interest was the latter. There was no logical reason for Gamble to have been talking to Ulrich about sheep. “He says the great gaffer’s mines are running out, and he’s looking to get into sheep farming. We talked for an hour and more. He knows summat about the subject,” Ulrich allowed critically. No one outside of himself is allowed to know more than “summat.” My own scarce knowledge would be described by him as “less than summat.”
    “When did the drinking occur?” I asked, somewhat angrily.
    “All along,” he admitted freely. “He brought a couple of bottles o’ wine with him, and we passed them back and forth, like. I told him about sheeping, and he told me tales of India. Strange tales,” he added, shaking his head, as though to determine whether his night had been a dream, or a nightmare.
    “Where was Scout while all this was going forth?”
    “Rounding up the strays first, then as darkness fell, he curled up in his usual spot. I’d have heard him leave if I’d been clean sober,” he admitted manfully.
    “Just exactly how drunk did you allow yourself to become?”
    “Not downright disguised, as ye might say, Miss. A trifle foxed maybe,” he allowed, with a judicious frown to see if he had chosen his word with precision.
    “I have a good notion to give him a piece of my mind.”
    “ ‘Twould be better to make your first business finding a replacement for Scout,” he suggested. A glance around at the wandering herd showed me the justice of his remark.
    A true star sheepdog is worth his weight in gold, and nearly impossible to find when you need one urgently. There had been one particularly fine one at the recent Dog Show Trials that Ulrich had praised to the skies. I was fairly sure it was this one he had in mind now. He was a Border collie like Scout, and a general rounder up of sheep. Ulrich had no good opinion of “fixers,” as he called those dogs who hypnotize their sheep with an