possess that animal.

Helen May did not know how vitally important it is to have a good dog at
such work. She did not know that Billy and his band felt exactly like
boys who have successfully eluded a too lax teacher, and that they would
have yielded without argument to the bark of a trained sheep dog. She had
set Vic a harder task than she realized; a task from which any
experienced herder would have shrunk. In her ignorance she blamed Vic,
and called him lazy and careless and a few other sisterly epithets which
he did not altogether deserve.

She watched now, impatient because he was so long in crossing the gully;
telling herself that he was trying to see how slow he could be, and that
he did it just to be disagreeable and to irritate her--as if she were
there of her own desire, and had bought those two hundred miserable
goats to spite him. Harmony, as you must see, did not always dwell in
Sunlight Basin.

Eventually Vic toiled up the far side of the gully, which was deep and as
hot as an oven, and followed it down within rock-throwing distance of the
goats. A well-aimed pebble struck Billy on the curve of one horn and
halted him, the band huddling vacant-eyed behind him. Vic aimed and threw
another, and Billy, turning his whiskered face upward, stared with
resentful head-tossings and a defiant blat or two before he swerved back
into the Basin, his band and Vic plodding after.

"Well, for a wonder!" Helen May ejaculated ungraciously, grudging Vic
the small tribute of praise that was due him. But she was immediately
ashamed of that, and told herself that it was pretty hard on the poor
kid, and that after all he must hate the country worse than she did,