Page:Zodiac stories by Blanche Mary Channing.pdf/80

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Aries, the Ram
63

"What for?"

"Because he and I were partners once,"—and he told the story.

"I know it's the same by the horn," he added at the end. "And now I want to buy the head. I 'll give you a fair price;—I 'm thinking of going back East, and I want to take this with me."

He opened a deer-skin pouch, and poured out a heap of bright silver on the pine table.

The rough hunter pushed it away.

"Put up your shiners!" he said gruffly. "You can have the head and fleece and all. Think I 'd sell a man his friend's body?"

And the ram's head hangs on the wall of Dick's house in the little village where he was born, and his children beg for the story of how he and the Rocky Mountain ram kept watch together in the storm.