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knows when he has all his sheep?”
    “I suppose he does but maybe not as well as the dogs do,” Trixie answered. “You just wait till Mr. Gorman gets that flock where he wants it and the gate locked. He’ll know all the sheep aren’t there, and he’ll come back here hunting Tip to see what he’s up to. I’m all for following the dog now. How about you, Brian? Jim? Mart? Honey? Di, you’ll just have to come with us.”
    “I’m for it,” Jim answered.
    “Me, too,” Honey said, close behind Brian, who patted Tip’s wet head. “If we don’t get going,” she said, “Tip is going to wiggle right out of his skin.”
    “What’s keeping us?” Mart called. “Wait a minute, Trix... Trixie, where are you?”
    “Through the fence and halfway down the hill,” she called back. The snow had thinned a little, and, in the beam from her flashlight, she could see the deep gully ahead. “Tip’s gone crazy,” she shouted. “I know some lost sheep must be around here someplace... but where?”
    Slipping and sliding, the other Bob-Whites followed Trixie under the fence wires and down the slope. “There’s not a thing down here!” Mart said. “Sheep couldn’t get through the fence if they tried.”
    “Tell it to Tip!” Trixie shouted back. “I’ll trust him. Listen to him bark!”
    “Come back from that gully!” Jim shouted. “Trixie, stay away from there. Wait! It’s dangerous!”
    A branched dead tree had fallen across the ravine. It made a natural bridge, and Trixie started over it, following Tip.
    “What’s bothering you?” she called back. “It’s safe enough, Jim. We have to get over to the other side. I’m coming, Tip.... Jeepers! Help! Jim! Help!”
    Down she went, breaking through tie branches of the dead tree... down... the collie hurtling after her. And then, just as the rest of the Bob-Whites reached the gully’s edge, Trixie’s voice came up to them. “I’m... all... right... but, gleeps, look what I found!”
    She had landed right in the middle of a dozen or more fat ewes. The snow, held up by the web of branches, had formed a shed for the wandering animals. Far more frightened by Trixie’s presence than she was by her fall, sheep baaed and bleated, tried vainly to get up the sides of the gully, and fell back, floundering.
    “Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” Jim asked anxiously as he and Brian let themselves cautiously down into the slush of the creek bed.
    “I’m sure of it,” Trixie said. “I just had my breath knocked out. And I’m a sight... all covered with mud. The poor sheep are in worse shape. What will they do? They can’t ever get out of here, Jim. They’ll just die. We’ll have to have Mr. Gorman’s help. Jim!” A sudden thought struck Trixie. “Jim, do you suppose this could solve the mystery of the disappearing sheep? Do you suppose they fell in this ravine and couldn’t get out?”
    “Gosh, no,” Jim said. “Mr. Gorman would have looked here first thing.”
    “Sure,” Brian said, “and the dogs would have tracked the sheep if they wandered in here. Tip even found them in die storm. Say, where is the storm now?”
    “It’s gone!” Mart said from above them.
    “Even stars in the sky!” Diana exclaimed.
    “Iowa weather is funnier than Westchester County weather, if that’s possible,” Honey said. “Mart, what are you doing?”
    “Trying to find my way to where Jim and Trixie and Brian are,” Mart said, “and it looks as though I’ll have to fall down, the way Trixie did.”
    “Just don’t come down here at all,” Trixie said. “Someone has to go and find Mr. Gorman.”
    “Someone has to tell us how to get out of here and how to get the sheep out,” Jim added. “Mart, suppose you and the girls go back to the house and bring Mr. Gorman. Tell him where we are and what Trixie found.”
    “All right,” Mart said, “but it’s my opinion that he’d rather not see any Bob-Whites right now.”
    “We have given him a tough time,” Jim