IN THE WAKE OF THE WESTERN SHEEP. To the idyllic mind the sheep is the symbol of innocence, gentle and trustful, and is emblematic of all things sweetly pastoral; to the naturalist it is Ovis laticaudatus, herbivorous mammal of the Ruminantia order, highly interesting in its four-stomached physiological structure, &c., &c.; to the woolman or the dealer it represents merely so many pounds avoirdupois of hirsute fibre or of human food; but to me, while associated with the animal in life, it was but a brute, a tiresome, bleaty, stupid, troublesome brute, upon four rambling dust-raising feet. Picture yourself linked to three thou-. sand and odd half-bred Merino muttons, as it behoves a lone camp-herder to be, day and night, week in, week out, for months at a stretch, in the beat of a south-western American summer, and then size up your impression of the sheep. It will perhaps coincide with mine. At times I try to imagine I am something of a philosopher, but when I found myself set down, ten miles from human habitation, right on the expansive bosom of an undulating wilderness, in company with those Merinos, and when I contemplated the meagreness of my seven-foot tent, with its contents of one miniature cook-stove, one child's size sleeping-cot, and a limited selection of plain food stores as a set-off to the grand howling lonesomeness of that skyline-framed picture, I much doubted if I was of the Stoic school at least. Marooned! That word tersely expressed my feelings on the situation as I looked about me and saw the white top of the prairie schooner which had conveyed my modest camping outfit to the spot rapidly sinking hull-down on the distant horizon, on its return to headquarters. After all, man is for the most part a socially inclined gregarious animal; and even the sight of my woolly companions, alive and numerous as they were, scattered over about half a mile of the unlimited leagues of scenery, did not afford me much comfort. Though I had been somehow pitchforked into the position of their guardian, I was but a short time out of the city, and as yet I knew but little of matters ovine, nor had I yet learned to love the creatures. Moreover, I was a stranger to the remote melancholy and the slow and simple life of the wild and woolly west. In Wyoming and certain other western American States there is a law prohibiting solitary sheep-herding. It appears to bave been found that the solitary life had a tendency to cause deterioration or disturbance of the grey matter in the brains of some who followed the occupation too long at a time. Statistics do not chronicle the exact form of insanity with which the unfortunate are prone to be afflicted, nor do they give, as the actual reason of the trouble, the isolation and monotony of the existence, nor do they state if the close and constant association with the sheep itself has anything to do with the matter. "A man is part of all that he has seen." With such continuous juxtaposition to sheep, and seeing so much of them, to the exclusion of everything else having them rubbed into him, in fact, for it must be realized that the herder on the plains is always practically in their midst, even having to sleep so close to them that the sound of their habitual sniffings and coughings and sputterings hangs ever in his ear,-is it not just reasonable to suppose that his mind may, after awhile, take on a touch of their supreme imbecility? If this latter is really in any way accountable for the insanity alleged, it would be interesting to know if the superlative silliness of the half-bred Merino is not, to a higher degree than that of some other strains, contagious to the human, or if the complaint developed therefrom is any more hopeless in its nature. Two weeks of herding in the immediate neighborhood of the ranch, and a couple of count-outs during that period, had satisfied the owners that I might be relied upon as a flockmaster, for the countings had proved eminently satisfactory. My private opinion was that this was due more to chance, or the design of a kind Providence, than to my own merits as a shepherd. On several occasions I had, as I thought, folded the flock all right at dusk, when I found to my horror five hundred or so that I had inadvertently let stray from the main gang during the day come rolling home on their own account in the small hours of the morning. Thirtyfive hundred is a lot of sheep. Even the skilled Mexican considers it so, and protests that such a number is "too mucho mucho carneros" for one man. When they get spread in skirmishing array, in their deployed files and strings, and their clusters, squads, and outposts, over their grazing territory, especially where there are any brush coverts, it takes a more experienced eye than mine to judge if all are there. Some border Mexicans allege that they can tell each individual sheep in a big flock, after being a few days in charge. A personal acquaintance, however, with the character of the individual Greaser making such assertion is absolutely necessary ere allowing his statement to go on record as a fact. The herder of that ilk is wont, as a class, to handle the truth somewhat carelessly, or, as the cowboy graphically puts it, "A derned Greaser can turn loose a lie big enough to wear a brand." Still trusting to luck to vouchsafe a continuance of pastoral assistance, I had kept my own counsel about things, and had retained my job. Then the lone camp idea had been suddenly sprung on me, and here I was. After a little thought bestowed on the matter, I decided that it was useless for me to aspire to proficiency in the art of learning to tell sheep apart. My talents, I felt, did not lie in that line, and I feared that my span of life might perhaps be all too short to enable me to graduate in the art. There are slight variations among these creatures, of course, and in his idle moments the lone shepherd may fall to studying for amusement their physiogGomies while they are nibbling round him, and trying to find here and there a resemblance to people whom he has known. Then when he runs across the same animal on another day, he feels as though he was meeting with an acquaintance, and wants to nod and smile. There is, in this proceeding, a feeling of the "society where none intrudes," and it gives him a mild form of interest in the personalities of the flock. Every shepherd invariably believes this practice to be a strictly novel invention of his own, until he finds out from some other herder to whom he is imparting the idea that he too has done the identical thing. It is not unlikely that this innocent pastime is as ancient as the land of the Perizzites and the herders of Lot. In the course of several weeks with my flock, I found several dozen that I could identify by face and name, but in those battalions and squadrons of mutton it was hard to chance upon them very often. If in his calling, in order to doctor or otherwise attend to any particular animal, the shepherd needs to find it again, it is well to simplify matters by crippling it slightly, if possible, by means of an accurately discharged chunk of rock or other missile, thereby imparting to it a distinguishable bobbing gait easily detectable by the eye. Such at least was the simple recipe once given to me by a brother pastor, who felt himself, no doubt, far enough removed from the supervision of his employer, or the vigilance of the S. P. C. A., to use it himself. Personally I considered this a drastic and inhumane measure, only to be introduced in extreme cases, and with specially aggravating and habitually straying sinners. In my bunch there were a few sheep on whom nature had already set her distinguishing seal by darker coloring, brown patch, or deformity. On taking charge of the drove, I was given to understand that by close attention to these it could be ascertained if one were losing any. The scheme was not a success. Having duly made myself familiar with those ringed, mottled, and streaked, I was morally persuaded, for a solid week, that I was dropping sheep to an enormous extent; I could never see half of these any more: and on the hunt for one or other of them I put in some exceedingly weary times of scouring the countryside with an assiduity worthy of Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece, only to find in the end that the supposed wanderers had made no further escape than that of my own observation, having never been really gone at all. From a few such desultory trips I deduced the moral that the sheep should be taken in the abstract, and that the fewer one knew as entities the better for one's peace of mind. Most animals anyhow which needed looking after, for accidental lacerations or abrasions, were generally in the drag of the drive, and could readily be found when the shepherd in his veterinary capacity wished to apply his one and only stocked cure and panacea fọr ovine ills, cresylic salve. The catching of fairly hale and hearty sheep in big corrals is oftentimes troublesome to the inexperienced. In these latitudes of lassoes it is presumed that everybody can snare, when he so desires, anything on four legs, be it couchant, marchant, or moving at the velocity of a shooting-star, provided he can get within rope's-length. The fact is quite forgotten or overlooked that a person may have been reared in a city where the catching of a train or an omnibus may have been essential to the prosecution of his business, but the mystic circling of lariat loop an art of cunning he could dispense with. Each lisping male child of the South-Western ranch. just as soon as he is able to toddle into the vicinity of a decrepit duck or a sick kitten, commences practice in roping. From his first efforts with his piece of string he continues through a graded series of puppy-dogs, lambs, calves, yearlings, and so on, till, by the time he has arrived at man's estate, he can at headlong gallop twine the biggest, wildest thing that wears hair, by neck, horns, or feet, and hogtie it down without help. In lieu of the timehonored orthodox crook, the shepherd here has forty feet of hempen rope, with a nice noose adjustment, handed to him in a matter-of-course way, as though he might be about to take a prominent part in a lynching drama. All untutored as I then was in rope work, I may still unboastingly say that I could catch sheep even in my earliest attempts. Indeed when the animals were well packed, I could catch quite a number, frequently as many as fifteen or a score, in one cast of my mighty all-embracing mesh. My difficulty was to learn how to disentangle myself, and the other superfluous fourteen or nineteen ensnared strugglers, and still retain the one of my aim and selection. In the mêlées ensuing upon my more comprehensive throws, the situations and poses in which I sometimes had the misfortune to find myself were alike undignified and trying. The life, or, if you will, the vegetating process that goes to make up the round of existence of the solitary pastor, is not complex. It is rather the acme of simplicity. His tent is pitched right by the fold, which is constructed of brush just high enough to make the inmates believe that they have got somewhere and are enclosed for the night. At the first streak of pale cold dawn he leaves his cot-bed, which he stows out of the way as he clears the decks for rudimentary cookery. If there is no dew on the grass, he can at once turn out his charges on their day's rambles, while he has his meal. Dew is considered here to be harmful to the feet of the sheep, and it has, moreover, a tendency to cause them to keep travelling instead of getting down to their legitimate occupation of feeding. There are few shepherds who are not conscientiously mindful of this precautionary measure with regard to the feet of the sheep, for they find it saves their own at the same time. When the flock has got fairly scattered, or is getting a good way off, their tender quits camp and follows on, and constitutes himself a peripatetic boundary for the day. In many parts of the American south that supposed universal adjunct of the shepherd,the dog,-is dispensed with. The owners of the sheep seldom furnish it to a white man, and never at all if the herder be a Mexican. They have found that many are apt to abuse the sheep by injudicious dogging. As a matter of fact, the dog himself is often the chief offender, he being an underbred, with little about him of the grand sagacity of the Scottish collie. During the heat of the day he is given to secluding himself in the privacy of a mudhole, wholly indifferent to his master's efforts to whistle him to the scene of action. The same dog, when he is on hand, and has undertaken some piece of work, cannot be induced to desist till he has had his run out, and has got the flock helter-skeltering in nervous panic to all the points of the compass. Mine had these sins of omission and commission fully developed. Through the day he was a systematic shade-hunter and amphibian, only on view at intervals. When he emerged, a fearsome sight, from his red mudholes, with his long coat matted with mire, the sheep fled from him in panic terror. By shearing him closely I corrected his wallowing habit to some extent, and by an unsparing use of a supple sprout I further brought him under control. But withal, even when on his best behavior, he would have been a discard on any hillside of Caledonia. In justice to his owners I may say that he had only been supplied at my special request, and upon arrangement that he was to be killed or cured. I reconciled my conscience to the fulfilling of my part of the contract by doing a little of both. It is also the exception for a herder to be provided with a pony, plentiful as these are. Most ranchers hold firmly to the belief that a herder should travel afoot, the idea being that the comparatively inferior agility of the biped is less liable to overdo that of the sheep, or knock it out of condition by rapidity of movement. It was at first recommended from headquarters that I adopt moral suasion and the guiding and befriending system of berding, and that instead of driving, dogging, or otherwise licking the sheep into shape, I should get the things to centre their affections upon me and have them amenable to soothing call, and ready to follow lovingly as I strolled, Corydon fashion, at their head, piping them daintily o'er hill and dale. A sweetly pretty picture, but my experience was that it would not do in practice. My predecessor on the job had not hailed from Arcady, and had taken full advantage of the inherent timidity of these creatures. By dint of rough treatment, surprise sorties, weird and unholy cries, and promiscuous pistol-shots, he had got them assured that man was not an animal whose near acquaintance it was well to cultivate. The task of converting them, after his ministrations, to millennium ways, I soon discovered was beyond my abilities, so I confined my attention to the inventing and perfecting of novel and startling screeches to be introduced in order to save my steps when by reason of private engagements the dog was off duty. How these Merino sheep would act. in a cool climate I cannot say. Throughout my reign the atmosphere was torrid, and the sun streamed down with scorching rays that searched for and easily found me and my woolly subjects on that scantily shaded expanse, and scorched us to a frizzle. During the greater part of the day the creatures were listless and contrary, never exhibiting any rightdown enthusiasm about things mundane save at salting times, when they came to life in a manner that took one's breath away. In the mornings and evenings they displayed a little energy; and in their pen at night, when the prowling coyotes came round, they were galvanized into alarming briskness, their fitful back-and-forward rushes seriously interfering with the slumbers of their shepherd. Some fourscore of them carried bells, by way of intimidating night-marauders; but neither bells nor dog, nor anything I could do in the way of shouts, put a stop to the inroads of the prowlers, who shortly got the length of carrying off or running off the weaklings bodily. When, after a bit, things became too bad, I tried placing my cot in the middle of the pen. I was soon obliged, however, to LIVING AGE VOL. LX. 3139 give up this plan. The everlasting din of the clashing bells, the short scared bleats of the sheep, the growling of the dog, who never could be induced to tackle a coyote, and the eerie croakings of expectant buzzards in the blackness overhead, made my rest hours a sleepless nightmare. The precaution was, besides, of no effect, for the artful thieves managed to get their Lightly toll of one of the flock, which they devoured a short distance from the pen, the scrap remains of the feast being cleaned up for breakfast by the buzzards. Ere long the camp became quite a popular restaurant for beasts and birds of prey. Only the introduction of a shot-gun from headquarters, and the illumination of the surroundings with the lantern and a fire kept burning, put an end to the trouble. Fortunately for sheep-men, the coyote does not go in bands. Though mainly nocturnal in his habits, he is a day prowler to some extent as well, and his slim outline is one of the charasteristic features of the less inhabited West. In size and appearance he is a small edition of the wolf, and passes for one, though he is a mere apology, with a pair of jaws, a tail, and a howl designed on a quite disproportionate and altogether unnecessarily generous scale. Remove these three features, and you will be surprised how very little coyote there is left. The residuum consists chiefly of meanness. After dark, when, like the mockingbird and the nightingale, he is in best voice, the extraordinary cachinnating, demi-semiquaver, long-drawn out, highpitched yowl of a lone coyote will suddenly break forth in the stillness within half a dozen rods of camp, electrifying a stranger into the certainty that he is surrounded and that his hour is come. The full hair-raising oratorio chorus performed by a couple of soprano coyotes is a thing which, when once heard, is always |