Lippincotts Magazine, October 1885 | Page 9

ancient boot with a still more ancient shoe. Many of these fellows were undoubtedly trustworthy, other some as undoubtedly, if they had had consciences, would have had homicides on them; but all were light-hearted. Life is one thing to the man who lets the breath out of his companion with a knife, and, leaving his body in the brush, straightway goes about his idleness laughing, and quite another to him who cannot get over the hideous fact that he has tied his cravat awry.
On the morning of the first day we turned out at four o'clock, and, while we were getting a dew-bite of crackers and a sip of coffee, el capitan circulated among the recumbent figures that had dotted the prairie over-night: with a shake and a pull of the big hat by way of toilet, they proceeded in twos and threes toward the shearing-shed, their shears in their hands and all their personal property in weapons dangling about them. The burrers, too, Mexicans hired in the neighborhood, put in an appearance and ranged themselves behind their tables, A flock had been penned at the shed over-night, and, while a fraction of it was being driven through the movable panels into the space behind the shearing--table, the shearers were ranged along it by the captain: they hung up their rifles and revolvers to the posts, some their hats and jackets, and fell to chattering, lighting their cigarettes, and sharpening their shears. When the supply of sheep was in and the panels closed, the captain gave the shrill cry, "_Vaminos__" and all hands rushed in among the frightened animals and dragged out their chosen victims by the leg. They showed great shrewdness in selecting the small, the light-woolled, the easy-to-be-shorn. "The loud clapping of the shears" at once filled the shed, and it was not five minutes before a light fleece was tossed upon the burring-table, and a grinning fellow came running up to the ranchman seated in a chair thereon, the better to supervise affairs, and called out, "Check-e!" amid vivas for the first sheep shorn. He received a tin token, which he thrust into his pocket, and plunged over the low platform after another sheep. Calls of "_Cole_!" "_Colero_" "_Cole, muchacho, echale_" began to ring out, and, with an answering call of "_Onde?_" ("Where?"), two little, laughing Mexican boys, with tumbled, curly black wigs, and cheeks like bronzed peaches, darted about with boxes of powdered charcoal, and clapped a pinch of it on the cut made by careless shears. The burrers threw out the fleeces smooth upon the table, and, one on either side, patted them over with their hands to discover the cockle-burrs entangled in the wool; these removed, they folded and rolled the fleeces up with care and handed them to a man who, with the aid of a small, square box, tied them tightly with two strings, and tossed them out of the shed, where they were received by the ranchman who was grading the wool and supervising the packing.
The packing was done in two frames, seven feet high, in which an iron ring held the sacks open. To a man on one of these frames the fleeces in their compact little bundles were tossed up, and he trod them down, packing them in the sack. Then the sack was let down, sewed up, rolled to the scales and weighed, marked with the ranch-mark, the weight, the grade, and was ready for the freighters and a market. About ten thousand pounds of wool were sheared, burred, packed, marked, and perhaps shipped, in a day.
Inside and out, seventy men were at work about the shed: the fleeces rapidly piled up on the burring-tables; tied and tossed out, they grew into little mountains, and around the scales for a wide space the packed sacks cumbered the ground. The ranchmen moved about to see that coal was used where needed, and that it was not needed too frequently, that fleeces were not broken, and were thoroughly burred and nicely tied; and the Mexicans, ceaselessly chattering, singing, laughing, calling jokes to each other, crying, "Viva Rito!" "Viva Encarnacion!" ran for their checks, dashed in for their sheep, and kept the shears clashing, while the perplexed ewe, with an uproar perhaps more distinctly justifiable, called to the lamb she had left in the pen, and the lamb answered cry for cry. All this went on in a strong south wind heavy with dust and the acrid sheep smell. It was the liveliest possible spectacle of organized confusion, and the accompanying noise was calculated to split the ears of the groundlings. As the number unshorn of the installment of sheep in the pen dwindled toward zero, little groups of unoccupied shearers gathered round the posts near the low tables, lit fresh