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Page 17
"'It is,' says he. 'Sometimes--so I have been told--one sees no human
being pass for weeks at a time. I've been here only a month. I
bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.'
"'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man
sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture,
float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.'
"'Can you herd sheep ?' asks the little ranch-man.
"'Do you mean have I heard sheep?' says I.
"'Can you herd 'em--take charge of a flock of 'em ?' says he.
"'Oh,' says I, 'now I understand. You mean chase 'em around and bark
at 'em like collie dogs. Well, I might,' says I. 'I've never exactly
done any sheep-herding, but I've often seen 'em from car windows
masticating daisies, and they don't look dangerous.'
"'I'm short a herder,' says the ranchman. 'You never can depend on
the Mexicans. I've only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of
muttons--there are only eight hundred of 'em--in the morning, if you
like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished.
You camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep. You do your own
cooking, but wood and water are brought to your camp. It's an easy
job.'
"'I'm on,' says I. 'I'll take the job even if I have to garland my
brow and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe
like the shepherds do in pictures.'
"So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of
muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let 'em graze on a
little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions
about not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving
'em down to a water-hole to drink at noon.
"'I'll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the
buckboard before night,' says he.
"'Fine,' says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping
outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer,
ain't it?"
"'My name,' says he, 'is Henry Ogden.'
"'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint
Clair.'
"I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the
wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next
to me. I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat. I've seen a lot of
persons more entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I'd
drive 'em to the corral and pen 'em every evening, and then cook my
corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a
table-cloth, and listen to the coyotes and whippoorwills singing
around the camp.
"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial
muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.
"'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep
are all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton
suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank
along with five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of cards, or a
parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on
a mental basis. I've got to do something in an intellectual line, if
it's only to knock somebody's brains out.'
"This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger-
rings and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was
calm, and his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in
Muscogee, an outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer
for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken
to be his brother. I didn't care much for him either way; what I
wanted was some fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost
sinners--anything sheepless would do.
"'Well, Saint Clair,' says he, laying down the book he was reading, 'I
guess it must be pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don't deny
that it's monotonous for me. Are you sure you corralled your sheep so
they won't stray out ?
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