of full and neat attire or insufficient tatters according as the goddess Fortune or the Mexican demi-goddess Monte had smiled or frowned; but all were equally jolly, and almost all fiercely armed, the greatest tatterdemalion and sans-culotte of all with a handsome Winchester, in a case, slung over brown shoulders that would have been better for a whole shirt. The hat, though cheap, was, even among the ragged, frequently elaborate, and served excellently to carry off a protruding toe or knee, or to reconcile the association in one person of an 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 cigarettes, whipped out cards, and started a little game of monte for the checks they had in their pockets, continuing till the captain's revenons à nos moutons once more started their shears. The sun crept up in the sky, a fitting cessation occurred, and, a ranchman having given the signal, a tide set in for the cook-house and breakfast.
In Mr. Hardy's story, just mentioned, his hero performs rather a feat in shearing three and a half pounds of washed wool in twenty-three and one-half minutes, A Mexican would have to take a reef in his big hat if he could not do better than that. His tin check is worth four and a half cents to him, and a fair hand ought to have at least fifty in his pocket at sunset, in return for as many seven-pound unwashed fleeces,—always provided he has not sacrificed them to monte during the day. A first-rate man will have seventy, and, if called upon to show what he is made of, will shear a heavy-woolled wether in six minutes. At evening each shearer turns in his checks, and receives in return a signed paper with his name and their number.
The interior of the shed when shearing is at its height commends itself very forcibly to the attention of the artist. The heaps of fleeces, mellow masses of gray, yellow, and white, the throng of anxious sheep, watching with painful interest their companions struggling in the swarthy arms of the stalwart, bare-chested shearers, saddles, broad sombreros, whips, and weapons grouped in so many pendent escutcheons of the great Mexican vagabond family, the flitting coleritos, the scarfed shearers themselves, all are so many veritable "bits." But it is not only that the details are good: they compose admirably about the long aisle, with here and there a dagger of sharp light thrust into the shade, and without, the luminous clouds of dust. The shearer puts one foot on the low table, the neck of the sheep resting over his knee, and its fleece rolling off like a robe; his broad chest is thrown out, his head back, his nostrils vent smoke like an angry god's, and his glancing white teeth, disclosed in a broad smile, tightly grip a cigarette. He is chattering, laughing, smoking: incidentally he is shearing.
The presence of the shearers at the ranch causes a flutter in surrounding Mexican society. They are known to be keen hands, viveurs, jolly good fellows withal, and, moreover, men who can wrestle with wethers ten hours a day (no light task on the muscles) and yet have spirit to dance and play all night. So, at evening, the jacals—the little farms and settlements on the creek—are likely to send forth a contingent bound for the cook-house and a night of it. A harp and an accordion are found, and to the sharply-marked music produced by this combination an impromptu baile forms itself. The swarthy sombreros clutch each other, and hop about, their spurs gleaming and jangling, their pistols sticking out behind like incipient tails; and soon the baile overflows the kitchen, and the glowing cigarette-tips circle like fire-flies to the music in the dark night-air without. In a corner, against the salt-house, by the light of a fire, a group is gathered round a blanket spread on the ground, with little piles of silver before them, over the always-absorbing monte; and other groups are very harmlessly singing. By midnight the music dies away and the dancing ceases, but the sombreros bend over the monte blanket and the silver clinks on it till morning.
About two weeks with days and nights of this character sufficed, with slight interruptions occasioned by bad weather, to get one hundred thousand pounds of wool off the backs of the sheep. On Sunday the shearers would not work: the day was sacred—to pleasure. The store was thronged with purchasers, the cook-house became the temple of monte, the road a race-track. The ranch had the air of a fête. The races were short rushes with horses started with a jab of the spur or thwack of the cuerta, to see who first should cross a line scratched in the dust, at either end of which a throng kneeled and craned forward and held out silver dollars and called bets.
At length the last
