V.

When the prickly pear had made a golden garden of the prairie and the

heart of _Cereus phoeniceus_ was warm with the intention of lighting its

gorgeous crimson torch on the divides; when the arroyo, but lately a

pretty streamlet, had told wellnigh all its beads to the sun-god, and

had but here and there in its parched length an isolated pool; when the

flock at noon no longer flushed the last teal from the creek, because

that lingering bird had finally winged its way toward Manitoba or some

other favorite retreat northerly,--at this time the constant wind,

gentle but never-failing, and almost always from the south, was

overweighted with a roar of multitudinous bleating and befouled with

dust; for shearing was going on at the ranch. It is a very picturesque

occupation, but it soils the most delightful season of the year, the

fresh month of May, with a fortnight of dusty toil, anticipating the

sun, and not halting promptly on his setting.

The shearing-shed lay somewhat apart from the other ranch buildings,

with a system of pens at its back, with chutes and swinging wickets for

"cutting out" lambs from their mothers destined for the shears, and

other incidental purposes. The shed was a roof of bearded

mesquite-grass, stayed by boughs and supported on live-oak or pecan

posts, the outside or bounding rows of which were sheathed up with

boards four feet or so, the remainder space up to the roof being open

for draught. On these boards Baleriano Torres, Secundino Ramon, and

others their companions of the shears, who had worked and played beneath

this shade in springs past, had written their names in large characters

of stencil-ink. One could see in the county roofs made of fresh boughs,

through which the sunlight sifted, flecking the swarthy faces and arms

of the shearers and the mantles of the sheep with a very picturesque

effect; but it is probably best to resist the temptation to treat the

shearing-shed as an artistic composition. The ground-plan of the shed

was one hundred feet or so long by twenty-five wide. The floor was of

trampled earth, and on it were placed shearing-tables, s s s, and

burring-and tying-tables, B B. The shearing-tables were about fifteen

inches high, the burring-tables high enough for a man to stand up to. It

is the custom in many parts of the country to shear on the floor. In Mr.

Hardy's picturesque novel, "Far from the Madding Crowd," the shearers

shear in a cathedral-like barn, on a shining black-oak floor,--probably

for purposes of contrast. Round the ranch, however, shearers preferred

very generally the low wooden tables. The space back of the

shearing-tables was occupied, when shearing was going on, by a "bunch"

of sheep admitted through the movable panels from a pen containing the

unshorn: after shearing, they departed through the panels into another

pen, and eventually over the prairie to their pleasant grazing-grounds,

angular and grotesque in appearance, but happy, their troubles past,

their year's chief purpose served.

[Illustration: Movable Panels. CORRALS.]

The shearers this year were a band of forty or so Mexicans from Uvalde

and other border towns, jollily travelling two hundred miles up the

country in charge of a _capitan_ and _grande capitan_ responsible

fellows, who had contracted with the ranchmen of the neighborhood to do

their shearing. Early in May we heard of them on the creeks, and made

preparation for them, the shed and corrals being put to rights in every

detail, the supply of bacon and _frijoles_ augmented at the store, and

all hands, including the stranger within the gates, set to hemming

wool-sacks with coarse twine and sailors' needles. One evening, but

shrewdly in time for supper, a couple of Mexicans on horses, thridding

their way through the mesquites, came into the ranch, quickly followed

by others, one or two on _burros_, more on ponies, most on the skeleton

of a prairieschooner drawn by four horses,--and the shearers had

arrived. They were a dark, black-eyed, hilarious set, some forty odd in

all, rather ragged as a crew, but with extremes 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 sheep was shorn, the last sack marked, the pools on

that interesting figure, the total clip of the year, decided, and the

shearers in motley tableau assembled in the ranch-house, before the

table, to have their paper slips redeemed. They did not understand

checks on San Antonio banks; they "didn't want paper;" they had a rather

praiseworthy doubt of green-backs; they wanted the solid _dinero_,--the

"Buzzard," the "Trade," or the radiant Mexican _peso_. Toward midnight

it ceased to be a laughing-matter, paying off, and one was glad to turn

in even in an atmosphere heavy with cigarette-smoke and not

over-fragrant. Next morning the shearers leisurely saddled up and

disappeared through the brush, the Grande Capitan and Capitan lifting

their hats with grace and dignity and calling, "_Adios_!" They left a

rather relaxed ranch, with a marked tendency toward hammocks and long

siestas, varied with a little mild lawn-tennis at evening in an old

corral, which, by the way, with its surrounding fence to stop the balls,

made in many respects an admirable court.