Of Necessity They Are Hardy, Simple
Livers, Superstitious, Fearful, Given To Seeing Visions, And Almost
Without Speech.
It needs the bustle of shearings and copious
libations of sour, weak wine to restore the human faculty.
Petite
Pete, who works a circuit up from the Ceriso to Red Butte and
around by way of Salt Flats, passes year by year on the mesa trail,
his thick hairy chest thrown open to all weathers, twirling his
long staff, and dealing brotherly with his dogs, who are possibly
as intelligent, certainly handsomer.
A flock's journey is seven miles, ten if pasture fails, in a
windless blur of dust, feeding as it goes, and resting at noons.
Such hours Pete weaves a little screen of twigs between his head
and the sun--the rest of him is as impervious as one of his own
sheep--and sleeps while his dogs have the flocks upon their
consciences. At night, wherever he may be, there Pete camps, and
fortunate the trail-weary traveler who falls in with him. When
the fire kindles and savory meat seethes in the pot, when there is
a drowsy blether from the flock, and far down the mesa the twilight
twinkle of shepherd fires, when there is a hint of blossom
underfoot and a heavenly whiteness on the hills, one harks back
without effort to Judaea and the Nativity. But one feels by day
anything but good will to note the shorn shrubs and cropped
blossom-tops. So many seasons' effort, so many suns and rains to
make a pound of wool!
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