for smelling is believing in Bear life.



VII. THE FRESHET


Pedro Tampico and his brother Faco were not in the sheep business for
any maudlin sentiment. They did not march ahead of their beloveds
waving a crook as wand of office or appealing to the esthetic sides of
their ideal followers with a tabret and pipe. Far from leading the
flock with a symbol, they drove them with an armful of ever-ready
rocks and clubs. They were not shepherds; they were sheep-herders.
They did not view their charges as loved and loving followers, but as
four-legged cash; each sheep was worth a dollar bill. They were cared
for only as a man cares for his money, and counted after each alarm or
day of travel. It is not easy for any one to count three thousand
sheep, and for a Mexican sheep-herder it is an impossibility. But he
has a simple device which answers the purpose. In an ordinary flock
about one sheep in a hundred is a black one. If a portion of the flock
has gone astray, there is likely to be a black one in it. So by
counting his thirty black sheep each day Tampico kept rough count of
his entire flock.

Grizzly Jack had killed but one sheep that first night. On his next
visit he killed two, and on the next but one, yet that last one
happened to be black, and when Tampico found but twenty-nine of its
kind remaining he safely reasoned that he was losing sheep--according
to the index a hundred were gone.