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