not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving 'em
down to a water-hole to drink at noon.

"'I'll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the
buckboard before night,' says he.

"'Fine,' says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit.
And be sure to bring the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer, ain't it?"

"'My name,' says he, 'is Henry Ogden.'

"'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint Clair.'

"I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the wool
entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to me.
I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat. I've seen a lot of persons more
entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I'd drive 'em to the
corral and pen 'em every evening, and then cook my corn-bread and mutton
and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a table-cloth, and listen
to the coyotes and whip-poor-wills singing around the camp.

"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial
muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.

"'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are
all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton
suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank
along with five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of cards, or a
parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on a
mental basis. I've got to do something in an intellectual line, if it's