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! And then there is the loss of
ground-inhabiting birds that must fail from the mesa when few herbs
ripen seed.

Out West, the west of the mesas and the unpatented hills,
there is more sky than any place in the world. It does not sit
flatly on the rim of earth, but begins somewhere out in the space
in which the earth is poised, hollows more, and is full of clean
winey winds. There are some odors, too, that get into the blood.
There is the spring smell of sage that is the warning that sap is
beginning to work in a soil that looks to have none of the juices
of life in it; it is the sort of smell that sets one thinking what
a long furrow the plough would turn up here, the sort of smell that
is the beginning of new leafage, is best at the plant's best, and
leaves a pungent trail where wild cattle crop. There is the smell
of sage at sundown, burning sage from campoodies and sheep camps,
that travels on the thin blue wraiths of smoke; the kind of smell
that gets into the hair and garments, is not much liked except upon