Various - Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885

In Mr. Hardy's story, just mentioned, his hero performs rather a feat in shearing three and a half pounds of washed wool in twenty-three and one-half minutes, A Mexican would have to take a reef in his big hat if he could not do better than that. His tin check is worth four and a half cents to him, and a fair hand ought to have at least fifty in his pocket at sunset, in return for as many seven-pound unwashed fleeces,—always provided he has not sacrificed them to monte during the day. A first-rate man will have seventy, and, if called upon to show what he is made of, will shear a heavy-woolled wether in six minutes. At evening each shearer turns in his checks, and receives in return a signed paper with his name and their number.

The interior of the shed when shearing is at its height commends itself very forcibly to the attention of the artist. The heaps of fleeces, mellow masses of gray, yellow, and white, the throng of anxious sheep, watching with painful interest their companions struggling in the swarthy arms of the stalwart, bare-chested shearers, saddles, broad sombreros, whips, and weapons grouped in so many pendent escutcheons of the great Mexican vagabond family, the flitting coleritos , the scarfed shearers themselves, all are so many veritable "bits." But it is not only that the details are good: they compose admirably about the long aisle, with here and there a dagger of sharp light thrust into the shade, and without, the luminous clouds of dust. The shearer puts one foot on the low table, the neck of the sheep resting over his knee, and its fleece rolling off like a robe; his broad chest is thrown out, his head back, his nostrils vent smoke like an angry god's, and his glancing white teeth, disclosed in a broad smile, tightly grip a cigarette. He is chattering, laughing, smoking: incidentally he is shearing.

The presence of the shearers at the ranch causes a flutter in surrounding Mexican society. They are known to be keen hands, viveurs , jolly good fellows withal, and, moreover, men who can wrestle with wethers ten hours a day (no light task on the muscles) and yet have spirit to dance and play all night. So, at evening, the jacals —the little farms and settlements on the creek—are likely to send forth a contingent bound for the cook-house and a night of it. A harp and an accordion are found, and to the sharply-marked music produced by this combination an impromptu baile forms itself. The swarthy sombreros clutch each other, and hop about, their spurs gleaming and jangling, their pistols sticking out behind like incipient tails; and soon the baile overflows the kitchen, and the glowing cigarette-tips circle like fire-flies to the music in the dark night-air without. In a corner, against the salt-house, by the light of a fire, a group is gathered round a blanket spread on the ground, with little piles of silver before them, over the always-absorbing monte ; and other groups are very harmlessly singing. By midnight the music dies away and the dancing ceases, but the sombreros bend over the monte blanket and the silver clinks on it till morning.

About two weeks with days and nights of this character sufficed, with slight interruptions occasioned by bad weather, to get one hundred thousand pounds of wool off the backs of the sheep. On Sunday the shearers would not work: the day was sacred—to pleasure. The store was thronged with purchasers, the cook-house became the temple of monte , the road a race-track. The ranch had the air of a fête . The races were short rushes with horses started with a jab of the spur or thwack of the cuerta , to see who first should cross a line scratched in the dust, at either end of which a throng kneeled and craned forward and held out silver dollars and called bets.

At length the last sheep was shorn, the last sack marked, the pools on that interesting figure, the total clip of the year, decided, and the shearers in motley tableau assembled in the ranch-house, before the table, to have their paper slips redeemed. They did not understand checks on San Antonio banks; they "didn't want paper;" they had a rather praiseworthy doubt of green-backs; they wanted the solid dinero ,—the "Buzzard," the "Trade," or the radiant Mexican peso . Toward midnight it ceased to be a laughing-matter, paying off, and one was glad to turn in even in an atmosphere heavy with cigarette-smoke and not over-fragrant. Next morning the shearers leisurely saddled up and disappeared through the brush, the Grande Capitan and Capitan lifting their hats with grace and dignity and calling, " Adios !" They left a rather relaxed ranch, with a marked tendency toward hammocks and long siestas, varied with a little mild lawn-tennis at evening in an old corral, which, by the way, with its surrounding fence to stop the balls, made in many respects an admirable court.

Toward the end of August the pluvial god, assisted by the physical characteristics of the region, provided us with a genuine sensation. Hitherto we had had mere weather; this was a pronounced case of meteorology: until then I had taken no special satisfaction in the word. It had been raining frequently during the month, in quite unusual volume; the arroyos were pretty brooks, the sides of the divides wept, and there were wide, soft places on the prairies; the flocks went very lame from the excessive dampness, and riding was a splashing and spattering business; but the oldest inhabitant dropped no hint suggestive of the veritable meteorological coup which was quietly preparing.

We retired one night in our usual unsuspecting frame of mind, and awoke next morning to hear above the dull reverberation of the rain the booming of a torrent. The arroyo near the ranch was no longer an arroyo, but a stream fifty feet wide; and on the hither side of the pecan-trees of the creek could be seen a silver line: the water had already surpassed the banks. Before noon there was neither creek nor arroyo, but a river a mile wide rushing down the valley: we knew where the trees had been, by the swirling waves. A flood is like those serpents which fascinate before they strike. The monotonous rain failing ohne Hast, ohne Rast , the dead immutable murk of the sky, the rush of gray wave after wave, induced a state of dull lethargic wonder: the feet—the foot more, would it accomplish that? Already the floor of the ranch-house was under water. But there was soon a sufficient dashing about of riders in long yellow oil-skin coats, and all was done that the situation seemed to demand or admit of. The culminating moment of the day came toward two in the afternoon, when we stood on the roof of the ranch-house, with our eyes glued to a sulphur-colored patch a mile up the valley. It was a flock of sheep congregated on an unsubmerged knoll in the middle of the torrent. There was a sudden movement in the mass, the sulphur patch vanished, and there was borne to us distinctly a long, plaintive cry: the flock had been swept away. In a few minutes, however, we caught sight of many of them swimming admirably, and, much to our astonishment, they found a desperate footing opposite the ranch across the swift sweep of the arroyo. A dozen Mexicans were equal to the emergency. They stripped, threw themselves in, stemmed the current, and, with amazing pluck and fortitude, worked about amid the submerged cactus and chaparral, which must have wounded them savagely, holding the sheep together. Finally, after desperate urging, a wether was induced to breast the rush of the arroyo and landed safely high and dry on the hither bank, when, thanks to their disposition to follow a leader, all plunged in, and, after a vigorous push, found their perils at an end. But the count showed some six hundred missing.

It ceased raining toward four o'clock, and the sun set in great splendor. The next day the water had quite subsided, and I went, unsuccessfully, after plover over the bed of yesterday's river, but the beauty of the creek had been destroyed for the season. And farther down, where the flood had come at midnight, it had swept away many lives.