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Sometimes they kicked and struggled like pizened sheep in their sufferin', and again they went off easy and comfortable, but without any glimpses of Paradise brightenin' their countenances, so far as he could notice. If he had a soul, all right; if he didn't, all right; that's the way he figgered it. The lead sheep started for the bed-ground.
Especially on moonlight nights they are apt to be uneasy and to move from their bed-ground short distances, when the herder quits his tent, and, rolling a cigarette, follows his fanciful flock about the blanched and wistful prairie till they subside; then, throwing his cloak over his shoulder with the swing of an hidalgo, he falls asleep beside them.
Bowers tied Mary to the wagon wheel, and, with a final rub and pat and admonition, left the lamb, to start the herd feeding toward their bed-ground on the summit. "Come out o' that, Mother Biddies! Better start now and go to fillin' up. I want them children of yourn to weigh sixty poun' each, come fall."
There was food for thought in the answer and Wallie pondered it as he got stiffly out of the saddle. "Can I be of any assistance?" he asked, politely. "You can git the squaw-axe and hack out a place fer a bed-ground and you can hunt up some firewood and take a bucket out of the pack and go to the crick and locate some water while I'm finding a place to picket these horses."
If still obdurate at the end of these two days, mother and child, marked with red chalk or tagged alike with bright cloth, are turned out, the herder in charge of the solitaries "roping" the ewe for the convenience of the lamb whenever the latter indicates a desire for nourishment. The flock grazing out on the range will have gone by noon perhaps a mile from the bed-ground.
Well, there's two lads out there waiting to be relieved, and you second guard know where the cattle are bedded." In gala spirits we broke camp the next morning. The herd had left the bed-ground at dawn, and as the outfit rode away to relieve the last guard, every mother's son was singing. The cattle were a refreshing sight as they grazed forward, their ragged front covering half a mile in width.
Here a little corral is made, and the lambs born in the vicinity, with their mothers, are penned here over-night, one of the two herders sleeping with them. In the afternoon the remaining herder takes the flock grazing back to the bed-ground. The next day, with many more to follow, repeats the routine of this and its incidents.
"Good thing I brought my sour-dough," she muttered as she untied the sheepskin-lined canvas coat from the back of her saddle. "We'd better sift along, Cherokee, and turn the sheep back to the bed-ground."
Our wrangler arose and strolled away from the fire under the pretense of repicketing his horse. It was nearly time for the guards to change, and giving the last watch orders to point the herd, as they left the bed-ground in the morning, back on an angle towards the trail, I prepared to turn in.
Detailing the third and fourth guard to wrangle the remuda, I sent Levering up the creek with my brother's horses and to recover our loaned saddle stock; even Bob Quirk was just thoughtless enough to construe a neighborly act into a horse trade. About two miles out from the creek and an equal distance from the trail, I found the best bed-ground of the trip.
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