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After that I am free of the Sierras, what you call Nieve snowy. Well I know that country. I go about with my sheep and seek my meadows mine, M'siu, that I have climbed the great mountains to spy out among the pines, that I have found by the grace of God, and my own wit: La Crevasse, Moultrie, Bighorn, Angostura.
If I go stand by that game, Filon is win, win all the time. That is because of the devil. And if there are women no, M'siu, there was never one woman. What would a shepherd, whose work is always toward the hills, do with a woman? Is it to plant a vineyard that others may drink wine? Ah, non!
It is hot then, you have the smell of the earth in your nostrils. That, M'siu, is the Santa Ana. It is pale dust and the great push of the wind. The sand bites, there is no seeing the flock's length. They huddle, and the lambs are smothered; they scatter, and the dogs can nothing make. If it blow one day, you thank God; if it blow two days, then is sheepman goin' to lose his sheep.
M'siu, that laugh stop on his face like it been freeze, his mouth is open, his eyes curl up. It is terrible, that dead laugh in the midst of the black water that run down from his hair. "Raoul," he say, "the sand is quick!" Then he take one step, and I hear the sand suck. I see Filon shiver like a reed in the swift water. "My God," he say, "the sand is quick!"
All this time I think me to take the sheep to Pierre Jullien in the meadow of Black Mountain. He is not much, that Pierre. If I tell him it is one gift from Le bon Dieu, that is explain enough for Pierre Jullien. Then I will be quit of the trouble of Filon Geraud. So, M'siu, would it have been, but for that dog Helène. That is Filon's she-dog that he raise from a pup.
The devil sit in Filon's eyes and laugh laugh some time he go away like a man at a window, but he come again. M'siu, he live there! And Filon, he know that I see, so he make like he not care; but I think he care a little, else why he make for torment me all the time? Ever since I see him at that shearing at Agua Caliente eight, ten year gone, he not like for let me be.
When Gabriel tell me that about Filon, I think he deserve all that. What you think, M'siu? That same night the water of Tinpah rise in his banks afar off by the hills where there is rain. It comes roaring down the wash where I make my camp, for you understand at that time of year there should be no water in the wash of Tinpah, but it come in the night and carry away one-half of my sheep.
M'siu, I do not know how it is with me. When I throw Filon in the pool, I have not known it is quick-sand; but when I hear that, I think I am glad. I kneel down by that log in the ford and watch Filon. He speak to me very quiet: "You must get a rope and make fast to that pine and throw the end to me. There is a rope in my pack." "Yes," say I, "there is a rope."
She is she is une femme, that dog! All that first night when we come away from the ford, she cry, cry in her throat all through the dark, and in the light she look at me with her eyes, so to say: "I know, Raoul! I know what is under the water of Crèvecoeur." M'siu, is a man to stand that from a dog? So the next night I beat her, and in the morning she is gone.
He has come up one side Crèvecoeur, with his flock, as I have come up the other. He laugh. "Hillo, Raoul," say Filon, "will you cross?" "I will cross," say I. "After me," say Filon. "Before," say I. M'siu does not know about sheep? Ah, non. It is so that the sheep is most scare of all beasts about water. Never so little a stream will he cross, but if the dogs compel him.
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