tle boy's mother
was, poor woman, very much of a sloven, but he had a string of little
sisters who were as nice as could be. They went about in white cotton
gowns--amazingly clean, considering that they lived under a tree--tied
at the waist with red scarfs; their black hair was smoothly gathered at
the backs of their pretty heads, and they had a demure and quaintly
maternal air; they looked at you with a tranquil, moon-like gaze, which
seemed to say that their ideas, which were on the way, had tarried for
the moment in some boon southern country.

III.

In riding about the range it was very pleasant to find, as one
constantly did, by the side of some "motte" (Texan for a considerable
cluster of scrub growth), or beneath the shade of a great live-oak, or
on the barren face of a divide, the little canvas A-tents of the
herders, nestled cosily to circular pens for the sheep, and generally
surrounded by brush to prevent the intrusion of inquisitive cattle.
Within the tent a sheepskin or so, stretched on the ground or on a
lattice of branches, for his bed, and without, a padlocked chest, with a
coffee mill screwed to the top, in which he keeps his rations, a skillet
and a few other utensils hanging from the branches of a neighboring
tree, a whitened buffalo's skull for a _metate_, a smouldering
fire,--this little spot, with its surrounding fence shutting out the
solitude, is the herder's palace, schloss, villa, town-and
country-house. "_Seguro_," says Juan, as he lights a brown cigarette and
quenches the yellow fuse in an empty cartridge-shell, "man wants but
little here below." They were a genial and hospitable set, the herders,
and if one arrived about mid-day they would regale him with scraps of
jerked beef, a cake of unleavened bread cooked in the skillet, and
coffee which, considering what it was made of, was a very inspiring
drink. In particular I recall the _pastor_ Patricio, a very pretty
fellow, with curly black hair and black eyes, a fine nose with a
patrician lift to the nostrils, a little black moustache bristling like
a cat's on a smiling lip, a red handkerchief about his neck: he was very
voluble of soft words, and made the waste blossom with his distinguished
manner. A dozen of these camps were to be discovered about the range,
and the brush fences and unused corrals of many more, which had been
used and would be used again as the sheep were moved from
grazing-ground to grazing-ground and portions of