y her on her side and doctor her in company.
Finally, the superintendent gives the herder some tobacco, some
cigarette-papers, and a couple of yards of yellow fuse, and, mounting
his horse, nods farewell, and Juan touches his hat, smiles, and says,
"_Adios_."

In the ordinary course of events this is his weekly allowance of human
intercourse. It was the common opinion that none but Juan and his
brethren could stand this sort of thing; but what there is in the
Mexican character that adapts him to it only becomes a mystery on
acquaintance therewith. His most obvious and, one inclines to think, his
highest and most estimable quality is his sociability. He has a sense of
the agreeableness of life, with a very considerable feeling for manners.
This feeling makes it a pleasure for him to meet you; it causes him to
put _himself_ into the most commonplace conversation, the simplest
greeting, and make it, in his small way, a matter of art. It makes it a
pleasure for him to call upon a friend beneath the shade of some
live-oak or in a dugout or _jacal_, carrying some white sugar for his
wife or some candy for his little ones. Our instinctive disposition to
infer deplorable lacunae in the region of morals from the possession of
a talent for manners is in the case of the poor Mexican too thoroughly
justified. For him there is no such region; it is an undiscovered
country. He is the lightest of light-weights. When his heart is warmest
he is tossing a silver dollar in the air and thinking; of _monte_.
Cimental herded industriously during the winter, and became the proud
possessor of a horse and saddle, a Winchester, and a big ivory-handled
pistol. In May, shearing going on, he drove his flock to the
shearing-shed, and spent the night at the ranch. In the morning he came
into the store laughing. What about? Oh, he had had a little _monte_
over-night, and horse, saddle, rifle, revolver, all were gone. He had
been shorn of half a year's growth. But there was still a large deposit
at his bank,--the bank of Momus.

The herder has, of course, his "consolatory interstices and sprinklings
of freedom;" he undoubtedly mitigates his solitary life by frequent
derelictions, nightly visits to the farm--settlements (or the _jacal_)
which a few possess, and where he keeps, possibly, a wife and family.
But, on the whole, his life, and not unfrequently his death, is lonely,
Just before shearing-time Juan Lucio and his flock were lost. The flock
was