the stranger within the gates, set to hemming
wool-sacks with coarse twine and sailors' needles. One evening, but
shrewdly in time for supper, a couple of Mexicans on horses, thridding
their way through the mesquites, came into the ranch, quickly followed
by others, one or two on _burros_, more on ponies, most on the skeleton
of a prairieschooner drawn by four horses,--and the shearers had
arrived. They were a dark, black-eyed, hilarious set, some forty odd in
all, rather ragged as a crew, but with extremes of full and neat attire
or insufficient tatters according as the goddess Fortune or the Mexican
demi-goddess Monte had smiled or frowned; but all were equally jolly,
and almost all fiercely armed, the greatest tatterdemalion and
sans-culotte of all with a handsome Winchester, in a case, slung over
brown shoulders that would have been better for a whole shirt. The hat,
though cheap, was, even among the ragged, frequently elaborate, and
served excellently to carry off a protruding toe or knee, or to
reconcile the association in one person of an ancient boot with a still
more ancient shoe. Many of these fellows were undoubtedly trustworthy,
other some as undoubtedly, if they had had consciences, would have had
homicides on them; but all were light-hearted. Life is one thing to the
man who lets the breath out of his companion with a knife, and, leaving
his body in the brush, straightway goes about his idleness laughing, and
quite another to him who cannot get over the hideous fact that he has
tied his cravat awry.

On the morning of the first day we turned out at four o'clock, and,
while we were getting a dew-bite of crackers and a sip of coffee, _el
capitan_ circulated among the recumbent figures that had dotted the
prairie over-night: with a shake and a pull of the big hat by way of
toilet, they proceeded in twos and threes toward the shearing-shed,
their shears in their hands and all their personal property in weapons
dangling about them. The burrers, too, Mexicans hired in the
neighborhood, put in an appearance and ranged themselves behind their
tables, A flock had been penned at the shed over-night, and, while a
fraction of it was being driven through the movable panels into the
space behind the shearing--table, the shearers were ranged along it by
the captain: they hung up their rifles and revolvers to the posts, some
their hats and jackets, and fell to chattering, lighting their
cigarettes, and sharpening their s