Candelária’s Curse.
What a snip-click! snip-click! snip-click! of the big steel shears, till the corral rang like an exaggerated telegraph office! Hoarse voices kept calling out “Numer’ uno!” “dieziseis!” “veintetres!” and tall, handsome Lorenzo, standing in a corner with the tally card in his hand, penciled a mark opposite No. 1, No. 16, No. 23, and so on as each man called out the number by which he was known. The calls came fast, and for each one a shabby gray shadow, looking like the ghost of a boy with a home hair-cut, “only more so,” went scurrying into the ranks of his yet unshorn fellows. The big corral was full as it could hold. Fifteen hundred sheep were there, so tightly packed that a mouse tossed upon their backs could hardly have found its way to the ground between them. Only in the triangular corners of the fence (which was built of logs laid up in zigzags) was there a trifle of room; and it was from these that all the noise came. In each was a fast-swelling heap of dirty, gray wool, and just in front of it the shearer. Each, as he turned a victim loose, yelled out his number, to be tallied one, and running upon the huddled mass of sheep, caught one by the fleece with each hand, dragged it to his corner, flopped it upon its side, knotted its four sharp feet together with a dextrous movement, and, snatching the shears from his belt, fell instantly to work. It was a scene to bewilder an Eastern sheep-grower. There were no shearing tables. Each man bent over, as though there were a hinge in his waist, until his hands were within six inches of the ground, and thus worked all day long. Holding and turning the sheep with the left hand, with the right he drove the sharp blades snipping through the wool with startling rapidity—till, almost before one knew it, the whole fleece rolled off to one side, very much as if it had been an unbroken pelt. As quick a motion freed the feet again and the shorn creature scrambled up and ran to hide his confusion, while the shearer was already playing barber to the “next gentleman.”
So it was no sleepy work, tallying for the thirty-seven swart fellows who were doing Don Roman’s fall shearing, and any one less practiced than Lorenzo might have lost count now and then. Every one seemed to be working his best, but the two cries that came oftenest of any were “trece” and “diezisiete.” Number thirteen was a short, thickset Mexican from Los Lunas, known (because of his unusually dark complexion) as Black Juan, and number seventeen was that two-fisted Pedro of Cubero. They had been for several years the two best shearers in Valencia county, and therefore, very naturally, rivals—though in some way they had never come together before. But now finding themselves, on the eve of the fall clip of 50,000 sheep, face to face each with a man he had never seen, but had disliked for ten years, neither could refrain from a slight curl of the lip. That fellow such a guapo? Huh! He might make a noise among the slowpokes down in the valley, but beside a real shearer there wouldn’t be enough of him to make a shadow! It was not long before their thoughts came to speech, and soon they had made a wager for a sheep-shearing race on the morrow. The ponies upon which they had come, their tattered blankets and a large proportion of their prospective wages were staked on which should shear the more fleeces between sunrise and sunset.
For eleven hours, now, the race had been in progress. Lorenzo had given the word when the first rim of sun peered above the yellow mesas. At noon the other shearers had taken the usual half hour to swallow the rude meal of tortillas and roasted sheep-ribs, but Juan and Pedro had worked doggedly on. The crunch of their shears seemed never to stop, and against the numbers thirteen and seventeen the little slanting marks (each fourth one crossed) had crept clear across the tally card and Lorenzo had to start a new line for each of them.
Five o’clock—five-thirty—six—and suddenly the timekeeper shouted “Ya ’stá!” The noise redoubled for a moment as each man hurried to finish his present sheep, and then stopped. Bent backs straightened slowly amid a general sigh of relief. A hard day, truly. Not a man in the corral, even down to young Blea, who had not sheared his sixty or seventy sheep. But the rivals? All crowded around Lorenzo as he began to count up.
“M—m—m—twenty-four, twenty-five—twenty-five tallies and three. Pedro has one hundred and twenty-eight sheep!” And Juan? “M—m—m—twenty-seven tallies and one—one hundred and thirty-six! Bravo! Que guapo!” And the evening air rang with shouts.
“Thou couldst not have done it fairly!” growled Pedro, with rage in every line of his dusty face.