“Then why does Jim Swope bring his bands south every Fall? I hear he loses five per cent of them, at the least, coming and going.”
“Ah, you don’t understand Jim as well as I do. I was tryin’ to make a livin’; he’s tryin’ to git rich. He’s doin’ it, too.”
Once more the note of bitterness came into his voice, and Hardy saw that the time had come.
“How’s that?” he inquired quietly, and the sheepman plunged into his story.
“Well, it was this way. I kept a few thousand sheep up there in my valley. In the Summer we went up the mountain, followin’ the grass, and in the Winter we fed down below, where the ground was bare. 185 It never got very cold, and my sheep was used to it, anyhow. The Navajos don’t move their sheep south, do they? Well, they’re away north of where I was. We jest give ’em a little shelter, and looked after ’em, and, as I says, I was doin’ fine––up to last year.”
He paused again, with his secret on his lips, and once more Hardy supplied the helping word.
“And what happened then?” he asked.
“What happened then?” cried Thomas, his eyes burning. “Well, you ought to know––I was sheeped out.”
“Sheeped out? Why, how could that happen? You were a sheepman yourself!”
The boss herder contemplated him with an amused and cynical smile. “You ask Jim Swope,” he suggested.