The trail Sandy was following led across the open fields and ascending gradually, made for the chain of low hills faintly outlined in the far-away blue haze. Beyond these hills loomed more distant mountains, their tops capped with snow. These mountains, Sandy told Donald, were the foot-hills of the Rockies.
It was quite evident that Sandy was now in his element. He swung along with slow but steady gait, carrying his pack easily and swinging his staff. His eye was alert for every movement of the flock. Now he would turn and draw some straying creature into place by putting his crook around one of its back legs. Sometimes he would motion the dogs to drive the herd along faster.
To an eastern-bred lad who had lived all his life in a city the scene was wonderfully novel. The great blue stretch of sky seemed endless. How still the country was! Had it not been for the muffled tramp of hoofs, the low bleating of the herd, the flat-toned note of the sheep-bells, there would not have been a sound. The quiet of the day cast its spell everywhere. Sandy, who was usually chary enough of his words, preserved even a stricter silence. Although his lips were parted with a contented smile, only once did he venture to break the quiet and that was when he softly hummed a bar or two of "There Were Hundred Pipers"—a favorite song of his.
At last Donald, who was bubbling over with questions, could bear it no longer.
"Are you always so quiet, Sandy, when you go to the range?" he asked.
The Scotchman roused himself.
"Why, laddie, I was almost forgetting you were here! Aye, being with a flock is a quiet life. You have nobody to talk to on the range—nobody except the dogs; so you fall into the way of thinking a heap and saying but little. I like it. Some herders, though, find it a hard sort of existence. Many a man has sat alone day after day on the range, watching the sheep work their way in and out of the flock until in his sleep he could picture that sea of gray and white moving, moving, moving! It was always before him, sleeping or waking. It is a bad thing for a shepherd to get into that state of mind. We call it getting locoed."
"What does that mean?"
"You must know that on the hills grows a weed called loco-weed. Sometimes the sheep find and eat it, and it makes them dull and stupid—you know how you feel when you take gas to have your teeth pulled. Yes? Well, it's like that. We never let the herd get it if we can help it, and if they do we drive them away from it. They will go right back again, too, and eat more if you do not watch them. That's what loco-weed is."
"And the shepherds?"