"Then you will have a place to fill right away, Mr. Clark. Some of the men who have been helping have gone down already, but I have kept Tobin and a couple of the Mexicans. Still it is no so easy to protect so many lambs from the coyotes. Lambing time is their great feasting season. A coyote is a mean creature, sir. Yet despise 'em as you may you cannot help admiring their cunning. There is no smarter animal alive than a coyote!"
"Tell us about them."
Sandy dropped down on a rock beside Mr. Clark and Donald.
"A coyote, as of course you know, is a wee bit wolf, about the size of a fox, and there is no feed he enjoys so well as a young lamb. Coyotes seem to know when the lambs come and they make ready to raid the flocks. You'd think folks would be bright enough to catch 'em, but there ain't wit enough in the world to get ahead of them. They're the cutest! The tricks a coyote will invent, sir, pass belief. In spite of the fact this pasture is fenced with coyote-proof wire the creatures manage to get in—goodness only knows how."
"Have they bothered you much, Sandy?"
"Have they! Haven't we built fires round the herd every night and patrolled the whole distance, back and forth, until light? Luigi, Bernardo, Carlos, and I have been on our feet from twilight until sunrise, tramping like sentinels; yet with all our care we have lost six lambs already. Six is not many when you consider the numbers some herders lose, still it is just six too many. So you see if Luigi goes down over the trail to-day with the ponies we can find work for you and Donald to-night."
"Oh, I think it will be great fun to patrol!" cried Donald.
"Think you so? Well, mayhap you will find it sport, since you haven't been doing it night after night for two weeks, lad."
Donald regarded him good-naturedly.
"There will be plenty of work waiting you by day, too," Sandy went on. "Just now we are busy inserting the flock mark in the ear of each lamb—a metal button with a crescent on it. The next ranch to ours is Anchor Ranch, and their herd is marked with an anchor, while down beyond lies Star Ranch. It behooves us to keep close track of our herds and mark them carefully. Then in addition to the marking we must dock the tails of the lambs lest they become foul; and we must record every lamb. We have a book where we enter the number of the mother and opposite it the number of her lamb. That is the way we keep track of the breeds."