Late that afternoon he worked the sheep toward a line of low cliffs that cut across the prairie and bedded them down in their lee, finding for himself a snug overhanging shelf of rock, under which he placed his camp outfit, and cooked his first meal since daylight.
Dummy dared not hobble out his horse in such a night, but after giving him a small feed of grain he had brought from the wagon, staked the animal in a little grassy wash near camp.
By dark the snow began to fall heavily and he knew that for him and his woolly companions the morrow would be full of new troubles.
Lost to all sounds of the storm, the lad sat before the little campfire under the overhanging rock and watched the snow drive before the wind. With the confidence of one born and raised amid such conditions, Dummy rather enjoyed the prospect of a struggle against the elements. His parents were Basques from the Spanish Pyrenees, a sturdy dependable race that for centuries have been sheepherders in their own land. Every winter, from the open ranges of the West, come tales of "basco" sheepherders facing death in the storms, rather than desert their herds. Their devotion to their woolly charges, good judgment in handling them and loyalty to their employers' interests, even unto death, is recognized all over the western range country, until the name "basco" stands for the best in sheepherders.
From such as these sprang this boy, deaf and dumb from his birth. His father and his uncle were among the best herders in the state, and from a child he had been used to the rough life of a sheep camp. Deficient as he was in two vital senses, the remaining ones had been developed until his ability to grasp and understand things about him seemed almost uncanny. It was this knowledge of the boy's breeding and peculiarities that made Stanley feel he would take the best possible care of the sheep left in his charge.
When Dummy opened his eyes the next morning, the air was so full of snow driving before a fifty-mile gale that he could not see a hundred feet from camp. He cooked his breakfast, fed Slippers the last of the grain, and waited for the storm to break, realizing that until it did it would be folly to leave the shelter of the cliffs.
The sheep were getting restless and hungry and occasionally small bunches drifted out into the storm in search of feed, but after buffeting with the wind for a few moments were glad to come back. About noon there came a lull in the gale and the snow came straight down almost in clouds. The sheep were uneasy over the change, and even Slippers seemed to sense some new danger.
Suddenly with a roar the wind swept upon them from a new direction so that they were now exposed to its full fury, whereas, before, they had been sheltered by the cliffs.
The sheep tried to face it, but the fierce wind was too much for them, and they slowly drifted before the gale across the snow-covered range.
All that day Dummy struggled along behind the herd tired, cold, hungry, and almost blinded by the frozen tears, leading the pack horse lest he lose him. As for controlling the movements of the sheep, he did nothing for they could travel in but one direction, and that was away from the arctic blast which grew in strength as the day wore on. Wherever there was a sign of anything eatable upon which the hungry animals could feed, they ate even the woody stems of the sage or the dry yellow fibre-like leaves of the Yuccas that here and there showed above the snow.