still there, though, because they would occasionally hear ’em baa-ing at night way back in the swamp. They caught one occasionally on a trotline of shark hooks baited with ears of corn. But not many.
“Well, sir, the more old man Jackson thought about that swampful of sheep, the madder he got. He’d stamp around the house and swear he’d catch ’em if he had to buy a motor boat that would run fifty miles an hour, and a diving suit for himself and every one of his boys. He had one boy named Claude—Al’s brother, you know. Claude was kind of wild: hell after women, a gambler and a drunkard—a kind of handsome humorless fellow with lots of dash. And finally Claude made a trade with his father to have half of every sheep he could catch, and he got to work right away. He never bothered with boats or trotlines: he just took off his clothes and went right in the water and grappled for ’em.”
“Grappled for ’em?” Major Ayers repeated.
“Sure: run one down and hem him up under the bank and drag him out with his bare hands. That was Claude, all over. And then they found that this year’s lambs didn’t have any wool on ’em at all, and that its flesh was the best fish eating in Louisiana; being partly cornfed that way giving it a good flavor, you see. So that’s where old man Jackson quit the sheep business and went to fish ranching on a large scale. He knew he had a snap as long as Claude could catch ’em, so he made arrangements with the New Orleans markets right away, and they began to get rich.”
“By Jove,” Major Ayers said tensely, his mind taking fire.
“Claude liked the work. It was an adventurous kind of life that just suited him, so he quit everything and gave all his time to it. He quit drinking and gambling and running around at night, and there was a marked decrease in vice in that neighborhood, and the young girls pined for him at the
