For a simple, pastoral pursuit, as old as civilization, there seemed to be a great deal to learn about this business of growing sheep. In a fenced pasture, with bluegrass and clover, water and shade and a shed against the winter storms, it was simple enough; here on the wild grey range, so vast that a man caught his breath and flinched from it, as from his first step into the sea, it was a different matter.
Why, Rawlins said, with frank astonishment over his own ignorance, he never knew before that morning that lambs' tails must be cut off—Clemmons said some sheepmen bit them off as they went about after the yeaning ewes—to keep them from matting up with burrs and sand and dragging upon the animals, a fatiguing, useless weight.
Perhaps it was just as well that he had run against that fence, stretching there from horizon to horizon between him and the unimproved white waste on the map. It might prove the first check in the precipitate dash of ignorance, saving him an inglorious fall in the end. Senator Galloway could not hold that land always; public pressure would remove his fence in time, probably soon enough for Rawlins' purpose. Meanwhile, nobody else could take up the land. When the lessons of sheep had been learned, maybe the fence would be down. Then a homestead on some creek, and a band of his own to range, with alfalfa growing to carry the sheep over winter hardships when the range was under snow or sleet.
The vision broadened out of the obscurity of first disappointment as Rawlins followed the fence up hill and down, holding his way toward the north.
