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Mother fixed sandwiches for my lunch to be eaten out on the range, and I had a jug of water slung from the saddle horn. Those helping with the tail-end of lambing, also with irrigating ate a hot noon-time dinner in the two-room ranch house. At the ranch we had four high quality saddle horses recently shod for the spring work The top horse was out of my domain, strictly a man's horse. The other three were safe There was to be no fooling around when riding Each day I was well-mounted on a grain-fed horse, however, I took it easy on them in order to conserve their energy Dad helped me to adjust the stirrups as short as possible on the adult saddle I rode. He said, "You need to be able to stand up in the stirrups when you're on a ground-covering trot " Dad's Uncle Jake lived at the ranch and told me, "When I was a herder, I liked to herd the sheep in rough country. There's better feed" This made good sense to me. Included in the 170 yearlings I herded were 12 black sheep Range sheepmen include a few black sheep used as "markers" along with the herd of white ewes. Pan of my job was to count the blacks each evening at sundown when I put the herd into a corral out on the range, a mile above the cultivated fields. If a herder is short a black sheep, he knows he has lost a bunch of sheep that day. One night I counted only eleven blacks. How could this be? Quickly, in the corral, I ran the herd by again. There were only eleven black sheep The country where they grazed that day was rugged, with several small steep hills at the upper area. That's where I must have not gone around the complete herd. Down at the ranch, just before dark, I told Dad, "I'm out a black. I counted 142 |
