In Mr. Hardy’s story, just mentioned, his hero performs rather a feat in shearing three and a half pounds of washed wool in twenty-three and one-half minutes, A Mexican would have to take a reef in his big hat if he could not do better than that.  His tin check is worth four and a half cents to him, and a fair hand ought to have at least fifty in his pocket at sunset, in return for as many seven-pound unwashed fleeces,—­always provided he has not sacrificed them to monte during the day.  A first-rate man will have seventy, and, if called upon to show what he is made of, will shear a heavy-woolled wether in six minutes.  At evening each shearer turns in his checks, and receives in return a signed paper with his name and their number.

The interior of the shed when shearing is at its height commends itself very forcibly to the attention of the artist.  The heaps of fleeces, mellow masses of gray, yellow, and white, the throng of anxious sheep, watching with painful interest their companions struggling in the swarthy arms of the stalwart, bare-chested shearers, saddles, broad sombreros, whips, and weapons grouped in so many pendent escutcheons of the great Mexican vagabond family, the flitting coleritos, the scarfed shearers themselves, all are so many veritable “bits.”  But it is not only that the details are good:  they compose admirably about the long aisle, with here and there a dagger of sharp light thrust into the shade, and without, the luminous clouds of dust.  The shearer puts one foot on the low table, the neck of the sheep resting over his knee, and its fleece rolling off like a robe; his broad chest is thrown out, his head back, his nostrils vent smoke like an angry god’s, and his glancing white teeth, disclosed in a broad smile, tightly grip a cigarette.  He is chattering, laughing, smoking:  incidentally he is shearing.

The presence of the shearers at the ranch causes a flutter in surrounding Mexican society.  They are known to be keen hands, viveurs, jolly good fellows withal, and, moreover, men who can wrestle with wethers ten hours a day (no light task on the muscles) and yet have spirit to dance and play all night.  So, at evening, the jacals—­the little farms and settlements on the creek—­are likely to send forth a contingent bound for the cook-house and a night of it.  A harp and an accordion are found, and to the sharply-marked music produced by this combination an impromptu baile forms itself.  The swarthy sombreros clutch each other, and hop about, their spurs gleaming and jangling, their pistols sticking out behind like incipient tails; and soon the baile overflows the kitchen, and the glowing cigarette-tips circle like fire-flies to the music in the dark night-air without.  In a corner, against the salt-house, by the light of a fire, a group is gathered round a blanket spread on the ground, with little piles of silver before them, over the always-absorbing monte; and other groups are very harmlessly singing.  By midnight the music dies away and the dancing ceases, but the sombreros bend over the monte blanket and the silver clinks on it till morning.