About two weeks with days and nights of this character sufficed, with slight interruptions occasioned by bad weather, to get one hundred thousand pounds of wool off the backs of the sheep.  On Sunday the shearers would not work:  the day was sacred—­to pleasure.  The store was thronged with purchasers, the cook-house became the temple of monte, the road a race-track.  The ranch had the air of a fete.  The races were short rushes with horses started with a jab of the spur or thwack of the cuerta, to see who first should cross a line scratched in the dust, at either end of which a throng kneeled and craned forward and held out silver dollars and called bets.

At length the last sheep was shorn, the last sack marked, the pools on that interesting figure, the total clip of the year, decided, and the shearers in motley tableau assembled in the ranch-house, before the table, to have their paper slips redeemed.  They did not understand checks on San Antonio banks; they “didn’t want paper;” they had a rather praiseworthy doubt of green-backs; they wanted the solid dinero,—­the “Buzzard,” the “Trade,” or the radiant Mexican peso.  Toward midnight it ceased to be a laughing-matter, paying off, and one was glad to turn in even in an atmosphere heavy with cigarette-smoke and not over-fragrant.  Next morning the shearers leisurely saddled up and disappeared through the brush, the Grande Capitan and Capitan lifting their hats with grace and dignity and calling, “Adios!” They left a rather relaxed ranch, with a marked tendency toward hammocks and long siestas, varied with a little mild lawn-tennis at evening in an old corral, which, by the way, with its surrounding fence to stop the balls, made in many respects an admirable court.

VI.

Toward the end of August the pluvial god, assisted by the physical characteristics of the region, provided us with a genuine sensation.  Hitherto we had had mere weather; this was a pronounced case of meteorology:  until then I had taken no special satisfaction in the word.  It had been raining frequently during the month, in quite unusual volume; the arroyos were pretty brooks, the sides of the divides wept, and there were wide, soft places on the prairies; the flocks went very lame from the excessive dampness, and riding was a splashing and spattering business; but the oldest inhabitant dropped no hint suggestive of the veritable meteorological coup which was quietly preparing.

We retired one night in our usual unsuspecting frame of mind, and awoke next morning to hear above the dull reverberation of the rain the booming of a torrent.  The arroyo near the ranch was no longer an arroyo, but a stream fifty feet wide; and on the hither side of the pecan-trees of the creek could be seen a silver line:  the water had already surpassed the banks.  Before noon there was neither creek nor arroyo, but