“There wasn’t any roads in sight, so I footed it ’cross country.  The grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a peach orchard.  It was so much like a gentleman’s private estate that every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite you.  But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a ranch-house.  It was a little one, about as big as an elevated-railroad station.

“There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front of the door.

“‘Greetings,’ says I.  ’Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even work for a comparative stranger?’

“‘Oh, come in,’ says he, in a refined tone.  ’Sit down on that stool, please.  I didn’t hear your horse coming.’

“‘He isn’t near enough yet,’ says I.  ’I walked.  I don’t want to be a burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water handy.’

“‘You do look pretty dusty,’ says he; ‘but our bathing arrangements—­’

“‘It’s a drink I want,’ says I.  ’Never mind the dust that’s on the outside.’

“He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then goes on: 

“‘Do you want work?’

“‘For a time,’ says I.  ’This is a rather quiet section of the country, isn’t it?’

“‘It is,’ says he.  ’Sometimes—­so I have been told—­one sees no human being pass for weeks at a time.  I’ve been here only a month.  I bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.’

“‘It suits me,’ says I.  ’Quiet and retirement are good for a man sometimes.  And I need a job.  I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.’

“‘Can you herd sheep?’ asks the little ranchman.

“‘Do you mean have I heard sheep?’ says I.

“’Can you herd ’em—­take charge of a flock of ’em?’ says he.

“‘Oh,’ says I, ’now I understand.  You mean chase ’em around and bark at ‘em like collie dogs.  Well, I might,’ says I.  ’I’ve never exactly done any sheep-herding, but I’ve often seen ’em from car windows masticating daisies, and they don’t look dangerous.’

“‘I’m short a herder,’ says the ranchman.  ’You never can depend on the Mexicans.  I’ve only got two flocks.  You may take out my bunch of muttons—­there are only eight hundred of ’em—­in the morning, if you like.  The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished.  You camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep.  You do your own cooking, but wood and water are brought to your camp.  It’s an easy job.’

“‘I’m on,’ says I.  ’I’ll take the job even if I have to garland my brow and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe like the shepherds do in pictures.’

“So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let ’em graze on a little hillside on the prairie.  He gives me a lot of instructions about not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving ’em down to a water-hole to drink at noon.