FLOCK HUSBANDRY IN WESTERN STATES. 203 



They grow very rapidly if well born on good 

 range. The shepherd has now some compen- 

 sation for his pains and anxieties. His duties 

 are comparatively light, he has time to keep 

 a neat camp, to hunt a little for grouse or deer, 

 and the flock itself is a source of gi'eat pleasure, 

 if he is more than an indifferent hireling. In 

 the evenings when the ewes have assembled, 

 perhaps on the slope of some ravine, the lambs 

 will disengage themselves from the flock and 

 withdrawing a little way will race up and 

 down in mobs, a fuzzy flood, undulating over 

 the ground. Again some belligerents will 

 square off and fight mock fights, butting by 

 twos and threes until one decides that too 

 rough a sport. Again there will be a game of 

 leap frog, or "follow your leader," and strings 

 of lambs will race up over banks and rocks 

 and jump stiif-legged down the other side. 



After a time some old ewe, feeling a proH- 

 sure within her uddei', will disengage herself 

 from the rest and coming to the open will 

 call anxiously for her lamb. As though ji 

 miracle some lamb will stop, listen, cease to 

 play and answering with a bleat, will come 

 scampering across the ravine to her to get his 

 evening meal. 



Curiously enough the ewe, though she has 

 seen him a thousand times, refuses to believe 

 that he is her rightful offspring until she has 

 applied her infallible test, her nose. Scent 

 tells her it is her own her darling child, and she 

 tranquilly allows him to milk her dry. 



