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Our shepherd is a queer character and hard to place in this
wilderness. His bed is a hollow made in red dry-rot punky dust beside
a log which forms a portion of the south wall of the corral. Here he
lies with his wonderful everlasting clothing on, wrapped in a red
blanket, breathing not only the dust of the decayed wood but also
that of the corral, as if determined to take ammoniacal snuff all
night after chewing tobacco all day. Following the sheep he carries a
heavy six-shooter swung from his belt on one side and his luncheon on
the other. The ancient cloth in which the meat, fresh from the
frying-pan, is tied serves as a filter through which the clear fat and
gravy juices drip down on his right hip and leg in clustering
stalactites. This oleaginous formation is soon broken up, however, and
diffused and rubbed evenly into his scanty apparel, by sitting down,
rolling over, crossing his legs while resting on logs, etc., making
shirt and trousers water-tight and shiny. His trousers, in particular,
have become so adhesive with the mixed fat and resin that pine
needles, thin flakes and fibres of bark, hair, mica scales and minute
grains of quartz, hornblende, etc., feathers, seed wings, moth and
butterfly wings, legs and antenn of innumerable insects, or even whole
insects such as the small beetles,
moths and mosquitoes, with flower petals, pollen dust and indeed bits
of all plants, animals, and minerals of the region adhere to them and
are safely imbedded, so that though far from being a naturalist he
collects fragmentary specimens of everything and becomes richer than
he knows. His specimens are kept passably fresh, too, by the purity of
the air and the resiny bituminous beds into which they are pressed.
Man is a microcosm, at least our shepherd is, or rather his trousers.
These precious overalls are never taken off, and nobody knows how old
they are, though one may guess by their thickness and concentric
structure. Instead of wearing thin they wear thick, and in their
stratification have no small geological significance.
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