Shepherds for Science

Me and Dirty Shirt Jones prods our three burros across the border of Yaller Rock County, points north through the country where God dumped the leavings after He made the Bad Lands, and has visions of the old home town.

Me and Dirty has abandoned the idea of finding gold where she ain’t, and right now we’re herding our sore-footed jassacks towards the flesh-pots of Piperock town.

We’re cutting around the side of a hill, when all to once we discerns the figure of a man setting on a rock ahead of us.

He looks a heap like he was figuring out the why and whatfor of all things. He humps there in the sun, a long, lean, pathetic-looking figure, despondency showing even in the curves of his cartridge-belt. I feels sorry for him long before our lead burro halts before him and lets us arrive.

The figure raises its head, peers at that gray burro, and when we stop he gets to his feet, turns to us and snaps:

“Hold up your hands! Both of you!”

Me and Dirty jerks our hands above our heads, and this fretful-looking hombre with the good-by forever mustache and weary eyes squints at us and says—

“You both solemnly swear to uphold the law vested in you as deputy sheriffs of Yaller Rock County, so help you Gawd?”

Me and Dirty nods and puts down our hands.

“Now,” says Magpie Simpkins, sheriff of Yaller Rock County, “I feel a danged sight better.”

We nods again, sets down beside him, and rolls smokes. After while Magpie scratches his nose and pinches out the light of his cigaret.

“What you doing here—hunting snakes?” asks Dirty.

Magpie shakes his head and digs into the dirt with his heels.

“Of course it ain’t none of our business,” says I, “but I would like to know why you inoculates us with sheriffitis without warning.”

“Sheep,” says he, soft-like. “Just sheep, Ike.”

“Which there never was nor never will be,” states Dirty. “You mean just plain sheep, don’t you, Magpie?”

“That is as may be, Dirty.”

Magpie fingers his mustache, and nods.

“Well,” says I, “me and Dirty hankers for home, so I reckon we might as well drift along, Magpie.”

“No,” says he, sad-like. “You ain’t going no place, Ike. You’re arrived. Do you reckon I deputized you for fun?”

“Sheep,” pronounces Dirty, “don’t mean nothing at all to me. I sure am contemptuous of all things pertaining to wool.”