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National Geographic : 1966 Jun
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National Geographic, June, 1966 of the trouble had really been in Wyoming and Montana, where lone sheepherders were murdered by bands of masked riders, their valuable dogs burned alive, and the sheep dynamited or stampeded over cliffs. My father remembered well one incident in Nevada. A cow outfit had brought in a professional badman to harass the sheepherders. "One time, the badman sneaked into a sheep camp when the herder was gone and put cyanide into the bread," my father related. "When the herd er cut the new loaf-he scratched the sign of the cross on it, as we all did -he gave the first piece to his dog. So he saved his own life." Emilio was indignant. "Didn't the Basques do anything about it?" My father raised his hand. "The time came when the badman went too far. He roped a herd er and dragged him to death over the desert. It was an awful thing to see how he must have suf Forlorn foundlin; fered. So the Basques got passionate Base passionate Basque their rifles and went after the herder search the badman. He died with a dozen holes in him, and that ended all the trouble in a hurry." Fermin, a stolid young Basque who was going home in a few months, wanted a snow storm story to take with him. My father ob liged, and told him how a herder far out in the deserts had suddenly gone snow blind. "He was in a bad situation, you can imag ine. He couldn't see to find his way back to the camp. And he knew that if he started wandering, he would get lost and freeze or starve before the camp tender found him. "Then he heard the sheep, and got the idea that saved his life. He stumbled and crawled in the direction of the sounds. When he was in the middle of the sheep, he caught hold of one by the wool. He held on to that wool for a whole day and a night until the camp tender found the band, and him with it." Santiago Mendieta, a trapper for Allied (page 883), had come into the wagon to listen. Santy is notorious for his wry humor. g bl ;s: He added a story of his own for Fermin. "It happened one winter," Santy began, "when the snows had bogged down thou sands of sheep and cattle in the deserts. The Air Force was carrying hay to them in their Flying Boxcars. Anyway, this one plane passed over a band of sheep and saw the herder waving. So it dropped bales of hay. "One bale killed the herder's burro, and an other leveled his tent. The funny thing about it was that the herder was only waving to signal that he was fine. But he sure wasn't fine after that." Before dawn on the day we were to say good bye, I climbed high up on the hillside to watch the sheep camp come to life. By the time I reached the bottom of the rimrock, the eastern horizon was edged with silver. Range upon range of mountains stretched out on all sides, lying one past the other as far as the eye could see. In the crystal morning KODCHROME © N.G.S. Wair, the waking sounds of rescued by a com- the sheep camp carried eats plaintively as for a new mother. up to me clearly. I heard the clink of a washpan, the scuff of a boot on bare ground. I smelled the woodsmoke rising from the slender chimney of the cookwagon. The distant barking of a dog reached me, and when I turned, I saw a band of sheep streaming slowly out of a ravine. The first sunshine was glowing on their backs. Behind them, wooden staff in hand, moved the soli tary figure of a Basque sheepherder. This was the life our fathers had led, and this was the land they had known when it was new and untouched. And it was a pass ing thing. The day of the Basque sheepherder was almost done. It had come without fan fare, and it would die as quietly. It was for our generation to know city oc cupations and professions. But we had been witness to the kind of men our fathers were. We had tasted the life they had led, the vast ness of the land they had walked, the loneli ness they had known. We, the sons of Basque sheepherders in America, would remember. 888
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