Herdboy

“ Thus defined, however, the horde does not differ essentially from the animal herd, in the meaning which the latter concept would possess when applied to human-kind. And it is not impossible that in the extension of the meaning of the term 'horde,' this association of the foreign word with the original Germanic word 'herd' played a part. A horde, we might say, is a human herd, but it is precisely a human herd. Between the members of a horde, therefore, there exists a relation that is lacking in the animal herd, in flocks of migratory birds, for example, or in herds of sheep and cattle. ”

“ It is this herd-spirit that the cowboy, on his long, cross-desert drives to the railroad, most fears. The herd is like a crowd, easily led, easily excited, easily stampeded,—when it becomes a mob of frenzied beasts, past all control,—the spirit of the city 'gang' at riot in the plains. ”

“ A HERDSMAN was tending his cattle when he missed a young Bull, one of the finest of the herd. He went at once to look for him, but, meeting with no success in his search, he made a vow that, if he should discover the thief, he would sacrifice a calf to Jupiter. ”

“ The Shepherd's Boy and Wolf.
A Shepherd-boy, who watched a flock of sheep near a village, brought out the villagers three or four times by crying out, "Wolf! Wolf!" and when his neighbors came to help him, laughed at them for their pains. The Wolf, however, did truly come at last. The Shepherd-boy, now really alarmed, shouted in an agony of terror: "Pray, do come and help me; the Wolf is killing the sheep;" but no one paid any heed to his cries.
There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth.
The Hawk, the Kite, and the Pigeons. ”

“ Inured from childhood to the hardships and activity incidental to a life in the country of the clans, where the care of vast herds of sheep and cattle, or the pursuit of the wild deer from rock to rock, and from hill to hill, are the chief occupations of the people;—a deadly shot with either musket or pistol, and a complete swordsman, he was every way calculated to become an ornament to our regiment and to the service. ”

“ His own dear shepherd-maid,
The herd-boy leads along his flock of sheep
To the sequestered shade;
190Where shepherd youths and maids in secret bowers,
In song and feast unite
In joyful band, to pass the sultry hours
Of their siesta light.
The sturdy hunter, bathed in moisture well,
Beneath an oak-tree’s boughs,
Beside his faithful dog, his sentinel,
Now yields him to repose.
All, all is calm, is silent. ”

“ The firelight of the herder still glows in the twilight. Civilization rises and falls like the tide. The beasts of prey still lurk in the thickets to slay the sheep. Fashions, hobbies, pleasures, habits and modes of life, faiths and doctrines, even kingdoms and palaces start up, flourish, change and die,—and still the shepherd dog keeps his watch.
He was suddenly called from his reverie by the voice of the guide beside him. “Fire’s about out,” the man said. “Time herder put on more fuel.”
It was a commonplace remark, yet it compelled Hugh’s attention. ”

“ Men were shouting, dogs were barking, with greatest animation, but the thronging travellers in so long a journey had grown nearly indifferent to such terrors, though they still bleated piteously at the unwontedness of their experiences, a tall shepherd rising here and there in the midst of them, like a gigantic idol amid a crowd of prostrate devotees.
The great mass of sheep in the fair consisted of South Downs and the old Wessex horned breeds; to the latter class Bathsheba's and Farmer Boldwood's mainly belonged. ”

“ They sprung from the ranks of the army, from the emigrant’s cabin, and from among those rangers of the plains, the cowboys.
These brave fellows have produced many a hero in their ranks, and they have been ever ready to battle for the weak against the strong.
The ranch and the cattle interests are being encroached upon by the advance of civilization, the mask of mystery is being torn from the wild borderland by the westward march of the iron horse, and in a few more years, like the40 scout, the guide, the trapper, and the hunter, the cowboy will be a thing of the past. ”

“ The young man, who appeared to have everything to say about them, was of the country sporting type, distinctly not the gentleman. In a cattle country he would have been a cowboy simply. Your father thought he might have been employed on some of the horse-breeding ranches below Auburn as a trainer of young stock. He even wondered if he could have stolen the animals.
"But as the train moved out it appeared he had appropriated something of greater value—a young girl, also a thoroughbred. ”

“ Herron was one of the few towns in a very extensive cattle belt, and a few days after I had arrived I noticed the town had filled up with "cow punchers." They had just had their semi-annual round up, and were in town spending their money and having a whooping big time. You probably know what that means to a cow-boy. I was a tenderfoot of the worst kind, and every one at the boarding-house and depot seemed to take particular delight in telling me of the shooting scrapes and rackets of these cow-boys, and how they delighted in making it warm for a tenderfoot. ”

“ Here also is the home of the cowboy, the man who lives on the horse and rides as if horse and man were one animal. His duty it is to ride among the great herds, keep them in order, stop them when they run away in mad fright, and live among them as the sheep-dog lives among the sheep. Brave fellows and splendid riders are these cowboys, among the best in the world. ”

“ Now the Lord whose sheep the Herd-boy looked after had a very lovely daughter, who always smiled and nodded to the youth when she walked with her father in his fields. For a long time the Herd-boy had made up his mind to prepare a surprise for this beautiful creature on her birthday. So when the day approached he put on his invisible belt, took a sack of gold pieces with him, and slipping into her room in the middle of the night, he placed the bag of gold beside her bed and returned to his sheep. ”

“ Still lingering on the summit far above, as loath to quit the contemplation of the splendid prospect seen from thence, stands a tall youth of eighteen, with his right arm thrown across his horse's neck, and his left hand grasping his compass-staff. He is clad in a buckskin hunting-shirt, with leggins and moccasons of the same material,—the simple garb of a backwoodsman, and one that well becomes him now, as in perfect keeping with the wildness of the surrounding scenery; while in his broad leathern belt are stuck his long hunting-knife and Indian tomahawk. ”

“ Herdsman, farmer or brigand, according to circumstances, he is also cavalryman at need; and a corps of such fellows, if properly trained and led, would make the best light horse in the world, perhaps, His chief interests in life, however, are gambling and cock-fighting, and he is quite capable of losing all his worldly goods, his wife and even his pony at the national game of monte, and then of lighting a cigarette and sauntering off without a sign of regret. ”

“ In cutting out a steer from a herd, in breaking a vicious wild horse, in sitting a bucking bronco, in stopping a night stampede of many hundred maddened animals, or in the performance of a hundred other feats of reckless and daring horsemanship, the cowboy is absolutely unequalled ”

“ Often we would find a number of ours on the outside of the main herd, when two men would cut the squad in a bunch, and if there was a wrong brand amongst them, it was no matter,—we knew our herd would have to be retrimmed anyhow, and the other outfits might be disappointed if they found none of their cattle amongst ours. ”

“ He was about to get down and lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shadowed drearily by the large half-timbered buildings, up to the long line of tumble-down dwelling-houses standing on a raised causeway; but the timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on,—namely, not to get down from his horse during this visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon. ”

“ Stable boys, bred to the vocation of groom, become horse-faced and equine of disposition, eventually they wheeze and whistle like a curry-comb. Cowboys partake of the scatter-brained recklessness of the Texas steer which they tend. ”

“ Clean-legged, long-pasterned, bright-eyed, lean-headed, mostly with well-placed shoulders and well-bent hocks, each with pluck enough for a troop of horse—where could one get a better cross than these wonderful little 'tats,' with legs and feet of iron, and though only ranging from ten to twelve hands high, able to carry a heavy man a long day's journey? ”

“ Small boys will be small boys all the world over, whether white or black, and this little untutored specimen of his genus had kept a hundred and fifty armed men, in two camps, in a state of intense anxiety for two days, and had driven a tribe with all its cattle and goods in mortal terror into the hills for the same period, in order to cover his impish escapade. ”

“ In the hunting-field the farmer's son, if he had a pony, or the butcher-boy out of the town, could come and take his part; and if the butcher-boy could go ahead and keep his place while the man with a red coat and pink boots and with two horses fell behind, the butcher-boy would have the best of it, and incur the displeasure of no one. ”

“ The trader in horses followed his guide in the deepest astonishment through several long ranges of stalls, in each of which a horse stood motionless, while an armed warrior lay equally still at the charger's feet. 'All these men,' said the wizard in a whisper, 'will awaken at the battle of Sheriffmoor.' At the extremity of this extraordinary depôt hung a sword and a horn, which the prophet pointed out to the horse dealer as containing the means of dissolving the spell. ”

“ Then, while some of the cowboys sat their horses as sentinels, turning the herd back on itself, others threaded a way through the multitude, edging always toward the border of the herd some animal uneasy in the consciousness that it was being followed. ”

“ Now the post-boy, on a jibbing or a shying horse, curses the evil hour of his birth, and is ingloriously assisted by the shabby hostler out of place, who is walking down with seven shabby companions, more or less equine, open to the various chances of the road. Now, the air is fresh, and the dust flies thick and fast. ”

“ I think the very cowboy in the farmyard—a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes—even the cowboy knows that I am to be Madame Lenoble of Côtenoir. ”

“ An untuned triad in major, sounding as the herdsman's horn, no matter how or when it struck in with the three notes of the others making an incomplete accord, a canon for the hunting horn without end or beginning, reminiscences from the childhood of the human race, from the earliest ages of the herdsman and the hunter. ”

“ Before all things the cowboy is a horseman. His pride in this almost amounts to a craze. His fastidiousness in horse-flesh, in his accoutrements, his boots, [Pg 158] his chapps, his jaunty silk handkerchief about his neck, even to the gauntlets he so often wears upon his hands, is an education in dandyism. He is a thorough dandy in his outfit. And the greater the dandy, the more surely is he a capable horseman. He is not a horse-breaker by trade, but he loves “broncho-busting” as a boy loves his recreation. ”

“ Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak- eyed man. Beneath them a captive sheep lay panting, quickening its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside. ”

“ Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back. By her side was another woman, on foot. These two seemed to keep at a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive.
"He's a shepherd," said the woman on foot. "Yes—he is. See how his crook shines as he beats the rick with it. And his smock-frock is burnt in two holes, I declare! A fine young shepherd he is too, ma'am." ”

“ The boy said to his father: ‘Go thou into the wood, raise a hare. I will turn into a hound, and will seize it before the eyes of these nobles. The nobles will follow thee, and will be anxious to buy me. Ask a high price, and sell me to them. Then I shall seize the first opportunity to escape, and overtake thee on the road.’ The father went into the wood and started a hare; his son turned into a hound, pursued the [3] hare, and, just before the eyes of the nobles, he pounced on it. They crowded round the peasant, and insisted upon buying the dog. ”

“ My father, as I told you, was a shepherd—a strong, fine-looking man over six feet in height, and as broad-chested as a Hercules—he herded sheep on the mountains for a Glasgow dealer, as low-down a rascal as ever lived, a man who, so far as race and lineage went, wasn't fit to scrape mud off my father's boots. ”

“ The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by harness and drudgery from colthood—though if all had their rights, he ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some Eastern plain instead of tugging here—had trodden this road almost daily for twenty years. ”