Sheep Bitch
A Borderlands Interview
There was this other summer after we had moved to Burley, Idaho, that I worked sheep for Bill Barnum, who we called Old Billy on account of his son was Billy. Old Billy had wheat land and he also grazed animals on leased BLM land south near the state border. Sheep and cows are like them Hatfields and McCoys. Well, maybe not themselves but herders and drovers don’t mix spit.
Mostly I just drove a big old D9 Cat pulling a gang of broad-weeders through the fallow wheat fields. God, that was a dirty old job though. There weren’t no air-conditioned dust-sealed cabs with stereos in them days, no sir. That old D9 was open to the sky and the floor plate would get so hot it would melt boot sole, no shit. So I’d just set up the line and stick my feet up on top the firewall and ride ‘er to the turn, which in them fields might take half a day. Course, up in the necks on the hillsides you couldn’t do ‘er that-a-way. You had some damn steep-sloped sidehills and some one-eighty u-turns at the top side or down in the crotches so you best kept your eyes popped open.
Yeh, that woulda been in the early sixties, I’d say. All that hippy shit goin’ on and the like. Long hair freaks doing acid and them weirded out long-legged heifers always in heat. Christ.
Sheep? Well, I was getting there.
So, Old Billy Barnum leased all this graze from the BLM. I’d say he had a lock on most all of it east of Rockland up in the Deep Creeks. That was good graze back then, every bit as good as the Curlew Grasslands except you was up in the mountains and so it weren’t flat. Old Billy, who always was a cheap SOB, had brought a couple of Basqies over from the old country to wrestle them greasy sheep around. I guess they did more than that if you know what I mean. Them Basques did like a nice tight lamb I’m told. Yeh, you probably ain’t too interested in that.
Well, these Basqies were great herders, I’ll say, and mostly that’s a tip to those damn dogs of theirs. You ain’t seen much in life until you seen one of them dogs work a flock, and it is like seeing Jesus his own self when you see them dogs take on a coyote. Shit.
The thing about sheep, though, is they’re dumb as a tick. Sheep is all about eating and they take a graze right down to the worms if you let ‘em. That happens it takes years to reshoot that graze and sometimes it won’t never happen. But them Basqies keep their dogs moving them sheep along and bunched pretty good so there ain’t many stragglers dangling out to tempt them coyotes. You might say them Basqie sheep dogs got the Holy Spirit giving ‘em the tempo, too. It takes some sittin and watchin to figger out them Basqies is whistling and clickin from the saddle to them damn dogs all the whole time, you bet. They always have ratty old beat-up hats pulled down over them dark faces to keep the sun off I reckon – anyways you can't never see their eyes. What I’m getting’ at is you’d think the dogs was doing all the work while them Basqies just slept horseback. But you’d be dead wrong. Dead wrong.
No, I don’t know what them dogs was called fancy like that. They was Basqie sheep dogs, black and white, mostly, with eyes big and brown as a cow’s staring right up at a fella from on top their heads. Them dogs was not afraid to look you right in the eyes. That was some creepy. They could cut better than any quarter horse I ever saw, course they was smaller so that ain’t such a big deal but it did appear they could turn inside out.
Never. Never saw or heard of a Basqie dog hurtin a sheep, never did. Yeh, they did a-p-p-e-a-r to be nippin sheep as they moved the flock along. But see, you watch that action close and pay some attention and what you get is them dogs never do much more than muzzle nudge. Oh, they snap them pointy jaws hard together, and that there is motivation. Like I said, sheep are dumb as a board. Even though they never actually get bit, they always think they shortly will be.
How dumb? Boy, you’re a bit stiff yourself, you know? Okay, how dumb: One time me and Old Billy was riding up to move one of the Basqie’s sheep camps to the new graze. Yeh, one of them covered wagon-type contraptions. You ain’t just wood, you’re new wood. Lordy. Anyway, movin the sheep like they did and given the slope, we pretty much used Old Billy’s four-wheel pick-up to shift them camps. It took two because one hand had to steady the camp or play anchor on an uphill tie rope to keep them damn camps from tippin in the crux. The other man drove the truck and it was some slow drivin I'll say. Course you wasn't always on a road. Then we also restocked the camp larder on them moving days. Basqies love canned pears, did you know that?
So this one time me and Old Billy was chuggin up to shift camps and I was on a snooze and sudden-like Old Billy slammed down hard on the brake pedal and damned if I ain't knockin my head near through the windshield.
Old Billy is yellin’ “shit! Shit! SHIT!” and then he shoved open his door and starts runnin like a bull elk up the hillside, which, seein as how Old Billy carried some weight, was quite a sight. I thought maybe I ought to stop feelin sorry for myself about the big knot growin on my forehead and maybe see what the hell was going on. I got out of the truck and turned toward the hillside. It took about as long as a fly fart to figure things out and I lit out after Old Billy.
That hillside was a pretty steep slant slatted by sheep trails runnin side-to-side and some wider cow trails. You’ve probably seen that kind of geography yourself? or maybe not. Anyway, the sheep fan out followin the lines nose to shithole. The dogs are behind keeping the ones waitin for their turn from gettin distracted until they pick a line. Now the lead Basqie dog usually does a constant circle around the flock so’s to keep the bunch aimed in the right direction. But on a steep hillside like this that plot won’t thicken cause there really ain't nowhere else but forward to go so all three dogs just worked from the back like I said. The Basqie himself was back at his camp waitin for me and Old Billy to pull up for movin day. The dogs was workin his flock, business as usual.
Problem was, some gully washer had carved a canyon into the hillside and a couple of them lateral trails them sheep were on led to exactly nowhere. The ground just dropped straight out for twenty-five or thirty feet and down below it was a jumble of rock. Them sheep were droppin over that cliff like turds after a bean dinner – plop, plop, plop.
When Old Billy reached the line he just started grabbin wool and chuckin sheep down the safer part of the hillside. He had started up there yellin and cursing like a Basqie himself, but I think figured he better save his wind when the climb started gettin steep. I reached the line about the same time as him but I wasn’t packin his kind of weight. All this runnin and yellin by us spooked the sheep on the hillside but the ones behind who couldn't see us kept comin and there weren’t a whole lot of places to run to anyway. There was a whole lot of caterwaulin and bleatin and sheep shit and Old Billy and I just kept grabbin and throwin ‘til we was snot slick with wool grease and then we started just knee-butting them down hill away from that cliff.
Finally Rosie, the lead Basqie dog picked her way through the commotion to see what the hell was up. I say finally but truth is, it wasn’t that long at all and she was bein careful cause like I said she'd been trained to follow over this kind of ground. That smart little bitch slinked up through them lines of sheep and had the situation sized up right then. She set guard on the death trails and Old Billy and I kinda vee’d the rest of the flock downhill around the washout. I didn’t mention it before but them other two Basqie dogs were Rosie’s sons. They had stayed back and finally brought the last of the flock across the hillside and pushed them that were left over into the next graze. Rosie stayed where she was. After the last of the able sheep had been moved through by her sons she followed Old Billy and I down where we could get at the tangle of sheep at the gully bottom. God, what a mess, I will say.
We plucked about six or seven out of the pile and sent them bleating and shitting after the rest the flock. About that many more as I recall had broken legs or backs but were still alive, more or less, so Old Billy sent me down to the pickup for the 30-ought and I brain-shot them. There were six more that were already dead – two that didn’t have no bone injuries when we skinned them out so maybe they suffocated or busted some vital organ we couldn’t see. You didn’t just throw away a dozen sheep so we scavenged what we could. By this time the Basqie had figured out something was wrong so he come to look for us on his horse. Those guys can skin and butcher a sheep in about three minutes I figure. Them goddamn dumb sheep.
So here’s the thing. The whole time we was skinning and butchering those goddamn sheep Rosie was curled up watching us with those damn brown eyes of hers. When we had what we could salvage stowed away in the pickup we dug out a pit as best we could near them rocks in the gully and buried the guts and stuff and then piled what rocks we could shift on top. We thought maybe Rosie was waitin around for us to leave so she could dig in. The herder yelled at her a couple times in that Basqie talk and she would move off at bit but never left and she always came back close enough to watch what we were doin. The Basqie finally left to make sure the rest of the flock was bedded in the new graze but that goddamn Rosie wouldn’t budge. When Old Billy and I left it was damn near midnight. Rosie was still there. Christ.
We had to come out there again next morning and move the goddamn sheep camp that we never got moved the day before. When we come up that road there was Rosie, coiled up on that pile of dirt and rocks, nothin disturbed as we could see. Old Billy stopped the pickup. Rosie uncoiled and shook herself, looked right over at us sittin in the pickup, and then finally loped off toward where the flock was on its new graze. And here's the thing. I’ll be goddamned to this day if both of us didn't see tears in them big old brown eyes of that little Basqie bitch dog as she left.
Yessir.
Copyright © 2008 K.R. Passey. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment