But he
has a simple device which answers the purpose. In an ordinary flock
about one sheep in a hundred is a black one. If a portion of the flock
has gone astray, there is likely to be a black one in it. So by
counting his thirty black sheep each day Tampico kept rough count of
his entire flock.
Grizzly Jack had killed but one sheep that first night. On his next
visit he killed two, and on the next but one, yet that last one
happened to be black, and when Tampico found but twenty-nine of its
kind remaining he safely reasoned that he was losing sheep--according
to the index a hundred were gone.
"If the land is unhealthy move out" is ancient wisdom. Tampico filled
his pocket with stones, and reviling his charges in all their walks in
life and history, he drove them from the country that was evidently
the range of a sheep-eater. At night he found a walled-in canon, a
natural corral, and the woolly scattering swarm, condensed into a
solid fleece, went pouring into the gap, urged intelligently by the
dog and idiotically by the man. At one side of the entrance Tampico
made his fire. Some thirty feet away was a sheer wall of rock.
Ten miles may be a long day's travel for a wretched wool-plant, but it
is little more than two hours for a Grizzly. It is farther than
eyesight, but it is well within nosesight, and Jack, feeling
mutton-hungry, had not the least difficulty in following his prey.
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