But at first it was
the odor that caused Carley to close her eyes and press her knees hard
against the upper log to keep from reeling. Never in her life had such a
sickening nausea assailed her. It appeared to attack her whole body. The
forerunning qualm of seasickness was as nothing to this. Carley gave a
gasp, pinched her nose between her fingers so she could not smell, and
opened her eyes.
Directly beneath her was a small pen open at one end into which sheep were
being driven from the larger corral. The drivers were yelling. The sheep in
the rear plunged into those ahead of them, forcing them on. Two men worked
in this small pen. One was a brawny giant in undershirt and overalls that
appeared filthy. He held a cloth in his hand and strode toward the nearest
sheep. Folding the cloth round the neck of the sheep, he dragged it
forward, with an ease which showed great strength, and threw it into a pit
that yawned at the side. Souse went the sheep into a murky, muddy pool and
disappeared. But suddenly its head came up and then its shoulders. And it
began half to walk and half swim down what appeared to be a narrow boxlike
ditch that contained other floundering sheep. Then Carley saw men on each
side of this ditch bending over with poles that had crooks at the end, and
their work was to press and pull the sheep along to the end of the ditch,
and drive them up a boarded incline into another corral where many other
sheep huddled, now a dirty muddy color like the liquid into which they had
been emersed.
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