“You’ve probably outgrown some of your sensitivity,” I said.
“I’ve got my bag up at the house,” Dad said. “Come on; I’ll give you a shot of antihistamine.”
“Should we call an ambulance?” Michael asked. I noticed that he was scratching his arms, too. And for that matter, so was I. They were starting to itch rather fiercely. Power of suggestion, or was prolonged contact with live lanolin factories bringing out an allergic reaction in those of us who’d never had a problem before?
Dad and Rob had begun trotting toward the house, and most of our volunteer helpers trailed after them. I hoped Dad wouldn’t run out of antihistamine, given how many hypochondriacs we had in the family.
Chapter 35
“Should I go find some more sheep?” Sammy asked.
“Not just yet,” I said. “Can I borrow your bullhorn?”
“Sure,” Sammy said. “It’s in my car.”
“I’m sure you know what you’re doing,” Michael said, as we followed Sammy to the police cruiser. “You always do. But just how is a bullhorn going to retrieve any sheep?”
“It won’t,” I said. “But they will.”
I pointed at the people still milling about the premises. Fewer than before, of course, but still far too many of them.
“We’re offering a bounty of twenty dollars per sheep,” I added.
“But that would cost—”
“In the form of a gift certificate redeemable at next weekend’s continuation of the yard sale.”
“I bow to your ingenuity,” he said.
Ten minutes later, the yard was empty of all but the customers checking out. And many of them were jostling with impatience to get out and join the sheep hunt.
“I certainly hope you’re not counting this sheep bounty as a yard sale expense,” Barrymore Sprocket said.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I said.
“Because I certainly can’t authorize—”
“Later!” I snapped.
Barrymore retreated, still grumbling.
“Meg,” Michael said, sounding worried. “What if someone tries to bring in ringers to claim the bounty?”
“What, you mean like goats or cows?” I said. “I think we’d notice.”
“No, like someone else’s sheep.”
“Are there many other sheep around?”
“Oh, yes,” Sammy said. “I can think of at least a dozen other farmers in the county who have sheep. Not as many as Early, of course.”
“Then how are we supposed to tell them apart?”
“Well, most of the farmers don’t have Lincolns.”
Since the only vehicle I’d ever seen Mr. Early driving was an enormous battered pickup truck, I assumed this was a brand of sheep.
“Okay, how can we tell Lincolns from other sheep?” I asked.
“They’re bigger than most sheep,” he said. “And they have longer wool. And they’re kind of square.”
“You can’t blame them,” Michael said. “It’s hard to stay up with all the trends, stuck out here in the country they way they are.”
Sammy blinked once and then focused on me.
“Square-shaped,” he said, carefully. “You know, blocky and rectangular, rather than round and—”
“Right,” I said. “Fleece-covered tanks. I’m sure this all makes sense to a farmer, and maybe it would to us if we had a couple of non-Lincoln sheep around for comparison, but we don’t, so how can we tell if our bounty hunters are bringing us Mr. Early’s sheep or rustling someone else’s sheep?”
Sammy blinked.
“You could always look at the ear tags,” he suggested, as if talking to a small child.
Sure enough, all the sheep were sporting bright yellow plastic ear tags. I winced when I saw that they’d been permanently attached to their ears with a sort of plastic grommet, but then reminded myself that it was probably no worse than having one’s ears pierced.
And each tag had a unique number, along with Mr. Early’s name.
“So all we have to do is write down each tag number, and we’ll know which sheep we have,” I said. “And if anyone found a sheep with any other ear tag, they’d know it wasn’t Mr. Early’s and they wouldn’t bring it here.”
“Unless they were city slickers who didn’t know any better like—like a lot of these tourists,” Sammy said, looking at Michael and me as he spoke. “Of course, you could get locals cutting off the tags and trying to pretend the animals had lost them. Which happens, but not too often because there are pretty stiff penalties for stealing livestock, so—”