<|im_start|>system
You are a helpful assistant. You first think about the reasoning process in the mind and then provide the user with the answer. You should try to truely solve the question by yourself without cheating.  <|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
 A shepherd is herding a flock of sheep through 6 gates. At each gate, the gatekeeper takes half of the sheep the shepherd has at that moment and returns 1 sheep to the shepherd. After passing through all these gates, the shepherd is left with only 2 sheep. Originally, the shepherd was herding $\_\_\_\_\_\_$ sheep. Show your work in <think> </think> tags. And return the final answer in <answer> </answer> tags.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Let me solve this step by step.
<think>
user
2
A shepherd is herding a flock of sheep through 6 gates. At each gate, the gatekeeper takes half of the sheep the shepherd has at that moment and returns 1 sheep to the shepherd. After passing through all these gates, the shepherd is left with only 2 sheep. Originally, the shepherd was herding $\_\_\_\_\_\_$ sheep.
test