Milking-time
Young Dave Titus was not without the rudiments of a knowledge of woman,
few as had been his opportunities for acquiring that rarest and most
difficult of sciences. He made no second visit to the cabin in the
clearing till he had kept Miranda many weeks wondering at his absence.
Then, when the stalks were whitey grey, and the pumpkins golden yellow
in the corn-field, and the buckwheat patch was crisply brown, and the
scarlet of the maples was beginning to fade out along the forest edges,
he came drifting back lazily one late afternoon, just as the slow
_tink-a-tonk_ of the cow-bells was beginning the mellow proclamation of
milking-time and sundown. The tonic chill of autumn in the wilderness
open caught his nostrils deliciously as he emerged from the warmer
stillness of the woods. The smell, the sound of the cow-bells,—these
were homely sweet after the day-long solitude of the trail. But the
scene—the grey cabin lifted skyward on the gradual swell of the
fields—was loneliness itself. The clearing seemed to Dave a little
beautiful lost world, and it gave him an ache at the heart to think of
the years that Miranda and Kirstie had dwelt in it alone.
Just beyond the edge of the forest he came upon Kroof, grubbing and
munching some wild roots. He spoke to her deferentially, but she swung
her huge rump about and firmly ignored him. He was anxious to win the
shrewd beast’s favour, or at least her tolerance, both because she had
stirred his imagination and because he felt that her good-will would be,
in Miranda’s eyes, a most convincing testimonial to his worth. But he
wisely refrained from forcing himself upon her notice.
“Go slow, my son, go slow. It’s a she; an’ more’n likely you don’t know
jest how to take her,” he muttered to himself, after a fashion acquired
in the interminable solitude of his camp. Leaving Kroof to her
moroseness, he hastened up to the cabin, in hopes that he would be in
time to help Kirstie and Miranda with the milking.
Just before he got to the door he experienced a surprise, so far as he
was capable of being surprised at anything which might take place in
these unreal surroundings. From behind the cabin came Wapiti the buck,
or perhaps a younger Wapiti, on whom the spirit of his sire had
descended in double portion. Close after him came two does, sniffing
doubtfully at the smell of a stranger on the air. To Wapiti a stranger
at the cabin, where such visitants were unheard of, must needs be an
enemy, or at least a suspect. He stepped delicately out into the path,
stamped his fine hoof in defiance, and lowered his armory of antlers.
They were keen and hard, these October antlers, for this was the moon of
battle, and he was ready. In rutting season Wapiti was every inch a
hero.
Now Dave Titus well knew that this was no bluff of Wapiti’s. He was
amused and embarrassed. He could not fight this unexpected foe, for
victory or defeat would be equally fatal to his hope of pleasing
Miranda. As a consequence, here he was, Dave Titus, the noted hunter,
the Nimrod, held up by a rutting buck! Well, the trouble was of
Miranda’s making. She’d have to get him out of it. Facing the defiant
Wapiti at a distance of five or six paces, he rested the butt of his
rifle on his toe and sent a mellow, resonant _heigh-lo, heigh-lo!_
echoing over the still air. The forest edges took it up, answering again
and again. Kirstie and Miranda came to the door to see who gave the
summons, and they understood the situation at a glance.
“Call off yer dawg, Mirandy,” cried Young Dave, “an’ I’ll come an’ pay
ye a visit.”
“He thinks you’re going to hurt us,” explained Kirstie; and Miranda,
with a gay laugh, ran to the rescue.
“You mustn’t frighten the good little boy, Wapiti,” she cried, pushing
the big deer out of her path and running to Dave’s side. As soon as
Wapiti saw Miranda with Dave, he comprehended that the stranger was not
a foe. With a flourish of his horns he stepped aside and led his herd
off through the barnyard.
Arriving at the door, where Kirstie, gracious, but impassive, awaited
him, Dave exclaimed: “She’s saved my life ag’in, Kirstie, that girl o’
yourn. First it’s a painter, an’ now it’s a rutting buck. Wonder what
it’ll be next time!”
“A rabbit, like as not, or a squir’l, maybe,” suggested Miranda,
unkindly.
“Whatever it be,” persisted Dave, “third time’s luck for me, anyways. If
you save my life agin, Mirandy, you’ll hev’ to take care o’ me
altogether. I’ll git to kind of depend on ye.”
“Then I reckon, Dave, you’ll get out of your next scrape by yourself,”
answered Miranda, with discouraging decision.
“That’s one on you, Dave,” remarked Kirstie, with a strictly neutral
air. But behind Miranda’s back she shot him a look which said, “Don’t
you mind what she says, she’s all right in her heart!” which, indeed,
was far from being the case. Had Dave been so injudicious as to woo
openly at this stage of Miranda’s feelings, he would have been dismissed
with speedy emphasis.
Dave was in time to help with the milking,—a process which he boyishly
enjoyed. The cows, five of them, were by now lowing at the bars. Kirstie
brought out three tin pails. “You can help us, if you like, Dave,” she
cried, while Miranda looked her doubt of such a clumsy creature’s
capacity for the gentle art of milking. “Can you milk?” she asked.
“’Course I can, though I haven’t had much chance, o’ late years, to
practise,” said Dave.
“Can you milk without hurting the cow? Are you sure? And can you draw
off the strippings clean?” she persisted, manifestly sceptical.
“Try me,” said Dave.
“Let him take old Whitey, Miranda. He’ll get through with her, maybe,
while we’re milking the others,” suggested Kirstie.
“Oh, well, any one could milk Whitey,” assented Miranda; and Dave, on
his mettle, vowed within himself that he’d have old Whitey milked, and
milked dry, and milked to her satisfaction, before either Kirstie or
Miranda was through with her first milker. He stroked the cow on the
flank, and scratched her belly gently, and established friendly
relations with her before starting; and the elastic firmness of his
strong hands chanced to suit Whitey’s large teats. The animal eyed him
with favour and gave down her milk affluently. As the full streams
sounded more and more liquidly in his pail, Dave knew that he had the
game in his hands, and took time to glance at his rivals. To his
astonishment there was Kroof standing up on her haunches close beside
Miranda, her narrow red tongue lolling from her lazily open jaws, while
she watched the milky fountains with interest.
While Kirstie’s scarlet kerchiefed head was still pressed upon her
milker’s flank, and while Miranda was just beginning to draw off the
rich “strippings” into a tin cup, Dave completed his task. His pail—he
had milked the strippings in along with the rest—was foaming creamily to
the brim. He arose and vaunted himself. “Some day, when I’ve got lots of
time,” he drawled, “I’ll l’arn you two how to milk.”
“You needn’t think you’re done already,” retorted Miranda, without
looking up. “I’ll get a quart more out of old Whitey, soon as I’m
through here.”
But Kirstie came over and looked at the pail. “No, you won’t, Miranda,
not this time,” she exclaimed. “Dave’s beaten us, sure. Old Whitey never
gave us a fuller pail in her life. Dave, you _can_ milk. You go and milk
Michael over there, the black-an’-white one, for me. I’ll leave you and
Miranda, if you won’t fall out, to finish up here, while I go and get an
extra good supper for you, so’s you’ll come again soon. I know you men
keep your hearts in your stomachs, just where we women know how to reach
them easy. Where’d we have been if the Lord hadn’t made us cooks!”
Such unwonted pleasantry on the part of her sombre mother proved to
Miranda that Dave was much in her graces, and she felt moved to a
greater austerity in order that she might keep the balance true.
Throughout the rest of the milking, she answered all Dave’s attempts at
conversation with briefest _yes_ or _no_, and presently reduced him to a
discouraged silence. During supper,—which consisted of fresh trout fried
in corn meal, and golden hot johnny-cake with red molasses, and eggs
fried with tomatoes, and sweet curds with clotted cream, all in a
perfection to justify Kirstie’s promise,—Miranda relented a little, and
talked freely. But Dave had been too much subdued to readily regain his
cheer. It was his tongue now that knew but _yes_ and _no_. Confronted by
this result of her unkindness, Miranda’s sympathetic heart softened.
Turning in her seat to slip a piece of johnny-cake, drenched in
molasses, into the expectant mouth of Kroof who sat up beside her, she
spoke to Dave in a tone whose sweetness thrilled him to the finger-tips.
The instinct of coquetry, native and not unknown to the furtive folk
themselves, was beginning to stir within Miranda’s untaught heart.
“I’m going down to the lake to-night, Dave,” she said, “to set a night
line and see if I can catch a togue.[1] There’s a full moon, and the
lake’ll be worth looking at. Won’t you come along with us?”
“Won’t I, Miranda? Couldn’t think of nothin’ I’d like better!” was the
eager response.
“We’ll start soon as ever we get the dishes washed up,” explained the
girl. “And you can help us at that—what say, mother?”
“Certainly, Dave can help us,” answered Kirstie, “if you have the nerve
to set the likes of him at woman’s work. But I reckon I won’t go with
you to-night to the lake. Kroof and Dave’ll be enough to look after
you.”
“I’ll look after Dave, more like,” exclaimed Miranda, scornfully,
remembering both Wapiti and the panther. “But what’s the matter, mother?
_Do_ come. It won’t be the same without you.”
“Seems to me I’m tired to-night, kind of, and I just want to stay at
home by the fire and think.”
Miranda sprang up, with concern in her face, and ran round to her
mother’s seat.
“Tired, mother!” she cried, scanning her features anxiously. “Who ever
heard of people like you and me, who are strong, and live right, being
tired? I’m afraid you’re not well, mother; I won’t go one step!”
“Yes, you will, dearie,” answered her mother, and never yet had Miranda
rebelled against that firm note in Kirstie’s voice. “I really want to be
alone to-night a bit, and think. Dave’s visit has stirred up a lot of
old thoughts, and I want to take a look at them. I reckoned they were
dead and buried years ago!”
“Are you sure you’re not sick, mother?” went on Miranda, hesitatingly
returning to her seat.
“No, child, I’m not sick. But I have felt tired off an’ on the last few
days when there was no call to. I do begin to feel that this big
solitude of the woods is wearing on me, someway. I’ve stood up under it
all these years, Dave, and it’s given me peace and strength when I
needed it bad enough, God knows. But someway I reckon it’s too big for
me, and will crush me in the long run. I love the clearing, but I don’t
just want to end my days here.”
“Mother,” cried Miranda, springing up again, “I never heard you talk so
before in my life! Leave the clearing! Leave the woods! I _couldn’t_
live, I just couldn’t, anywheres else at all!”
“There’s other places, Miranda,” murmured Dave. But Kirstie continued
the argument.
“It’s a sight different with you, child,” she said thoughtfully. “You’ve
grown up here. The woods and the sky have made you. They’re in your
blood. You live and breathe them. You were a queer baby—more a fairy or
a wild thing than a human youngster—before ever you came to the
clearing; and all the wild things seem to think you’re one of
themselves; and you see what other folks can’t see—what the folks of the
woods themselves can’t see. Oh, yes! it’s a sight different with you,
Miranda. Your father used to watch you and say you’d grow up to be a
faun woman or wood goddess, or else the fairies would carry you off.
This place is all right for you. And I used to think I was that big and
strong of spirit that I could stand up to it all the rest of my life.
But I begin to think it’s too big for me. I don’t want to die here,
Miranda!”
Miranda stared at her, greatly troubled.
“You won’t die till I’m old enough to die too, mother,” she cried, “for
I just couldn’t live without you one day. But,” she added passionately,
“I know I should die, quick, right off, if I had to go away from the
clearing! I know I would!”
She spoke with the fiercer positiveness, because, just as she was
speaking, there came over her a doubt of her own words. In a flash she
saw herself growing old here in the vast solitude, she and Kirstie
together, and no one else anywhere to be seen. The figure so cruelly
conspicuous in its absence bore a strange, dim likeness to Young Dave.
She did not ask herself if it were possible that she could one day wish
to desert the clearing, and the stillnesses, and all the folk of the
ancient wood, but somewhere at the back of her heart she felt that it
might even be so, and her heart contracted poignantly. She ran and flung
both arms about Kroof’s neck, and wiped a stealthy tear on the shaggy
coat.
Dave, with a quickening intuition born of his dread lest the trip to the
lake should fall through, saw that the conversation was treading
dangerous ground. He discreetly changed the subject to johnny-cake.