Millie Eckers, with her arms around his waist, rode behind Robert Burns
toward the county seat one spring morning to get married. But before
they got there along came Joe Fultz, a justice of the peace, to whom
they told their intent. Joe said the middle of the road on horseback was
as good a place as any for a pair to be spliced, so then and there he
had them join right hands. When they were pronounced man and wife Robert
handed Joe a frayed greenback in exchange for the signed certificate of
marriage. Joe Eckers always carried a supply of blank documents in his
saddlebags to meet any emergency that might arise within his bailiwick.
The justice of the peace pocketed his fee, wished Mister and Mistress
Burns a long and happy married life, and rode away, and Robert turned
his mare's nose back toward Little Goose Creek from whence they had
come.
Some said, soon as they heard about Millie and Robert being married on
horseback right in the middle of the road, that no good would come of
it. As for the preacher he said right out that while the justice of the
peace was within his rights, he had observed in his long ministry that
couples so wed were sure to meet with misfortune--married on horseback
and without the blessing of an Apostle of the Book.
Scarcely had Millie and Robert settled down to housekeeping than things
began to go wrong.
One morning when the dew was still on the grass Millie went out to milk.
"Bossy had roamed away off ferninst the thicket," she told Robert, "and
ginst I got there to where she was usin' I scratched the calf of my leg
on a briar."
Robert eyed her swollen limb. "Seein' your meat black like it is and the
risin' in your calf so angry, I'm certain you've got dew pizen."
Sure enough she had. Millie lay for days and when the rising came to a
head in a place or two, Robert lanced it with the sharp blade of his
penknife.
Some weeks later old Doc Robbins who chanced by wondered how Millie had
escaped death from blood poison from the knife blade, until the young
husband told casually how when he was a little set along child he had
seen an old doctor dip the blade of a penknife in a boiling kettle of
water and lance a carbuncle on another's neck. He had done the same for
Millie.
No sooner was she up and about than something else happened.
Millie and Robert had just the one cow but soon they had none. Even so
Millie said things might have been worse. "It could have been Robert
that was taken." And he said, bearing their loss stoically, "What is to
be will be, if it comes in the night."
It was Millie who first noticed something was wrong with Bossy. It was
right after she had found her grazing in the chestnut grove. All the
young growth had been cut out and the branches of the trees formed a
solid shade so that coming out of the sunlight into the grove Millie
blinked and groped in the darkness with hands out before her, feeling
her way and calling, "Sook, Bossy! Sook! Sook!" Millie all but stumbled
over the cow down on her all fours. She coaxed and patted for a long
time before Bossy finally got to her feet and waddled slowly out of the
shaded grove into the sunlit meadow.
That evening Robert did the milking. But before he began he stroked
Bossy's nose and bent close. "I've caught the stench of her breath!" he
cried. "Sniff for yourself, Millie!"
Millie did. "Smells worser'n a dung pile," she gasped, hand to stomach.
Quick as a flash Robert put the tin pail under Bossy's bag and began to
milk with both hands.
There was scarcely a pint in the bucket until Robert gaped at Millie.
"Look! It don't foam!" His eyes widened with apprehension. He took a
silver coin from his pocket, dropped it into the pail and waited. In a
few moments he fished it out. "Black as coal!" gasped Robert. "Our cow's
got milk sick!"
Bossy slumped to the ground. By sundown the cow was stark dead.
Before dark Robert himself grew deathly ill.
They remembered that at noon time he had spread a piece of cornbread
with Bossy's butter. He had drunk a cup of her milk.
Millie lost no moment. She mixed mustard in a cup of hot water and
Robert downed it almost at a gulp.
"He begun to puke and purge until I thought his gizzard would sure come
up next," Millie told it afterward. "All that live-long night he puked
and strained till he got so weakened his head hung over the side of the
bed and hot water poured out of his mouth same as if he had water brash.
Along toward morning Doc Robbins come riding by. He had a bottle of
apple brandy and we mixed it with wild honey. It wasn't long till Robert
got ease. Doc set a while and about the middle of the morning he give
Robert two heaping spoonfuls of castor oil."
From then on no one could coax Robert Burns to touch a mouthful of
butter nor drink a cup of sweet milk. Though he drank his fill of
buttermilk with never a pain.
As for the shaded grove where the cow had grazed, every tree was cleared
away--at Doc Robbins's orders. The sunlight poured into the place and
soon there was a green meadow where once the shaded plot had been
covered with a poisoned vegetation. Cows grazed at their will over the
place with no ill effects.
Still Robert had no hankering for butter or sweet milk.
"You've no need to fear milk sick now," Doc Robbins tried to reassure
Robert. "It's never found where there's sunlight." Though he could never
figure out whether the deep shade produced a poisonous gas that settled
on the vegetation, or whether it came from some mineral in the ground,
he did know, and so did others, that whatever the cause it disappeared
when sunlight took the place of dense shade.
The incident was scarcely forgotten when ill luck again befell Millie
and Robert. Their barn burned to the ground, reducing their harvest and
their only mule to ashes.