color, with a Jersey strain somewhere among her remote forebears. Yet,
one could not gaze on Molly for long without a feeling of profound
respect pervading his soul. It was not because one could see with half
an eye that she gave large quantities of milk; that was merely the
performance of her natural functions. Nor was it that her wistful regard
suggested all the sorrows of her sex. Molly in some way made a subtle
appeal to sympathy that cannot be voiced.
As a matter of fact, she ought to have been the pampered occupant of a
clover field by day and of a stall by night. Instead, she was roaming
the zacaton flats of the Tumbling K and losing herself among the
blackbrush ridges, in vague wonder that the world was grown so large.
Designed to be a respectable milch-cow on a dairy farm, here she was in
the heart of a wilderness, and all because of a boy.
He came among us, pink and white and fearfully clean; and he was the
owner’s son. There were eleven thousand cows in our domain, but milk had
been a thing of rumor to the outfit, perhaps because it is inconvenient
to milk on horseback. Now, however, Vance shoved his legs under the
boards at the bunk-house and objected to clear, biting coffee. So, when
he departed blacker than a Mexican, with a two months’ beard and
overalls sustained by a strand of rope,--babbling wild things of a bath
he would take, a bath that would endure for a day and a night,--we still
had Molly.
“That cow’s got a mind, I tell you,” Uncle Henry assured the outfit at
supper. “She’s got a mind jist like you or me, Dave, only better than
yourn. Pass them frijoles.”
Perhaps Molly did have a mind. At any rate, she was humanly lonesome. To
be the only one of her kind in a tract of five thousand acres--they kept
her in the horse pasture--was depressing to a companionable disposition.
The bronchos on the river flats and mesquite-clothed hills were shy,
wild creatures, subject to alarms and foolish panic. With mild wonder
she would watch them break into a run at a sound or a strange scent.
They were masterful, too, always driving her away from the water-holes
and the salt until they had had their fill. Instinctively she was afraid
when one of them approached with careless confidence that she would give
place. Yet, though unhappy, Molly never overlooked her duty, and each
morning and each evening she stood quiet while Uncle Henry milked her,
occasionally rumbling a note of satisfaction or sweeping at a fly with
cautious backward swings of her head. Uncle Henry was becoming too stiff
for hard riding, and now spent most of his time trying to persuade
himself and others that the odd jobs he applied himself to were of his
own choosing.
One morning Molly awoke to turmoil. Wondrous noises came to her on the
west wind, and she arose and walked to the imprisoning fence. Truly the
Tumbling K was become a Babel. In the wide, browned valleys, on the
mesas, and far into the fastnesses of the Mules, bulls and cows and
clumsy calves were on the march, with riders hanging in rear. Molly
could hear the churning of the hosts on the round-up ground, and to her
nostrils was wafted the taint of the dust belching heavenward in clouds.
For the Tumbling K range was to be divided, and eight thousand head must
be turned over to the retiring partner.
Where did all the cattle come from? Molly had never dreamed there were
such hordes of her kind in the world. Armies of them filed by in long
lines, the cowboys on flank and in rear shouting, whistling, spurring
into the press in their efforts to urge the herds forward. Molly stood
at the barb-wire fence most of the day, staring at this rally of her
species. Sometimes she bawled a troubled greeting.
And the little calves! Many a toddling new-born, strayed from its mother
and solicitous of protection, staggered out to sniff at the kindly
disposed creature that nosed it so tenderly from the other side of a
four-strand barrier. All night the trampling of sleepless thousands and
the bawling of steers and worried cows came to disturb Molly’s slumbers.
The bed-ground for the herds was not four hundred yards distant from the
pasture fence. She could see tiny intermittent lights move slowly about
them in a wide circle, where the men on guard smoked as they rode their
rounds.
Next day her heart was filled with forebodings and uneasiness. Hundreds
of cattle were driven into an extensive corral within the confines of
her pasture, and thence, in small groups, they went into a chute,
propelled by the whoops and outcries of sundry reckless horsemen who
crowded their rear. Molly watched and wondered. She saw these cattle
forced singly into a narrow runway; she saw them caught fast in a
squeezer, heard their bellows of consternation and fright; and then
there reached her the stinging odor of burned hair, when the branding
irons seared the flesh. Upon which Molly would flip her tail in the air
and lope away. But she always returned; much as she feared it, she could
not leave this anguished assemblage.
It was Uncle Henry who discovered that the arrival of the herds was
demoralizing our faithful benefactor. She no longer grazed sedately;
even the succulent grama-grass of the creek-bottom failed to hold her,
and she walked the barb-wire ceaselessly day and night. Her weight fell
off in alarming fashion, and when, on the third evening, Uncle Henry
approached with outstretched hand and honeyed speech, and the milk-pail
cunningly concealed, she shook her big, patient head and moved off. He
followed, and she quickened her pace.
“Consarn your fat haid!” roared Uncle Henry, never a patient man. “Hold
still or I’ll take the hide off’n you.”
He tore after Molly, threatening dire visitations. Now, it takes an
extremely clever person to circumvent a determined cow, when he is on
foot and she has five thousand acres in which to manœuver, and Uncle
Henry returned to headquarters, howling for somebody to lend him a horse
and he would drag that old fool clear to Texas. We went without milk
that night, and grumbled and swore precisely as if we had had nothing
else all our lives.
* * * * *
“Hi-yi! Bear down on him, cowboys. More frijoles here!”
With a yell, Big John sprang to the lever of the squeezer and threw all
his strength on it, gripping a plunging steer about the middle as he
strove to win through the chute.
“Hot iron! Hot iron!” the wagon boss shrieked. “Somebody build that fire
up. All right. That’s got him, Cas.”
Molly hung about near the corral, gazing on these frenzied activities in
consternation. It was early morning and low-hanging mists were shredding
before the sun.
Some calves passed through the chute by inadvertence. Being too small
for the squeezer to hold, they were noosed as they came out, and branded
on the ground. One was so tiny that the men at work beside the runway,
idly rolling cigarettes during a halt in the operations, failed
altogether to perceive him above the heavy lower boarding. As a result,
he sauntered into the open, and there was no noose ready to snare. His
ears were twitching with curiosity, and he moved his legs as if they
were stiff and his feet hurt, as indeed they did, because he had come
many weary miles and he was not three days old.
“Hi-yi! There goes a calf!” yelled the punchers. “Go to him, John. He’s
just your size.”
Big John grinned, spat on his hands, and made a dive for the fugitive.
“The li’l’ rascal,” he chuckled, grabbing for its tail. Instead of
taking to the open and falling a prey to a roper, the calf lunged
sideways and went under the horse-pasture fence. He was so short that he
easily bowed his back and slid beneath the wire. The outfit sent up a
shout of laughter, and exhorted John to stay with him; but the giant
remained where he was, gazing fixedly at the fugitive. Molly was on the
other side of the fence.
To her side the white-face bolted, confident of sanctuary. For a cow,
Molly was terribly agitated. She turned about and about, trying to
obtain a really good look at this forward baby who greeted her as his
mother. The calf, on his part, kept close in an endeavor to secure his
supper, being very hungry and properly careless as to where he got it.
Molly smelled and sniffed at him, and edged off in intense nervousness.
Evidently quite positive in his own mind that he had found what he had
been seeking, the calf gave over all useless fuss and set himself
resolutely to obtain a meal.
“Let him go, John,” the boss called. “We lost his mother over on the
Magayan. Molly’ll look after him. Look out! Bear down on him, cowboys!
It’s that big ol’ bull.”
Molly was thrilling to long-pent yearnings, and the vapors of
self-delusion welled up to befog her instincts. After five minutes of
nosing, the Jersey came to the conclusion that this must be her son, and
yielded to his hungry importunities. With a deep murmur of content, she
walked away, followed by her adopted baby. And behind a sage-brush, safe
from interference, she fed him. The outfit watched them go in amazement,
prophesying many things.
One of the few things they did not foretell came to pass next morning.
Molly had hidden the calf behind some soapweed while she went to graze a
few rods off, and, the dawn being still gray and the air stinging cold,
we picked that particular bunch of weed for a bonfire to provide warmth
while the wrangler was bringing up the horses. When the match flared,
the calf on the other side of the shooting sparks staggered to his feet.
Ba-a-a-a-aw!
“It’s the little ’un,” John whooped.
He said no more, because at that moment came the dull pounding of hoofs
on grass, and there was Molly, her head held high, turning her gaze
jerkily from one to another, after the manner of cows when preparing to
charge. We forgot about the fire for the moment and headed for the
corral fence, streaming across country twenty strong, with Molly in hot
pursuit. Big John eluded her by dodging dexterously behind a bush,
leaving a portion of his overalls with the cow, and she abandoned the
chase at once, returning to her charge. Him she licked and caressed with
many mumbled endearments, making sure that he was unhurt. The calf took
all this stoically and as a matter of course, considering it his due,
and fell to breakfast. Molly gazed across at her late friends sitting
spectrally astride the fence, and all the anger was gone from her eyes.
They were large and melting with tenderness.
A crippled horse was shot that day,--the broncho-buster threw him too
hard, breaking a leg,--and to the carcass a coyote skulked when night
shut down. About eleven o’clock Molly got to her knees, in which
position she remained a few seconds, meditating; then rose to walk
about, nibbling at the grass. All cattle get up in this manner between
eleven o’clock and midnight to graze for a few minutes and then lie down
on the other side. This may be the basis of an old superstition that
“good cows say their prayers.”
Molly, with the warmth of the snuggling calf still on her side, wandered
farther than she intended. Abruptly she thrust her nose into the wind
and sniffed. It was a stale, penetrating stench, and inherited knowledge
warned her there was danger. Back ran Molly in a tremor of anxiety, her
head wagging from side to side in her efforts to glimpse the marauder.
Behind a clump of bear-grass crouched a coyote, his foxlike nose pointed
toward the spot where snoozed her unprotected son. Inch by inch he slunk
forward; now his muscles grew taut for the leap.
Whoo-oo-oo-huh! snorted Molly, smashing down upon him.
The wolf straightened and wheeled with a flash of gray, and sprang, all
in one movement. So marvelously quick was he that escape would have been
certain ninety-nine times in a hundred. A bull would have borne down on
him with lowered head and eyes shut, like a runaway freight train; a cow
charges with eyes open, and Molly, consumed with mother-wrath, ripped
sideways with her sharp horns as the hunter swerved. A shapeless bundle
of brown-gray fur was tossed into the air, and when it struck the ground
and rebounded, Molly went at it again. This time she caught him full
with her horns, and, quite by chance, followed stumblingly on his ribs
with her forefeet. The coyote squirmed away from this terrible avenger,
snapping futilely at her muzzle, and a cry from the calf distracted the
Jersey from a burning desire to complete the good work. When she
abandoned him to run to her adopted son, the wolf made as if to flee;
but he was hurt unto death, and sank down miserably under a mesquite,
his glinting eyes searching the brush for foes. And through the long
night he panted out his life, until at dawn the last spark flickered.
“It’s a big ol’ ki-yote”--John stirred the carcass with his boot--“A
bull done ripped him.”
“There aren’t any bulls in the horse pasture,” the boss retorted. “Only
Molly.”
By one impulse the outfit turned in their saddles to look for her. There
stood the Jersey a hundred paces off, feeding tranquilly on mesquite
pods. Toddling at her heels was a red, white-faced calf of sturdy frame
and curly coat. Molly was behaving as if she had never done anything
more exciting in her life than eat bran mash.
“Good ol’ Molly,” they called back, as they rode to the bunk-house for
dinner. Molly, hearing the familiar name, lifted her head to regard the
cavalcade soberly.
We went without milk cheerfully enough now and speculated at every meal
as to the probable course Molly would pursue as the calf grew. There was
little else to talk about. Some vowed she would get over her
hallucination quickly and abandon the youngster. Uncle Henry thought
differently.
“She’s a better mother to him than his own would have been. I never done
saw a range cow look after her calf like Molly does that rascal. And
ain’t he fat!” he exclaimed.
The wagon boss conceived it to be in the line of his duty to brand the
calf. A man was despatched to rope him. He returned presently to say
that Molly would not permit him to get near. “She went on the peck and
gored my horse.” He exhibited a red wale along his mount’s flank.
“You can’t rope a calf away from its mother?” the boss exclaimed,
dumbfounded. “Pshaw! You’d better go back to cotton-pickin’, Cas.”
He spurred away to bring in the culprit himself. What were cowboys
coming to nowadays? He would show them! We mounted the corral fence the
better to view proceedings, and waxed merry of spirit when Molly chased
the boss six separate times. Molly would not be frightened or enticed
away from her son, but turned to confront this unexpected enemy when he
galloped at her. As for the calf, he glued himself to Molly’s side and
would not budge therefrom.
“Will we stretch her out, Pink?” we shouted.
“No,” the boss roared.
He made another try and almost got his rope over the calf; but the
Jersey went at him just then and gave him something else to do. So the
boss ambled back, grinning sheepishly behind his sandy mustache.
“I reckon”--he cleared his throat--“I reckon that’s one on me, boys. Let
him go just now. We’ll get him in the spring.”
Uncle Henry was the only human being that the Jersey would permit within
five yards of her baby. He entertained a sort of proprietary affection
for the cow, and she reciprocated save when such cordial relationship
clashed with her love for the adopted one. At such moments Uncle Henry
was not to be considered, of course, and she was as ready to put him on
the fence or speed him round a bush as any other member of the Tumbling
K outfit.
Upon a day in September, he was on his way back from patching the line
fence, when he espied Molly trotting distractedly about a narrow draw.
She stopped to stare as he approached, then resumed her agitated run.
From time to time she dashed to the brink of an arroyo to gaze down.
Uncle Henry watched her, surmising from the stores of his experience
what had happened.
“She’ll jist about go on the prod and rip me if I try to git him out.”
Molly took a few steps toward him, lowed pitifully, and returned to look
down at the unfortunate calf. He advanced with caution, anticipating a
rush; but Molly only lowed again and made way for him.
“I swan, she wants me to pull him out,” said Uncle Henry in a reverent
tone. “If that don’t beat every--”
He alighted and walked to the arroyo’s rim. Ten feet below, on the sandy
bottom of a hole whose precipitous sides prevented him climbing out, lay
the white-face. Uncle Henry deftly dropped a noose over its head, and
dragged the kicking youngster to safety. When he went to remove the
rope, Molly suffered him to handle her son, though she glared in swift
suspicion when Uncle Henry threw him to the ground and knelt on his body
to free the loop from his neck.
“Boys,” said the boss at supper one night, “Molly has got to go.”
“Oh-ho! Ho, indeed!” Uncle Henry retorted with fine sarcasm. “Oh, yes,”
he added, unable to think of anything better to say.
The boss shook his head sadly over the clamor that ensued. He spoke of
the matter as a man of feeling would acquaint a wife of her husband’s
taking-off; but it had to be. An order had come to deliver Molly to
Bockus, the butcher at Blackwater.
What! Lose Molly? The boss was locoed, or worse. Had he by any chance
secured a bottle, of whose whereabouts we were in ignorance? We would
buy the cow ourselves first.
It was an off-day. The branding was done, and the Tumbling K outfit was
awaiting the arrival of a purchase of four thousand steers from the
South. Thus it came about that twelve of us rode into Blackwater, and
Big John was spokesman. John was not much of a speaker, being given to
profanity when a congestion of language threatened, but he had a grand
theme, and talked about Molly in a way that made us cough.
“Bless my heart,” cried the owner of the Tumbling K, when the nub of the
matter was revealed. “Bless my heart!”
He gaped, then squeezed the mighty muscles of Big John’s shoulder and
laughed. All this fuss about a cow--one forlorn dun cow. The puncher
grinned in his turn, shuffling his feet; for they knew and understood
each other, these two, having been associated for eighteen years. That
is why Bockus received the strange explanation he did when he called to
protest against the delay in delivering Molly.
“It’s just this way,” the cattleman observed, slipping an elastic band
about his tally-book. “If I let you have that cow for thirty, I lose
precisely nine hundred and thirty-seven dollars. No; Molly stays.”
“Nine hundred and--Why, man, you’re crazy! How’s that?”
“Ask those strikers of mine,” came the answer, accompanied by a chuckle.
“Great weather, isn’t it? How is veal selling to-day?”
“But look a-here, Vance, let me have the calf, anyway. You owe me that
much,” the fat Bockus protested.
“All right. Send out for him, though,” said the cattleman.
It happened that Bockus despatched a youth with a pair of mules hitched
to a wagon, for the calf. He was a wily urchin, and a glance satisfied
him that Molly’s son could be taken from her only by craft. Accordingly
he loafed all of one forenoon in the horse pasture with his wagon close
at hand, and when the unsuspecting Jersey strayed off some hundreds of
yards to secure better grazing, he made a sudden descent upon the
white-face, locked his fingers about its nose so that the calf could not
utter a sound, threw and tied him, then heaved the outraged victim into
the wagon and made off. Molly returned shortly, and missing the apple of
her eye, set out on a search of the immediate vicinity. In the distance
a wagon raised the dust of the Blackwater trail, going rapidly. The boy
did not feel any too secure even with a fence between them, and lashed
his mules, shrilling oaths at the gawky beasts.
The cow brought up at the fence, every sense on the alert to detect the
presence of the calf in the fast-disappearing vehicle. Some subtle
intuition told Molly he was there, and she retreated a few steps. Then,
with a crash, she went through the four strands of wire, and, with a
long gash in her left shoulder dripping blood, started after them at a
swinging trot.
Brother Ducey was conducting an open-air revival service among the
mining population of Blackwater. He was a powerful exhorter, was the
brother, and, as most of his congregation were women, with a sprinkling
of men who would presently go on the night shift six hundred feet into
the bowels of the earth, his picture of a lurid, living perdition had
them swaying and rocking on the benches. Their groans and lamentations
rolled up the street.
“You’re all a-going to hell!” he shouted. “Your feet are on the hot
bricks now. Hell is--” And, again-- “Hell--”
Brother Ducey broke off and glared wrathfully at an imp of a boy who
drove a clanking wagon at top speed completely around the meeting-place,
making for the slaughter-house beyond.
Then Molly arrived and took no such devious route. She went straight
through the congregation, overturning the mourners’ bench, and, unable
to differentiate between friends and foes, headed for the rostrum.
Brother Ducey waved his arms wildly and squalled “Shoo!” But, as Molly
would not “shoo,” he scaled a tree with the speed of a lizard, from
which vantage-point he besought somebody to shoot the animal.
The Jersey did not pause to trifle with these hysterical worshipers. Her
business was to find her baby, and she was almost up with him. In truth,
the cow was an awesome sight as she charged anew after the wagon, the
blood trailing from her shoulder, froth flaking her muzzle. Evidently
the butcher’s assistant found her so.
“I can’t beat her to the gate!” he gasped, with a glance backward.
Whereupon he wheeled again and galloped his team in front of Bockus’
store. There he abandoned them, springing through the door just as Molly
swept down the road. The calf bawled a greeting and the Jersey began to
circle the wagon, occasionally prodding at the mules just to be on the
safe side in the event of their having had anything to do with this
theft. They kicked at her in return, but did not offer to run away.
“Somebody rope her! Somebody rope her!” Bockus cried, dancing up and
down in his shop. “No, don’t shoot. Them locoed Tumbling K’s will wipe
out the town if you do.”
Alas, there was nobody in Blackwater competent to do it. They were a
peaceful, industrious mining folk, and a cow was a dubious thing to
them, to be handled respectfully in the best of moods. And an enraged
animal like Molly! Blackwater suspended business, shut up shop, and hid
indoors or took refuge on the roof.
From time to time Molly abandoned the wagon temporarily to seek revenge
where it might be given to her. In this way she made forays over half
the town, and put Bill Terry, the postmaster, through a new plate-glass
window that Tom Zeigler had imported at enormous expense. Tom swore that
Vance would have to pay for it.
“Send for one of them fool cowboys!” Bockus screamed, after an hour of
this.
His boy stole forth on an emaciated pony, and, eluding the cow by a
burst of speed, brought Blackwater’s prayerful appeal to the Tumbling K
headquarters.
We rode in and roped Molly. Then certain of us did some trafficking with
Bockus, Big John laying down the terms, with the result that the cord
around the calf’s legs was loosed and he was restored to his mother.
All the blind savagery was departed from Molly now. She sauntered over
to a patch of grass and began to eat, with the calf at her heels, and
the stare she turned on the citizens of Blackwater was noncommittal,
even kindly.
Her departure took on something of the character of a pageant. Brother
Ducey was induced to make an oration--or he could not be restrained--at
any rate, Brother Ducey delivered a speech setting forth the
extraordinary qualities of the cow. It was really a remarkable tribute,
but all the notice Molly took was to flick one ear as she masticated a
bunch of grass.
“And, brethern and sisters, what does this brave creature teach us?
Hey?” he demanded, in conclusion.
“I dunno,” mumbled a gentleman at whom he was staring, in a hopeless
tone.