FROM the earliest record of events, either sacred or profane, the genus
Bos has been associated with the history of the landowner. The Ancient
Egyptian saw in him certain traces of divinity, and honored it with
proper recognition. The lamented Job, erstwhile poet of calamity,
found time amid the recording of his numerous disasters to set down
his venerable appreciation of the species; and the pagan Homer, while
singing of gods and men, remembered to sing also the virtues of the
noble bullock; and the painters, too, from Claude Lorraine to Rosa
Bonheur, have deigned to consider the artistic importance of the
domesticated kine; treating him first as a necessary adjunct to a
landscape, and later as a central figure in the scene. He has had his
part, say the records, not infrequently with the plans of men, virtuous
and otherwise. A certain wily barbaric general used him well in a
difficult emergency, and the patriarch Jacob used him in a shrewd
physiological experiment, which he had probably learned at Padan-aram
in his salad days; an experiment that added much to the worldly worth of
the good father, but detracted not a little from his fame.
When the sun climbed up from behind the broad eastern hillside on the
following morning it looked down upon Rufus Alshire, who, far more
expeditious than itself, had already set himself to the affairs of the
day; before the dawn he had brought the cattle from their beds in the
cool pasture land, weighed them at his scales and turned them out in the
road on their journey to the shipping station some ten miles away. The
herd strayed leisurely along the highway. The giant Alshire rode through
the drove, keeping the bullocks moving slowly; while following the herd
barefoot in the dust, was one of his retainers, a half-witted youth,
wearing an ancient straw hat, a shirt originally of the material called
“hickory,” but now patched in variegated colors, and blue cloth trousers
well worn and frayed. As the youth tramped along he sang in a high
piping voice one of those simple little songs which the playing children
sing, and by way of illustration danced up and down and whipped the dust
with a long hickory switch. On his heart was no shadow of the cares of
men, and for this reason, perhaps, under his torn shirt was two-thirds
of the happiness of the world.
As the herd wandered along under the great oaks that lined the roadway
and the rays of the morning sun crept down through the green leaves,
making queer mottled spots on the sleek cattle and brilliant shifting
patches on the dewy grass, one looking on could easily have come to
believe that the world had turned back some several hundred years, and
this was a grassy forest glade of merry England, and the herd, cattle
of the gruff, gigantic Saxon who rode among them on his huge red horse,
scowling under his black brows and cursing by St. Withold and St.
Dunstan and the soul of Hengist the evil times of the Conqueror that
forced him to drive his herd into the thick forest at daybreak in order
to preserve it from the marauding cut-throats of a Norman baron; and
he would have looked close for great stones half-bedded in the moss,
lasting monuments to the weird and bloody rites of some stern Druid
colony long dead; and then glanced up sharply to see if that patch
of thicker green in the deeper woods were not indeed the coat of some
gallant outlaw whose bosom was English, and who stood ready with his
yew bow and his cloth-yard shaft to join the huge Saxon in his stubborn
fight against the bloody followers of Duke William of Normandy; and when
the herd had wandered by one would have leaned over in the road to see
if there was not a brass collar soldered fast around the neck of the
happy cowherd, graven in Saxon letters with this inscription: “Zaak, the
son of Jonas, is thrall to Rufus of Alshire.”
The cheery sunshine under the dear arch of blue, with its homely noises
of awakening life and its cool breath, ladened with the fresh odor
wafted from meadows of clover springing up with sweet new blossom after
the harvest, all so conducive to careless, joyous existence, failed
utterly to remove any portion of the anxiety from the face of the
grazier.
He sat listlessly in his saddle, with his gray eyes half-closed and the
muscles of his face drawn down in furrows; the red roan, trained from
his colt days, assumed the duties of his master, and moved carefully
among the cattle; his equine intelligence appreciating that it was a
part of his duty to the indolent master, to see that the drove kept
moving slowly, and that no bullock stopped to crop the wet grass by the
roadside, or fight with his fellow.
The watches of the night had brought to Rufus Alshire no solution of the
matter with which he had struggled so persistently during the evening
before. He was acting, it was true, upon his temporary plan, but that
seemed but an incident in the main vexatious problem.
The giant was now entirely oblivious of his environment, and deep in his
troublous matter he spoke aloud. “If I could only hold the title,” he
muttered, and then, as if realizing the folly of his hope, he gripped
the tree of his saddle with his hand and straightened his mighty foot
suddenly in the stirrup. The leather snapped under the great weight, and
the iron stirrup dropped into the road. The red roan stopped short, and
the huge Alshire, pronouncing some severe malediction on his ponderous
size, dismounted, picked up the stirrup and tied it to the strap. Then
he slipped the bridle rein over his aim and, walking along beside the
horse, began to examine the herd with the critical eye of an expert, and
comment thereon with the artlessness of a child.
“Beef for the British.” he said, “and as good beef as John Bull ever put
under his ribs. They are broad on the backs and deep in the brisket and
heavy in the quarters, and every black calf of them made the beam kick
sixteen hundred pounds.”
The grazier slapped his horse fondly on the neck. “They 'll please the
Jews, won't they, boy?” The red roan pricked up his ears and rubbed his
nose against his master's arm, as though this statement was quite in
accord with his own private views of the matter. “They will ship well
over the sea.” The giant laughed. “And by gad! if the rotten ships hold
together the black brutes will get a blamed sight nearer to the Queen
than most of the little snobs ambling around in the East.”
The herd of Rufus Alshire belonged to that species of beef cattle
termed Polled-Angus, native to the lowlands of Scotland; a breed of
comparatively recent importation. They were fine bullocks, full, round,
and comely in form; hornless, trim of head and neck, and with coats as
black as the fabled spirit of midnight. The law of natural selection had
finally indicated this breed as best adapted to the conditions of the
West Virginia grazier. It was hardy, easily maintained, and endured the
rigor of the winter without distress, beside it was quick to mature and
gained flesh rapidly, and then, too, the absence of horns rendered it
easier to handle and far less dangerous.
The horn, a necessary and powerful weapon in the wild state, was in the
state of domestication a useless incumbrance Hence nature, laboring for
the convenience of men, thrust in and produced the Polled-Angus.
The business of the grazier had been progressive. The powerful
landowner, who in the autumn purchased his cattle from the stockmen of
the interior counties, had ever encouraged the cultivation of the breed.
For many years the short horn Durham had been the great cattle of this
inland country. It was an old race; old in England when the Scandinavian
and the Dane swarmed over the river Tees. But the breed, though
excellent, was rather slow to mature and not adapted to severe winters,
and the breeder awakened to the needs of his market and casting about
for an animal better adapted to his uses chanced upon the Hereford,
first imported by the elder Clay of Kentucky. And the Hereford became
the chief bovine of the grazier. He was old, too; old on the north side
of the river Wye in the tenth century, and ancient of record, it is
said, in the law of Howell the Good; but while a fine beef animal, he
preserved one defect, the massive horn. Still he maintained his place,
until on a certain autumn morning at a fat cattle show in Chicago,
the good wife of a powerful Virginia grazier, on a quest for the ideal
bullock, pointed down into the stock ring at the splendid Polled-Angus
and said, “There he is, but he don't look human.” And there he was
indeed, broad, and shiny black, and hornless as a man's palm--nature's
answer to the breeder's dream.
The great tawny sun climbed high in the heavens; the heat of the day
settled down over the living earth like an invisible mantle; the crisp
freshness of the morning breeze had given place to the monotonous hot
air of midday. The dust arose in clouds from under the feet of the herd,
and the cattle themselves, warm and vexed with the irksome travel, were
restless and difficult to control. The great Al-shire and his huge horse
moved here and there through the drove, white with dust; while the happy
thrall plodded along behind the herd, whistling merrily and turning from
time to time to strike some lagging bullock, and shout with childish
glee “Go along you fat feller; to-night you will ride on the steam-cars,
and to-morrow the British will eat you.” And passing a slight inaccuracy
in the matter of time, the witless Zaak was entirely correct. To him
the steam-cars were marvels from wonderland, and the British was some
far-away gigantic monster with a mighty, insatiate maw.