The Thunder Moon passed quickly by; the hay was in; the barley partly
so. Day by day the whitefaced oxen toiled at the creaking yoke, as the
loads of hay and grain were jounced cumbrously over roots and stumps of
the virgin fields. Everything was promising well, when, as usual, there
came a thunderbolt out of the clear sky. Buck, the off ox, fell sick.
Those who know little about cattle have written much of the meek and
patient ox. Those who know them well tell us that the ox is the “most
cussedest of all cussed” animals; a sneak, a bully, a coward, a thief,
a shirk, a schemer; and when he is not in mischief he is thinking
about it. The wickedest pack mule that ever bucked his burden is a
pinfeathered turtle-dove compared with an average ox. There are
some gentle oxen, but they are rare; most are treacherous, some are
dangerous, and these are best got rid of, as they mislead their yoke
mates and mislay their drivers. Van's two oxen, Buck and Bright,
manifested the usual variety and contrariety of disposition. They were
all right when well handled, and this Rolf could do better than Van,
for he was “raised on oxen,” and Van's over voluble, sputtering,
Dutch-English seemed ill comprehended of the massive yoke beasts. The
simpler whip-waving and fewer orders of the Yankee were so obviously
successful that Van had resigned the whip of authority and Rolf was
driver.
Ordinarily, an ox driver walks on the hew (nigh or left) side, near
the head of his team, shouting “gee” (right), “haw” (left), “get up,”
“steady,” or “whoa” (stop), accompanying the order with a waving of the
whip. Foolish drivers lash the oxen on the haw side when they wish them
to gee--and vice versa; but it is notorious that all good drivers do
little lashing. Spare the lash or spoil your team. So it was not long
before Rolf could guide them from the top of the load, as they travelled
from shook to shook in the field. This voice of command saved his life,
or at least his limb, one morning, for he made a misstep that tumbled
him down between the oxen and the wagon. At once the team started, but
his ringing “Whoa!” brought them to a dead stop, and saved him; whereas,
had it been Van's “Whoa!” it would have set them off at a run, for every
shout from him meant a whip lick to follow.
Thus Rolf won the respect, if not the love, of the huge beasts; more and
more they were his charge, and when, on that sad morning, in the last of
the barley, Van came in, “Ach, vot shall I do! Vot shall I do! Dot Buck
ox be nigh dead.”
Alas! there he lay on the ground, his head sometimes raised, sometimes
stretched out flat, while the huge creature uttered short moans at
times.
Only four years before, Rolf had seen that same thing at Redding.
The rolling eye, the working of the belly muscles, the straining and
moaning. “It's colic; have you any ginger?”
“No, I hat only dot soft soap.”
What soft soap had to do with ginger was not clear, and Rolf wondered if
it had some rare occult medical power that had escaped his mother.
“Do you know where there's any slippery elm?”
“Yah.”
“Then bring a big boiling of the bark, while I get some peppermint.”
The elm bark was boiled till it made a kettleful of brown slime. The
peppermint was dried above the stove till it could be powdered,
and mixed with the slippery slush. Some sulphur and some soda were
discovered and stirred in, on general principles, and they hastened to
the huge, helpless creature in the field.
Poor Buck seemed worse than ever. He was flat on his side, with his
spine humped up, moaning and straining at intervals. But now relief was
in sight--so thought the men. With a tin dipper they tried to pour
some relief into the open mouth of the sufferer, who had so little
appreciation that he simply taxed his remaining strength to blow it out
in their faces. Several attempts ended the same way. Then the brute, in
what looked like temper, swung his muzzle and dashed the whole dipper
away. Next they tried the usual method, mixing it with a bran mash,
considered a delicacy in the bovine world, but Buck again took notice,
under pressure only, to dash it away and waste it all.
It occurred to them they might force it down his throat if they could
raise his head. So they used a hand lever and a prop to elevate the
muzzle, and were about to try another inpour, when Buck leaped to his
feet, and behaving like one who has been shamming, made at full gallop
for the stable, nor stopped till safely in his stall, where at once he
dropped in all the evident agony of a new spasm.
It is a common thing for oxen to sham sick, but this was the real thing,
and it seemed they were going to lose the ox, which meant also lose a
large part of the harvest.
In the stable, now, they had a better chance; they tied him, then raised
his head with a lever till his snout was high above his shoulders. Now
it seemed easy to pour the medicine down that long, sloping passage. But
his mouth was tightly closed, any that entered his nostrils was blown
afar, and the suffering beast strained at the rope till he seemed likely
to strangle.
Both men and ox were worn out with the struggle; the brute was no
better, but rather worse.
“Wall,” said Rolf, “I've seen a good many ornery steers, but that's the
orneriest I ever did handle, an' I reckon we'll lose him if he don't get
that poison into him pretty soon.”
Oxen never were studied as much as horses, for they were considered a
temporary shift, and every farmer looked forward to replacing them with
the latter. Oxen were enormously strong, and they could flourish without
grain when the grass was good; they never lost their head in a swamp
hole, and ploughed steadily among all kinds of roots and stumps; but
they were exasperatingly slow and eternally tricky. Bright, being the
trickier of the two, was made the nigh ox, to be more under control.
Ordinarily Rolf could manage Buck easily, but the present situation
seemed hopeless. In his memory he harked back to Redding days, and he
recalled old Eli Gooch, the ox expert, and wondered what he would have
done. Then, as he sat, he caught sight of the sick ox reaching out its
head and deftly licking up a few drops of bran mash that had fallen from
his yoke fellow's portion. A smile spread over Rolf's face. “Just like
you; you think nothing's good except it's stolen. All right; we'll see.”
He mixed a big dose of medicine, with bran, as before. Then he tied
Bright's head so that he could not reach the ground, and set the bucket
of mash half way between the two oxen. “Here ye are, Bright,” he said,
as a matter of form, and walked out of the stable; but, from a crack, he
watched. Buck saw a chance to steal Bright's bran; he looked around; Oh,
joy! his driver was away. He reached out cautiously; sniffed; his long
tongue shot forth for a first taste, when Rolf gave a shout and ran in.
“Hi, you old robber! Let that alone; that's for Bright.”
The sick ox was very much in his own stall now, and stayed there for
some time after Rolf went to resume his place at the peephole. But
encouraged by a few minutes of silence, he again reached out, and
hastily gulped down a mouthful of the mixture before Rolf shouted and
rushed in armed with a switch to punish the thief. Poor Bright, by his
efforts to reach the tempting mash, was unwittingly playing the game,
for this was proof positive of its desirableness.
After giving Buck a few cuts with the switch, Rolf retired, as before.
Again the sick ox waited for silence, and reaching out with greedy
haste, he gulped down the rest and emptied the bucket; seeing which,
Rolf ran in and gave the rogue a final trouncing for the sake of
consistency.
Any one who knows what slippery elm, peppermint, soda, sulphur, colic,
and ox do when thoroughly interincorporated will not be surprised to
learn that in the morning the stable needed special treatment, and of
all the mixture the ox was the only ingredient left on the active list.
He was all right again, very thirsty, and not quite up to his usual
standard, but, as Van said, after a careful look, “Ah, tell you vot, dot
you vas a veil ox again, an' I t'ink I know not vot if you all tricky
vas like Bright.”