It was because the doctor insisted that my system needed ozone that I
went to Colorado on a hunting trip. It was there that I met her, and it
was there, by the way, that I became convinced that when a man with a
lame lung undertakes to hunt ozone in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains
he ought to provide himself with a guide. I went alone, and that's why
I got lost.
For two days I had tramped, half starved, toward the rising sun, with
the hope of reaching some cattle ranch near Denver. On the morning of
the third day, as I was trudging through a thick undergrowth, I was
suddenly startled by a woman's voice:—
"You didn't happen to spy a little speckled heifer back yonder, did
you, stranger?"
It is said that upon the approach of a human being the first impulse of
a man who has been lost in the woods is that biblically ascribed to the
wicked, namely, "to flee when no man pursueth." But at this time I was
too far gone with hunger and weariness to flee from anything.
I simply leaned against a tree trunk and awaited the appearance of the
voice's owner. She came riding a bronco across the crest of a hillock.
She was slight and wiry, and she wore her huge sombrero and man's
canvas shooting-coat with an air that at first suggested the cowboy. A
later glimpse of feminine drapery, however, proclaimed her something
infinitely more interesting,—a real Rocky Mountain cow-girl in all her
glory.
"No," I answered weakly to her repeated question as to the heifer's
whereabouts. "No, I've seen neither hoof nor hide of your heifer, which
is lucky for you, as I should probably have eaten it if I had."
"You do look hungry," said the strange horsewoman; and as she spoke
the bold lines of her aquiline face relaxed into an expression of
womanly solicitude.
"Here, take this," she added in a business-like tone, producing from a
bag that lay, meal sack fashion, across her saddle, a can of pressed
beef and a square foot or so of corn bread. "No," as I tried to speak,
"never mind explanations. Have some lunch with me and talk afterwards;
that is, if you ain't afraid to eat with a cow-girl.
"You see," she continued, when we were comfortably seated on a
moss-grown log that served as a whole set of dining-room furniture, "I
know myself what it is to get lost and nearly starve to death. 'Having
experienced misfortune myself, I know how to pity others.'"
I choked over a morsel of corn bread and stared at my companion
with ill-bred astonishment. A cow-girl who quoted Virgil, even in a
translation, was something not dreamed of in my philosophy.
"Yes, I don't wonder that you look surprised," said my hostess
good-naturedly. "I suppose I don't look as though I was up in the
classics, but the fact is I'm a graduate of Iowa Wesleyan University,
and I've studied Latin, Shakespeare, geometry, and all the rest.
"Yes," musingly, "once I expected to pursue a literary career. Indeed,
my professors all told me that I might become the George Eliot or Mrs.
Browning of America. But that speckled heifer I was asking you about
just now knocked all my plans into a cocked hat."
"How was that?" I asked.
"Well, it was like this," said the cow-girl college graduate, as she
pushed aside her corn bread, untasted, and, planting her elbows upon
her knee, propped her chin upon her palms, man fashion. "In the spring
of 1885, several years after I had graduated, my father died, and
mother and I came to Colorado and bought a ranch at Plum Creek, some
twenty-three miles south of Denver. You see, my father had been an
invalid, and ever since I can remember we'd been chasing round from
pillar to post, trying to find a climate that agreed with him; so this
was really what you might call the first chance I had to go to work in
earnest. It was a lovely quiet spot, an ideal place, I thought, for
communing with nature and pursuing a literary career. But it was not so
to be. Like—what's his name with a tender heel?"
"Achilles?" I suggested.
"Yes, like Achilles, I had one weak spot that was going to be my ruin.
I was crazy about pets. Why, if it hadn't been for that weak spot I
might be wearing literary laurel instead of lassoing cattle—but this
is neither here nor there. What I was going to say was that before I'd
been settled on that ranch three days some men came our way driving a
herd of Texas cattle to Denver, and, as a late snowstorm came up just
then, they decided to camp on good feed in the hills in front of my
ranch. That afternoon they came over to our house to buy bread, and
while they were there they mentioned to me that they had a nice cow
that had just calved, and offered if I would buy the cow to throw in
the calf, as they were just going to kill it. Well, here was where
my weak spot came in. No sooner did I hear about those animals than
nothing would do but that I should have them for pets. Besides, the cow
was offered mighty cheap, only eighteen dollars, while I'd been going
without milk rather than pay the fifty or seventy-five dollars asked
for a milch cow; so now I thought was my chance to close a good bargain
and get two nice pets, beside. Yes, sir, I even planned while the men
were gone after those animals how I would domesticate them in a few
days."
"And it took longer?" I asked.
"Domesticate! I might as well have tried to domesticate an active
volcano—but I mustn't anticipate.
"My first impression of my pet cow wasn't exactly encouraging. I had
imagined her ambling serenely up to the house, mild-eyed and gentle,
with the little calflet trotting at her side. Instead, she was dragged
upon the scene by four men who had spent at least an hour in catching
her and bringing her to me. The calf, meantime, after an equally
exciting chase had been led up and tied to a large plum bush.
"However, I wasn't one to let a little thing like that phase me. I was
determined to make friends with that cow; so when, about two hundred
yards from the house, the men threw her and took off the rope I
advanced with that idea. But I wasn't half so anxious to make friends
as the cow was. As soon as she set eyes on me—and if ever an animal
had the evil eye, that cow did—she made a bee line for yours truly.
"'Look out,' shouted the men. But I was already footing it pretty
lively towards the thicket where the calf was tied, the cow after me,
snorting like a steam engine almost in my ear. The next thing that
I knew I had slipped and fallen on the ice in the north side of the
bushes with the cow on top. I believe that I tried to grab the creature
by her horns, with a wild hope that I might hold her down until the men
came to the rescue.
"I might as well have tried to hold down a hurricane. As she rose so
did I, and was on my feet twenty yards away before she could see where
she was at. Just as she rushed from the bush and lunged after me, I saw
a rope swing through the air, and the next thing that devil-possessed
cow knew she was tied to a clump of thicket and left to meditate upon
the evil of her ways."
"What did the men say to this?" I asked.
"Of course they made out that they were awfully surprised at the cow's
antics, fearfully scared at my close call, and all that; but I saw them
grinning and chuckling as if they were ready to burst as they rode off,
and I felt dead sure they'd planned to have a double funeral, cow and
calf both, if they hadn't found a tender-foot to unload them on.
"However, I never was one to give in that I was beaten by anything,
first off, especially by a cow. Besides, that idea of having two nice
pets had got a great hold on me. I made up my mind that if kindness
could reclaim that erring cow she should be coddled like an infant.
So next morning, bright and early, I started for the plum bush where
she and the calf were tied, determined to make peace. Fortunately, two
gentlemen, who had heard of the episode of the day before, rode over
to see me that morning and joined me on my peace-making expedition. No
sooner did the cow see me within thirty feet of her than she gave a
fearful surge; the rope that she was tied with—worn thin by rubbing
against the tree all night—gave way, and the cow made for me as though
fifty devils had taken possession of her and were urging her on.
"I tell you I didn't stop to think about the power of kindness on the
brute creation. I simply yelled, 'Murder,' and made for a sand gulch
near by as though a band of wild Indians were on my trail. As I reached
the gulch and dropped ten feet or so down the steep bank, digging my
heels into the loose sand to stop myself, that acrobatic cow sailed
straight over my head and lit about twenty yards below. At first I
thought that she was dead, but no such luck. In a moment she got up,
looking foolish and dazed, but very much alive, and began shaking her
head and pawing fiercely, when the two gentlemen reached down and
lifted me out, as much as to say, 'This is what I'll do when I get hold
of you.'"
"Which she didn't, I hope," I put in.
"No, indeed; you can be precious sure that I took particular care that
she didn't have another chance to get hold of me or to get back into
the yard again. For an hour or so after she had hoisted herself out
of the gulch she stood outside the fence that separated the yard from
the field, shaking her head and pawing whenever she saw any of us at
the doors or windows. At last, towards evening, she trotted off with a
zigzag wabble down the bank towards the creek among the willows, and
there she lay in ambush, you might say, so that for a week after we
didn't dare to go down to make a garden or do anything else, for fear
of having that cow descend like a wolf on the fold."
"And after that week?" I inquired.
"Well, finally she grew bolder, and ventured on the mesa near the
railroad track, where she made war on the section hands, and I was
warned that I must take her out of the field or they would shoot her.
So to prevent her from demoralizing the entire neighborhood I had
her killed and used her for beef. And tough eating she was," said my
hostess, laughing; "but in any case she was better dead than alive, for
there wasn't room for that cow and me in the same country."
"But you've been telling me about the cow. What about the heifer? I
thought that you said that she was the cause—"
"Oh, yes. The heifer was the calf. Now, whether the cow disowned the
calf, or the calf the cow, I never found out. Anyway, the day that
the cow disappeared into the bottom land that little calf trotted up
to the house and tearfully begged to be loved. Well, you might have
thought I'd had enough of pets for one while, but, no; the helplessness
of that poor little calf so went to my heart that for weeks I rode nine
miles every day for milk, and fed it to that little creature with my
own hands."
"A sort of foster-mother," I suggested.
"Yes, I was a mother to that little orphan calf. But, if you'll
believe me, it was a case of 'how sharper than a serpent's tooth is an
ungrateful child,' or however that goes. Yes, sir, that calf followed
in the evil course of its mother, only if anything it was worse, sort
of like Agrippina and her son, Nero, only this was a daughter.
"You see, the cow was perfectly open about her evil deeds, but the
calf was underhanded. After trotting around me, looking as innocent
as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, she'd all of a sudden
disappear, and come back after a few days with an ear torn and the skin
raked off her side; and pretty soon I'd hear that she'd been attacking
horses or fighting other cows.
"One day she chased an unlucky workman out onto the railroad bridge
and kept him there until a train came along and the engineer slackened
enough to take him on and carry him to Plum Station. Another time
she got after a tramp that was camping on the bottom land among the
willows, and forced him to take refuge in the forks of a crooked tree,
where he roosted until one of us went down and called off Miss Bossie.
In fact, the only return that calf ever made for all my loving care was
to scare away tramps. If I could have kept her around the house just
for that purpose she would have been one of the best investments I ever
made.
"But as years went by that calf became more and more abandoned to evil.
She would wander farther and farther from home, until now I spend half
my nights worrying about her and more than half the day following her
up and taking her home with me."
"I should think you'd get rid of the creature," I interrupted.
"Kill her? Yes, I suppose that would be the most sensible thing to do,
but you know how it is about always loving the prodigal son the most.
Yes, sir; wherever that animal goes it takes my heart with it, and,
though it's nigh onto eleven years old, I never can think of it as
anything but a pet calf."
"And so it was bringing up that heifer that interfered with your
literary career?"
"Interfered? Well, I should say so! Back at the start I did publish
some poems in the local papers, and I read one or two essays at the
Zion Church literaries. But people wouldn't believe they were original.
No woman, they said, who spent her time chasing wild cows over the
country could write odes to spring and essays on Shakespeare.
"My literary career was killed, blighted in the bud. And, as my income
was small and I had to do something to make out a living, I've just
turned my hand to anything that came along.
"Instead of gaining fame as the American George Eliot, I've been called
Colorado Cow-girl and Bronco Buster. Instead of wielding the pen, I've
driven a four-horse stage, branded cattle, broken saddle horses, sung
in a church choir, run a blacksmith's shop, kept school, given music
lessons, run a hotel, taught painting, carried mail, roughed it on
horseback all the way from Colorado to Oregon, and taken a hand in
pretty much everything else, except shoveling wind off the roof. But
there"—breaking off suddenly—"you aren't interested in all this. What
you want now is rest and shelter.
"Take my outfit and make tracks for Wilkins ranch. Just give the pony
his head and he'll land you all right.
"It's over that way," rising and gesturing toward the southeast.
I tried to protest against this plan, but the Colorado cow-girl was
already several yards away.
"That's all right; meet you later at the ranch," she cried, turning for
a moment before she plunged into the thicket. "But first," she added,
with almost maternal solicitude, "I think I'll just look around and see
if I can't find that little speckled heifer."
In a Tiger Trap.