Letters from an Oregon Ranch/Chapter 7
VII
Did you ever try, dear Nell, to conduct culinary operations without either milk or eggs? We had five weeks of this experience, while wrestling with the problems of fuel and flour of which you have been told. Our nearest neighbors lived a mile away, and, besides, they had no milk to spare; consequently “after-dinner” coffee was in vogue here at every meal. The hill hens had suspended business for the winter, and, having forgotten to order eggs when that last trip to market was made, we had now to suffer the penalty. Having neither milk nor eggs, our cuisine showed a painful dearth of such delicacies as custards, omelets, puddings, etc. This we could have borne without complaint; but as nearly all vegetables, to be palatable, require either milk or cream, the lack of these articles was a real hardship. Then, too, being so far from the markets, we could get no fresh meats. We had smoked ham and breakfast bacon,—only these and nothing more. The first, unaccompanied by eggs, we soon tired of, especially as it happened to be salt as brine, tough, and hard; the bacon was good enough, but I defy any one to face it three times a day for five weeks and not loathe it. But few vegetables were brought out to the ranch, the wagons being so heavily loaded with other things. We supposed they could be bought in the neighborhood; but here again we were disappointed.
The farmers had disposed of their surplus stock earlier in the season, reserving only sufficient for their own use; and it was not long until our supply was reduced to apples and potatoes. I see that I have made a vegetable of the apple, but that’s no worse than calling potatoes “spuds,” as people do here. You may be sure that members of this family suffered nothing from apprehensions of gout. How often, when looking through our empty cupboard, did we think sorrowfully of Dame Hubbard’s dog! At breakfast, while munching adamantine bread, bacon, and “spuds,” we were apt to have tormenting visions of hot griddle-cakes and maple syrup, or of juicy porterhouse steaks, and eggs variously served. At dinner, with the breakfast menu repeated, some one was sure to ask, “How would you like a good big slice of rare roast beef, with nicely browned sweet potatoes?” “Yes, or scalloped oysters, or chicken pie, and a nice crisp, cool salad?”—and so on down through an imaginary bill of fare.
Lest you wonder why we didn’t “go to town” and renew our supplies, let me remind you of the impassable condition of the roads. For weeks during the late winter never a team was seen passing. Finally, when almost the “last herring smoked upon the coals,” two hungry men arose in desperation, declaring they would at least find some cows and chickens. In the chill dawn of the following morning, in a pouring rain, they started on their mission. They were gone until five o’clock in the evening; then the now familiar mountain cry, “Whoo-whoo,” came echoing through the woods. As I opened the door, Tom shouted, “Katharine, run out in the road and head off these cows.”
I knew by the tone and the voice that this was a “hurry-up” call; so, throwing the omnipresent shawl over my head, I dashed out of the house, and, as self-preservation is the first law of life, snatched up a pole that was propping up the limb of a peach tree, then flew down the path and out of the gate into the middle of the road, and, standing there in mud and rain, looked the field over. Away down the hill, in the road, stood the horses and wagon; in the latter I discerned several chicken-coops, from which protruded long feathered necks, with red-combed squawking heads. The pasture bars were down, and standing near them was Tom. A little higher up the hill a road branches off, and there Bert was stationed. Coming full-tilt toward me were three big, wild-eyed, galloping cows, with two very young-looking, spindle-shanked calves. I admit I was scared; but remembering my great-grandsires who fought in the Revolution, I raised the pole high in air, like a flagstaff, and stood firm. On came the bovine brigade until within a few rods of me, when suddenly they halted, tossed up their heads, and stared at me. I hardly believe they thought I was alive; perhaps they mistook me for the statue of “Liberty enlightening the World.” We stood there looking at each other, until Tom yelled, “Well, why don’t you do something? We haven’t had a bite to eat since breakfast.” Now, I knew no more than the man in the moon what to do; but just then one of the cows, one with awful threatening horns, began pawing up the mud, so I called back, “I think this big spotted one is cross!” “Cross nothing! She’s gentle as a lamb,” Tom answered. She’s an old cow, I thought, the mother of the other two. Then she must be the grandmother of these calves, and it would be rather disrespectful to pounce upon the old lady with this pole. So I just continued to “hold her with my glittering eye.” Again Tom roared, “She won’t hurt you, I tell you; she’s just scared and rattled!”
It did not seem to me that the grandmother was scared. She had now advanced several paces, and was not only throwing mud, but had lowered her head and was shaking her horns at me in a way quite disconcerting. That she was “rattled” seemed plausible; certainly her manners were not reposeful. Thinking I must do something, I pounded the road a little with my pole, throwing some mud myself. At this the enemy moved forward in solid phalanx, the younger cows now shaking their horns also; whereupon, forgetting my valorous ancestors of the Revolution, I drew a trifle nearer the rail-fence,
"It comes rollicking and roystering through our little glen" (page 42)
and, again raising my standard high in air, said in a hoarse, loud voice, “Huey, cows! Huey there!”
No effect whatever, except upon the man down the road. “Goin’ to stand all night lookin’ at ’em?” he yelled. “Why don’t you close in on ’em?”
“‘Close in on ’em,’ indeed! That’s all very well, sir, from your point of view, at the tail end of this caravan,” I thought; “but up here the outlook is different, facing these three steaming monsters, with six threatening horns and twice as many eager hoofs;” and I remarked softly to myself, “I won’t do it.”
On the grassy embankment at the roadside, quite near me, stood one of those grotesque Noah’s-ark calves. “I’ll just close in on you, my young friend; you will likely turn and run back down the road, where I trust your perspiring relatives may follow you.” I knew better than to jump at the creature with my big pole; so, trailing it behind me, I advanced cautiously, with one hand extended, saying in sweet tones, “Pretty little calfie,”—a piece of the basest flattery when applied to the sorry-looking object before me. One step more forward,—and what did that ungentle idiot do but give a wild snort, leap like a deer, whirl square about, and plunge through the rail-fence,—not through, either, for it stuck fast between the rails, bawling at the top of its voice. Mercy, Nell, you ought to have seen grandma then! She ploughed across that muddy road, scrambled up the green bank, and, standing before the prisoner at the bar, literally tore up the sod. Both daughters charged after her, all bellowing, all pawing sod, and even the other calf, that wasn’t in the affair at all, added his wailings, while away down the road the scared chickens squawked louder than ever.
Seeing the ruin I had wrought, I climbed to the top of the fence, ready to drop on the other side if future developments should make it necessary. Up the road came both men running, and I thought, “Now, Katharine, you’ll catch it!” But, to my great surprise, not one solitary word did they utter, not even to each other. Half starved, soaked through and through with misery, they seemed dumbly desperate. Rain trickled in streams from their rubber coats and hats; their boots were muddy to the tops, mud was on their faces and in their hair, as, silent and grim, with stoical fortitude they pulled and tugged at that vicious little centipede of a calf. Tom had seized it by its tail and hind feet, while Bert had climbed the fence and gathered up its sprawling front legs, and together they were folding it over like an omelet, poking and pulling it sideways through the fence. At last the sufferer was released, but only to be instantly seized again by both men, who, clasping it in a damp embrace, bore it off down the hill, with all those bellowing bovines at their heels. As that solemn procession filed away, I had a haunting sense of having seen something like it in the sculptured frieze of some great public building. I watched until their burden was safely shoved into fields elysian, the cows all walking in after it, and then three bars were put up,—only three, a piece of carelessness which led to future trouble. I was pained to observe the other calf still walking around outside the fence.
Thinking I had done about all the good I could, I was going to retire quietly from the scene, when Tom called out, “Drop that pole and come and help catch this other calf.” A hungry man is seldom a polite one. Obeying orders, I advanced unarmed down the hill. I saw at a glance that their plan was to surround and capture the calf where it stood, in a fence corner. I have a quick discernment of field tactics—inherited, most likely. The unsuspecting victim was gazing longingly through the fence at its mother, not noticing the environing forces; but just as we were about to close in upon it it looked up, and, seeing three frightful ogres with arms outstretched, gave a terrified leap through the cordon and went flying up the branch road. “The dun deer’s hide to fleeter foot was never tied.” Away we all went in hot pursuit. Not being much of a sprinter myself, I was soon left far in the wake. Suddenly the pursued, descrying a big pile of brush by the roadside and mistaking it for a rock of refuge, turned aside and dashed into it, and there, lacerated by thorns and briers, it began to roar. Hearing a bellowing and a thundering of hoofs behind me, I glanced back, and saw tearing up the road every last one of those infuriated cows. A steep hill slopes down to one side of the road; and up this height dashed the now poleless daughter of the Revolution, where, climbing high among the roots of a giant upturned fir tree, she surveyed the scene.
Just then a strange thing happened. I saw, as plainly as I now see this paper, the stage of a theatre in a far distant city, and standing out upon a jutting cliff the tall picturesque figure of Meg Merrilies. Beyond, through trees and rocks, was a faint glimpse of a sullen sea; while immediately below her was a dark narrow glen lit up by gypsy campfires. Though at the time this seemed strange, I now see that the outlook from my lofty perch very naturally recalled this half- forgotten scene. Night was now coming on; low-lying mists upon the meadow gave to it in that half-light a look of the sea; all about me were the same dark hills, and below was just such a little glen as I had seen in my vision. There were no rocks and no campfires, but, instead, a big brush-pile, teeming with life, a confused jumble of rubber coats, hoofs, and horns, and in its centre the struggling calf sinking deeper at every lunge. Clawing over it were its would-be captors; on the outskirts those roaring bedlamites tossing the brush with hoofs and horns. Dead ferns and wild blackberry vines clinging to her horns, the aged one looked a dangerous Nemesis,—and was, too, for she had to be beaten back with brush. Doubtless Thomas would now have been glad of my pole. Finally the pitfall yielded up its victim, which was carried to a low place in the fence, and gently dropped into the fold. As soon as its voice was hushed, that concord of sweet sounds died away, the cows became submissive and were easily driven back into the meadow, and once again sweet peace descended on the Ranch of the Pointed Firs.