Letters from an Oregon Ranch/Chapter 8
VIII
On the morning following the “round-up” of our new cows, while breakfast was being prepared, Tom sallied forth with a bright new tin pail to do the milking. The cook, while striving to feel hopeful of the result, had secret misgivings, doubting very much whether the gentleman had ever milked a cow, as we had never before owned one, knowing, also, that if such were the case he never would admit it, and, if doubts were expressed, he would at once begin to talk about that summer he “worked for Uncle Jim.” It seems that when a lad of twelve he spent one summer on his uncle’s farm; and if he then did all the things he now thinks he did, he must have been a marvel of boyish industry and activity. Those seem to have been the red-letter days of his life; perhaps there budded then a love of country life that eventually led to the possession of this mountain home. He has talked of that blessed summer all through the years, and I must confess there have been times in my life when those reminiscences seemed a burden and a weariness. Now, when he reverts to the subject, I can’t help thinking of the never-ending regrets of Mrs. Blimber “that she had not known Cicero, and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum, beautiful Tusculum.” Rather than risk the revival of this Arcadian dream, I pretended to believe that Tom could milk.
After an absence of about an hour he came in, and from where I stood I could see nothing in the pail.
“Haven’t you milked?”
“Sure!” he answered, waving the pail before me.
“Good gracious! Is that all?”
“Of course. How much did you expect?”
“Well, I should think two cows ought to give more than a pint of milk.”
“No; this is just about right when the calves are with them.”
In a day or two stalls were made for those voracious calves, and they were put on half rations. Then I ventured to remark, “Now you will get milk galore.”
“Well, yes; I ought to get a little more.” The increase, however, was scarcely noticeable, which he explained by saying the cows wouldn’t “give down,”—“they never do when first separated from their calves.” I believed this to be a bit of suddenly inspired fiction to cover his own shortcomings, but managed to hold my peace. I kept hoping and waiting for several days, and then one morning when he appeared with the usual quart, I quite forgot myself, and blazed forth with, “Tom Graham, I don’t believe you know how to milk!”
You should have seen his look of indignant surprise! It was equal to Sairey Gamp’s when the existence of her beloved Mrs. Harris was doubted.
“Know how? I guess you forget that summer I worked for Uncle Jim!”
“No; I have never been allowed to forget it. I suppose you milked a dozen cows then, night and morning, didn’t you?”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t; I milked five.”
“If you did, it was so long ago that you have forgotten the art.”
“No, milking is like swimming; the accomplishment, once acquired, is never forgotten.” Presently he added thoughtfully: “Speaking just now of Uncle Jim reminds me—and I had forgotten to tell you about it—that I was down in the field the other morning, when suddenly out rang the clear notes of a bird, the same that I heard a thousand times that summer, tilting and lilting from the tops of the tall rosin-weeds. Here I found him poised on a branch of vine maple; but it was the very same bird, and for about a minute I was a straw-hatted barefoot boy, going for the cows in Uncle Jim’s pasture, wading through tall slough grass higher than my head. I could almost hear it rustling and feel the rushes crawling under my bare feet with a sort of squeaking sound, and all about me were those chipper little birds swaying upon the rosin-weeds, singing as if to split their throats. I tell you, it is worth coming to Oregon just to hear and see that bird again.”
This boyhood bird, so strangely reappearing in Tom’s later life, seemed to afford him such genuine pleasure that I decided to accept it as a flag of truce, and suspend hostilities over the problem of the cows. In about another week the novice mastered the art of milking, the cows suddenly began to “give down,” and from that time on we had abundance of milk.
Mary assured me they had had about the same experience at their place. I have not told you that Bert took possession of their new home the day after the late “round-up.” Following the last load of goods was Bert, leading the big spotted cow,—more correctly speaking, the big spotted cow leading Bert. Not quite liking her tricks and manners, I was glad to learn that she was his property and not ours. She had already acquired the name of “Medusa.” It came, Bert said, as an inspiration; watching me standing motionless so long, facing her, he believed I had been turned into stone.
The cows had no special names; all alike had been called “bossy.” Now, surely a good cow is entitled to the distinction of a name. Anyway, we believe in naming them, and everything else on the place that is alive. We fancy, in our isolation, that with names they seem more human and companionable. We see so few people up here in the woods that we have to talk a good deal to the animals, lest we forget the habit of speech and all become mutes. So our two cows were named Dolly Varden and Maud Muller; but after a long acquaintance with Maud, we found she was not the guileless, rustic beauty she appeared. She was tricky, a schemer, and rather unprincipled, opening gates and barn-doors with her horns, helping herself to provender at unseasonable hours, or, if attracted by the waving of feathery carrot and green turnip tops beyond a fence, she simply threw off the upper rails, and leaped over the remaining ones, as though she supposed those things were planted for her especial use, but through some oversight her attention had not been called to them. Owing to these characteristics, we felt obliged to change her name to Becky Sharp. The calves are known as Buttercup and Trilby, if you please,—and you needn’t laugh! You are thinking of the muddy little wretches that arrived here that rainy night; but you must remember this is written at a later date, and those calves grew in beauty with the springtime, and when June came they were as lovely as her roses. Such winsome, witching things you never saw; and if only Rosa Bonheur were alive, and I could have her do them in oil (for nothing), I’d send you their pictures as proof that this description is no flattery.
But I seem to have drifted far from my subject, and must go back and tell you of my first butter-making. For several days cream had been accumulating; and at last came a morning when there was enough for churning. A pleasurable excitement seized me, and I was all eagerness to begin the work. I had never in my life made a pound of butter, but you know there is a certain charm connected with every new experience,—although at this later date my ardor has considerably diminished. After breakfast, I found our ranchmen had an errand at a saw-mill back in the mountains. Mary was going with them, and I was urged to go too; but that churn was drawing me like a lodestone,—not for worlds would I have left it. I had learned that a part of the road they were going over ran along a narrow ridge on either side of which was a deep canyon, a sort of Scylla and Charybdis affair; and having a horror of such a road, I made that my excuse for not going, not mentioning the churning, intending to surprise them agreeably on their return, both families being quite destitute of butter.
As soon as they were fairly off, I rushed for the churn,—a barrel-shaped revolving affair, which, it seemed to me while lugging it in, ought to have been built on rollers or at least on casters. Then came the treasured can of cream, the butter-bowl, ladle, mould, oiled paper, long-handled spoon, jar of salt, thermometer, teakettle of hot water, and two pamphlets on the art of butter-making. One of the latter had come with the churn, giving full instructions; the other, equally explicit, was from a State Agricultural College. I sat down to consult these authorities.
“First scald the churn.” Easy enough! I poured in the boiling water, and began whirling the crank with great enthusiasm, when out popped the cork with a noise like the report of a Winchester, followed by a revolving stream of hot water and steam. The operator, though scared and trembling, stuck to her post, knowing the thing must be stopped, and stopped with the nozzle-end up, though several revolutions were made before this could be accomplished. The cork had blown to the other side of the room; but I dared not leave my post to get it,—I felt sure that if the churn were released it would turn over and begin spouting again. It was plain the mountain must go to Mahomet; so, pushing the sputtering and pulsating machine across the floor, I reached and replaced the cork, hooked the churn back in its place, and then paused to consider,—thankful indeed that my precious cream was not in the machine when the explosion occurred.
Turning again to my butter lore, I read: “Remove cork at intervals to allow escape of steam.” In my eagerness to get down to business, I had overlooked that detail. Well, the cork had removed itself, and that part of the affair was over; so I proceeded to mop up the overflow, looking ruefully at my new wallpaper.
The next step was the heating of the cream, which my authorities said must be tested with the thermometer. Then came the proudest moment of my life. I felt, perhaps, as does a great scientist, shut up in his laboratory, engaged in some wonderful chemical experiment that may startle a waiting world. Slowly the temperature of the cream rose to 62½°. I could not understand its slowness,—mine having risen to at least 150° in the same time. The critical moment had arrived. The rich Jersey cream was poured into the churn, the lid clamped down, the cork pounded in with the potato-masher. The operator, seated, with book in hand, now read: “Eighty revolutions per minute the proper rate of speed.” To a lady of quiet habits that seemed “the pace that kills,” but at it I went with might and main, whirling the crank so fast I couldn’t count; it might have been eight hundred instead of eighty times per minute. Anyway, I got scared, thinking a hot-box might be the next feature; so I slowed down to perhaps eight revolutions a minute.
More comfortable now, I looked at the churning equipment, thinking all butter-makers should have a dairy-room where such things could be kept, and not need to be collected from the four quarters of the globe when wanted. I rather fancied I’d like such a one as Queen Victoria had at Balmoral Castle; but that seemed almost too aspiring. I then fell back on Mrs. Poyser’s, as described by George Eliot: “The dairy was certainly worth looking at. A scene to sicken for in hot and dusty streets,—such coolness, such purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft coloring of red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, gray limestone and rich orange rust on the iron weights and hooks and hinges.” Then, naturally, I fell a-thinking of the bewitching Hetty,—of the rose-petal cheeks, the round dimpled arms and pretty hands tossing and patting the butter, losing myself in the tragical story of that young life until recalled to consciousness by a queer slushing about of the cream in my own churn. Looking in the glass at the top of the churn, I was terrified to see that it was quite clear, and the book said, when that occurred, “STOP,” in letters about the size of those seen at railroad crossings.
Trembling with the fear that all was lost, I nervously removed the lid, glanced in, and, lo! there was the butter, just as predicted by the sages, “golden globules half the size of a kernel of wheat.” Oh, the pride of Miss McBride, as she drew off the buttermilk, rinsing the butter three times in pure spring water, scalding and cooling the bowl, taking out that mass of golden glory, sprinkling salt over it, and then trying desperately to “work it,” like one to the manner born.
My instructions were, after the first working, to set it aside for five hours; this seemed a cruel delay, but, mine “not to reason why,” I was about to obey orders, when it occurred to me that in my excitement I had forgotten to taste it. And then I had a surprise and shock I am not likely to forget. As the flavor reached my palate, I recoiled and stood aghast. How could any thing so beautiful possibly taste so vile? It surely had not absorbed the odors of cookery, as the cream had been kept out in the pure air. Yet there it was,—a bad-tasting, ill-smelling lump of yellow hypocrisy. At first I thought I’d carry it up the yard to a thicket of salmon bushes so dense no human being could penetrate it, hurl the mass of iniquity into its most secret fastnesses, then hurry back and remove all traces of the late struggle before the “return of the natives,” and never tell a living soul about it. But I soon saw that scheme would never work. Tom had been as proud as Punch over that cream; he would miss it, and explanations would be called for. So I sat down, and mused drearily upon the Wandering Willies’ return and the horrible surprise awaiting them.