The Busted Ex-Texan, W. H. H. Murray [best english books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: W. H. H. Murray
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"But I did not agree with him. I reflected that the Chinese are only an imitative race, and wholly lacking in original perception. 'They never invent anything,' I said; 'never study into causes, never get down to principles, as it were. It requires a purely occidental intellect to master the problem before me. This cow has a strong disinclination to be milked. Why? What is the motive of her conduct? If I could only answer that!' All at once it came to me,—came like a flash. The reason was plain. 'This cow is a mother. The maternal instinct in her case is beautifully developed. Her reasoning faculties less so. She has a calf. To her mind, we are trying to rob her beloved offspring of its nourishment. She naturally resents this injustice on our part. Beautiful development of maternity,' I apostrophized, as I looked at the cow in the light of this new revelation. 'Thy instincts are those that sweeten the world, and remind us of the benignity that planned the universe. I will bring thy calf to thee. I will show thee that I am not devoid of the spirit of equity; that I am ready to go shares and play fair, as it were. Thy calf shall take one side of thee. I will take the other, and thy soul will come forth to me in gratitude!'
"I was delighted. I went directly to the pen, and gazed benevolently at the calf. The little imp was blacker, if possible, than its mother. There was that same peculiar look also in its eyes. 'You're all hers!' I joyfully cried, 'you are your mother's own child!' I seized hold of the neck-rope. I opened the pen-door and I went out through that door quicker than a vagrant cat ever got round a corner of a house where a Scotch terrier boards. The calf went under the cow and I struck her, head on. But I had come to stay. I grabbed the pail with one hand and a teat with the other. I tugged it, pulled it, twisted it. Not a drop could I start. A suction pump of twenty horse-power would have found it drier than Sahara, and all the while the calf's mouth, on the other side, was actually running over with milk! In two minutes he looked like a black watermelon. Then the cow, with a kind of back action, suddenly reached out one foot, and when I came to I found myself facing a mulberry tree, with one leg on each side of it.
"By this time I had reached a decision, and I had the courage of my convictions. I felt it to be my duty to milk that cow. I reminded her in plain, straightforward language that I was the son of a deacon, and that she'd find it out before she got through with me. I assured her that I understood the beauty of righteousness, and that I held a strong hand—a straight flush, as it were. I was well aware that the metaphor was somewhat mixed; but it expressed my sentiments and relieved my feelings, and so I fired it at her point-blank. She snorted and pawed and bellowed, and swore at me in cow-language, but I didn't care for that. So I shook the old, battered milk-pail in her face, and told her I was born in Connecticut, and did business on spot-cash principle; and that she would know more of the commandments than any cow of her color in Texas, before we said our long farewell.
"By this time the matter had attracted a good deal of attention, for I had carried on my conversation with the cow in the voice of a tragedian when the chief villain of the play has stolen his girl, and my next neighbor, an old sea-captain from Mattagorda Bay, and his hired men had come over to assist me. They were of the nature of a reënforcement, which consisted of the captain, a Mexican, a Michigan man that stuttered, and two negroes—Napoleon Bonaparte de Neville Smith, and George Washington Marlborough Johnsing, by name. Hence we were six in all, and I decided to take the offensive at once. The captain was advanced in years and rheumatic, but a clearheaded man, used to command, and had 'boarded,' as he expressed it, 'several of the——crafts in his own waters.' So I put him in charge of the marines, namely, ourselves, and told him to fight the ship for all she was worth. He caught on to the thing at once, and swore he would 'sweep the old black hulk fore and aft, and send every mother's son to the bottom, or make her strike her colors.' The vigor of the gallant old gentleman's language, and the noble manner in which he shook his cane at the old pirate, put us all in good spirits, and I verily believe that, if he had at that fortunate moment given the word 'board!' we would, niggers and all, have gone over the bulwarks of that old cow with a rush.
"The captain's plan of action was proof of his courage, and in harmony with my own ideas of the matter. He said that our force was ample, every gun shotted, and the ports open: that we had the windward gauge of her, and that the proper course was to send a boat in to cut her cable, and, when she drifted down with the current, we would ware ship, lay up alongside, grapple, pass lashings aboard, and send the whole crew on to her deck with a rush. Assaulted in such a man-of-war style, he was confident she would become confused, be intimidated, and strike her colors without firing a gun. The brave and sonorous language with which our commander set forth his plan of assault captured our imaginations, and we all longed for the moment when the word of command should permit us to swarm up the sides and over the rail of the old bovine.
"Not only was the general plan thus agreed upon, but each man had his post of duty assigned to him. When the 'cable was cut,' that is, when the cow should find herself at liberty and bolt, as she would be sure to do, the Mexican was to lasso her and hang on; Napoleon Bonaparte de Neville and George Washington Marlborough were to lay hold of her horns to 'port and starboard,' as the captain insisted, while the Michigan man—who was over six feet tall, and leggy—was to fasten with a good grip on to her tail, that he might serve not only as a 'drag,' as our commander phrased it, but as a pilot as well, 'if she should get to yawing or be suddenly taken aback, and be unable to come up into the wind promptly,' while I was held in reserve to guard against emergencies. I did not quite like the position assigned to me, and so intimated to the captain, but he said no one could tell how it might go when we once got out of the harbor, and, if any of the braces should part, or the sea get high, that he would have to send an additional man to the wheel, 'for,' he added, in a whisper, 'God knows, that long-legged Michigan land-lubber could never keep her to a straight course if she should once get running with the wind over her quarter, and everything drawing, through that cornfield.' I saw the force of his reasoning, and felt easier.
"So, without farther delay, we went into action. The old captain stood, knife in hand, ready to cut the lariat which held the cow to the tree, but, before he did so, he hailed, 'All ready to cut cables!'
"'Fo' de lawd, cap'in!' yelled Napoleon de Neville, 'what is dis yere nigger gwine to do if de udder nigger lets go?'
"'Go way dar, nigger!' retorted George Washington Marlborough; 'what you takes dis nigger for if you tinks I's gwine to let go dis ole black cow?'
"'I'll give a silver dollar to the nigger that holds on the longest,' I yelled.
"'Well answered, mate,' sang out the old captain. 'All ready to cut cables. Cut she is!'
"The cow gave a bellow like the roar of a lion, and made a rush with lowered horns at the captain. Now, this was not the course laid down on his chart for her to take; and he and the rest of us were struck all aback, as he afterwards expressed it; but he met the emergency with spirit. He broke his big, Spanish-oak stick on the nose of the brute, and then the old mariner rolled in the dust.
"'Lay aboard of her, men!' shouted the old hero, in a voice like a fog-horn, flourishing the fragments of his stick. 'Lay aboard of the old cuss, I say! Cast your grapplings, Greaser! Seize her helm, some of ye, and throw it hard over to port!'
"These orders were obeyed with alacrity. Not a man flinched. The loop of the lasso settled over the polished horns to the roots, and Don Juan San Diego set it tight with a twang. Napoleon Bonaparte and George Washington rushed headlong upon her and hung to horns and ears; while the man from Michigan fastened a grip on her lifted tail, as she tore past him, which straightened him out like a lathe. As to myself, I could only stand and gaze with solicitude upon the terrific contest, on the issue of which depended not only the chances of my speculation, but even the preservation of my self-esteem.
"The combat deepened and enlarged itself, as it were. A bull-dog, who was wandering along the road in search of adventure, and two foxhounds joined in the fight. The calf, the only one of the seven thousand five hundred and twenty-three I was ever destined to behold, broke from its pen and ran bellowing to its mother. The dogs bayed, the niggers yelled, the Mexican swore in his delightful tongue; and the stuttering Michigander remained silent, simply from his inability to pronounce the profanity of his feelings.
"Suddenly the cow, which had been slowly working her way, with her several attachments clinging to her, toward the road which ran along the front of the field, turned and started pell-mell toward the river, which flowed wide and deep, through the rushes, at the rear of it. She left the path and took to the corn, and through the mass of growing stalks she swept like a whirlwind. Onward she came. I anticipated the awful catastrophe, and stood riveted to the spot. The old captain still sat in the gravel, where the cow had bowled him, his hand grasping the shattered cane, and his game leg extended. He too foresaw the inevitable. Through the corn came the cow, like a black Saturn attended by her satellites. But her
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