Beautiful Joe (19 page)

Miss Laura
got a stick and scratched poor piggy’s back a little, and then she went back to
the house. In a short time we went home with Mr. Wood. Mr. Harry was going to
stay all night with the sick animals, and his mother would send him things to
make him comfortable. She was better by the time we got home, and was horrified
to hear the tale of Mr. Barron’s neglect. Later in the evening, she sent one of
the men over with a whole box full of things for her darling boy, and nice, hot
tea, done up for him in a covered dish. When the man came home, he said that Mr.
Harry would not sleep in the Englishman’s dirty house, but had slung a hammock
out under the trees. However, he would not be able to sleep much, for he had
his lantern by his side, all ready to jump up and attend to the horse and cow.
It was a very lonely place for him out there in the woods, and his mother said
that she would be glad when the sick animals could be driven to their own farm.

In a few
days, thanks to Mr. Harry’s constant care, the horse and cow were able to walk.
It was a mournful procession that came into the yard at Dingley Farm. The
hollow-eyed horse, and lean cow, and funny, little thin pig, staggering along
in such a shaky fashion. Their hoofs were diseased, and had partly rotted away,
so that they could not walk straight. Though it was only a mile or two from
Penhollow to Dingley Farm, they were tired out, and dropped down exhausted on
their comfortable beds.

Miss Laura
was so delighted to think that they had all lived, that she did not know what
to do. Her eyes were bright and shining, and she went from one to another with
such a happy face. The queer little pig that Mr. Harry had christened “Daddy
Longlegs,” had been washed, and he lay on his heap of straw in the corner of
his neat little pen, and surveyed his clean trough and abundance of food with
the air of a prince. Why, he would be clean and dry here, and all his life he
had been used to dirty, damp Penhollow, with the trees hanging over him, and
his little feet in a mass of filth and dead leaves. Happy little pig! His ugly
eyes seemed to blink and gleam with gratitude, and he knew Miss Laura and Mr.
Harry as well as I did.

His tiny
tail was curled so tight that it was almost in a knot. Mr. Wood said that was a
sign that he was healthy and happy: and that when poor Daddy was at Penhollow
he had noticed that his tail hung as limp and as loose as the tail of a rat. He
came and leaned over the pen with Miss Laura, and had a little talk with her
about pigs. He said they were by no means the stupid animals that some people
considered them. He had had pigs that were as clever as dogs. One little black
pig that he had once sold to a man away back in the country had found his way
home, through the woods, across the river, up hill and down dale, and he’d been
taken to the place with a bag over his head. Mr. Wood said that he kept that pig
because he knew so much.

He said
the most knowing pigs he ever saw were Canadian pigs. One time he was having a
trip on a sailing vessel, and it anchored in a long, narrow harbor in Canada,
where the tide came in with a front four or five feet high called the “bore.”
There was a village opposite the place where the ship was anchored, and every day
at low tide, a number of pigs came down to look for shellfish. Sometimes they
went out for half a mile over the mud flats, but always a few minutes before
the tide came rushing in they turned and hurried to the shore. Their instincts
warned them that if they stayed any longer they would be drowned.

Mr. Wood
had a number of pigs, and after a while Daddy was put in with them, and a fine
time he had of it making friends with the other little grunters. They were
often let out in the pasture or orchard, and when they were there, I could
always single out Daddy from among them, because he was the smartest. Though he
had been brought up in such a miserable way, he soon learned to take very good
care of himself at Dingley Farm, and it was amusing to see him when a storm was
coming on, running about in a state of great excitement carrying little bundles
of straw in his mouth to make himself a bed. He was a white pig, and was always
kept very clean. Mr. Wood said that it is wrong to keep pigs dirty. They like
to be clean as well as other animals, and if they were kept so, human beings
would not get so many diseases from eating their flesh.

The cow,
poor unhappy creature, never, as long as she lived on Dingley Farm, lost a
strange melancholy look from her eyes. I have heard it said that animals forget
past unhappiness, and perhaps some of them do. I know that I have never
forgotten my one miserable year with Jenkins, and I have been a sober,
thoughtful dog in consequence of it, and not playful like some dogs who have
never known what it is to be really unhappy.

It always
seemed to me that the Englishman’s cow was thinking of her poor dead calf,
starved to death by her cruel master. She got well herself, and came and went
with the other cows, seemingly as happy as they, but often when I watched her
standing chewing her cud, and looking away in the distance, I could see a
difference between her face and the faces of the cows that had always been
happy on Dingley Farm. Even the farm hands called her “Old Melancholy,” and
soon she got to be known by that name, or Mel, for short. Until she got well,
she was put into the cow stable, where Mr. Wood’s cows all stood at night upon
raised platforms of earth covered over with straw litter, and she was tied with
a Dutch halter, so that she could lie down and go to sleep when she wanted to.
When she got well, she was put out to pasture with the other cows.

The horse
they named “Scrub,” because he could never be, under any circumstance, anything
but a broken-down, plain-looking animal. He was put into the horse stable in a
stall next Fleetfoot, and as the partition was low, they could look over at
each other. In time, by dint of much doctoring, Scrub’s hoofs became clean and
sound and he was able to do some work. Miss Laura petted him a great deal. She
often took out apples to the stable, and Fleetfoot would throw up his beautiful
head and look reproachfully over the partition at her, for she always stayed longer
with Scrub than with him, and Scrub always got the larger share of whatever
good thing was going.

Poor old
Scrub! I think he loved Miss Laura. He was a stupid sort of a horse, and always
acted as if he was blind. He would run his nose up and down the front of her
dress, nip at the buttons, and be very happy if he could get a bit of her watch
chain between his strong teeth. If he was in the field he never seemed to know
her till she was right under his pale-coloured eyes. Then he would be delighted
to see her. He was not blind, though, for Mr. Wood said he was not. He said he
had probably not been an over-bright horse to start with, and had been made
more dull by cruel usage.

As for the
Englishman, the master of these animals, a very strange thing happened to him.
He came to a terrible end, but for a long time no one knew anything about it.
Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were so very angry with him that they said they would
leave no stone unturned to have him punished, or at least to have it known what
a villain he was. They sent the paper with the crest on it to Boston. Some
people there wrote to England, and found out that it was the crest of a noble
and highly esteemed family, and some earl was at the head of it. They were all honorable
people in this family except one man, a nephew, not a son, of the late earl. He
was the black sheep of them all. As a young man, he had led a wild and wicked
life, and had ended by forging the name of one of his friends, so that he was
obliged to leave England and take refuge in America. By the description of this
man, Mr. Wood knew that he must be Mr. Barron, so he wrote to these English
people, and told them what a wicked thing their relative had done in leaving
his animals to starve. In a short time, he got an answer from them, which was,
at the same time, very proud and very touching. It came from Mr. Barron’s
cousin, and he said quite frankly that he knew his relative was a man of evil habits,
but it seemed as if nothing could be done to reform him. His family was
accustomed to send a quarterly allowance to him, on condition that he led a
quiet life in some retired place, but their last remittance to him was lying
unclaimed in Boston, and they thought he must be dead. Could Mr. Wood tell them
anything about him?

Mr. Wood
looked very thoughtful when he got this letter, then he said, “Harry, how long
is it since Barron ran away?”

“About
eight weeks,” said Mr. Harry.

“That’s
strange,” said Mr. Wood. “The money these English people sent him would get to
Boston just a few days after he left here. He is not the man to leave it long
unclaimed. Something must have happened to him. Where do you suppose he would
go from Penhollow?”

“I have no
idea, sir,” said Mr. Harry.

“And how
would he go?” said Mr. Wood. “He did not leave Riverdale Station, because he
would have been spotted by some of his creditors.”

“Perhaps
he would cut through the woods to the Junction,” said Mr. Harry.

“Just what
he would do,” said Mr. Wood, slapping his knee. “I’ll be driving over there tomorrow
to see Thompson, and I’ll make inquiries.”

Mr. Harry
spoke to his father the next night when he came home, and asked him if he had
found out anything.

“Only
this,” said Mr. Wood. “There’s no one answering to Barron’s description who has
left Riverdale Junction within a twelvemonth. He must have struck some other
station. We’ll let him go. The Lord looks out for fellows like that.”

“We will
look out for him if he ever comes back to Riverdale,” said Mr. Harry, quietly.
All through the village, and in the country it was known what a dastardly trick
the Englishman had played, and he would have been roughly handled if he had
dared return.

Months
passed away, and nothing was heard of him. Late in the autumn, after Miss Laura
and I had gone back to Fairport, Mrs. Wood wrote her about the end of the
Englishman. Some Riverdale lads were beating about the woods, looking for lost
cattle, and in their wanderings came to an old stone quarry that had been
disused for years. On one side there was a smooth wall of rock, many feet deep.
On the other the ground and rock were broken away, and it was quite easy to get
into it. They found that by some means or other, one of their cows had fallen
into this deep pit, over the steep side of the quarry. Of course the poor
creature was dead, but the boys, out of curiosity, resolved to go down and look
at her. They clambered down, found the cow, and, to their horror and amazement,
discovered nearby the skeleton of a man. There was a heavy walking stick by his
side, which they recognized as one that the Englishman had carried.

He was a
drinking man, and perhaps he had taken something that he thought would
strengthen him for his morning’s walk, but which had, on the contrary,
bewildered him, and made him lose his way and fall into the quarry. Or he might
have started before daybreak, and in the darkness have slipped and fallen down
this steep wall of rock. One leg was doubled under him, and if he had not been
instantly killed by the fall, he must have been so disabled that he could not
move. In that lonely place, he would call for help in vain, so he may have
perished by the terrible death of starvation—the death he had thought to mete
out to his suffering animals.

Mrs. Wood
said that there was never a sermon preached in Riverdale that had the effect
that the death of this wicked man had, and it reminded her of a verse in the
Bible: “He made a pit and he digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he
made.” Mrs. Wood said that her husband had written about the finding of Mr.
Barron’s body to his English relatives, and had received a letter from them in
which they seemed relieved to hear that he was dead. They thanked Mr. Wood for
his plain speaking in telling them of their relative’s misdeeds, and said that from
all they knew of Mr. Barron’s past conduct, his influence would be for evil and
not for good, in any place that he choose to live in. They were having their
money sent from Boston to Mr. Wood, and they wished him to expend it in the way
he thought best fitted to counteract the evil effects of their namesake’s
doings in Riverdale.

When this
money came, it amounted to some hundreds of dollars. Mr. Wood would have
nothing to do with it. He handed it over to the Band of Mercy, and they formed
what they called the “Barron Fund,” which they drew upon when they wanted money
for buying and circulating humane literature. Mrs. Wood said that the fund was
being added to, and the children were sending all over the State leaflets and
little books which preached the gospel of kindness to God’s lower creation. A
stranger picking one of them up, and seeing the name of the wicked Englishman printed
on the title page, would think that he was a friend and benefactor to the
Riverdale people—the very opposite of what he gloried in being.

Miss Laura
was very much interested in the sheep on Dingley Farm. There was a flock in the
orchard near the house that she often went to see. She always carried roots and
vegetables to them, turnips particularly, for they were very fond of them; but
they would not come to her to get them, for they did not know her voice. They
only lifted their heads and stared at her when she called them. But when they
heard Mr. Wood’s voice, they ran to the fence, bleating with pleasure, and
trying to push their noses through to get the carrot or turnip, or whatever he
was handing to them. He called them his little Southdowns, and he said he loved
his sheep, for they were the most gentle and inoffensive creature that he had
on his farm.

One day
when he came into the kitchen inquiring for salt, Miss Laura said: “Is it for
the sheep?”

“Yes,” he
replied; “I am going up to the woods pasture to examine my Shropshires.”

“You would
like to go too, Laura,” said Mrs. Wood. “Take your hands right away from that
cake. I’ll finish frosting it for you. Run along and get your broad-brimmed
hat. It’s very hot.”

Miss Laura
danced out into the hall and back again, and soon we were walking up, back of
the house, along a path that led us through the fields to the pasture. “What
are you going to do, uncle?” she said; “and what are those funny things in your
hands?”

“Toe-clippers,”
he replied; “and I am going to examine the sheeps’ hoofs. You know we’ve had
warm, moist weather all through July, and I’m afraid of foot-rot. Then they’re
sometimes troubled with overgrown hoofs.”

“What do
you do if they get foot-rot?” asked Miss Laura.

“I’ve
various cures,” he said. “Paring and clipping, and dipping the hoof in blue
vitriol and vinegar, or rubbing it on, as the English shepherds do. It destroys
the diseased part, but doesn’t affect the sound.”

“Do sheep
have many diseases?” asked Miss Laura. “I know one of them myself that is the
scab.”

“A nasty
thing that,” said Mr. Wood, vigorously; “and a man that builds up a flock from
a stockyard often finds it out to his cost.”

“What is
it like?” asked Miss Laura.

“The sheep
get scabby from a microbe under the skin, which causes them to itch fearfully,
and they lose their wool.”

“And can’t
it be cured?”

“Oh, yes!
with time and attention. There are different remedies. I believe petroleum is
the best.”

By this
time we had got to a wide gate that opened into the pasture. As Mr. Wood let
Miss Laura go through and then closed it behind her, he said, “You are looking
at that gate. You want to know why it is so long, don’t you?”

“Yes,
uncle,” she said, “but I can’t bear to ask so many questions.”

“Ask as
many as you like,” he said, good-naturedly. “I don’t mind answering them. Have
you ever seen sheep pass through a gate or door?”

“Oh, yes,
often.”

“And how
do they act?”

“Oh, so
silly, uncle. They hang back, and one waits for another, and, finally, they all
try to go at once.”

“Precisely;
when one goes they all want to go, if it was to jump into a bottomless pit.
Many sheep are injured by overcrowding, so I have my gates and doors very wide.
Now, let us call them up.” There wasn’t one in sight, but when Mr. Wood lifted
up his voice and cried: “
Ca nan, nan, nan!
” black faces began to peer
out from among the bushes; and little black legs, carrying white bodies, came
hurrying up the stony paths from the cooler parts of the pasture. Oh, how glad
they were to get the salt! Mr. Wood let Miss Laura spread it on some flat
rocks, then they sat down on a log under a tree and watched them eating it and
licking the rocks when it was all gone. Miss Laura sat; fanning herself with
her hat and smiling at them. “You funny, woolly things,” she said “You’re not so
stupid as some people think you are. Lie still, Joe. If you show yourself, they
may run away.”

I crouched
behind the log, and only lifted my head occasionally to see what the sheep were
doing. Some of them went back into the woods, for it was very hot in this bare
part of the pasture, but the most of them would not leave Mr. Wood, and stood
staring at him. “That’s a fine sheep, isn’t it?” said Miss Laura, pointing to
one with the blackest face, and the blackest legs, and largest body of those
near us.

“Yes; that’s
old Jessica. Do you notice how she’s holding her head close to the ground?”

“Yes; is
there any reason for it?”

“There is.
She’s afraid of the grub fly. You often see sheep holding their noses in that
way in the summer time. It is to prevent the fly from going into their
nostrils, and depositing an egg which will turn into a grub and annoy and worry
them. When the fly comes near, they give a sniff and run as if they were crazy,
still holding their noses close to the ground. When I was a boy, and the sheep
did that, we thought that they had colds in their heads, and used to rub tar on
their noses. We knew nothing about the fly then, but the tar cured them, and is
just what I use now. Two or three times a month during hot weather, we put a few
drops of it on the nose of every sheep in the flock.”

“I suppose
farmers are like other people, and are always finding out better ways of doing
their work, aren’t they, uncle?” said Miss Laura.

“Yes, my
child. The older I grow, the more I find out, and the better care I take of my
stock. My grandfather would open his eyes in amazement, and ask me if I was an
old women petting her cats if he were alive, and could know the care I give my
sheep. He used to let his flock run till the fields were covered with snow, and
bite as close as they liked, till there wasn’t a scrap of feed left. Then he
would give them an open shed to run under, and throw down their hay outside.
Grain they scarcely knew the taste of. That they would fall off in flesh, and
half of them lose their lambs in the spring, was an expected thing. He would say
I had them kennelled, if he could see my big, closed sheds, with the sunny
windows that my flock spend the winter in. I even house them during the bad
fall storms. They can run out again. Indeed, I like to get them in, and have a
snack of dry food, to break them in to it. They are in and out of those sheds
all winter. You must go in, Laura, and see the self-feeding racks. On bright,
winter days they get a run in the cornfields. Cold doesn’t hurt sheep. It’s the
heavy rain that soaks their fleeces.

“With my
way I seldom lose a sheep, and they’re the most profitable stock I have. If I
could not keep them, I think I’d give up farming. Last year my lambs netted me
eight dollars each. The fleeces of the ewes average eight pounds, and sell for
two dollars each. That’s something to brag of in these days, when so many are
giving up the sheep industry.”

“How many
sheep have you, uncle?” asked Miss Laura.

“Only
fifty, now. Twenty-five here and twenty-five down below in the orchard. I’ve
been selling a good many this spring.”

“These
sheep are larger than those in the orchard, aren’t they?” said Miss Laura.

“Yes; I
keep those few Southdowns for their fine quality. I don’t make as much on them
as I do on these Shropshires. For an all-around sheep I like the Shropshire. It’s
good for mutton, for wool, and for rearing lambs. There’s a great demand for
mutton nowadays, all through our eastern cities. People want more and more of
it. And it has to be tender, and juicy, and finely flavored, so a person has to
be particular about the feed the sheep get.”

“Don’t you
hate to have these creatures killed that you have raised and tended so
carefully?” said Miss Laura with a little shudder.

“I do,”
said her uncle; “but never an animal goes off my place that I don’t know just
how it’s going to be put to death. None of your sending sheep to market with
their legs tied together and jammed in a cart, and sweating and suffering for
me. They’ve got to go standing comfortably on their legs, or go not at all. And
I’m going to know the butcher that kills my animals, that have been petted like
children. I said to Davidson, over there in Hoytville, ‘If I thought you would
herd my sheep and lambs and calves together, and take them one by one in sight
of the rest, and stick your knife into them, or stun them, and have the others lowing,
and bleating, and crying in their misery, this is the last consignment you
would ever get from me.’

“He said, ‘Wood,
I don’t like my business, but on the word of an honest man, my butchering is
done as well as it can be. Come and see for yourself.’

“He took
me to his slaughter house, and though I didn’t stay long, I saw enough to
convince me that he spoke the truth. He has different pens and sheds, and the
killing is done as quietly as possible; the animals are taken in one by one,
and though the others suspect what is going on, they can’t see it.”

“These
sheep are a long way from the house,” said Miss Laura; “don’t the dogs that you
were telling me about attack them?”

“No; for
since I had that brush with Windham’s dog, I’ve trained them to go and come
with the cows. It’s a queer thing, but cows that will run from a dog when they
are alone will fight him if he meddles with their calves or the sheep. There’s
not a dog around that would dare to come into this pasture, for he knows the
cows would be after him with lowered horns, and a business look in their eyes.
The sheep in the orchard are safe enough, for they’re near the house, and if a
strange dog came around, Joe would settle him, wouldn’t you, Joe?” and Mr. Wood
looked behind the log at me.

I got up
and put my head on his arm, and he went on: “By and by, the Southdowns will be
changed up here, and the Shropshires will go down to the orchard. I like to
keep one flock under my fruit trees. You know there is an old proverb ‘The
sheep has a golden hoof.’ They save me the trouble of ploughing. I haven’t
ploughed my orchard for ten years, and don’t expect to plough it for ten years
more. Then your Aunt Hattie’s hens are so obliging that they keep me from the
worry of finding ticks at shearing time. All the year round, I let them run
among the sheep, and they nab every tick they see.”

“How
closely sheep bite,” exclaimed Miss Laura, pointing to one that was nibbling
almost at his master’s feet.

“Very
close, and they eat a good many things that cows don’t relish bitter weeds, and
briars and shrubs, and the young ferns that come up in the spring.”

“I wish I
could get hold of one of those dear little lambs,” said Miss Laura. “See that
sweet little blackie back in the alders. Could you not coax him up?”

“He wouldn’t
come here,” said her uncle kindly; “but I’ll try end get him for you.”

He rose,
and after several efforts succeeded in capturing the black-faced creature, and
bringing him up to the log. He was very shy of Miss Laura, but Mr. Wood held him
firmly, and let her stroke his head as much as she liked. “You call him little,”
said Mr. Wood; “if you put your arm around him, you’ll find he’s a pretty
substantial lamb. He was born in March. This is the last of July; he’ll be
shorn the middle of next month, and think he’s quite grown up. Poor little
animal! he had quite a struggle for life. The sheep were turned out to pasture
in April. They can’t bear confinement as well as the cows, and as they bite closer
they can be turned out earlier, and get on well by having good rations of corn
in addition to the grass, which is thin and poor so early in the spring. This
young creature was running by his mother’s side, rather a weak-legged, poor
specimen of a lamb. Every night the flock was put under shelter, for the ground
was cold, and though the sheep might not suffer from lying outdoors, the lambs
would get chilled. One night this fellow’s mother got astray, and as Ben
neglected to make the count, she wasn’t missed. I’m always anxious about my
lambs in the spring and often get up in the night to look after them. That night
I went out about two o’clock. I took it into my head, for some reason or other,
to count them. I found a sheep and lamb missing, took my lantern and Bruno, who
was some good at tracking sheep, and started out. Bruno barked and I called,
and the foolish creature came to me, the little lamb staggering after her. I
wrapped the lamb in my coat, took it to the house, made a fire, and heated some
milk. Your Aunt Hattie heard me and got up. She won’t let me give brandy even
to a dumb beast, so I put some ground sugar, which is just as good, in the
milk, and forced it down the lamb’s throat. Then we wrapped an old blanket
round him, and put him near the stove, and the next evening he was ready to go
back to his mother. I petted him all through April, and gave him extras different
kinds of meal, till I found what suited him best; now he does me credit.”

“Dear
little lamb,” said Miss Laura, patting him, “How can you tell him from the
others, uncle?”

“I know
all their faces, Laura. A flock of sheep is just like a crowd of people. They
all have different expressions, and have different dispositions.”

“They all
look alike to me,” said Miss Laura.

“I dare
say. You are not accustomed to them. Do you know how to tell a sheep’s age?”

“No,
uncle.”

“Here,
open your mouth, Cosset,” he said to the lamb that he still held. “At one year
they have two teeth in the centre of the jaw. They get two teeth more every
year up to five years. Then we say they have ‘a full mouth.’ After that you can’t
tell their age exactly by the teeth. Now, run back to your mother,” and he let
the lamb go.

“Do they
always know their own mothers?” asked Miss Laura.

“Usually.
Sometimes a ewe will not own her lamb. In that case we tie them up in a
separate stall till she recognizes it. Do you see that sheep over there by the
blueberry bushes the one with the very pointed ears?”