Lord God Made Them All (40 page)

I smiled. So many people wanted to accompany me on my rounds. There seemed to be some fascination in the veterinary life. “Of course you can, Andy. But I don’t think you’ll find it very entertaining. All I have is an afternoon’s dehorning.”

“Really? Sounds interesting. I’d love to come, if you don’t mind.”

I found a spare pair of Wellingtons for him, and we got into the car. As we drove away I noticed him looking around him: at the boxes of bottles and instruments on the back seat, at my clothes which contrasted so sharply with his own natty outfit. At that time I had discarded the breeches and leggings that were almost a vet’s uniform when I qualified and now wore brown corduroy trousers with a sort of canvas jacket made for me by a German prisoner and which I had cherished for years.

The corduroys were frayed and stiffened with mud and muck, and the jacket, too, despite the protective clothing I always wore, bore ample evidence of my trade.

I could see Andy’s nostrils wrinkling as he took in the rich bouquet of manure, dog hairs and assorted chemicals that was the normal atmosphere in my car, but after a few minutes he appeared to forget everything as he gazed out of the window.

It was a golden afternoon in October, and beyond the stone walls, the fell-sides, ablaze with their mantle of dead bracken, rose serenely into a deep, unbroken blue. We passed under a long canopy of tinted leaves thrown over us by the roadside trees, then followed a stretch of white-pebbled river before turning along a narrow track that led up the hillside.

Andrew was silent as we climbed into the stark, airy solitude that is the soul of the Dales, but as the track levelled out on the summit, he put a hand on my arm.

“Just stop a minute, Jim, will you?” he said.

I pulled up and wound down the window. For a few moments he looked out over the miles of heathery moorland and the rounded summits of the great hills slumbering in the sunshine, then he spoke quietly as though to himself.

“So this is where you work?”

“Yes, this is it, Andy.”

He took a long breath, then another, as if greedy for more.

“You know,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about air like wine, but this is the first time I’ve realised what it means.”

I nodded. I always felt I could never get enough of that air, sharp and cool and tinged only with the grass scent that lingers in the high country.

“Well, you’re a lucky beggar, Jim,” Andrew said with a touch of weariness. “You spend your life driving around in country like this, and I’m stuck in a damned office.”

“I thought you liked your job.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Oh yes, I suppose playing around with figures is what I’m best at but, oh hell, I have to do it all inside. In fact,” he said, becoming a little worked up, “when I start to think about it, I live and have my being in a bloody centrally heated box with no windows and electric light blasting down all day, and I share what passes for air with a whole crowd of other people.” He slumped back in his seat. “Makes me wish I hadn’t come out with you.”

“I’m sorry, Andy.”

He laughed ruefully. “Oh, I didn’t really mean that, but, honestly, this is idyllic.”

At the end of the moor the land dipped into a lush valley where the herd of Mr. Dunning grazed and grew fat on the abundant grass around the farm buildings. The Dunnings were not dairymen, as was usual in the Dales, but raised beef cattle. And they did so on a large scale, with more than two hundred animals under their care.

I had been there for the last few afternoons, dehorning, and I was glad that this was my last visit because the bullocks on which I had been operating were massive three-year-old shorthorns, and I had had a rough time. Nowadays, with the housewife’s preference for smaller, leaner joints, most beef cattle are slaughtered at around eighteen months, and the kind of huge creatures I had to face at Mr. Dunning’s are rarely seen any more.

As we drove into the farmyard, there were about twenty of them milling around in a collecting pen.

“We’ll run ’em into the fold yard one at a time as usual,” Mr. Dunning cried as he trotted towards me. He was a small, excitable man, bursting with energy, and his voice seldom fell below a piercing shout.

His sons, large young men with the classical Dales names of Thomas, fames and William followed more slowly.

I introduced Andy, and he gazed with interest at the enormous boots, the work-worn clothes and the tangle of hair pushing from under the caps. The farmers, in turn, seemed similarly intrigued with my friend’s pinstripes, gleaming white collar and tasteful tie.

Once the action commenced, Mr. Dunning launched into full cry, poking at the beasts’ rumps with his stick and emitting shrill yelps of, “Haow, haow, cush-cush, get on there!”

Finally one of the bullocks trotted into the fold yard, and the brothers guided it into a loose box. I handed the chloroform muzzle in to them and leaned on my mighty guillotine, thinking how much easier life had become over the past few days.

At the start of this session I had applied every tourniquet myself, then buckled on the muzzle before putting the halter over the top. But farmers are very adaptable people and the brothers soon devised a better way.

On the second day, Thomas, the eldest, made a quiet suggestion. “We could put on them bands and the muzzle ourselves, Mr. Herriot, while you wait outside t’box.”

I leaped happily at the idea. That rough binder twine had to be pulled very tight and my soft palms had been nibbed sore, but the horny fingers of the Dunning boys would be impervious to such a detail. Also, I would not be thrown around in the tying process.

As I leaned there, feeling again like an executioner, I bethought myself of my friend.

“Andy,” I said, “I think it would be a good idea if you climbed up there.” I pointed to one of a long row of square wooden feeding troughs known as “tumblers” which stretched down the middle of the straw-covered yard. Above them, running the full length of the tumblers, a hayrack dangled on chains.

He smiled indulgently. “Oh, I’ll be all right here.” He rested a shoulder against a post opposite the box and lit a cigarette. “I don’t want to miss anything and, anyway, it sounds very interesting in there.”

It did indeed sound interesting behind the wooden doors of the box. It always did. Gruff outbursts of “Ow!” “Stand still, ya bugger!” “Gerroff me foot!” blended with tremendous crashes as the big beast hurled itself against the timbers.

At length came the inevitable volley of yells.
“Right! ‘e ‘s comin ‘ out’“

I tensed myself as the doors were thrown wide and the great animal, festooned with binder twine and wearing the muzzle like a wartime gas mask, catapulted outwards, with two of the brothers hanging grimly to the halter.

As the bullock felt the straw around its knees, it paused for a moment in its headlong rush and looked around till the eyes, glaring above the rim of the muzzle, focussed on the elegant form of my friend leaning against the post. Then it put its head down and charged.

Andy, confronted by fourteen hundredweights of hairy beef hurtling towards him, did not linger. He vaulted onto the tumbler, grabbed the slats of the hayrack and swung himself to safety as the horns sent the tumbler crashing away beneath his feet. I recalled that he had been very good on the wall bars in the school gymnasium, and it was apparent that he had lost none of his agility.

Cradled in the fragrant clover, he looked down at me as the rack swung gently to and fro on its chains.

“I’d stay up there if I were you,” I said.

Andy nodded. I could see he didn’t need much persuading. He had lost a little colour, and his eyebrows were arched high on his forehead.

All three of the Dunning brothers were needed to bring the bullock to a halt, and they stood there, leaning back on the rope and breathing heavily as they waited for me to make the next move.

This was the tricky bit. I leaned the guillotine against a tumbler and slowly approached the beast. Opening the front of the muzzle, I trickled chloroform onto the sponge. At this moment I never knew what was going to happen. Some animals turned sleepy almost immediately, while others, on inhaling the strange vapour, seemed to resent my presence and took a sudden dive at me. And in the deep straw it was difficult to get out of the way.

I was relieved to see that this was one of the former type. His charge at Andy and his subsequent struggles had made him breathless, and as he gulped deeply at the anaesthetic, his eyes glazed and he began to sway. He took a few stumbling steps, toppled onto his side and slipped into unconsciousness.

Now I had to move fast. I struggled through the straw, grabbed the guillotine and dropped the cutting jaws over a horn. I seized the shafts and began to pull. With small animals a single swift clip did the job, but the horns of these big bullocks were extraordinarily wide at the base, and I had to haul away with all my strength for several panting seconds till the knives crunched together. I repeated the process with the other horn, and it was just as tough to remove.

“Right,” I gasped. “Get the muzzle off him.” I was sweating and I had done only one beast, with about nineteen to go.

The brothers leaped into action, unbuckling the muzzle and running to usher another bullock from the pen where their father was already screaming and flailing around him with his stick.

With the loss of a little more perspiration I did the second and third, but the fourth defeated me. The horns were so vast that I had to open the shafts wider and wider until they were almost in a straight line. I groaned and strained, but it was obvious I would never be able to close them. Thomas, who had the build of a heavyweight wrestler, came up behind me.

“Move in a bit closer, Mr. Herriot,” he said.

I grasped the shafts halfway up their length, while Thomas seized the extreme ends in his great hands. Even with our united effort nothing happened for a few seconds, then the hom came off with a crack. But unfortunately I was the man in the middle, and as the shafts came together, they thudded with pitiless force against my ribs. It was the same with the other horn. Thomas had to help again, and my ribs took another hammering.

As the brothers trotted off for the next beast, I sank down on the straw and moaned softly, massaging my aching sides.

“Are you all right, Jim?” The voice came from above, and I looked up into Andy’s anxious face. I had been vaguely aware of him all the time, rocking on his chains as he twisted around in the rack to see as much as possible.

I gave him a rueful smile. “Oh yes, Andy, I’m okay. Just a bit bruised.”

“I don’t doubt it. I wouldn’t like that big bloke squeezing me in those choppers.” My friend’s head, protruding from the hay, was all I could see of him, but his eyes looked startled.

They looked still more startled when the next beast, at the first sniff of chloroform, launched himself forward and knocked me flat on my back. In fact, it was clear that little Mr. Dunning was upsetting the cattle with his constant shrieking and the poking with his stick.

Thomas thought so, too. “For God’s sake, Dad,” he said in his slow way. “Put that bloody stick away and shurrup.” He spoke without anger because he was fond of his father, as indeed I was, because he was a nice little man at heart.

Mr. Dunning quieted down, but he could contain himself for only a brief spell. Very soon he was yelling again.

About halfway through, the dreaded accident happened. I chopped through the tourniquet on one of the horns.

“Quick! More twine!” I shouted, groping my way through the red fountains spurting high from the sleeping animal. I had to retie the tourniquet with the warm fluid spraying my face. There was no escape. As I pulled the last knot tight, I turned to Mr. Dunning.

“Could I have a bucket of warm water, some soap and a towel, please?” My eyes were almost closed, the lashes gummed with the fast-clotting blood.

The little man hurried to the house and was back soon with a steaming bucket into which I eagerly plunged my hands. A second later I was hopping round the fold yard, yelping with pain and shaking my scalded fingers.

“That bloody water’s boiling hot!” I cried.

The brothers regarded me stolidly, but little Mr. Dunning was highly amused.

“Hee-hee, hee-hee, hee-hee.” His high-pitched giggles went on and on. He hadn’t seen anything so funny for a long time.

While he was recovering, William fetched some cold water and diluted the original sufficiently for me to give my hands and face a rough wash.

I went on with my work almost automatically and with increasing weariness. The driving of each bullock into the box, the hangings and oaths from behind the door, the final yell of
“He’s comin’ out!,”
then the straining and the chopping, and all the time in the back of my mind the question every veterinary surgeon of that era must have asked himself—”Why in heaven’s name did I have to study five years at college just to do this?”

But at last I saw with relief that there was only one more to do. I had just about had enough. Thomas had done his nutcracker act on my ribs a few times more, and every muscle in my body seemed to be protesting. I watched thankfully as Mr. Dunning started to drive the beast into the yard.

This animal, however, was reacting differently to the little man’s bawling and stick work. I remembered that the brothers had described the beast as being “bully-headed,” and indeed there was a vibrant masculinity about this shape and expression which suggested that the bloodless castrators might not have done their work completely.

The shaggy head, instead of turning away from Mr. Dunning’s importunities, kept pushing towards him. The little farmer poked at the nose with his stick but still it came on, and at that point Mr. Dunning evidently decided he would be better out of the way.

He walked off through the straw and the bullock walked after him. He broke into a trot and the bullock did the same. The trot became a stiff-legged gallop and the bullock followed suit.

At no time did the beast show any sign of charging the farmer, but Mr. Dunning didn’t seem reassured. He kept on running and his face registered increasing alarm. His progress was impeded by the deep straw and it must have been like running in knee-high water but for all that, he cut out a very fair pace for a sixty-year-old.