Here and Now Story Book Part 27

"Oh, of course not," said Silly Will, gulping hard. "I certainly wouldn't depend on a vegetable. That would be too ridiculous. If the frost should kill all the vegetables, it would make no difference to me!" Nevertheless in his heart he felt unhappy and a little frightened at the thought of the coming winter. But still he didn't understand.

Silly people never do understand.

He walked on down the road saying to himself, "I'll go order my winter wood anyway. I'm almost out of it at home." Just then he looked up. He expected to see the green forest stretching up the hillside. He stared.

The hillside was black smoking stumps, fallen blackened trees, white ashes! Beside the dead trees stood the old forester wringing his hands.

Silly Will didn't even speak to him. He could see what had happened without asking. He turned around. Slowly he walked home. He went right to bed. He still pretended that he wasn't unhappy or frightened. He kept saying to himself, "I don't really depend on the wood at all. Of course that would be silly! I've got coal. It wouldn't matter to me if all the plants left me." And with that thought he fell asleep. You see even now he didn't understand. Silly people never do understand.

Now that night another strange thing happened to Silly Will. I can't explain how or why it happened. But in the middle of the night all the plants _did_ leave Silly Will,--not only the potatoes and the trees but the whole vegetable kingdom.

He was asleep all curled up to keep warm in his cotton clothes. Suddenly he felt the comforter and sheet under him jerk away and he was left lying on the wire spring. At the same time the comforter and sheet over him disappeared. So did his nightshirt. Then bang! His wooden bed was gone. The house began to creak and rock. He jumped up and tore down stairs. He just got outside the front door when the whole house collapsed.

The moon was shining. Silly Will could see quite plainly. There stood the brick chimneys rising out of a pile of plaster dumped on top of the concrete foundations. There was the slate roof and the broken window of gla.s.s. The air was full of a sound like the violent trembling of many leaves. It sounded for all the world as if it said, "I take back my wood!"

"Whatever will I do?" groaned Silly Will as he shivered all naked in the moonlight. Then his eye lighted on the kitchen stove. There it stood with the stove pipe all safely connected with the chimney.

"I'll build a coal fire," he thought. There stood the iron coal scuttle.

But alas! It was empty! He heard a far-away murmur like a faint wind stirring in giant ferns. And they said, "I take back my buried leaves!"

By this time Silly Will was shaking with cold. "I've heard that newspapers are warm," he thought. But the pile behind the stove was gone. Again came the murmur of trees--"I take back my pulp," and a queer soft sound which he couldn't quite make out. Was it "I take back my cotton?"

Silly Will was thoroughly terrified now.

"I'll go somewhere to think," he said to himself. So he crept down the cement steps to the cellar and crawled into a sheltered corner. But he couldn't think of anything pleasant. He could hear a confused noise all around him. Sometimes it sounded like growls, like animal cries, like animal calls. "The animal kingdom has left him," it seemed to say.

Again it sounded like the wind rustling a thousand leaves. "The vegetable kingdom has left him," it seemed to say.

"I've nothing to wear," sobbed Silly Will. "And I'm afraid I've nothing to eat." At the thought of food he jumped up and ran over to the cellar pantry. He found just three things. They did not make a tempting meal!

They were a crock of salt, a tin of soda and a porcelain pitcher of water.

"What shall I ever do? How shall I live? I'll never have another gla.s.s of milk or cup of cocoa. I'll never have anything to wear. I'll freeze and I'll starve. I might just as well die now!" And poor little Silly Will broke down and cried and cried and cried.

"I can't live without other living things," he sobbed. "I can't eat only minerals and I can't keep warm in minerals. Everybody has to depend on animals and vegetables. And after all I'm only a little boy! I've got to have living things to keep alive myself!"

Then a wonderful thing happened to Silly Will. I can't explain how or why it happened. Suddenly he felt all warm and comfortable. "Perhaps I'm freezing," he thought. "I've heard that people feel warm when they are almost frozen to death."

Slowly he put out his hand. Surely that was a linen sheet! Surely that was a woolen blanket. Surely he had on his flannel nightgown. He sat straight up. Surely this was his own bed: this was his own room: this was his own house. He could scarcely believe his eyes. He gave a great shout.

"Moo-oo-oo," answered a cow under a tree outside his window. And the leaves of the tree rustled at him too.

"h.e.l.lo, old cow! h.e.l.lo, old tree!" cried Silly Will running to the window. "Isn't it good we're all alive?" And when you think of it that wasn't a silly remark at all!

"Moo-oo-oo," lowed the old cow. "Swish-sh-sh-sh," rustled the tree. And suddenly Silly Will thought he understood! I wonder if he did!

EBEN'S COWS

This story attempts to make an industrial process a background for real adventure.

EBEN'S COWS

PART 1

Eben was looking at the cows. And the cows were looking at Eben. What Eben saw was twenty-six pairs of large gentle eyes, twenty-six mouths chewing with a queer sidewise motion, twenty-six fine fat cattle, some red, some white, some black, some red and white, and some black and white, all in a bright green meadow. What the cows saw, held by his mother on the rail fence, was a fat baby with a shining face and waving arms. What Eben heard was the heavy squashy footsteps of the slow-moving cows as they lumbered toward the little figure on the fence. What the cows heard was a high, excited little voice saying a real word for the first time in its life, "Cow! cow! oh, cow! oh, cow!" And so with his first word began Eben's life-long friendship with the cows.

Eben Brewster lived in a little white farm-house with green blinds. The cows lived in a great long red barn, which was connected with the little white farm-house by a wagon-shed and tool-house. High up on the great red barn was printed GREEN MOUNTAIN FARM. Long before Eben knew how to read he knew what those big letters said, and he knew that the lovely rolling hills that ringed the farm around, were called the Green Mountains. In front of both house and barn stretched the bright green meadows where day after day fed the twenty-six cows. In a neighboring meadow played the long-legged calves. For at Green Mountain Farm there were always many calves. In the summer they usually had fifteen or twenty calves a few months old. For every cow of course had her baby once a year. The little bull calves they sold; but the little cow calves they raised.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

When Eben was three years old he made friends with the calves his own way. He wiggled through the bars of the gate into their pasture. The calves stared at him; they sniffed at him. Then they came a little closer. They stared at him again. They sniffed at him again. Then they came closer still. Then one little black and white thing came right up to him and licked his face and hands. And three-year-old Eben liked the feel of the soft nose and the rough tongue and he liked the sweet cow smell.

So it came about that Eben played regularly with the calves. It always amused his father Andrew to watch them together. "I never saw a child so crazy about cows!" he used to say. One day he put a pretty little new calf,--white with red spots,--into the pasture. Eben ran to the calf at once. "What shall we call the calf, Eben?" asked his father. "Think of some nice name for her." Eben put his arms around the calf's neck and smiled. "I call him 'ittle Sister," he said. For little baby sister was the only thing three-year-old Eben loved better than a calf. And the name stuck to the calves of Green Mountain Farm. From that time on they were always called Little Sisters!

Real little sister or Nancy, as she was called, grew apace. To her Eben was always wonderful. At six years he seemed equal to about anything. It did not surprise her at all one day to hear her father say, "Eben, you get the cows tonight." But it did surprise Eben. He had helped his father drive them home for years. And now he was to do it alone! Down the dusty road he went, switch in hand, taking such big important strides that the footprints of his little bare feet were almost as far apart as a man's. The cows stood facing the bars. He took down the bars.

The cows filed through one by one. Nancy and her father, waiting to help him turn the cows in at the barn, knew he was coming. They could see the cloud of dust and hear the many shuffling feet and the shrill boy's voice calling: "Hi, Spotty, don't you stop to eat! Go 'long there, Crumplehorn, don't you know the way home yet! Hurry up, Redface. Can't you keep in the road?" Eben felt older from that day.

From the day he began driving home the cows alone Eben took a real share in the work at the farm. He put the cows' heads into the stanchions when each one lumbered into her stall. He fed them hay and ensilage through the long winter months when the meadows were white with snow. He put the cans to catch the cream and the skimmed milk when his father turned the separator. He took the separator apart and carried it up to his mother to be washed. Nancy helped and talked. Only she really talked more than she helped!

Eben's talk ran much on cows. His poor mother read all she could in the encyclopedia, but even then she couldn't answer all his questions. Why does a cow have four stomachs? Why does her food come back to be chewed?

Why does she chew sideways? Why does she have to be milked twice a day?

Why doesn't she get out of the way when an auto comes down the road?

When Eben asked his father these things the farmer would shake his head and answer, "I guess it's just because she's a cow."

There came a very exciting day at Green Mountain Farm. For twenty years Andrew Brewster and his men had milked his cows morning and evening. His hands were hard from the practice. The children loved to watch him milk.

With every pull of his strong hands he made a fine white stream of milk shoot into the pail, squirt, squirt, squirt. Eben had often tried, but pull as he would, he could only get out a few drops. And even as Andrew Brewster had milked his cows morning and evening until his hands were h.o.r.n.y, so had his father done before him. Yes, and his father's father, too. For three generations of Brewsters had hardened their hands milking cows on Green Mountain Farm. Then there came this exciting day, and a new way of milking began at the big red barn.

A milking machine was put in. It ran by a wonderful little puffing gasolene engine. It milked two cows at once. And it milked all twenty-six of them in twenty minutes. Andrew Brewster could manage the whole herd alone with what help Eben could give him. It was a great day for him. It was a great day for Eben and Nancy too.

PART 2

There came another day which was even more exciting for the two children than when the milking machine was put into the big red barn. This story is really about that day. Eben was then ten years old and Nancy seven.

Their father and mother had gone for the day to a county fair. The two children were to be alone all day, which made up for not going to the fair. The children had long since eaten the cold dinner their mother had left for them. They had done all their ch.o.r.es too. Nancy had gathered the eggs and Eben had chopped the kindling and brought in the wood. They had fed the baby chickens and given them water. Then they had gone to the woods for an afternoon climb over the big rocks and a wade in the brook. Now they were waiting for their father and mother to come back. They had been waiting for a long time, for it was seven o'clock.

The last thing their mother had called out as she drove off behind the two old farm horses was, "We'll be back by five o'clock, children."

What could have happened? "Eben," said Nancy, "we'd better eat our own supper and get something ready for Father and Mother. I guess I'll try to scramble some eggs."

"Go ahead," answered Eben. "But we're not the ones I'm worrying about--nor Father and Mother either. It's those poor cows."

"Oh! the cows!" cried Nancy. "And the poor Little Sisters! They'll be so hungry." Both children ran to the door. "Just listen to them," said Eben. "They've been waiting in the barn for over an hour now. I certainly wish Father would come." From the big red barn came the lowing of the restless cattle. "I'm going to have another look at them," said Eben. "Come along, Nancy."

The two children peered into the big dark barn. The unmistakable cow smell came to them strong in the dark. Stretching down the whole length was stall after stall, each holding an impatient cow. The children could see the restless hind feet moving and stamping; they could see the flicking of many tails; they could feel the cows pulling at the stanchions. On the other side were the stalls of the Little Sisters.

They too were moving about wildly. Over above it all rose the deafening sound of the plaintive lowings. By the door stood the gasolene engine.

It was attached to a pipe which ran the whole length of the great barn above the cows' stalls. Eben's eyes followed this pipe until it was lost in the dark.