"We can manage that much more simply," was the reply; "we drive home the calves when we find them in the woods, and the cows, of course, come with them. The cow is milked at the homestead, and afterwards driven out of the clearing. During the first night she does not like to go away, but she is driven by hunger to go at last, seeks her food, and comes home regularly to be milked, and to see her calf."
"Certainly that is a convenient mode of keeping milking cows; and the calf remains all day long in a shed?"
"Shed! we don't know such a word here. Whoever may happen to have a stallion may perhaps keep him in a log-house built on purpose, differing in nowise from our own ordinary dwellings, except that it has no boarded floor, nor chimney, but otherwise we don't require those kind of buildings."
"Well, thus much I can see," Herbold now expressed his opinion; "there is no great art in raising cattle here; one has only to drive them out, and scarcely trouble oneself further about them."
"There," said Wolfgang, who had now joined them, and had heard the last remark, "you fall into an error common with emigrants from Europe. They go from one extreme to the other, and believe that, because in their own country they have so much trouble with stall feeding, and are obliged to conduct everything with so much care, therefore that here they have nothing further to do, for instance, than to drive out a breeding sow into the woods, in order to have a drove of some hundred hogs arrive some three or four years after. No, no; one must not neglect cattle here either, but must look after it, else they get wild, and become worse than deer or rabbits."
"I don't know what Wolfgang means by extremes, or what extremes are, but in other respects he has hit it exactly. One has to drive about in the woods for many a long day to get the creatures together, and when that is done they never will remain where they are wanted. But you were saying that you wanted to buy some cows and horses; if you do, you couldn't have pitched upon a better time than just the present; my best cows are here, and there is not one of the horses missing."
"Certainly, we wish to buy both cattle and horses," said Siebert, who now also joined in the conversation; "that was just the cause of our coming hither; but in making our bargain we must rely implicitly upon Mr. Wolfgang and yourself, for——"
"Mr. Wolfgang understands the thing thoroughly," the old American interrupted him, laughing; "we have transacted many a piece of business together. He and his wife—by-the-bye, Wolfgang, how is your wife? she suffered much from the fever lately."
"It is well with her," said the young man, turning half aside; "she is dead."