The three working over the calf looked up to see the cow trotting toward them. There was no time to dodge. When she was within ten feet of the group an idle flanker kicked a jet of sand into her face and she swerved irresolutely, coming to a walk. The roper drove her back and work was resumed on her son.
“I mind once, when I was with the Spur, a cow jumped clean over us that-a-way,” remarked Bill Kennedy, rising from the ground. As a parting salute he rolled the red-and-white over his hip, as a wrestler throws a man to the mat. “Say, Jake, heel them big fellers.”
The calf was scared, and sore all over. A swallow-fork in the right ear and a crop in the left worried him. He stood glowering in all directions, in an effort to get his bearings; then he executed some shuddering, half-hearted jumps, as though trying to shed the two burning letters on his left flank, and sought his mother. He was sick, and all the fight gone from him.
The herd was driven off and released, and the red-and-white went with them. He tarried in a draw, enduring great pain. A fever burned him, too, and he was low in spirits. Half of his enormous appetite was gone, but only half. Alas, he had lost the source of supply for even the remnant that remained. In the general confusion he had become separated from his mother, and, as it was meal-time, the loss was doubly distressing.
He lifted up his voice in a song of sorrow, but naught availed. Perceiving this, he started to find her. The cow was hunting for him, too, hunting frenziedly. And she was not alone in her grief, for at least a dozen cows had lost their young in the turmoil of branding, and they wandered up and down and across without cessation, lowing pathetically, a world of distress in their tones and in their eyes. From time to time one would sight a stray calf and make a bee line for it, but only to give a moan of disappointment and resume her hunt.
Come-a-Seven tried to establish filial relations with every cow he met. As a result, he got some rebuffs that would have discouraged a less hungry youngster. For hours he searched; for hours cows wandered about crying for their young. Twice the red-and-white essayed to feed where he had no blood-rights and nearly had his ribs stove in for his pains. Finally, made crafty by hunger, he softly shouldered another calf away from her place at the mother’s side and tried to substitute. The old cow properly kicked him for that trick.
But his hunger was short-lived; a familiar voice smote upon his ear, his answering cry came with a glad quiver in it, and mother and son were reunited. How she smelled of him and licked his dusty sides and neck! And the way he went for his meal! She gave a deep rumble of content. Even when Come-a-Seven butted cruelly with his head, in his consuming hunger, and hurt her, she lowed in proud satisfaction.
Pain and trouble cannot last forever. In a week his wounds had healed; he was sound and strong again. Once more began the long, idle days of good feeding and play with his young companions. His life was a full one. Compared with that of the barnyard variety of the genus calf, it was as checkered as a drummer’s appears to a hot-blooded resident of a country town.
In the winter his mother grew gaunt. The cold was intense at times, and the snowfall was greater than the oldest bull could recall. At rare intervals men came riding to inspect and on one visit drove some of the weaker cattle to the home pasture, there to be fed daily. For the others little could be done, and the red-and-white was one of them. There were many good windbreaks on the range and the calf was tough, so he won through somehow, though once when the snow drifted deep and the cow could not find grass in her wanderings, grim death stared them in the face. The calf himself went three days without a meal, yet lived. A cow will not paw down through the snow like a horse, and mother and son saw some of their friends perish.
Spring came at last--suddenly, like a mountain sunrise--and the earth was exceeding glad. Worried and emaciated, they greeted the season of hope with a sudden access of energy. In later months the red-and-white was weaned. He learned to eat grass, of which accomplishment he was at first inordinately proud, and he throve on it; and he had but one worry in the world--heel flies.