He made another try and almost got his rope over the calf; but the Jersey went at him just then and gave him something else to do. So the boss ambled back, grinning sheepishly behind his sandy mustache.
“I reckon”--he cleared his throat--“I reckon that’s one on me, boys. Let him go just now. We’ll get him in the spring.”
Uncle Henry was the only human being that the Jersey would permit within five yards of her baby. He entertained a sort of proprietary affection for the cow, and she reciprocated save when such cordial relationship clashed with her love for the adopted one. At such moments Uncle Henry was not to be considered, of course, and she was as ready to put him on the fence or speed him round a bush as any other member of the Tumbling K outfit.
Upon a day in September, he was on his way back from patching the line fence, when he espied Molly trotting distractedly about a narrow draw. She stopped to stare as he approached, then resumed her agitated run. From time to time she dashed to the brink of an arroyo to gaze down. Uncle Henry watched her, surmising from the stores of his experience what had happened.
“She’ll jist about go on the prod and rip me if I try to git him out.”
Molly took a few steps toward him, lowed pitifully, and returned to look down at the unfortunate calf. He advanced with caution, anticipating a rush; but Molly only lowed again and made way for him.
“I swan, she wants me to pull him out,” said Uncle Henry in a reverent tone. “If that don’t beat every--”
He alighted and walked to the arroyo’s rim. Ten feet below, on the sandy bottom of a hole whose precipitous sides prevented him climbing out, lay the white-face. Uncle Henry deftly dropped a noose over its head, and dragged the kicking youngster to safety. When he went to remove the rope, Molly suffered him to handle her son, though she glared in swift suspicion when Uncle Henry threw him to the ground and knelt on his body to free the loop from his neck.
“Boys,” said the boss at supper one night, “Molly has got to go.”
“Oh-ho! Ho, indeed!” Uncle Henry retorted with fine sarcasm. “Oh, yes,” he added, unable to think of anything better to say.