Here and Now Story Book / Two- to seven-year-olds

by Lucy Sprague Mitchell

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.

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!