“That elk had antlers as big as never was,” says the boy.
The outcome was that Martin went with him. They found “Drople” not far off, but no elk bull, only to the farmer’s eye the cow looked strangely shamefaced. He also found elk spoors, so evidently the lad had spoken the truth. But that spoor was Rauten’s, for Martin recognised it.
Now, as the dairymaid knew, “Drople” had been ready for play, but strange to say she did not seem to care for a strange bull which happened to come near their mountain farm.
Nine months later “Drople” was kicking and raving in the Lyhus cowshed in the Valley and she could not give birth to her calf. The dairymaid went in and woke up Martin Lyhus. Her white kerchief gleamed in the light of her cowshed lantern, the ends hanging under her chin like long ears, when shaking her head she declared that the farmer himself had better come out and take that calf. He wasn’t no real cattle crittur,’ that he was not, for “Drople” had mated with that wizard devil’s beast in Ré Mountain. Now she could not drop her calf.
Well, Martin went out, but for all he strove and laboured he could not bring that calf. Then he fetched Tolleiv Skoro, who was something of a vet. And Tolleiv bit his tongue, as he always did when treating cattle, and he worked and worked till that calf lay beside “Drople” in the straw.
But what a miracle of a calf! Mercy upon us!
Its legs were half as long again as they should have been, its colour was dark, snout long like an elk’s, and there was next to no tail!
The dairymaid trampled across the shed in her dirty boots.