"Then another singalar thing begun to be noticed. All them 't drunk the milk from her was took an' possessed to jine the church! I use' ter send out peddlin' carts o' milk—for my ranch was the biggest in that section—it use' ter be all mixed together in course, an' the smallest elemunt o' that old cow's milk in it made it jest the same as ef 'twas all hern. Sometimes I thought ser'ously whether I hadn't ought to take her and go around an' start seasons o' special interest with her all over the kentry; and then thinks I—no, I'll stay here and I'll let 'em build new churches. So they kep' a-goin' up—three new Baptis', four new Methodis', in a month's time."
Captain Leezur was softly but strenuously sucking a nervine lozenge. I heard Captain Pharo crunching one down stormily, at the same time one was pressed into my hand. "They come high," whispered the beloved voice; "cent apiece, dollar a hunderd, but——"
"But the strangest and singalarest of it all, I didn't find out till 'long toward the last. I was a-milkin' on her one day, an' I spilled the milk accidental, an' I said a word that I hadn't ort'er said. When she heered that she up an' kicked me, an' I give her tail a yank, an' she began to sing——"
Belle O'Neill clutched me by the neck.
"I don' say that she sung as Vesty doos. I don' say that she pernounced the words jest regalar; but as fur as tune goes, she hit the tune right squar' in the bull's eye every time. She sung:
"'From Greenlan's icy mountings,
From Injy's coral stran',
Whar Aferk's sunny fountings
Roll down their goldin' san';'"
And when she got as fur as that"—Pershall showed evidences of lively distress—"she keeled right over an' died."
"You've heered o' the tewn 't the old cow died on? Wal, that 's whar it all started, Jane; right thar. That was the very cow and the very event. It was my old cow that died."
"Give me sea-room here, by clam!" muttered Captain Pharo, shooting his arms about.
"Ef I b'lieved in gho's, I sh'd say 't your but'ry was harnted, Jane," came from the kitchen the solemn and shifty voice of the Man-Who-had-Been-in-California: "le's step around by the outside way to the door whar the folks is. Jest look at the stars, Jane," he continued, when they were safe out. "See anythin' o' my old cow up in the Milky Way? Down in the southern latitude, whar I was, the Milky Way use' ter be so plain some nights 't ye could see——"