"Yes," musingly, "once I expected to pursue a literary career. Indeed, my professors all told me that I might become the George Eliot or Mrs. Browning of America. But that speckled heifer I was asking you about just now knocked all my plans into a cocked hat."
"How was that?" I asked.
"Well, it was like this," said the cow-girl college graduate, as she pushed aside her corn bread, untasted, and, planting her elbows upon her knee, propped her chin upon her palms, man fashion. "In the spring of 1885, several years after I had graduated, my father died, and mother and I came to Colorado and bought a ranch at Plum Creek, some twenty-three miles south of Denver. You see, my father had been an invalid, and ever since I can remember we'd been chasing round from pillar to post, trying to find a climate that agreed with him; so this was really what you might call the first chance I had to go to work in earnest. It was a lovely quiet spot, an ideal place, I thought, for communing with nature and pursuing a literary career. But it was not so to be. Like—what's his name with a tender heel?"
"Achilles?" I suggested.
"Yes, like Achilles, I had one weak spot that was going to be my ruin. I was crazy about pets. Why, if it hadn't been for that weak spot I might be wearing literary laurel instead of lassoing cattle—but this is neither here nor there. What I was going to say was that before I'd been settled on that ranch three days some men came our way driving a herd of Texas cattle to Denver, and, as a late snowstorm came up just then, they decided to camp on good feed in the hills in front of my ranch. That afternoon they came over to our house to buy bread, and while they were there they mentioned to me that they had a nice cow that had just calved, and offered if I would buy the cow to throw in the calf, as they were just going to kill it. Well, here was where my weak spot came in. No sooner did I hear about those animals than nothing would do but that I should have them for pets. Besides, the cow was offered mighty cheap, only eighteen dollars, while I'd been going without milk rather than pay the fifty or seventy-five dollars asked for a milch cow; so now I thought was my chance to close a good bargain and get two nice pets, beside. Yes, sir, I even planned while the men were gone after those animals how I would domesticate them in a few days."
"And it took longer?" I asked.
"Domesticate! I might as well have tried to domesticate an active volcano—but I mustn't anticipate.
"My first impression of my pet cow wasn't exactly encouraging. I had imagined her ambling serenely up to the house, mild-eyed and gentle, with the little calflet trotting at her side. Instead, she was dragged upon the scene by four men who had spent at least an hour in catching her and bringing her to me. The calf, meantime, after an equally exciting chase had been led up and tied to a large plum bush.
"However, I wasn't one to let a little thing like that phase me. I was determined to make friends with that cow; so when, about two hundred yards from the house, the men threw her and took off the rope I advanced with that idea. But I wasn't half so anxious to make friends as the cow was. As soon as she set eyes on me—and if ever an animal had the evil eye, that cow did—she made a bee line for yours truly.
" 'Look out,' shouted the men. But I was already footing it pretty lively towards the thicket where the calf was tied, the cow after me, snorting like a steam engine almost in my ear. The next thing that I knew I had slipped and fallen on the ice in the north side of the bushes with the cow on top. I believe that I tried to grab the creature by her horns, with a wild hope that I might hold her down until the men came to the rescue.