“Milk cows ain’t wild, Ike. All you’ve got to do is to corner ’em. Sabe? You hold this starving infant while Uncle Dudley plays milkmaid.”
He crawls over the fence and approaches the herd. I’ll admit that Magpie has a soothing voice, and his “So-o-o, boss,” would assure most anything of his good intentions. But them cows ain’t used to having strangers come out of the night to steal their juice. They sort of mills around and acts foreign to his designs.
“Make that kid shut up!” he yelps. “It’s scaring the critters, Ike.”
“I ain’t no murderer,” says I. “There is things that nothing short of sudden death will stop. Hurry up with the nourishment.”
I hears a cow bawl, and then comes a rattle, a bump and a curse.
“What are you trying to do?” I asks.
Pretty soon I hears Magpie spit audible-like, and then:
“Dang the luck! Tried to bulldog a muley cow!”
Bulldogging is the gentle pastime of getting in front of a cow, getting one arm under a horn and the other arm over a horn and then twisting the critter’s neck until said critter decides to lay down. Muley cows are exempt on account of not having any horns.
The baby seems to sympathize openly with the cows. In fact, that kid has the only perpetual voice I ever heard.