The Man of Last Resort/The Grazier/Chapter 2
II
From the earliest record of events, either sacred or profane, the genus Bos has been associated with the history of the landowner. The Ancient Egyptian saw in him certain traces of divinity, and honored it with proper recognition. The lamented Job, erstwhile poet of calamity, found time amid the recording of his numerous disasters to set down his venerable appreciation of the species; and the pagan Homer, while singing of gods and men, remembered to sing also the virtues of the noble bullock; and the painters, too, from Claude Lorraine to Rosa Bonheur, have deigned to consider the artistic importance of the domesticated kine; treating him first as a necessary adjunct to a landscape, and later as a central figure in the scene. He has had his part, say the records, not infrequently with the plans of men, virtuous and otherwise. A certain wily barbaric general used him well in a difficult emergency, and the patriarch Jacob used him in a shrewd physiological experiment, which he had probably learned at Padan-aram in his salad days; an experiment that added much to the worldly worth of the good father, but detracted not a little from his fame.
When the sun climbed up from behind the broad eastern hillside on the following morning it looked down upon Rufus Alshire, who, far more expeditious than itself, had already set himself to the affairs of the day; before the dawn he had brought the cattle from their beds in the cool pasture land, weighed them at his scales and turned them out in the road on their journey to the shipping station some ten miles away. The herd strayed leisurely along the highway. The giant Alshire rode through the drove, keeping the bullocks moving slowly; while following the herd barefoot in the dust, was one of his retainers, a half-witted youth, wearing an ancient straw hat, a shirt originally of the material called “hickory,” but now patched in variegated colors, and blue cloth trousers well worn and frayed. As the youth tramped along he sang in a high piping voice one of those simple little songs which the playing children sing, and by way of illustration danced up and down and whipped the dust with a long hickory switch. On his heart was no shadow of the cares of men, and for this reason, perhaps, under his torn shirt was two-thirds of the happiness of the world.
As the herd wandered along under the great oaks that lined the roadway and the rays of the morning sun crept down through the green leaves, making queer mottled spots on the sleek cattle and brilliant shifting patches on the dewy grass, one looking on could easily have come to believe that the world had turned back some several hundred years, and this was a grassy forest glade of merry England, and the herd, cattle of the gruff, gigantic Saxon who rode among them on his huge red horse, scowling under his black brows and cursing by St. Withold and St. Dunstan and the soul of Hengist the evil times of the Conqueror that forced him to drive his herd into the thick forest at daybreak in order to preserve it from the marauding cut-throats of a Norman baron; and he would have looked close for great stones half-bedded in the moss, lasting monuments to the weird and bloody rites of some stern Druid colony long dead; and then glanced up sharply to see if that patch of thicker green in the deeper woods were not indeed the coat of some gallant outlaw whose bosom was English, and who stood ready with his yew bow and his cloth-yard shaft to join the huge Saxon in his stubborn fight against the bloody followers of Duke William of Normandy; and when the herd had wandered by one would have leaned over in the road to see if there was not a brass collar soldered fast around the neck of the happy cowherd, graven in Saxon letters with this inscription: “Zaak, the son of Jonas, is thrall to Rufus of Alshire.”
The cheery sunshine under the dear arch of blue, with its homely noises of awakening life and its cool breath, ladened with the fresh odor wafted from meadows of clover springing up with sweet new blossom after the harvest, all so conducive to careless, joyous existence, failed utterly to remove any portion of the anxiety from the face of the grazier.
He sat listlessly in his saddle, with his gray eyes half-closed and the muscles of his face drawn down in furrows; the red roan, trained from his colt days, assumed the duties of his master, and moved carefully among the cattle; his equine intelligence appreciating that it was a part of his duty to the indolent master, to see that the drove kept moving slowly, and that no bullock stopped to crop the wet grass by the roadside, or fight with his fellow.
The watches of the night had brought to Rufus Alshire no solution of the matter with which he had struggled so persistently during the evening before. He was acting, it was true, upon his temporary plan, but that seemed but an incident in the main vexatious problem.
The giant was now entirely oblivious of his environment, and deep in his troublous matter he spoke aloud. “If I could only hold the title,” he muttered, and then, as if realizing the folly of his hope, he gripped the tree of his saddle with his hand and straightened his mighty foot suddenly in the stirrup. The leather snapped under the great weight, and the iron stirrup dropped into the road. The red roan stopped short, and the huge Alshire, pronouncing some severe malediction on his ponderous size, dismounted, picked up the stirrup and tied it to the strap. Then he slipped the bridle rein over his aim and, walking along beside the horse, began to examine the herd with the critical eye of an expert, and comment thereon with the artlessness of a child.
“Beef for the British,” he said, “and as good beef as John Bull ever put under his ribs. They are broad on the backs and deep in the brisket and heavy in the quarters, and every black calf of them made the beam kick sixteen hundred pounds.”
The grazier slapped his horse fondly on the neck. “They'll please the Jews, won't they, boy?” The red roan pricked up his ears and rubbed his nose against his master's arm, as though this statement was quite in accord with his own private views of the matter. “They will ship well over the sea.” The giant laughed. “And by gad! if the rotten ships hold together the black brutes will get a blamed sight nearer to the Queen than most of the little snobs ambling around in the East.”
The herd of Rufus Alshire belonged to that species of beef cattle termed Polled-Angus, native to the lowlands of Scotland; a breed of comparatively recent importation. They were fine bullocks, full, round, and comely in form; hornless, trim of head and neck, and with coats as black as the fabled spirit of midnight. The law of natural selection had finally indicated this breed as best adapted to the conditions of the West Virginia grazier. It was hardy, easily maintained, and endured the rigor of the winter without distress, beside it was quick to mature and gained flesh rapidly, and then, too, the absence of horns rendered it easier to handle and far less dangerous.
The horn, a necessary and powerful weapon in the wild state, was in the state of domestication a useless incumbrance. Hence nature, laboring for the convenience of men, thrust in and produced the Polled-Angus.
The business of the grazier had been progressive. The powerful landowner, who in the autumn purchased his cattle from the stockmen of the interior counties, had ever encouraged the cultivation of the breed. For many years the short-horn Durham had been the great cattle of this inland country. It was an old race; old in England when the Scandinavian and the Dane swarmed over the river Tees. But the breed, though excellent, was rather slow to mature and not adapted to severe winters, and the breeder awakened to the needs of his market and casting about for an animal better adapted to his uses chanced upon the Hereford, first imported by the elder Clay of Kentucky. And the Hereford became the chief bovine of the grazier. He was old, too; old on the north side of the river Wye in the tenth century, and ancient of record, it is said, in the law of Howell the Good; but while a fine beef animal, he preserved one defect, the massive horn. Still he maintained his place, until on a certain autumn morning at a fat cattle show in Chicago, the good wife of a powerful Virginia grazier, on a quest for the ideal bullock, pointed down into the stock ring at the splendid Polled-Angus and said, “There he is, but he don't look human.” And there he was indeed, broad, and shiny black, and hornless as a man's palm—nature's answer to the breeder's dream.
The great tawny sun climbed high in the heavens; the heat of the day settled down over the living earth like an invisible mantle; the crisp freshness of the morning breeze had given place to the monotonous hot air of midday. The dust arose in clouds from under the feet of the herd, and the cattle themselves, warm and vexed with the irksome travel, were restless and difficult to control. The great Alshire and his huge horse moved here and there through the drove, white with dust; while the happy thrall plodded along behind the herd, whistling merrily and turning from time to time to strike some lagging bullock, and shout with childish glee “Go along you fat feller; to-night you will ride on the steam-cars, and to-morrow the British will eat you.” And passing a slight inaccuracy in the matter of time, the witless Zaak was entirely correct. To him the steam-cars were marvels from wonderland, and the British was some far-away gigantic monster with a mighty, insatiate maw.