Next day her heart was filled with forebodings and uneasiness. Hundreds of cattle were driven into an extensive corral within the confines of her pasture, and thence, in small groups, they went into a chute, propelled by the whoops and outcries of sundry reckless horsemen who crowded their rear. Molly watched and wondered. She saw these cattle forced singly into a narrow runway; she saw them caught fast in a squeezer, heard their bellows of consternation and fright; and then there reached her the stinging odor of burned hair, when the branding irons seared the flesh. Upon which Molly would flip her tail in the air and lope away. But she always returned; much as she feared it, she could not leave this anguished assemblage.
It was Uncle Henry who discovered that the arrival of the herds was demoralizing our faithful benefactor. She no longer grazed sedately; even the succulent grama-grass of the creek-bottom failed to hold her, and she walked the barb-wire ceaselessly day and night. Her weight fell off in alarming fashion, and when, on the third evening, Uncle Henry approached with outstretched hand and honeyed speech, and the milk-pail cunningly concealed, she shook her big, patient head and moved off. He followed, and she quickened her pace.
“Consarn your fat haid!” roared Uncle Henry, never a patient man. “Hold still or I’ll take the hide off’n you.”
He tore after Molly, threatening dire visitations. Now, it takes an extremely clever person to circumvent a determined cow, when he is on foot and she has five thousand acres in which to manœuver, and Uncle Henry returned to headquarters, howling for somebody to lend him a horse and he would drag that old fool clear to Texas. We went without milk that night, and grumbled and swore precisely as if we had had nothing else all our lives.
“Hi-yi! Bear down on him, cowboys. More frijoles here!”
With a yell, Big John sprang to the lever of the squeezer and threw all his strength on it, gripping a plunging steer about the middle as he strove to win through the chute.
“Hot iron! Hot iron!” the wagon boss shrieked. “Somebody build that fire up. All right. That’s got him, Cas.”
Molly hung about near the corral, gazing on these frenzied activities in consternation. It was early morning and low-hanging mists were shredding before the sun.