Suddenly, in the midst of this charmed silence, the prolonged blast of a huntsman's horn, and the deep baying of many hounds, came sweeping up the ravine below. The sleepers sprang to their feet, rubbed their eyes, and peered over the brink of the precipice.
"'Tis Madame la Comtesse out with the hounds!" said the elder of the three--a big, burly, sun-browned mountaineer of some fifty-five or sixty years of age.
"_Peste!_ It is my luck never to be in the way when she rides!" exclaimed one of the two younger herdsmen. "Here is the third time our new mistress has hunted of late, and I have never yet seen her."
The horns rang out again, but this time farther away and more faintly. Once more, and it was but a breath upon the breeze. Then all was silent as before.
"They have gone round by the Gorge des Loups," said the elder of the trio.
Then, looking round the horizon, he added:--
"There is a storm brewing somewhere--and the shadows are lengthening. 'Tis time we went down to the Buron, lads, and saw to the milking."
Now these three constituted the usual triumvirate of the Haute Auvergne--the _vacher_, or cowkeeper, (sometimes called the _buronnier_) who makes the cheeses which form the principal revenue of the landowners in this part of France; the _boutilier_ who makes the butter; and the _pâtre_, or herdsman, who looks after the cows, and keeps the Buron and dairy in order. The distinctions of rank among these three are strictly observed.
The _varher_ is a person of authority, "a wise fellow, and, what is more, an officer" the _boutilier_ comes next in dignity; and the _pâtre_ is under both. The Buron, or little wooden hut, in which they live during the six Summer months, in Switzerland would be called a châlet. It is generally built of wood, and divided into three chambers, the first of which is for living and cooking in, and is provided with a rude fire-place and chimney; the second is for the cheese-making, and contains milk-pails, churns, and other implements; the third serves for a cheese-room, store-room, and sleeping-room. A small kitchen-garden, a stable, a pigsty, and an enclosure in which the cattle take refuge in rough weather, completes the establishment.
The Buron to which the three herdsmen now took their way stood on a green slope surrounded by oaks, about six hundred feet below the spot on which they had been sleeping. As they went along, the cows came to their call and followed them, knowing that milking-time was come. Every cow--and there were fifty in all--was branded on the flank with a coronet and an initial P, thus showing them to be the property of the Countess de Peyrelade, a young and wealthy widow whose estates extended for many miles to the eastward of the Plomb de Cantal. Other herds, other Burons, other dependents, she had scattered about the neighbouring hillsides, all portioned off in the same way--namely, fifty cows and three men to each district.