Beautiful Joe

She made a gesture in the direction of the suffering horse, and said, frankly, “Yes, I do.”

“Well, my dear girl,” he said, “father and I are with you. If we can hunt Barron down, we’ll do it.” Then he muttered to himself as she turned away, “She is a real Puritan, gentle, and sweet, and good, and yet severe. Rewards for the virtuous, punishments for the vicious,” and he repeated some poetry:

“She was so charitable and so piteous,She would weep if that she saw a mouseCaught in a trap, if it were dead or bled.”

Miss Laura saw that Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were doing all that could be done for the cow and horse, so she wandered down to a hollow at the back of the house, where the Englishman had kept his pig. Just now, he looked more like a greyhound than a pig. His legs were so long, his nose so sharp, and hunger, instead of making him stupid like the horse and cow, had made him more lively. I think he had probably not suffered so much as they had, or perhaps he had had a greater store of fat to nourish him. Mr. Harry said that if he had been a girl, he would have laughed and cried at the same time when he discovered that pig. He must have been asleep or exhausted when we arrived, for there was not a sound out of him, but shortly afterward he had set up a yelling that attracted Mr. Harry’s attention, and made him run down to him. Mr. Harry said he was raging around his pen, digging the ground with his snout, falling down and getting up again, and by a miracle, escaping death by choking from the rope that was tied around his neck.

Now that his hunger had been satisfied, he was gazing contentedly at his little trough that was half full of good, sweet milk. Mr. Harry said that a starving animal, like a starving person, should only be fed a little at a time; but the Englishman’s animals had always been fed poorly, and their stomachs had contracted so that they could not eat much at one time.

Miss Laura got a stick and scratched poor piggy’s back a little, and then she went back to the house. In a short time we went home with Mr. Wood. Mr. Harry was going to stay all night with the sick animals, and his mother would send him things to make him comfortable. She was better by the time we got home, and was horrified to hear the tale of Mr. Barron’s neglect. Later in the evening, she sent one of the men over with a whole box full of things for her darling boy, and nice, hot tea, done up for him in a covered dish. When the man came home, he said that Mr. Harry would not sleep in the Englishman’s dirty house, but had slung a hammock out under the trees. However, he would not be able to sleep much, for he had his lantern by his side, all ready to jump up and attend to the horse and cow. It was a very lonely place for him out there in the woods, and his mother said that she would be glad when the sick animals could be driven to their own farm.

CHAPTER XXVIII THE END OF THE ENGLISHMAN

IN a few days, thanks to Mr. Harry’s constant care, the horse and cow were able to walk. It was a mournful procession that came into the yard at Dingley Farm. The hollow-eyed horse, and lean cow, and funny, little thin pig, staggering along in such a shaky fashion. Their hoofs were diseased, and had partly rotted away, so that they could not walk straight. Though it was only a mile or two from Penhollow to Dingley Farm, they were tired out, and dropped down exhausted on their comfortable beds.

Miss Laura was so delighted to think that they had all lived, that she did not know what to do. Her eyes were bright and shining, and she went from one to another with such a happy face. The queer little pig that Mr. Harry had christened “Daddy Longlegs,” had been washed, and he lay on his heap of straw in the corner of his neat little pen, and surveyed his clean trough and abundance of food with the air of a prince. Why, he would be clean and dry here, and all his life he had been used to dirty, damp Penhollow, with the trees hanging over him, and his little feet in a mass of filth and dead leaves. Happy little pig! His ugly eyes seemed to blink and gleam with gratitude, and he knew Miss Laura and Mr. Harry as well as I did.

His tiny tail was curled so tight that it was almost in a knot. Mr. Wood said that was a sign that he was healthy and happy: and that when poor Daddy was at Penhollow he had noticed that his tail hung as limp and as loose as the tail of a rat. He came and leaned over the pen with Miss Laura, and had a little talk with her about pigs. He said they were by no means the stupid animals that some people considered them. He had had pigs that were as clever as dogs. One little black pig that he had once sold to a man away back in the country had found his way home, through the woods, across the river, up hill and down dale, and he’d been taken to the place with a bag over his head. Mr. Wood said that he kept that pig because he knew so much.

He said the most knowing pigs he ever saw were Canadian pigs. One time he was having a trip on a sailing vessel, and it anchored in a long, narrow harbor in Canada, where the tide came in with a front four or five feet high called the “bore.” There was a village opposite the place where the ship was anchored, and every day at low tide, a number of pigs came down to look for shell-fish. Sometimes they went out for half a mile over the mud flats, but always a few minutes before the tide came rushing in they turned and hurried to the shore. Their instincts warned them that if they stayed any longer they would be drowned.

Mr. Wood had a number of pigs, and after a while Daddy was put in with them, and a fine time he had of it making friends with the other little grunters. They were often let out in the pasture or orchard, and when they were there, I could always single out Daddy from among them, because he was the smartest. Though he had been brought up in such a miserable way, he soon learned to take very good care of himself at Dingley Farm, and it was amusing to see him when a storm was coming on, running about in a state of great excitement carrying little bundles of straw in his mouth to make himself a bed. He was a white pig, and was always kept very clean. Mr. Wood said that it is wrong to keep pigs dirty. They like to be clean as well as other animals, and if they were kept so, human beings would not get so many diseases from eating their flesh.

The cow, poor unhappy creature, never, as long as she lived on Dingley Farm, lost a strange melancholy look from her eyes. I have heard it said that animals forget past unhappiness, and perhaps some of them do. I know that I have never forgotten my one miserable year with Jenkins, and I have been a sober, thoughtful dog in consequence of it, and not playful like some dogs who have never known what it is to be really unhappy.

It always seemed to me that the Englishman’s cow was thinking of her poor dead calf, starved to death by her cruel master. She got well herself, and came and went with the other cows, seemingly as happy as they, but often when I watched her standing chewing her cud, and looking away in the distance, I could see a difference between her face and the faces of the cows that had always been happy on Dingley Farm. Even the farm hands called her “Old Melancholy,” and soon she got to be known by that name, or Mel, for short. Until she got well, she was put into the cow stable, where Mr. Wood’s cows all stood at night upon raised platforms of earth covered over with straw litter, and she was tied with a Dutch halter, so that she could lie down and go to sleep when she wanted to. When she got well, she was put out to pasture with the other cows.

The horse they named “Scrub,” because he could never be, under any circumstance, anything but a broken-down, plain-looking animal. He was put into the horse stable in a stall next Fleetfoot, and as the partition was low, they could look over at each other. In time, by dint of much doctoring, Scrub’s hoofs became clean and sound and he was able to do some work. Miss Laura petted him a great deal. She often took out apples to the stable, and Fleetfoot would throw up his beautiful head and look reproachfully over the partition at her, for she always stayed longer with Scrub than with him, and Scrub always got the larger share of whatever good thing was going.

Poor old Scrub! I think he loved Miss Laura. He was a stupid sort of a horse, and always acted as if he was blind. He would run his nose up and down the front of her dress, nip at the buttons, and be very happy if he could get a bit of her watch-chain between his strong teeth. If he was in the field he never seemed to know her till she was right under his pale-colored eyes. Then he would be delighted to see her. He was not blind, though, for Mr. Wood said he was not. He said he had probably not been an over-bright horse to start with, and had been made more dull by cruel usage.

As for the Englishman, the master of these animals, a very strange thing happened to him. He came to a terrible end, but for a long time no one knew anything about it. Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were so very angry with him that they said they would leave no stone unturned to have him punished, or at least to have it known what a villain he was. They sent the paper with the crest on it to Boston. Some people there wrote to England, and found out that it was the crest of a noble and highly esteemed family, and some earl was at the head of it. They were all honorable people in this family except one man, a nephew, not a son, of the late earl. He was the black sheep of them all. As a young man, he had led a wild and wicked life, and had ended by forging the name of one of his friends, so that he was obliged to leave England and take refuge in America. By the description of this man, Mr. Wood knew that he must be Mr. Barron, so he wrote to these English people, and told them what a wicked thing their relative had done in leaving his animals to starve. In a short time, he got an answer from them, which was, at the same time, very proud and very touching. It came from Mr. Barron’s cousin, and he said quite frankly that he knew his relative was a man of evil habits, but it seemed as if nothing could be done to reform him. His family was accustomed to send a quarterly allowance to him, on condition that he led a quiet life in some retired place, but their last remittance to him was lying unclaimed in Boston, and they thought he must be dead. Could Mr. Wood tell them anything about him?

Mr. Wood looked very thoughtful when he got this letter, then he said, “Harry, how long is it since Barron ran away?”

“About eight weeks,” said Mr. Harry.

“That’s strange,” said Mr. Wood. “The money these English people sent him would get to Boston just a few days after he left here. He is not the man to leave it long unclaimed. Something must have happened to him. Where do you suppose he would go from Penhollow?”

“I have no idea, sir,” said Mr. Harry.

“And how would he go?” said Mr. Wood. “He did not leave Riverdale Station, because he would have been spotted by some of his creditors.”

“Perhaps he would cut through the woods to the Junction,” said Mr. Harry.

“Just what he would do,” said Mr. Wood, slapping his knee. “I’ll be driving over there to-morrow to see Thompson, and I’ll make inquiries.”

Mr. Harry spoke to his father the next night when he came home, and asked him if he had found out anything. “Only this,” said Mr. Wood. “There’s no one answering to Barron’s description who has left Riverdale Junction within a twelvemonth. He must have struck some other station. We’ll let him go. The Lord looks out for fellows like that.”

“We will look out for him if he ever comes back to Riverdale,” said Mr. Harry, quietly. All through the village, and in the country it was known what a dastardly trick the Englishman had played, and he would have been roughly handled if he had dared return.

Months passed away, and nothing was heard of him. Late in the autumn, after Miss Laura and I had gone back to Fairport, Mrs. Wood wrote her about the end of the Englishman. Some Riverdale lads were beating about the woods, looking for lost cattle, and in their wanderings came to an old stone quarry that had been disused for years. On one side there was a smooth wall of rock, many feet deep. On the other the ground and rock were broken away, and it was quite easy to get into it. They found that by some means or other, one of their cows had fallen into this deep pit, over the steep side of the quarry. Of course the poor creature was dead, but the boys, out of curiosity, resolved to go down and look at her. They clambered down, found the cow, and, to their horror and amazement, discovered near-by the skeleton of a man. There was a heavy walking-stick by his side, which they recognized as one that the Englishman had carried.

He was a drinking man, and perhaps he had taken something that he thought would strengthen him for his morning’s walk, but which had, on the contrary, bewildered him, and made him lose his way and fall into the quarry. Or he might have started before daybreak, and in the darkness have slipped and fallen down this steep wall of rock. One leg was doubled under him, and if he had not been instantly killed by the fall, he must have been so disabled that he could not move. In that lonely place, he would call for help in vain, so he may have perished by the terrible death of starvation the death he had thought to mete out to his suffering animals.

Mrs. Wood said that there was never a sermon preached in Riverdale that had the effect that the death of this wicked man had, and it reminded her of a verse in the Bible: “He made a pit and he digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made.” Mrs. Wood said that her husband had written about the finding of Mr. Barron’s body to his English relatives, and had received a letter from them in which they seemed relieved to hear that he was dead. They thanked Mr. Wood for his plain speaking in telling them of their relative’s misdeeds, and said that from all they knew of Mr. Barron’s past conduct, his influence would be for evil and not for good, in any place that he choose to live in. They were having their money sent from Boston to Mr. Wood, and they wished him to expend it in the way he thought best fitted to counteract the evil effects of their namesake’s doings in Riverdale.

When this money came, it amounted to some hundreds of dollars. Mr. Wood would have nothing to do with it. He handed it over to the Band of Mercy, and they formed what they called the “Barron Fund,” which they drew upon when they wanted money for buying and circulating humane literature. Mrs. Wood said that the fund was being added to, and the children were sending all over the State leaflets and little books which preached the gospel of kindness to God’s lower creation. A stranger picking one of them up, and seeing the name of the wicked Englishman printed on the title-page, would think that he was a friend and benefactor to the Riverdale people the very opposite of what he gloried in being.

CHAPTER XXIX A TALK ABOUT SHEEP

MISS LAURA was very much interested in the sheep on Dingley Farm. There was a flock in the orchard near the house that she often went to see. She always carried roots and vegetables to them, turnips particularly, for they were very fond of them; but they would not come to her to get them, for they did not know her voice. They only lifted their heads and stared at her when she called them. But when they heard Mr. Wood’s voice, they ran to the fence, bleating with pleasure, and trying to push their noses through to get the carrot or turnip, or whatever he was handing to them. He called them his little Southdowns, and he said he loved his sheep, for they were the most gentle and inoffensive creature that he had on his farm.

One day when he came into the kitchen inquiring for salt, Miss Laura said: “Is it for the sheep?”

“Yes,” he replied; “I am going up to the woods pasture to examine my Shropshires.”

“You would like to go too, Laura,” said Mrs. Wood. “Take your hands right away from that cake. I’ll finish frosting it for you. Run along and get your broad-brimmed hat. It’s very hot.”

Miss Laura danced out into the hall and back again, and soon we were walking up, back of the house, along a path that led us through the fields to the pasture. “What are you going to do, uncle?” she said; “and what are those funny things in your hands?”

“Toe-clippers,” he replied; “and I am going to examine the sheeps’ hoofs. You know we’ve had warm, moist weather all through July, and I’m afraid of foot-rot. Then they’re sometimes troubled with overgrown hoofs.”

“What do you do if they get foot-rot?” asked Miss Laura.

“I’ve various cures,” he said. “Paring and clipping, and dipping the hoof in blue vitriol and vinegar, or rubbing it on, as the English shepherds do. It destroys the diseased part, but doesn’t affect the sound.”

“Do sheep have many diseases?” asked Miss Laura. “I know one of them myself that is the scab.”

“A nasty thing that,” said Mr. Wood, vigorously; “and a man that builds up a flock from a stockyard often finds it out to his cost.”

“What is it like?” asked Miss Laura.

“The sheep get scabby from a microbe under the skin, which causes them to itch fearfully, and they lose their wool.”

“And can’t it be cured?”

“Oh, yes! with time and attention. There are different remedies. I believe petroleum is the best.”

By this time we had got to a wide gate that opened into the pasture. As Mr. Wood let Miss Laura go through and then closed it behind her, he said, “You are looking at that gate. You want to know why it is so long, don’t you?”

“Yes, uncle,” she said; “but I can’t bear to ask so many questions.”

“Ask as many as you like,” he said, good-naturedly. “I don’t mind answering them. Have you ever seen sheep pass through a gate or door?”

“Oh, yes, often.”

“And how do they act?”

“Oh, so silly, uncle. They hang back, and one waits for another, and, finally, they all try to go at once.”

“Precisely; when one goes they all want to go, if it was to jump into a bottomless pit. Many sheep are injured by overcrowding, so I have my gates and doors very wide. Now, let us call them up.” There wasn’t one in sight, but when Mr. Wood lifted up his voice and cried: “Ca nan, nan, nan!” black faces began to peer out from among the bushes; and little black legs, carrying white bodies, came hurrying up the stony paths from the cooler parts of the pasture. Oh, how glad they were to get the salt! Mr. Wood let Miss Laura spread it on some flat rocks, then they sat down on a log under a tree and watched them eating it and licking the rocks when it was all gone. Miss Laura sat; fanning herself with her hat and smiling at them. “You funny, woolly things,” she said “You’re not so stupid as some people think you are. Lie still, Joe. If you show yourself, they may run away.”

I crouched behind the log, and only lifted my head occasionally to see what the sheep were doing. Some of them went back into the woods, for it was very hot in this bare part of the pasture, but the most of them would not leave Mr. Wood, and stood staring at him. “That’s a fine sheep, isn’t it?” said Miss Laura, pointing to one with the blackest face, and the blackest legs, and largest body of those near us.

“Yes; that’s old Jessica. Do you notice how she’s holding her head close to the ground?”

“Yes; is there any reason for it?”

“There is. She’s afraid of the grub fly. You often see sheep holding their noses in that way in the summer time. It is to prevent the fly from going into their nostrils, and depositing an egg which will turn into a grub and annoy and worry them. When the fly comes near, they give a sniff and run as if they were crazy, still holding their noses close to the ground. When I was a boy, and the sheep did that, we thought that they had colds in their heads, and used to rub tar on their noses. We knew nothing about the fly then, but the tar cured them, and is just what I use now. Two or three times a month during hot weather, we put a few drops of it on the nose of every sheep in the flock.”

“I suppose farmers are like other people, and are always finding out better ways of doing their work, aren’t they, uncle?” said Miss Laura.

“Yes, my child. The older I grow, the more I find out, and the better care I take of my stock. My grandfather would open his eyes in amazement, and ask me if I was an old women petting her cats if he were alive, and could know the care I give my sheep. He used to let his flock run till the fields were covered with snow, and bite as close as they liked, till there wasn’t a scrap of feed left. Then he would give them an open shed to run under, and throw down their hay outside. Grain they scarcely knew the taste of. That they would fall off in flesh, and half of them lose their lambs in the spring, was an expected thing. He would say I had them kennelled, if he could see my big, closed sheds, with the sunny windows that my flock spend the winter in. I even house them during the bad fall storms. They can run out again. Indeed, I like to get them in, and have a snack of dry food, to break them in to it. They are in and out of those sheds all winter. You must go in, Laura, and see the self-feeding racks. On bright, winter days they get a run in the cornfields. Cold doesn’t hurt sheep. It’s the heavy rain that soaks their fleeces.

“With my way I seldom lose a sheep, and they’re the most profitable stock I have. If I could not keep them, I think I’d give up farming. Last year my lambs netted me eight dollars each. The fleeces of the ewes average eight pounds, and sell for two dollars each. That’s something to brag of in these days, when so many are giving up the sheep industry.”

“How many sheep have you, uncle?” asked Miss Laura.

“Only fifty, now. Twenty-five here and twenty-five down below in the orchard. I’ve been selling a good many this spring.”

“These sheep are larger than those in the orchard, aren’t they?” said Miss Laura.

“Yes; I keep those few Southdowns for their fine quality. I don’t make as much on them as I do on these Shropshires. For an all-around sheep I like the Shropshire. It’s good for mutton, for wool, and for rearing lambs. There’s a great demand for mutton nowadays, all through our eastern cities. People want more and more of it. And it has to be tender, and juicy, and finely flavored, so a person has to be particular about the feed the sheep get.”

“Don’t you hate to have these creatures killed that you have raised and tended so carefully?” said Miss Laura with a little shudder.

“I do,” said her uncle; “but never an animal goes off my place that I don’t know just how it’s going to be put to death. None of your sending sheep to market with their legs tied together and jammed in a cart, and sweating and suffering for me. They’ve got to go standing comfortably on their legs, or go not at all. And I’m going to know the butcher that kills my animals, that have been petted like children. I said to Davidson, over there in Hoytville, ‘If I thought you would herd my sheep and lambs and calves together, and take them one by one in sight of the rest, and stick your knife into them, or stun them, and have the others lowing, and bleating, and crying in their misery, this is the last consignment you would ever get from me.’

“He said, ‘Wood, I don’t like my business, but on the word of an honest man, my butchering is done as well as it can be. Come and see for yourself.’

“He took me to his slaughter-house, and though I didn’t stay long, I saw enough to convince me that he spoke the truth. He has different pens and sheds, and the killing is done as quietly as possible; the animals are taken in one by one, and though the others suspect what is going on, they can’t see it.”

“These sheep are a long way from the house,” said Miss Laura; “don’t the dogs that you were telling me about attack them?”

“No; for since I had that brush with Windham’s dog, I’ve trained them to go and come with the cows. It’s a queer thing, but cows that will run from a dog when they are alone will fight him if he meddles with their calves or the sheep. There’s not a dog around that would dare to come into this pasture, for he knows the cows would be after him with lowered horns, and a business look in their eyes. The sheep in the orchard are safe enough, for they’re near the house, and if a strange dog came around, Joe would settle him, wouldn’t you, Joe?” and Mr. Wood looked behind the log at me.

I got up and put my head on his arm, and he went on: “By and by, the Southdowns will be changed up here, and the Shropshires will go down to the orchard. I like to keep one flock under my fruit trees. You know there is an old proverb ‘The sheep has a golden hoof.’ They save me the trouble of ploughing. I haven’t ploughed my orchard for ten years, and don’t expect to plough it for ten years more. Then your Aunt Hattie’s hens are so obliging that they keep me from the worry of finding ticks at shearing time. All the year round, I let them run among the sheep, and they nab every tick they see.”