.

"My!" said one of the cowboys, "wouldn't a little fresh milk go fine
after all that ptomaine we've been feeding on?"

"There's plenty of it there; help yourself," said I.

"I'd soon catch one if I knew which, and what to do when I got her," he
answered.

Then memories of boyhood days on the farm came over me and I said: "I'll
show you a cow in milk, and I'll milk her if you'll hold her."

"Agreed! Which is the one?"

I put my hands up to my mouth and let off a long bleat like a calf in
distress. The distant cattle threw up their heads and began "sniffing."
Another bleat and three cows separated from the others; two ran like mad
into the woods, the third kept throwing her head this way and that, but
not running. "That one," I said, "is your cow. She's in milk and not too
recently come in."

[Illustration: Milk Lady]

Then away went the cowboys to do their part. The herd scattered and the
cow tried to run, but the ponies sailed alongside, the lariats whistled
and in a flash she was held with one rope around her horns, the other
around one hind leg.

"Now's your chance, Milk-lady!" they shouted at me, and forward I went,
pail in hand, to milk that snorting, straining, wild-eyed thing. She
tried to hold her milk up, but I am an old hand at that work. She never
ceased trying to kick at me with her free hind leg, so I had to watch
the leg, and milk away. The high pitched "_tsee tsee_" had gradually
given place to the low "_tsow tsow_" of the two streams cutting the foam
when a peculiar smell grew stronger until it was nothing less than a
disgusting stench. For the first time I glanced down at the milk in the
pail, and there instead of a dimpled bank of snowy foam was a great
yeasty mass of yellowish brown streaked with blood.

Hastily rising and backing off, I said: "I've got plenty of milk now
for you two. The rest of us don't care for any. Hold on till I get back
to the trees."

Then, when I was safely under cover, the boys turned the cow loose. Of
course, her first impulse was revenge, but I was safe and those mounted
men knew how to handle a cow. She was glad to run off.

[Illustration]

"There's your milk," I said, and pointed to the pail I had left.
Evidently that cow had been suffering from more than one milk malady.
The boys upset the bloody milk right there, then took the pail to the
stream, where they washed it well, and back to camp, where we scalded it
out several times.

THE DANGEROUS NIGH