in the chaff, or stood
about humped and shivering--only on sunny days did their arching backs
subside. Naturally each animal grew a thick coat of long hair, and
succeeded in coming through to grass again, but the cows of some of our
neighbors were less fortunate. Some of them got so weak that they had to
be "tailed" up as it was called. This meant that they were dying of
hunger and the sight of them crawling about filled me with indignant
wrath. I could not understand how a man, otherwise kind, could let his
stock suffer for lack of hay when wild grass was plentiful.

One of my duties, and one that I dreaded, was pumping water for our
herd. This was no light job, especially on a stinging windy morning, for
the cows, having only dry fodder, required an enormous amount of liquid,
and as they could only drink while the water was fresh from the well,
some one must work the handle till the last calf had absorbed his
fill--and this had to be done when the thermometer was thirty below,
just the same as at any other time.

And this brings up an almost forgotten phase of bovine psychology. The
order in which the cows drank as well as that in which they entered the
stable was carefully determined and rigidly observed. There was always
one old dowager who took precedence, all the others gave way before her.
Then came the second in rank who feared the leader but insisted on
ruling all the others, and so on down to the heifer. This order, once
established, was seldom broken (at least by the females of the herd, the
males were more unstable) even when the leader grew old and almost
helpless.

We took advantage of this loyalty when putting them into the barn. The
stall furthest from the door belonged to "old Spot," the second to
"Daisy" and so on, hence all I had to do was to open the door and let
them in--for if any rash young thing got out of her proper place she was
set right, very quickly, by her superiors.

Some farms had ponds or streams to which their flocks were driven for
water but this to me was a melancholy winter function, and sometimes as
I joined Burt or Cyrus in driving the poor humped and shivering beasts
down over the snowy plain to a hole chopped in the ice, and watched them
lay their aching teeth to the frigid draught, trying a dozen times to
temper their mouths to the chill I suffered with them. As they streamed
along homeward, heavy with their sloshing load, they seemed the
personification of a desolate and ab