A Cow With a Reputation

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 474, 23 July 1948, Page 24

A Cow With a Reputation

Written for "The Listener" |}

by

G. R.

GILBERT

HIS isn’t the story of a criminal. It is the story of one of the most respectable, hard-working, industrious cows I have ever known. When I was a small boy it was my job to fetch her to the bail every evening. That must be 60 years ago now, but I can still remember Polly. At the time we lived at Irishman’s Flat in the diggings up the river from Greymouth. There was still gold there then and the diggers were still pretty active. Dad worked a claim together with Cockney Tom and Jack the Traveller. They were all right chaps too, with always a pocket full of sweets for me when they came up to our place, but I never did know what their full names were, nor, I think, did anyone else. But I used to hear Dad referred to as the Laird of Cockpen now and then, and it used to make me feel rather grand, although I hadn’t the faintest idea of who or what Cockpen might be. I asked Dad once, but he only roared with laughter. He had a fine chestnut beard in those days and I remember watching it with awe as it rose and fell on his chest with the laughter. Every night when Dad got home from | the claim he used to milk Polly and every night it was my duty to see that Polly was there waiting. Polly however had no sense of responsibilitythe nearer milking-time came, the further away from the bail she strayed. There weren’t any fences in those days

and Polly fed, mostly, in the bush, on broad-leaf and five-finger and anything else she fancied there. If Polly had been camouflage colour like so many of her kind, instead of pure speckless white I would probably have lost her a dozen times, as it was she stood out like a tombstone among the green and brown. But apart from greens, Polly liked a varied diet, and ‘this was constantly my worry, for Polly would eat blocks of common soap, boiled potatoes, loaves of bread and occasionally a roast of beef smeared with dripping, which had been left by some unfortunate digger on the bench outside his hut. Many a time I found Polly standing silently in the track, wearing a hang-dog expression, and a fine lather of soap hanging from her lower lip to her "knees. I didn’t mind Polly eating these things, as none of them seemed to taint the milk, but when Polly got into trouble I got into trouble too. It was the rule in those days that all the doors were left unlocked, and any traveller was expected to go in and make himself a cup of tea if he wanted it. But many a digger who would have given the shirt off his back to a stranger, has come roaring down the track after me when he has discovered Polly inside his hut with her teeth firmly clamped into half a loaf of bread. Many a time Polly and I have been accompanied by an irate digger back to our hut where Dad would be given an indignant account of the latest felony, and then would have to part up with the damages. I guess that cow must have given the most expensive milk on the Terrace when it was all reckoned up. Dad must have thought so too because he would frequently threaten to get rid of her, and it was only the persuasion of me, Polly’s only friend, that kept her from the butcher’s, * * * NN one occasion I was unable to find Polly in any of her usual haunts and I had gone over to Cockney Terrace to search for her. I wasn’t anticipating trouble, for there was only one digger left there-an old soldier called the British Lion. The British Lion had lived so long in the bush by himself that he did all his thinking aloud in the form of animated discussion, and as I got near his hut I heard him telling himself what should be done with people who let their cows get into other people’s gardens. His language was blunt to the point of brutality and I hastily concealed myself behind a tree and listened, In half a minute I heard enough to convince me that sweet reasonableness wouldn’t get Polly out of this scrape. And peering around the tree I could see that the British Lion had Polly properly impounded-the gate was barred and the old digger was waving what looked like a buffalo gun at the very least as he threatened our poor cow with sudden and violent death. Meanwhile Polly serenely chewed the

cud whilst standing square on a fow of his cabbages-what was left of them. I could see that things were moving towards a rapid climax, in which there mightn’t be any milk for tea, so I came out from behind the tree and called out. I kept 30 yards or so between me and the British Lion just in case. I told him that if I could take the cow Dad would square up the damage. "No," roared the British Lion. "That damned white cow-I’ll finish her like she finished off the peas. Tell the Laird of Cockpen he can come down and collect the skin. ... "

So I took the ‘sympathetic line. It was hafd luck, all right, I said, having all those peas eaten like that. But worse things could happen at sea — and what if his hut went up in smoke one day when he was down at the claim? I thought that would get him, for his hut had burned down a while before and he had a great fear of fire. It, got him all right, but not quite in the way I had expected. The old cove thought I was threatening to burn him out if he didn’t turn over Polly. He lowered his gun and began muttering to himself, then he rammed the butt hard into the ground a couple of times as though clinching an argument. "You can come and get your cow," he growled. "Tell the Laird he’ll have to ‘square up with eg ee

But I wasn’t trusting him much and I made him drive Polly out of the garden, and then I came up and collected her from no-man’s land. I drove her away, leaving the old digger muttering about the evil ways of youth. All the way home I was wondering how I was going to stop Polly from getting over into Cockney Terrace again. I felt that I’d never be popular with the British Lion again. , But. I needn’t have worried, for Polly solved that problem, and, indeed, all others, by falling over a cliff when she was reaching out for a nice clump of five-finger, and I was her only mourner.