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  I almost floated to the car and as I settled in my seat Beamish put his face to the open window.

  “Mr. Herriot …” He was not a man to whom gracious speech came easily and his cheeks, roughened and weathered by years of riding on the open moor, twitched as he sought for words. “Mr. Herriot, I’ve been thinking … you don’t have to be a horsey man to cure horses, do you?”

  There was something like an appeal in his eyes as we gazed at each other. I laughed suddenly and his expression relaxed. It was an indescribable satisfaction for me to hear voiced the conviction I had always held.

  “I’m glad to hear somebody say that at last,” I said, and drove away.

  CHAPTER 12

  I WAS ON GUARD outside the Grand. It was after midnight, with a biting wind swirling across the empty square, and I was so cold and bored that it was a relief even to slap the butt of my rifle in salute as a solitary officer went by.

  Wryly I wondered how, after my romantic ideas of training to be a pilot, I came to be defending the Grand Hotel at Scarborough against all comers. In a baleful way it seemed comic, and as I tramped frigidly round my short guard route, I kept telling myself, right, keep your sense of humour about it. On my right was a wall almost as tall as I was, and as I passed it continually, grimly trying to focus on how funny this all was, the wall reminded me of Mr. Bailes’ dog Shep. Now there was a creature with a sense of humour. I should think on him for a bit.

  Mr. Bailes’ little place was situated about half way along Highburn Village and to get into the farmyard you had to walk twenty yards or so between five-foot walls. On the left was the neighbouring house, on the right the front garden of the farm. In this garden Shep lurked for most of the day.

  He was a huge dog, much larger than the average collie. In fact I am convinced he was part Alsatian because though he had a luxuriant black and white coat there was something significant in the massive limbs and in the noble brown-shaded head with its upstanding ears. He was quite different from the stringy little animals I saw on my daily round.

  As I walked between the walls my mind was already in the byre, just visible at the far end of the yard. Because one of the Bailes’ cows, Rose by name, had the kind of obscure digestive ailment which interferes with veterinary surgeons’ sleep. They are so difficult to diagnose. This animal had begun to grunt and go off her milk two days ago and when I had seen her yesterday I had flitted from one possibility to the other. Could be a wire. But the fourth stomach was contracting well and there were plenty of rumenal sounds. Also she was eating a little hay in a half-hearted way.

  Could it be impaction …? Or a partial torsion of the gut …? There was abdominal pain without a doubt and that nagging temperature of 102.5°—that was damn like a wire. Of course I could settle the whole thing by opening the cow up, but Mr. Bailes was an old-fashioned type and didn’t like the idea of my diving into his animal unless I was certain of my diagnosis. And I wasn’t—there was no getting away from that.

  Anyway, I had built her up at the front end so that she was standing with her fore feet on a half door and had given her a strong oily purgative. “Keep the bowels open and trust in God,” an elderly colleague had once told me. There was a lot in that.

  I was half way down the alley between the walls with the hope bright before me that my patient would be improved when from nowhere an appalling explosion of sound blasted into my right ear. It was Shep again.

  The wall was just the right height for the dog to make a leap and bark into the ear of the passerby. It was a favourite gambit of his and I had been caught before; but never so successfully as now. My attention had been so far away and the dog had timed his jump to a split second so that his bark came at the highest point his teeth only inches from my face. And his voice befitted his size, a great bull bellow surging from the depths of his powerful chest and booming from his gaping jaws.

  I rose several inches into the air and when I descended, heart thumping, head singing, I glared over the wall. But as usual all I saw was the hairy form bounding away out of sight round the corner of the house.

  That was what puzzled me. Why did he do it? Was he a savage creature with evil designs on me or was it his idea of a joke? I never got near enough to him to find out.

  I wasn’t in the best of shape to receive bad news and that was what awaited me in the byre. I had only to look at the farmer’s face to know that the cow was worse.

  “Ah reckon she’s got a stoppage,” Mr. Bailes muttered gloomily.

  I gritted my teeth. The entire spectrum of abdominal disorders were lumped as “stoppages” by the older race of farmers. “The oil hasn’t worked, then?”

  “Nay, she’s nobbut passin’ little hard bits. It’s a proper stoppage, ah tell you.”

  “Right, Mr. Bailes,” I said with a twisted smile. “We’ll have to try something stronger.” I brought in from my car the gastric lavage outfit I loved so well and which has so sadly disappeared from my life. The long rubber stomach tube, the wooden gag with its leather straps to buckle behind the horns. As I pumped in the two gallons of warm water rich in formalin and sodium chloride I felt like Napoleon sending in the Old Guard at Waterloo. If this didn’t work nothing would.

  And yet I didn’t feel my usual confidence. There was something different here. But I had to try. I had to do something to start this cow’s insides functioning because I did not like the look of her today. The soft grunt was still there and her eyes had begun to retreat into her head—the worst sign of all in bovines. And she had stopped eating altogether.

  Next morning I was driving down the single village street when I saw Mrs. Bailes coming out of the shop. I drew up and pushed my head out of the window.

  “How’s Rose this morning, Mrs. Bailes?”

  She rested her basket on the ground and looked down at me gravely. “Oh, she’s bad, Mr. Herriot. Me husband thinks she’s goin’ down fast. If you want to find him you’ll have to go across the field there. He’s mendin’ the door in that little barn.”

  A sudden misery enveloped me as I drove over to the gate leading into the field. I left the car in the road and lifted the latch.

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!” I muttered as I trailed across the green. I had a nasty feeling that a little tragedy was building up here. If this animal died it would be a sickening blow to a small farmer with ten cows and a few pigs. I should be able to do something about it and it was a depressing thought that I was getting nowhere.

  And yet, despite it all, I felt peace stealing into my soul. It was a large field and I could see the barn at the far end as I walked with the tall grass brushing my knees. It was a meadow ready for cutting and suddenly I realised that it was high summer, the sun was hot and that every step brought the fragrance of clover and warm grass rising about me into the crystal freshness of the air. Somewhere nearby a field of broad beans was in full flower and as the exotic scent drifted across I found myself inhaling with half-closed eyes as though straining to discern the ingredients of the glorious melange.

  And then there was the silence; it was the most soothing thing of all. That and the feeling of being alone. I looked drowsily around at the empty green miles sleeping under the sunshine. Nothing stirred, there was no sound.

  Then without warning the ground at my feet erupted in an incredible blast of noise. For a dreadful moment the blue sky was obscured by an enormous hairy form and a red mouth went “WAAAHH!” in my face. Almost screaming, I staggered back and as I glared wildly I saw Shep disappearing at top speed towards the gate. Concealed in the deep herbage right in the middle of the field he had waited till he saw the whites of my eyes before making his assault.

  Whether he had been there by accident or whether he had spotted me arriving and slunk into position I shall never know, but from his point of view the result must have been eminently satisfactory because it was certainly the worst fright I have ever had. I live a life which is well larded with scares and alarms, but this great dog rising bellowing from that empty landsca