The Lord God Made Them All Read online

  “They do indeed.” I smiled at the men and waved my hand in greeting. They jumped to their feet and bowed. “Right,” I said to the farmer, “you can be having your dinners while I’m gone. I’ll be back in about half an hour.”

  When I returned, we led the cow to a patch of soft grass. Her progress was painfully slow as she trailed her almost useless hind leg.

  I buckled the muzzle to her head and dribbled the chloroform onto the sponge. As she inhaled the strange vapour her eyes widened in surprise, then she stumbled forward and sank to the turf.

  I slipped a round stake into the animal’s groin and stationed the two biggest men at either end of it, then I fastened a rope above the fetlock and gave the other end to Mr. Preston and the remaining two Germans.

  The stage was set. I crouched over the pelvis and placed both hands on the bulging head of the femur. Would it stay obstinately still or would I feel it riding up the side of the acetabulum on the way to its proper home?

  Anyway, this was the moment, and I took a deep breath. “Pull!” I shouted, and the three men on the rope hauled away, while the brown corded arms on each side of me took the strain on the stake.

  No doubt an unedifying spectacle, this tug of war with the sleeping animal in the middle. Not much science in evidence, but country practice is often like that.

  However, I had no time for theorising—all my mind was concentrated on that jutting bone under my hands. “Pull!” I yelled again, and fresh grunts of effort came back in reply.

  I clenched my teeth. The thing wasn’t moving. I couldn’t believe it could resist the terrific traction, but it was like a rock.

  Then, when the feeling of defeat was rising, I felt a stirring beneath my fingers. It all happened in seconds after that—the lifting of the femoral head as I pushed frantically at it and the loud click as it flopped into its socket. We had won.

  I waved my arms in delight. “All right, let go!” I crawled to the cow’s head and whipped off the muzzle.

  We heaved her onto her chest, and she lay there, blinking and shaking her head as consciousness returned. I could hardly wait for what is one of the most rewarding moments in veterinary practice, and it came when the cow rose to her feet and strolled over the grass without the trace of a limp. The five faces, sweating in the hot sunshine, watched in happy amazement, and though I had seen it all before, I felt the warm flush of triumph that is always new.

  I handed cigarettes round the prisoners, and before I left I drew on my scanty store of German.

  “Danke schoen!” I said fervently, and I really meant it.

  “Bitte! Bitte!” they cried, all smiles. They had enjoyed the whole thing, and I had the feeling that this would be one of the tales they would tell when they returned to their homes.

  A few days later, Siegfried and I alighted at Village Farm, Harford. We had come together because we had been told that our patient, a Red Poll bullock, was of an uncooperative disposition, and we thought that a combined operation was indicated.

  The farmer led us to the fold yard where about twenty cattle were eating turnips. “That’s the one,” he said, pointing to an enormously fat beast, “and that’s the thing I was tellin’ ye about.” He indicated a growth as big as a football dangling from the animal’s belly.

  Siegfried gave him a hard look. “Really, Mr. Harrison, you should have called us out to this long ago. Why did you let it get so big?”

  The farmer took off his hat and scratched his balding head ruminatively. “Aye, well, you know how it is. Ah kept meanin’ to give you a ring, but it slipped me mind and time went on.”

  “It’s a hell of a size now,” Siegfried grunted.

  “Ah know, ah know. I allus had the hope that it might drop off because he’s a right wild sod. You can’t do much with ’im.”

  “All right, then.” Siegfried shrugged. “Bring a halter, and we’ll drive him into that box over there.”

  The farmer left, and my partner turned to me. “You know, James, that tumour isn’t as fearsome as it looks. It’s beautifully pedunculated, and if we can get a shot of local into that narrow neck we can ligate it and have it off in no time.”

  The farmer returned with the halter, and he was accompanied by a dark little man in denims.

  “This is Luigi,” he said. “Italian prisoner. Don’t speak no English, but ’e’s very handy at all sorts o’ jobs.”

  I could imagine Luigi being handy. He was short in stature, but his wide spread of shoulder and muscular arms suggested great strength.

  We said hello, and the Italian returned our greetings with an inclination of his head and a grave smile. He carried an aura of dignity and self-assurance.

  After a bit of galloping round the fold yard, we managed to get our patient into the box, but we soon realised that our troubles were only beginning.

  Red Polls are big cattle, and an ill-natured one can be a problem. This fat creature had a mean look in his eyes, and all our attempts to halter him were unavailing. He either whipped away from the rope or shook his head threateningly at us. Once, as he thundered past me I got my fingers into his nose, but he brushed me off like a fly and lashed out with a hind leg, catching me a glancing blow on the thigh.

  “He’s like an elephant,” I gasped. “God only knows how we’re going to catch him.”

  The sedative injections for such animals and the metal crushes to restrain them were still years in the future, and Siegfried and I were looking gloomily at the bullock when Luigi stepped forward.

  He held up a hand and loosed off a burst of Italian at us. None of us could understand him, but we took his point as he ushered us back against the wall with great ceremony. Plainly he was going to do something, but what?

  He advanced stealthily on the bullock, then with a lightning movement he seized one of the ears in both hands. The animal took off immediately but without its previous abandon. Luigi was screwing the ear round on its long axis, and it seemed to act as a brake because the beast slowed to a halt and stood there, head on one side, glancing almost plaintively up at the little man.

  I was reminded irresistibly of pictures of Billy Bunter being held by a Greyfriars prefect, and I almost expected the bullock to cry, “Ouch! Yaroo! Leggo my ear!”

  But I didn’t have much time for musing because Luigi, in full command of the situation, jerked his head towards the hanging tumour.

  Siegfried and I leaped forward. We had never seen anybody catch a beast by the ear before, but we weren’t going to discuss it. This was our chance.

  I cradled the growth in my hands while Siegfried injected the local into the neck. As the needle entered the skin the hairy leg twitched, and under ordinary circumstances we would have been kicked out of the box, but Luigi took another half-turn on the ear and rapped out a colourful reprimand. The animal subsided immediately and stood motionless as we worked.

  Siegfried applied a strong ligature and severed the neck of the growth bloodlessly with an ecraseur. The tumour thudded onto the straw. The operation was over.

  Luigi released the ear and received our congratulations with a half-smile and a gracious nod of his head. He really was a man of enormous presence.

  Now, more than thirty years later, Siegfried and I still talk about him. We have both tried to catch large cattle by the ears without the slightest success; so was Luigi just an amateur with wrists of steel or was he a farmer, and do they do it that way in Italy after a lifetime of practice? We still don’t know.

  One still summer evening I was returning from a call when I heard the sound of singing. It was a rich, swelling chorus of many voices, and it seemed to come from nowhere. I stopped the car and wound down the window. The fells rose around me, their summits glinting in the last sunshine, but the only living creatures were the cattle and sheep grazing on the walled slopes.

  Then I saw Knowle Manor perched on a plateau high above, and I remembered that hundreds of Russian prisoners were billeted there.

  These men were singing the songs of th