The Crowstarver Read Online Free PDF Page B

cottage, the more it brightened.
    As they went in through the garden gate, Spider gave vent to the longest sentence of his life. ‘Spider not go school, Mum?’ he asked anxiously.
    Kathie shook her head.
    He grinned hugely. ‘Good un!’ he shouted.

C HAPTER S IX
    T here was no dairy herd on Outoverdown Farm. Instead, Mister bought in a large number of stirks, that is to say maiden heifers. These came from Ireland and were all Dairy Shorthorns. Though he knew he could rely upon the dealers to find him decent stock, he went over himself, each winter, ostensibly to check the quality of the animals on offer, but actually to get a week’s hunting with a well-known Irish pack.
    The Shorthorn stirks were varied in colour, red, red-and-white, white, and roan, and Mister ran them out on the downs, each bunch with its own bull. Then, eight months to a year later, they would go to Salisbury Market to be sold as springers, heifers, that is, that were approachingtheir first calving; ‘springing to calve’, as the term was.
    The bulls were all Aberdeen Angus, chosen for their placidity, but also because that breed tends to throw smallish offspring, so that the Irish heifers could calve more easily.
    These cattle, a hundred to a hundred and fifty of them on the farm at any one time, were Percy Pound’s special responsibility and interest. Of the other farm livestock, he well knew that he could entrust the care of the sheep to Tom Sparrow, of the horses to Ephraim Stanhope, and of the laying hens, which were also kept up on the downs in movable fold units, to Stan Ogle.
    Of the other farm men, Albie helped his father or Tom as and when needed, and Red and Rhode Ogle gave their father a hand with the daily moving of the folds. The Butts, Billy and his nephews Frank and Phil, were general farm workers, able to turn their hands to any job.
    The foreman liked nothing better than to ride his old Matchless 500 c.c. motorcycle up the drove, or indeed across the fields, and then to dismount and walk across the down to check the cattle. He thought there was no finer sight to see than, against a backdrop of rolling downland, a big bunch of those Shorthorn heifers movingacross the grass in all their variety of colour, while with them, usually bringing up the rear on account of weight, shortness of leg, and general idleness of disposition, slouched the stout figure of a bull, coal-black and with not even the shortest of horns, for the Angus is a naturally polled breed.
    In the autumn Mister would often accompany his foreman on his rounds, so that between them they might pick out the most forward of the springers. Major Yorke was in the business of producing not milk but milkers and it was Percy Pound’s job to see that the springers left the farm in the best possible nick.
    On a fine September morning in 1936, farmer and foreman walked among one of the current bunches of heifers. In some ways the two men were alike. As well as having both served in the Great War, they were of an age, and each had a family of a boy followed by two girls.
    Physically they were very different. Mister was a big man, tall and stout and red-faced, with fair wavy hair. Percy was a head shorter, prematurely grey-haired, lean of build, his face etched with lines that were the legacy of pain as well as age.
    They looked at the cattle through somewhat different eyes. Major Yorke was a good judge of a horse or a hound, but he had come somewhat late to farming and lacked that stockman’s instinct that his foreman possessed in full measure. Whether or not he would have admitted this, he was wise enough not to dispute the other’s opinion of a beast.
    â€˜A nice bunch, these, Percy,’ he said.
    In front of the other men Mister always addressed his foreman as ‘Mr Pound’, but it was ‘Percy’ when they were on their own.
    â€˜And they’re well forward too,’ he added.
    Percy nodded. ‘Bull’s done his