Hide and Seek
By Hugh Forsythe

It was time to go for the cows. Clyde Sheffield, now sixteen, and his brother John, two years younger, took their duties seriously. They stopped at the stile to listen for cowbells.

Clyde said, “It sounds like they’re down near the swamp. It will be quicker if we take the old wood road.”

The clanging bells began to sound louder as the boys neared the bottom land.

“There they are, Clyde.”

Six red-brown Guernseys feasted on the spring grass at the edge of the bog. Six cows lifted their heads and started for the barn; it was milking time.

“I see them all, John, except Judy.” He thinks, now where can she be? “I’ll let you take the cows to the barn while I stay and look around; she can’t be far away.”

John and the cows faded over the rise in the pasture. Clyde stood still and listened: ...the murmur of the brook over granite boulders...the rustle of the new leaves in the surrounding tall poplars... a distant white throat: 0 Canada, Canada, Canada; there was no close cowbell.

He searched until the darkness began to take over, then headed for the barn.

“We have an addition to our herd,” was their father Ken’s reaction.

“Judy is about due.”

The last time she had a calf it was hidden in that stand of hemlocks nearest the river, dry and sheltered.

“We’ll look in the hemlock grove tomorrow.”

Helen Sheffield had prepared a hearty breakfast: scrambled eggs, back bacon, toasted homemade bread with her raspberry jam, and, that tradition she had brought with her from Lunenburg County, apple pie for breakfast.

“Finish your eggs, John. You might have a long morning.”

Two years ago when Judy hid her calf, it was easily found. Something told them that it would be hidden much better this time.

Father and two sons headed for the “back forty” just as the blazing red sun lifted over the eastern hills. They planned to search for an hour before completing their chores, and then put the other cows out to pasture. This morning, they wanted only one bell in the back pasture.

Sharp-eared John was first to hear it, “Aha, I think we’re in luck.”

A cowbell began to stir as they approached the growth of hemlocks. It was Judy, walking towards them. She approached within fifty feet and then turned away. Ken could see that the cow had delivered her calf.

Over the next hour, she led them in one side of the hemlocks and out the other, through the tangled alder bushes in the swamps, up a steep rock-bound hill, through the thickest growth of firs in Nova Scotia, and back and forth across the brook.

Ken was frustrated. “She’s just leading us on a wild chase. That’s one smart cow. Judy is going to make sure that we don’t find her calf this time.”

Sitting on a pine stump for a minute, he continued, “Darn those alder bushes this time of year. The pollen always chokes me up. My feet are soaked and I’m aching all over. Let’s go back to the house.”

Over the next few days, Judy was spotted several times, but a calf was never seen. In the middle of the afternoon of the fifth day, Clyde was in the garden behind the barn hoeing the newly-sprouted beans. He had been listening to the distant cowbells as their herd worked its way across the back pasture. Now, there was a closer bell, gradually getting louder, coming up the lane toward the barn.

“That sounds like Judy’s bell.”

With her calf trailing, the cow emerged from behind a cluster of red spruce. Clyde ran and opened the barn door. Judy marched in, her bell clanging and reverberating; English sparrows, startled, fled to the upper rafters.

The cow mooed softly. A tottering, small but perfect version of herself entered the barn for the first time.