CHAPTER VI.

HOW WE FOUND OUR CATTLE.


The old cow always wore the bell. Early in the spring, when there were no
flies or mosquitoes to drive them up the cattle sometimes wandered off.
At such times, when we went to our chopping or work, we watched them, to
see which way they went, and listened to the bell after they were out of
sight in order that we might know which way to go after them if they
didn't return. Sometimes the bell went out of hearing but I was careful
to remember which way I heard it last.

Before night I would start to look for them, going in the direction I
last heard them. I would go half a mile or so into the woods, then stop
and listen, to see if I could hear the faintest sound of the bell. If I
could not hear it I went farther in the same direction then stopped and
listened again. Then if I did not hear it I took another direction, went
a piece and stopped again, and if I heard the least sound of it I knew it
from all other bells because I had heard it so often before.

That bell is laid up with care. I am now over fifty years old, but if
the least tinkling of that bell should reach my ear I should know the
sound as well as I did when I was a boy listening for it in the woods
of Michigan.

When I found the cattle I would pick up a stick and throw it at them,
halloo very loudly and they would start straight for home. Sometimes, in
cloudy weather, I was lost and it looked to me as though they were going