The former governess snatched up her walking stick and smartly proceeded to the back yard where a dozen or so cows were contently grazing in the ghostly fog and a lone cowbell clanged randomly.
Away with you! Miss Hilda ordered sharply with a slap of the stick against her riding boot, Scat!
Scat? my grandmother repeated from the doorway, Hilda, these are cows not cats!
No matter, Miss Hilda called back briskly, They'll make a wretched pasture of the yard, upon my word!
I was dispatched across the road to let Uncle Willie know that his cows had once again broken free and in due time he returned with me, leisurely rounded them up and herded them home. The cowbell echoed eerily, becoming fainter as the fog closed in tighter. Miss Hilda and my grandmother sat in companionable silence, drinking tea, nibbling on hand made scones and listening to the fog horn wail. I had just begun a game of jacks when the dogs began to howl and there was a sudden, frantic pounding at the back door - Uncle Shad, looking disheveled and panicky, didn't wait to be let in - he was in the kitchen and then the living room before Nana had even gotten up from her rocking chair.
Alice! It's Willie! he panted, Quick! Call the doc!
My grandmother gave me an urgent nod and I ran for the old telephone while she and Miss Hilda followed Uncle Shad out the back door, disappearing almost at once into the fog. The factory whistle began an alarmed shriek, the signal for serious trouble. Doc Martin was already on his way, Elsie the telephone operator told me reassuringly, everything would be fine, don't go traipsing out into the fog.
Something as yet undetermined had spooked the cows and being stupid and single minded creatures, they'd rushed the road, pinned Willie to the ground and broken both his legs, several ribs and his collarbone before turning as one toward The Old Road where four of the beasts plunged over the embankment in a mindless panic - three died on impact while the fourth and final one to fall survived, cushioned no doubt by the three she landed on.
Like a stack of flapjacks, Uncle Shad remarked to the doctor as they peered over the grassy edge, Hard way to go for a cow.
Doc Martin judged Willie's survival a miracle - he was young and inexperienced and had no clear idea of how tough island folk could be when needed - and although Willie's daughter and her entire family had to be called in to get him through the rest of the summer, fall and winter, come spring he was up and about. The first thing he did was sell the lot of the remaining cows to a farmer from The Valley and wash his hands of the entire dairy business. That summer all that remained of the three unfortunate cows was a pile of bleached out bones - time, tide, scavengers and a harsh Canadian winter had done their work well.
The cowbell was never recovered - snapped off in the fall and washed out to sea, most said or taken as a souvenir by some curious onlooker - but that didn't explain the nights when the fog rolled in and tightened its grip, when farmers gathered their flocks and doubled checked their fences - and the lonely sound of a cowbell seemed to answer the call of the fog horn.
It's the fog, Uncle Shad told me sternly, and the night air. Plays tricks on your ears.
I hoped not.
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