TH E END OF "COW S TA IL"
By Sally Hawthorne*
O F course, “ Cow’s Tail” really was n’t his name—but almost nobody but Mommy thought to call him Robert. It was just that he didn’t like to eat; nothing ever looked good. And that’s bad, when a little boy lives on the Mission Field. “ Come on, Cow’s Tail,” Daddy would urge;, “hurry up there.” But it never did any good. He was always the last to finish, if he finished at all. “ It’s so eshasperating!” Yvie com plained, as she cleared all the dishes off and left Robert’s soup sitting there all alone, like a forgotten island with the blue plastic tablecloth-ocean all around. On the day that proved to be the last straw, the family sat down to lunch, which was potatoes and milk gravy. Lunches were never very special, since they usually consisted of starches— macaroni, rice, peeled wheat, potatoes, always potatoes. None of the men in the small, Andean town ever seemed very eager to butcher a hog, cow or sheep so it was very seldom that meat appeared on the table. “ I’m warning you, Cow’s Tail,” Daddy pointed his finger right under Robert’s startled nose. “You eat that and you do it in double-quick time, or else.” “ Daddy, he sits and daydreams,” said Dick. “While he turns up his pug nose.” Plates on both sides of the table were emptied in no time, seconds vanished in like manner—all except the food in front of Robert. He pushed the potatoes around with his fork—to him, they were Indians marching into town on feast days. When he piled them up in little mounds they became Indians’ round rock huts. “ Even the baby eats better than he does,” Daddy said to Mommy, later. “ And the punishments we have heaped upon him! He just seems to hate food.” “ I’m so worried,” Mommy admitted. “He has already made up his mind he wants to be a missionary, but how could he ever be, when he won’t eat even the food we have? What if he’s offered fish- eye soup, like that lady from Venezuela told about? Or roast alligator tail, like the kind they eat in the tropics, right here in Bolivia?” Daddy thought a moment. “ Well, there’s one thing I’ve been worrying around in my mind, dear. It just might work . . . ” So it was, that Cow’s Tail found him self, several days later, posing atop a * Missionary of Bolivian Indian Mission.
frightfully tall mule, as Faith snapped his picture. He hadn’t recovered from the shock of surprise when Daddy had asked if he would like to go along on a trip. Would he? It had been his ambition some day to accompany his father to the In dian villages. Up to this time his bamboo stick had taken him everywhere, but the funny thing was, he never went out of the mission property. How much nicer a real mule was! And this one, fully as tall as the one Daddy rode, was all a little boy’s heart could desire. Its long, pointed ears twitched back and forth and it stamped its horny feet as if say ing, “ Let’s go, Cow’s Tail!” That night, squatting beside the camp fire, Daddy got out the bread, boiled po tatoes and fried rice, and offered it to Robert. “ I’m not hungry, Daddy.” To his great surprise he wasn’t urged to eat. That was nice! The stars twinkled down, so much closer out here than they had ever seemed in town; water rippling over stones in the nearby river seemed to sing him to sleep. The poncho wrapped around him felt nice and warm and Robert thought, “ This is what I’ll be do ing all the time, when I’m big and a real missionary.” It was a long hot, dusty climb up to the small huts where the Christian In dians lived; miles from any kind of civilization and Robert could see nothing but peaks and crags and occasional val leys in every direction. The mountains seemed to stretch on and on, even hiding from sight the small pueblo where he knew Mommy and his brothers and sis ters yrere. Robert could enter the small door of the hut easily, but Daddy had to stoop to get through, and when inside it seem-
ed so dark, because there were no win dows. The soup bubbling on the open fire did not smell good and when he was offered some, Robert pushed it away. But Daddy ate two bowlfuls, carefully removing several straws and long black hairs as he ate. The Indians drank theirs from their bowls, making loud slurping sounds as though it tasted wonderful. Then all the believers were talking at once, excitedly pointing to some distant spot below the- village. Daddy began tightening the cinches of the mules, and as he lifted Robert up, he said, “ They say there are some Indians down in that little hollow who want to know more about the gospel. We’re going down.” The Indians did not look like the ones they had just visited; their teeth were all discolored from the cocoa leaves they were chewing, the green juice dribbling out of the corners of their mouths; their clothing was dirty and their hair all matted and hanging down beneath the night-cap-style hats. They looked evil and smelled evil, Robert thought. He pulled away from one who tried to shake his hand, but when he looked over at his father, he was not only shaking hands but clapping the Indians on the back in true Bolivian fashion. “ I guess a missionary can’t mind the dirt and the smell,” he mused. As Daddy took his Quechua New Testament and the small hymnal out of the saddle bags, everyone gathered around him, eyes round with interest. They must have liked the gospel, be cause they kept nodding their heads. Ro bert helped sing several choruses and though some women persisted in singing ’way up high on the same note, no one seemed to mind. Just as Daddy was packing the books away and lifting Robert up on his saddle, to start home, one of the Indian women came up to them with two eggs in her hand. Daddy looked pleased, though he said, “ Oh, me!” under his breath. “ Boiled?” he asked. “ Yes, they are boiled.” Robert remembered Daddy telling Mommy about the time he had been of fered “ boiled” eggs in an Indian hut. “ They drop them in and take them right out,” he had said. That time the eggs had been one-quarter cooked and half- rotten. “ But you just can’t afford to hurt their feelings,” Daddy explained. “ An egg is one of the best things they can offer a visitor and you just have to open your mouth and let it slide down—and not let on it’s making you sick.” (Continued Next Page)
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By Martha S. Hooker
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
Page Twenty
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