The Happy Valley Mystery

The little lamb, tasting its mother’s warm milk, bleated happily and snuggled close, feeding.
    “She’s taken that one all right,” Mr. Gorman said with relief. “Now, Trixie, the little black one.”
    Trixie took the black lamb, all wrinkles and loose skin, and handed it to Mr. Gorman.
    The poor baby bleated pitifully. The mother listened, sniffed it, and, as it tried to feed, bunted it cruelly.
    “You bad mother!” Trixie said.
    “It’s natural with a twin,” Mr. Gorman said. “Let’s try her again.”
    “Let me,” Brian said. He dipped his finger in a few drops of warm milk from the little white lamb’s busy mouth, then rubbed it over the small black face.
    The mother sniffed again, then bunted it away, angrily and finally. Clearly, she wanted nothing to do with it.
    “It’s just no use,” Mr. Gorman said. “We’re stuck with an orphan lamb. Let’s get up to the house in a hurry and take care of it. It can’t five long this way. It has to be fed as soon as possible.”
    “I’ll take care of things here,” Brian said, “and see that the mother is comfortable. She should have something to eat, too, shouldn’t she?”
    “Yes,” Mr. Gorman said, “thanks for thinking of it. Take some of that hot water we brought in the bucket, Brian, and mix with it some of that feed there. Make a sort of warm mash. Sheep love warm mash. Just leave it in that pan there beside her. She’ll eat it when the lamb stops feeding.”
    “We haven’t had a black lamb born in several years,” Mr. Gorman told Trixie on the way to the house. “Some people think they’re bad luck. I don’t. The only trouble is, so many of the mothers won’t claim a black one.”
    “I’d a thousand times rather have a black lamb than that yellowish thing,” Trixie said.
    “The mother wouldn’t,” Mr. Gorman said. “That’s the color all white lambs are when they’re born. They quickly turn white. Here we are, Trixie. Take this baby, please, while I open the door.”
    Mrs. Gorman and the other Bob-Whites waited for Mr. Gorman, Trixie, and Brian in the warm kitchen. When Mrs. Gorman saw the lamb in Trixie’s arms, she hurried to warm some milk. “Oh, no,” she said, “not another orphan! Did the ewe die, Hank?”
    Mr. Gorman shook his head, smiled, and held up two fingers. “Twins,” he said. “Everything all right except... well, she wouldn’t own the black one. Guess you’re in for a season of bottles and nipples, Mary.”
    Hastily Mrs. Gorman turned on the oven. “Keep holding the lamb while I fill the bottle,” she told Trixie.
    “Now, then, put the lamb in the oven,” she said, opening the oven door.
    “It’s too hot,” Trixie said. “The lamb will be burned!”
    “It can’t be too hot,” Mrs. Gorman said. “Quick, Trixie, please.”
    Reluctantly Trixie surrendered the orphan to the hot oven and left the door open, as Mrs. Gorman instructed her.
    Mrs. Gorman held the lamb’s small head, then watched the baby relax in the warmth of the oven, stop struggling, and, with a big sigh, start feeding from the bottle, its tiny corkscrew tail jerking in happiness.
    Ben came in and with him Brian. “Brian told me it’s all over, and everything’s all right,” he said to Mr. Gorman. “It’s a good thing. The veterinarian wasn’t at home.”
    “Everything’s done, thanks to Brian and Trixie,” Mr. Gorman said. “But we’ll have an orphan to feed all summer. Five times a day, then three times a day,” he explained to the Bob-Whites, “and so on, all summer long.”
    “Lambing season’s early this year,” Ben said. “It had started in Ames when I was there. Say, if you think that little white lamb is ugly, Trixie, you should see one of the Rambouillet lambs... all skin, big ears, and wobbly legs.”
    “They’re all darling, anyway,” Honey said. “Listen to the way it’s going after that bottle!”
    “Ben usually has the job of taking care of the orphans,” Mrs. Gorman said. “He’s a sort of substitute mother... at least the lambs think so. They follow him around everyplace.”
    “I don’t encourage it,” Ben said and turned bright red.
    “No, but you have every bit as good a time as the lambs do,” Mrs. Gorman said. “Ben jumps and plays with them,” she told the Bob-Whites. “If Trixie keeps on feeding this one, it’ll run after her, too. How’d you like to be a lamb’s mother, Trixie?”
    “If they were born about a week old, I wouldn’t mind at all,” Trixie