The Happy Valley Mystery

dishes,” Mrs. Gorman said. “But you just stay here, Honey, if you want to. I’ll be glad for company... the rest of you, too,” she added.
    “I was just wondering,” Trixie said, “about that crying noise I heard just now—like a hurt animal someplace, sort of far off. Was it?”
    “Not hurt,” Mrs. Gorman said. “At least, I don’t think so. It’s a little calf born out of time, and its mother is bawling for it. It’s lost. She came right up under our bedroom window last night and bawled, asking us to hunt for it. Betsy’s a pet, but sometimes she’s a pest. Bight now she is. If she’d just hunt hard enough and cry less, she’d find her calf.”
    “Is that where Mr. Gorman is—hunting the calf?” Trixie asked.
    Mrs. Gorman nodded. “He just can’t bear it when an animal of any kind is in trouble.”
    “Would he mind if I went out and helped him?” Trixie asked her.
    “Me, too?” Jim inquired.
    “Of course he wouldn’t. He’d be glad of company, even if he didn’t need the help. He’s right over the top of that hill, see, south of the farm, in the direction of that big sycamore tree on the slope.”
    Her last sentence followed Trixie and Jim out the door. After they’d gone through the barnyard fence, they heard the soft tinkle of bells and the baaing of the sheep. Mr. Gorman had told them on the way to Happy Valley that the sheep had been let out to crop the short early grass, after being kept in the barnyard all winter.
    They were running from one patch of grass to another, kicking up their heels, shoving, frolicking. “They’re acting more as I thought lambs would act,” Trixie said to Mr. Gorman when they caught up with him, “instead of grown sheep.”
    “They’re like lunatics in the spring,” Mr. Gorman said, “so crazy about anything green they don’t know what to do with themselves. Look at those two over there, for instance.”
    Two ewes, heads down, approached one another, ears laid back and legs stiffened.
    “They look just like the good guy and the bad guy walking toward one another on TV. Look at them, Jim.”
    “Expect them to pull a gun any minute, don’t you?” Jim agreed. “Hey, you, you’ll get a headache!”
    The ewes butted their heads together hard, retreated, approached again, and butted. They repeated the play several times; then, the game apparently over, they separated and began greedily cropping the grass again, not at all disturbed by the spectators or by Betsy’s mournful bellowing from across the field.
    “Will you let us help you find Betsy’s calf?” Trixie asked. She held up her foot. “We’ve heavy boots on.”
    “It’s a good thing you have. Of course; come along.
    Goodness only knows where that crazy calf has strayed. Oh, Betsy, pipe down; were coming to help you,” he called. “Right now I’ve other business to attend to. Just wait your turn!”
    The two collies, Tip and Tag, who had been ranging the hills, came up barking. Tag ran back and forth in front of Mr. Gorman, while Tip ran over the slope, still barking, back to Mr. Gorman, then back over the slope again.
    “One of the sheep is down somewhere,” Mr. Gorman explained. “All right, Tip, I’m coming.”
    As he followed the barking dog, Trixie and Jim hurried after him. At the top of the hill they saw a strange sight. Tip and Tag were circling about a fat ewe who lay on her back, her spindly legs sticking straight up in the air.
    “She sounds terrible,” Trixie said, watching the ewe struggle, gasping and gurgling, as though she were strangling. “Is she going to die?”
    “Thanks to Tip and Tag, no,” Mr. Gorman said. “Give me a hand, Jim. There, you take her head, and I’ll manage her hindquarters. Flip her over onto her feet. There!”
    The poor ewe staggered, righted herself, and, before their eyes, seemed to deflate like a punctured balloon. “They try to roll over,” Mr. Gorman explained. “Then their thin legs aren’t strong enough to hold them, and they can’t get back on their feet. They start to swell, especially if they have new grass in their stomachs, as this one does, and they’d die in half an hour, actually choke to death, if someone didn’t help them.” He reached down to pat the dogs and pull their ears affectionately. “These boys save a lot of sheep for me.”
    “There’s a lot about sheep-raising we’ll have to learn,” Trixie said. “I studied it in the encyclopedias, and I thought it was just a matter of turning