‘Bill brought the cow,’ she says, and they try to talk. __ Bill had seen the cow and stopped the tractor and gone to help the cow. He’d always had a quiet way with animals. He saw she was heavy with calf and helped her down through the hedge where she was stuck on the corrugated iron. She came on her haunch down from the hedge with her big bag, streaked and marred with blood, clopping with her, like a balloon full of water. She hissed and puffed through her nose and even then, being a cow, she reached round and pulled a long tongue-full of grass from the hedge. Bill checked over the cow while she crunched the long grass. When she had drunk long and hard from the buckets Bill brought from the water butt she got to her feet and she dashed a short way as the madness of sense came back to her. She shook and bucked but Bill spoke to her gently and soon she lowered her head to the grass and rubbed her nose on the short turf and started to follow his voice.
