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Updated: June 20, 2025
So I sat for a time last evening on my porch. The cool, still night had fallen sweetly after the burning heat of the day. I heard all the familiar sounds of the night. A whippoorwill began to whistle in the distant thicket. Harriet came out quietly I could see the white of her gown and sat near me. I heard the occasional sleepy tinkle of a cowbell, and the crickets were calling.
She laughed again, because it was another day, and because she was alive. She waded about for a while where the spring joined the creek, and delightedly watched the schools of tiny, almost transparent, minnows that darted away at her coming. Then, standing on a rock, she paused with her head bent, and listened until her ears caught the faint tinkle of a cowbell, which she recognized.
It was very cold and the time must have been very late, for the wind had died down, and I heard not a tinkle from the hobbled horses. The absence of the cowbell music gave me a sense of loneliness, for without it the silence of the great forest was a thing to be felt. This oppressiveness, however, was broken by a far-distant cry, unlike any sound I had ever heard.
It was as good as a cowbell for letting the world know one's whereabouts. There was only one thing that annoyed her. Since she hung the bell from her waist nobody had mentioned fire to her. Nobody had said a word about her children's burning. It seemed as if none of her neighbors wanted her to sound a fire alarm.
The bleating of sheep, the barking of dogs, the lowing of cattle, the splash of the bucket in the well, "the pastoral curfew of the cowbell," etc., are sounds we have heard before in poetry, but that clatter of the pasture bars is American; one can almost see the waiting, ruminating cows slowly stir at the signal, and start for home in anticipation of the summons.
"And now," he added, "since you are Mr. Temple's cousin and friend and an old acquaintance of mine to boot, I will tell you where I think he is." "Where is that?" I asked eagerly. "I'll stake a cowbell that Sevier will stop at the Widow Brown's," he replied. "I'll put you on the road. But mind you, you are to tell Mr. Temple that he is to come back here and race me at Greasy Cove."
From the valley below had come the smell of human habitations mingled with the faint tinkle of a cowbell and the sound of a hammer. Eyes bright in an instant, he watched the man climb stiffly out of the car ahead. The other and bulkier man clambered from between the curtains of the rear where he had ridden all that day. They talked for a while low and guardedly.
Then, alighting, she passed through a postern that hung at the side of folding gates, and, winding her way up a walk bordered with shrubs and flowers, approached the dwelling, that stood upon a knoll. At that moment the sound of a cowbell in the contiguous mountain coppice told the slow approach of a dappled dairy, in charge of a swarthy French Canadian youth.
The sound of a distant cowbell mingles with the voice of the last prayer; the clods drop heavily with heart-startling echo; the mound is heaped and shaped by kindly friends, sharing with one another the task; the long rough sods are laid over and patted into place; the old minister takes farewell in a few words of gentle sympathy; the brother and sister, with lingering looks at the two graves side by side, the old and the new, step into the farmer's carriage, and drive away; the sexton locks the gate and goes home, and we are left outside alone.
"Early this mornin' Bristow's oldest boy that one they call Buddy he heared a cowbell over in the swamp and so he went to look; Bristow's got cows, as you know, and one or two of 'em is belled. And he kept on followin' after the sound of it till he got way down into the thickest part of them cypress slashes that's near the middle there; and right there he run acrost it this body.
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