for summer, for winter the fur-lined bunda. These are the herdsman"s coverings, and in them he sleeps beneath G.o.d"s sky. Only the overseer reposes under the projecting eaves, on a wooden bench for bedstead, above his head the shelf with the big round loaves, and the tub that holds the week"s provisions. His wife, who lives in the town, brings them every Sunday afternoon.
Before the hut stands a small circular erection woven out of reeds, with a brick-paved flooring and no roof. This is the kitchen, the "vasalo,"
and here the herdsman"s stew, "gulyashus" and meal porridge are cooked in a big pot hung on a forked stick. The taligas does the cooking. A row of long-handled tin spoons are stuck in the reed wall.
"But where did the gentlemen leave the cowboy?" asked the overseer.
"He had some small account to settle with the innkeeper"s daughter,"
answered the farmer. His name was Sajgato.
"Well, if he comes home drunk the betyar!"
"Betyar," interrupted the painter, delighted at hearing the word. "Is our cowboy a betyar?"
"I only used the expression as a compliment," the overseer explained.
"Ah!" sighed the painter, "I should so like to see a _real_ betyar, to put him in my sketch-book!"
"Well, the gentleman won"t find one here, we don"t care for thieves. If one comes roaming around we soon kick him out."
"So there are no betyars left on the Hortobagy puszta?"
"There"s no saying! Certainly there are plenty of thieves among the shepherds, and some of the swineherds turn brigands, and it does sometimes happen that when a csikos gets silly and loses his head, he sinks to a vagabond betyar, but no one can ever remember a cowboy having taken to robbery."
"How is that?"
"Because the cowboy works among quiet, sensible beasts. He never sits drinking with shepherds and swineherds."
"Then the cowherd is the aristocrat of the puszta?" remarked the manager of the stables.
"That"s it, exactly. Just as counts and barons are among grand folk, so are csikos and cowboys among the other herdsmen."
"So there is no equality on the puszta?"
"As long as men are on the earth, there will never be equality," said the overseer. "He who is born a gentleman will remain one, even in a peasant"s coat. He will never steal his neighbour"s cow or horse, even if he find it straying, but will drive it back to its owner. But whether he won"t try a little cheating at the market, that I am not prepared to say."
"For gentlemen to take in each other at the horse fair is, however, quite an aristocratic custom!"
"Still more so at the cattle market, so I would recommend you to use your eyegla.s.s while you are with us, for when once you have driven off your cattle I am no longer responsible."
"Thanks for the warning," said the manager.
Here the doctor interrupted the discussion.
"Come out, gentlemen," he cried, "in front of the kitchen, and see the sunrise."
The painter rushed forward, and began to sketch, but soon fell into utter despair.
"Why, this is absurd! What colour! dark blue ground, violet mist on the horizon, above it orange sky, and over that a long streak of rosy cloud.
What, a purple glory announces the coming of the sun! A glowing fire is rising above the sharply defined horizon! Just like a burning pyramid, now like red hot iron! Yet not so dazzling that one cannot look at it with the naked eye. Now look, do! The sun is five-sided, the upper part grows egg-shaped! The lower contracts, the top flattens out, now it is quite like a mushroom! No, no, a Roman urn. This is absurd, it can"t be painted. Now there comes a thin cloud which turns it into a blindfolded cupid, or a bearded deputy. No! If I painted the sun five-sided and with a moustache they would shut me up in an asylum."
The painter threw down his brushes.
"These Hungarians," he said, "must always have something out of the common. Here they are giving us a sunrise which is a reality, but at the same time an impossibility. That is not as it should be."
The doctor began to explain that this was only an optical delusion, like the _fata morgana_, and was due to the refraction of the rays through the differently heated strata of the atmosphere.
"All the same it is impossible," said the painter. "Why, I can"t believe what I see."
But the sun did not leave him in wonder much longer. Hitherto, the whole display had been but a dazzling effect of mirage, and when the real orb rose with floods of light, the human eye could no longer gaze at it with impunity. Then the rosy heavens suddenly brightened into gold, and the line of the horizon appeared to melt into the sky.
At the first flash of sunlight the whole sleeping camp stirred. The forest of horns of fifteen hundred cattle moved. The old bull shook the bell at his neck, and at its sound uprose the puszta chorus. One thousand five hundred cattle began to low.
"Splendid! Good Lord," exclaimed the painter ecstatically. "This is a Wagner chorus! Oboes, hunting horns, kettledrums! What an overture! What a scene! It is a finale from the Gotterdammerung!"
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sajgato. "But now they are going to the well. Every cow is calling her calf, that is why they are lowing."
Three herdsmen ran to the well--the beam of which testified to the skill of the carpenter--and setting the three buckets in motion, emptied the water into the large drinking trough--fatiguing work which has to be done three times a day.
"Would it not be simpler to use some mechanism worked by horse-power?"
inquired the German gentleman of the overseer.
"We have such a machine," he replied, "but the cowboy would rather wear out his own hands than frighten his horse with it."
Meanwhile a fourth cowboy had been occupied in picking out those cows which belonged to Mr. Sajgato, and in removing their calves, which he drove into the corral, the mothers following them meekly into the fenced enclosure.
"These are mine," said Mr. Sajgato.
"But how can the herdsman tell among a thousand cattle which belong to Mr. Sajgato?" asked the manager of the stables. "How do you know one from the other?"
The overseer cast a compa.s.sionate glance over his shoulder at the questioner.
"Has the gentleman ever seen two cows just alike?"
"To my eyes they are all alike."
"But not to the herdsman"s," said the overseer.
The manager, however, professed himself perfectly satisfied with the selected cattle.
The barrow-boy now came up, and announced that from the look-out tree he had seen the other cowherd coming up at a gallop.
"Running his horse!" growled the overseer. "Just let him show his face here. I"ll thrash him till he forgets even his own name."
"But you won"t really strike him?"
"No, for whoever beats a cowherd will have to kill him before he cures him in that way, and he"s my favourite lad too! I brought him up and christened him. He is my G.o.dson, the rascal!"
"Yet you part with him? He is taking the herd to Moravia!"