five o'clock
murmured my hostess . `` Ai n't he just the hostile little wretch ? '' Terrific sound waves beat upon the Arrowhead ranch house this night . At five o'clock a hundred and twenty Hereford calves had been torn from their anguished mothers for the first time and shut into a too adjacent feeding pen . Mothers and offspring , kept a hundred yards apart by two stout fences , unceasingly bawled their grief , a noble chorus of yearning and despair . The calves projected a high , full-throated barytone , with here and there a wailing tenor against the rumbling bass of their dams . And ever and again pealed distantly into the chorus the flute obbligato of an emotional coyote down on the flat .