CHAPTER X
THE BEST PULLING TEAM IN THE STATE
Leading the cow, and aided by "Tex" McGonnigle, who boasted that he hada heart as big as the country he lived in and was willing to prove it byhelping him with the locoed horses, Wallie made fair progress as far asthe gate in the last wire fence, where "Tex" had to leave him.
"'Tain't fur now," said that person, passing over the rope with a knotin the end with which he had belaboured the horses he had driven aheadof him. "Mog along stiddy and you'd ought to make it by sundown."
"I think I'll lead 'em," Wallie remarked.
"Locoed horses won't lead--you've got to drive 'em."
Nevertheless, on the chance that "Tex" might not know everything, Wallietried it after his helper had galloped in another direction.
"The best pulling team in the state!" the auctioneer had declared, andtruthfully. Wallie had a notion they could have moved the Capitolbuilding if they had laid back on it as they did their halters when hetried to lead them.
There was nothing for it but to tie their heads together and drive themas Tex had done, but with even less success. They missed either Tex'svoluble and spicy encouragement or the experienced hand which laid onthe rope end, but the chief difficulty seemed to be that they were ofdifferent minds as to the direction which they should take, and sincethe cow was of still another, Wallie was confronted with a difficultsituation.
Dragging the mild-eyed Jersey, which had developed an incredibleobstinacy with the cessation of Tex's Comanche yells behind her, Wallieapplied the rope he had inherited, with the best imitation he could giveof the performance, but futilely.
The cow and the horses pulling in opposite directions went around andaround in a circle until the trampled earth looked as if it had been thesite of a cider-press or a circus.
After they had milled for twenty minutes without advancing a step Wallielost patience.
"Oh, sugar!" he cried. "This is certainly very, very annoying!"
The cow was as much an obstacle to the continuance of their journey asthe horses, since, bawling at intervals, she planted her feet andallowed her neck to be stretched until Wallie was fearful that it wouldseparate, leaving only her gory head in the halter.
With this unpleasant possibility confronting him, Wallie shrank fromputting too much strain upon it with the result that the cow learnedthat if she bawled loud enough and laid back hard enough, he would easeup on the rope by which he was dragging her.
Wallie had been taught from infancy that kindness was the proper methodof conquering animals, therefore he addressed the cow in tones ofsaccharine sweetness and with a persuasive manner that would havecharmed a bird off a tree.
"Bossy! Bossy! Good bossy!" he cajoled her.
Immune to flattery, she looked at him with an expression which remindedhim of a servant girl who knows she is giving notice at an inopportunetime. Then she planted her feet still deeper in the sand and bawled athim.
"Darn it!" he cried, finally, in his exasperation.
As he sat helpless in his dilemma, wondering what to do next, an ideaoccurred to him which was so clever and feasible that he lost no time inexecuting it.
If he tied the cow to the stirrup of his saddle and she showed nodisposition to escape, then he could walk and drive the work-horsesahead, returning for his saddle-horse and the cow! This, to be sure, wasa slow process, but it was an improvement over spending the night goingaround in a circle.
Wallie tied the cow's rope to the stirrup and both animals stood as ifthey were nailed to the spot while he ran after the work-horses, who hadwandered in another direction. His boots, he noted, were not adapted towalking as they pinched in the toes and instep. He could not stop forsuch a small matter at this critical moment, however, so he continued torun until he overtook the horses and started them homeward.
Turning to look at the cow and his saddle-horse, he saw them walkingbriskly, side by side, like soul-mates who understood each otherperfectly, in the opposite direction from which he wanted them to go. Heleft the horses and ran after the cow, shouting:
"Whoa--can't you?"
He reasoned swiftly that the Jersey was the nucleus of a herd whichwould one day run up into the thousands, and he must get her at allhazards.
"Whoa! Bossy--wait for me!" he pleaded as at top speed he went afterher.
"Good bossy! Good bossy!" His quavering voice was pathetic.
At the sound of his voice the horse stopped, turned its head, and lookedat him. The cow stopped also.
Intensely relieved, Wallie dropped to a walk, congratulating himselfthat the livery horse chanced to be so well trained and obedient. As heapproached, the cow stepped forward that she might look under thehorse's neck and watch her pursuer. Both animals stood like statues,regarding him intently. When within fifty feet Wallie said in aconciliatory tone to show them that he stood ready to forgive them inspite of the inconvenience to which they had put him:
"Nice horsey! Good bossy!"
Quite as if it were a signal, "Nice horsey and good bossy" started at atrot which quickly left Wallie far behind them.
Wallie ran until he felt that his overtaxed lungs were bursting. Hisboots were killing him, his shin bones ached, and his feet at everystep sank to the ankles in the loose sand. It was like running through abog. He pursued until he was bent double with the effort and his legsgrew numb. The perspiration streamed from under his stylish derby, hisstock wilted, and his clothing was as wet as if it had been raining.
When his legs would carry him not one step farther he stopped and lookedafter the cow and horse--who were still doing perfect team-work,trotting side by side as evenly as if they had been harnessed together.They stopped instantly when he stopped, and, as before, the horse turnedits head to look back at him while the cow peered under its neck atWallie.
Hope revived again when they showed no disposition to move, and after hehad panted awhile, Wallie thought that by feigning indifference andconcealing his real purpose he might approach them. To this end, hewhistled with so much breath as his chase had left him, tossed pebblesinconsequently, and sauntered toward the pair as if he had all the daybefore him.
The subterfuge seemed to be succeeding, and he was once more withinfifty feet of them when they whirled about simultaneously and started atthe same lively trot, leaving Wallie far behind them.
A humane consideration for animals had been inculcated in Wallie fromchildhood by Aunt Mary, but now he felt such a yearning to inflict painupon the cow and the livery horse that it would have shocked that ladyif she could have read his thoughts as he chased them. He visualizedthe two of them tied to a tree while he laid on the rope-end, and thepicture afforded him intense satisfaction.
Exhausted, and with his heart pounding under his silk shirt-bosom,Wallie stopped at last because he had to. Immediately the horse and cowstopped also. While he gasped, a fresh manoeuvre occurred to Wallie.Perhaps if he made a circle, gradually getting closer, by a quick dashhe could catch the bridle reins.
As he circled, the gaze of the horse and cow followed him with thekeenest interest. Finally he was close enough to see the placid look ofbenevolence with which his cow was regarding him and success seemedabout to reward his efforts. The horse, too, had half closed its eyes bythe time he was ready for his coup, as if it had lost all interest ineluding him.
"Nice horsey! Good bossy!" Wallie murmured, reassuringly.
For the third time he was within fifty feet of them, and while he wasdebating as to whether to make his dash or try to get a little closer,the pair, seeming to recognize fifty feet as the danger zone, threw uptheir heads and tails and went off at a gallop.
Grinding his teeth in a way that could not but have been detrimental tothe enamel, Wallie stood looking after them. A profane word never hadpassed his lips since he had had his mouth washed out with castile soapfor saying "devil." But now with deliberate, appalling abandon, and theemphasis of a man who had cursed from his cradle, he yelled after thefleeing fiends incarnate:
> "Go to hell--damn you!"
Instantly shocked and ashamed of himself, Wallie instinctively lookedskyward, half expecting to see an outraged Jehovah ready to heave athunderbolt down on him, though he felt that the Almighty in justiceshould recognize the provocation, and forgive him.
Weary, with blistered heels and drooping shoulders, Wallie plodded afterthem while time and again they repeated the performance until it wouldhave worn down a bloodhound to have followed the tracks made by Wallieand the renegades.
The sun set and the colours faded, yet Wallie with a dogged tenacity hehad not known was in him trudged back and forth, around and around, inpursuit of the runaways, buoyed up chiefly by the hope that if he couldcatch them he might soon be wealthy enough to afford to kill them.
It was nearly dusk, and a night in the open seemed before him when thepair stopped and commenced feeding toward him. Whether they had becomehungry or the sport had palled on them were questions Wallie could notanswer. It was enough that they waited like two lambs for him to walk upand catch them.
He was so tired that when he got himself in the saddle with the cowambling along meekly at his stirrup, he found himself feeling gratefulto them instead of vindictive. The locoed horses he decided to leaveuntil morning.
By the time he had reached his homestead and fallen out of the saddle,he had forgotten that he had sworn to tie them up and "whale" them. Onthe contrary, he was wondering if milking were a difficult process andif he could accomplish it, for he could not find it in his heart to leta dumb brute suffer. He remembered hearing that cows should be milkedregularly, and while his Jersey had goaded him to blasphemy he knew thathe would not be able to sleep if she was in pain through his negligence.
Picketing the horse as Pinkey had taught him, he put the cow on a ropealso. Then he set about the performance which had looked so simple whenhe had seen others engage in it.
Among his accoutrements was a flashlight, and with this and a lard canWallie stood for a moment speculating as to whether the cow had anypreference as to the side she was milked on. He could not see that itwould make any material difference, so he sat down on his heel on theside nearest and turned his flashlight on the spot where he wished tooperate. Placing his lard can on the ground where he could throw astream into it conveniently, he used his free hand for that purpose.
To his surprise, nothing happened--except that the cow stopped chewingher cud and looked at him inquiringly. He persisted, but uselessly. Wasanything wrong with his system, he wondered? He thought not, since hewas milking exactly as he had seen the hired man milk on a farm where hehad once spent a month in his childhood.
He varied his method, making gentle experiments, but at the end of tenminutes the lard can was still empty and the cow was growing restless.For that he could not blame her. His hand ached and his foot seemedabout to break off at the ankle from sitting on it.
Wallie felt chagrined when he reflected that although he was a graduateof Haverford College and was bringing all his intelligence to bear uponit he was still unable to do what any hired man with an inch of foreheadcould accomplish with no apparent effort.
Perhaps there was some trick about it--perhaps it _did_ make adifference which side a cow was milked on. Wallie walked around andturned the spot-light on the other side of his Jersey.
The outlook, he fancied, seemed more promising.
He sat down on his heel and started in energetically.
It did make a difference which side one milked on--there was no doubtabout it. The instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aimwhich was not only deadly and unerring but remarkable, considering thatshe could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie's stomachwith such force that the muffled thud of it sounded like someone beatinga carpet. The kick knocked the breath out of him, and as he lay on hisback on a clump of cactus he was sure that he was bleeding internallyand probably dying.
Wallie finally got to his feet painfully and with both hands on hisstomach looked at the cow, who was again chewing tranquilly. There wasmurder in Wallie's eyes as he yelled at her:
"Curse you! I could cut your heart out!"
Then he crept up the path to his tent and dropped down on his pneumaticmattress, doubting if he ever would rise from it. As he lay there,supperless, with his clothes on, every muscle in his body aching, to saynothing of the sensation in his stomach, it seemed incredible that hecould be the same person who had started off so blithely in the morning.
The series of misfortunes which had befallen him overwhelmed him. He hadpurchased a cow which not only gave no milk but had a viciousdisposition. He had paid two prices for a pair of locoed horses that didtheir pulling backward. He had made himself a laughing stock to theentire country and seemed destined to play the clown somehow wheneverHelene Spenceley was in the vicinity. His ears grew red to the rims ashe thought of it.
But she _had_ resented Canby's dishonesty for him--_that_ was something;and Wallie was in a mood to be grateful for anything.
The cow grunted as she lay down to her slumbers--Wallie ground his teethas he heard her. A coyote yapped on a ridge forlornly and the horse onpicket coughed and snorted while Wallie, staring at the stars throughthe entrance, massaged his injury and ruminated.
Suddenly he sat up on his patent air mattress and shook his fist at theuniverse:
"Canby nor nobody else shall down me! I'm going to make good somehow, orfertilize Wyoming as old Appel told me. I'll show 'em!"
After that he felt better; so much better that he fell asleepimmediately, and even the activities of two field-mice, who pulled andsnipped at his hair with their sharp teeth in the interests of a nestthey were building, only disturbed without awakening him.