“I vow, I ain’t so mighty sorry Speaker’s along of us,” Pendrilla said after they had vainly browbeaten, threatened, and stoned the hound to drive him back through the gate. “He’s a mighty heap of company and protection out thisaway in the night.”
“Girls,” said Judith, suddenly halting them all in the little byroad which they were travelling, “don’t you think we’d better cut across here? Hit’ll be a lot nearer.”
“Grandpap’s jest ploughed that thar field to put in his winter wheat,” objected Pendrilla. “Hit’ll make mighty bad walkin’.”
“But we’ll get there quicker,” urged Judith feverishly, and that closed the argument. Between them the Lusk girls had succeeded in lighting the old lantern; by its illumination the party climbed the rail fence, and struggled for some distance across the loose hillocks of ploughed ground.
“Hit wouldn’t make such awful walkin’ if it had been drug,” Cliantha murmured. In the mountains they hitch a horse to a log or a large piece of brush and, dragging this over the ploughed ground, make shift to smooth it without a harrow.
They had hobbled about one third of the toilsome way when there came a rush of galloping hoofs, the girls had barely time to crouch and cry out, Speaker barked loud, and suddenly half a dozen young calves ran almost into them.
“Oh landy!” cried Pendrilla. “Ef them thar calves ain’t broke the fence again! Grandpap will be so mad—and we don’t darst to tell him that we know of it.”
“Come on,” urged Judith. “We’ve got to get over there.”
But it was found when they would have moved forward that they could not shake off their unwelcome escort. The calves had been tended occasionally in the dusk by a man with a lantern, and they hailed this one as a beacon of hope. Finally even Judith, desperately impatient to be gone, agreed that they would have to turn back and put the meddlesome creatures into their pasture and lay up the fence before they could make any progress.
“Hit’ll save time,” she commented briefly, as though time were the only thing worth considering now.