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 doubt about it. The instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aim which was not only deadly and unerring but remarkable, considering that she could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie's stomach with such force that the muffled thud of it sounded like someone beating a carpet. The kick knocked the breath out of him, and as he lay on his back on a clump of cactus he was sure that he was bleeding internally and probably dying.
Wallie finally got to his feet painfully and with both hands on his stomach looked at the cow, who was again chewing tranquilly. There was murder 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 pneumatic mattress, doubting if he ever would rise from it. As he lay there, supperless, with his clothes on, every muscle in his body aching, to say nothing of the sensation in his stomach, it seemed incredible that he could be the same person who had started off so blithely in the morning.
The series of misfortunes which had befallen him overwhelmed him. He had purchased a cow which not only gave no milk but had a vicious disposition. He had paid two prices for a pair of locoed horses that did their pulling backward. He had made himself a laughing stock to the entire country and seemed destined to play the clown somehow whenever Helene Spenceley was in the vicinity. His ears grew red to the rims as he 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 teeth as he heard her. A coyote yapped on a ridge forlornly and the horse on picket coughed and snorted while Wallie, staring at the stars through the entrance, massaged his injury and ruminated.
Suddenly he sat up on his patent air mattress and shook his fist at the universe: