“Oh, no, Ralph,” I said, “see, sister hasn’t got her basket nearly full yet. Here’s some nice large berries; let me fill your bucket again.”
“No; ’eys sour. Me don’t like ’ackburries any more!”
“I don’t wonder!” I thought, recalling the number of times that I had filled the small bucket, and he had emptied it, but I remained discreetly silent. The little fellow had been humored so much since father’s death—and, perhaps, before—that the moment he was opposed he cried, so now he began to whimper forlornly: “Me ’ants to do home, ’Essie!”
“What for, dear?”
“Me’s s’eepy.”
That appeared very probable, too, but I disliked to return with a half-filled bucket when the berries were so abundant and fairly begging to be picked. Looking around, inquiringly, I saw, under a clump of bushes at some little distance, an inviting carpet of cool green grass. Taking the child in my arms I carried him over and laid him down on the grass, putting my apron under his head for a pillow. “There, Ralph, isn’t that nice? I’ll stay right close by you and you can sleep here in the bushes like the little birds.”
Ralph smiled sleepily, nestling his head closer into the impromptu pillow. “’Ess,” he murmured drowsily, “’is nice; now me is a yittle yay bird.” He meant no reflection on himself in the comparison. His acquaintance with jay birds was limited, but he recognized them when he met them, and considered them very good fellows. The cool breeze fanned him; the leaves rustled, their airy shadows playing over his face, and Ralph was sound asleep almost as soon as his drowsy eyes closed. I watched him for a moment and then hastened back to my chosen corner of the blackberry patch and resumed picking.
Unconsciously, as I worked, I pressed in among the tall vines until at length the recumbent little figure on the grass was quite hidden from sight. That did not really matter, for I was easily within call. No sound coming from that quarter I gradually became more and more absorbed in my task. It would be very nice, I thought, to carry a brimming bucket full of berries down to the house on my return. Once or twice I suspended operations to stand still and listen under the startled impression that I had heard some unusual noise. Convinced each time that there was nothing; that I was mistaken, I continued picking, but I remember that I did glance up once at the cloudless sky, wondering, in an idle way, why I should have heard thunder.
The bucket was quite full and I was backing carefully out from a thick cluster of canes, having a respectful regard for their sharp thorns, when, suddenly, the air was rent with a wild shriek, coming from the direction of the grassy plot where I had left Ralph. Shriek after shriek followed. I had heard those high piercing notes too many times to be left in an instant’s doubt; the shrieks were his. Tearing my way out of the bushes, regardless now of thorns and scratches, I bounded into the open. The scene that presented itself, when I could get a view of what was going on, almost took away my breath. The entire hillside, and the fields below, were literally swarming with cattle. Not the tame domestic herds of peaceful Eastern meadows, but the wild, long-horned, compactly built, active, and peculiarly vicious beasts known in Western parlance as “range stock.”
Ralph had been awakened, none too soon, perhaps by the trampling of hoofs, perhaps by the low bellowing that I had absently attributed to unseen thunder clouds. However it was, he had started up, as he afterward sobbingly expressed it, “To make ’e bad tows do away, so ’ey not hurt ’Essie.”