When something happens that way and you have to do something first and think about it afterward, the mind seems to work like chain lightning. There was only one thing to do and it didn't take Skinny long to do that. He dropped the rope, grabbed hold of the cow's tail with both hands, and dug his feet into the ground.
"Run!" he yelled. "Run for the fence! I've got her."
When Bill heard about it he said that it seemed to him as if the cow had Skinny. Anyhow, she was surprised some and she was mad. She will think twice next time before she does any chasing, when anybody from Raven Patrol is around, I guess.
Skinny had a good hold and she couldn't get away. First she stopped running and tried to get at whatever it was back of her, with her horns, chasing herself around in a circle.
Skinny hung on like a good fellow. He had to. If he had let go once it would have been all up with him. She never touched him. Every time the cow stopped, there was a hundred pounds of boy hanging to the end of her tail.
It was like playing crack the whip, he told us afterward, "and being the littlest fellow on the tail end."
Then for a few moments it was hard to tell which was the cow and which was Skinny, for she started on a run for the other side of the pasture, Skinny sliding and bumping behind, and both of them scared half to death. Skinny was so excited he couldn't think to let go of the tail.
Hank said that he would have given a quarter if he could have taken a picture of it with his camera.
All this didn't take so long as it does to tell about it. The girl had reached the fence, crawled under, and was yelling for help.
Just then it seemed to Skinny as if the tail had come off in his hands, for he went tumbling along, heels over head, until he struck with a jar that almost loosened his teeth.