Snatching up a stick, I began clapping wood and hatchet together and charged directly at his lordship. He stood his ground till the hatchet was almost touching his nose, then, with a bellow of fear, turned tail and raced across the field with me in close pursuit. Gaining the fence, I tumbled over and arrived panting at the back of the farmhouse.
In a beautiful kitchen garden a farmer stood as though rooted to the ground with amazement at my grotesque appearance, as with hands and face streaked with blood, clothing in shreds and bedraggled with mud, I stood before him with a club in one hand and a hatchet in the other.
Eyes bulging, nostrils flaming, tail in air, a fine bull calf was careering madly among the vegetables.
“Wh—wh—why, my good Lord, woman,” began the man as he recovered his breath. “What’s happened to you? Where in the world did you drop from?”
“Where is my husband? What have you done to him?” I demanded hotly.
“Well, now. Let me see.” He scratched his head perplexedly. “Seems like I recall a man askin’ for a bucket o’ water something like a half hour back. Might he be your man now? I was so plum frantic with this here pesky calf, that I didn’t pay no attention to the man.”
“But who were you going to shoot?” I persisted. “I could hear you swearing clear over to the railroad.”
“Sho, now. Is that so? ’Scuse me. I’m plum bad about swearin’. Wife, she’s after me all the time, too,” he apologised. “Now, the wife’s right set on her posies, and this here —— calf—’scuse me, seems like I just can’t stop cussin’—got in and trompled ’em all down, and while I was a trying my darndest to get him out, I’ll be damned if he didn’t bust through into the vegetables and cavort all over them.”
Meanwhile, the innocent cause of the commotion had taken advantage of the lull in the storm to make his escape from the garden.
“You didn’t get in the slough, did ye?” continued the farmer, eyeing my skirt. “Didn’t ye see all them fences? We had so much trouble with the stock gettin’ in the —— hole—’scuse me, beats the devil how those words will come apopping out—that we fenced her all in. But what gets me is how ye come to get past that bull ’thout being gored to death. He’s turrible dangerous. That’s why we got all them high fences about. Kill’t two men, he did, ’fore I got him. Bought him cheap, but the wife just raises a hell of a row—’scuse me—at keepin’ him.”