By the second “Wow!” Sal Scrugs bounded out of the bushes in the opposite direction from the pasture and hooked her way through the thick bushes straight for a little lake that lay sparkling in the sunshine.
“Here, you long-legged, cross-eyed cow, don’t think you are going to lose me in these woods! For you are not, even if the thorns and briars do pull the hair off my skin!”
On, on, faster and faster went Sal Scrugs, straight for the lake, though the hide on her back was scratched by the long, cruel thorns on the thorn apple trees under which she ran. Anything was better than being bitten by Shep! She had just come out of the woods to a smooth piece of ground where she expected to make great headway and out-distance Shep when, chancing to look behind her, she saw Shep within thirty feet of her, running with mouth open and showing to advantage his glistening teeth.
“Oh, my! He is going to catch me! But I will try one more way to dodge him. I will run into the lake.”
She increased her speed but to no avail. She could hear him coming closer and closer and just as she reached the shore of the lake she felt his warm breath on her legs and expected to feel his sharp teeth sink in her ankles when, with one plunge, she threw herself into the deep water and began to swim for the opposite shore. Shep did likewise, and her hope that he would not follow her into the water was blasted. As she swam, he barked to her: “If you don’t turn toward the pasture when we land, I will bite a big piece out of your hind leg, and no fooling about it, either!”
On hearing this, Sal said to herself, “I guess he means it so I might just as well give up now and go back to the pasture as to wait until I am all bitten up. I guess my aunt was right. Shep never gives up chasing an animal until he has it where he wants it.”
Consequently when she landed on the opposite shore, she cut sticks for the home pasture as fast as her legs would carry her.
What was Shep’s surprise when he returned to find that while he had been gone all the other cows had walked out of the pasture and were now ambling leisurely down the road away from home! But it took only a few minutes for him to run past them and head them toward home again. He had just succeeded in getting them all back in the pasture and was taking a much needed rest when he saw Mr. Watson, Mr. Jones and their two hired men coming down the road to mend the fence. When they arrived, Mr. Watson noticed that Shep was wringing wet and he said, “Why, Shep, how in the world did you manage to get so wet? There is no water nearer than the lake, and I do not think you would leave the cows you were in charge of long enough to go for a swim.” But chancing to look up just then, he saw Sal Scrugs too was wet all over, and he exclaimed, “I think I begin to see light! That impish cow of yours, Sal Scrugs, got out of the pasture and went over to the lake, and she and Shep have both been in the water. And I think if the truth were known, it was she who broke down the fence and let out all the other cows.”
“I believe so, too,” replied Mr. Jones, “and this settles it. I am tired of her tricks and I am going to put her up for sale to-morrow. She never gave much milk, and I can’t fatten her for beef; no matter how much I feed her, she never takes on a pound of flesh. So why keep such a mean animal? Sal Scrugs, you hear that? You are to be sold to-morrow!”