"Ouch! Help!"
A loud, angry bleat followed his exclamation. The lad's head had been driven with great violence against the soft, unresisting side of a Merino ram.
The Merino went down under the blow. But his soft fleece had saved the boy from serious injury, if not from a broken neck.
"I fell off," cried Stacy, struggling to his feet, running his fingers over his body, as if to determine whether or not he had been hurt. "I—I didn't see them. Th—they got in my way."
Whether he had or not was not now the question, at least so far as the Merino was concerned.
The ram was angry. He resented being bunted over in any such manner.
The animal, scrambling to his feet, uttered a bleat, at the same time viciously throwing up his head, landing lightly, for him, on Chunky's leg.
"Stop kicking me! I say you stop that you——"
He did not finish what he had started to say. The Merino, finding the mark a satisfactory one, had backed quickly off. With head well down, eyes on the boy who had been the cause of his downfall, he charged with a rush.
Just at the instant when he delivered the blow, the tough, horned head was raised ever so little.