“Sure he can,” remarked Bones. “You know what sort of gymnast Lanky is. Watch him put his feet in his pockets now.”
Of course, the dangling boy did not go quite that far, because in the first place he had no such thing as a pocket in his running togs, and even if he had, he felt no inclination to carry out the suggestion of humorous Bones. But he did throw one leg up over the line, and this took his form just so much further away from the ugly horns below.
In this fashion then Lanky passed over the fence, and was safe. The baffled bull seemed to know that his intended prey had escaped him. Perhaps he felt that the boy on the fence must be laughing at him. At any rate he made a sudden, wicked lunge in the direction of Bones, and that worthy, being taken by surprise, might have suffered if he had not allowed himself to simply fall in a heap on the ground outside of the rails.
Bang! came the rushing bull against the fence, which quivered before the onset, and might even have given way, only that it had been stoutly built to withstand such rushes.
“Bah! don’t you wish you could?” jeered Bones, struggling to his feet, his fright a thing of the past; and he made a face at the bull, that was just two feet away, although separated by that barrier of stout rails.
“How are you, Lanky; all right?” asked Frank, as the long figure of the rescued chum appeared in sight, dropping down out of the second tree.
“Well, I seem to be all here,” replied the other, with a broad smile; “but when that old beast was trying to reach me, I began to think he’d have my shins scraped, more or less. That was a bully good thought of yours, Frank. Queerest ride I ever took in all my life. Talk to me about toboggan slides—why, they’re not in it with a rope run, and a jumpin’ bull underneath.”
“Who’ll get the rope, Frank?” asked Bones.
“You can, if you feel like it,” replied the other, with a smile.
“Excuse me, but it’d have to be something more’n an old clothesline that would tempt me to go into that field again,” Bones declared.