"Trouble! Trouble!" cried Aunt Millie. "What are you doing?"
"Playin' cowboy!" was his answer. "I lasso rooster wif my rope, like Teddy catches post."
"Oh, you mustn't do that!" cried Aunt Millie, as she ran after the small boy and the dragging rooster.
"Cock-a doodle-do!" crowed the rooster, or, rather, it tried to crow that way, but it would get only about half of it out and then Trouble would pull the rope tight about the fowl's neck and the crow would be shut off suddenly.
"Gid-dap, pony!" cried Baby William, trotting along on his short, fat legs, making-believe, as he often did, that he was riding horseback. "Gid-dap! I lasso a rooster, I did!"
"Yes, and you'll kill the poor thing if you're not careful," panted Aunt Millie, as she raced after the little fellow and caught him. Then she gently pulled the rooster to her by means of the rope, and took it off the fowl's neck.
The rooster was bedraggled from having been dragged through the dust and the dirt, and it was so dizzy from having been whirled around by Trouble that it could hardly stand up.
Aunt Millie smoothed out its feathers and got it some water. The rooster drank a little and seemed to feel better. Then it ran off to join the other roosters and the cackling hens that had been watching what Trouble did, doubtless wondering what had gotten into the lassoed rooster to make it run around the way it did on the end of a rope. But it was Baby William who made all the trouble.
"You must never do that again," said Mrs. Martin when she came out of the ranch house and heard what her little boy had done. "That was very wrong, William, to lasso the poor rooster and drag it about with a rope around its neck."
"I not do it any more," promised Trouble. "But I want a lasso like Teddy."