However, just as Russ and Rose reached the place one of the cows shook her head violently and Vi screamed:
“There! Look! The old thing wants to hook me! Oh, Russ! Oh, Rose! Laddie! Why don’t you do something!”
“Don’t be silly!” exclaimed Russ, who had little patience with Violet sometimes. “She isn’t going to hook you!”
“But what makes her shake her head?” demanded Violet, half crying.
“She’s doing it to shake off the flies that are biting her,” answered Russ, for he observed that when the cow shook her head a cloud of flies rose from behind her ears. “She’s only doing it to get rid of the flies, Vi,” said Russ.
“That’s what I told her, but she wouldn’t believe me,” remarked Laddie. “I said the cows wouldn’t hook her.”
“Well, they looked as if they were going to hook me, anyhow,” said Violet, who was not frightened now that her older brother and sister were there with her.
“I’m glad we found the cows, anyhow,” said Rose. “Now we can drive ’em out with the others and we can call Ralph and his dog and go home.”
The two black cows that had wandered away from the rest of the herd seemed gentle enough when the children urged them out of the shady bushes and into the open pasture. The other ten cows were gathered down near the pasture bars, waiting for them to be opened.
Ralph and Jimsie came slowly up the hill from another part of the pasture, where they had gone to search for the missing animals.