This confident announcement proved how truly Rosie had spoken when she said that Bob did not know cows.
Drive them up, indeed! The moment Snigs came up somewhere near close enough to be of any use, the calves with one simultaneous, if not concerted, movement, lowered their heads a little further, kicked up their six hind legs and scuttled out into the road.
"There! That's the way they always act!" cried Gretta. "There's nothing on earth so hard to drive as calves, except pigs. Bob, run; head 'em off! Ralph, Snigs, get on up the road, or they'll go over into the next county. Come, Happie!" And Gretta herself followed Rosie down the road at top speed.
The calves paused, looking as who should say: "How strangely excited you all are!" Then they trotted quietly up the road, slipping past Rosie, Gretta and Happie by the simple device of dividing forces, one on one side, the other two on the other side of the road. Then they saw the boys, and stopped short, eyeing them blandly as they crept towards them, whirled suddenly, threw up their legs again, whisked their tails into an arch, and bolted for the boundary fence of the farm opposite the Ark.
"Keep 'em out of there!" shrieked Rosie. "That there field belongs to the crabbedest man in the township. My days, but it's hot!"
There was not the slightest objection to keeping them out of the field, save to the minds of the lively beasts themselves. They seemed to think it would be a good joke to go through a broken paling and trample down their neighbor's clover—even calves are liable to have a different sense of humor from oneself.
The Holstein capered through—smiling, Happie declared—and the other two followed without the loss of a moment. Bob, Ralph and Snigs rushed after them, shouting like demented megaphones. The calves kept ahead of them without an effort.
"If they get over there by the woods that's the end of it!" cried Snigs despairingly. Suddenly the calves stopped, looked around inquiringly, wheeled right about face, and trotted easily up to the broken palings and out into the road, where they turned to gaze reproachfully at the irate boys whom they had left behind, plainly asking if they could not take their sport like gentlemen, and lose a race without losing their tempers.
"Now close up!" shouted Bob. "Head 'em off into our gate; they're bunched now." They were, but they immediately unbunched—if one may so express their sudden scattering.
Rosie and Gretta made a desperate lurch to stop this dispersion. Rosie stubbed her toe on a rock and fell headlong, her whole great length stretched out on the dusty road, and her arms extended; she looked like a fallen guide-post.