The bars were down in a twinkling, and beyond them were acres and acres of tempting green grass. Surely no cow in her senses would prefer the dusty road to all that hill-side of breakfast.
Still, it might have occurred to Rube and Bun that cows could have preferences. Their own, indeed, had always marched on into the right lot without a blunder, and so had the Deacon's old ones. Even the new cow might now have been rightly guided if it had not been for her disturbed state of mind. So might all the rest but for the "worry" they were in. As it was, however, Watch had no sooner made his last dash at the head of the brindle than she made her last rush at him, and when she was met by Bun Gates and a long stick, she wheeled sharply to the right. There was the open gap before her. All the bars were down, and on she went into Mr. Gates's pasture at a gallop that was full of angry head-shaking. Both of Deacon Chittenden's orderly and sedate old cows followed as if she had called them.
"There they go!" shouted Rube. "Run in, Bun, and drive 'em out."
It would have been better if he had attended only to his other cattle, for Watch saw at once how badly things were going, and charged upon his old acquaintances in the road as if the confusion were driving him crazy.
The storm of bark he raised was enough to have made any cow nervous at any time, and those four were already "so worried." Well, in ever so few seconds Mr. Hollenhouser's cows and Mr. Gates's, all four of them, were scampering up the hill-side in Deacon Chittenden's lot. All Bun Gates could do over there beyond the partition fence only served to make the Deacon's new prize and the two others scatter in three different directions.
"What'll we do now?" shouted Rube.
"Put up the bars and go home," responded Bun, at the top of his voice. "I want to get some breakfast, and dry myself. We'll swap grass with Deacon Chittenden to-day."
That seemed fair; but after they had been to breakfast it looked like a duty to leave word at Deacon Chittenden's where his cows were, and Bun Gates did it. Rube did not see but what the news was told correctly, and so Katy Chittenden's forenoon was just spoiled for her, and her father and brother spent their afternoon looking for a gap that was not in the pasture fence.
Even when the Deacon on his way home stopped to ask Mr. Gates about it, all he learned was that Bun had complained that the new cow drove him all around the creek in a boat, and upset him.
"But that does not account for her being in your lot."