'Step backward gradually, my Ann Harriet,' said the valiant Dobbs, 'and I will see that she does not touch you.'
Ann Harriet stepped backward, but not 'gradually,' for she trod on a loose stone, which upset her, and she rolled over and over down a sloping rock, ruining, on the way, any quantity of huckleberry bushes and pennyroyal. This started the cow, who made another furious charge at the soldier, who this time, by a well-directed blow, cut one horn sheer off.
'That's good!' exclaimed he; 'next time I'll take t'other horn, and then commence on her legs.'
The cow made another retreat, but appeared by no means vanquished. The Captain stood his ground manfully. Ann Harriet sat on the moss at the foot of the rock, disentangling from her hair the bruised and mangled caterpillars which still remained there.
Just as the cow was about to make her third charge, shouts were heard in the path which led to the village, and in a moment 'Extinguisher No. 1,' with its brave volunteers, was on the ground. They had followed the directions of the parson and arrived at an opportune moment.
The boys at once decided that, as there was no fire to put out, they would 'put out' the cow; so, unreeling the hose, they drew the water from the brook, and in a very little while a stream of water from a two-inch pipe struck the astonished cow full in the face, when she turned and scampered off into the forest, jumping over Ann Harriet at a single bound, and was seen no more.
Captain Dobbs wiped his gory weapon on the greensward, and returned it to the sheath. He then sprang to the side of his wife, and, with the help of the foreman and two brakemen, raised her. She said her nerves were all unstrung, and she 'never could walk home in the world;' so she was placed on the box of the hose carriage and carried to the village.
The Peonytowners turned out en masse to meet them, and were anxious that the heroic Captain should make a speech from the town pump; but he declined.
In a short time the happy couple were comfortably seated on the sofa in the parlor of the old homestead, and his arm was as far round her waist as it would go. Here we will bid them adieu. Ann Harriet being married, she will have no more miss-haps—albeit at some future time something may be heard of Captain and Mrs. Dobbs—and all the little Dobbses.