“Yes?” responded Dig, yanking again on the calf’s line.
“Call it Stone Fence. You can move it just as easily.”
“Waugh!” shouted Dig, as the calf hung back again and the rope became taut, burning the boy’s hand between rope and saddle. “Now you’ve said something, boy! Stone Fence let him be.”
Poke was dancing. He was no cow-pony and he objected to the dragging of the waif.
“We’ll never get anywhere,” said Chet impatiently. “Do something to that calf, Dig, please!”
It did seem as though after the little brute had been half choked to death he ought to be willing to trot along behind Poke; but not so. Stone Fence fell down on his knees, flopped over on his side, and allowed himself to be dragged in that position.
“Say!” gasped the sweating Dig, “he’ll be worn as thin as paper if he keeps that up. By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! I’ll beat that little nuisance!”
He dismounted and cut two long willow sprouts. The maverick began to graze. Nothing seemed to disturb its appetite. In that possession it and Digby Fordham were brothers, and Chet, with gravity, pointed this fact out.
“Brothers?” sniffed Dig. “You can bet we are brothers in another way. That dogy is obstinate; but so am I. You watch me!”
He mounted into the saddle again. He stuck one willow wand into his bootleg for emergency, and then used the other to prod the maverick. The latter didn’t like this. He kept ahead of the point of the willow wand which, whenever he lagged, poked between his hind legs.