Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/80

 standing before the prisoner at the bar, literally tore up the sod. Both daughters charged after her, all bellowing, all pawing sod, and even the other calf, that wasn’t in the affair at all, added his wailings, while away down the road the scared chickens squawked louder than ever.

Seeing the ruin I had wrought, I climbed to the top of the fence, ready to drop on the other side if future developments should make it necessary. Up the road came both men running, and I thought, “Now, Katharine, you’ll catch it!” But, to my great surprise, not one solitary word did they utter, not even to each other. Half starved, soaked through and through with misery, they seemed dumbly desperate. Rain trickled in streams from their rubber coats and hats; their boots were muddy to the tops, mud was on their faces and in their hair, as, silent and grim, with stoical fortitude they pulled and tugged at that vicious little centipede of a calf. Tom had seized it by its tail and hind feet, while Bert had climbed the fence and gathered up its sprawling front legs, and together they were folding it over like an omelet, poking and pulling it sideways through the fence. At last the sufferer was released, but only to be instantly seized again by both men, who, clasping it in a damp embrace, bore it off down the hill, with all those bellowing bovines at their heels. As that solemn procession filed away, I had a haunting sense of having seen something like it in the sculptured frieze of some great public building. I watched until their