Page:On Our Selection.djvu/199

Rh screwed the wrong way, and lay with her tongue out moaning.

Dad rose and spat out dirt.

"Dear me!" Mother said. "it 's a wild cow y' bought."

"Not at all," Dad answered; "she 's a bit touchy, that 's all."

"She tut-tut-tutched you orright, Dad," Joe said from the top of the yard.

Dad looked up. "Get down outer that!" he yelled. "No wonder the damn cow's frightened."

Joe got down.

Dad brought "Dummy" to her senses with a few heavy kicks on her nose, and proceeded to milk her again.

"Dummy" kicked and kicked. Dad tugged and tugged at her teats, but no milk came. Dad could n't understand it.

"Must be frettin'," he said.

Joe owned a pet calf about a week old which lived on water and a long rope. Dad told him to fetch it to see if it would suck. Joe fetched it, and it sucked ravenously at "Dummy's" flank, and joyfully wagged its tail. "Dummy" resented it. She plunged until the leg-rope parted again, when the calf got mixed up in her legs, and she trampled it in the ground. Joe took it away. Dad turned "Dummy" out and bailed her up the next day—and every day for a week—with the same result. Then he sent for Larry O'Laughlin, who posed as a cow doctor.