hardly turned to look there before, I reckoned it was behind me, I was
e'en a'most skeered to death.

"Thinks I, 'I shall never be able to keep up to the cows if a bear comes
arter 'em and chases 'em, and if I fall astarn, he'll just snap up a
plump little corn fed feller like me in less than half no time. Cryin','
says I, 'though, will do no good. You must be up and doin', Sam, or it's
gone goose with you.'

"So a thought struck me. Father had always been a-talkin' to me about
the leadin' men, and makin' acquaintance with the political big bugs
when I growed up and havin' a patron, and so on. Thinks I, I'll take
the leadin' cow for my patron. So I jist goes and cuts a long tough ash
saplin, and takes the little limbs off of it, and then walks along side
of Mooley, as meachin' as you please, so she mightn't suspect nothin',
and then grabs right hold of her tail, and yelled and screamed like mad,
and wallopped away at her like any thing.

"Well, the way she cut dirt was cautionary; she cleared stumps, ditches,
windfalls and every thing, and made a straight track of it for home as
the crow flies. Oh, she was a dipper: she fairly flow again, and if ever
she flagged, I laid it into her with the ash saplin, and away we started
agin, as if Old Nick himself was arter us.

"But afore I reached home, the rest of the cows came a bellowin', and a
roarin' and a-racin' like mad arter us, and gained on us too, so as most
to overtake us, jist as I come to the bars of the cow yard, over went
Mooler, like a fox, brought me whap up agin 'em, which knocked all the
wind out of my lungs and the fire out of my eyes, and laid me sprawlin
on the ground, and every one of the flock went right slap over me, all
but one--poor Brindle. She never came home agin. Bear nabbed her, and
tore her most ridiculous. He eat what he wanted, which was no trifle, I
can tell you, and left the rest till next time.

"Don't talk to me, Squire, about merits. We all want a lift in this
world; sunthin' or another to lay hold on, to help us along--_we want
the cow's tail_.

"Tell your friend, the female widder, she has got hold of the wrong cow
by the tail in gettin' hold of you, for you are nothin' but a despisable
colonist; but to look out for some patron here, some leadin' man, or
great lord, to clinch fast hold of him, and stick to him like a leach,
and if he flags, (for patrons, like old Mooley, get tired sometimes), to
recollect the ash saplin, to lay into