Exhausted, and with his heart pounding under his silk shirt-bosom,
Wallie stopped at last because he had to. Immediately the horse and cow
stopped also. While he gasped, a fresh manoeuvre occurred to Wallie.
Perhaps if he made a circle, gradually getting closer, by a quick dash
he could catch the bridle reins.

As he circled, the gaze of the horse and cow followed him with the
keenest interest. Finally he was close enough to see the placid look of
benevolence with which his cow was regarding him and success seemed
about to reward his efforts. The horse, too, had half closed its eyes by
the time he was ready for his coup, as if it had lost all interest in
eluding him.

"Nice horsey! Good bossy!" Wallie murmured, reassuringly.

For the third time he was within fifty feet of them, and while he was
debating as to whether to make his dash or try to get a little closer,
the pair, seeming to recognize fifty feet as the danger zone, threw up
their heads and tails and went off at a gallop.

Grinding his teeth in a way that could not but have been detrimental to
the enamel, Wallie stood looking after them. A profane word never had
passed his lips since he had had his mouth washed out with castile soap
for saying "devil." But now with deliberate, appalling abandon, and the
emphasis of a man who had cursed from his cradle, he yelled after the
fleeing fiends incarnate:

"Go to hell--damn you!"

Instantly shocked and ashamed of himself, Wallie instinctively looked
skyward, half expecting to see an outraged Jehovah ready to heave a
thunderbolt down on him, though he felt that the Almighty in justice
should recognize the provocation, and forgive him.

Weary, with blistered heels and drooping shoulders, Wallie plodded after
them while time and again they repeated the performance until it would
have worn down a bloodhound to have followed the tracks made by Wallie
and the renegades.

The sun set and the colours faded, yet Wallie with a dogged tenacity he
had not known was in him trudged back and forth, around and around, in
pursuit of the runaways, buoyed up chiefly by the hope that if he could
catch them he might soon be wealthy enough to afford to kill them.

It was nearly dusk, and a night in the open seemed before him when the
pair stopped and commenced feeding toward him. Whether they had become
hungry or the sport had palled on them were questions Wallie could not
answer. It was enough that they waited like two lambs