He varied his method, making gentle experiments, but at the end of ten minutes the lard can was still empty and the cow was growing restless. For that he could not blame her. His hand ached and his foot seemed about to break off at the ankle from sitting on it.
Wallie felt chagrined when he reflected that although he was a graduate of Haverford College and was bringing all his intelligence to bear upon it he was still unable to do what any hired man with an inch of forehead could accomplish with no apparent effort.
Perhaps there was some trick about it--perhaps it _did_ make a difference which side a cow was milked on. Wallie walked around and turned the spot-light on the other side of his Jersey.
The outlook, he fancied, seemed more promising.
He sat down on his heel and started in energetically.
It did make a difference which side one milked on--there was no doubt about it. The instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aim which was not only deadly and unerring but remarkable, considering that she could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie's stomach with such force that the muffled thud of it sounded like someone beating a carpet. The kick knocked the breath out of him, and as he lay on his back on a clump of cactus he was sure that he was bleeding internally and probably dying.
Wallie finally got to his feet painfully and with both hands on his stomach looked at the cow, who was again chewing tranquilly. There was murder in Wallie's eyes as he yelled at her:
Then he crept up the path to his tent and dropped down on his pneumatic mattress, doubting if he ever would rise from it. As he lay there, supperless, with his clothes on, every muscle in his body aching, to say nothing of the sensation in his stomach, it seemed incredible that he could be the same person who had started off so blithely in the morning.
The series of misfortunes which had befallen him overwhelmed him. He had purchased a cow which not only gave no milk but had a vicious disposition. He had paid two prices for a pair of locoed horses that did their pulling backward. He had made himself a laughing stock to the entire country and seemed destined to play the clown somehow whenever Helene Spenceley was in the vicinity. His ears grew red to the rims as he thought of it.