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 for him to walk up and catch them.
He was so tired that when he got himself in the saddle with the cow ambling along meekly at his stirrup, he found himself feeling grateful to them instead of vindictive. The locoed horses he decided to leave until morning.
By the time he had reached his homestead and fallen out of the saddle, he had forgotten that he had sworn to tie them up and "whale" them. On the contrary, he was wondering if milking were a difficult process and if he could accomplish it, for he could not find it in his heart to let a dumb brute suffer. He remembered hearing that cows should be milked regularly, and while his Jersey had goaded him to blasphemy he knew that he would not be able to sleep if she was in pain through his negligence.
Picketing the horse as Pinkey had taught him, he put the cow on a rope also. Then he set about the performance which had looked so simple when he had seen others engage in it.
Among his accoutrements was a flashlight, and with this and a lard can Wallie stood for a moment speculating as to whether the cow had any preference as to the side she was milked on. He could not see that it would make any material difference, so he sat down on his heel on the side nearest and turned his flashlight on the spot where he wished to operate. Placing his lard can on the ground where he could throw a stream into it conveniently, he used his free hand for that purpose.
To his surprise, nothing happened--except that the cow stopped chewing her cud and looked at him inquiringly. He persisted, but uselessly. Was anything wrong with his system, he wondered? He thought not, since he was milking exactly as he had seen the hired man milk on a farm where he had once spent a month in his childhood.