LITMIR.BIZ

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Up from one side came Mrs. Tiffany; and from the other, where ran a road dividing the Tiffany orchard from the next, approached a buckboard driven by a lolling Portuguese. Beside him sat a girl all in brown, dust-resistant khaki, who curtained her face with a parasol. Mrs. Tiffany ran, light as an elderly fairy, down the rows.

      “Eleanor!” she called.

      “Dear, dear Aunt Mattie!” cried the girl. Judge Tiffany, too, was hurrying forward to the road. The youth had his hand on the ladder, prepared to mount, when the parasol dropped. He stopped short with some nervous interruption in his breathing—which might have been a catch in his throat—at the sight of her great, grey eyes; stood still, watching. Mrs. Tiffany was greeting the girl with the pats and caresses of aged fondness. 7 Out of their chatter, presently, this came in the girl’s voice:

      “And I was so excited about getting back that when Antonio left the corral gate open I never thought to speak to him. And Ruggles’s Dynamo—they’ve let him run away again—just walked in and butted open the orchard bars and he’s loose now eating the prune trees!”

      “Edward, you must go right over!” cried Mrs. Tiffany; and then stopped on the thought of an old man trying to subdue a Jersey bull, good-natured though that bull might be. The same thought struck Judge Tiffany. Antonio, the Portuguese, lolling half-asleep against the dashboard, was worse than useless; the nearest visible help was a Chinaman, incompetent against horned cattle, and another Portuguese, and—

      “Let me corral your bull,” said the easy, thrilling voice of the boy who stood beside the step-ladder. Judge Tiffany turned in reproof, his wife in annoyance, the girl in some surprise. The youth was already walking toward the buckboard.

      “I guess that lets you out, John,” he said to the Portuguese. 8

      Something in him, the same quality which had made the Judge smile back through his rebuke concerning the green apricots, held them all. The Judge spoke first:

      “Very well, Mr.—”

      “Chester—Bertram Chester,” said the youth, throwing his self-introduction straight at the girl.

      “Mr. Chester is one of the University boys who are picking for us this summer,” said Judge Tiffany.

      “Yes?” replied the girl in a balanced, incurious tone. Her eyes followed Mr. Chester, while he took the reins from the deposed Antonio and waited for her to mount the buckboard. As she sprang up, after a final caution from Mrs. Tiffany, she perceived that he was going to “help her in.” With a motion both quick and slight, she evaded his hand and sprang to the seat unaided.

      Mr. Chester slapped the reins, clucked to the horse, and bent his gaze down upon the girl. He had seated himself all too close. She crowded herself against the iron seat-rail. It annoyed her a little; it embarrassed her still more. She was slightly relieved when he made a beginning of conversation. 9

      “So you’re Judge Tiffany’s niece, the girl who runs her ranch herself. I’ve heard heaps about you.”

      “Yes?” Embarrassment came back with the sound of her own voice. She could talk to Judge Tiffany or to any man of Judge Tiffany’s age, but with her male contemporaries she felt always this same constraint. And this young man was looking on her insistently, as though demanding answers.

      “They say you’re one of the smartest ranchers in these parts,” he went on.

      “Do they?” Her tone was even and inexpressive. But Mr. Chester kept straight along the path he was treading.

      “And that you’re also the prettiest girl around Santa Lucia.”

      “That’s very kind of them.”

      “I haven’t seen your ranch, but about the rest of it they’re dead right.”

      To this, she made no answer.

      “I’m just down for a few weeks,” he went on, changing the subject when he perceived that he had drawn no reply. “I’m a Senior next year at Berkeley. Ever been over to Berkeley?”

      “Yes.” 10

      “Ever go to any of the class dances?”

      “No.”

      “Thought you might, being in the city winters. I’m not much on dances myself. I’m a barb.”

      He peered, as though expecting that this last statement would evoke some answer. But her eyes were fixed on the little group of buildings—a bungalow, a barn and a corral—which had just come in sight around a turn of the orchard road. For the first time, she spoke with animation.

      “There’s the house—and there he is, just back of the stable!”

      Dynamo, the bull, a black and tan patch amidst the greenery, stood reaching with his tongue at an overhanging prune branch, bowed to the breaking point with green beads of fruit. As they watched, he sucked its tip between his blue lips, pulled at it with a twist of his head; the branch cracked and broke. Dynamo, his eyes closed in meditative enjoyment, started to absorb it from end to end.

      “Oh, dear, he’ll ruin it!” she cried. “Do hurry! Hadn’t you better send for help?”

      “I figure I can handle him,” said Bertram Chester, bristling at the imputation. “Just 11 give me that halter and drive in back of the corral, will you?”

      “Please don’t let him trample any trees!” she called after her champion as he vaulted the fence.

      Dynamo, seeing the end of his picnic at hand, galloped awkwardly a few rods, the branch trailing from his mouth. Then, with the ponderous but sudden shift of bull psychology, indignation rose in his bosom. He stopped himself so short that his fore-hoofs plowed two long furrows in the soft earth; whirled, lifted his muzzle, and bellowed. One fore-hoof tore up the dirt and showered it over his back. He dropped to his knees and rubbed the ground with his neck in sheer abandonment to the joy of his own abandoned wickedness. He rose up in the hollow which he had dug, lowered his horns, and glowered at the youth, who advanced with a kind of awkward bull-strength of his own.

      “Chase yourself!” cried Bertram Chester, flicking the halter. For a second, Dynamo’s eyelids fluttered; then, unaccountably, his bull pride rose up in him. He stopped midway of a bellow; his head went down, his tail rose up—and he charged. The girl across 12 the fence gave a little scream. The youth, stepping aside with a quickness marvelous considering the size of his frame, avoided the charge. As Dynamo tore past him, he struck out—a mighty lash—with the halter. The bull tore on until he smashed into a prune tree. The green fruit flew like water splashing from a stone; and Dynamo checked his course, turned again, began to paw and challenge as the preliminary to another charge.

      “Oh, let him go—please!” cried Eleanor. Whether he heard her or not made little difference to the youth. Taking advantage of Dynamo’s slight hesitation, he sprang in close, caught him by the horn and the tender, black nose; and back and forth, across the ruins of the prune tree, which went flat at the first rally, they fought and tugged and tossed. Through the agonized half-bellows of Dynamo, Eleanor caught a slighter sound. Her champion was swearing! Raised a little above her fears by the vicarious joy of fight, she took no offence at this; it seemed part of the picture.

      No one can account for the emotional processes of a bull. Just as suddenly as it rose, Dynamo’s courage evaporated. Once more 13 was he brother to the driven ox. He ceased to plant his fore feet; his bellow became a moan; he gave backward; in one mighty toss, he threw off his conqueror, turned, and galloped down the orchard with his tail curved like a pretzel across his back. Behind him followed the youth, lashing him with the halter as long as he could keep it up, pelting him with rocks and clods as the retreat gained. So, in a cloud of dust, they vanished into the Santa Clara road.

      When Bertram Chester came back panting, to return the halter, Antonio had arrived and was unhitching the bay mare from the buckboard. Eleanor stood by the corral gate, her Panama hat fallen back from her brown hair and a little of the excitement left in her grey eyes.

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