He yelled over his shoulder: “Better you hurry, and not sing light songs and nonsense. The kelver maybe is lost in the woods.” She stopped singing, and trudged behind without saying anything, though once she sobbed when she twisted her ankle. Shoes—wearing shoes at work! A young girl had good strong feet; shoes were for church and weddings.

As soon as they reached the woods, they began to have trouble. The calves had indeed hidden themselves, in a little patch of bushes high among the rocks; how they ever got there was a mystery; they peeked out like big-eyed deer. It took half an hour to climb around and catch them and drag them, bawling, back to the herd. And the sun was high, and the cattle seemed restless. Henry had no sooner mounted Belle than she stumbled over some stones and nearly threw him. He gave her a good stick where it would do the most good … ach, she acted like a wild horse, and they would never get home this way!

It was certainly ten o’clock before they got the straggling beasts up to the Emmetsburg road. Ten men would have had a time; Henry knew that the delay was not Amelia’s fault, though he blamed her loudly for it. She had torn her dress in two places, her face was a dull red, she had a scratch on her cheek, and there were dirty tear-marks around her eyes. The cattle were wild ones and the horses almost as bad, except old Heine, and he moved as if each hoof were buried in mud above the shaggy hock. Half the day speeding by, and the cattle not home yet. “You bet God is giving it to me,” Henry told Amelia coldly. “God is mad because I got a girl that has her head full of crazy songs instead of work like she should.” He howled at the animals: “You damn verrickt, and get to the road! Throw them a stone once, you no-good—”

At every lane opening, at Sherfys’ dooryard, at Codoris’, the herd made a lumbering dash for shade and freedom. You had only to leave your stock in the woods for four days to make them as savage as Indians. The sunshine pushed down; they stewed in its pale glare, and Henry began to forget about harvest. He could feel yellow dust settling in his throat, coating his eyeballs, dry and scorching all over his body sweat … Well, at last they were getting the dumb-heads home. He would like to let them go without their feed this night, and see how they liked it. Only you could not do that to cows; they had to eat, or you got no milk. Precious little milk he would get until they were tamed again … The animal shadows blotted under trampling feet—