fence, but my eyes had watered, I couldn’t see to climb. Max hopped about the pound, crying at them to stop; I bleated my pain to him and scrabbled up and down in search of the gate. The pens were in an uproar. “Ha ha ha!” the people snarled, and kicked me with their leathern hooves.
Hours later, when Max had calmed the herd at last and laid cold pads on my contusions, he did his best to explain that my attackers had been frightened as I, and had struck me thinking I meant to harm them. This I could understand readily enough. What stung more sharp than bruises was a thing he found less easy to make clear in our simple tongue: Why had they cheered my stunt and then
ha-ha’d
all the while they kicked me? To attack—that was perfectly normal for bucks of any species, however unequal the contest. But what manner of beast was it that
laughed
at his victim’s plight?
Even as I strove to find words for this question I felt a nudging at my back; Redfearn’s Tommy had overcome his fright enough to cross the kid-pen and snuggle down beside me in Max’s lap, which we often shared. He still smelt of my urine, and when I made to pick his lice by way of reparation, he bounded off a-trembling.
“So,” Max said, and was kind enough to say no more.
3
.
This sweet forbearance—which had also spared me any punishment for my misdeeds—I myself was not graced with. The more I reflected on my ill use of Redfearn’s Tom, the wrathfuller I grew at my own tormentors. Indeed, I tasted for the first time hatred, and turning its dark flavor on my tongue, lost my first night’s sleep. Tom by next morning bore no grudge, he was ready to play again; but when the iron cycles drove up to our pound and the afternoon’s humans were discharged to admire me—their numbers increased by news of the past day’s sport—I attacked the fence viciously, and was pleased to see them scatter. That became my custom: I would wait in my stall until the visitors gathered, charge at them once, and then withdraw to brood away the balance of the day. When their first alarm passed they begged and taunted me to have at them again—“Here, Billy!” “Come, Bill!”—and made ready sticks to poke me through the mesh. But the first charge they were always unprepared for: to a man they sprang back; the females squealed, the males made oaths. I never gave them the pleasure of a second.
“That’s not nice,” Max suggested. But he didn’t say
verboten
, as once he would have, and I noticed he was usually somewhere about to see the brutes jump.
This new sport—say rather
diversion
, since I had lost all taste for play—preoccupied me until one evening in March, just short of a fortnight after my fall. I had had no victims all that day; it was a Friday, and Maxhad long since told me how surpassing dull humans were, that spend five days a week learning things to make them miserable. Then after supper, as Redfearn’s Tom and I enjoyed a fresh salt-lick, I heard a clinking rattle in the road, which I knew to be the sound of a
bicycle
. Together we peered out into the pound: a plump, brown-coated human lady had dismounted from her thing in the dusking light and approached our fence. By the look of her she was no doeling—though truly, all humans but Max looked much alike to me. Her hair was cream-white like a Saanen’s and seemed decently brushed; she wore jeweled eyeglasses pointed at the corners; her legs were bare from hock to hoof … how did one describe a creature that changed its coat every day? She came to the fence and looked about the pound, where three or four kids were sleeping off their meal. They were polite enough, when she called something meaningless to them, to wander over and sniff the dead weeds she stuck through the wire. But of course it was not they she came to taunt; she pretended interest in them for half a minute and then yoohooed at the barn. Her voice seemed timid; I guessed she feared Max might hear and prevent her from
Hours later, when Max had calmed the herd at last and laid cold pads on my contusions, he did his best to explain that my attackers had been frightened as I, and had struck me thinking I meant to harm them. This I could understand readily enough. What stung more sharp than bruises was a thing he found less easy to make clear in our simple tongue: Why had they cheered my stunt and then
ha-ha’d
all the while they kicked me? To attack—that was perfectly normal for bucks of any species, however unequal the contest. But what manner of beast was it that
laughed
at his victim’s plight?
Even as I strove to find words for this question I felt a nudging at my back; Redfearn’s Tommy had overcome his fright enough to cross the kid-pen and snuggle down beside me in Max’s lap, which we often shared. He still smelt of my urine, and when I made to pick his lice by way of reparation, he bounded off a-trembling.
“So,” Max said, and was kind enough to say no more.
3
.
This sweet forbearance—which had also spared me any punishment for my misdeeds—I myself was not graced with. The more I reflected on my ill use of Redfearn’s Tom, the wrathfuller I grew at my own tormentors. Indeed, I tasted for the first time hatred, and turning its dark flavor on my tongue, lost my first night’s sleep. Tom by next morning bore no grudge, he was ready to play again; but when the iron cycles drove up to our pound and the afternoon’s humans were discharged to admire me—their numbers increased by news of the past day’s sport—I attacked the fence viciously, and was pleased to see them scatter. That became my custom: I would wait in my stall until the visitors gathered, charge at them once, and then withdraw to brood away the balance of the day. When their first alarm passed they begged and taunted me to have at them again—“Here, Billy!” “Come, Bill!”—and made ready sticks to poke me through the mesh. But the first charge they were always unprepared for: to a man they sprang back; the females squealed, the males made oaths. I never gave them the pleasure of a second.
“That’s not nice,” Max suggested. But he didn’t say
verboten
, as once he would have, and I noticed he was usually somewhere about to see the brutes jump.
This new sport—say rather
diversion
, since I had lost all taste for play—preoccupied me until one evening in March, just short of a fortnight after my fall. I had had no victims all that day; it was a Friday, and Maxhad long since told me how surpassing dull humans were, that spend five days a week learning things to make them miserable. Then after supper, as Redfearn’s Tom and I enjoyed a fresh salt-lick, I heard a clinking rattle in the road, which I knew to be the sound of a
bicycle
. Together we peered out into the pound: a plump, brown-coated human lady had dismounted from her thing in the dusking light and approached our fence. By the look of her she was no doeling—though truly, all humans but Max looked much alike to me. Her hair was cream-white like a Saanen’s and seemed decently brushed; she wore jeweled eyeglasses pointed at the corners; her legs were bare from hock to hoof … how did one describe a creature that changed its coat every day? She came to the fence and looked about the pound, where three or four kids were sleeping off their meal. They were polite enough, when she called something meaningless to them, to wander over and sniff the dead weeds she stuck through the wire. But of course it was not they she came to taunt; she pretended interest in them for half a minute and then yoohooed at the barn. Her voice seemed timid; I guessed she feared Max might hear and prevent her from
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