Read Online Old Yeller by Fred Gipson - Free Book Online

the next morning I went further back in the hills and searched all over. I finally came across her, holed up in a dense thicket of bee myrtle close to a little seep spring. I got one brief glimpse of a wobbly, long-legged calf before Spot snorted and took after me. She ran me clear to the top of the next high ridge before she turned back.
    I made another try. I got to the edge of the thicket and picked me up some rocks. I went to hollering and chunking into the brush, trying to scare her and the calf out. I got her out, all right, but she wasn’t scared. She came straight for me with her horns lowered, bawling her threats as she came. I had to turn tail a second time, and again she chased me clear to the top of that ridge.
    I tried it one more time, then went back to the house and got Old Yeller. I didn’t know if he knew anything about driving cattle or not, but I was willing to bet that he could keep her from chasing me.
    And he did. I went up to the edge of the thicket and started hollering and chunking rocks into it. Here came the heifer, madder than ever, it looked like. I yelled at Old Yeller. “Get her, Yeller,” I hollered. And Yeller got her. He pulled the neatest trick I ever saw a dog pull on a cow brute.
    Only I didn’t see it the first time. I was getting away from there too fast. I’d stumbled and fallen to my knees when I turned to run from Spot’s charge, and she was too close behind for me to be looking back and watching what Old Yeller wasdoing. I just heard the scared bawl she let out and the crashing of the brush as Old Yeller rolled her into it.
    I ran a piece farther, then looked back. The heifer was scrambling to her feet in a cloud of dust and looking like she didn’t know any more about what had happened than I did. Then she caught sight of Old Yeller. She snorted, stuck her tail in the air and made for him. Yeller ran like he was scared to death, then cut back around a thicket. A second later, he was coming in behind Spot.
    Without making a sound, he ran up beside her, made his leap and set his teeth in her nose.
    I guess it was the weight of him that did it. I saw him do it lots of times later, but never did quite understand how. Anyway, he just set his teeth in her nose, doubled himself up in a tight ball, and swung on. That turned the charging heifer a flip. Her heels went straight up in the air over her head. She landed flat on her back with all four feet sticking up. She hit the ground so hard that it sounded like she ought to bust wide open.
    I guess she felt that way about it, too.Anyhow, after taking that second fall, she didn’t have much fight left in her. She just scrambled to her feet and went trotting back into the thicket, lowing to her calf.
    I followed her, with Old Yeller beside me, and we drove her out and across the hills to the cow lot. Not one time did she turn on us again. She did try to run off a couple of times, but all I had to do was send Old Yeller in to head her. And the second she caught sight of him, she couldn’t turn fast enough to get headed back in the right direction.
    It was the same when we got her into the cowpen. Her bag was all in a strut with milk that the calf couldn’t hold. Mama said we needed to get that milk out. She came with a bucket and I took it, knowing I had me a big kicking fight on my hands if I ever hoped to get any milk.
    The kicking fight started. The first time I touched Spot’s bag, she reached out with a flying hind foot, aiming to kick my head off and coming close to doing it. Then she wheeled on me and put me on top of the rail fence as quick as a squirrel could have made it.
    Mama shook her head. “I was hoping shewouldn’t be that way,” she said. “I always hate to have to tie up a heifer to break her for milking. But I guess there’s no other way with this one.”
    I thought of all the trouble it would be, having to tie up that Spot heifer, head and feet, twice a day, every day, for maybe a month or more. I looked at