LONE WOLF 275 



when Timmins and Lone Wolf emerged from 

 the thick woods into the stumpy pastures 

 and rough burnt lands that spread back 

 irregularly from the outlying farms. And 

 here, while crossing a wide pasture known 

 as Smith's Lots, an amazing thing befell. 

 Of course Timmins was not particularly 

 surprised, because his backwoods philoso- 

 phizing had long ago led him to the conclusion 

 that when things get started happening they 

 have a way of keeping it up. Days, weeks, 

 months, glide by without event enough to 

 ripple the most sensitive memory. Then the 

 whimsical Fates do something different, find it 

 interesting, and proceed to do something else. 

 So, though Timmins had been accustomed, 

 all his life, to managing bulls, good-tempered 

 and bad-tempered alike, and had never had 

 the ugliest of them presume to turn upon him, 

 he was not astonished now by the apparition of 

 Smith's bull, a wide-horned, carrot-red, white- 

 faced Hereford, charging down upon him in 

 thunderous fury from behind a poplar thicket. 

 In a flash he remembered that the bull, which 

 was notoriously murderous in temper, had 

 been turned out into that pasture to act as 

 guardian to Smith's flocks. There was not 

 a tree near big enough for refuge. There 

 was not a stick big enough for a weapon. 



