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Show H? 364-THE BULL The man turned in order to run the short distance to the front of die trailer and climb up the slat sides. He had plenty of time, except mat he slipped and fell. His boot was muddy from die rain, the trailer floor was still wet, and as he turned and pushed off, that foot slid on an old piece of manure. He fell to his hands and knees, dropping his hat and instantly forgetting it, scrambling to get his feet under him and to start again, rising part way and charging forward like a football lineman. But the bull did not slip and he caught the man just as, hands on the slats, he started to pull himself erect. The bull's head slammed into the man's back and they crashed against the slats so hard that the bull could not raise his head to toss me man. He might have tossed him on out, but as it was, the man was pinned there, shoulders back, face turned up to the sky and mouth open in a breadiless, soundless scream. When the bull backed off, the man fell to the floor and the bull put his head down and charged. Again and again he gored him while the man, his back broken and his lower body paralyzed, threshed his arms and shoulders about. Then he stopped. * * * The hired man straightened up from over the man and looked at die truck driver. "He's dead, huh?" said the driver. "Yeah." The hired man walked over to the man's expensive Stetson hat. The bull had kicked it free of harm; the man brushed it off and set it carefully over the dead man's face. Then the two men climbed up and over the sides of the trailer, dropping off to the ground. "What we gonna do now?" the driver wanted to know. "Take him down the hill, I reckon." He didn't feel like doing anything, but then he looked up and saw the boy. "Hey!" he said, startled. When the bull caught the man, the boy had been sitting on the fence. His mouth had opened in horror, he had reeled and nearly fallen, he had turned his face away and had climbed down the pole fence like a blind person. And he had stood there while the two men had lured the bull back down into the corral and then had attended to the man, but now he was running in his long loping stride up toward the pines and the camp. "What's he up to?" said the hired man, worried. |