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Show 3? 354-THE BULL Closest to him, the hired man looked up at him and smiled: he called him die Boss, sometimes the Head Man, and shared die world easily with him. Further down toward the pond the boy looked back over his shoulder at the bull, straightening as he did, his eyes glowing, sitting up so straight that he rose taller in the saddle than his father. The man never sat any way but straight and when he looked at die bull he saw only what a valuable animal he was. The bull surveyed the scene below him with the alert calm of a demi-god, his sides rising and falling, his dusty red hide glowing dully in the sun, the white streak down his withers and particularly his white face matted with curls. His horns, curving forward at almost an identical angle, looked waxed and polished, were darker at die tips and needle-sharp. He looked timeless, as old as die ages. He looked not at all like the Hereford bulls which win blue ribbons at state fairs. Too fat to fight, too short-legged to mount a cow unless she is stood in a pit, the prize bull lives out his life in a pen, curried, stuffed with vitamins and reduced to dependence on Sears, Roebuck apparatus to service a harem which he doesn't even see. He is impressive in the ratio he carries of meat to bone, of profit to loss, and in the fabulous prices he brings; from his forebears he has been allowed to inherit only his coloring and his horns, which are usually clipped. The range bull is another animal. He has legs for speed and the endurance to travel all day; he has the horns to disembowel a cougar, die power to rip up a bear; he has the balls to husband his harem, the lust to populate the world. Separate him from his cows with a barbed wire fence and he will walk through it, threaten them and he will kill. And yet he is the safest of bulls for man. Not bred to fight like Spanish bulls, not unnaturally confined like dairy bulls, he is usually indifferent to man whether on foot or horseback. And since there is nothing else in his world to match him, nothing threatens him. When he gets too old he will be shoved aside by a bull in his prime, but until then he is boss all right, the head man: in his world he is so unchallenged that his indifference is godlike, and with that mien he walked down the slope and into his herd. While die herd gathered, the riders searched the surrounding area for strays, the hired man astride a bay mare which he had broken and had named Belle, young and strong and fast, crisply |