Another roper had snared him. He humped his back and began to buck, his legs rigid. At every leap into the air he blatted and protested. His mother shrank back in confusion at the first outcry and lost sight of him in the dust raised by his unwilling progress. For fully thirty yards he was dragged in a series of hurtling leaps, with the rope cutting into his neck so that he could scarcely breathe; and then, before he had time to recover his faculties, a man seized the rope, ran along it until he reached the red-and-white, and reaching over his body, flopped him in the air. But the calf was not flanked so easily--not Come-a-Seven. Twice he rebounded like a rubber ball, finding his feet before his antagonist could fall on him. “Stay-ay-ay with him, Steve! Go to him, boy!” shrieked the delighted flankers. “Durn his hide. He’s stout as a weaner,” Steve snorted; and he gave a tremendous heave. At the same time he made a short spring forward with knees crooked, which carried him under the calf as that strenuous combatant tried to make his hoofs hit the ground first. The red-and-white came down with a bump that sounded like the unloading of a trunk marked, “Handle with care.” It would have broken the ribs of anything aged three months except a calf. “Holy cats, it’s Come-a-Seven,” Steve panted. He sat back of his head, with a knee on the neck, and twisted one foreleg in a jiu-jitsu grip that paralyzed all effort. Another puncher at his other extremity got a vise-like hold of the left leg and put the other out of commission by thrusting it far forward with his foot. Oh-oh-oh-uh-uh-uh-ah! The cry was almost human, and the eyes bulged and rolled with terror until the whites showed. The iron had touched him, biting through his coat into the flesh, while the smoke curled up with smell of burning hair. His fright needed just that pang to get proper vocal expression, and he used all his available breath in a frantic appeal to the mother that bore him. It was not in vain. “Look out! Here she comes!” yelled a flanker. The three working over the calf looked up to see the cow trotting toward them. There was no time to dodge. When she was within ten feet of the group an idle flanker kicked a jet of sand into her face and she swerved irresolutely, coming to a walk. The roper drove her back and work was resumed on her son. “I mind once, when I was with the Spur, a cow jumped clean over us that-a-way,” remarked Bill Kennedy, rising from the ground. As a parting salute he rolled the red-and-white over his hip, as a wrestler throws a man to the mat. “Say, Jake, heel them big fellers.” The calf was scared, and sore all over. A swallow-fork in the right ear and a crop in the left worried him. He stood glowering in all directions, in an effort to get his bearings; then he executed some shuddering, half-hearted jumps, as though trying to shed the two burning letters on his left flank, and sought his mother. He was sick, and all the fight gone from him.