Spluttering and vowing threats, Chet was forced to retrieve his clothes. When he sought to regain his boot from the pasture the bull saw him and rushed toward him with a bellow. Chet, in bare feet, just reached the fence in time and tumbled over into the bushes with the rescued boot. Then he had to step gingerly through the thistle patch in the other field before he could get the other boot. After that he had to climb a tree before he could reach one sock, and go plunging through the brambles before he could regain the other. When the laughing boys last saw him he was sitting by the roadside picking thistles from his feet and gazing hopelessly at his necktie. "He's cured for a while now," chuckled Joe, as the boys came up into the barnyard of Stummer's farm. "Cure him? Never!" exclaimed Frank. "He'll be making us all step before the day is out." CHAPTER VI THE OLD MILL Carl Stummer, a lanky, shambling old farmer with drooping shoulders, a drooping mustache and a drooping pipe, was just coming in from the fields when the boys came through the barnyard gate. How he managed to chew a straw and smoke a pipe perpetually at the same time was always a fascinating mystery, but he could do it and always seemed to derive a great deal of satisfaction from the feat, stopping only to change the straw or fill the pipe at intervals. Some people had been known to have seen him without the straw and some had seen him without the pipe, but no one had ever seen him without one or the other. Chet Morton always stated it as a grave fact that Carl Stummer slept with his pipe in his mouth and a supply of fresh straws constantly by his bedside and that he changed them in his sleep. "'Lo, boys!" he called, taking a firmer grip of the pipestem. "And what brings you here?" "How's the cherry crop, Mr. Stummer?" asked Frank. "Fair to middlin'," replied Mr. Stummer doubtfully. This was a good sign, as Carl Stummer was rarely known to express an encouraging opinion about anything. If he said crops were poor, one might be reasonably certain that they were really fair. If he said they were "fair to middlin'" it might be inferred that they were excellent. "Mother wants to know if you can let her have cherries to can this year." Mr. Stummer chewed with relish at the straw. "Most probably she kin," he agreed. "She wanted to speak for them so that you'd keep her in mind at cherry-picking time." "I'll remember," promised Stummer. "Mrs. Hardy has always been a good customer of mine. You tell her she can have all of them cherries that she wants." "Thanks, Mr. Stummer. That's all we called about." The farmer looked at them. His hands were plunged deep in the pockets of his faded overalls. The straw waggled beneath the drooping mustache. "Out for a hike?" he ventured. "Yes. We thought it would be a good day for it."