his short, fat
legs, making-believe, as he often did, that he was riding horseback.
"Gid-dap! I lasso a rooster, I did!"

"Yes, and you'll kill the poor thing if you're not careful," panted Aunt
Millie, as she raced after the little fellow and caught him. Then she
gently pulled the rooster to her by means of the rope, and took it off
the fowl's neck.

The rooster was bedraggled from having been dragged through the dust and
the dirt, and it was so dizzy from having been whirled around by Trouble
that it could hardly stand up.

Aunt Millie smoothed out its feathers and got it some water. The rooster
drank a little and seemed to feel better. Then it ran off to join the
other roosters and the cackling hens that had been watching what Trouble
did, doubtless wondering what had gotten into the lassoed rooster to
make it run around the way it did on the end of a rope. But it was Baby
William who made all the trouble.

"You must never do that again," said Mrs. Martin when she came out of
the ranch house and heard what her little boy had done. "That was very
wrong, William, to lasso the poor rooster and drag it about with a rope
around its neck."

"I not do it any more," promised Trouble. "But I want a lasso like
Teddy."

"No, you're not big enough for that," his mother said. "You must wait
until you are a little older. Don't bother the chickens any more."

"No, I only get de eggs," promised Baby William.

"And please don't lasso them, or you'll break them," put in Aunt Millie;
but Janet thought her "eyes laughed," as she later told Teddy.

"No more lasso?" asked Trouble, looking at the rope his aunt had taken
from the rooster's long neck.

"No more lasso!" exclaimed Mrs. Barton, trying not to smile, for the
sight of the rooster, caught the way he had been, made even the older
folks want to laugh. Ted and Janet did laugh, but they did not let
Trouble see them. If he had he might have thought he had done something
smart or cute, and he would try it over again the first chance he had.
So they had to pretend to be sharp with him. The rooster was not hurt
by being lassoed.

Afterward Trouble told how he did it. With the slip-noose of the rope in
one hand and holding the rope's end in the other, Baby William walked
quietly up behind the rooster and tossed the loop over its head. Then he
pulled it tight and started to run, as he had seen the cow ponies
galloping to pull down a horse or steer that needed to be branded or