mp round and roar till the earth shook, calling me every
name he could lay tongue to. This was to frighten me, of course; and
when he thought I was sufficiently impressed, he'd back away softly and
try to make a sneak for the creek. Sometimes I'd let him get almost
there--only a couple of hundred yards away it was--when out I'd pop and
back he'd come, lumbering along like the old landslide he was. After I'd
done this a few times, and he'd figured it out, he changed his tactics.
Grasped the time element, you see. Without a word of warning, away he'd
go, tearing for the water like mad, scheming to get there and back before
I ran away. Finally, after cursing me most horribly, he raised the siege
and deliberately stalked off to the water-hole.

"That was the only time he penned me,--three days of it,--but after that
the hippodrome never stopped. Round, and round, and round, like a six
days' go-as-I-please, for he never pleased. My clothes went to rags and
tatters, but I never stopped to mend, till at last I ran naked as a son
of earth, with nothing but the old hand-axe in one hand and a cobble in
the other. In fact, I never stopped, save for peeps of sleep in the
crannies and ledges of the cliffs. As for the bull, he got perceptibly
thinner and thinner--must have lost several tons at least--and as nervous
as a schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony. When I'd come up with
him and yell, or lain him with a rock at long range, he'd jump like a
skittish colt and tremble all over. Then he'd pull out on the run, tail
and trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing,
and the way he'd swear at me was something dreadful. A most immoral
beast he was, a murderer, and a blasphemer.

"But towards the end he quit all this, and fell to whimpering and crying
like a baby. His spirit broke and he became a quivering jelly-mountain
of misery. He'd get attacks of palpitation of the heart, and stagger
around like a drunken man, and fall down and bark his shins. And then
he'd cry, but always on the run. O man, the gods themselves would have
wept with him, and you yourself or any other man. It was pitiful, and
there was so I much of it, but I only hardened my heart and hit up the
pace. At last I wore him clean out, and he lay down, broken-winded,
broken-hearted, hungry, and thirsty. When I found he wouldn't budge, I
hamstrung him, and spent the better part of the day wading into him with
the hand-axe, he