BUZZING BEES
Russ and Rose, who had been walking along the shores of a little brook
looking for the missing cows, heard Violet’s yells. A moment later they
heard shouts from Laddie. He was saying:
“Get back there, you old cows! Get back there! Don’t you dare hook my
sister!”
Then Violet’s voice sounded again:
“Oh, but Laddie, they are going to hook me! Oh! Oh!”
“Come on!” called Russ to his sister Rose, and together they rushed up
out of the little glen where the stream ran and hastened toward the
clump of trees and bushes whence came the voices of Laddie and Violet.
Ralph and his dog were not in sight.
“Do you suppose the cows are trying to hook Laddie and Violet with
their horns?” asked Rose.
“I don’t think cows would,” panted Russ as he ran on followed by Rose,
who could not go quite so fast. “Cows don’t hook you, I guess, but
bulls do, though I didn’t hear Ralph say there were any bulls in this
pasture.”
“Is a bull worse than a cow?” Rose asked.
“For hooking you a bull is the worst there is,” Russ answered. “But I
don’t suppose it’s a bull. Maybe the cows are only shaking their heads
at Violet and she thinks they’re trying to hook her.”
And this is just what had happened. Laddie and Violet had found the
lost cows. The two black animals were standing peacefully in a shady
place, chewing their cud. Perhaps they were day-dreaming, if cows ever
do such things. At any rate the cows paid no attention to the “co,
boss” called by the children.
Laddie had fairly stumbled upon the hiding place of the cows, and as
Russ and Rose reached the place they saw Laddie and his twin sister
standing with their backs against a big tree, as Rose had stood when
Jimsie barked at her.
In front of Laddie and Violet were the two cows, chewing their cud,
as I have said. But as Russ looked he could see no signs that the cows
were going to “hook” Violet, as she had shouted they were about to do.
However, just as Russ and Rose reached the place one of the cows shook
her head violently and Vi screamed:
“There! Look! The old thing wants to hook me! Oh, Russ! Oh, Rose!
Laddie! Why don’t you do something!”
“Don’t be silly!” exclaimed Russ, who had little patience with Violet
sometimes. “She isn’t going to hook you!”
“But what makes her shake her head?” demanded Violet, half crying.
“She’s doing it to shake off the flies that are biting her,” answered
Russ, for he observed that when the cow shook her head a cloud of flies
rose from behind her ears. “She’s only doing it to get rid of the
flies, Vi,” said Russ.
“That’s what I told her, but she wouldn’t believe me,” remarked Laddie.
“I said the cows wouldn’t hook her.”
“Well, they looked as if they were going to hook me, anyhow,” said
Violet, who was not frightened now that her older brother and sister
were there with her.
“I’m glad we found the cows, anyhow,” said Rose. “Now we can drive ’em
out with the others and we can call Ralph and his dog and go home.”
The two black cows that had wandered away from the rest of the herd
seemed gentle enough when the children urged them out of the shady
bushes and into the open pasture. The other ten cows were gathered down
near the pasture bars, waiting for them to be opened.
Ralph and Jimsie came slowly up the hill from another part of the
pasture, where they had gone to search for the missing animals.
“Oh, you found them! That’s good!” cried the farm boy, as he saw Rose
and Laddie with Violet and Russ slowly driving the black cows. “You
were pretty lucky,” he added. “Sometimes I’ve hunted an hour for lost
cows.”
“I guess Vi thinks she’s lucky they didn’t hook her,” said Russ, with a
laugh.
“What do you mean—hook her?” inquired Ralph.
[Illustration: THE TWO COWS FRIGHTENED VIOLET AND LADDIE.
_Six Little Bunkers at Farmer Joel's._ _Page 97_]
And when they told him he laughed and said:
“Our cows never hook anybody—they’re very gentle. But we have a bull
in the barn that’d hook you if he could get out. And Mr. Todd’s got a
bull, too.”
“Why can’t he get out?” Violet wanted to know.
“Because he’s chained fast to a ring in his nose,” answered Ralph. “He
dassn’t pull too hard on the chain ’cause it hurts his nose. So he has
to be good. But if he got loose he’d hook you all right.”
“He couldn’t hook me! I’d throw stones at him,” boasted Laddie.
“You’d better not try it if he ever does get loose,” warned Ralph. “He
wouldn’t mind stones any more than if you chucked soft mud at him. He’s
awful strong.”
“Well, if I saw him coming I’d run,” went on Laddie.
“That wouldn’t do much good,” said Ralph. “That bull can run faster
than you. If you ever do see him and he’s loose, keep away from him or
get on the other side of the fence as fast as you can. Once he nearly
hooked me, but I got to the fence first. He ran right into the fence
with his head down and he bellowed like thunder.”
“Did it hurt him when he bunked into the fence?” asked Vi.
“I guess maybe he didn’t feel it any more than he’d feel a mosquito
bite,” Ralph replied. “He’s tough, our bull is.”
“Goodness! I hope he never gets out,” murmured Rose, looking over
her shoulder as if she feared, even then, the bull might be roaming
somewhere about the pasture.
But he was not in sight and soon the children were quietly driving the
cows along the road toward their barn on the farm of Ralph’s father. In
the barn the cows would be milked and some of the milk would be sent to
the cheese factory.
“Well, did you have a good time?” asked Mrs. Bunker, when her four
children arrived at Farmer Joel’s house after having gone for the cows.
“Yes, it was fun. We had a little adventure,” said Rose, and she told
about the missing cows.
Margy and Mun Bun listened with widely opened eyes to the tale, and
when it was over, Mun Bun exclaimed:
“I wish I’d been there!”
“Why?” asked his mother.
“Oh, I would give the cows some salt and they would love me,” he
answered.
“Salt!” cried Russ. “Who ever heard of giving cows salt?”
“It would make their milk salty!” declared Laddie.
“Well, it didn’t,” said Margy. “’Cause when we went after eggs with
Farmer Joel he gave his cows some salt and when he milked them he gave
Mun Bun and me some of the milk and it wasn’t salty at all, so there!”
“Wasn’t it, Mother?” asked Rose, who seemed to share Laddie’s idea.
“No, of course not, child,” said Mrs. Bunker. “The farmers often give
salt to their cows, sheep and horses. Animals are very fond of a small
bit of salt. And while you were gone Farmer Joel gave his cows some
lumps of rock salt which they licked with their tongues, and seemed
very fond of.”
“Hum!” remarked Laddie. “That’s the first time I ever knew cows liked
salt.” But later when he saw how horses in the pasture followed Adam
North about when he went to “salt” them, and when the little boy
watched the sheep eagerly licking the salt in their field, then he knew
that his mother was right.
Happy days at Farmer Joel’s followed one after another. The six little
Bunkers never had such delightful times. There seemed to be something
new to do all the while. They roamed about the fields and woods, they
gathered eggs, they fed the chickens, and sometimes they had picnics.
They waded in the brook and, once or twice, fell in and got muddy. But
this was expected.
One place that the children stayed away from was the part of the farm
where Mr. Todd kept several hives of bees. The children knew that bees
stung and they did not want this to happen to them.
About a week after the Bunkers had come to stay at Farmer Joel’s, Russ
and Laddie were going to the brook to play with their water wheel when
suddenly they heard a loud buzzing, humming sound in the air. At first
they thought it was a distant aeroplane, but, looking up, they could
see none. However, over in the direction of the bee orchard Russ saw a
dark cloud in the air. The buzzing sound seemed to come from this dark
cloud.
Then Russ knew what it was—a flight of bees.
“Oh, they’re running away!” he cried. “We must tell Farmer Joel!”
He and Laddie hastened toward the house and told the news. Mr. Todd
ran out. As soon as he heard the buzzing sound and saw the moving dark
cloud he cried:
“They’re swarming! I don’t want to lose them! I must try to get them
back!” Into the house he hurried, to come out with a queer, smoking
machine in his hand. Over his head Farmer Joel wore a broad-brimmed
straw hat with a veil of mosquito netting coming down over his
shoulders.