Fox Farm [antikvár]

FOX FARM I A boy who was passing along the Fox Farm road saw the horns and head of a black buli come crashing through the rotten weather-boarding of a cow-house wall. A stout rope had been fastened round the horns of the buli. The boy could hear men shouting in the byre. "Tom, you muck of a fool, what be ye a'-doing with t' chain—!" "Maister Jess, let t' rope go! God save us, he'll tear t' shed down!" The bull's head had disappeared from the hole in the splintered timber, and in the black-fenced cow-yard the figures of men went scattering across the straw. In the byre itself the chain that had held the great beast dangled from the oak manger, and on the straw lay a searing-iron, a red sponge, and a bottle of disinfectant. Briggs, the "vet," a hard-faced little man in a green waistcoat, riding-breeches, and yellow gaiters, turnéd at the yard door with one hand through the latch-hole. Shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, hands bloody, he still held a scalpel between his teeth, and his eyes were full of furious disgust. Three men had climbed the high black fence, and were straddling it üke banderilleros. The buli had stop-ped in the centre of the yard, nostrils smoking, horns shaking the rope that trailed behind him across the straw.