Now it seemed easy to pour the medicine down that
long, sloping passage. But his mouth was tightly closed, any that
entered his nostrils was blown afar, and the suffering beast
strained at the rope till he seemed likely to strangle.
Both men and ox were worn out with the struggle; the brute was no
better, but rather worse.
"Wall," said Rolf, "I've seen a good many ornery steers, but
that's the orneriest I ever did handle, an' I reckon we'll lose
him if he don't get that poison into him pretty soon."
Oxen never were studied as much as horses, for they were
considered a temporary shift, and every farmer looked forward to
replacing them with the latter. Oxen were enormously strong, and
they could flourish without grain when the grass was good; they
never lost their head in a swamp hole, and ploughed steadily
among all kinds of roots and stumps; but they were exasperatingly
slow and eternally tricky. Bright, being the trickier of the
two, was made the nigh ox, to be more under control. Ordinarily
Rolf could manage Buck easily, but the present situation seemed
hopeless. In his memory he harked back to Redding days, and he
recalled old Eli Gooch, the ox expert, and wondered what he would
have done.
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