The three stood silent, watching all this. Ruth could not have spoken if she had wished to do so; she could scarce breathe. Darrin watched unseeingly, automatically, his thoughts busy elsewhere. John stood still, and his eyes were narrowed and his face was faintly flushed, either by the sun’s light or by the intoxication of beauty which was spread before him. And they were standing thus when there came to them through the still, liquid air the bellow of the bull.
John and Ruth reacted automatically to that sound. They were accustomed to the beast; they could to some extent distinguish between its outcries, guess at its moods from them. Its roaring was always frightful to an unaccustomed ear; but they were used to it, were disturbed only by some foreign note in the sound. They both knew now that the bull was murderously angry. They did not know, had no way of knowing what had roused it. It might be a dog, a cat; it might be that one of the cows had broken loose and was near its stall; it might be a pig; it might be a hen; it might be merely a rat running in awkward loping bounds across its pen. They did not stop to wonder; but John turned and ran toward the pen, and Ruth followed him, stumbling through the soft snow. Darrin, to whom the bull’s bellow had always been a frightful sound, was startled by it, would have asked a question. When he saw them run round the house he followed them.
John was in the lead, but Ruth was swift footed and was at his shoulder when he reached the gate of the pen. The walls of the inclosure and the gate itself were so high that they could not look over the top. But just beside the main gate there was a smaller one, like a door; too narrow and too low for the bull to pass, but large enough for a man. John fumbled with the latch of this gate; and his moment’s delay gave the others time to come up with him. When he opened the way and stepped into the pen Ruth and Darrin were at his shoulder. Thus that which was in the pen broke upon them all three at once--a picture never to be forgotten, indelibly imprinted on their minds.
The snow that had fallen in the inclosure was trampled here and there by the tracks of the bull and by the tracks of the man, and in one spot it was torn and tossed and crushed into mud, as though the two had come together there in some strange matching of strength. At this spot too there was a dark patch upon the snow; a patch that looked almost black. Yet Ruth knew what had made this patch, and clutched at her throat to stifle her scream; and John knew, and Darrin knew. And the two men were sick and shaken.