This Side of Heaven Read Free Page B

laboring men stopped what they were doing and squinted toward the scene of the commotion. One called out something that was unintelligible to Caroline.
    Millicent bolted under the fence on the opposite side of the barnyard while Raleigh and the boy raced after her. Caroline, her caught-up skirts revealing flashes of white petticoats and slim, thrashing calves, followed suit. The child stopped, apparently content to do no more than hang on the gate and watch as dog and cat dashed across the meadow. He yelled something to Caroline as she swarmed up and over the fence. So intent was she on the chase that the words didn’t register until she was almost halfway across the field. Then the sense of what he had said sank in. The boy had cried, “ ’Ware the bull!”
    Bull?
    Caroline’s step faltered. Her gaze left the dog and cat and swung around in a wide arc. What she saw made her stop dead and drop her skirts. Her mouth opened and her eyes rounded with horror.
    There was, indeed, a bull.
    It was as black as Satan and as big as a colossus, and it was looking directly at her from no more than a dozen yards away!
    For a moment that seemed suspended forever in time, Caroline and the beast stared at each other. Then, with a nod to the adage that discretion was the better part of valor, Caroline snatched up her skirts, whirled about, and fled back toward the safety of thebarnyard, her scarlet cloak streaming out behind her like a banner.
    Behind her, with a fearsome bellow, the behemoth charged.
    “Run!”
    The boy on the fence screamed encouragement, but Caroline scarcely heard him. She was deafened, blinded by fear. Her eyes focused on the fence, and her ears were filled with the heaving, snorting creature that pounded after her.
    “Come on! Come on!”
    The child cheered her on, but it was scarcely necessary. The finest runner in all of London town could not have matched the speed Caroline attained that morning. She sprinted toward the fence like a greyhound. Behind her she could hear the monster’s enraged bawls, the pounding of its hooves.
    Caroline screamed. The boy on the gate yelled. Men and children converged on the barnyard from seemingly every direction.
    She fancied she could feel the creature’s hot breath on her back.
    “Your cloak! Drop your cloak!”
    Still some paces short of the fence, Daniel yelled the advice even as he raced to her assistance.
    Caroline clenched one fist around her skirt—tripping at such a juncture might very well prove fatal—and raised the other hand to jerk at the strings of her cloak. An instant later the garment billowed free.
    “Good girl!”
    Terror gave wings to her feet as she leaped toward the safety of the fence from nearly a yard away. Daniel,vaulting up the other side, grabbed her arm and jerked her up and over. There was a tug as her skirt caught, the sound of ripping cloth, and then she was hurtling through the air to land with an oomph! facedown in the filth of the barnyard.
    As she lay sprawled, aching in every bone and fighting for breath, Millicent appeared from nowhere and rubbed her head against her mistress’s. From the woods beyond the bull’s pasture, Raleigh continued to bark frantically as he sought the cat, which had, in the mysterious manner of its kind, managed to elude him. Caroline didn’t even have the strength to groan as her pet began, very noisily, to purr.

3
    F or what seemed like an eternity Caroline lay unmoving, Millicent’s consoling rumbles echoing in her ears. The fall had knocked the breath from her; the hardscrabble ground had scraped her face and hands, making them sting. Her entire body felt bruised by the force of her landing, and her heart had yet to slow its panicked beat. To make matters worse, she was sure that when she opened her eyes a huge mouth full of giant doggy teeth would be poised to make a meal of her under the eyes of its grinning masters, none of whom had seemed inclined to lift so much as a finger in her defense.
    But