Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Andersen Nexø (great novels to read .TXT) 📕

Pelle was resting now after the exertion with Rud, by making the air rock with his jubilant bawling. Up at the farm a man came out and went along the highroad with a bundle under his arm. It was Erik, who had to appear in court in answer to a summons for fighting. Then the farmer drove out at a good pace toward the town, so he was evidently off on the spree. Why couldn’t the man have driven with him, as they were both going the same way? How quickly he drove, although she never followed him now. She consoled herself at home instead! Could it be true that he had spent five hundred krones in drinking and amusement in one evening?

“The war is raging, the red blood streams,
Among the mountains ring shouts and screams!
The Turk advances with cruel rage,
And sparing neither youth nor age.
They go⁠—”

“Ho!” Pelle sprang to his feet and gazed up over the clover field. The dairy cows up there for the last quarter of an hour had been looking up at the farm every other moment, and now Aspasia lowed, so his father must soon be coming out to move them. There he came, waddling round the corner of the farm. It was not far to the lowest of the cows, so when his father was there, Pelle could seize the opportunity just to run across and say good day to him.

He brought his animals nearer together and drove them slowly over to the other fence and up the fields. Lasse had moved the upper half, and was now crossing over diagonally to the bull, which stood a little apart from the others. The bull was growling and kicking up the earth; its tongue hung out at one side of its mouth, and it tossed its head quickly; it was angry. Then it advanced with short steps and all kinds of antics; and how it stamped! Pelle felt a desire to kick it on the nose as he had often done before; it had no business to threaten Lasse, even if it meant nothing by it.

Father Lasse took no notice of it, either. He stood hammering away at the big tether-peg, to loosen it. “Good day!” shouted Pelle. Lasse turned his head and nodded, then bent down and hammered the peg into the ground. The bull was just behind him, stamping quickly, with open mouth and tongue hanging out; it looked as if it were vomiting, and the sound it made answered exactly to that. Pelle laughed as he slackened his pace. He was close by.

But suddenly Father Lasse turned a somersault, fell, and was in the air again, and then fell a little way off. Again the bull was about to toss him, but Pelle was at its head. He was not wearing wooden shoes, but he kicked it with his bare feet until he was giddy. The bull knew him and tried to go round him, but Pelle sprang at its head, shouting and kicking and almost beside himself, seized it by the horns. But it put him gently on one side and went forward toward Lasse, blowing along the ground so that the grass waved.

It took hold of him by the blouse and shook him a little, and then tried to get both his horns under him to send him up into the air; but Pelle was on his feet again, and as quick as lightning had drawn his knife and plunged it in between the bull’s hind legs. The bull uttered a short roar, turned Lasse over on one side, and dashed off over the fields at a gallop, tossing its head as it ran, and bellowing. Down by the stream it began to tear up the bank, filling the air with earth and grass.

Lasse lay groaning with his eyes closed, and Pelle stood pulling in vain at his arm to help him up, crying: “Father, little Father Lasse!” At last Lasse sat up.

“Who’s that singing?” he asked. “Oh, it’s you, is it, laddie? And you’re crying! Has anyone done anything to you? Ah, yes, of course, it was the bull! It was just going to play fandango with me. But what did you do to it, that the devil took it so quickly? You saved your father’s life, little though you are. Oh, hang it! I think I’m going to be sick! Ah me!” he went on, when the sickness was past, as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead. “If only I could have had a dram. Oh, yes, he knew me, the fellow, or I shouldn’t have got off so easily. He only wanted to play with me a little, you know. He was a wee bit spiteful because I drove him away from a cow this morning; I’d noticed that. But who’d have thought he’d have turned on me? He wouldn’t have done so, either, if I hadn’t been so silly as to wear somebody else’s clothes. This is Mons’s blouse; I borrowed it of him while I washed my own. And Mr. Bull didn’t like the strange smell about me. Well, we’ll see what Mons’ll say to this here slit. I’m afraid he won’t be best pleased.”

Lasse talked on for a good while until he tried to rise, and stood up with Pelle’s assistance. As he stood leaning on the boy’s shoulder, he swayed backward and forward. “I should almost have said I was drunk, if it hadn’t been for the pains!” he said, laughing feebly. “Well, well, I suppose I must thank God for you, laddie. You always gladden my heart, and now you’ve saved my life, too.”

Lasse then stumbled homeward, and Pelle moved the rest of the cows on the road down to join his own. He was both proud and affected, but most proud. He had saved Father Lasse’s life, and from the big, angry bull that no one else on the farm dared have anything to do with.