Who do people usually tell all sorts of tall tales about? We mean about what animals? Well, of course, about the unprecedented. About miracle animals. About those who are either incredibly big, or run incredibly fast, or are incredibly smart.
But now we will tell you a story about a bull, who was almost a completely ordinary bull, with the exception of one time when he showed himself at a wedding, so much so that everyone remembered this incident for a long time. It is quite possible that he was a little larger and stronger than ordinary bulls that were found in the southwest of the country, but this is not what made him famous.
They gave him the name White Sock because one of his legs was white at the bottom, like a sock. Actually, he had white spots in other places; in fact, wherever he was not black, he was white. Its owner, the miller Berne, rode on it every day and rode to his mill. The bull had a ring sticking out of his nose, and a rope was thrown over his horns. Instead of a saddle, Berne took two boards and covered them with an old rug. The rope went down and caught the bull under the belly, forming stirrups so that the miller could put his feet into them. White Sox didn’t seem to mind being ridden like a horse, but, to be honest, he simply didn’t know any other bulls besides himself, and therefore believed that bulls were supposed to ride under saddle.
Not only did he not know other bulls, but he also did not know how to scare people like them, moo loudly and chase them around the pasture, crush buckets of milk with his hoofs and throw himself at a red rag. In a word, he was a backward bull, if one who knows how to commit outrages is considered advanced.
And only on the day of this very wedding a real bull woke up in White Sock.
Miller Burns had a daughter named Cecily. She was going to marry the young farmer Klopshaw, and for this occasion the miller Berne decided to throw a real celebration. He invited guests from all over the county to his daughter's wedding. He invited everyone, except one person, whose name was Sat Dobrodale. You might think that this man really did good deeds, as his name said: he was kind, benevolent, good-hearted, good-natured, respectable... But no, quite the opposite! Sat knew how to make a lot of noise out of nothing. He was a born intriguer, unscrupulous, shameless, unrestrained, inhuman, a hopeless troublemaker and brawler. When he found out that he was not invited to Cecily's wedding, he immediately decided to get even with Burns and all his guests. But how?
He saddled the mule, combed his hair for the first time in many years and ran down the mountain to the miller's house.
Sat hid behind the barn and watched from there as everyone was drinking and having fun at the wedding table. He racked his brains, still couldn’t figure out how to annoy them. What if you cut the tails of the groom's horse and the bride's mare? But this seemed not offensive enough compared to the insult that was inflicted on him, Sat Dobrodale.
He was still thinking about his plan of revenge when White Sock wandered into the garden from the backyard. He was still saddled, because in the festive bustle - no joke, his daughter's wedding! - Miller Berne forgot to unsaddle him. White Sock sniffed at the large basket containing the remains of grain and stuck his nose into it.
This is where it dawned on Sat Dobrodale! Sat took a step forward and quietly threw the basket over White Sock's horns.
Try walking with a basket on your head! Yes, this is worse than going blind. When the bull raised his head and suddenly saw nothing, he beat his tail, moved his head, bucked his hindquarters, rushed to one side, to the other, stomped on the spot, snorted, blowing all the remaining grain out of the basket, and rushed to the house.
He roared louder than heavenly thunder and shook his horns, trying to tear the basket off his head. With all his might, he flew into the back wall of the house and smashed it to the ground, almost crushing the poor mouse, who had just managed to crawl out of his hole to get himself a piece of the wedding cake. Backing away, White Sock hit a thick tree with his hind legs. It trembled so much that it lost almost all its foliage. White Sock spun in place, kicked, kicked, and finally broke into Melnikov's apiary. He knocked down a dozen hives, and in a single moment it became dark from a cloud of bees. The bees were so crowded in the air that they began to sting each other.
Do you know what a stung bee is? Yes, this is a hundred times worse than a mad bull. But even unstung bees are so evil! They immediately declared a life-and-death war on White Sox and flew at him like a whirlwind. And they buzzed and circled above him! They stuck around the poor animal so tightly from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail that there was no place for a grain of wheat to fall, let alone an apple. And the bees, who did not have enough space on the body of the unfortunate bull, started a fight in the air for the right to land on him, although they probably covered him in ten rows anyway.
White Sock snorted and mooed and rushed back and forth, unable to see a thing. And what will you see here when the bees were buzzing and ringing just above his head, hidden in the basket. “Sniff, snort!” the bull snorted, and it became black from the bees that flew up from his nose. White Sock's tail could be mistaken for the knot of a dried pine tree covered with moss. The bees that surrounded him made the bull seem three times as big. Sat Dobrodale had never seen such an angry and offended bull.
White Sock finally got to the back door of the house and knocked on the door with his tail, while accidentally ripping it off its hinges and breaking into the house. Out of clumsiness, he bumped into an old Dutch clock that was standing on the floor, inadvertently caught the pendulum, and the clock flew to the floor, and with it the wheels and gears also rolled in all directions, and the bees rushed to catch up with them. Backing away, the bull touched the foot of the bed and knocked it over. He kicked up and sent his bed leg straight out the window. His next step, tail first, was to the sideboard, decorated in the corners with carved cats. As a result of the collision, he fell to the floor, and the poor bull had no choice but to trample and turn into mush everything that was on the shelves in it.
The guests at the wedding heard some noise, but they were so carried away by savoring the wedding treat that they only heard their champ-champ-champ.
The poor bull ran around like mad, trying to get rid of the bees, and flew into the storeroom next to the dining room. Of course, everything there went upside down - clay pots with pickles, jars of jam, pickles, bags of grain, bunches of dried herbs, painkiller tincture of opium, baskets of eggs, pumpkin, tomatoes, cans of milk, butter churns.
Sitting closest to the wall in the pantry was the groom's mother, Mother Klopshaw. But she was deaf as a stump. She seemed to hear some rustling, but before she had time to figure out what was what, White Sock had already burst into the dining room right through the wall. The guests screamed, screamed and ran away from him. Mother Clopshaw didn't even have time to blink an eye when she found herself in her chair on the table - it was the bull that hooked her with its horns and threw her onto the table.
In the dining room, half a dozen tables were lined up, creating one long table to accommodate all the wedding guests. White Sock had scattered all the tables, they were piled one on top of the other, and at the very top sat poor Mother Clopshaw, fighting off the bees and flapping her arms like a windmill's wings in windy weather. In one hand is a printed chintz hat, in the other is a chicken leg.
Broken plates, fried potatoes, stewed cabbage, pork chops, steaks, soup, beans, baked apples, puddings, pies, even pieces of wedding cake - everything was mixed, confused, tangled, as if someone had put it all through a meat grinder and then peppered it with bees. White Sock threw and kicked, everything flew from under his hooves - tables, chairs, dishes, food - and through the front door, counting seven steps, straight into the street. And behind the tables and everything else, he himself, a carcass weighing one and a half hundred pounds, tumbled over his head and fell onto this vinaigrette of chairs with herring,
Poor miller Berne hovered around, beating the bull on the back and yelling:
- Whoa, you bastard! Whoa, my boy!
He grabbed the handle of the basket and wanted to rip it off the bull’s head, but did not have time. White Sock jumped up and gave such a kick with his hind legs that the miller Berne flew upside down and landed straight on the back of the bull. But he had the basket in his hands!
As soon as White Sock saw the white light, he shook the bees from his muzzle and rushed down the lane with such speed that Miller Burns, who was sitting astride him, had his hair pulled back from his forehead a full two inches. He dug his feet into the rope stirrups, and grabbed the saddle with his free hand, leaving the bull to run wherever he looked. But White Sock didn’t know exactly where it was better to run, he mooed, stomped on the spot, rushed back and forth, called the horses tied to the wire fence. The horses raised their heads in response and neighed, and then broke free and also ran. The bees are behind them, however, most of them remained faithful to White Sock, and at the same time to Miller Burns. The miller fought them off with a basket and twirled it in the air so quickly that it seemed like he had not one, but at least a dozen of these exact baskets in his hand.
Can you imagine the dust White Sox and the horses raised? A real dust storm! So all that the grinning and satisfied Sat Dobrodale, standing aside and scratching his head, could see was dust, dust and dust and sparks flying out from under the horses' hooves. Everyone who was on two or four legs, including chickens and piglets, began to run. Some ran so far that they were lost forever.
And the guests in the miller's house, fleeing from the bees, jumped out of the windows, rolled out of the doors, climbed through the chimneys, and rushed into the cellar. Those who managed to escape earlier rolled around the field, climbed trees, plunged headlong into the river. Clopshaw's groom screaming “Egyptian Plague!” climbed under a haystack.
Sat purred with pleasure like a cat with cream. Seeing Cecily's bride, the miller's daughter, who, brushing aside the bees, rolled into the cold river with a milk pot on her head, he slowly approached her and spoke insinuatingly:
“So, how are you spending your honeymoon, little Cecily?” I see you have enough honey even here in the water. Sweet life, eh?
-You're reaping, you scoundrel! - she mumbled from under the milk pot, diving deeper to drown all the bees that were clinging to her. - ABOUT! I'm on fire!..
- Sprinkle yourself with soda, it will become easier. - And he turned to leave. “It doesn’t stop me from hunting for honey.”
Cecily raised the milk pot above her head:
“You can borrow a pound of arsenic from me to sprinkle on your honey!”
- What do I have to do with it? — Sat was offended. - This is all your troublemaker bull.
But then the grin suddenly disappeared from his face, because at the end of the alley the miller Berne himself appeared, still with a basket in his hands to brush off the bees, but the bees, apparently, were already exhausted, tired, tired. Following Miller Burns, White Sock appeared at some distance from him in the clouds of dust. He was so swollen from bee stings that if the miller Berne decided to sell him now, he could ask for him not as one bull, but as a whole herd. And the miller Berne himself also swelled, as if there were not one Berne, but two. But even two Burns could still run fast enough. True, Sat Dobrodale could run even faster! Which is what he did. He fled across the wild, deserted plains and mountains to the northwest, into Canada. No one knows whether he got there or not, only he was never seen again in these places. There was a rumor that he repented of what had happened and was ready to bang his head on the rocks, only he was afraid to deal a fatal blow to them.
As for White Sock, he has never calmed down since then, and no one dared to ride him anymore. When the miller Berne plucked up courage, he nevertheless approached him, took off his saddle and let him graze on the grass in the company of a dozen portly black and white cows.
Clopshaw's groom, they say, remained under the haystack for another whole week, and Cecily's bride, probably for a month, if not more, could not get the milk pot off her head. However, everything ended well, even for Mother Bug Show. By the time she managed to descend to the ground from the top of the mountain of tables and chairs, the bees had managed to clear her ears so much that she could even hear her own thoughts, unless they were too ringing in her ears.
Well, when the piglets got scared of the mad bull and started running, they ran all the way to Mexico and stayed to live on the Mexican coast. The Spanish ship picked up one hog and several pigs from there and took them to what is now California.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru