“Hey!” bellowed Charlie, “you don’t vear it so!  You — " The mare stamped at a fly, bringing her hoof down on the old Dutchman’s foot.  His blood-curdling whoops and yells brought the sheriff in on a brilliant finale to a record-breaking run.

“What’s the matter?  Are you being murdered?”

“Who, I’m?” asked Charlie, absent-mindedly.  He was nursing the injured member, wondering whether to kick at Lizzie with it, knowing full well that he stood a good chance of her kicking back again’ but when she snapped viciously at the puffing sheriff he decided against it.

“You com’ to see me?” he asked, in a bland, so-glad-you’ve-called tone.

“To see you!  Why, I’ve come to save your life!”

“So?  Dot’s goot, but Lizzie undt me, ve ain’t got so much time today.  It’s vegetables I sell in Rattlesnake undt ve go to plow, now.”

“Well, you old fool, after this you can call in vain if anything happens to you.  I’ll never bother with you.”

“Oh, vell, ven I got a little excitement I got to yell about it, ain’t it?”

“Maybe you have — and after this you can, for all of me,” and the wrathful sheriff departed.  He was new in the community or he would have known that the plowing of Charlie Price and Lizzie was a regular event of each season, for which an audience gathered to lay bets for and against the probability of his dying of apoplexy before it was finished.

The plowing progressed in this manner: 

Charlie put the point of the plow in the soft earth and roared at the motor-power.  Lizzie started off at a nimble lope.  The plow cut a pretty curve and flew out of the ground.  Charlie reefed the reins at once, completely turning off the power.  Then he put the reins about his neck, grasped the handles of the plow with both hands, and zoomed commands again at the champing power.  “Power” jumped ahead.  The reins nearly snapped old Charlie’s head off, but effectually brought the mare to a standstill.

“Vait, you dunder-undt-blitzen apful peelings!  You — you think dot plowing is not high-toned enough, yet — hey?  Vell, I show you!”

He picked up a huge clod of soft dirt held it aloft in both hands and banged it down on Lizzie’s back — whereupon she promptly ran away!  She galloped furiously to the end of the field with the plow banging in scoops and leaps, and old Charlie, dangling on the end of the reins, flying along in seven-league jumps behind her.  As soon as he caught his breath sufficiently for renewed directions, the cavalcade returned to the grandstand and operations were repeated.

Charlie had been a sailor before he came to California, and he plowed (?) each furrow with a collection of forceful admonitions, delivered in a voice of thunder, from a different language.  It was all the same to Lizzie!  She loathed plowing just as thoroughly in wildcat Spanish, as she did in Dutch or Cingalese, and she did not hesitate to prove it.