At first the slow circling line of soft-singing horsemen kept fragile control. Three thousand uneasy cattle stayed put even when lightning flickered over the plains to the south and thunder carved its long ragged tearing slits through the thick damp fabric of the air.
Wil Dow kept licking rain off his lips. He could see hardly a thing in the clouded night—now and then the hint of a steer’s horn alarmingly close to his knee—but in the increasingly frequent artillery flashes of lightning he managed to keep himself oriented with regard to the herd.
He tried to keep from laughing at the extraordinary sound of Roosevelt’s attempts to sing “Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.” If anything will start a stampede, Wil thought wryly—and never had the chance to finish the thought, for an earsplitting crash all but opened his skull while a blinding many-forked snake’s tongue of light split the sky so close as to awe Wil and strike him half-blind.
The horse shuddered, squealed and bolted. Wil grabbed the saddlehorn and flailed. He swayed precariously—tried to firm his feet in the stirrups and knew he was riding for his very life.
Stampede.
The world was revealed to him in sudden flashes—battlefields must be like this. The noise was awfuclass="underline" as if the earth itself were in collapse. The horse galloped flat-out, head down, ears back, and only barely kept up with the heaving surf of lifted tails and longhorns; Wil was in the middle of the stampede and if he should fall, or his horse stumble, he would be minced under a thousand cloven hoofs.
Another flash—and ahead he saw nothing: the great seething ocean of dark forms crested and disappeared.
A cliff?
In the darkness his eyes went wide with terror.
The horse ran and ran. Wil prayed for a lightning bolt and heard nothing but a continuation of the horrible deafening rattle of the stampede.
Somewhere right around here, it must be …
He held his breath, locked his legs against the horse’s flanks and felt the saddle tumble away from him when the horse went over the edge but he had an iron grip on the pommel and somehow the horse still had purchase—its hoofs were scrambling at a steep slope and Wil slammed hard down onto the leather and reared far back to give the horse balance and then with a juddering jar the horse’s front feet hit flat ground just as a flash of lightning revealed this new world and Wil saw the river of cattle flowing pellmell through the wide shallow gully and up the steepening pitch of its far bank, and over the top—and in the midst of it all he saw a solitary horseman above the backs of the cows like a centaur: by the shape of shoulders and hat, unmistakably Theodore Roosevelt.
The boss—alive and riding the stampede.
It cheered Wil. His mount staggered but ran on, mane streaming. Wil said, “Good boy. Good boy,” and found resource enough to let go of the saddle with one hand and pat the horse on the neck.
He rode blind again, galloping, guiding the horse by lightning bursts to his left to try and get out past the edge of the running herd. He remembered the wagon boss’s stricture to head them east but by now he was entirely turned around and had no idea what direction lay before him. To get out of this alive would be achievement enough.
He heard the squeal of an animal going down; the saddle shook under him when the horse took a dip and recovered; his hands kept slipping—soaking wet and he had no idea if it was sweat or rain.
It was the noise, he thought desperately—the deadly pounding of thousands of hoofs in this total blind blackness—that was what truly terrified a man because it stopped him from hearing, it stopped him from thinking …
He knew if he lived beyond tonight he would never forget the horror of this.
Then in the faint glimmer from a distant splash of lightning he saw that he had escaped the worst of it: he was out of the stampede, running along at the side of it. He pulled the horse more sharply away to the left and rode in that direction until the dread noise diminished with distance. Then he slowed the horse to a walk and finally stopped altogether and allowed the poor animal’s quivering and quaking to subside.
He talked all the while. “All right. Easy now. It’s all right. Gentle down. Easy now.” Talking as much to himself as to the horse.
Got to get on. Got to stay with the herd. Can’t let them get away. Stay alongside—keep them bunched. At least that way they’ll still be in one crowd at daylight.
He waited the next flash of lightning. It was a while coming; the storm was moving away or petering out. He saw the black rolling flow of cattle, oriented himself and ran at an oblique course, aiming to intercept, guiding by sound. Lifted the horse to a tentative gallop and went over an easy little rise of a hill and felt the most God-awful startling blow—a sickening thud of muffled sound as he slammed forward and something sharp raked at him and then he felt the horse go down and he just managed to jerk his legs out from under.
When everything settled down he examined the horse, familiarized himself with his surroundings, appraised his circumstances and said aloud, “A fine thing. For shame.” And saw nothing left to do except go to sleep.
At dawn he was trudging afoot with his saddle and bridle across his shoulder, soaked with rain, feet splashing in his boots, backtracking the herd across the rolling plain.
God knew how many miles they had run last night. It was going to be a long walk back to the wagon camp, assuming it had not been moved—
Miraculously Roosevelt was here, riding up behind him, full of good cheer, driving thirty or forty head of exhausted cattle. “What happened to your horse?”
“Ran full gallop straight into a tree. Only tree on the whole prairie and I managed to hit it dead-center. I owe some poor stockman a good horse.”
“Some may have suffered far worse losses than that. Well I am happy to see you alive and healthy, Wil.”
“And I you, sir.”
“I do believe last night brought me as close to death as I ever hope to come,” replied the boss. “Climb up behind me. We can ride double if we go easy. These cattle are too tired to mind.”
The herd had scattered into little bunches but by good fortune the main direction of its flight had been eastward. Penned by the great loop of the river, the cattle were not beyond recall—if they could be recaptured quickly enough.
The rain had stopped by midmorning and most of the hands were accounted for. After a quick meal they fanned out on fresh horses.
By the time the herd was recaptured, Wil Dow and Roosevelt had each ridden forty straight hours and worn out five mounts.
There followed the harrowing intrusion of burials: three men had been stomped to death.
By the end of that spring’s round-up, Wil observed, Roosevelt had just about completed an astonishing metamorphosis from sickly dude to robust outdoorsman. He wasn’t a pretty rider but he could stay on his horse and do his job as well as any man. He had barreled out with thirty pounds of new muscle; he was weathered and brown and rugged. There was no question about the respect in which he was held amongst the ranchmen. He was still chairman of the Stockmen. But it seemed to Wil Dow that Roosevelt, for all his brilliance and his wholehearted endeavor, never would be attached to this earth the way Huidekoper and some of the others were.
Strung out in its long line the culled Elkhorn herd filed onto the grass of the home ranch. Wil and Roosevelt, leading the way, found the hired man heating a slender iron in a hasty fire. An unbranded calf lay on its side kicking ineffectually, its feet tied together with piggin’ strings. A long-spined cow, ribs showing, stood nearby with her head lowered suspiciously. The hired hand was preparing to put the Elkhorn brand on the calf.