I rub my eyes. Pouring out from the forest before us are dozens, maybe hundreds of livestock, tearing down the trail at top speed. The bovines and equines lead the charge, trailed by goats and a few pigs. They’re stampeding right toward us.
“Holy Moses,” cries Andy, wobbling in her seat.
I grab the brim of my hat and bounce up and down. “Let’s get out of here. What are we waiting for?” I twist around to face an unusually quiet Cay.
Peety grabs Princesa’s reins. “Princesa never done stampede before. Vámanos.” He quickly leads Princesa and Andy to a column of limestone ten yards ahead of a lone oak tree on our left. The limestone column rises up sharply like a shark’s tooth.
“Why aren’t we following them?” I ask.
“Cowboys never run from a stampede,” says Cay.
“Says who? I say we get the hell out of the way, too,” says West.
“We’d be doing someone a huge favor by catching their animals,” pleads Cay. “Maybe that someone has a daughter and some friends.”
“That ain’t a good reason,” says West. “We got a few of our own friends to worry on.” He glances at me.
“They’re tough,” says Cay. “Come on, the remuda needs some practice.” Without waiting for a reply, Cay taps Skinny with his heels. She moves toward the solitary oak.
“This is your stop,” Cay says to me, halting Skinny.
“I can’t outrun them,” I wail, poking a tenuous toe toward the ground.
Cay locks his knee under mine. “Not down, dummy, up.” He looks up at the branches. “You can climb a tree, can’t you?”
If I can’t, I am not going to tell him. “Shouldn’t I wait by Andy?”
“They’ll run you over if they get behind that wall.”
“But what about Andy, what if—”
“Don’t worry, stampede won’t run down a horse. Usually. Let’s go, they’ll be here soon!”
He grunts as I step off his thigh, and then onto his shoulder, reaching up to catch a branch. Cay helps boost me up, but desperation gives me a final push. Soon I’m swinging like a trapeze artist. I hook my legs around another branch, grab the trunk, and scramble up even higher, toward the oak’s sturdiest arm, my muscles straining. Finally, winded, I lie flat along the branch and look down below.
To my left, behind the limestone column, Andy sits stiffly atop Princesa, tugging the reins as Princesa tries to follow Peety and Lupe. West peers up at me. Franny fidgets underneath him. “This ain’t one of your brightest ideas,” he tells Cay. Then he curtains his frown with his bandanna.
“Let ’em run,” yells Cay.
My perch twenty feet above the ground, while not comfortable, at least gives me a good view of the action.
“Heeyaw!” yells Cay, leading the boys off. They wheel back in the direction we came.
The din of charging animals increases until they finally tear by under me, mooing and shrieking. Their frenzied stomping causes my tree to shake and kicks up a cloud of dirt in my face, but I cannot spare a hand to wipe it off. I clear my vision by blinking and twitching.
With panicked livestock hot on their heels, the boys lead the chase down the prairie. West flanks Cay on the left. Some of the fleeter animals nose past, but the boys dig in and gain the ground. Then West swerves Franny farther left to slow down the animals in front, cutting close enough to give each animal a shave.
I glance at Andy, who’s still tucked behind the limestone column. She waves at me.
A pair of longhorn cattle charges toward West. Sunlight glints off the wicked curve of their horns.
“Pull out,” I cry, though he is too far off to hear me. West’s hat twists. He sees them. Incredibly, he edges Franny closer.
“No!” I moan. “The other way.” Another moment and—I squeeze my eyes shut. Then I pop them open again.
The longhorns veer off! Franny screams in victory, winner of the battle of the nerves.
Peety runs down a pack of animals in a flat-out race west. He overtakes them, then pulls Lupe up hard, waving his arms and yelling to bring them to heel.
Meanwhile, Cay zigzags Skinny in front of a hot press of confused livestock. The lead ox matches Skinny in length, its compact body like a barrel of brown fur. Devilish spikes protrude from its head.
It will gore him for sure. I can’t watch, yet now I can’t close my eyes.
Cay lengthens the distance between his turns, and eventually, the animals slow. Those behind must also decelerate. Then he begins circling the herd, and Peety and West do the same. Together, the boys cinch the animals into a tighter bunch.
Soon, the whole herd’s moving like a merry-go-round, save for the animals in the middle, who’ve come to a standstill, rolling their eyes and bellowing in bewilderment. I rest my cheek on the branch and let out my breath.
As the cowboys continue ringing the herd with an invisible line, Peety begins to sing, his rich voice carrying across the noise of the herd. Cay and West feed the lines back to him after each stanza.
Hey little missy,
Little missy,
With the waddle.
Tell me if you wanna
Little pony with a saddle.
Wait for me
Until I make it
Back from the battle.
Bring ya back
The horns of the
Longhorn cattle.
I stretch my neck to look for Andy. Princesa’s getting friskier and has crept to the edge of the limestone. The horse flicks its head and Andy sways. She recovers her balance, but nearly loses her hat.
Clouds have started to collect above us, blocking out the sun. They stick together like dirty snow by the side of the road. A flash storm must be on its way, which might have caused the stampede. Father says animals can sense weather before humans. I inch backward. If I can reach the trunk, I can shimmy down, then stand by the limestone with Andy. The animals graze calmly as the boys serenade them. No one’s going to run me over.
A sudden jolt of lightning turns the sky hot white, freezing me in my tracks. Father used to tell me that lightning was the flash off the drunk man’s whiskey bottle as he stumbled across the sky. I brace myself for the arrival of his angry wife wielding her rolling pin. Moments later, thunder roars across the prairie. I quake against my branch, four years old all over again.
The livestock scream in panic. And like that, like the saying goes, all the cats explode out of the bag. The animals run in every direction, sometimes falling over each other in their hurry to escape.
As Peety and Lupe gallop past us, Princesa surges so abruptly that Andy drops the split reins. She grabs on to the apple. “Stop! Whoa!” yells Andy. The horse ignores her and starts off after Peety.
Holy moly. Princesa is joining the stampede.
“Whoa, Princesa!” I yell. “Peety!” I yell at his departing backside. But he doesn’t hear me through the din of animals.
“Peety!” I scream. Cay and West are too far away to hear or help. “Peety!”
Princesa enters the fray, tail and head held high. Approaching traffic slows her, but she continues to thread her way to Peety, still twenty feet ahead. The reins drag in the dirt, and Andy can’t fetch them without falling off. She slides too far one direction, and I draw in a horrified breath.
At the last second, she corrects her saddle position. But now she’s sliding too far the other way. Princesa snaps at a passing mule. The mule turns around and kicks at Princesa, who dodges the kick, and suddenly, Andy’s in the dirt.
A longhorn charges from Andy’s left, its horned head waggling up and down with each loping stride. She doesn’t notice it. With one hand on the ground, and one hand over the top of her hat, Andy looks wildly about her at the animals flying by.
“Peety!” I scream again, using every bit of air in my lungs.
At last, Peety turns his head. He sees the riderless Princesa tailing him, then finally spots Andy trying to get to her feet. Quickly, he pirouettes Lupe on one hoof, and they sprint toward Andy. Frozen in place, she stares, open-jawed, at the longhorn barreling toward her.
The vaquero reaches out and scoops up Andy by her belt, somehow managing to hold on to her with one arm until the great Andalusian has cleared most of the animals.
I let out a shaky breath of relief. Andy can’t ride that unpredictable horse anymore. Maybe Peety will let her ride Lupe instead. I watch them move away from me until the throngs of animals swallow them up.
Cay and West pick up their pace, forcing the animals to stay on the merry-go-round.
Again, I start inching backward, tired of this tree and wanting to get down before I fall.
Another flash of lightning blinds me. My legs start shaking, then my whole body. But it’s not me, it’s my tree. Something crashes to the ground: a burning branch. I look up and behold hell where heaven should be. Dear God, my tree is on fire.