Two thousand cattle simultaneously went mad with fear. In the blink of an eye, they were running crazily, fleeing an unknown terror. Freddy’s job in this situation was to gallop alongside the crazed steers and try to hold them together until the point men could turn the seething, clacking, pounding maelstrom into a mill. Her instructions didn’t cover what to do when outlaws were firing at her during the stampede they had started.
Figuring things couldn’t get worse if she fired her six-shooter now, she leaned over her horse’s neck and fired at the outlaws through clouds of billowing dust, wishing she were a better shot. She didn’t have much hope of hitting moving targets, but she sure as hell tried.
When she ran out of bullets, she gave up on the outlaws and concentrated on trying to squeeze down the herd and keep the steers from fanning out. Then she made the mistake of glancing ahead, and her heart stopped on a spasm of icy horror. She had been wrong. Things could get much worse.
Instead of curving to the right and away from camp, the herd had veered left, away from the outlaws and gunshots. Two thousand maddened steers were bearing down on Alex, who was alone in their path and helpless in her wheelchair.
Chapter 19
At first Alex didn’t understand what was happening. The ground was bumpy and pocked with holes. Her first thought was that she must have braked on a small ridge or at the edge of a prairie-dog hole and an unstable position explained why her chair began to shake and vibrate. Then she registered the thunder of running hooves and an explosion of gunshots. The gunshots didn’t make sense, but the growing rumble did.
Her heart leapt into her mouth and her hands shook violently, but she managed to wrench her chair around then wished she hadn’t. Horror widened her eyes and scalded her chest. The herd had swerved toward her, was perhaps half a mile away and closing the gap fast. Gripping the wheels of her chair so hard that her palms bruised, she swung a panicked look toward the chuck wagon and understood at once that she could never reach it in time.
Terror blotted her vision, and her heart shuddered with fear. She couldn’t escape. The rampaging steers would trample her. She would die an ugly death alone on the prairie.
Dizzy with horror, she stared at the oncoming tide of destruction and for one terrible instant, she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. And then a numbing calm stole across her mind.
So be it.
Resignation relaxed her fear-clenched muscles and the terror slowly faded from her eyes. She released a low breath of acceptance. She’d had a year longer than she should have had and she had used her time well. She had said good-bye to her father, had gotten to know her sisters, and she had known John. Her only regrets were that she would never have the chance to tell her sisters that she loved them, and that she had not met John McCallister at another time in another place under different circumstances.
Before the maelstrom of thundering hooves drowned his voice, she heard Grady scream, “Run!” Luther and Ward added urgent shouts to Grady’s. But she couldn’t walk, let alone run. Certainly she couldn’t push the unwieldy and heavy chair fast enough to save herself, even if the ground had not been shaking as if an earthquake rocked it. “Run, you son of a bitch, run!”
The crazed steers were close enough now that she could see sunlight sliding along their pointed horns, could smell the fearful stink of them and feel their heat rolling toward her. They would be upon her within minutes.
Folding her hands in her lap, she bowed her head and calmly began to recite the Lord’s Prayer, but a flash of white caught her eye, coming up fast on her left. When she raised her head and saw John running toward her, an electric jolt of horror replaced the serenity of acceptance. Heart slamming against her chest, she gripped the wheels of her chair and screamed frantically. “No! No, go back!” Oh God. Oh God, no. “Don’t do this, no! Go back! Go back!”
When he reached her, he spun in front of her chair, planted his legs wide and swung a rifle to his shoulder, firing into the onrushing destruction. The noise was monstrous now, a roaring hellish din. The ground shook so violently that John lost his footing and fell, rose to one knee and fired again. One steer dropped. And then another, so close to them that the horns furrowed the ground not eight feet from where John knelt, firing continually.
The herd split around the fallen steers, and a foaming sea of animals swept past them, surrounded them on all sides. The hot stink of fear and chaos and animal hide thickened the air. Alex’s ears rang with the hideous sound of horns clacking and crashing and knocking together, with the sound of heavy snorting and blowing and hooves tearing up the ground. Her wheelchair toppled on the shaking earth, and she sprawled on the grass, immediately snatched into John’s arms. He caught her up upright against his chest, clasping her tightly, his face in her hair, his breath against her cheek, holding her as the cattle pounded around them.