From thirty
feet, by human measure, twenty paces in cow-language, the old girl spied the
cause of the rising sun’s shining jewel on what had been and had promised to be
just another day of foraging, drinking cool river water and basically lazing
around in the tall yellow grass of Nebraska’s unending rolling plains.
Some sort of
metal star catching the brightness of the new-born morn announced by the
warming sunshine presented itself in an area usually passed by the foraging
herd. Not that a bovine might surmise the shape as that of a lawman’s badge
long abandoned as lost on the prairie sod, but, that was exactly what the glint
came from. Elsie paused, dead in her tracks.
Unable to fathom
the object in any reality of meaning, she was disconcerted by the “where” of
the discovery, more so than by the find, itself. This was the evil place of
graveyard wraiths where evil demons devoured the life of her kind; her old
friend, and, now departed, kin, Elinore and her calf, Jeremy, had succumbed to
death at the very spot when both had become ensnared in an iron-bar gate of
sorts lying hidden in the grass. Yes! And, there in witness to her accurate
memory of the event and testament to Elsie’s acumen lay the bleached brittle,
white bones of the frightened bovine’s deceased relatives.
That the metal
trap might be only the remains of a jail cell which now served to litter the
prairie as relics of a long-lost thriving metropolis destroyed by deranged
anger born of greed, lust, jealousy and uncontrollable anger mattered not to
Elsie-the-cow. She sounded the alarm and set off a mini-stampede which
accelerated across the lush grass for a half mile giving worthy challenge to
the million animal rumblings of the buffalo multitudes a century and a half
earlier.
When the herd
had run itself out, they came to a prolonged pause well down-river from the
haunted hell-hole of their ancestor’s happy hunting grounds where the cattle
rested for the day, partaking of life giving river water quenching a mighty
thirst after their long morning-jog.
The cattle
quickly forgot the episode; yet, the scene bears witness to discarded history
tale…
Back---then…To
the day! One hundred fifty-plus years prior; To wit:
(End of Part 2 of 2)
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