Van Gangen-burg, Nebraska
(circa 1875)
Somewhere on the
Modern-day Spring grassland Prairie (circa 2016)---
Elsie chomped
tender green shoots from the verdant prairie floor as she led the herd in their
never-ending meandering foray across the lush grasslands of the “flat
water”-name in the country of the near-extinct Otoe Indian tribe in the state
of Nebraska. At the head of a smallish group of bovine members numbering some
two hundred animals, the lead cow funneled the herd over rolling swales and
through shallow coulee troughs, the subtle undulations like constant waves upon
some green seascape, in a continuous search for green nourishment. In the
new-dawn freshness chill, a peeking sun, just challenging the fleeting of
nighttime blackness to once more reign supreme over its vast domain until the
space of time claimed yet another vestige of dark’s return harbingered by dusk,
old Elsie’s eye captured an annoying glint on a nearby bucolic moraine-like
hillock on the prairie meadow. Instantly alert, the anomaly coaxed the animal
curiously forward though not providing any haste in the quest as she moseyed
ever-onward continuing to “feed” her way toward the peculiar confounding
observance.
Cattle are not
known for their high intelligence like that of their sophisticated, erudite
masters, but many species in the animal kingdom manage to survive, quite well
with eons of honed, expert instinct coupled with a nervous disposition toward
danger and the good sense to avoid such snares. The cow’s head had come up
abruptly when the sparkling glare garnered her alert attention automatically
kicking her “survival mode” intuition into high gear.
That slight rise
of hillock, with its unusual copse of scattered trees including myriad willow
along the river bank, hardwoods, cedar, several fir and a smattering of pine,
uncommon on the sea of grass causing a curiosity of its existence rather than
any phenomena of natural consequence, held a peculiar odor of dread, and,
therefore, warning to the alerted Elsie. She snorted her disapproval of the
scent, both real to the day and also the vagueness of dark images confined
somewhere within her miniscule brain. A warning grunt at the smell brought the
assemblage to an abrupt halt of their slow-motion progress as each member of
the herd looked to Elsie for direction. An expert leader, suddenly, now, she
hesitated with unusual trepidation.
Nervously, the
cow pawed at the fertile earth, shaking her large head which caused her ample
neck to shudder ocean-waves of flab like an undulating sea. With painstaking
caution, Elsie moved forward, ever-watchful for the first sign of danger,
tensed to sound the alarm to flee.
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:
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