Chapter 6: The Highway

Boone ran for the truck, and I ran after him.

"Take the road side!" he shouted. "Block the highway, I'll turn them at the gap!"

I jumped behind the wheel with blood still running down my wrist.

I drove the truck down the access track and slewed it sideways across both lanes of the highway.

I hit the hazard lights and the horn together.

A grain truck was coming around the bend a quarter mile off.

I got out and stood in the road with both arms up.

The driver locked his brakes.

The truck screamed to a halt twenty feet from my hands.

Behind me I heard hooves.

I turned and saw the first cows come through the gap in the fence, and I saw Boone on foot beside them with his hat in his fist.

He was shouting and slapping the hat against his leg, and the lead cow veered left along the ditch.

The second and third followed her.

Then the herd bent, the whole brown flood of it, and ran alongside the fence instead of over the road.

I stood in the road until the last of them had passed.

Two hundred head had made it onto the shoulder, and the rest were still inside.

Boone caught my eye across the road.

"Get the gate!" he yelled. "The south gate, drive them through!"

I ran.

The two ranch hands who had been feeding the heifers arrived in a feed truck and joined in.

For an hour and forty minutes we pushed cattle.

My hand opened and closed on the gate chain until the bandana was black with blood.

The grain truck driver got out and stood on his running board.

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