#6: Jed, the giant buffalo, was in a bad mood

.......................................................................................................................................................................................

---

. That is to say, situation normal. Jed was always in a bad mood. Jed was the most even tempered critter Lamar had ever come across….he was pissed off ALL the time.

That was bad news for the band of young Indians that were stopped in the trail. Jed and Lamar crested the hill at full gallop. Not only did the young bucks get trampled, they got gored. Jed used his horns. Jed LOVED to use his horns. Jed was nasty. Mostly. Oddly enough he was strangely gentle on some occasions, to certain people.

This wasn’t one of those occasions and those poor Indians weren’t any of those people. Jed plowed through those poor boys like a bowling ball through a plate glass window. A bomb might as well have gone off in their midst to look at what Jed did to them. Jed left death and destruction in his wake. He really LIKED to use his horns. Several horses were down and more Indians. There were going to be some empty Teepees somewhere tonight.

Jed just kept going. He didn’t even bother to look back.

It wasn’t very far till they crested another hill and come upon the wagon. The wagon was in pitiful shape. Lamar thought he heard a baby crying but it was hard to be sure over the sound of the horses screaming and the oxen bawling. Those damn tenderfeet had hit the stream running full tilt. The first pool of water that they tried to cross at break neck speed had mossy rocks in it and holes. The animals that didn’t break their legs immediately had slipped and fell.

One rider was face down in a pool of water with his horse laying on top of him. Neither of them were breathing. The other man, the wagon driver had just kept going when the wagon had stopped. He too, was face down underwater. It looked like he’d been stepped on. The water around him was red.

Obviously neither man had survived. Few of the animals were going to survive either. The sound of a baby crying came from inside the wagon. Lamar reined Jed to a halt beside the wagon, dismounted and looked inside from the rear. It didn’t take him a real long time to see what was inside because he instantly dodged to one side and dropped to the ground.

The sound of the gunshot rang out and smoke billowed out. The shot had just missed him. That had been way too close. Maybe stopping to help had been a bad idea. Lamar heard the ‘click’ of a gun being cocked so he shouted.

“Don’t shoot ma'am. I mean you no harm”

“You speak English?”
came the startled cry from inside the wagon.
“Are you a white man?”

“We’ll discuss my pedigree some other time ma’am’, if you please”
Lamar grumbled as he cautiously peeked thru the opening in the rear of the wagon again…white man indeed.
”right now we need to get out of here. There’s a band of pissed off injuns right behind me.”

Isabel just stared at the grey bearded black face, her mouth hangin’ open. The apparition spoke good english with a Texas drawl yet was wearing octagonal sunglasses. She felt faint. Obviously she was going insane.

“See to it then. I’m not in the mood for this kind of thing. I have a newborn baby and it’s momma to take care of. Do what you need to do and don’t bother me”
she snapped and put down her pepperbox pistol as she turned back to the newborn.

Lamar shook his head in wonder.

Women! You never knew about Women!

She had a point though. He best get crakin. When the surviving Indians recovered their wits they might just come after him. Then again they might decide not to throw good money after bad and call it quits.

Indians. You never knew about Indians….either.

Lamar studied the situation with an engineer’s eye. He WAS an engineer...among other things. Whatever he did he’d beter do it fast. He took a hand axe and a coil of rope from one of Jeb’s packs. Jeb was carrying a heavy load but seemed not to care. Jeb was, after all, thousands of pounds of pure muscle.

It took Lamar very little time to cut the wagon loose from the oxen. He then put a loop of rope around Jeb’s horns and tied the other end of the short rope to the rear of the wagon.

Jeb backed up.

The wagon just naturally came with him.

Wood chips flew as Lamar shortened the wagon tongue just in front of the single tree. Working as fast as he could Lamar hastily improvised. He hooked up Jeb and away they went…..right into the river.

Just as they pulled even with the two uninjured oxen Lamar jerked to a stop.

“Oh shit! One more thing...I almost forgot”

Lamar pulled a big knife, almost a short sword, from a holster on Jeb’s neck. He jumped down and cut the two uninjured oxen loose from their harness.....then he slit the throats of the other injured animals, including the horses. It only took a minute for them to bleed out. They were in so much pain that they barely noticed the sting from the knife slice. It was a mercy. It didn’t take much time and it wasn’t like the Indians didn’t know where he was.

It was the humane thing to do.

That done he climbed aboard the wagon. Jeb pulled the wagon directly across the river. He was big enough and strong enough to do it….barely. The middle was almost too swift and deep even for him. No other critter short of an elephant could have done it. Riding a horse across would be risky.

Next Episode
#7: “You tend to your Rat killing and I’ll tend to mine”…
Last Episode
#5: What in Tarnation is THAT?”…
First Episode
# 1 : In the beginning…

---

I'm

@everittdmickey
I surf the net, find the GOOD stuff.
and write posts about it
So you don't have to.
I also write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
and comment on the news

Sometimes it's hard to tell fiction from the news.