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As John Stott saw me ride out into the pasture he called, "Come back!" You will get killed out there!" But I could only think of Lanky out there and how badly my dad would feel if anything happened to her. I forced a very reluctant Lyd into the face of the storm. Lightning and thunder and rain seemed to be destroying the earth. I reached First Creek, and the water was already over the little bridge, but I crossed it, in the lightning flashes still looking for Lanky. Then I came over the rise to look upon Second Creek. The juniper posts showed where the bridge was, and Lyd waded through or across it. Then as we came to Third Creek the creek was about a hundred feet across the white water. The lightning flashes showed cattle coming from this water to the knoll at the southwest corner of the pasture, this being the highest ground in the pasture. Lyd was very reluctant to go into this water and was soon swimming toward the knoll, and the stream was quite swift. But finally she was wading and was safely across. There we found Lanky with her spotted calf. The calf was lying in the mud and Lanky was licking it. Afraid that it would drown, I dragged its head upon some rabbit brush and held my straw hat over its face. I used my hand to scrape away the water that soaked the calf and prayed for help to save it. Rome reached my home with the cows during the worst of the storm. Mother was watching for him, and amid the flying debris and the limbs coming from the Lombardy poplars, she got the gate open and let the cows inside and put them into the stable. She asked Rome where I was, and he said I was coming with Lanky. As she approached the house, lightning hit a poplar tree and split half of it away to fall over into the garden, and just then the wind tore down the chicken-wire trellis that held the vines across the north end of the porch and against the house. As Mother came into the house my sisters were huddled and crying, and upstairs the shutters to the windows were banging, and the girls did not dare to go shut them. As the worst of the storm was abating, John Stott came to our house on his way home from the pasture to tell mother, "I am afraid that boy of yours is a goner. I tried to call -81- |
