(Warning. Lengthy writing. All who prefer short, concise writings should desist from reading, especially those who have lived in this area previously and who have my number for writing pieces too lengthy.)

I left Pratt livestock with a load of 16 classy, healthy, bright-eyed heifers weighing in at 540 pounds each. 

Calves like those are visual therapy to a cattleman.

My load was an easy 8,500 pounds; I could haul 12,000 pounds if I had to, but I had 100 miles to roll up towards home and didn’t want anyone down on the trailer floor when I got there. 

I purchased these heifers as guaranteed open, or in other words, they were guaranteed not to have a baby calf in them.  Just in case, the man selling them had given them all a shot of Lutalyse, a drug commonly given to cause an abortion if there is, in fact, a fetus involved.

We rolled homeward, and 1 ½ hours later I was kicking them out into pen 2 in our home corral.  They didn’t look weaned, so I kept them in that pen for a number of days before turning them into pen 3, which has a gate open to some wheat pasture adjacent to the corrals and which had some 30 other calves, already weaned, fence broke, and grazing in it.

I made sure to turn these 16 in when all the rest came up for water, so they could ease out with them and know the way back home.  I also made sure to turn them in in the morning, so I could keep an eye on them for the rest of the day, and if need be, ride against them if they took off running.  As far as I knew, these 16 weren’t fence broke, but that didn’t bother me too greatly, turning them in with the others and all.

And all went mostly according to plan. 

In ones and twos, sometimes threes, they made their way out with the rest and generally stayed with the group.

Except for two of them.

I made a cardinal mistake then.

After a couple of days with those two hanging around in the corral, I figured it was time to show them the way out to wheat pasture so they could start gaining some weight.

And I made a second cardinal mistake.  I drove them out midafternoon instead of early morning.

There was a sharp twang as the fence was blasted through, and cracking tree branches as they plowed their way across the tree row right in front of them.

I wasn’t too concerned yet; I had had this happen before, although maybe not quite so viciously as it was playing out now.

Almost always when this had happened before, the one or two on the run would see their cronies over the way, and being a herd animal by nature, would take down the fence a second time just to get in with them.  Once the fence was fixed, I usually didn’t have to worry too much about them anymore.

But, as one rocketed in a westerly arc, and the other split off in a southerly direction, there was one word that imprinted itself on my mind.

Lutalyse.

It was too late to do anything about it then, but I knew it for the truth when I thought of it.

I’ve had the occasional calf that was treated with that drug go loco for several days. 

Now it made sense why these two hadn’t joined the rest, and a whole lot of other things made sense also, including the fading black blobs out in the distance.

I romped the four-wheeler up to top speed in pursuit. 

I hit a couple of terraces at speed and gently flew for some yards afterwards, coming in for a smooth landing each time.

The one heading west circled around towards her cronies on the wheat pasture a quarter mile back east.  I left her be and turned my attention to our new southern belle.

But she was a foxy one.  She blew through two more fences in quick succession and headed for some rough country where I was tasked with either keeping up and more than likely getting flipped or use some covert methods.

I chose the latter, running far out in front and easing back her way in a nonthreatening gesture. 

She flippantly took down two more fences. 

I decided I had better leave her be for a bit to see if she might decide to come back on her own.  She was foaming pretty badly around her mouth already anyways.

The other one had stopped about 500 yards from the group on the wheat pasture and they had seen each other and were talking back and forth. 

Slowly, I pulled in behind her with the intention of moving her closer.  At this point there was no reason to try to get her back home; I didn’t care if she took the fence down to get in with the rest.

And then we had a black explosion.

She turned and came straight at me. 

I said, “Okay lady, if that’s how you want it, let’s roll.”

I diced off to the side and she blew past, out to the west again. 

Now I know if any neighbors end up reading this, they may be provoked to open the court case against us they have always been minded to. 

We seem to have had a few too many getaways. 

But what is interesting, in all of the getaways the common denominator has been that they always travel south.  This one going west and now north was odd. 

I’ll chalk it up to that drug.

She took down one fence and leaped another a half mile from home and was moving along faster than I liked to see. 

A mile north of home she took down another fence.

At that location I made a misjudgment that nearly caused me some bodily damage.  That heifer charged up the bank of a tail water pit, dug some 50 or 60 years previous, to catch the run-off water from the flood irrigation used to water crops in those days. 

I had been to that small pond a number of times both for ice skating and pheasant hunting; I had never been over on this side of it.  The sun was getting lower, and it cast the leeside, which I was facing, in a deep shadow, making it quite difficult to judge the angle of ascent.  That wily girl had bounded over it with apparent ease, so I sent myself and the four-wheeler up it in the thrill of the chase.

It proved to be quite a bit steeper and longer than it looked. 

My four-wheeler was bogging a bit as we neared the top, and I had to give a bit more throttle to make it over.  That bit of throttle was just about the undoing of it all.  The front end definitely started to curl back on top of me; I threw myself forward and was just able to overcome the precarious situation.

We bounced down on the other side and into the dry bottom of the pond.

She was waiting for us and took the red plastic fenders of the four-wheeler for the red blanket of your regular matador decoy and hammered into us, head down, head on.  We all stopped, me stunned from the force of it all, she with fight in her eye, and not more than 3 feet away.  I got a very clear visual of her carotid pulse as it pounded away in her neck.  She lowered her head and charged again, but she was too close to do much more than jostle us both.

She took off again towards the north.  And to the north/northeast was the town of Montezuma.

Things took on a grim reality as I tried to head her off time and again.

Once, another close call, she charged at full speed into the flank of the four-wheeler, lifting the back wheel high enough and with my speed at 30 m.p.h. or better, nigh well rolled us into a mad tumble.

And then it was off north again. 

Actually northeast. 

Towards town.

About then my good wife called.

She said the boys were coming to help me.  I said fine, but they shouldn’t bring their trucks as both were quite new and I told her how badly I was getting charged on a fairly regular basis by then. 

I couldn’t believe it.  That girl was a good 100 feet away, pawing the ground.  I thought, “She’ll never charge from that distance.  They never do.”

But she squatted back on her haunches, sprang forward, and here she came.

All 100 feet.  Right in my face.

I skittered off to her right just in time.

We twirled and twirled, she charging, I dancing away, albeit on the four wheeler.

And I realized, desperately, that we were edging closer and closer to town. 

And darkness was settling in deeper and deeper.

Austin came in close to where I was and called to say he would take over if I and Bryce wanted to go find the other one.  He would use his truck; I told him it would get hammered.  He said if it did it did.  We couldn’t have this loco calf on the loose in town. 

I scampered off south, and Bryce and I found the other girl about three miles from where I had left Austin.

She promptly took down the neighbor’s fence and streaked farther south.  I was able to curb her travel in a quarter mile or so and bring her back to where she had gone through the fence. 

Bryce was waiting just a bit back of that on the road, and once she bounded out, he flanked her with his truck.  With a fence on both sides of the road, I switched position with Bryce.

With me at her side, and Bryce’s growly diesel behind, the fight pretty much left her, and we were able to trail her home and back to pen 2.

About then, Austin called Jan and told her to bring a rope. 

That crazy one had gotten crazier, and they were now only a quarter mile from town.  Bryce jumped on the four-wheeler to go help with the rope, and after I had the fence for the wheat calves temporarily gussied up, I made my way to the Bryce’s truck to join them. 

Before I could leave, I got a call from Austin.

“Bring the gun,” he said.  “If we can’t get her roped, we’ll have to shoot her.  We’re too close to town.”

So, I found the gun and got myself over to where they struggled. 

The four-wheeler didn’t go into reverse anymore; it was left in a haphazard angle to the road a way back from where they were.

And it was almost full dark.

They dallied onto the receiver hitch on Austin’s truck, Bryce drove, and Austin in the bed, ready to lasso. 

He made a good throw and had her.

She took off, and Bryce tried to slow her. 

They had her down to a heaving, thrashing mess when she suddenly took off pell-mell around and in front of Austin’s truck. 

The rope flew up wide and high and she went by; Austin got out of its way just in time, as it snapped down across the side and hood. 

We figured the truck was dented, but on later inspection, there was a very slight ding and a few minor scratch marks, neither of which kept him from fetching home his new bride in it a few months later.

Meanwhile, Bryce jumped in his truck and spooled up the turbo to a scream, heading back home to hook on to the trailer.

He was soon back, and we got ready to get that critter pulled in. 

But alas, it was not to be.  She found some insane energy reserve and flipped around and through us. 

We did manage to double dally on a trailer stake and left the original dally on the receiver hitch.  I was afraid if we unhooked that one, we’d lose her.

This second dally posed a real risk of getting a finger caught and amputated. 

We took care and soon had her within a few feet of the trailer’s edge, when she took off again around to the front like the other time.

Except the rope was dallied to the trailer and she came to it’s end at the same time she came even with the edge of the door.

There was a crash as she slammed into it.  She was momentarily stunned and if we would have had our act together, we could have heaved her in right then, but she manifested a fair amount of fight yet, even then, and I didn’t want anyone getting kicked.

And then it was over.

She totally gave up.  No amount of prodding would move her. 

So, we three picked her up and bodily lifted all 540 pounds of her up and into the trailer.

We looked up at that point, and not 200 feet away was Geronimo Street, which is the southmost street in our little town, and south, 2 ½ miles, was the corral whence she had vacated. 

Surprisingly, not a single vehicle went by that whole time on either of the two roads we were near to as we struggled in that inky night.  I’m afraid if they had, it would have set us up for a whole ‘nother go ‘round.

Bryce and I went one direction to fix fence, and Austin went to look at his pickup and get things generally put away.

We all gathered for supper, some 6 hours after the first snap of the fence, a very dirty, drained, and disconsolate bunch.

The boys turned into men that night. 

I turned into an old man.

That second one died the next day.  Totally ran out, I guess.

(It should be stated that if we had horse savvy, a good horse, and a general basic instinct, a lot of what happened wouldn’t have; but, we don’t, and therefore you have the story as it is.)