“Git,” he said, slapping his thigh. The cows didn’t back off. If anything, they leaned forward, tense and hungry. He paused on our side of the guard, maybe having second thoughts when he saw the way all those eyes were looking at him, but he considered himself a cowboy and no cowboy has ever been afraid of a cow. He took a long step, halfway across, lifted his arm, and gave the biggest of them a hard slap on the nose. “Go on now, git!”
She stared at him for a full second then lunged forward and sank her teeth into his arm. He screamed. Her legs slipped between the bars and she went halfway down, busting her left at the knee. She writhed, her teeth clamped around his elbow, shaking him back and forth like a chew toy.
“For Christ’s sake, shoot her!” His feet skidded in the dust with each toss of her head. He flailed at her nose with his free arm.
I jumped down and unholstered my piece. Lucky for him, cows aren’t much good at biting—their jaws don’t open wide enough—but she had a fair hold and blood was running down his wrist and over her lips. She kept lunging forward on her busted leg, trying to get to the rest of him. Making a crazed sound I didn’t know cows could make, sort of a bellowing shriek. The smell of manure filled the air. I came around from the side and shot her twice in the head.
By and by she went still.
The sun hung directly over the Big Horns. It was the kind of crisp, fall day that’s so clear it hurts your eyes. Vultures circled overhead, their black wings a wrongness in the light. Travis pulled himself free. He staggered back, clutching his arm, wild fear in his eyes. Cow blood spattered his uniform. A big splash dripped over his oversized belt buckle. I made sure there was no permanent damage and told him to get some peroxide and a bandage from the first aid kit.
Then I considered the situation.
None of the other cows had moved. Even in their newly militant state they didn’t care a whit for one another unless they were direct baby kin or ripe for mating. All Travis had managed to do was get two thousand pounds of beef wedged in the guard. Bracing my bad knee in one hand and holding my gun in the other, I climbed onto the roof of the Suburban for a look at the land.
The pasture was twenty acres in front and another eighty behind in the foothills, with a hundred head. Most of them were lined up in the driveway. In ranks, near as I could tell. The rest had broken through the rear fence and were up on the porch of the farmhouse. Don and Don Jr. lay near the hole in the fence and even from a distance I could see there was nothing to be done for them except prayer and remembrance. If it weren’t for the cattle, the vultures would’ve been at them already.
Maxim Loskutoff was raised in western Montana. His stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Witness, Narrative, and The Chicago Tribune. He has worked as a carpenter, field organizer, and bookseller, among many other things.