by Bill Crider
The telephone rang inside the house. A landline. Rhodes liked having it.
“I’ll get it,” Ivy said, standing up. “You stay here with the dogs.”
Rhodes thought that was a good idea. Yancey had the ball again and brought it over to Rhodes.
Ivy came to the door to tell Rhodes about the call. “Hack says it’s an emergency.”
“It’s always an emergency,” Rhodes said.
“He sounds excited.”
That was unusual. Hack was hardly ever excited.
“Come on, Yancey,” Rhodes said, standing up. “Time to go back inside.”
Yancey wasn’t interested. He ran across the yard with the squeaky ball, trying to get Speedo to chase him. Speedo looked at Rhodes as if to say, “Want me to round him up for you?”
Rhodes chased down Yancey himself and grabbed him up. He took the ball out of his mouth. It was easier to get it from him than from Speedo because Yancey couldn’t get it into his mouth and always had a precarious hold on it.
Yancey wriggled like a landed fish and tried to grab the ball, but Rhodes threw it to Speedo, who bit and made it squeak. The sound made Yancey wriggle even more.
“That was mean,” Ivy said. “Are you going to talk to Hack or not?”
“We’re coming,” Rhodes said, carrying Yancey across the yard and into the house. He was careful not to set the little dog down until the door was safely closed.
Yancey ran to the door and whined.
“You’re lucky you get to live inside,” Rhodes told him. “Speedo has to stay out there in the yard in a Styrofoam igloo, and you get the run of the house.”
Yancey didn’t seem to care about being lucky. He ignored Rhodes and continued to whine at the door. Rhodes left him there and went into the kitchen. Ivy handed him the phone.
“’Bout time,” Hack said when Rhodes spoke. “We got a situation.”
“Don’t we always?” Rhodes said.
“Not like this,” Hack said, and instead of digressing, he went right into it. “We got a wild bull on the loose from the vet’s and headin’ for the Walmart. You need to get out there right now.”
“That’s Alton’s job,” Rhodes said.
As the animal control officer for the county, Alton Boyd was the one in charge of things like bulls. However, it seemed that Rhodes was called to help him out all too often, having been involved with capturing both alligators and donkeys.
“Alton needs some backup. Before you say send somebody else, you got Andy doing a crime scene, and Duke’s off in another part of the county. Alton’s got Dr. Stanton and his assistant, but they ain’t enough.”
Dr. David Stanton was a veterinarian, fairly new in town. He had a new building a half mile or so down the highway from the Walmart. Rhodes wasn’t sure who his assistant was.
“If that bull gets to Walmart, much less gets in the buildin’, there’s gonna be big trouble,” Hack said. “You better get on out there.”
“I’m on the way,” Rhodes said.
* * *
The Clearview Super Walmart was located out on the highway that led to Railville. Rhodes arrived at the entrance to the parking area and looked around. It was a little early for there to be much of a crowd, only about an hour after sunup, but there were a few cars in the lot near the entrance to the building. There was always someone shopping at Walmart, no matter what time it was. A couple of motor homes were parked at one edge of the lot. They weren’t likely to belong to customers but to people who’d pulled in for the night. Walmart seemed to welcome travelers, whether they were customers or not.
Looking down the highway, Rhodes saw the bull. It was a reddish color, maybe a Brangus. Rhodes wasn’t entirely sure. Whatever it was, it was well over a ton of beef on the hoof, and it was ambling along the side of the highway with several people in hot pursuit. One of them was Alton Boyd. Another was Dr. Stanton. Rhodes didn’t recognize the others.
Boyd was hazing the bull with a lariat, trying to turn it back in the direction of the veterinary clinic. He might as well have been a housefly for all the good he was doing. The bull kept its eyes straight ahead and kept on coming toward the Walmart.
Rhodes pulled into the parking lot and got out of the county car. He wasn’t sure if he could keep the bull out of the lot, but he could try. A bull in a parking lot wasn’t as bad as a bull in a china shop, but if the bull got in among the cars, it could cause a lot of damage, even to as few cars as there were. Just a good head butt would crumple the sides, and the bull had a pair of horns that could puncture metal. A person who got unlucky could also get punctured, but at the moment Rhodes was the only person in the lot. He hoped he wouldn’t get unlucky.
Another car parked beside Rhodes, and Jennifer Loam got out. She was blond, smart, and, ever since leaving the local newspaper, the owner of a Web site called A Clear View of Clearview. She was also the site’s reporter, photographer, and webmaster. In her spare time she sold ads. She was dating Andy Shelby, who had promised Rhodes more than once that he wasn’t feeding her news tips. Yet here she was. Someone had passed the word. Since Andy was working the crime scene at the Moore house, Rhodes suspected Hack.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Jennifer said. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”
Rhodes checked to see if she had her little video camera running. She didn’t, but it was right there, ready to go.
“It’s always something, for sure,” he said. “You’d better stay clear of the bull. You don’t want to get gored.”
“That’s not in my job description,” she said. “I’m just here to watch and learn.”
Rhodes didn’t think there would be much learning going on.
“And to take some great video, of course,” Jennifer continued. “If anybody gets gored, maybe I can sell it to a network or become an Internet sensation.”
Rhodes hoped she was kidding, but he didn’t ask. He turned his attention to the bull, which was only about thirty yards away now. It had begun to run, and it outdistanced the pursuers. Alton Boyd had dropped to the back of the pack. Too many cheap cigars.
A couple of cars on both sides of the road had stopped, and people were recording the chase with their phone cameras. If Jennifer didn’t get anything good, someone else might.
“What’s your plan?” Jennifer asked Rhodes, turning her camera on him.
“I don’t have one,” Rhodes said. “I’ve never been on a roundup before.”
“It’s only one cow,” Jennifer said.
“It’s a bull,” Rhodes said. “There’s a difference.”
“I know that. Here he comes.”
Rhodes looked. Sure enough, the bull was almost at the entrance, and Rhodes still didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have a rope, not that he’d have been able to lasso the bull even if he had one. If Alton Boyd could catch up, maybe he could do it, but even if he could, the bull might just drag him along with it.
Rhodes walked almost to where the entrance met the highway, prepared to stop the bull somehow. He’d wave his arms and yell, but what he hoped was that the bull wouldn’t turn. It didn’t have any reason to. It could just keep on going straight, which would make a lot more sense. Not that bulls had an abundance of sense. This one especially. If it had any sense, it wouldn’t be running down the highway.
For the first time, Rhodes wondered how the bull had gotten there and why it was on the loose. If Dr. Stanton was involved, the bull might have come from his clinic. Maybe someone had been unloading it and it had escaped. Not that it mattered. It was here now, and they needed to get it corralled. Too bad there wasn’t a corral handy.
Rhodes heard the bull snorting as it approached. The men following it had dropped back a bit, but Alton Boyd was making an attempt to regain his lost ground. He wore cowboy boots and ran awkwardly, but he was catching up.
“Don’t scare him,” Rhodes called out. “He might turn.”
Too late. Boyd was twirling his lasso in a wide loop above his head as he ran. It appeared that he was go
ing to attempt to rope the bull and stop it before it went any farther, and Rhodes was afraid things wouldn’t go according to plan.
They didn’t.
Or maybe they did, since Rhodes didn’t know what Boyd’s plan had been. If it had been to lasso the bull, he succeeded.
It was what happened next that Rhodes suspected hadn’t been a part of any plan, or if it had been, then Boyd hadn’t thought it through. He was strong, stronger than a lot of people Rhodes knew, but he wasn’t strong enough to stop a running bull. Hardly anybody was, except maybe Hercules, and Boyd was no Hercules. Years ago Rhodes had seen a series of badly dubbed Italian movies on television that went under the general title of Sons of Hercules. Boyd wasn’t one of them, either.
He tried, Rhodes had to give him credit for that. He dug in the heels of his boots and leaned back as the rope tightened, but the bull didn’t even slow down. Boyd was jerked forward and onto his stomach. It was like a scene from some old B Western. Rhodes had seen a few of those, too.
“Oh, boy!” Jennifer said.
Boyd was dragged along the side of the road for a few yards, churning up dust and gravel as he tried to dig in his heels. He released the rope. When he did, the bull did just what Rhodes had feared he might and swerved right into the entrance to the parking lot.
Rhodes was right in his way. If he’d had a red cape, Rhodes might have waved it and danced lightly aside. Lacking the cape, he jumped awkwardly to his left and almost fell down.
“Oh, boy!” Jennifer said.
Rhodes didn’t have time to worry about how he was going to look in the now sure to be viral video. He had to do something to stop the bull, which was headed straight for the entrance to Walmart. Two men who had just left the store took one look, turned around, and ran back inside so fast that the automatic doors barely had time to open for them.
The opening and closing of the doors seemed to have confused the bull, and he slowed down. Rhodes went after him, though he had no idea what he’d do if he caught up with him. He could grab the rope, but the idea of getting pulled across the Walmart parking lot and getting asphalt burns all over his body didn’t appeal to him. Jennifer Loam would love it, but Rhodes didn’t feel any obligation to get her video any extra hits.
The automatic doors opened again, and a woman came out pushing a cart. Obviously no one had warned her about the bull, because when she saw him, she pushed the shopping cart away from her and went back into the store, leaving whatever she’d bought to the mercy of the bull.
The bull slowed even more and looked at the cart.
“Maybe the two of us could stop him,” Alton Boyd said.
He was standing right behind Rhodes, who hadn’t heard him come up.
“I think it would take more than two of us,” Rhodes said.
“He’s just walking now,” Boyd said. “We could do it.”
“Not worth the risk,” Rhodes said, keeping a wary eye on the bull, which was meandering over to the shopping cart. It was full of white plastic bags that held the bounty of the woman’s shopping trip. Rhodes wondered what was in them.
The bull must have wondered, too, because it stopped and stuck its head into the cart. Rhodes heard it snuffling as it moved its head around the bags.
“Cereal,” Boyd said. “Sugar cereal. A bull would go for that. Let’s get hold of that rope while he’s not moving.”
Rhodes wondered what they’d do if the bull started to move again, but by that time the men who’d been chasing it had all caught up.
“We can all grab the rope,” Rhodes said, looking around at them. “That way we’ll have a chance of controlling him.”
He didn’t know whether that was true or not. There were six men, eight with him and Boyd. The bull still outweighed them by a good margin.
“We gotta be quiet and move slow,” Boyd said. “Don’t scare him.”
The men all crept along with Rhodes and Boyd in the lead. The bull paid them no attention at all. He was munching on something in the cart. Maybe a nice box of Frosted Flakes. Rhodes got as close as he could without touching the bull and took hold of the rope. Boyd and the others followed his lead. The bull kept on munching.
“Now what?” Rhodes asked. “Dr. Stanton?”
The veterinarian was next to Boyd in the line of men holding the rope. He said, “We just hang on. Rafe Steadman should be here any minute.”
“What does Rafe have to do with it?” Rhodes asked.
“It’s Rafe’s bull. He should be bringing his trailer.”
Rhodes looked back toward the highway and saw a Ford F-150 turning into the parking lot, pulling a slat-sided trailer behind it.
“There he is,” Rhodes said.
“All we have to do now is get the bull into the trailer,” Stanton said.
“Sounds easy enough,” someone said.
Somebody chuckled at that. Rhodes was skeptical, too, but it was worth a try. They didn’t have anything else. He watched as Steadman pulled the trailer around and started to back it toward them.
The bull must have heard something, too, because he raised his head from the shopping cart and turned to look. He wasn’t disturbed. He went back to crunching whatever he’d found in the cart.
Steadman stopped the truck at an angle to the shopping cart, got out, and came around to the back of the trailer. He was a tall, skinny man, dressed in jeans and a Western shirt. He wore a gray Western hat. He opened the gate and pulled out a ramp from beneath the trailer.
When the bull heard the gate being opened, it looked around again. This time it didn’t like what it saw. It shook its head, scattering something that looked to Rhodes like mini wheat squares, and snorted. It moved forward, shoving the cart aside, and jerking the rope.
The men all dug in their heels, but it didn’t do any good. The bull pulled them right along, and half of them fell down, letting go of the rope as they did so and allowing the bull to move even faster. It was headed toward the motor homes, some of the occupants of which had come out to watch the fun. When they saw the bull heading in their direction, they all started to go back inside except for one small boy wearing a T-shirt and shorts. He must have liked the bull, because he started to run toward it. A woman turned back from the motor home and yelled at him. The bull snorted and lowered its head.
Rhodes and Boyd were still hanging on to the rope, but they were the only ones. They ran to keep up with the bull, but they couldn’t stop it.
Rhodes knew he had to do something. He’d been to the Clearview summer rodeo every year for a long time, and one of the events that he remembered was the bulldogging. A horseback rider would chase a steer, a steer much smaller than the bull, lean out of the saddle, grab the bull’s horns, and come out of the saddle to wrestle it to the ground.
Wrestling the bull to the ground was out of the question, but Rhodes thought he might at least be able to get its attention and distract it from the child, who now appeared frozen in place. His mouth was open, and maybe he was screaming. Rhodes couldn’t hear him because of the roaring of his own blood in his ears.
Rhodes released the rope, ran forward, and took the bull by the horns.
Chapter 5
Twisting the head of a steer when you’re coming off a horse isn’t easy. Twisting a bull’s head when you’re running alongside of it is next to impossible, or at least it was for Rhodes. The bull snorted and flipped its head, and Rhodes felt himself being lifted off the ground. He somehow hung on and kept twisting. The bull didn’t fall. It didn’t stumble. It didn’t even slow down. It did, however, turn slightly to the left, which was the side Rhodes was hanging on to.
Encouraged, Rhodes tried to dig in his heels. He couldn’t, but the bull did turn a bit more to the left.
Rhodes wondered if Alton Boyd was still hanging on to the rope. He didn’t dare look back, and for that matter he couldn’t really see what was ahead of him. Everything was pretty much a blur at the moment.
After a couple of seconds Rhodes realized that someone was on
the right side of the bull, running along and flapping a cowboy hat at it. Steadman, Rhodes thought. He was trying to help Rhodes turn the bull away from the mobile homes, and they were succeeding.
The bull sped up, and Rhodes felt his feet skidding along the ground. He was no longer doing much to turn the bull. He was just hanging on for the ride. He thought about letting go, but he knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. Hanging on to the bull was bound to be better than bouncing off an asphalt parking lot.
Steadman kept pace with the bull, swinging the hat. The bull flipped its head again as if trying to get rid of a particularly annoying insect. Rhodes felt his legs fly out almost parallel to the surface of the parking lot. He wondered what would happen if the bull just kept going like that battery-powered bunny in the TV commercials. Would the bull and Rhodes wind up in Mexico? Or maybe Canada, depending on the direction the bull took? Surely the bull would run down before that happened.
Rhodes saw something in front of them. He tried to focus. It was the trailer, and now he heard yelling on his left. Several of the bull’s former pursuers were there, waving their arms and jumping around as if they were on a trampoline.
Rhodes thought at first that they wanted to warn him about something, but then it occurred to him that they were trying to guide the bull into the trailer. With Steadman on one side and the men on the other, they’d formed a sort of corridor. If Rhodes could guide the bull down the middle and keep him from running over anybody, it might even work.
Rhodes didn’t like to think about what might happen once he and the bull got into the trailer, assuming that they would. The trailer was big enough to hold the bull, and there would be plenty of room for Rhodes, too, but not if the bull decided to crush him against the side.
Before Rhodes could think too much about that, it was too late for him to worry. The bull slowed, but not enough for Rhodes to take the chance of letting go, and then they were at the trailer. This was the critical moment. If the bull turned quickly, someone was going to get trampled, and if it didn’t go straight into the trailer, Rhodes was going to get raked off by the side.