Two Hundred Years to Pecos (eBook)

Ch 1
The Stampede

A sunbeam broke over the horizon as old man Higgs poured himself a cup of cowboy coffee. The morning was dark and cool, and this was his favorite part of the day. By golly, how things have changed since I first rode trails as a boy and camped out under the stars.

He sipped steaming hot coffee from a tin cup and sat down on his front porch. There were no coffee filters or cappuccino machines back then. The art of making coffee had become complicated and expensive. Still...the best tasting coffee was made with water, coffee, and a coffee pot over a campfire. Reflecting on his past experiences, he could make out a faint rumble in the distant hills. The cries of an infant thunderstorm coming to life, perhaps.

Hooty owls and tree frogs suddenly went silent as he set his cup down on the porch. He looked up to see a gray cloud blocking the sun’s rays. “Peculiar, there’s no lightning, and it don’t smell like rain,” he noted. Delicate ripples crisscrossed the surface of his coffee as the porch boards vibrated. Rumbling now shook the ground.

Without warning, orange plumes sprang out in all directions from the ominous gray cloud that was now streaking directly towards him. Shafts of fire accompanied by thunder shot out from the dark cloud, shaking the earth hard, causing porch boards to buckle and pop into the air. The old man’s coffee cup was launched clear across the barnyard. Rocks in the yard shot into the air, and then dropped back only to bounce up again.

“What in tarnation? What kind of stampede is this?” He’d experienced many stampedes in his lifetime, but none with the feel and sound of this one. The fiery cloud looked to be a mile and a half across. “Where to go?” Higgs wondered. He ran to a giant oak tree that stood between the house and barn as an enormous flaming object took out the front porch where he’d been sitting. He reached the tree and hugged it as the fiery thing swooped back in the opposite direction and leveled his house. “What the heck was that?”

The noise was so loud, exploding dynamite would have been a welcome relief. The flaming objects whipped up fire and hot dust with such force it could slice your skin right off. Higgs wondered if he were in some sort of tornado caused by a greenhouse effect he read about a while back in a magazine. He’d been through many a whirlwind growing up in Texas, but had never seen one shake the earth or shoot fire like this, much less one caused by a greenhouse.

The oak tree bent unnaturally, and a loud crack from the oak tree mixed with the fiery cloud’s ear-shattering sounds presented Higgs with a choice. He could stay behind the tree and get crushed by it, or he could stand out in the open and get crushed by whatever was coming. Neither option sounded too good right now. What the devil could cause this kind of devastation?

And then he saw them. Creatures 20 or 30 feet tall, shooting shafts of fire from their nostrils with every breath. One of them was heading straight for the oak tree.

Now he could see spears of white-hot fire shooting across the sky with blazing horns the size of pickup trucks. Strong wind drafts from these horns pulled on him as he struggled to hold on. Then the tip of a flaming horn caught the side of the oak tree, inches away from his hand. The great oak gave out another loud crack. Luckily the horn careened past, barely grazing his arm, but still snapped it like a dry twig.

~~~~~~~~

The cool dark morning was also the best time for dreaming, and that’s precisely what Nellie Turner was doing. Nellie was several months old when found in the Chihuahuan desert of West Texas next to a prickly pear cactus. She was holding a glowing turquoise pendant in the shape of Texas on a broken leather necklace. Jeb and Kate Turner adopted her twelve years ago in a story surrounded by mystery.

Nellie was dreaming about her first day at Pecos School. She and her friends Shawnee and Big-un had spent the last eight years preparing for this day.

After all, the Pecos School of Bronco Bustin and Farmin was the best in Texas for learning the ways of the land and animals. Its long history dated back 200 years to the days of Pecos Bill, the roughest, toughest cowboy of all time.

The dream shifted to one she’d experienced many times before. Nellie was flying high in the sky, and a person was holding her tight with one hand and twirling a rope in the other. She noticed debris swirling below and, with a start, realized they were in a tornado. No, she thought, that’s not quite right. I’m not in a tornado, I’m on top of it. The exhilaration of riding high in such a powerful force of nature was breathtaking.

“Yee-Ha,” the rider yelled as the tornado shrank to a dust devil and landed. She could still feel the excitement of the ride when a delicate white mist surrounded her.

They were now standing at a corral gate, staring at large creatures. “These cows are the first of a new breed,” said the cowboy as Nellie’s eyes viewed through his. “She’s called a ‘Boom-a-horn.’

The cowhand said, “Holy cow, how did you do this?”

“Well, I crossed a cow with a boomerang and a volcano and got a Boom-a-horn,” the Cowboy said, laughing.

“Dang, that’s amazing," the cowhand replied.

A moment later, the images were gone.

Through squinty eyes, she came to consciousness. Tiny circles of light fluttered about, warming and comforting her. Then, when all was calm, a familiar, loving voice in her mind said, “Go to Lookout Cavern and open the jar.” Nellie's eyes popped wide open, but no one was there. “I know that voice. My dream has never ended like this before.”

~~~~~~~~

“I’m a goner…” Higgs thought.

The stampede showed no signs of easing up. Another few cracks from the oak tree would be the end. Higgs struggled to hold on, when suddenly little circles of light appeared, enveloping him. Calm pulsed through his body, and he felt like nothing could harm him. “Was this how the final few seconds of life felt like?”

A bright crescent dome appeared on the distant horizon, casting the morning’s first sunbeams on Higgs ranch. The first thing he noticed was that the gigantic creatures had moved away. The second thing he saw was a terrifying sight of utter destruction. Nothing was left of his ranch for a mile and a half in either direction.

His house, barn, garden, equipment, and cornfields were nothing but dust and memories. The only thing left of the 200-acre Higgs Ranch was the broken oak tree and old man Higgs. It was like a giant plow scraped his land clean in one big swoop.

A battered oak tree limb looked as if it were pointing to a patch of ground. Moving to the spot, he could see his favorite old tin coffee cup squashed in the center of an elephant-sized hoofprint. He reached for it, and then stopped, shook his arm, and realized it was completely healed.

~~~~~~~~

Nellie started her morning ritual for school. First, she dressed in her favorite jeans, shirt, boots, and cowgirl hat. Next, she checked her list: “Notebook, pencils, erasers, spurs, lasso, chaps, branding iron, and a bandana. Yep, ready to go,” she thought.

Nellie pushed the bedroom door open, and the smell of bacon, eggs, and homemade biscuits filled her nostrils. “Mornin Nellie,” said Kate Turner. “How’d ya sleep?”

“I had the dream about flying again, but I felt like something horrible happened to someone this time. The last thing I remember is a familiar voice saying, ‘Go to Lookout Cavern.’ Then I woke up.”

“Something strange did happen at the Higgs place early this morning. Your uncle Jeb headed out to the Higgs place a few minutes ago. He said there was some kind of ruckus and went to see if Mr. Higgs was alright,” Kate replied.

“What kind of ruckus?” Nellie asked, abruptly putting her knife and fork down.

“Don’t know, but Jeb got a call from Mr. Shanefield early this morning to meet him over at Mr. Higgs’ place.”

“Can I go see what happened? Mr. Higgs’ place is only six miles away. I could saddle up Firefly and be there and back in a jiffy,” Nellie pleaded.

(Now, Firefly was the fastest horse the Turners owned and probably the fastest horse in Texas. No one could stay on Firefly once she hit full stride Except for Jeb Turner and Nellie. Old Lester Koot once said Firefly was “Faster than a speeding bullet.” Then that kid in the blue long johns with a red tablecloth tied around his neck showed up, and the meaning changed. A state trooper once clocked Firefly on a radar gun at close to 2,400 miles an hour. She may have been going faster, but the radar gun melted. It was also strange that no one knew where she came from.)

“Nellie, don’t be silly,” Kate scolded. “It’s your first day of school, and the school wagon will be here shortly. You’ll miss it.”

“Aw… Aunt Kate,” Nellie said as the school wagon pulled up to the front of the house. The methodic clip-clop of a noble steed named Strider, the oldest horse at Pecos school, melded with the trembling sound of an ancient Conestoga wagon and the yodeling of a tall, lanky dust-covered cowboy. The old covered wagon that once took settlers across America creaked, popped, and shook in cadence. Now it transported students to and from Pecos School of Bronco Bustin and Farmin. It had PSBBF painted on its sides.

Seated high atop the rig, Dusty steered Strider and the PSBBF wagon from under his ten-gallon hat....