But this evening, the cows just stayed huddled together, heads bowed wearily, making low noises as if to warn each other not to budge. Oxford tapped his heels into his horse's flank and flicked the reins against its neck. It lurched forward a step. The nearest cow lifted its head and looked at the horse warily out of the corner of its eye, but didn't move. Oxford couldn't understand it. The only explanation he could think of was that the cows must have been more scared of something ahead of them than they were of him and his horse behind. He put two fingers in his mouth and blew. This didn't scare the cows into moving either, but that hadn't been his intention.

The ranch had two corrals. They were large open pens, surrounded by a rickety fence made of dry old wood and rusty wire, and boxed in by the hay barn on one side and the riverbank on the other. At the other corral, Oxford's brother Winston was having much more success. He had to crack his whip against the ground behind the cows, but slowly and surely, his half of the herd was filing through the corral gates. When Oxford whistled, Winston looked up. It was dusk, and Oxford was only a brown silhouette against an orange sky. Soon it would be too dark to finish the task, so Winston didn't go over to assist his older brother until his own cows were safely locked up for the night.

"Somethin's put the frighteners on 'em," Oxford told him.

"Yeah, but it shoulda been you," Winston crowed.

He cracked his whip several times behind the herd and then the cows finally started to move. Winston laid his whip over the shoulders of his horse and adjusted the peak of his hat, then folded his arms and turned to Oxford as if to ask what had been so hard about that. Oxford looked red faced, and not because of the heat.

"They just need to know who's in charge," Winston said.

"Yeah, yeah," Oxford replied dismissively.

"And that's me." Winston laughed.

The pair of them watched as the herd trundled toward the open corral gates. Oxford followed on his horse at a distance, just to make sure the cows kept going straight. Winston remained where he was. He ruffled his horse's mane with his hands and then began to wind his whip back into a coil. The jubilant smile on his face grew into a broad grin when Oxford's cows finally reached the corral gates - and stopped again.

"Need some help?" Winston called.

"I got it," Oxford muttered. "I'll show 'im."

He took the whip out from under his arm and shook it out of its coil. He didn't actually need to whip any of the cows. As long as they were sufficiently worried that he might, they'd move without him needing to. He flicked the end of the whip. It slapped into the dust unimpressively and none of the cows even noticed.

"You gotta really crack it," Winston called.

"I know! I know!"

He did it again, flicking his arm forward at the elbow so that the whip would snap the air just before hitting the ground. This time he did better. Some of the cows even looked up. But they didn't move.

Winston hooted with laughter and rode over. He snatched the whip from Oxford's hands and cracked it twice, one after the other. The cows all looked up and started making those low moaning noises again, but Oxford was almost glad when they didn't move for Winston either. Winston couldn't understand it.

"What's wrong with it now?" he asked the herd.

"There's gotta be somethin' in there they don't like," Oxford suggested.

"Great," Winston said through his teeth. "I bet it's a rattlesnake."

"I bet it's a nest of 'em. Go and have a look."

"You go and have a look! I'm not gettin' bit."

"Okay, but if I get bit, you're suckin' the poison out."

They both knew there wasn't a cure for a rattlesnake bite. Rattlesnakes were the scourge of the frontier. They kept away from houses, but the plains where the ranchers allowed their cattle to graze were full of the things. Oxford and Winston didn't know if sucking out the poison even worked. They assumed it did because they rarely heard of deaths from rattlesnake bites, but they also knew a lot of people who'd supposedly died in cattle stampedes even when they didn't own any cows, so they did wonder.

Oxford climbed off his horse and left his hat on the saddle. He didn't need it anymore. In a matter of minutes the last of the sun's rays would vanish and he would be poking around the sand looking for poisonous snakes in only the moonlight. It wasn't a prospect he looked forward to. All of a sudden, his thick leather boots just didn't feel thick enough. He sighed and found a stick baked white by the sun. He made his way around the cows to the fence of the corral and climbed over it.

"Jump up and down," Winston called.

"What do you mean, jump up and down?"

"Snakes'll think you're something big and get outta your way."

To begin with, this made perfect sense to Oxford, so he started jumping up and down on the spot. Winston immediately burst out laughing, slapping his thigh with his free hand. Oxford stopped. He had just realised that if a rattlesnake wasn't going to be scared away by the herd, then it certainly wasn't going to be scared away by him. As per usual, Winston had outwitted him for his own amusement. Oxford began to poke around with his stick at anything that looked like a hidden snake.

"There's nothin' here," he reported shortly.

"You probably scared it off, then," Winston teased.

"Okay, so let's try again."

He climbed back over the corral fence, returned to his horse and put his hat back on his head. Winston didn't wait for him. He rode in close behind the herd and cracked Oxford's whip twice more. This time the cows moved without any fuss. By the time Oxford was back in the saddle, the last of the herd were pottering into the corral and Winston was waiting patiently behind them ready to close the gate. Oxford shook his head. He'd never understand cows. They were good for steaks and boots, and that was about it. Perhaps he just wasn't cut out to be a rancher.

"I hate cows," he told Winston as they rode back toward the house. It was at the end of a long dirt track and somebody had just lit the oil lamps in the window. They'd need their guiding light. The sun had finally set and the moon wasn't bright enough.

"I think they hate you, too," Winston replied.

As if eager to confirm it, the cows they had just left behind suddenly started to moo in unison. Winston laughed. Oxford looked back over his shoulder in the direction of the corral and frowned. It was so dark he couldn't even see them now. He shook his head again and bounced the reins against his horse's back.

Had he looked back a few moments later, and had it not been so dark, Oxford might have seen the flustered face of cowpoke Dusty Lee suddenly pop up in the middle of the herd. Dusty gasped for air, as if he'd been holding his breath underwater, then squeezed his hat out from underneath the cows and patted it down upon his head. It had been battered completely out of shape and he'd need a new one. Catching his breath, he started to look around, peering into the darkness for his companions.

"Where are you clowns?" he hissed.

"Dusty? That you in there?" someone whispered.

"'Course it's me. Where are you?"

"We're by the fence. Where'd you go?"

"Go? I didn't go nowhere."

"Well, where'd you hide, then?"

"I got stuck in here, didn't I?"

"Oh. You still got the rope?"

"'Course I have. Get in here."

Dusty sighed. His head was swimming. Those two ranchers had very nearly caught him. Had they been looking the right way, they would have seen the ruddy faced cowboy crouched down in the middle of the herd with a long coil of rope slung over his shoulder and a red kerchief pinched over his nose because of the smell of the cows. He used that kerchief now to fan his face.

"Dusty? Dusty? Is this you?" someone said.

"Is what me?" asked Dusty.

"This... oh, oh, no, wait, this is a cow."

"You mistook me for a cow?!"

"No, no, I mistook a cow for you!"

Dusty growled quietly to himself. He'd been checking the cattle for branding marks that would identify them as belonging to the Willis boys when the ranchers had suddenly appeared. He hadn't had the time to belt back across the corral, hop over the fence and hide down on the riverbank. All he wanted to do now was get out, but the cows were packed pretty tightly into the corral and he was trapped in the middle of them.

"Ugh, I think I stepped in somethin'!"

"Is that you, Earl?" said Dusty.

"Yep, I think I can see you."

Dusty felt a hand brush his shoulder. Earl was behind him, but there was at least one cow between them. Dusty tried to turn round, but the herd wouldn't let him. He pushed against one of the cows, but it just pushed back and he was squeezed even tighter. Dusty snorted, sighed, and gave up.

"Have you tried climbin' over, Dusty?" Earl asked.

"No. Wait. I'll give it a go."

He put a hand each on the backs of the cows to his left and right, then began to push himself up. He winched with the effort, not just of supporting his own well fed body but also of pulling himself free of the herd's grip on him. But no sooner had he got one booted foot up on the back of nearest cow than it lurched sideways. Dusty fell back to the ground and the fall winded him.

The cows started to close in around him again. Dusty didn't hang around. He pushed his hat further down onto his head and gripped the rope in his hand, then dropped onto his belly and wriggled beneath the cow, escaping between its legs. Earl was on the other side, ready to pick him up and dust him down, laughing. The cows all seemed to groan in dismay that he had managed to get away.

Dusty wiped his face and neck with the kerchief then put a hand on Earl's shoulder for support whilst he caught his breath again. In the darkness the others were whispering and sniggering. Dusty sighed, but the worst was over.

"And after all that," he said. "I can reveal; the cows ain't even branded."

"Maybe it was too dark to see," Earl suggested.

"Nope. I woulda seen somethin'."

"Well, how many did you check?"

"Maybe three or four. All they got is these collars."

"We better remove them first, then."

"No, I got a better idea. Here, take this."

He handed Earl the end of the rope and unravelled the coil until he found the other end. There was now a long loop of rope spilling over his feet. He kicked it off as he felt along the back of one cow until he found the collar, then he stuck two fingers between the collar and the cow's neck and fed the rope through. Earl was leaning in close so that he could see what Dusty was doing. Dusty pulled the rope halfway through.

"Now," he said. "You take your end, and go that way. I'll go this."

"You're tying them all together!" Earl realised.

"You boys make sure that fence is down by the time we're finished," Dusty called out to the rest of the gang. "This herd's coming with us!"

He clapped Earl on the shoulder, and then they went off in opposite directions, feeding the rope through collar after collar and gradually attaching the entire herd to this one length of rope. The cows just stood there, occasionally snorting or making the odd low noise, but not making any futile attempt to escape. Meanwhile, the sniggering boys on the riverbank bashed away at the wooden fence until it shattered and crumbled and they could bend the wire frame out of shape.

Dusty quickly reached the end of the rope and knotted it around the collar of the final cow. He knew there were more cows in the corral he didn't have enough rope to tie, but with any luck they'd follow the ones that were tied up when he led them down to the river. Earl called out when he had reached his end of the rope. Dusty told him to wait there whilst he made his way over.

Earl was standing at the edge of the corral with the other end of the rope in his hand when Dusty reached him, beside the hole in the fence the boys had made. They had returned to the little row boat the cowboys had crossed the river in.

"Hey, cows can swim, can't they?" said Earl.

"They better do," Dusty muttered.

He looked out across the river. It wasn't very wide, but he imagined it'd be too deep in the middle for the cows to just walk from one side to the other. On the opposite bank he could just about see the dancing light of a small lantern, where Billy West was waiting for them. Dusty thought it typical he'd never get involved.

"Go and get in the boat," he told Earl.

Earl obeyed. The moon reflected off the ripples in the water so Dusty could see where the edge of the river was and where one of the boys was stopping the boat from floating downstream.

Dusty took the end of the rope in his hand and tugged. The first cow just shook its head. It was not going anywhere. Dusty pulled again. This time the cow made a loud mooing noise and pulled back instead. Dusty took off his hat, ran a hand through the dusty-coloured hair that got him his name and then clapped the cow on the rump with the misshapen hat. It began to move.

Dusty grinned. When he tugged the rope a third time, the cow kept moving, and now of course the cow behind had no choice but to follow, and so on, until Dusty was leading much of the herd down to the water's edge. He climbed into the boat, and with one hand still leading the cows, told the boys with the oars to start rowing.

On the other side of the river, Billy West listened to the slap of the oars dipping in and out of the water and the splashing of the cows as they entered the river and began to swim behind the boat. He stood beside his horse, with the reins in one hand and a lantern held aloft in the other. When the boat reached this bank and Dusty Lee left Earl and the boys to bring the cows ashore, Billy greeted him with a grave expression.

"That took longer than you said," he told Dusty.

"We can still make it on time, boss."

"I hope so, Dusty, 'cos we better."

NOTES:
A few years ago I started writing a Western for the post-"Gladiator" era. I hadn't decided to write a Western and never thought about doing it before. In fact, I was in the middle of writing a story called "The Dragon Raiders", which was a time travel fantasy adventure story about the end of the magic. I still like the title, but that's about it. Anyway, one of the scenes in that was to be a dramatic escape across a river by linking arms. I heard there was such a scene in a Western called "Northwest Passage" (I think that was it), which serendipitily enough, was on TV as I got to writing that scene. Except it bored me. I was much more taken by a scene in which the soldiers assault a Native American Indian village.

So I began writing a story around that scene. That scene stayed as the focus of the story for a long time. And held it back the entire time. I wrote a story around it about an Indian boy who survives the attack and is adopted by a family of white settlers. All very contrived and convoluted. He goes on to find out his true identity and join in some generic evil white man bashing. I don't know how much of that original plotline would have survived this planned rewrite. It was always going to be about an orphaned boy discovering his Indian heritage, learning his mother is actually still alive and is a freedom fighter liberating slaves from plantations.

I'm not continuing with this story anymore because it revealed to me that, descriptive writing being my weak point, I'm not really qualified enough to write a story set 150 years ago in a place I've never been to. Same reason I'm not good at fantasy and straight science fiction. This chapter is supposed to have been set shortly before the American Civil War in the 1860s, but there's little really to suggest it couldn't be set in the modern day. The characters in this scene aren't really mid-19th century cowboys - they're 21st century blokes pretending to be mid-19th century cowboys. Incidentally, I'm still struggling with character names. I tried to think of cowboys I'd seen in movies. Earl was named after Fred Ward's character in "Tremors", whilst Dusty Lee was named after Chevy Chase's character in "The Three Amigos" (plus I pinched Lee from Laurie Lee - just another random book on the shelf).

It was strange writing in the third person and past tense. I haven't done that for nearly a year now. I regard this chapter as a success in the overall scheme of things because I think I have finally got pacing tapped because of it.