Free Cowboy Seeks Bride by Carolyn Brown Page B

the bull so close behind him that Haley could feel his snorts. Two cows managed to get flannel nightgowns over their heads in such a way that only one wild eye was visible and they were giving the bull a real run for his money.
    Hell’s bells, the running of the bulls didn’t have a thing on a stampede in southern Oklahoma. A lady was cornered between a rack of jeans and the door into a store by a big heifer that still had horns. The woman was shooing at the cow with her handbag. The cow tossed her head back and bawled, then stomped through a round rack of blue jeans and one of bras. She went tearing down the street with a hot pink bra strap stuck firmly on one twitching ear.
    Women were screaming like wounded coyotes and fighting so hard to get their kids to safety inside stores that they were stampeding worse than the cattle. Haley saw the whole thing in a blur of flashes as Apache ran full out ahead of the whole herd. Lord, what a show it would make, but nothing could ever be staged to look like the real thing.
    The red tablecloth flipped up over Haley’s eyes about the time that the stampede reached the edge of town, so she couldn’t see what was going on when Apache came to a long greasy stop. She tumbled out over his head to land right in the middle of a table full of cupcakes. The table collapsed and cupcakes went sailing through the air like miniature Frisbees. As luck would have it, she landed smack in the middle of dozens of chocolate cupcakes and the red tablecloth floated right down on top of her. She fought her way out, slinging chocolate every which way. Once she was free, she found Apache nibbling away at the cupcakes, with chocolate icing in his teeth.
    Haley licked chocolate icing from her fingers, remounted, and gave thanks that she’d landed in that rather than shit—for a change. She slapped Apache on the rear end and they raced on ahead, this time behind the herd instead of in front of it. The cowboys were all still working their asses off trying to turn the bull and cows around. If they could get the first ones turned and head back toward the rest, the oncoming cows would slow down and they’d stall out the stampede.
    Dust boiled up all around her, but she and Apache kept to the side as the cattle finally came to a stop half a mile out of town in the middle of a corn patch. A withered-up little old man with a shotgun trained on Dewar’s chest stopped cowboys, cows, bulls, and even Apache quicker than six cowboys on horses had been able to do.
    “You the revenuers?” he asked.
    He had wispy gray hair that the wind blew every which way. His overalls were unbuttoned on the sides, and from Haley’s vantage point, it was evident that those and a pair of scuffed-up cowboy boots were the only things the man wore.
    “No, sir. We just drove this bunch of cows through Main Street and we had a stampede.”
    “Smart-ass kid threw a rock and hit my horse and the little shit caused the whole thing,” Haley said.
    The shotgun lowered and the old man grinned. “I keep tellin’ Mama that folks don’t raise their kids right no more. I swear to God that I’d kick that kid from here to next week if I caught him. Damn kids ain’t got a lick of sense. It all comes from all them damn things that they keep plugged in their ears. God only knows what the hell they’re listenin’ to…”
    A voice from the house shut him up. “Clovis, shut up your bitchin’. I got two big pans of corn bread cooked up and my bathtub is full of moonshine. If that damn sheriff comes out here, and you know he will to see if any of them crazy fools got hurt in town, he’s going to put us both in prison. So bring them people in here and I’ll give them a chunk of fresh corn bread and a jar of shine to take with them.”
    “I made that to sell, not give away,” Clovis yelled back at the little house with peeling paint.
    “You’d try to sell a coffin to a dead man. It won’t be worth a damn if we’re in prison and can’t