The Day The Prairie Cried

The old Chevy feed truck squeaked and groaned under the weight of 1,000 pounds of grain and the 1,000 pound hay bale dangling from the forks on the back.  The ground was uneven next to the feed troughs and the frame of the truck whined in protest as it approached with its full ton load.  Right foot still on the brake, she swung the door open and reached around to let the arm of the cake feeder down.

The phone was buzzing in the seat next to her.  In her haste, she wedged it between her shoulder and ear and strained to hear over the sounds of the diesel engine, the motor releasing feed into the troughs, and the sputtering sound it made as it hit the metal trough bottoms and scuttled in either direction.

"He's gone," came the quivering voice on the other end of the line.

She threw the truck into park for the first time since starting it, released the trigger on the cake feeder, and slid out of the truck until her boots hit the hard dirt below.  Thirty thousand pounds of cattle crowded around her, snorting and butting each other out of the way, battling for what little grain had already been released.  "He's what?!"

"He's gone," the soft voice replied.

"Oh, no," was all she could muster.

She dropped the phone on the hard dirt and collapsed in the empty trough behind her, stunned and momentarily dumbfounded.  She reached blindly for the phone, undaunted by the hooves of the 30 steers that clomped around it.

Numbly, she raised it to her ear.  "What are we going to do?"