Two-for-One

Shuttered for a three-month period during the winter and vandalized, the boss decided to hire an extra person to help keep an eye on the place as Rob and I repaired fence lines and attended the cows we’d already drove up top. Our new roustabout, Jesus, arrived shortly afterwards.

Jesus’ was short on English-speaking ability and at first had a hard time communicating. To make it even harder for Jesus, Rob spoke with a heavy Australian brogue which I even found difficult to understand at times.

But after a month or so, we were getting along pretty good.

In fact, Jesus and I had traded out places a few times so he could get some saddle-time. It was during one of these times that I grew bored with myself and started looking for trouble.

When Rob and Jesus returned to camp that afternoon, I handed Jesus a rifle and told him he had to kill a cow we had in the yard, as we needed some fresh meat. Being 18 or 19-years old and inexperienced, he grimaced at the idea.

But not wanting to say no, he took the rifle over to the corral fence and using one of the timbers for support, he fire a shot into the cow. The animal jumped at the report of the rifle and ran panicking around the corral.

Jesus turned and looked at me; he had a quizzical look in his eye as he knew he’d shot the animal and it should have dropped over dead. I waved at him to shoot again.

Blam!

Again the terrorized beast raced around the corral. And again, Jesus looked back at where Rob and I were standing.

“Dammit, kid,” Rob yelled, “you can’t even hit the broadside of a barn, can you?”

In frustration, he walked over and took the rifle from Jesus, and pumped two rounds into the cow, and still, it didn’t go down. Then in rapid succession, Rob cocked and fired five more shots into the animal.

As the frightened cow continued to run around the corral, Rob turned and looked back at me. That when he knew he’d been had, falling for another one of my jokes.

Unknown to him or Jesus, I had loaded the 30-30 Winchester with blanks.