Anatomy of A Wreck by Baxter Black

Since I love this story by BB so much, I thought I would share it with y'all....

It just goes to show you how quickly a walk in the park can turn into a 4-alarm stampede. The only thing that kept this wreck from resulting in permanent damage to man or beast, was that the soil on the plains of Eastern Colorado is loose and sandy.

Paddy, not his real name, and a couple of neighbors were moving some of his cows from one big pasture to the next. Things were going smoothly, the cows knew the way, the sun was shining, the grass was still holding up good and what could go wrong?

Paddy was riding his big gray gelding. The kinda horse that can do it all, even the horse was whistling a tune. Suddenly a dingy heifer broke out of the bunch and turned back. She caught the drovers off guard, squirted between them and headed back where she'd come from. The ball of twine began to unravel....

Paddy whirled the big gray and in two jumps they were flyin' across the plain. The crew watching could see Paddy and the heifer appear and disappear up and down across the rolling grass prairie. Gray overtook the heifer and they headed back in the direction of the still plodding herd. The big horse was feeling his oats and had built up a head of steam. The heifer pounded down a sandy ridge past the watching cowboys, followed by horse and rider. Midway down the side Gray stuck his front feet in the loose dirt and exploded! He seemed to stand straight upon his front legs; imagine a pole vaulter, a medieval catapult or stepping on a sand rake.

Very few bronc riders could have stayed on and Paddy was not one of them. There was a scream like someone falling off a cliff, followed by what might have been a giant zipper being opened, a whip cracking, two thuds, a whoomp and a crumple.

Old Gray regained his feet, unhurt. Ten feet away Paddy appeared to be standing on his head, shirt down around his shoulders, boots sticking up in the air and completely pantless! He keeled over like a felled tree.

During the cleanup they deduced that when Paddy was ejected he must have hung his belt buckle on the saddlehorn, because his jeans were torn completely off his body. It took two of them to pull his had back off his nose and a set of wire cutters to get the sagebrush out of his ear.

The lady who told me the story was an artist but she'd never been able to paint the picture. She said she couldn't ever get the flames just right.

Are you rolling on the floor yet???