Well, I know I shouldn’t but we had to gather cattle to move and I figured it had been awhile since I had ridden the ol Brown nag so I caught him and got saddled up.  I had started calling him H Bomb, because you never knew when he was going to blow up and try to do you in again. But we had to ride and he was around, besides it was time for him to get a work out again. He had been pretty good since the wreck we had when he run away with me and I dropped the rope over the post. Boy did we come to a stop. It took a few days before H Bomb was his normal self but he recovered and not only that he recovered faster than I did.

                We rode for a few hours before we got to where the cows were after we got there we started to work them getting them rounded up to move. Things were going fairly well and H Bomb was behaving himself, unbelievable. 

In fact he was doing so good I had taken down my rope and Max and I were heeling the calves and letting them go. Things were starting to look up with this horse and thinking he might turn into a good rope horse yet. I shook out another loop and was swinging and just as I was about to throw he let out a big windy and jumped sideways. I took a grab at the saddle horn to keep from being unseated but it was not there. I then looked down and there was no horse under me anymore either. This did not bode well as I was in the middle of about a million acres of cactus. 

                I hit the ground on my butt with my eyes closed because I knew I was sitting in a cactus pile. But I didn’t feel anything so I slowly opened my eyes and looked around. I had landed in the only place in thirty square feet without any cactus however it did have an ant hill worse yet a red ant hill and I was sitting right on top of it. But they were not out in force yet, that is until I landed on their home. Just as I looked down they started to swarm out in the millions.

                I jumped up and started stomping and jumping around to get them off. The brown buzzard I was riding was only a couple of feet away, just standing there looking at me, like I was the village idiot.  I ran over there and grabbed the reins climbed on board and moved off before the ants ate us. 

I checked myself over and didn’t see any of the little red buggers, so life was good again. I looked over at Max and he was having a laughing fit. I mean it was terrible the way he was carrying on, he could barely stay in the saddle he was laughing so hard and talking was out of the question with him.   

I just looked at him, “You know you could have helped a little, at least show some concern that I might be hurt.” He just looked at me and started laughing again. Disgusting.  

                We moved on heading out to finish what we had started. We had been riding along slow and easy for about twenty minutes moving the cows ahead of us.

“Yowwwwwwwwwwwwww” I yelled as I jumped off H Bomb and was dancing around like I was having a fit. Max’s horse had jumped sideways at my outburst about unseating him and of course the cows took off in 360 different directions.   Max was looking at me like I had gone mad. “What’s wrong with you now?”

 I never answered; I was too busy jerking my pants down. After I got them down with my bare butt in the wind there was a red ant biting things that were best left unbitten. I was jumping around so bad it took a couple of tries to grab the little bugger, but I finally managed get him off and the relief was mind boggling. I just stood there with the wind blowing around my bare behind and other parts and sighed with relief, there is no way to really describe how wonderful it felt. 

I looked over at Max and he was lying on the ground beside his horse laughing so hard he was holding his sides; every time he would stop laughing a little he would look over at me with my pants down around my ankles and my butt in the wind and would go into another fit of laughter. It was getting embarrassing the way he was caring on. 

With as much dignity as I could muster I pulled my pants back up and climbed back on board H Bomb.  I swear that horse was even grinning at me.

 I sat there waiting for Max to get back on his horse so we could continue. He finally managed to get back on and we headed off again, however every time he would look at me he would bust out again.  I don’t know how he stayed on his horse, good thing he was riding a nag. 

Like I said when I let out that blood curdling yell the cows had scattered every which way like their tails were on fire, which meant that we had to go find them all again and start over. Course Max did not let me forget that either, he kept reminding me that if not for me we would be back at home now. Yea sure blame the poor boy that was getting ate by the ant, like it was all his fault.

The way Max was carrying on I could see that this little adventure was not going to go away for me anytime soon even though I was just as happy to forget it. I am sure when he told the story later it would not even be close to the real story. There was nothing I could do about it, but my day would come, somehow, somewhere, it would be my turn to laugh myself silly at him, oh yeah it would come, ever ant has his day.

 

 

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