This entry is part of the NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain 2013 at Absolute Write.

The blast startled the cows, and they began to moo in a frenzy and gallop about the Wonky M Ranch paddock. It was a stampede in the making.

“Oh god, they’re gonna get me! They’re gonna get me! Help!” Jeanette was sprinting headlong under the moonlight with a bevy of bovines in hot pursuit, not towards the fences—at least not directly—but rather toward Virginia.

“What part of scatter don’t you get, you plain fool?” Virginia cried in response, but it was too late. Jeannette was beside her, and they were on the run from a rapidly-growing herd of cattle in addition to old man Morrison, who was huffing behind his prized beasts fumbling for fresh crimped-brass cartridges in the pockets of his overalls.

In the distance, Dale had managed to evade notice by diving into, and apparently rolling around in, the baker’s dozen of cow pies that littered the field like torpedoes in Farragut’s Mobile Bay. His eyes saucer-wide at Virginia and Jeanette’s predicament, he finally found the mental fortitude to make a sloppy, smelly dash for the Wonky M Ranch’s paddock fence. Unfortunately for him, Morrison had put up barbed wire like it was going out of style, and while it had been easy enough to wriggle through on the way in, Dale found himself caught and suspended from his clothes—hung out to dry next to a big red “no trespassing on penalty of shotgunnery” sign, one of many Morrison had hand-painted and erected.

“You…said…this…would…be…easy!” Jeanette panted, giving Virginia as recriminating a look as her velocity and panic allowed.

“And you said you could run if he caught us!” Virginia shot back. She’d just wanted to have some fun at the expense of the old fart and grump who was always chasing kids away from his market stand and yammering on about conspiracies against his person, his cows, and his ranch hands. You couldn’t argue that the unhinged curmudgeon didn’t deserve it.

Both the cows and said coot were gaining. In fact, some of the cows were actually passing Virginia and Jeanette on either side, panicked and stupid as they were. They were close enough to see their brands—and it was no use arguing that the Wonky M Ranch brand wasn’t specially made so it fit perfectly over a McNeill Ranch brand. Just another reason Morrison could stand to have a few cows tipped.

A fresh blast of gunpowder and rock salt lit up the paddock, grazing a few head of cattle and sending them even further down the dark road to stampede. “Dammit, get back here so I can shoot you!” Morrison cried.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that!” Virginia cawed over her shoulder. The Wonky M fence was just ahead, but there was no way to clear the barbed wire at the full-on clip they were running. The barbed wire was stretched over a wooden framework, leaving a good foot open at the bottom in places. There was nothing for it but to try and slide under the fence like a scoring baseman and hoping that the dewy grass would be slick enough to allow passage rather than an invitation to a fatal trampling.

It worked, after a fashion. The lubrication for Virginia’s slide was less dewy grass, though, than it was an arsenal of cow pies. She came up thoroughly smeared and smelling like a barnyard in July.

For her part, Jeanette took a sharp left at the fence, nowhere near nimble enough to take a similar dive. The cows followed, as did Morrison; when Jeanette reached the far corner, she took it again. She eventually escaped out the same door Morrison had come in by, as the nasty old coot had left it ajar in his haste to apply the liberal shotgunning promised by his signs.

Panting and red, Jeanette appeared at the rally point overlooking the Wonky M from a low hill nearby. Virginia was already there, retching into a bush as the cow pie deluge hadn’t spared any orifice.

“That…wasn’t…as…fun…as…you…said…it’d…be,” panted Jeanette.

“Look,” said Virginia. “Once I join the Rangers tomorrow, there won’t be as much time for fun. We had to go out with a bang.” The words were meant for Jeanette but directed at the unfortunate sagebrush that was now the proud owner of a gumbo mixing Ms. McNeill’s stomach contents with old man Morrison’s cow pies.

“Yeah…I’m sure that will…go down in history…as one of the great pranks…of Prosperity Falls,” Jeanette said with as much acid as she could manage between great gasping gulps of air.

Virginia wobbled to her feet, boots squishing with an unspeakable mixture of different fluids from different species. “At least I tried,” she said. “When I’m a famous Prosperity Ranger, riding the range, you’ll look back on this and smile.”

“I’d have to be looking back on this from an awfully long way to smile,” said Dale. He had appeared unnoticed while the girls had been distracted by talking and other things that were not necessarily language yet still coming out of their mouths.

“Well we…oh God!” Virginia cried, turning away in disgust and heaving anew atop her put-upon friend the sagebrush. “Dale, where the hell are your clothes?”

Dale sighed as Jeanette broke into a fit of giggling. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Can we just go home? I have to be up in an hour to start milking.”

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