The scream shattered the fine Kansas morning.
At first the sound was so foreign I couldn’t put a name to it, but the gunshot cracked right after the cry and it abruptly became quite real. Suddenly I was on my feet, running barefoot across the grassy plain. The wildflowers I’d picked tumbled down my dress, unheeded.
I hardly felt the snagging prairie weeds catching at my dress or the sharp stones biting into my feet. The ground, uneven and rough, made my view of the horizon jumbled. My stumbling movements merged blue sky into the grasslands of the High Plains, hindering my flight.
Already I was out of breath, gasping in the warm air, but guilt and fear kept me running. Fear because of trouble at the farmhouse. Guilt because I had wandered much too far.
I heard more gunshots as I pelted over the plains, sickened by the sound. It wasn’t my pa’s rifle I heard, or the pistol he kept by his bedside. Strangers. Somehow strangers had come to the farmhouse, and with them came trouble. By now my sobs had freed themselves from my chest, breaking up my labored breathing. I ignored the constriction, ignored the icy-cold, roiled sensation in my belly, and ran.
As I stumbled up the hill by the cornfield I saw the first billows of smoke rising on the air. Somehow I dragged in another choking breath and kept going, nearly tumbling headfirst down the hill.
Faintly I heard the ringing bark of a hound, the blue tick we called Tracker. If there were trouble he’d do what he could to stall it, but against guns a dog was easy prey. I feared for the hound, but I feared more for my family. All I could think to do was run, run to Pa, a big enough man able to stop nearly any brewing trouble.
Cottonwoods lined the river behind the house, but a few of the big trees crept up toward the prairie plains as if to escape the regimental lines of the others. I had no thought for the big one on my right as I topped the rise and hurried down, but I guess the tree had an eye out for me. My foot caught a root and I fell hard, banging my jaw into the ground hard enough to shoot stars in my head and make it spin. My eyes crossed and I bit my bottom lip, bringing blood salty and quick. It hurt so bad I just lay there with a mouthful of grit, trying to suck in some air.
That was how I missed being murdered by prairie scavengers who killed my family and rode away while I lay sprawled in the dust, fighting tears of pain and frustration, and fear.