Cowboy Protector

1. Roman-1

1

ROMAN

It felt good to hear the crowd cheering for me. My hometown of Carthage, Texas, had always held my most avid supporters. And I needed all the support that I could get.

Sitting atop a fifteen-hundred-pound bull, my hand tethered to it with a bull rope, I gripped the leather lacing, making sure it didn’t slip. All that was left to do was to give the cowboys who held the bull inside the shoot a nod. Then they’d set him free, and my ride would begin.

“Are you ready?” The sound of the announcer’s voice over the loudspeaker did nothing to calm my nerves. Not that I was scared — I had done this plenty of times before. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, making the blood inside them boil.

Sweat formed on my forehead, the way it always did when I was in this particular position. The not knowing what would happen was the hardest part of bull riding. You could watch the same bull do its thing twenty times, and not two of those times would be exactly the same.

“Rodeo fans, allow me to introduce you to Old Yeller, the bull beneath our hometown rider, Roman Ethridge!” the announcer said. “This is the young bull’s debut. Raised right here in Carthage, Texas, on the Whisper Ranch, owned by the Gentry brothers. Roman is not only a rodeo cowboy. He’s also the man who raised this young bull from a little calf. Roman manages the bucking bull breeding program for Whisper Ranch. What better cowboy to introduce this bull to the world of rodeo?”

The crowd roared, and I began to get pumped up for the ride. I nodded my head, signaling the cowboys to release Old Yeller.

He bucked forward, nearly unseating me right there in the shoot. I held on tight, though, tightening my grip around the rope with both hands. The bull continued to get more excited, jumping up and down. “Settle down, boy. It’s just me, your old buddy from the ranch. Now let’s give these people a good show.”

Once the bull settled down, I leaned forward, gripping the rope with all my strength. The cowboy in charge of opening the shoot asked, “You ready, Roman?”

“As I’ll ever be.” I gave one more nod and, this time, the gate came open, and out we slipped like molten lava.

The bull jumped up in the air and then started running in a circle, coming back around to where he had started. I tried my best to stay on top of him, but when he came down from a jump, my hand slipped along with the rest of me.

Unfortunately, my hand didn’t slip all the way out of the rope, leaving me dangling off the side of the monstrous bull who acted like we’d never met before. “Yeller, slow down!”

The bull wasn’t listening to me at all as he continued to jump, kick, snort, and bellow like he was being beaten to death. Which he was not. Other than having me on his back, nothing else was happening to him.

As the bull came around again, I was able to swing my other hand onto the rope and hold tightly once more, pulling myself back up onto the bull’s back. I wasn’t going to get any points now, since I’d used both hands. But the people in the stands cheered me on anyway. They cheered so loud I could barely hear anything else.

I waved to them as we went by and tried to smile, but it felt like my face would break with how hard I had been clenching my jaw. Focused on trying to get my hand free from the rope, I looked at the knot that had gotten screwed up somehow. “Come on!” I shouted as the knot refused to loosen.

The rodeo clowns moved around the bull, trying to get him to follow them out of the arena so that they could help me get off the beast. One of them whistled. “Over here, Yeller!” His bright red suspenders held up old blue jean shorts that were three sizes too big for him. He took his oversized cowboy hat off and began waving it in the bull’s face to get his attention.

The bull was not impressed, and instead of following the clowns, he turned and ran directly toward the stands. “Oh s**t!” I yelled as we headed right for them.

I leaned forward and wrapped my arms tightly around the beast’s neck just in time to avoid getting head-butted by him when he jumped up into the air once again.

There was nothing I could do. Old Yeller was headed for the tall fence that surrounded the arena. He meant to get the hell out of there— and fast. And I was stuck to him, going along for the ride whether I wanted to or not.

I began fishing for a handhold as best I could with only one arm to work with. In the meantime, Old Yeller kept scrambling along as fast as he could go, and it must have been pretty darn fast because the sounds of those clowns out there screaming at me had begun to fade away behind us.

But before we could make it to the fence, Old Yeller skidded to a stop, somehow wrenching my hand free of the rope. He turned me loose with one mighty buck that left me lying in the dirt. All I could see was his belly, and my ribs felt like they’d just been stepped on by an elephant.

The next thing I knew, he’d picked me up with his horns and tossed me like a ragdoll. I flew through the air, heading for a future starring nothing but sky and birds who didn’t give two hoots about the predicament I was currently in.

This is it. I’m a goner for sure this time.

Before the last bit of air left my lungs, I came down hard on my a*s, the rest of the breath knocked right out of me. For a moment, I just sat there, looking at the stands but not seeing anything but a blurry scene. I heard nothing at all — the fans had gone silent.

Then one voice penetrated the silence as a little girl shrieked, “Help him! The bull’s coming for him again!”

Turning my head, I saw the bull I’d raised from a tiny calf charging toward me. Suddenly, someone grabbed me by the shoulders and began pulling me backward at a fast speed. But it wasn’t fast enough. The bull got to me and managed to get one last stomp in, breaking my leg, before a couple of cowboys caught him with their ropes, stopping him from doing any more damage to my body.

Unable to breathe, I heard the siren as the ambulance came into the arena now that the bull had been cleared out of it. The light faded a little at a time until there was no light left, and I heard no more.