D
ISTANT CHURCH BELLS MELDED with the muffled screams. Daniel paced in the barn before falling to his knees on the straw-covered floor. He folded his hands together. “Lord, please don’t take her.” Daniel stayed in his kneeling position. The Sunday morning bells had silenced, and still he prayed. His wife needed a doctor. If Tommy didn’t return with him soon… well, there ain’t no use thinkin’ that. God would save her. Minutes crawled into hours. Her screams grew fainter, and Tommy had not yet come with the doctor. “Save her,” Daniel’s voice faltered. His legs were numb, and his shoulders drooped underneath an invisible weight that increased with each passing hour. Hooves clopped outside. Tommy. Daniel pushed himself up from the hard floor. A pins-and-needles sensation rippled through his legs. He staggered. When Daniel balanced himself, he stamped against the floor. Tommy arrived through the barn’s doorway. No one else was with him. “Where’s the doc?” asked Daniel.
“I’m sorry.” “Sorry?” Daniel took a step forward. “Yer sorry?” “He was on another emergency call.” “You… you….” Daniel tilted his ear toward the door, straining for a glimmer of hope that his wife was alive. Her screams were no longer among the usual ranch sounds of cattle, horses, and men. “Betsy.” Daniel burst past Tommy and into the home he and Betsy had shared for the last five years. Blood cloyed the air inside. He halted at the sight of red-stained bedsheets and his lifeless wife. Water splashed. “I—I—I….” His sister, Hattie, furiously scrubbed the blood off her hands. Daniel whirled around and vomited. God had snatched his Betsy for the nighttime dots, like Mama always said. — DANIEL AND HIS HORSE stood at the bluff’s edge. Far below, twilight painted an ocean of silhouettes belonging to the grazing longhorns. Betsy would have
