Thunder crashed and lightning tore open the black sky like a stockman’s knife cutting through a hunk of dried-out longhorn hide.
Pete Betman stood on the edge of a gulch that, an hour before, had been desert-dry but now raged like the Colorado river.
“Jim!” he shouted into swirling air. “Jim … where are you?”.
A hard tug on his elbow threatened to tumble Pete to the ground, and he whirled to face Matt Anderson.
“C’mon, Pete!” Matt called over the din of the wind. “The storm is getting worse. We have to go back!”
Edgar Wilson had sent his ranch hands out to round up a few stray head of cattle before the rough weather set in.
They hadn’t made it in time.
“We can come back for the cattle later!” Matt’s voice was strained.
“I don’t care about the dang cattle”, Pete said, yanking his arm away. “We gotta find Jim.”
“It’s too dangerous, Pete,” Matt pleaded. “We can find him later, too.”
Pete set his jaw. “No sir. You don’t leave a pal to die. Jim wouldn’t leave us out here.”
Matt nodded, resigned now to his fate -- the water was rising fast.
The wind shifted just then, and it carried an anguished cry.
The two men turned together in the direction of the wail.
There, two hundred feet upstream, Jim stood on a huge boulder calling out to his buddies. He was surrounded on three sides by certain watery death, but the fourth offered a clear rescue path.
Before Matt could blink, Pete was halfway to Jim. When they were separated by ten feet or so, the mutt leaped from his stony perch and into Pete’s waiting arms.
“You knew I wouldn’t leave you behind, boy,” Pete said.
Then, man and dog turned toward home.
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