For Kitty's Sake Part 2 For Kitty's Sake Part 2

Adam Frazer urged the twenty-five year old piebald mare he affectionately called Faith Elizabeth over the storm ravaged two track. Until two hours ago the hundred mile round trip had been uneventful. But then the storm that passed just north of him came along. It was a doozy. He wasn't in its direct path but he still felt the power in those straight-line winds. They gave him good cause to worry. They threatened to blow his precious load of supplies back to Menden Falls or, maybe all the way to St. Louis. Rain and hail pelted both him and Faith Elizabeth before he managed to get cover underneath the wagon bed. His flesh still felt the sting of those balls of ice.

He and Faith Elizabeth weren't the only ones to suffer. Before this storm, the brown grass lifted spring green spires in defiance of the coming heat and drought of summer. Those supple blades now littered the gravely soil, cut off from their roots. Doomed.

Adam didn't envy anything, not man nor beast, who had to weather the full brunt of that onslaught. It looked, as it came across the rolling prairie, like the maw of Hell, open mouthed and twisting and chewing any living thing in its path.

His trail kept to the higher ground to avoid the zigzagging cuts that slashed the normally dry ground except after a furious rain. Those crevices were filled with fast moving water, churning soil, and whatever else had the misfortune of being caught up in it.

"What in the.."

A rusty brown something stumbled in starts and stops in the distance.

"Fresh meat, old girl." Adam stopped the horse and reached for his rifle. He stood up, shaded his eyes from the late afternoon sun and really looked at that moving something. "Oh my God, Faith, it's a woman."

He called out.

She didn't hear him.

She needed to hear him.

"I'm sorry, old girl, but you're gonna have to get a move on." He slapped the mare's rump with the leather reins and she settled into a steady forward motion.

That woman was headed for the deepest arroyo. By now it was a maelstrom because others fed into it. If she fell into it she'd be swept all the way to the Purgatory and from there….Adam didn't want to think about it because he knew there wouldn't be anything left of her.

He shouted again, jumped from the rig and ran full speed through the slippery mat of shredded green.

Ten steps behind.

Muddied and snarled hair, she perched on the lip. One more step and she'd be lost to oblivion.

Her foot hovering in mid-air over that swelling abyss, she paused as if she heard something. In that moment of hesitation Adam caught the material of her skirt. Heard it rip.

Prayed.

That it would hold just long enough.