THE OLD COWBOY Part Twenty One
(continued)

Tomorrow morning came when mom was shaking my shoulder saying, "hey sleepy head, time to get up."

"O.K. mom, I must have been dreaming about standing on one of Grandpa's mountains. I was sitting on ol' Tanner and looking down on a herd of cattle."

"Well it's eight 'o five and I just wanted to make sure you are alright. Come on to breakfast, I'll warm the gravy for your biscuit."

"O.K. mom, I'll be right there." I wanted to get back to Grandpa and tell him all about downtown.

Boy, mom makes some really good biscuits and gravy, a couple slices of bacon, and yum, yum, yum. The sun felt warm and steamy this morning, must be 'cause it rained last night. I looked down the drive to see if I could see Grandpa, and sure enough he was out on that porch standing with one foot on the rocker and maybe looking at a bird in the tree next door.

"Well there ya are Grandboy, how was yer big adventure?"

"We drove...." I told Grandpa all about it, even that fancy banana split.

"Well young'n sounds like ya had a mighty good time. Ah that mother of yours has always liked a little adventure.

When she was about yer age... As I recollect, we'd moved up near the foothills a long ways out 'a town. I goes off ta work and when I come back home the house was all excited. Seems they'd been hearnin' explosions all day long."

"Explosions?"

"Like a gunshot, only a lot louder. Well it seems we'd moved in next to a mine. The mine was about a mile away, so I promised the kids we'd go have a look on my day off.

We got the chores done pronto, and off we went. We hiked on over a couple of hills and there it was. You could see they'd been diggin' a very long time by the size of that mound of dirt they had piled up. Of course there was a guard, they didn't want anyone inside that wasn't workin' there.

I was askin' the guard 'bout the mine, what it's like, and what kind of mine it was. When I got ready to go someone was missin'! Your mother had..."


To Be Continued. . .