Baragon leap

Suddenly, the men heard an echoing roar from the distance, even as the prairie began to tremble beneath their feet. A half-mile away, a coats of tall pines shook as if a powerful wind or buffeting the trees, though there was hardly a breeze. As one, the cowboys turned in the direction of the grove in time to see a monster from the from their worst nightmares rush out from behind the towering pines into the clear grassland ahead.

"What in damnation!" Deke cried.

The trail boss recognized the creature instantly. He'd seen it a hundred times on the posters sold to tourists all over this part of Montana. The creature out of the old woodcut picture from Zachariah Walters' Museum of Wonders.

*Baragon, the Cheeachaw Valley Monster. The Horror of Buffalo Ridge.*

The trail boss drew his rifle out of its saddle holster. But with a speed that belied it's great bulk, the monster leaped. The prodigious jump covered in nearly a quarter of a mile. Baragon landed not thirty feet away, in the middle of a panicked and stampeding herd.

Before Deke could pump off a shot, the gigantic monster snapped up two cows and it's slavering jaws. He heard the sound of crunching bones and ripping flesh.