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Entry tags:
abc prompts; k+s: western
Now and again, on a day like today, when everything was ambling along just as pleasant as can be, the sun beating down on the parched earth outside and the hot afternoon breeze whistling through the eaves, a fella would walk through the saloon doors and the whole place would pause. The piano would stutter, the dancers would stall, and the bartender would set down a glass in the quiet before the room took off again, but that man had made his entrance, and wasn't nobody gonna forget it.
He made his way to a table near the back and turned a chair to sit facing the door. With one lazy hand, he knocked the brim of his hat up high enough to show a pair of dark eyes beneath it.
His hair was black, just a little too long to be proper, and his skin too tanned to call sunkissed. The girls leaned close and gossiped. He must be an Indian man, and just what did he think he was doing, dressed in boots and spurs like that?
Kirsten figured she knew. She was from a bigger city than most, and she'd met a half-breed boy or two in her time. The Indians wouldn't take them and the cowboys hated them, but it was easier to be an outlaw than an outcast. She also figured it must be a pretty lonely life. The girls around here fawned over the white men who blew into town, pissed off the sheriff and disappeared into the sunset. They were all the time getting their fool hearts broken over those cowboys, but they wouldn't touch a half-breed like this one.
Hell, they wouldn't even serve the man a drink. Kirsten picked up a mug of beer from the bar and carried it to his table, ignoring the whispers of the other girls and the barkeep's disapproving eye.
"Your horse been fed, sugar?" she asked, standing just at the ends of his long, outstretched legs as she set the mug down in front of him.
"No, ma'am. Not since yesterday." His drawl was smooth and low, with none of the pitchy twang the locals had. She wanted to hear more of it instantly.
"We'll get him something," she said, using the rag over her arm to dry her damp hands. She wiped it over the tabletop, too, to clear some of the dust off, but it was bound to come back directly. "Feed store's right across the street there."
"They got all the dancers waitin' tables?"
The question took her by surprise. "I'm — new." She tripped on the confession. "They make the new girls do all the waitressin'. Ain't much good help around here."
"No, I reckon you're the best they've got," he agreed, and when his dark eyes caught hers from beneath the brim of his hat, Kirsten felt herself flush.
"I'll send somebody to the feed store," she said as she hurried off.
She went to the feed store herself, in the end, because everyone saw her talking to that Indian in the spurs, and no one wanted to be held accountable for feeding his horse.
He was a big dark stud of a stallion, not unlike his rider (she thought with a giggle and a glance around, like someone might catch her thinking it), and he ate grain from Kirsten's hand gentle as you please. She rubbed his velvet nose when it was gone and murmured, "About right, a pair of wild boys like you two lookin' out for each other."
She might have gone on talking to him; he was easier to hold a conversation with than the man who rode him, and near just as pretty, but a commotion from inside the saloon interrupted them.
The half-breed cowboy stumbled out the doors, catching his hat as it tumbled off his head and his balance as he reached the edge of the porch.
"We ain't servin' your kind here," were the words that followed him out, and though the look he shot over his shoulder was fierce, his gun stayed in its holster.
When he turned away, toward his horse (to leave, Kirsten thought, and she felt sorrier about it than she ought to), he raised a hand as if to draw on her — but pressed it against his side gingerly instead, hiding a wince with the downturn of his mouth.
"You're hurt!" she declared before she could stop herself. The horse snorted, raised its head sharply, and the cowboy's reaction was about the same. She might have laughed, if she weren't so worried now.
"I'm just fine, ma'am," he replied, dropping his hand and moving to untie the stallion. "Nothin' for you to worry about."
"Let me see it." She surged forward, made a grab for his shirt, and he ducked neatly out of the way, putting the horse between them. She peered around his thick neck at his rider, frowning. "C'mon, now."
He looked troubled, confused, maybe, but he covered it with that gruff edge unique to a man on his own. "No sense in you wastin' time lookin' after a mongrel," he said this time.
Kirsten was immediately angry. "Don't you dare!" She stepped around the front of the horse and advanced, pressing a finger emphatically against the cowboy's chest. "I look like the kinda girl who takes 'no' for an answer from cowboys too stubborn to say when they need somethin'? You come back here—" She punctuated this remark with a grab at his shirt, which she hauled from beneath his belt. "— and let me look at — Chrissakes, sugar, you been shot!"
"It's a scratch," he groused. She'd succeeded in backing him against the rail of the porch, and she noticed now that there were eyes watching them from beyond the saloon doors.
"C'mon," she said, twisting her hand in his shirt to pull him along. "You and your horse."
He didn't say another word as she led him away from the saloon, horse and rider walking compliantly side-by-side. At last, as they passed the blacksmith's, he asked, "We goin' far?"
"My place is just down the road," she said, "out past the clinic."
He turned his gaze down the road, to the clinic in the visible distance, and stopped walking. Her grip on him was loose, and he pulled his shirt free easily, swinging into the saddle before she could stop him. Then he held out his hand to her.
She studied his hand with its long, strong fingers, the gun on his hip and the swatch of dark skin she could see where his shirt was out of sorts. His face was shaded by the brim of his hat and the fringe of dark hair around it, but his dark eyes glittered.
"Now how do I know you ain't just gonna ride off with me once you get me in your saddle?" Kirsten pursed her lips, as if much less impressed than she was. "Take me on the run from the law?"
"Reckon you don't," he said simply, and didn't withdraw his hand. "Figured that was the fun of it, ma'am."
The respectful address coupled with the mischievous suggestion of danger won her over, made her toes curl. She took his hand and let him lift her up into the saddle, sitting across his lap. Up close, he smelled like leather and sweat and a touch of whiskey; she breathed it in and leaned against him.
He didn't ride off with her or steal her away into the outlaw life. He just let his horse amble them beyond the clinic, until the inn came into view.
It was a well-kept place, four bedrooms and a bit of property where a single cow and an armful of chickens shared the sparse grass amicably. The woman who kept it was a retired dancer, herself, and she'd offered Kirsten a room if she'd help keep the place clean and milk the cow. Kirsten wasn't in any shape to refuse. She didn't have much space to herself, but she had a roof over her head and something to keep her busy when she wasn't dancing.
Today, she also had a place to put a horse and a place to keep a man. Carissa was out, which Kirsten figured was for the best, since she was about the nosiest old woman she'd ever met, and Kirsten wasn't real sure how she felt about Indians, in any case.
They left the horse in the pasture and she took the rider upstairs, into her room. He looked dusty and out-of-place in Carissa's clean house. Kirsten brought a kitchen chair up for him to sit in, to spare the white bedspread from his dirty jeans.
"You're makin' an awful big deal for such a little scratch," he informed her, settling into the chair. He didn't stop her when she started unbuttoning his shirt.
"You're awful stubborn for a man who's been shot," she answered, crouching down and inspecting the wound. It was shallow, as much of a scratch as a bullet wound could be, really, but it looked red and angry.
She stole a bottle of whiskey from downstairs, thankful for the second time that Carissa was gone. She'd pay her back, but she'd have hated to explain stealing her whiskey.
When she returned, he crowed, "Thank God," with a smile in his voice, and she laughed as she pulled the bottle out of his reach.
"A drink," she said. "I didn't bring it so you could empty it."
"Yes, ma'am," he answered, all sarcastic drawl, but he only took one long drink when she let him have it. Handing it back, he added, "Nice place for a bar dancer."
"Ain't mine and you know it," she said, pouring whiskey on a rag to clean the wound. He sucked in a sharp breath through closed teeth. "Wouldn't be dancin' in no damn saloon if I had a place like this anymore."
"Anymore?" he echoed, allowing her to move his hand to hold the rag in place.
"Daddy used to own some land, little ways up north," she replied. "Momma sold it when he died and took off with some fella owns a railroad up there somewhere."
There was heavy disapproval in his voice when he spoke again, drawing her eyes up to him. "Left you all by yourself."
"I was seventeen," she offered boldly. "Took care of myself just fine, as you can see."
He didn't seem inclined to forgive her momma so readily, and she didn't want to argue about it, so she changed the subject.
"What about you?" she asked.
His gaze turned outward again, focused on her upturned face. "What about me?" he replied warily.
"What's a good-lookin' boy like you doin' all by his lonesome in a town like this?"
He scoffed, almost laughed, and turned his head to look out the window. "Gonna pretend you didn't hear the barkeep back there?"
"Jesse's a son-of-a-bitch," she said vehemently. He seemed surprised at her outburst. "You ought not to listen to him."
"Ain't like he's the only one," he pointed out. "Daddy got run outta town when they found out he had a baby on the reservation."
"Oughta be against the law," she muttered, taking a strip of bandage to tie around his waist.
"Daddy was the sheriff," he said dryly.
Her hands gentled on his stomach and his muscles tensed under her. After a second, she looked up at him.
"Kirsten," she said. "My name's Kirsten."
He took his time answering this time. "Shane," he said finally.
She smoothed her fingers over the bandage and began to wrap another. His skin was warm beneath her hands, warmer even than the air around them, which seemed impossible. As she patched him up, she let her eyes roam, drinking in all the dark skin and valleys of muscle and ridges of scars. He'd been shot before, and he'd been stabbed. She wondered how much of it was because he was a half-breed.
"Much obliged," he murmured when she finished.
"Where you headed after you leave here?" she asked, sitting back on her heels.
He shrugged. "Somewhere else," he answered. "Why? You need a ride somewhere?"
She smiled, but leaned back against the bed, arms folded over her knees. "You goin' alone?"
"Came alone, didn't I?" He was starting to look like a wild horse catching onto a trap.
"You don't get lonely?" she pressed. "Ridin' alone everywhere?"
For a moment, he didn't answer, only looked at her uneasily. When he finally did, he said, "You got a decent thing goin' here, darlin'. Don't up and leave it on account of some good-lookin' outlaw blowin' through town."
At that, she had to grin. She'd known there was no way a man that good-looking didn't know it. "You ever danced at a saloon before, cowboy?"
"No, ma'am, I can't say as I have."
"It ain't a decent thing." She was still smiling, but ruefully now. "Meat's gettin' more expensive all the time, you know. Girl's gotta eat, and the tips ain't cuttin' it. Some of the girls — I ain't namin' names, but some of the girls go to bed with cowboys like you, for a price."
"I ain't lookin' for a girl to go to bed with," he said, sitting upright.
"I ain't offerin' to go to bed with you, stupid," she replied, and stood up. "I'm just sayin' that I've gotta make some more money, you know, and the girls that do, they get tipped better, besides."
"What're you tellin' me for?" he asked. He sounded irritated, and she kept her back to him, unwilling to see his expression.
"I'm tellin' you, it ain't such a decent thing." She fancied she could feel his eyes on her back. Maybe he looked angry, maybe he just looked unhappy. Maybe he wasn't looking at her at all. "Ain't no reason I oughta stay."
"Ain't no nice beds and carpets out there, you know."
"I reckoned not," she said dryly.
"You ever slept on the ground before, darlin'?"
"Slept on a wood floor before. That count?"
"Guess so."
They were both quiet for a moment, and into the dry heat of the afternoon, Kirsten let out a breath. She'd never felt so close to the edge of something before. Here she was, twenty years old and asking to be committed to a life on the run, like it was somehow better than having a roof over her head and money in her pocket.
But she guessed it wasn't the life on the run she really wanted. At the end of the day, she'd be on the run with him, and that was a hell of a lot better than being here alone, in her book.
"We'll be alone all the time," he said, quiet. "Ain't nobody gonna want nothin' to do with either one of us."
"We'll be together all the time," she said, and finally turned to face him. He was slouched low in the chair, watching her with a look on his face like a slow-moving sky.
"How do you know you ain't gonna hate me?"
She smiled again, warm and bright.
"Reckon I don't," she said. "Figured that was the fun of it."
He made his way to a table near the back and turned a chair to sit facing the door. With one lazy hand, he knocked the brim of his hat up high enough to show a pair of dark eyes beneath it.
His hair was black, just a little too long to be proper, and his skin too tanned to call sunkissed. The girls leaned close and gossiped. He must be an Indian man, and just what did he think he was doing, dressed in boots and spurs like that?
Kirsten figured she knew. She was from a bigger city than most, and she'd met a half-breed boy or two in her time. The Indians wouldn't take them and the cowboys hated them, but it was easier to be an outlaw than an outcast. She also figured it must be a pretty lonely life. The girls around here fawned over the white men who blew into town, pissed off the sheriff and disappeared into the sunset. They were all the time getting their fool hearts broken over those cowboys, but they wouldn't touch a half-breed like this one.
Hell, they wouldn't even serve the man a drink. Kirsten picked up a mug of beer from the bar and carried it to his table, ignoring the whispers of the other girls and the barkeep's disapproving eye.
"Your horse been fed, sugar?" she asked, standing just at the ends of his long, outstretched legs as she set the mug down in front of him.
"No, ma'am. Not since yesterday." His drawl was smooth and low, with none of the pitchy twang the locals had. She wanted to hear more of it instantly.
"We'll get him something," she said, using the rag over her arm to dry her damp hands. She wiped it over the tabletop, too, to clear some of the dust off, but it was bound to come back directly. "Feed store's right across the street there."
"They got all the dancers waitin' tables?"
The question took her by surprise. "I'm — new." She tripped on the confession. "They make the new girls do all the waitressin'. Ain't much good help around here."
"No, I reckon you're the best they've got," he agreed, and when his dark eyes caught hers from beneath the brim of his hat, Kirsten felt herself flush.
"I'll send somebody to the feed store," she said as she hurried off.
She went to the feed store herself, in the end, because everyone saw her talking to that Indian in the spurs, and no one wanted to be held accountable for feeding his horse.
He was a big dark stud of a stallion, not unlike his rider (she thought with a giggle and a glance around, like someone might catch her thinking it), and he ate grain from Kirsten's hand gentle as you please. She rubbed his velvet nose when it was gone and murmured, "About right, a pair of wild boys like you two lookin' out for each other."
She might have gone on talking to him; he was easier to hold a conversation with than the man who rode him, and near just as pretty, but a commotion from inside the saloon interrupted them.
The half-breed cowboy stumbled out the doors, catching his hat as it tumbled off his head and his balance as he reached the edge of the porch.
"We ain't servin' your kind here," were the words that followed him out, and though the look he shot over his shoulder was fierce, his gun stayed in its holster.
When he turned away, toward his horse (to leave, Kirsten thought, and she felt sorrier about it than she ought to), he raised a hand as if to draw on her — but pressed it against his side gingerly instead, hiding a wince with the downturn of his mouth.
"You're hurt!" she declared before she could stop herself. The horse snorted, raised its head sharply, and the cowboy's reaction was about the same. She might have laughed, if she weren't so worried now.
"I'm just fine, ma'am," he replied, dropping his hand and moving to untie the stallion. "Nothin' for you to worry about."
"Let me see it." She surged forward, made a grab for his shirt, and he ducked neatly out of the way, putting the horse between them. She peered around his thick neck at his rider, frowning. "C'mon, now."
He looked troubled, confused, maybe, but he covered it with that gruff edge unique to a man on his own. "No sense in you wastin' time lookin' after a mongrel," he said this time.
Kirsten was immediately angry. "Don't you dare!" She stepped around the front of the horse and advanced, pressing a finger emphatically against the cowboy's chest. "I look like the kinda girl who takes 'no' for an answer from cowboys too stubborn to say when they need somethin'? You come back here—" She punctuated this remark with a grab at his shirt, which she hauled from beneath his belt. "— and let me look at — Chrissakes, sugar, you been shot!"
"It's a scratch," he groused. She'd succeeded in backing him against the rail of the porch, and she noticed now that there were eyes watching them from beyond the saloon doors.
"C'mon," she said, twisting her hand in his shirt to pull him along. "You and your horse."
He didn't say another word as she led him away from the saloon, horse and rider walking compliantly side-by-side. At last, as they passed the blacksmith's, he asked, "We goin' far?"
"My place is just down the road," she said, "out past the clinic."
He turned his gaze down the road, to the clinic in the visible distance, and stopped walking. Her grip on him was loose, and he pulled his shirt free easily, swinging into the saddle before she could stop him. Then he held out his hand to her.
She studied his hand with its long, strong fingers, the gun on his hip and the swatch of dark skin she could see where his shirt was out of sorts. His face was shaded by the brim of his hat and the fringe of dark hair around it, but his dark eyes glittered.
"Now how do I know you ain't just gonna ride off with me once you get me in your saddle?" Kirsten pursed her lips, as if much less impressed than she was. "Take me on the run from the law?"
"Reckon you don't," he said simply, and didn't withdraw his hand. "Figured that was the fun of it, ma'am."
The respectful address coupled with the mischievous suggestion of danger won her over, made her toes curl. She took his hand and let him lift her up into the saddle, sitting across his lap. Up close, he smelled like leather and sweat and a touch of whiskey; she breathed it in and leaned against him.
He didn't ride off with her or steal her away into the outlaw life. He just let his horse amble them beyond the clinic, until the inn came into view.
It was a well-kept place, four bedrooms and a bit of property where a single cow and an armful of chickens shared the sparse grass amicably. The woman who kept it was a retired dancer, herself, and she'd offered Kirsten a room if she'd help keep the place clean and milk the cow. Kirsten wasn't in any shape to refuse. She didn't have much space to herself, but she had a roof over her head and something to keep her busy when she wasn't dancing.
Today, she also had a place to put a horse and a place to keep a man. Carissa was out, which Kirsten figured was for the best, since she was about the nosiest old woman she'd ever met, and Kirsten wasn't real sure how she felt about Indians, in any case.
They left the horse in the pasture and she took the rider upstairs, into her room. He looked dusty and out-of-place in Carissa's clean house. Kirsten brought a kitchen chair up for him to sit in, to spare the white bedspread from his dirty jeans.
"You're makin' an awful big deal for such a little scratch," he informed her, settling into the chair. He didn't stop her when she started unbuttoning his shirt.
"You're awful stubborn for a man who's been shot," she answered, crouching down and inspecting the wound. It was shallow, as much of a scratch as a bullet wound could be, really, but it looked red and angry.
She stole a bottle of whiskey from downstairs, thankful for the second time that Carissa was gone. She'd pay her back, but she'd have hated to explain stealing her whiskey.
When she returned, he crowed, "Thank God," with a smile in his voice, and she laughed as she pulled the bottle out of his reach.
"A drink," she said. "I didn't bring it so you could empty it."
"Yes, ma'am," he answered, all sarcastic drawl, but he only took one long drink when she let him have it. Handing it back, he added, "Nice place for a bar dancer."
"Ain't mine and you know it," she said, pouring whiskey on a rag to clean the wound. He sucked in a sharp breath through closed teeth. "Wouldn't be dancin' in no damn saloon if I had a place like this anymore."
"Anymore?" he echoed, allowing her to move his hand to hold the rag in place.
"Daddy used to own some land, little ways up north," she replied. "Momma sold it when he died and took off with some fella owns a railroad up there somewhere."
There was heavy disapproval in his voice when he spoke again, drawing her eyes up to him. "Left you all by yourself."
"I was seventeen," she offered boldly. "Took care of myself just fine, as you can see."
He didn't seem inclined to forgive her momma so readily, and she didn't want to argue about it, so she changed the subject.
"What about you?" she asked.
His gaze turned outward again, focused on her upturned face. "What about me?" he replied warily.
"What's a good-lookin' boy like you doin' all by his lonesome in a town like this?"
He scoffed, almost laughed, and turned his head to look out the window. "Gonna pretend you didn't hear the barkeep back there?"
"Jesse's a son-of-a-bitch," she said vehemently. He seemed surprised at her outburst. "You ought not to listen to him."
"Ain't like he's the only one," he pointed out. "Daddy got run outta town when they found out he had a baby on the reservation."
"Oughta be against the law," she muttered, taking a strip of bandage to tie around his waist.
"Daddy was the sheriff," he said dryly.
Her hands gentled on his stomach and his muscles tensed under her. After a second, she looked up at him.
"Kirsten," she said. "My name's Kirsten."
He took his time answering this time. "Shane," he said finally.
She smoothed her fingers over the bandage and began to wrap another. His skin was warm beneath her hands, warmer even than the air around them, which seemed impossible. As she patched him up, she let her eyes roam, drinking in all the dark skin and valleys of muscle and ridges of scars. He'd been shot before, and he'd been stabbed. She wondered how much of it was because he was a half-breed.
"Much obliged," he murmured when she finished.
"Where you headed after you leave here?" she asked, sitting back on her heels.
He shrugged. "Somewhere else," he answered. "Why? You need a ride somewhere?"
She smiled, but leaned back against the bed, arms folded over her knees. "You goin' alone?"
"Came alone, didn't I?" He was starting to look like a wild horse catching onto a trap.
"You don't get lonely?" she pressed. "Ridin' alone everywhere?"
For a moment, he didn't answer, only looked at her uneasily. When he finally did, he said, "You got a decent thing goin' here, darlin'. Don't up and leave it on account of some good-lookin' outlaw blowin' through town."
At that, she had to grin. She'd known there was no way a man that good-looking didn't know it. "You ever danced at a saloon before, cowboy?"
"No, ma'am, I can't say as I have."
"It ain't a decent thing." She was still smiling, but ruefully now. "Meat's gettin' more expensive all the time, you know. Girl's gotta eat, and the tips ain't cuttin' it. Some of the girls — I ain't namin' names, but some of the girls go to bed with cowboys like you, for a price."
"I ain't lookin' for a girl to go to bed with," he said, sitting upright.
"I ain't offerin' to go to bed with you, stupid," she replied, and stood up. "I'm just sayin' that I've gotta make some more money, you know, and the girls that do, they get tipped better, besides."
"What're you tellin' me for?" he asked. He sounded irritated, and she kept her back to him, unwilling to see his expression.
"I'm tellin' you, it ain't such a decent thing." She fancied she could feel his eyes on her back. Maybe he looked angry, maybe he just looked unhappy. Maybe he wasn't looking at her at all. "Ain't no reason I oughta stay."
"Ain't no nice beds and carpets out there, you know."
"I reckoned not," she said dryly.
"You ever slept on the ground before, darlin'?"
"Slept on a wood floor before. That count?"
"Guess so."
They were both quiet for a moment, and into the dry heat of the afternoon, Kirsten let out a breath. She'd never felt so close to the edge of something before. Here she was, twenty years old and asking to be committed to a life on the run, like it was somehow better than having a roof over her head and money in her pocket.
But she guessed it wasn't the life on the run she really wanted. At the end of the day, she'd be on the run with him, and that was a hell of a lot better than being here alone, in her book.
"We'll be alone all the time," he said, quiet. "Ain't nobody gonna want nothin' to do with either one of us."
"We'll be together all the time," she said, and finally turned to face him. He was slouched low in the chair, watching her with a look on his face like a slow-moving sky.
"How do you know you ain't gonna hate me?"
She smiled again, warm and bright.
"Reckon I don't," she said. "Figured that was the fun of it."