Protection

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Clint rode a few feet behind Miss Cooper as she let her horse break out into a lively canter. She sat tall and erect in the saddle, yet she wasn’t tense. Her horse catered to her every movement and Clint found that they made a good team.

She hardly recognized his existence for most of the ride. Every once in a while she would look back at him with a strange look on her face, but she didn’t offer to strike up a conversation, and that was the way that Clint liked it.

Eventually, she pulled up in front of a tall tower with a spinning fan looking thing on top. Clint had only seen one of the new fangled windmills once before, and they were one of the few things that fascinated him. How did one contraption and the wind draw water out of the earth all on its own? It was an amazing invention.

Miss Cooper looked back and smiled at him. “Isn’t it a beauty?”
Clint didn’t speak but simply nodded. He wondered what it was like to view the world from the top of that windmill. Glancing over at the mesa he had heard referred to as “Almighty”, Clint thought about the view from the top of that mesa. It must make a man feel like the king of the world. He would like to know that feeling sometime.

　

Back at the ranch, Miss Cooper dismounted and led her horse into the barn where she began unsaddling her horse. Clint did the same, and this was when she decided to ask questions.

“Are you a religious man, Mr. Slade?” she asked.

Clint shook his head. “Nope.”

Miss Cooper nodded but didn’t look disappointed. An awkward silence fell between them as they tended their horses. Miss Cooper was the first top finish and led her horse to her stall.

“Your horse gotta name, Mr. Slade?” she asked.

Clint shrugged. “Horse.”
Miss Cooper let out a whoosh of breath. “What kind of man doesn’t name his horse?”

“This man,” Clint put his horse in a stall.

“Well, we’ve got to come up with a name besides ‘horse’.” Miss Cooper crossed her arms and walked up to Clint’s horse’s stall.

Clint shrugged again.

“I’ve got it,” Miss Cooper grinned.

He looked at her.

“What do you think of the name ‘Diablo’?” Miss Cooper moved her hands in a rainbow pattern.

Clint raised an eyebrow at her.

“It’s the Spanish word for ‘devil’.” She took on a dramatic tone with her words.

Clint shook his head. “Whatever you decide. It’s just a horse.”

Miss Cooper rolled her eyes. “One would think that you would be friends with the animal you spend so much time with.”

Clint shook his head. He didn’t need friends, let alone a horse friend.

Women and their sentiments.

**********

Bliss went to the barn late that afternoon and found Colt in his normal place in the loft. He preferred to sleep there instead of in the smelly bunkhouse, and no one could really blame him. She knew how he liked his solitude, anyway.

“Colt? Are you up there?” she asked.

“Yeah,” was his muffled reply.

Bliss climbed up the ladder and saw Colt sitting in the corner, writing in his small leather-bound journal. She was the only one who knew of Colt’s ability to read and write, let alone his journal. He wrote with a pencil that looked like it was half an inch long, and the difficulty of the task shone through in the concentrating look on his face.