Requested by a wonderfulanon on tumblr, who said: Hi! I absolutely love ur stuff and saw you were doing requests 🤩 Could you write a fic/drabble where the reader is a rancher's daughter, and one night there's a noise in the barn and the reader goes out with a shotgun to find an injured YOUNGER Arthur stumbling around. After some initial distrust, she patches him up, and they begin to have a little tryst for weeks 👀 until Dutch and Hosea move on from that town and he has to bid her goodbye. If this idea doesnt inspire you at all that's okay!
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In which you find out that the best way to patch up an injured stranger is with sarcasm, jokes, and a tourniquet.
It's not every night that the horses and livestock make such noise without a good reason. You hear the animals stirring all the way from your room, though you're the one that left the window open, so part of the blame is on you.
Sighing in annoyance (because it's one AM and as peaceful as any other night, what the hell is going on?) you get out of your bed and trot over to the window. Just as you're about to close it, you hear something that sounds anything but animalistic.
"God damn it!" A male voice, undoubtedly, but it's unfamiliar. The tone is just slightly above a whisper, but very much annoyed. Your entire frame tenses.
Perhaps your parents have hired someone new to help around the ranch? Possible, but what would a ranch hand do at one in the morning in the barn? They've got their own quarters on the other side of your father's property.
Most likely not a ranch hand, then. That makes you all the more curious.
You'd never considered yourself lucky when it came to the location of your sleeping quarters, mainly because you'd been the only one of your siblings cursed with the closest room to the barn. But then again, you have your own room, and you're the daughter to one of the most successful ranchers around, so maybe it's not all bad.
A light flickers inside the barn before it dies out.
Someone's definitely there.
You tiptoe out of bed, and grab your lantern and a sawed off shotgun on the way out. You don't bother with anything other than shoes and a shawl draped over your shoulders before you step out into the chilly summer night.
If it's a burglar, you're prepared, and if not, then you'll just return to your room.
It's almost sad to realize that no matter what the outcome, you're looking forward to this nighttime adventure. Absolutely nothing of note has happened at the ranch in literal years — you're reduced to living off of small escapades such as this one. That and books.
You lean your shoulder against one of the doors, pushing lightly. It's dark and quiet inside.
Maybe you've been so starved for some excitement that you'd imagined it, or perhaps you'd dreamt about hearing something and woken up afterwards. How foolish of you.
