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.

“You busy?” Bliss asked, more like requesting his time.

Colt marked the page with his pencil and set the journl aside. “Not anymore.”

Bliss smiled and sat down beside him.

“What are you doing out here without the warden?” Colt teased.

Bliss rolled her eyes. “I had to sneak out. Everyone else has gone to bed.”

Colt nodded. “Pretty bad when you have to sneak around at your own place.”

“Precisely. Colt, I need yout help,” Bliss stated.

“With what?”

“With getting Clint Slade to quit. I plan to make his life absolutely miserable.”

Colt glared at her. “What did he do?”
“Nothing, but I’m no child you who has to be looked after. I can take care of myself, and it’s high time my daddy saw that.”

“He’s just cautious after what happened,” Colt defended.

“I made a mistake. Why can’t he accept that and move on? It’s like he thinks I’m a little china doll he can display on a mantel that no one can ever touch. I don’t think he realizes that I need to lead my own life,” Bliss wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging them to her chest.

“I don’t think a man who chooses to raise his daughter on a cattle ranch in Arizona would want his daughter to be an unscathed china doll. It ain’t natural,” Colt told her.

“There ain’t nothing about my daddy that’s natural.”

Colt chuckled. “That’s true.”

“So will you help me?”

Colt looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “What’s the plan?”

*********

Colt watched as Bliss climbed back down the ladder later on that night after going over her somewhat flawed master plan. He had basically decided that they would make it up as they went along.

Pulling his journal back into his lap, he picked up where he left off.

She was even more beautiful just now than I have ever seen her. Sometimes I think I can literally see every thought she has in her brown eyes. She’d had her hair down in all its plank-straight glory. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen hair as yellow as hers, either. When the light catches it, it glows to rival the sunshine. One of these days, I’m going to tell her how I feel. I’m nearly bursting to tell her, but I don’t want to ruin our friendship if she rejects the idea of something more. I like having her around to pick on me. Keeps me humble.

Before I go off telling her what I think about her, I think I need to find out how she stand with God. I hear her talk about creation sometimes and she mentions Him, but I haven’t heard her utter a single prayer or one word of praise. It makes me wonder. It’s a shame that I’ve known her over half her life and I don’t even know if she’s a believer or not. The subject never came up in our conversations. Maybe that’s my fault. I’ll get around to it one day when the opportunity presents itself.

I’ve got to.

If she turns out to be a believer, then that would take all my dreams and combine them into one amazing reality.

**********

Clint tossed and turned that night, unable to sleep, yet not wanting to be awake. It was pitch black in his room, with not a ray of moonlight shining from the window. It took him around half an hour to finally get exasperated and light a lamp. He faced the fact that he just couldn’t sleep. Some nights he closed his eyes and the faces of the past men he killed flashed into his memory. Faces he had tried to wipe from his mind came back to haunt him and dark, moonless nights like this one.

Heaving a deep sigh, Clint leaned against the wall behind the bed and wished for morning to come. He wondered if it was like this for all gunfighters. Did the notches on their gun come back to haunt them too?

He had tried to think of any way possible that he could get rid of the faces, but none worked.

He had to find some way of getting some peace of mind soon.

“Ah, Mr. Slade. There’s someone that I’d like you to meet,” Mr. Cooper said that next morning as Clint entered the kitchen.

Clint looked to where Mr. Cooper motioned to a man sitting at the table, with white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. Fancy clothes and a pencil behind his ear were dead giveaways to the man’s occupation.

He just couldn’t escape the newspaper writers.

“This is my old friend and fellow soldier, Mr. Damian Jeremiah,” Mr. Cooper introduced.

“Pleasure, sir.” Clint tipped his hat to the man.

Damian’s eyes grew wide. “Why, this is Clint Slade! What are you doing with him here, Sherman?”

Mr. Cooper smiled. “He’s the gunfighter I hired for Bliss.”

“Well, I knew that you said you hired a professional, but I didn’t know it was Mr. Slade.” Damian stood and walked up to Clint to extend his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I admire your skill. We could have used a man like you in the war.”

“I was previously engaged during that time,” Was Clint’s only reply to that statement.

His past was something he never talked about.

Ever.

“Damian’s in town for a few weeks for a visit. He’ll be staying with us during that time. He surprised me,” Mr. Cooper grinned.

Damian smiled at him. “Where is Miss Bliss, anyway? I haven’t seen her around.”

“She’s probably still asleep. Must’ve had a long night. It’s been ages since she’s slept this late,” Mr. Cooper observed.

“I’m sure she’ll be up soon. In the meantime, would you be willing to answer a few questions for me, Mr. Slade?” Damian asked.

Clint sighed just like he had a million times before and sat down with the man to answer the same questions he had been asked so often.

I... am very much ashamed. A week without an update? I was crazy. When I'm not writing, I'm feeling lonely and depressed. Yet I just couldn't write! I hope this turned out ok!! I stayed up writing hoping to get back into my groove:) I think I am.

BTW, It's my birthday today! I'm sixteen! Whoop whoop! So can I have a vote? :P lol No, not really. Vote if you like the story! :D Love you guys!!