Shadows had just begun to press a kiss over the clearing in the woods when Curtis McGowan crested the last ridge of Mica Mountain. From his rocky alpine outcrop he watched as those shadows advanced, interrupted only by a young wisp of smoke from the cabin chimney below. There was only one other who knew of his family’s abandoned refuge in the woods, unless it’d been claimed by squatters, but he doubted it. The gray mustang grazing downstream confirmed his suspicions.
Found you, Bethy Shaw. You’ve taken one too many liberties this time.
It didn’t take much to find her, but it was a relief to know his childhood ‘playmate’ hadn’t gone far. Wouldn’t be long now ‘til he recovered his gold and other effects. Then maybe he’d go down to Sante Fe and find some honest work– something other than mining. He wasn’t about to fall for that racket again.
The miner swung down from his horse, cursing the ‘borrowed’ saddle that made him sorer than a California widow.
“Now just you wait here,” he told the horse as he tossed the reins on a low branch. Not that he particularly cared if the bay stayed put or not, since he was fixin to liberate another from down-valley in short order.
He cut a trail down the backside of the ridge, skirting the perimeter of the cabin until the only safe barrier was a cluster of boulders, and he veered around them. She’d expect him there. Instead he sallied to the far side of the cabin, where her horse stood dozing.
“Hey, Clyde,” he whispered, giving the old gelding a scratch behind the ears. The big gray looked awful long in the tooth these days, a far cry from the colt he’d caught on the plains when he couldn’t have been much older himself. “How’s she treatin’ you?”
Clyde only flicked an ear in response, as if his former owner were a fly. He and Clyde weren’t much friends these days. That was alright, nothin’ a spare apple wouldn’t fix. But the big brute only eyed Curtis suspiciously as the apple was held out.
“Suit yourself.” Curtis stowed it and crouched behind the firewood, stacked in neat towers below the cabin’s eave. He waited, listening, and he imagined she was on the other side of that wall, doin the same. Until the dull scrape of wood on packed-down clay proved him wrong. It cut through the cicada’s song, and with it Curtis dropped behind a low scrub.
Dim lantern light spilled over the clearing as Bethy Shaw stepped out of the cabin. Her shadow danced behind her, making wispy exaggerated sways of her hips across the pines. Every curve of her shape leapt in the lantern light. Curtis would have recognized every one even in the dark. Blindfolded. With his hands tied behind his back. Not that the two had any… intimate history. He just always wished they did. Their chance encounter a couple days back in Tucumcari made that hope a possibility, again, as long as he could persuade Bethy to return his goods and go on back home.
Except it was at that exact moment he caught the hard line that pointed westward from her hip like a compass into the twilight unknown, and he froze.
He’d know that sawed off barrel anywhere. Pa’s shotgun. His shotgun.
In the soup-thick night air another thing came to him as well. The sweet, earthy aroma of his lucky cigars. He groaned. A little too loudly.
Known for her keen hearing, of course, Bethy heard. Her clear, brusque voice cut through the night serenade.
“Curtis, you gullible sonofabitch, I know you’re out there. I’ll shoot ya full of your own bullets if you try me.”
After a long moment of stillness the cicadas started up again. She remained there, peering into the darkness as the nightsong swelled and the oil lamp flickered.
Curtis McGowan weren’t no yellerbelly. He gathered up his courage, waited until Bethy Shaw disappeared back into the cabin, and waited twenty more minutes just for good measure. Satisfied that would be enough time for his quarry to let her guard down, he tiptoed to the door. There he waited another five minutes at the pine doorframe. And finally burst into the cabin.
Several things hit Curtis McGowan all at once. The most unexpected of those things was the beautifully light but fragrant aroma of lavender and sage. Then there was the sight of Bethy Shaw, in a state of the most titillating undress, more real than any dream he’d ever had. The most predictable, and pressing thing, however, was the knotty end of a long pine bough, bark still intact, which slammed into his chest with considerable force.
He stumbled back, crying out, and was rewarded with another whack over his hands as they flew up to protect his face.
“Damn Bethy, it’s Curtis, not a goddamn Comanche!” he cried, struggling to shield himself from another blow.
“Don’t care who you are, if you’re hopin’ to get the bulge on me you’d better think again, Curtis McGowan!” She made to swing again.
Curtis backed up, empty palms raised. “Easy girl, easy! Have a care with that thing! Ain’t here to uhh–,” his eyes traveled down her front, taking in the sights, and bit back a smirk. “Get the bulge on ya.”
Despite himself, he couldn’t help but notice her state of relaxation. Aside from the gunbelt slung haphazardly over her shoulder, she had the look of a soiled dove hanging up her spurs for the day. Not that he’d say that aloud– that would surely cost him. Instead, his eyes landed on the weapon he’d spied her with earlier.
“See you helped yourself to my pa’s shotgun too.”
She smiled wickedly and reached for it, blessedly putting the pine bough down. “Oh, this one? It was your pa’s, you say?” The shotgun swung in a high arc to level at him.
He gave a low whistle. “Didn’t take long for you to adjust to bandit life. You’ve got sticky fingers somethin awful, Bethy.”
She pulled a face. “It’s hard out here for a lady to make her way! Thought an old friend wouldn’t mind helpin a damsel in distress but I see I misjudged my old friend.”
Curtis wasn’t buying it. “I have a mind to pack you up on my mule and take you directly back home to tell your daddy what you done.”
That brought on a true flash of panic across her face. “You know my daddy would tan my hide if I went back home!”
From what he knew of Jacob Shaw, a tanned hide would be the most mild-mannered result of Bethy goin home, that was for sure. Curtis stole a glance back to her and smiled. As real casual-like as possible, he planted a palm on the rough-hewn table and leaned back.“Well hell, I s’pose I don’t have to mention it to your old man. Depends.”
Bethy lowered the gun, the hint of an upward twitch at the corners of her lips. “You tryin’ to make a bargain, Curtis?”
“You gonna make it worth my while?”
Wickedness flickered through her eyes. It stirred a weakness behind his knees. It was the same look she had in this dreams, ever since the town fair hay makin’ competition three years ago. She’d won a blue ribbon. He won a ‘friend’ he couldn’t shake, even if he wanted to. Not that he ever did. Bethy Shaw was like a shadow made of smoke, all wispy curves he knew by heart but never could catch. But maybe tonight…
It was with that secretive, mischievous glance that she finally put down Pa’s shotgun. She set it gently on the table behind him, and slipped her gunbelt back off to join it. With her blouse no longer under the heavy belt it draped and swung freely. Free enough to billow up when she moved a little too quickly, sidling up against him. It was then that his vantage, towering over her by a good head and a half, paid off.
“You’d think,” she mused aloud, “that any idiot would’ve figured out if a gal is lifting all your gear, you’ve got something she wants.”
Curt paused, unsure he caught her meaning. “Other than gold?”
He needed a drink, and a casual sweep of the cabin told him Beth indeed had helped herself to his whiskey, too.
“Other than gold”, she echoed slowly, fingers inching towards his gunbelt. His mouth worked soundlessly, so transfixed was he upon her fingers. The buckle fell to the floor with a heavy clink. The weight of the thick leather belt leaving his hips made him wiggle ever so slightly, by instinct, and by happy accident collided with hers.
“Other than gold.” Her murmur was husky, so low he had to lean forward to hear as she repeated again.
When he did she seized him, her fingers traveling up his arms, and then his shoulders, to tangle in his hair. He tried to not think about the heat flooding through him. Tried to tear his eyes away from her smooth, unblemished slopes of cleavage in stays that only barely served their purpose while unlaced.
He wanted to ask, “is it a kiss?”, but her lips were already on him, and he dared not tempt fate.
***
He woke to cardinals singing. For a moment he basked in the song, unable to discern if he was in a dream or a memory of times gone by. If only things were as simple as mornings of his childhood, in his father’s hunting cabin in the high ponderosas amid early birdsong and thick mountain fog. Dream or no, it was cozy all the same. He wanted to savor it, but a reminder tickled him to waking.
Gotta light a shuck out of here before Bethy wakes.
He made himself listen for a moment, and furtively sent a hand to Bethy beside him. But his fingers only met cold buffalo hide. Bethy was not there. Confused, he raised his head and rubbed his bleary eyes.
Pa’s shotgun was gone. His new saddleblanket, too. With cold realization, it hit him. Bethy was gone. His gold was gone.
“No. No no no no!” Curtis vaulted out of bed. “Aw, sheeit. Bethy!” In nothin but his long johns he dashed outside, checking for her horse.
But Bethy was long gone, and Clyde with her.
He should have expected as much. He wondered if it was true, that she was really sweet on him.
Maybe this is what folks called ‘hard to get’.