Wilding In The West

Chad Connors sought for a word to express how he was feeling. The only one he could land on was ‘antsy.’

And here he’d heard stagecoach travel was supposed to be relaxing. He could certainly see how a body would prefer it to riding horseback from one territory to another. That was hell on the hips.

The Concord, on the other hand, was only a faint vibration, like the shake in the earth after some miners had dynamited. And the sound wasn’t so bad… kinda musical… the tromp of hooves, the rattle of wheel rims, and the susurration of timber in its slow fight against how well-made it was.

Chad had gotten so used to it that he’d gotten a few hours’ shuteye, before forcing himself up at the waystation to enjoy what motion he could before they were off again, with new horses to take all the advantage they could of the remaining daylight. The largesse of the stagecoach company: the faster they got him there, the sooner they could be sending someone else somewhere else. The fat traveling salesman who’d shared Chad’s coach had remarked that pretty soon, they’d be shooting people from place to place in big cannons—it was as inevitable as them breeding horses faster and faster, said he.

Chad didn’t know about that. To him, the Concord had a stately pace. The four horses in their traces cantered more than anything else, succoring little alkaline from the dusty plains they traveled over. A gallop would hammer salty grit out of the featureless expanse; it would cloud up and mark the coach out of any prettiness, not to mention inevitably make its way into the interior and play merry hell with the passengers.

So they went slow, comparatively speaking, and their clothes stayed clean of caked-on dirt and they breathed in the reasonably fine scent of horseflesh in motion and their fellow passengers. All of whom, thankfully, were as genteel as Chad and had sprung for a bath before setting out.

Perhaps a gallop would suit Chad better. A good horse and a strong saddle and a hard ride. He had a destination—how could you not, when you bought a ticket on a Concord? But little pressing reason to be there. He was a young man and once he got there, there’d be plenty of days to spend in retirement.

Oh Lord, he thought, if I can’t take riding a darned stagecoach, how am I ever going to tolerate settling down and working one patch from a tomorrow to the end of days?

Then again, he had taken that nap and slept better than he ever had on the owlhoot trail of his boyhood. So it wasn’t all the Concord, which Chad would allow was a perfectly acceptable way to travel and a far sight better than his own two feet for the distance he was going. So perhaps it was the company.

The fat man was alright, with a share of stories and jokes that Chad had not yet seen depleted. He didn’t know if he would like to bunk with the man, but if Roger Trace, as the salesman introduced himself, wished a game of faro or a round of drinks, Chad would oblige him. He was not so ornery a cuss that he could only get along with blood.

It was the new arrivals that gave Chad pause. They had boarded at the last stop, superlative examples of feminine architecture. Two glorious copper blondes with skin that could’ve been Jersey cream, tanned and bosomed like regular Venuses. They looked enough alike to be kin, and all of the strongest features, they shared: both long of leg and lean of flank, and wearing suit jackets and widely flared skirts that only differed in color. One blue, the other (on the elder) a floral green that seemed a bit more lush than the younger’s paler carapace.

They were both looking at him, trading looks with each other… taking occasional glances at the salesman Roger, but never the same survey that Chad received. He’d never in his life been some females’ private joke, but he couldn’t say he liked the feeling if that’s what it was. He liked even less four blue eyes like theirs having such an impact on him.

Roger let out a snore. Untroubled by the two women’s fixed attention, he’d let the long, slow ride get to him. Chad wished him a rest as restorative as the one he’d gotten, back when all he had to worry about was feeling obliged to buy a new pocket watch for all the conversation that seller had supplied him with hitherto.

With Roger out of it, the eldest sister leaned nearly out of her seat and to the one Chad shared with the salesman. “Excuse me, sir… aren’t you the Nevada Kid?”

Her voice, thank God, was pure Dixie. Chad could not worm out of a preference for Southern women. As he saw it, Eastern women were too pliant, with barely a word to speak for fear of being caught in a contradiction with those they were trying to get along with (and they tried to get along with everyone).

But frontier women were far too bitter. You couldn’t get a word in edgewise with all the ideas they had, knowing everything about how to do anything.

Southern women were sweet enough to please, but tart enough that you wouldn’t rot your teeth. And if God was kind, this woman’s second helping had grown up in whatever bayou or plantation had made the first such rich chocolate. Thunder and damning if they’d sent her to some school where she’d learned up into an approximation of a lesser female.

“Yes and no,” Chad said, hoping she wouldn’t think he was slow since he’d had to think on both his answer and her lemonade-sweet voice.

“Well, which is it?” asked the younger woman.

“Yes, I was the Nevada Kid, but no, I ain’t no more.”

The older leaned back in the direction she’d come from, grappling with his words, seeming to try and turn them into something besides disappointment. “Now how can that be? You either are something or you aren’t. You can’t just stop being the Nevada Kid.”

“Perhaps not, ma’am, but I thought I’d give it a good try. Not that you don’t make that title sound sweet as molasses, though. Yet I’d prefer you call me by my Christian name: Chad Connors.”

The eldest offered her hand. “Allie Larter. And this little chip off the ol’ block would be my daughter, Michelle. Admit it, you thought she was my sister, now didn’t you?”

Chad kissed her hand and then Michelle’s. Scenting both their perfumes in turn was a heady enough experience to border on sexual. He had to will himself not to develop an erection. “You and her are of some, ah, real fine stock, ma’am. If ever anyone had drunk from the Fountain of Youth, it’d be you. I hope your daughter follows suit.”

“Oh, I’m certain she will. We Larter women have a little royalty in our bloodline. And all that breeding, well, blood will out, as they say! I wouldn’t be surprised if my little Michelle doesn’t have herself a president for a babe someday—once she finds a proper stud horse.”

“Mo-ther!” Michelle moaned, eying Chad with a look of horror at having to share in her private mortification.

“Hush up now, Michelle, you’re a lady of late and should be ready to discuss adult matters. Don’t you want to hear from a real live gunfighter?”

Chad chuckled uneasily. “That’s putting it real nicely, ma’am—”

“Please, Allie,” she interrupted. “A Son of the South like yourself shouldn’t have to be so formal outside of ‘mixed company’.” She held up two fingers to bracket the expression.

“Allie,” Chad said to satisfy her, and was rewarded with a simpering facial expression. “I feel like gunfighter, gunslinger… those are right romantic words and putting too pretty a suit on a sinner’s life. I robbed banks and trains and, ah, even the odd stagecoach.”

Michelle put a scandalized hand to her breast, which Chad enjoyed in a boyish, pulling-pigtails sort of way.

“I never killed none, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I can’t do anything about the dime book writers putting a fine sheen on what I did, but I’d rather not speak on it myself. Too hard getting it all straight in my head.”

“But Chad, a gentleman like yourself—even an aspiring gentleman, as any good Southern boy is—must want to satisfy a woman, much less two. And you simply can’t tantalize us with tell of you being a robber—”

“A stagecoach robber,” Michelle added, darkly gleeful, clearly enjoying getting to discuss something so outré under the nose of… with the endorsement of… her mother.

“And then deny us an explanation! It’s downright rude and liable to give us bad dreams.”

Michelle pouted. Their displeasure just made them both prettier; they were cute when they were angry. And at any other time. Chad couldn’t help but admire the shininess of their spun-gold hair, their high cheekbones, and their strong round jaws. Allie’s face was a little narrow compared to the plushness of Michelle’s youth, but both had lithe figures and breasts more than sufficient for their size.

Chad gave them a smile as reassuring as he could make it. Which was very, given how one of the duties of a highwayman (as he saw it) was to reassure fair maidens that he’d steal cash money, not any of their virtue.

“I suppose it all got a little too raucous to be fun anymore. All the lawmen after me, the bounty hunters, other gangs who’d be sure to cash the bounty and take my money besides… yeah, this fox slipped the hounds, but it got to be you’d have a posse traipsing through Indian territory trying to get at me, or one family accusing another of harboring me and burning down a house with that as an excuse. So the governor of Missouri offered me a deal. If I returned all the money I’d stolen and promised to be a good boy, he’d grant me a pardon.”

Allie was far more shocked at this than she had been to have him confirm he was the Nevada Kid. She reared up: “And you agreed?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I didn’t figure it was good business to stick around… not when the sheriffs might be a little slow in taking down my wanted posters.”

“But what about all the money?” Michelle asked. “Didn’t you spend any of it?”

“Plenty,” Chad confessed with a grin. “But not as much as you’d think. I was really just stealing because it was fun as hell, easy as hell, and it got people talking. Oh, pardon my French.” He coughed and wore an apologetic smile for them. They approved of his bashfulness: faces flushed, eyelashes batting. “I had a good run at faro; da… dratted near broke the bank. So I took my winnings and the money I had stashed, got right with the law, and here I am.”

“But—” Michelle began, but Allie shushed her.

“Quiet, child.” She beamed uncertainly at Chad. “That’s how you did it, but whatever for? I didn’t think any lawman had ever come close to nabbing the Nevada Kid.”

“Oh, plenty of them came plenty close,” Chad recalled with a wince. “But I suppose it was fear, really.”

“You? Afraid?”

“Isn’t everyone? Of something?” Chad settled back in his seat and let his hat slip down so he’d have to look real hard to see the ladies’ reaction. He hadn’t talked about this before—who was there to tell it to? The Governor? But talking to a pretty girl, or two, had a way of letting scabs peel off and scars fade. “It’s that if I kept being a badman much longer, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else for the rest of my life. I started down the owlhoot trail when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I’m twenty-five now… hardly a kid anymore… and if I was ever going to change from running and hiding and robbing, it’d have to be today. There’s plenty of land to be had, plenty of West that needs taming. I’ve got a steady hand and a dead eye. Maybe being a puncher’s the life for me.”

“A puncher,” Michelle repeated, seeming to reel, until Allie patted her hand and centered her.

“I think my daughter’s a little disappointed. She thought she’d get to meet an outlaw and ended up meeting a cowpuncher. But that’s silly of her. After all…” Allie’s eyes flashed like the scope of a rifle, picking you out for a shot from afar. “Just because you’ve gone good, doesn’t mean you can’t go bad again.”