Chapter Ten
Beau
Six weeks in Burning Scrub flew by faster than Beau had expected.
He enjoyed his stay in Burning Scrub more than he’d expected he would, too, even if the residents each had their quirks.
Grady was a conspiracy theorist who believed the moon landing had been staged and that journalists weren’t to be trusted.
He’d also kindly volunteered to take over the horse-riding lessons from Adam, and after their uneasy start, Beau and Buttercup had established a mutual respect.
No one would ever see Beau ride at the Utica Stampede, but he could sit straight in the saddle. Under normal conditions.
Meanwhile, swinging a scythe in the hayfields earned him enough muscle to satisfy Leon.
The blisters had turned to callouses after the first week, and he had new respect for early settlers.
No heavy farming equipment for Burning Scrub.
He’d raked the hay into windrows, then rolled it into large piles.
The piles were forked onto wagons, and from wagons to raised wooden platforms. Once the haystack reached eight feet, it was covered with canvas.
He’d enjoyed the fresh air more than the work, although there was something deeply satisfying about completing an activity that the community would rely on all winter.
The picnic lunches served every day were better than anything a New York lunch bar could offer.
He’d learned how to fish. He’d also learned how to smoke meat.
It wasn’t all work and no play. Hayrides at night, under stars that touched mountain peaks and seemed to go on forever, turned hard work into pleasure.
Days of fencing on the ranch at the foot of the mountain interspersed with days spent cutting hay. Those, too, seemed to go on forever, because fences in Montana were used to keep cattle out, and the repairs never ended. That wasn’t quite as much fun.
They’d had three international clients arrive in Burning Scrub to shake up the routine.
Their adventures weren’t always immersive.
Some of them were high-end tourists, interested in observing the Old West, not in living the part.
Beau hadn’t had his money long enough to get used to the idea of spending a hundred thousand dollars for a weekend of glamping in Montana’s mountains, no matter how pretty they were.
Through it all, his friendship with Belle had grown to the point where they were comfortable together. She was an easy woman to live with, although he only had the women in his own life for comparison, so the bar wasn’t high. She had a great sense of humor, as well. Quiet, but sharp.
His music, however, was a growing cause for concern. He’d had dry writing spells before, but this one was different. He’d sit down each evening prepared to work on new songs, and every evening, his mind would go blank. It was as if a tap had been turned off. The ideas weren’t flowing.
Writing with Belle in the room proved to be a distraction, and not the inspiration one might expect.
The world around ceased to exist for her once she opened a book.
He’d glance over to where she sat, reading by lamplight, with her chin tilted forward, and he’d get lost in the way the soft light highlighted her hair, and the dark sweep of her lashes as she scanned the pages.
He didn’t mind the way she zoned out. That wasn’t it. What bugged him was how she could ignore him so completely, while she proved a major distraction for him. He had no idea what that was about. Maybe because Jen had constantly demanded attention. Maybe he hadn’t lived on his own long enough yet.
Either way, today, when Belle asked if he wanted a shooting lesson, he’d jumped at the chance to get out of town. Adam and Grady were busy putting the finishing touches on the gallows they’d built to hang him, and he needed something to take his mind off it.
She’d found a small clearing not too far from town, but not too close, either.
Adam had declared it free of bears, proving even grizzlies feared him.
The earth under Beau’s boots was spongy from the rain that had blown through in the night.
This morning, the air was fresh and clear, and sunlight dappled the mulchy forest floor through the canopy of branches and leaves.
Mountain peaks poked their white caps between the aspen and pine.
A sharp, grating craaaww announced a nutcracker’s presence nearby.
Mountain chickadees, those tiny, masked dive-bombers that Jayce liked to feed, let the nutcracker know what it could do to itself. Those little assholes were fearless.
“Hold your arm straight out from your body and aim,” Belle said to Beau, ignoring the assholes, who were currently fighting each other.
“It’s not a semiautomatic machine gun. No one shoots a Peacemaker from the hip.
” She lifted Beau’s arm into position to illustrate what she meant. “Now, sight down the barrel.”
The gun was a Colt single action army Peacemaker, gunfighter edition, with a 5.5-inch barrel and six-round cylinder. The notched hammer served as a rear sight with the fore sight a blade on the tip of the barrel. A slider underneath the barrel discharged the spent shell.
Belle had borrowed the Peacemaker from Mavis.
She and Beau then tramped into the woods a mile outside of town, where they were using an old tree stump for what she called plinking.
It looked like plain old target practice to him, but since he’d never fired a gun before in his life, he’d trust she was right.
“The goal is accuracy, not speed.” She placed her hand over his and squeezed his fingers tight around the hard rubber grip.
“Except for a few trick shooters, like Wild Bill Hickok or Annie Oakley, those quick draws are something you only see in the movies. In real life, drawing fast makes you more likely to miss. Better to be the steadier second shot. Besides, back then, no one wanted to be the one who drew first. Vigilante justice meant you might hang for it. The second draw was considered self-defense, even if they provoked the first person into it. Remember—draw, aim, and shoot. Gunfighters in the Old West didn’t hesitate.
When their guns came out, they intended to use them. ”
She released his hand. “Now. Aim the gun first, then slowly pull back the hammer with your thumb. You’ll hear a few clicks.
The first engages the safety. The second opens the chamber to load it.
The third click ejects the spent shell. The fourth click fires the gun, which is why you need to be sure to have the barrel pointed at your target. ”
One, two, three…
His first shot missed the stump entirely and kicked up dirt a good two feet away, but the recoil wasn’t as bad as he had expected.
Belle clapped her hands, dancing as if he’d hit the target dead center. “Excellent! Now, ignore the clicks. Aim the gun, sight the barrel, then pull the trigger all the way back.”
He missed the stump again, but the puff of sod suggested he might have been a few steps closer to it. By the time he’d emptied the cylinder, however, he’d hit the stump twice and was pleased with himself.
He passed the Peacemaker to Belle. She spun the cylinder and loaded a new bullet into each empty chamber. The sure way she handled the gun made him smile. It was so out of character for her, and yet, also so natural. There was much more to her than met the eye.
And what met the eye was appealing enough. She was so damned adorable it stole his breath. He took a step back to better admire it.
“You’re sure the guns used for the client adventure will have blanks in them?” he said, because he had concerns.
Visions of Jayce going off-script and pulling a gun from under the poker table interrupted his sleep.
“Absolutely. Those will be movie props. Adam has a supplier.”
“About this supplier of Adam’s … is it the same one he’s getting the harness to hang me from? They aren’t good friends by any chance?”
That hanging was another source of concern. Placing the gallows in front of the jail in the middle of the street meant no matter where Beau went, he had to pass by, and he got the message.
“I don’t know what you have to complain about,” Belle said.
“I asked to be one of the harlots. Instead, I’m married to a local miner, and I’m the one who gets kidnapped by Sioux raiders.
I tried to point out that I’d been kidnapped by the Sioux as part of my backstory, which means I’ll have been kidnapped twice, but Benny wouldn’t listen.
” She took aim at the stump. The gun jumped in her hand and wood chips scattered in all directions.
“Dave and his friends aren’t happy about having to play Sioux warriors, either. ”
Beau had met Dave, or Thundering Buffalo as Benny called him, and he seemed like a good enough guy. He also seemed okay with the money he made off Burning Scrub. From what Beau understood, the entire county profited from Benny’s business venture.
“What’s wrong with Sioux warriors?” he asked.
She cast him one of those looks that smart people gave morons when they said something stupid—part pity, part incredulous disbelief.
“Cultural appropriation. Dave is Bitterroot Salish, not Hunkpapa Sioux. Hunkpapa territory was mainly the Dakotas and around the mouth of the Tongue River. Plus, Benny has been trying to convince Dave to play Sitting Bull, who was a widely respected Hunkpapa holy man, and Dave sees it as disrespectful.”
It probably was. But Beau hadn’t been much of a student in high school.
History had bored him, although now, stuck in the past as he currently was—wearing pants without any zippers, and shooting a tree stump with a Peacemaker while mentally preparing himself to be hanged or shot—he could say in all honesty that it wasn’t as dull as he’d thought.
“Why would you rather play a harlot?” he asked, because he couldn’t see it.