Wishing you the blessing of peace and assurance this Eastertime, People. Thinking today of how sacrificial love transcends all socio-spiritual boundaries and is of eternal consequence. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, this is a bit of Kate's Billy-The-Kid myth/kidology inspired by a night's stay in the so-called "Bridal Suite" of the Ellis Stores longhouse where The Kid was reputed to have been kept at one time under close house arrest! :)) xx

LOVE IN LINCOLN


She didn’t believe that disdainful lips or the snapping garters of saloon girls were real expressions of the heart; nor the copper-pan faces of women work-worn to the bone, chafed by wedlock’s shackles. She thought love would come to her on the breeze like an unknown scent; that it would announce itself humbly in the quietest of sounds.

Though when it was Billy who asked for her hand, the need for such tiny confirmations escaped, squeezed out through walls of excitement closing in. Romance and heroism were made for each other, she reasoned. But, with rivalry between local shopkeepers growing violent (intensifying over supply of goods to military deployed to protect settlers from natives), it wasn’t long before the lavender-lace of Ellis Stores’ marriage bed began to wither and fade.

She grew lonely and tired under seeming house arrest, being supplied daily with flour to “cook for the men” and always being told “stay inside out of harm’s way, woman!” A lassitude lengthened between rounds of gunfire and the deepening stench of bitterness; grew within evening shadows and imbued the longhouse with a drowse of liquor that seeped from where the Tunstalls sat, pistols at hand on the table in front, or with rifles cocked in their laps. Grumbling murmurs stalked room to room until she was haunted by cursing and sighs; she could feel red-rimmed, sleepless eyes following her every move.

At the height of the feud, one morning dawned clean and brighter than the rest. She knew she shouldn’t, but she left the back door ajar to quicken the atmosphere when the boys went out on a raid. Above the smell of rotted boots and soaking oatmeal came a crisper, fresher pungency; a waft of mountains, musk-ox and aromatic oils. Unaccountably, she thought she heard a slight rock-fall; tiny stones slipping from an eagle’s crag. She felt momentarily drawn outside, just to take a look.

Gathering the width of her skirts tight to her slight body, she moved quickly towards the shade of pines banked at the side of the house. Noiselessly, she slid round a tree to face the red-rising buttes, foothills of the brooding sierra that stood a day’s ride distant. She thought she caught sight of a glint in a cleft, a warrior’s face in the play of light on a cliff. She shielded her eyes with one hand and tentatively leaned out from the tree’s protection, her other hand pressed to its trunk. An arrow whistled between shoulder and bark, landing with a thud just yards behind: a McSween was laid out cold on the grass, a twitching jumble of limbs; the Apache dart still quivering in his chest.

There was the sudden scent of first-melting snows from far-away, unseen peaks; the unintelligible sound of a piebald rearing then retreating at a gallop.