Chapter 6

The sound of the roosters greeting the morning sunrise with their strident call to get busy filled Dixie with instant regret for her shameful actions the night before. She wished she could banish the memories of her submissive compliance with her bed partner's spirited assault on her dignity. Sure, she was filled to the brim with male joy-juice and she had that feeling that she had a powerful magnet of sensual attraction for male attentions right between her shapely legs but it was time for serious, responsible thoughts and deeds. This was not the time to be letting her hormones rule her life.

Thank goodness Pablo was not jealous of her regretful indiscretions. Butch seemed a bit tense and shied away from conversation answering question with either a nod of his head or a single grunt. She hesitated to broach the subject of the night before so she played along and just ignored the whole thing like it had never happened.

The saloon girls were having the time of their life because there were no demands on them for other favors in the cold light of day. They just joined in with everyone else in tending to the chores around the homestead and helping Manuela prepare the evening dinner which suddenly had added places at the dining table.

I looked like it might be a reasonably calm and peaceful day until the sound of a rider pushing his mount hard brought them all out to the front porch to see one of the new fence stringers gallop in on a tired mount to announce,

"You have to come down to the creek, boss, those Rocking "R" back-shooters have torn down the entire Creekside fence and rustled off almost a hundred head of those winter doggies we been tending the last few months. They shot a couple of them and dragged them into the creek to poison the drinking water downstream. We got to get those carcasses out before the water is polluted all the way down into town."

Dixie knew this was the flash point that the Rocking "R" yahoos were aching to get ignited. She could ignore it but it was not in her genetic makeup to ignore a challenge so direct and so dangerous.

The first job on the agenda was to get the creek clear of the biological materials so the water could run free and clear again. One of the worst sins of the open western rangeland was to pollute the fresh water system or to kill wildlife or domestic animals just for the sake of killing and not for food or to protect innocent victims. The excesses of the "buffalo hunting" era was long gone but folks remembered that purge of free and available meat that threatened the existence of the native American tribes that lived their entire lives around the cycle of life of the free-roaming buffalo herds that swept across the prairie like a locust storm on four legs.

Now it was time for Dixie and the other deputies to rid their peaceful valley of the hired guns who had no concept of normal behavior and no time for peace-loving people to live their lives in quiet harmony. The chaos of the Wild West was their forte and they reveled in the face-to-face showdowns of blasting bullets and the often unseen lead flying from a bushwhacker's firearm.

Dixie and her followers knew it was a chore they could not ignore in safety any longer. That den of rattlesnakes needed to be stomped and they needed to be stomped before they multiplied in the dark corners of the open range.

They rode out single file silent in the dying rays of the setting sun.

The young female sheriff was conflicted because she knew this would be a violent conclusion to a violent chapter in the battle between the cattle barons of the open ranges and the families of the homesteading settlers. Her parents were dead, she was the only survivor and now her new family was riding into the danger of flying lead and blood on the saddle. If there was some way to settle the affair peacefully, she would grasp at it like a straw offered to a drowning soul.

Pablo was humming some silly Mexican tune that told a story about a young man searching for his true love that had gone to visit her girlfriends in another town and disappeared like a ghost in the night. The name of the girl was Margarita and each time Pablo spoke the name he trembled with emotion. Strangely, it made Dixie a bit jealous even though she was certain there had never been any female called Margarita in Pablo's life and that he was just in love with the song.

Butch was checking his extra ammo even as they were trotting along at a decent pace in that peaceful time just before the fall of night. The dark came like a closing curtain across the cloudless sky. The mountains in the distance seemed closer than ever before. She knew that they were getting closer to a showdown and every step of the horse's hooves was taking them all into the lap of danger.