The Stranger by Suzy

Just as he suspected, just as he liked, Chris was alone in the saloon, but hardly. With the late men dizzying around the wooden building, the wood that made up the floor, the place was anything but alone.

But unusually for a Wednesday night no one bothered him. No one made a fuss, or refused a drink they didn’t order and throw a tantrum over it. Nothing like that this night and Chris was thankful. He wouldn’t say he was on duty, just observing. Making sure things were as they were supposed to be, but like anything was now-a-days.

Meaning, his small posse of seven men was slowly fading and it shocked the hell out of Chris to find it was going to be Buck the first to leave the group for a while. Of all people, of everything going on in the country, it had to be Buck leaving his side. The gunslinger/friend he’d known for a good part of his life, the saneness he used to have when Sarah and Adam were still alive. Buck knew how Chris was, how great of a man he was to his family, to his horses, to his land. He knew him inside and out, and now it was time to say those goodbyes Chris had lodged deep down in the pit of his stomach for the past two years since he and Buck ran into each other’s past when Chris needed him for a job.

You could always count on Buck…his infamous words. And those words never let him down when Buck always showed up in the wrong place but at the right, precise time.

And now he was leaving and before he hadn’t seen him for five years, Chris wondered how long it would be this time before they saw each other again.

Holding his whiskey mug close to his mouth, savoring the sinful taste on his lips, on his tongue and lost in his world, he didn’t see the woman enter the saloon.

Tightly restricted within her discomfort corset and skin tight, gown, the woman palmed her lower stomach. She tried to take a relaxed breath of air, but it was no use and she quickly regretted for changing into this dress compared to her silk, clingy one she had on this afternoon.

Stepping out from in between the swinging doors, Natalie looked about the place, the dirty, dusty saloon she saw herself in. She pulled tighter on her cape and ever so neatly, pulled the hood off her do-up curls and dropped it behind her back. To her surprise, not a man… yet… had noticed her uncanny introduction. And that was a good start. She didn’t want a man, no less a drunken man, walking up to her with his sweet talk and gaud awful breath of fresh and old booze.

Silent, she moved across the bunch of tables circled together in the core on the first floor and she walked right up to the bar without trouble.

Maybe this was going to be a good night, she thought.

She hoped a lot better than she had two nights ago in Slater Town. With those drunken men at her beckon call. Surrounding theirselves at her door, waiting by her wagon, sleeping outside the hotel window. And then having a run into with a few men she knew and once she saw them, she had to leave the town as sly as possible. In the middle of the night, that’s how she did it and she’s been looking over her shoulder ever since.

Men she never wanted to see again. Not after what she heard what happened… She couldn’t face him again. Not yet.

Chris looked up when he saw the woman walk across the dusty floor in that dark dress of hers, confident, shy, not welcoming any man who tried to introduce himself. She had that walk to intimidate any man to back up and leave her alone.

And he noticed that walk right away.

But still he didn’t do anything about it and that’s how he preferred it. He took the last drip of his whiskey and set the glass firmly back on the damp table, still dripping raindrops from the ceiling after the early morning rainstorm. The water splashed as the mug dropped in a puddle, splattering some of the dry spots left.

He let go of the mug handle and leaned back in his chair and pulled his hat further down his forehead. An ache poked the center of his spine and he jolted up to recover the pain. He didn’t want to feel that kind of pain again so what he had left to lean against was the wet table or he could leave. And he didn’t want to leave and go back to the hotel because he knew he’d fall asleep and he’d rather do anything but sleep right now.

Chris put his elbows on the table, the water seeping into his black duster and for a quick moment, it felt good. Cool against his skin where his body only knew heat from the blazing sun’s rays all day. He leaned his elbows harder on the table, the glass mug between his arms, and he stopped. He let the coolness take over his body and that coldness seemed to take over whatever thoughts flew around in his head. And that’s when he looked up and saw her again.

The woman at the bar, her back to him, her head crooked to the side as she talked to Inez about what to order then left her alone.

Narrowing his eyes, a wrinkled confusion spreading across his forehead and shifted his hat, he remembered her. The same woman who crossed his path last night, and who struck him dumb for five seconds of his life. But last night and now, he never saw her face, not even in the cracked mirror before her could he see her face from where he sat.

But this wasn’t a good feeling; it was a lousy feeling on his part. She was just a woman, a woman who pleased men, or better yet, just a woman who was passing through town. Not for a second did he think she was here for the wedding. Not dressed like that, and she sure wasn’t a friend of Buck’s. Chris spotted that right off too. Even when every woman was his friend’s type, she wasn’t somehow.

She was different. And how the hell did he know she was different? He never met her before in his life. He never spoke to her, never made eye contact. Didn’t even know what the sound of her voice was like.

Chris quickly rid his thoughts of her. When she made an impact on him already, he knew he couldn’t get involved even if she was a working girl. He took on Maria so hastily in Purgatory, why not this woman too?

No, Chris yelled in his thoughts.

Natalie stared at the shot glass on the bar Inez left her after she paid her nickel price. Cheap price always meant cheap liquor, she thought.

Disgusted with the taste of liquor in the air, why on earth would she order some for herself? She hated the thought of liquor, the taste of beer, the smell of anything alcoholic.

Would this be called torture, she wondered.

She reached for the shot glass and held it in the palm of her hand. She brought it up to eye level and studied the waviness of the liquid with her movement. Yeah, disgusted was indeed the right term and she used torture perfectly for her wonderment. She knew she couldn’t drink this puppy down now and not this late. She needed some space from her horses, from her personal wagon she stored in the livery, and breathe some fresh air. And as it seemed the saloon was the most likely place open and alive for the night, she had no choice but to head in here and now she regretted it horribly.

Natalie set the drink back down on the bar counter, drips of liquor tipping out onto the countertop. And she just stood there when she knew she should be getting the hell out of there before trouble she knew would soon stir.

She put her hands on the countertop and heaved her tired body off the bar and as she turned to walk out of the saloon, and gustily, dirty man, smelling of liquor, was right behind her, shielding her to move or leave.

“You gonna… drink that… shot, missy?” he slurred his words.

“No because you are. It’s on me.” She hissed but gently as she turned and handed the man the shot. “Don’t have too much fun.” And with that, she planned to walk around his six foot four build, his aging face, and those hairy knuckles until they groped her to stop.

“Where you think you’re goin’, missy?”

“Away,” Natalie said tightly.

“Not a chance. You didn’t even let me buy you a drink.” The man tightened his grip on her wrist when he shifted from her forearm, pretending to be friendly.

“If you saw I didn’t drink that one,” she watched him drink the shot and dispose the glass over his shoulder, and she heard it shatter on the floor. “You can bet I won’t ask for another.”

With her still in his hold, he walked to the bar and slammed his palm on the counter for Inez, and she was there in less than a heartbeat. “I’d like another of what you offered this woman here, and whatever else this woman would like.”

Inez looked at Natalie, “What would you like, senorita?”

“Nothing,” she told Inez coldly, then turned to look at the man holding her to him, “I don’t want anything. Let me go.”

“Put it on my tab,” the gray haired man told Inez.

Inez put her hands on her hips and leaned on one hip, “I’m not serving you anymore drinks until you let the senorita free, senor.”

“I told you to get me my drink, senorita!”

“And I told you to let the woman go!” Surprised by her own raised voice, Inez looked across the ways at Chris, hiding in the dark corner. Where she usually found him.

He nodded, she nodded in acknowledgment, and Natalie had no idea what was going on behind her back between bartender and gunslinger. All she had her mind set on was this man holding her wrist, more like squeezing her wrist waiting for blood circulation to cut off.

“Damn you, man, let me go!” she yelled in his face, in his ear. And then without waiting for reassurance she was going to get free from him, she smacked him across the face with an open hand. Then she asked for it when he slapped her across the face the same way, only with the back of his hand, hard and jagged.

Not one other man in the saloon bothered to help her or even care…except Chris Larabee.

When those hairy knuckles came up to cup her face between thumb and the other four fingers, Chris jerked that hand away so quickly, bending back the man’s fingers. Natalie heard the crack of breaking bones.

Screaming in agony, the old man released Natalie’s wrist and she brought it up to her chest, rubbing around it with her other hand. Chris leaned back up with the man still in his hard, jagged hold. He looked up and locked eyes with Natalie and her swelled cheekbone. Her eyes chocolate brown, his emerald green, they clashed and surprised heat soared between them.

But only for a mere second did that bliss occur when the man came back up with his pistol in his other hand. He tried to stick Chris with what bullets he had, if any, but swiftly enough and courageous, Chris pulled the gun out of the man’s hand and put a firm hand on his back and pushed him outside the saloon doors, and he followed.

Natalie let her arms fall free to her sides after that immediate one-on-one fight and took in the smack across his face and the smack he to her returned right after. She looked at Inez, standing behind the bar, and she gave Natalie a gentle smile, and with her eyes, letting her know that everything was taken care of now. That she not need to worry about that man again.

After Inez offered her condolence, she offered to give her an rag full of ice for her swollen cheek, but Natalie refused and walked out of the saloon with a dozen eyes lurking all over her body from the men who didn’t give a hoot about what just happened.

She stepped out in the midst of the fresh cool night with the swinging saloon doors swaying behind her backside. The incident that just happened left her thoughts, her memory as soon as she sucked up fresh air into her lungs. This, right here, was good for her, hale.

Ready to end the night with another restless night as she’d done night after night with tossing and turning, she reached behind her and pulled her hood back over her head. As she did this, she couldn’t help but listen to the sound of a rocking chair creaking outside the saloon windows.

She turned her head, fingertips still on the rim of the hood; she saw the gunslinger that helped her. Mysterious in his own right, his own head as he sat rocking coolly in the rocking chair that sent goose bumps down her spine that she looked away from him quickly before their stare took hold like before.

Instant attraction, she may have called it. Attraction she didn’t want or need right now, or ever. What she wanted was to sleep a goodnight sleep but even that looked hopeless.

Natalie whipped her head back to forward when she noticed he stopped rocking in the chair. She turned her entire body down in the opposite direction of Chris and began her long stride to Virginia’s Hotel.

And Chris never let his eyes drop from her departed, gliding walk.