“Lou, I’m sorry! It just slipped out,” Kid said trying to explain himself before she blew up.

“I don’t want to hear it. I just want you out of here,” Lou said pushing him toward the door of their hotel room.

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“Get another room, go sleep outside, get a bunk at the weigh station! I don’t care!” Lou exclaimed giving him a final shove through the door and slamming it in his face.

“I really am sorry, Lou. Please open the door,” Kid pleaded hoping the humiliation of standing in a hallway with people all around him would end quickly. There was silence on the other side of the door, but after another minute of begging and apologizing the door finally opened again. Of course, that didn’t mean the fight was over, the look on Lou’s face told him he was still in big trouble and would be for a while.

“I want you to know that the only reason I’m letting you back in here is because I don’t want to have to explain to Teaspoon how you ended up at the weigh station when you were supposed to be in here with me.”

“All right. Fine. Let’s just get some sleep,” Kid said heading toward the bed. Lou immediately stood in his way and handed him the blanket that had been lying on the bed. The look on her face told him that if he thought he was going to sleep in the same bed with her, he was insane.

Blanket in hand, Kid accepted his fate for the evening and attempted to make himself comfortable in the stiff chair that he was forced to spend the night in. The next morning neither said a word to the other and got back to Sweet Water in worse moods than they’d been in when they’d left Ellsworth.

Kid headed straight for his bunk to make up for the sleep he had missed the night before. Lou went into the barn to take care of Katie and Lightning in order to avoid everyone else. The rest of the afternoon did manage to stay quiet, much to their relief. Lou was not about to explain to anyone what had gone wrong on their run. She knew they had been sent out there intentionally.

It was a little too obvious that she and the Kid had been the only two riders ready to go when Teaspoon said there was an overnight run to Ellsworth. They both knew it was an overt attempt to get them to make up after what had gone on with the Kid and Samantha. A couple of months had passed and neither was exactly happy without the other. They had gone on and were getting along well enough to not need a third party around to break up their fights.

The quiet at the weigh station that afternoon however, did accentuate the fact that Lou and Kid were not speaking. Everyone had thought they would at least be in good moods when they got back. If anything, they had been given a night off away from home. Of course, those two alone together could mean only two things: either they’d be very happy when they came home or they’d be arguing so loudly you could hear it before you saw them riding in. This time Lou was still angry over what he had said the night before and Kid knew there was no point in trying to talk to her when she was so mad.

The next couple of days the Kid wasn’t the only person who didn’t want to go near Lou. She had been in a horrible mood and no one knew when it was safe to speak to her. On the other hand, Lightning’s stall had never been so clean. She spent all her free time after her chores were finished in the barn cleaning his bridle or saddle or anything else that happened to be in need of polish. Finally, Rachel took it upon herself to at least get the story out of Lou, if not try to fix things to some degree.

Rachel opened up the barn door and found Lou sitting on a bale of hay with a very serious look on her face. She had been sitting there for nearly two hours just thinking over and over about what had gone on in Ellsworth. What was it that made him say it? was all Lou could get to without getting so angry that she end up near tears.

“Louise, is something wrong?” Rachel asked as she approached her.

“No. Everything’s fine,” Lou said looking up, surprised someone was talking to her. “Did something happen in Ellsworth?” Rachel asked cautiously, trying not to provoke her wrath which usually happened when she was asked about something she didn’t want to talk about.

“What makes you say that?” Lou asked, feeling panic rise since she knew Rachel was going somewhere with the question.

“You and Kid haven’t been in the same room together since you got back. You’re out here all the time and he’s in the bunkhouse. You can’t stand the sight of each other and when you do see each other there’s usually a door being slammed right after it. I thought you two had been looking forward to going.”

“I really don’t want to talk about this right now, Rachel,” Lou said standing up.

“Tell me. It will make you feel better,” Rachel said making Lou sit back down, “What are you and Kid so mad at each other for?”

“Oh, he’s got no right to be angry with me. I’m the one who should be angry with him.”

“Well, you’re certainly doing a good job of that.”

Lou was getting aggravated with the way Rachel tried to make light of the whole situation so she finally decided to spill it out quickly instead of suffering a slow, dragging process of Rachel poking around a sensitive area.

“He said something to me that should never have been on his mind in the first place. That’s why I’m mad at him.”

“What?” Rachel asked dying to know what Kid could have possibly said to make her so upset. It couldn’t have been intentional or meant to be this bad, Rachel thought, trying to decide how to defend the Kid. Defender of the unfairly accused was a role she had gotten used to assuming when Lou and Kid would argue over a poorly placed phrase. “To put it simply, the name Samantha came out of his mouth.”

“How did he say it? When did he say it?” Rachel asked amazed that that was what had caused the problem. That was certainly not what she had been expecting. She figured he had done some dumb thing that had annoyed her, but this was serious.

“I’m so mad at him right now I don’t even remember what he said, but I am sure he called me Samantha,” Lou said bitterly, spitting out the dreaded name at the end.

“Lou, have you talked to him about this? I mean, are you completely positive that’s what he said?” Rachel asked praying that this was just a fight that had gotten out of hand and not as serious as what Lou said.

“He apologized after he said it. Why would he apologize if he didn’t say it?” Lou asked feeling her throat tighten as she thought about the whole night.

“All right, tell me exactly what happened that night. Maybe there was a reason he said it. I’m not defending him or what he did, but you never now, may be you just took it out of context?” Rachel said immediately responding to the look on Lou’s face.

“There is no context in which that name should have ever come out of his mouth, but to answer your question there wasn’t anything unusual about the night. We just went out for dinner and then took a walk. When we got back to the hotel we were just talking and going to go bed when he just called me Samantha. It came out as plain as anything.”

“I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation for saying it.”

“Yeah, she was on his mind instead of me,” Lou said bitterly.

“Lou...” Rachel began.

“I’m serious Rachel. He wants me to be something I can’t, at least not right now. She was the perfect girl to him, all cultured and refined and lady like. That’s not what I can be now even if I wanted to. It’s too much pressure. I really think it’s over for good this time.”

“Lou, don’t talk like that.”

“Come on Rachel, we’re miserable when we’re together. All we ever talk or argue about is his being over protective or this job being too dangerous or a hundred other small things he thinks are too risky for me to be doing. I don’t think I even want a relationship like that. I’m sure I love him, but I can’t keep hiding everything from him to avoid a fight. If I have trouble on a run and I tell Teaspoon about it so the next person will know, Kid finds out and won’t let me head out that way anymore. He either trades with someone else or takes the run before anyone knows about it. It’s a nice gesture once in a while, but Rachel, I’m not getting anything done! First I have to convince the boys not to treat me any differently because I’m a girl. Then it’s Teaspoon and now I have to start all over with the Kid. It’s enough to drive me insane!” Lou exclaimed rubbing her forehead to stop the pounding that had begun a minute before.

“Lou, you’re not thinking about quitting are you?”

“No! Of course not! I know I complain a lot about him, but there’s no way I would ever give the Kid the satisfaction of quitting. He’d think I did it for him and then he’d be after me to change again. No. He’s one problem I’m going to have to figure out on my own. I just wish I knew how to make him stop thinking of me as some poor helpless little thing like that witch Samantha.”

“Well, there’s no need to start calling people names,” Rachel scolded her, “of course, in this case I can understand it.” Rachel let the term slide by since she had never liked Samantha and the thought of her actually made her rather queasy. That syrupy accent and phony smile were enough to make Rachel wish she had less manners so she could say what she really thought. Of course, Samantha was long gone and just an aggravating memory. At moments like this though, just knowing she still existed could make Rachel’s blood boil.

“Well, there are a lot of other things I’d like to call her, but I won’t,” Lou said before Rachel could interrupt again, “I guess I have to go back into the bunkhouse now, huh?”

“I suppose I could make you a plate for dinner and give you a little more time to think of anything you may want to say to the Kid. Of course, the boys are probably all in the bunkhouse by now, so any arguing you’re planning on doing should wait until you’re alone,” Rachel advised Lou as she headed outside. “Oh, Louise, one more thing. Tomorrow when you let Kid have it, don’t yell too loudly. This isn’t something you want everyone to hear about and if you talk loud enough the boys can hear you in the bunkhouse.”

Lou felt her face turn flaming red after Rachel’s last comment. She began to wonder how many arguments the others had heard them have. Usually the barn was their one sanctuary. They could yell at each other as much as they needed and didn’t have to do it in front of everyone else. Lou had always assumed you had to be up against the barn door to hear what was going on when it was shut, but thinking about she realized how close the bunkhouse was.

Slowly she began to understand how all the others always knew what they were arguing about. She had always assumed the Kid would talk to Jimmy about their fights, looking for advice, and Jimmy would tell someone else and in the end everyone would know. She had kind of forgiven him for that since she had Rachel as a confidant; still it did annoy her that everyone knew what was going on between them.

Now things made a little more sense though and Lou wished that someone had said something before. Of course, the arguments must have provided some entertainment to everyone when things got boring at the weigh station. But that was beside the point now. Lou was mad at Kid for a very good reason and was going to stay that way until he apologized for real, not just because he didn’t want to sleep on the ground.

All that was left was for her to think of a way to punish him or find the right words to make him feel incredibly sorry for what had happened. That was easier said than done. The only thing she could really hold away from him was herself and then was no chance of him getting near her to even talk for a long while. Then it dawned on her what else she could do, drive him crazy with jealousy and worry.

“Noah, would you trade runs with me? I’ll take the one you had for tomorrow,” Lou said when she returned to the bunkhouse.

“Sure Lou, whatever you want,” Noah said before it dawned on him that the area he was supposed to head into had been attacked by Indians more than a few times in the last month, “Wait a minute, you can’t go out there, it’s too dangerous. Indians have been acting up.”

“Nothing’s happened out there for a week. I’ll be fine,” Lou said shrugging off his protest.

Everyone in the bunkhouse fell silent and looked at each other. She was right, there hadn’t been trouble in a week, but that didn’t make it safe for her to be out there. They were all waiting for Kid to say something, but after an initial attempt at speaking to her he decided it was better to just let her go and make her own mistakes. There was no way he was going to get drawn into an argument with her if she was going to do it like that. The others didn’t want to start sounding like the Kid to her, so they all left the matter be. None of them was happy with the decision, but they couldn’t yell at Noah for his slip up until Lou was out of the room and that wouldn’t be until the next morning when she left.

On to Chapter Two

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