Jack Marston is at a low point in his life. His family is dead, Beecher's Hope is in ruins, and he has nothing left to live for. Most days he spends so drunk he can barely remember anything, he kills and robs people at will, and there isn't an ounce...
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Mariposa kicked and screamed like the devil. The rope around her neck slipped through Eva's hands, and she was glad she'd had the good sense to wear a pair of thick, leather gloves for this occasion. Today was the day she'd finally break the mare to ride once and for all. She'd managed to convince herself that she had some sort of special connection with Mariposa that transcended even species.
Unfortunately, Eva had been severely deluded.
Mariposa lunged forward against the rope, causing Eva to fall headlong into the dirt. Spitting grit from her mouth, she got to her feet, cursing in Spanish under her breath.
"You okay?!" she heard Jack call from outside the paddock. "Christ, Eva! Your nose is bleeding!"
Whether because she was angry or because her nose had been broken so many times before it no longer felt much pain, she hadn't felt the blood spurting from it like a crimson river at first. Dropping the rope and tearing off her right glove, Eva pinched her nostrils shut and leaned forward to stop the bleeding. Her nose didn't feel broken, just knocked around a bit. She breathed a sigh of relief.
There was blood on her dress, though. Thankfully, it was only the tattered one she'd worn on the journey here from Mexico and not one of her brand new ones. Vivian and Karen might be okay with wearing men's clothes outdoors, but Eva still couldn't quite bring herself to. The compromise was using her oldest, rattiest dress as her work clothes. And the clothes Vivian wore when she worked outside were, in Eva's opinion, quite lewd. Her favorite shirt, for example, was a dark gray union shirt, which she did not fully button and wore no corset beneath.
Instead, Vivian wore something called a brassiere, which was lighter and less restricting than a corset, and consisted simply of two cups made of cotton which buckled behind her and were held up with two shoulder straps. According to Vivian, it was a rather new invention and all the rage in the latest fashion trends, but Eva still preferred corsets. Although to be fair, if she'd been wearing something a little less restricting, perhaps her mouth wouldn't be full of dirt and blood.
Spitting to get the god-awful taste of mud made from her own blood and saliva out of her mouth, Eva got to her feet, breathing heavily. Mariposa snorted angrily and trotted to the other end of the paddock with a look of smug triumph in her dark brown eyes.
Jack, on the other hand, had slipped between the bars of the paddock and ran towards her with concern in his eyes. "You okay?" he asked, holding out his hands as if he wanted to comfort her, though he dared not touch her. "Someone needs to take a look at that, Eva. If not me, then I'll go get Karen or somebody else female. It might be broken."
"It's not the first broken nose I've had," Eva said gloomily. "I'll live." She desperately wanted to let Jack look at it, but everything in her was still screaming not to let him touch her in the slightest, especially after the shock of her fall. She hadn't realized it at first, but the buckskin mare had managed to drag her halfway across the pen as well before she'd let go of the rope.
