Standoff

|5|Lost|

A/N Sorry guys, I was out of Internet for a few days, it just came back on yesterday, so I'm back in the saddle! Hope you all enjoy, Buh Bye~

Seven hours and ten minutes later, they had a pure white foal in their ranks.

Aaron had fallen asleep inside the covered wagon, Aphmau was packing all of the stuff up, and the boy's were around the foal and Pepper.

The foal stumbles over its knobby legs and trips, it's head getting stuck in the sand.

The other horse, that had been oddly silent huffs at Pepper, who looks up and stands shakily, going over to her foal.

Before she can reach it however, Eclipse had made his way over to it, sniffing it and huffing aggressively.

The foal finally lifts its head out of the sand and flops onto Eclipses nose, he looks startled, and he stares at the little mare.

He huffs, and helps the foal to it's feet, and trots away, sticking his head into the covered wagon where Aaron was asleep.

In the span of five seconds multiple things happened at once, Eclipse kicked the wagon, making the brake snap, Aaron was jostled enough to wake up and felt the wagon start to roll.

"Wait. Shiiiiiit!!!!!!" The wagon starts speeding down the hill at blinding speed, Levin and Malachi stare in shock, but Aphmau immediately stops what's she's doing and runs in the wagon's direction.

Eclipse starts sprinting after his master, Aphmau jumps onto his saddle as he's running, and twirls a lasso around her head, the wagon gaining speed.

Grabbing Eclipses reins she pulls him to a stop and throws the lasso at the wagon, it wraps around the hitch and They are pulled forward by the force of the wagon.

Eclipses hooves digs into the dirt as he uses all of his strength to stop the wagon, it slows, and slowly rolls to a stop.

Aaron had been holding on for dear life, trying to fix the brake, his heart is beating way too fast for his liking and he looks up at his saviors.

The image of the sun glowing behind her will forever be engraved in his mind, she looks like a hero, the sun glowing behind her as she sat atop Eclipse, gripping his reins and smirking.

"I thought you said he was hard to handle." Not a second passes until Eclipse bucks her off, whinnying loudly a stamping his feet.

Aaron lunges to catch her, whirling around she falls into his arms, their faces inches apart.

For what had to be the first time in his life, he felt nervous, nervous to speak, and he froze.

Aphmau blushed, she had never given any thought to Aaron at all, he was a man that needed help, she knew he had feelings, wether they be innocent or not. But never had them herself.

But now, she felt.... strange.

Aaron clears his throat, running his hand through his messy mop of black hair and looking behind him.

They had been only feet from a valley, a second later and he and the wagon would have been dead and broken at the bottom.

A town was at the bottom, surrounded by green trees and water, the inside of the valley, lush, and bustling with life.

"Wait.... Where is this? It's not on any map." Aaron checks his map, the landmarks around him are nonexistent on the map, and the valley, unmarked.

"Uh... I don't recognize it, But we are kinda far out, maybe we just went past the border." At this Aaron got even more confused, Outlaws Gulch was on the Northern border of Arizona Territory, the border she was talking about was the Southern.

"What town were you heading to?" He asks, not attempting to hide his confusion and panic.

"Torrence."

Again, Torrence isn't a town on his map, but he recognized the name, it was a small mining community in Californian/Mexican territory.

Though, He thought to himself, None of us are supposed to be here anyway, this is Mexico.

"I- How the hell did I get so off track?!" He stares at the town in the valley, it would take weeks to just get back into Arizona, and months to get back home.

"Where were you coming from?" Aphmau asks, a worried and confused look on her face.

"Out-" He stops, if he said where he was she would never trust him, there's a reason it's called Outlaw's Gulch.

"It's an unmarked town on the southern edge of the Texas territory, Arizona." He passes her the map and points in the general location, She winces.

"But you told me that you'd only been riding for a couple hours." She looks up at him, thinking he'd lied.

"I was! I... think." Now that it was brought to his attention, he really didn't remember how long he'd been riding, but it couldn't have been that long.

"I'm sure I did..." Thinking about it made his head pound, and he hold his head in his hands.

"Come on, let's set up camp, the boy's will be here any minute with the horses." She reaches up to place her hand on his shoulder, and he nods.

"Yeah.... Let's.... Let's do that."