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Cowgirls
While the other girls were out rustling and shooting, Theda stayed behind on the ranch. All day she leaned against the corral fence and read paperback novels, the flap of her holster dancing in the breeze. After one particularly hard day, Velma, a tall girl who wore a necklace of cow teeth, pointed at Theda as her horse rode up to the fence. "See that star," she said, "that star on Theda's hat?" The girls nodded, adjusting their own hats as they looked at Theda's. Their horses stamped impatiently on the dirt.
Theda didn't notice the girls nor the dust brought up by their horses. Her mind was far away: she might have been Anna receiving Vronsky, an explorer on the Amazon, flying high over London in a plane. She smelled flowers rather than sweat, felt velvet as opposed to canvas.
"I'm going to shoot that star," Velma said.
Theda's hat slipped down over her eyes and she reached up to push it back, an action so practiced she could do it without taking her eyes off the book. As she lowered her arm, something brushed past the tip of her thumb and she felt a sting of heat. No longer reading, she reached up and patted her exposed hair. Slowly, she turned around and looked the hat smoldering in the dirt behind her, the star obliterated. The other girls snickered as they dismounted, but Theda picked up her hat and put it back on without saying a word, without any reaction at all, really.
Velma slapped her horse on the rump. "Don't see any stars around here anymore, do ya?"
Theda turned the page and the girls moved on. An hour later, the incident seemed to be forgotten, and the girls played a game of shoot-the-bottle cap in the evening light. Caps popped over Theda's head, ting! ting! but she barely heard them. In the novel, a duel was about to take place between two men who loved the same woman. Theda almost felt as if she were the woman; she could not have more keenly anticipated the outcome of the fight. At the same time, she felt as if she were both men, battling for their beloved. She sighed and worried the fringe on her vest, anxious for things to be decided, then she reached for her gun at the same time as the heroes drew theirs. She noticed nothing as her pistol slid free of its open holster.
Ting! Ting!
The countdown began; the men walked away from each other in measured steps while the woman watched from a window. One. Ting! Two. Ting! Three. The other girls stopped their game to watch Theda. Four. Five. Six. She walked down the corral away from them, her gun aimed at the sky.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
Ten.
Theda turned and lowered her weapon.
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