“What?” Jessie laughed, her left arm still around Hank’s neck. “Ya’ll think I’d ever marry you? I’d rather marry that goldurned mule of yours! Ya’ll cain’t come in here and tell me what to do! I’ll dance with who want – Jake Kendall – and when I want!”
Jake’s fists doubled up in rage as the bar room went silent.
“Yeah,” Hank said smirking. “She’s a big girl – so, why don’t you just mosey on out of here, rodeo clown. You ain’t wanted.”
Jake glared at them for a moment but then turned and kicked a chair out of his way and flung open the door. He stormed out of the Idaho Potato Bar and pulled open the door to his pickup truck in rage.
“Jake! Wait!” Jessie ran out of the bar and waved her arms. “Don’t go!”
Hank and the rest of the bar followed her onto the wide wooden porch and laughed.
“Ya’ll best catch him, Jess.” Mara looked at her and pointed. “He ain’t one you can do that to. Go get him back girl – a’fore he goes off somewheres – and you lose him forever.”
Stones and gravel flew out from underneath Jake’s rear tires as he fishtailed out of the parking lot into the night. The engine roared as the tires squealed out on to the pavement.
Jessie ran to the other side of the building where a line of horses stood tethered to a hitching post. Rapidly she untied Thunder’s reins and jumped up into his saddle.
“Hyah!” She shouted and kicked Thunder’s sides. Thunder neighed loudly and leaped forward, galloping through the darkened parking lot. Jessie whipped the reins back and forth rising up in the saddle and Thunder jumped the three-rail fence easily at the far end. Jessie pulled the reins to the left after Jake’s speeding pickup truck and Thunder’s hooves cut into the pavement sending faint sparks up behind them.
Jake tromped his foot down on the accelerator at the bottom of the hill and rounded the bend near Rocking Horse lake slowing down only to make the turns. He shook his head. He knew that he shouldn’t have asked Jessie. She was just too untamed – too wild to ever want to settle down with anyone. She said it herself.
“I do what I want! No man nowhere’s will ever rope me down and lay their brand on my hide!”
In a shower of gravel, dust and dirt, Thunder jumped down from the hillside along the road and stopped in the middle. Jessie pulled up on the reins and jumped off onto the pavement. She stopped in the center of the road and put her hand out in front like a traffic cop.
Jake stomped on the brake and screeched to a halt only inches from Jessie’s outstretched hand in the headlights. He jumped out of the truck and threw his hands back.
“What are you doing?”
Jessie ran around the truck’s open door and threw herself at Jake, kissing him again and again in the dark.
“I’m sorry Jake! I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry. Don’t go. Don’t go! I didn’t mean it – none of it!”
“Jessie! Are you loco? I could have killed you!”
“I’d ruther you’d kill me smack dead right in the road – run me over a hundred times – than to live without you.”
“Jessie – I –” He kissed her back. “I –”
“I love you Jake! I swear I do! Forgive me. I love you. I love you! My mouth is like a snorting mustang running away with me sometimes. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it. I’ll won’t never say nothing like that ever again – never, never, never. I promise!” She kissed him over and over. “Don’t leave me!”
“Ya’ll marry me then?”
Jessie reached up and dug through his shirt pocket.
“Gimme that goldurned ring!” She took out the engagement ring container, opened it up and threw down the box. She put the ring on her finger.
“But, you just told me in front of half the town that you’d rather marry my mule than me.”
“You want me strip down buck-naked and ride through the middle of town like Lady Godiver, wearing nothing but your ring? ‘Cause I’ll do her.” She threw off her hat and started to unbutton her checked shirt. “I swear I will!”
“No.” Jake pulled up her wrist gently and hugged her. “Don’t do that,” he said and kissed her passionately beneath a thousand stars in the deep dark Idaho night. “That’s my job.”
This is the prequel to Duncan Little – how his parents met and fell in love.
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