milliways_bar | EP: Kate Barlow | Outside, Stables / Main Bar

It's been a long time since Beaut's had the pleasure of startling the bar with her presence. The front door admits the five-foot cowgirl and her mount, obviously on their way someplace else, depositing them smack dab in the middle of the bar.

Beaut snorts.

"Oh, come now. S'good t'be back, ain't it?"

Kate wins an ear twitch for her trouble. With a chuckle, she sets about navigating the tables and chairs — and waitrats, we mustn't forget them. She'll get Beaut resettled out in the stables and check on the stock, and once she's done there she'll find a calendar. Once she knows the date and has stopped to look for messages in the stables, at the board, or with the Bar, she'll settle in for a while.

Then again, it's such a beautiful evening out. Maybe she'll take advantage of the lingering light and give Beaut a proper ride up the mountain path.

[ooc: I'm so sorry for inundating the bar! I did try to space everything out. ~sheepish~ Post open indefinitely; catch Kate anywhere you like, she'll be making her rounds and she's in a great humor.]

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Hot damn, she can practically feel the prickling heat pouring off him. The lane straightens out, and she drops back a touch to give Boomer a chance to pull up beside her. Eyebrow arched, lips parted but still smiling, delight dancing in her eyes.

"Is that a challenge, Mr. Twist?"

She sincerely hopes it is.

"Y'see, runnin's what I do. What we do, Beaut an' I. I'm afraid you ain't got a chance."

It's mostly for show, just to see how he'll react. But there is plenty of pride to back it up. Beaut's a fine animal, she knows these paths well, and she don't need nudging to get her to fly.

"That's a fact, Mz. Barlow."

Boomer takes the chance to push forward, ears twisting up, turning back to catch Jack's voice, and he can feel the way she quivers, like an arrow on the string, impatient as hell and lively under the restraints he's been placing on her.

"Seems to me there ain't no way to find out without givin it a try'n seein what happens."

He's spent hours, days on these trails, and maybe those hours and days were with Ennis and maybe they were a fair while ago, but that doesn't change shit when it comes to knowing them like the back of his hand.

"A fact that you ain't got a chance? Why, I agree."

The blue in her eyes sparkles with laughter, like sun on a busy lake. She's keenly aware of the state of his mare, and she knows Beaut is, too. It doesn't show itself in such overt ways, but there's a tenseness to her mare; like a coiled spring, or the lever on a mouse trap.

"So what you're suggestin' is ... "

Due hesitation, letting the word sit on her tongue while her eyes, curiosity and innocence, tango with impishness.

"A race?"

"Racin in the woods, seems like a foolhardy notion."

These trails might be covered in downed branches; hell, there could be a tree lying across this one, for all he knows, and Boomer's a fine horse, but she's a cow pony, not a hunter. Thankfully, she's got no high-strung jumper blood, which is good for when he's got to haul on a steer her size or larger.

Just not so much when confronted by a sudden hurdle in a previously clear path.

But he just can't sit by and let Kate get away with her insinuations and impertinence, can he? Besides, the two mares are just about spring-loaded, cocked and ready to go, and all it would take would be a touch of his heels to send Boomer catapulting down the trail.

"Reckon it's the only way, though."

"Whoever said it'd jus' be the forest?"

An eyebrow tics, grin going nowhere fast.

They're not on the northeasterly trail, the one that cuts straight by the lake and follows the forest line back beyond to the great open meadow she loves like the Good Book, where the mountains loom proud and tall. It's not the westerly trail neither, which dumps out toward the inlet. But when you've got a place like Milliways, always adapting and changing, you find the trails are like wagon spokes, all crisscrossing to end up at the same point. She knows just where to run.

Reckon it's the only way.

Her grin broadens, like the sun spilling over the eastern horizon at daybreak.

"Y'know the red ribbon trail, leads up the mountain? The one that'll take y'to the mountain lodge that showed up a few years back?"

"There's a lodge?"

Glancing up towards the mountain with mild surprise. "Shit, there anythin this place don't no more? That woulda made campin out a hell of a lot easier."

Not that comfort was really the point. Not that he wouldn't have missed the smell of hot canvas and plastic from the groundsheet, the campfire smoke drifting everywhere, the cold and crystal air that was such a difference from the near suffocating warmth inside the tent.

Still. Man likes a roof over his head, when he can get it.

"I know the trail."

He's been up that way, anyhow, even if it was before the lodge itself showed up.

Grinning:

"It belongs t'two folks here, but they let it out on request, way I understand it. Built it maybe three years back? At the tiptop of that snowcapped mountain."

Kate's never been herself. She's not acquainted with either of the gentleman, and, in fact, isn't sure how the place held up after everything that happened last winter.

"Y'go up that trail 'bout fifty feet, there's a stone arch crawls right over it. Trail continues on a couple bends 'fore it gets real twisty. How 'bout we call that the finish line? First one there an' through."

For glory, for honor, ~~and a red dawn!~~

He peers up at the peak she indicates, shading his eyes with a hand past the brim of his hat. "Oughta get up there one a these days, if those passes ain't blocked with snow."

But that's in the future, and he'll have plenty of time to think about cabins and camping once he's beat lil' Miss 'runnin's what we do' and her mare.

"Call the arch the startin line?"

A little wary, watching her out of the corner of his eye. He wouldn't put it past her to just take off, and leave him swearing in the ensuing dust.

At least he's got half a mind to figure that's what she's gonna do before she does it. Heck, maybe he does know her after all.

Or maybe them bright, hellfire grins just give her away.

"I'm callin' now the startin' line."

Beaut seems to share some kind of mental wavelength with her rider, because Kate don't even have to put heels to her side before she starts in a canter leap forward, happy when Kate doesn't pull her back, but rather urges her on.

Sure, they could have come out the gate ripping up soft peat, but Kate's not wholly discourteous, and mayhaps some part of her wanted him to have the chance to take the lead. Hell, it might be the only chance he gets.

EP: Kate Barlow | Outside, Stables / Main Bar

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