A rooster crowed from its perch on top of the barn. With a yawn, Cheyenne Silverman flipped the covers back off her legs and jumped out of bed. At six in the morning, she could smell bacon sizzling on the frying pan downstairs.
Dust exploded in little puffs around Cheyenne’s feet as she trotted down the stairs from her room in the attic. “Hello Ma!” she greeted a tall women in her mid-forties. Her hair, tied in a bun, was the color of sagebrush, and her skin was tan as the sun baked desert.
“Hello dear,” the women said. “Hurry and finish your breakfast, than go find your pa. He’s outside with the cattle. I think they’re branding today.”
Cheyenne gobbled her biscuits ‘n’ gravy in record time and stepped into the early morning air. Sure enough, the smell of burning brush and singed hair filled the air. A small campfire was lit in the largest corral, and the unbranded cattle were all standing patiently in a round pen adjacent to the main corral. “Grab Blackjack, Cheyenne, and hurry. We’ve been waiting to start this thing for hours.”
The man talking was kneeling near the campfire, a red-hot branding iron in his hand. His skin was even darker than his wife’s; brown from years of life in the dusty corrals. His hair, hidden under a black cowboy hat, was beginning to gray, but he still had the cowboy spirit he had had forty years ago. The man was Cheyenne’s father.
Jogging slowly so as not to startle the cattle, she headed out to a large pasture. There, standing all alone on the horizon, was a grazing silhouette. A long, flowing mane nearly reached the ground, and a glossy tail lazily twitched to scare away flies. As Cheyenne stared at her horse, the sun began to rise behind him.
With a long whistle, Cheyenne beckoned the cow horse. “Cummon Blackjack, there’s work to be done,” she hollered. The gelding perked his ears up and broke into a graceful trot, and then, without breaking stride, changed gait into a lope and then a gallop, leaving a trail of dust in his wake.
“Good boy, Blackjack,” Cheyenne cooed as the Quarter Horse slid to a stop in front of her. Grabbing her rigging sitting on the top fence rail, she tacked her horse up. Then, she quickly mounted and entered the corral where the branding was to take place.
“Go rope a calf, Cheyenne, we‘re burnin’ daylight,” her father groaned. Four cowboys stood beside him, hats over their eyes, and they muttered a quiet laugh after his comment. Insulted, Cheyenne picked up her lariat from her saddle horn and formed a large loop. Okay Blackjack, she thought, let’s do this.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, the coal black gelding took off at a flying lope. He spotted a calf and seconds later had him cut from the herd. Cheyenne expertly threw the loop over the calf’s horns and dragged him to the fire.
The minute she entered the corral, one of the cowhands hurled the calf into the air; it landed with a thump on it’s side. The other three cowboys held the calf down as Cheyenne’s father pressed the hot iron to the calf’s hide.
The sizzle of burning hair, the bawl of a calf in pain, and then it was over. One of the cowboys quickly released the calf and the frightened animal galloped, tail in the air, toward another chute and into the pasture.
Six hours later, Cheyenne had roped the last of her family’s four-hundred head and the calf ran out to meet it’s herd members. The girl dismounted her horse and led him to the pasture. Instead of turning him loose, Cheyenne tied her horse. “I’ll be right back, boy,” Cheyenne whispered. “Just gotta finish the day’s work.”
Before she met her horse again, Cheyenne had already groomed six of the ranch horses, collected the eggs from the chicken coop, worked three more green-broke colts in the round pen and had dinner. The sun was hovering a ways above the land when the girl mounted again. She steered her sturdy Quarter Horse toward the desert. “Let’s go, boy,” she said. “Just you and me.”
They loped peacefully across the hot, dry plain, never breaking stride. After about a half hour of peaceful riding, Cheyenne looked down to see that her horse’s pure black coat was speckled with white lather. She slowed him down to a walk. “Oh Blackjack, you’re the greatest,” Cheyenne whispered. He heard his mistress and flickered an ear toward her.
Still rubbing her horse’s lathered neck, Cheyenne turned her horse around towards home. Then, she looked up.
There, in front of the setting sun, was a figure. It reminded Cheyenne vaguely of when she had watched Blackjack grazing so quietly in the sunrise. Except this unknown figure sent shivers down the teenage girl’s spine.
This was a cowboy, dressed from hat to spurs. A lariat was wound tightly around his saddle horn, and he held his reins on his mount’s neck. His horse was a stocky Quarter Horse like Blackjack, although any markings were undistinguishable. The frightening part was that the man was only about fifty yards away - and Cheyenne had a terrible feeling this cowboy meant trouble. It was unusual, a lone rider out in the desert; Cheyenne had never encountered another horseman on any of her countless evening rides.
“He…” Cheyenne sputtered. “Hello?”
“Hello Cheyenne. Hello Blackjack,” the man said, a cool, unnatural edge to his voice. Cheyenne shuddered and felt goose bumps creep up her arms, even though the desert heat had yet to subside. How did the man know her name? And what self-deserving cowboy greets a horse?
The man went on. He leaned forward in his saddle, resting his forearms over his saddle horn. Cheyenne imagined if she could see his face, his eyes would be locked on hers.
“You are attached to that horse, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice still calm, collected…eerie.
“Why…why yes, sir. I love him very much,” Cheyenne answered hesitantly. The cowboy’s reply was a mocking laugh.
“No cowboy - or cowgirl - ever gets far with an attachment to anything. It only leads to pain in the end. I learned the hard way. Do you think I got where I am now through love? Caring? Compassion?” The mysterious man laughed again, slowly; such a lighthearted gesture also seemed unnatural, coming from this strange man. “Don’t trust the love of anyone, kid. It just doesn’t work out.” For a fraction of a second, Cheyenne thought his voice lost its eerie smoothness and let an edge of irritation slip through.
The man had hardly moved since Cheyenne had seen him, but now Cheyenne could hardly see his shoulder slouch forward, as if his arm were reaching down.
The startling bang Cheyenne heard next was enough to make her jump right out of the saddle. That, along with the ear-piercing squeal erupting from Blackjack, sent her into a cold panic. Blackjack skidded backward, his head held high. Looking straight ahead, Cheyenne could see the fear in her poor gelding’s eyes. For a moment, he continued to prance, then, without notice, Blackjack’s knees buckled and he toppled to the ground. Hitting her head on a stone, Cheyenne lay still.

Darkness had fallen over the desert when Cheyenne awoke. She leaned up, and a sharp pain struck her stomach. Looking down, she saw the saddle horn had put pressure against her body. And then, she saw something that made her shriek in terror.
There, under her own body, was Blackjack. His eyes were still wide and scared, but his barrel did not move underneath his rider. Looking down the gelding’s neck, still white with lather, Cheyenne saw her horse’s shoulder. Blood smeared in an ugly line all the way down to Blackjack’s pastern. The saddle was still secure on the horse’s back, and Cheyenne was still seated properly, although her lower legs were bent backward, as if she were kneeling.
She looked up, tears in her eyes. The man - the murderer - was still there on his own horse. His mount sniffed Blackjack’s still body, willing the gelding to move. But, as more tears came, Cheyenne realized the horrible truth.
Blackjack was gone.
Cheyenne looked up. The man was closer now, close enough that, if she trusted her arm not to shake, trusted her own strength enough to do so, Cheyenne could reach out and touch the forelegs of the strange man’s horse. However, through her tear-filled eyes and with darkness quickly approaching, Cheyenne was still unable to identify the man.
“What did I tell ya, kid?” the man said, a smirk on his tanned face. “Real cowhands learn early on that love just isn’t meant to be on the ranch.” He still smiled, his cool demeanor taken over again, as Cheyenne’s hesitant fingers reached down to twist around a lock of Blackjack’s mane. His body was cold, as was his rider’s.
Cheyenne had always been quick-tempered and reckless. But as the reality of what that man had just done…how such a stranger could come and destroy her world, and still sit there, smiling…it was too much. Slowly, so slowly, Cheyenne reached behind her and fumbled through a saddlebag. She always had it with her, always, when she rode alone…
Finally, her she found what she was searching for. The girl’s fingers, steadier now, flinched as the cool metal met her skin. The recovery was fast, however, and Cheyenne closed her eyes, and slowly wrapped her long fingers around the pistol. Taking a deep breath, she concentrated.
And, in a reflex quicker than Cheyenne would have thought humanly possible, she whipped around in the saddle, and her anger ignited, along with the gunpowder.
As the stranger’s body went limp in his saddle and the echo of the gunshot faded into the distance, Cheyenne sat, rigged, every muscle tense, her arm still extended, pistol aimed, as if ready to shoot again, should the man react.
But when the stranger’s horse spooked and skidded sideways, and as the dead man’s body slid to the ground, Cheyenne knew there would be no more shots fired that day. And as the man’s cow horse wheeled around and galloped back toward the ranch, Cheyenne knew she had found her revenge.