Donovan McGuire's home was in Boston; a grand Tudor styled home tucked into the center of high society. Before her death, his mother had made sure that her son's upbringing suited the McGuire lifestyle, and name. The best teachers money could buy had schooled him. French, Latin, and Italian unconsciously spilled out of his mouth frequently, a testament to his skill, and his teacher's tenacity. His blood was as blue as the deep of the Atlantic Ocean.
Unfortunately, however, Donovan McGuire's home has just been sold to pay off the debt that was the inheritance his father bequeathed to him three days ago. All that was left of Donovan's lifestyle was the knowledge he had been taught, which he discovered was completely useless outside high society, and an arrogance that exiled him from Boston's lower class which he now belonged to.
With nothing more than a hundred dollars, a satchel that held his clothes and a few small personal belongings, he took his father's horse and left the city he had always called home. He had no where in particular he planned on going, so he steadily worked his way West, sporadically stopping to do physical labor for money. Sometimes he worked on the railroads, or occasionally helped some farmer build a fence for a horse corral. Such physical labor his lean, aristocratic body had never known before. Gone was the superior arrogance, the academic, and the upper class. In place was a man of presence, large and physically formidable, completely lost in the wilderness of the prairie.
Walking next to his exhausted horse, Donovan kicked at the rocky trail, sending up a plume of dust. It was well past nightfall, and he was just as exhausted as his horse. There was a small scattering of lights in the near distance, which he figured was a small town. Fields of grass stretched out, punctuated by small herds of cows and the occasional farm.
"It's getting late," he said to his horse. Talking to the horse was a habit that began a week into his travels, and it annoyed him immensely. What kind of a cultured individual talked to his horse? Even if he was lonely.
The horse just snorted.
Donovan had learned quickly how dangerous it could be to wander into an unknown town at night. People were wary of outsiders in general, but at night it turned into a fierce protectiveness that usually included shooting first and asking questions later.
"Perhaps we should find a place out here to camp tonight."
The horse snorted again.
He made for a small stream that gurgled nearby. Sheltered by a few scraggly trees and high brush, Donovan made his bed for the evening. Despite the cold, exhaustion had made the decision to forgo a fire that evening, and as soon as his head hit the rolled up jacket that served as his pillow, he was asleep.
Riding the horizon, the moon was bursting with light. The tall grass shadowed the ground, but the glowing night made moving fairly easy. Sounds of running water covered the soft sound of footfall. There was a horse to the left, watching with guarded silence. A lump of a person was curled under a blanket, his handguns, sitting in their holsters, were uselessly sitting five feet away.
Kneeling a foot away from the sleeping person, a dark figure held a rifle up, and pulled back the hammer. The sharp sound brought the unconscious lump immediately awake.
"Don't move," a low voice said slowly. The figure aiming the alarmingly large rifle, alarmingly close to his person left Donovan feeling completely vulnerable and incredibly stupid. How could he have left his guns over by the horse?
The moon, and a wide brimmed hat shadowed the features of the stranger before him, and the only impressions Donovan could make were that the man was rather small. Regardless of stature, however, he wasn't about to try and take down someone holding a gun that close to him. He has seen what a gun like that can do.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Donovan McGuire, and I..."
"What are you doing on my land?"
"Sleeping," Donovan answered the quiet voice. "We were only going to be here for the night."
The stranger seemed to think about that for a moment.
"Get up." Donovan got up. "To your left; move."
Donovan began walking. A few minutes and a few nudges of the rifle later, he could see the lights of a small log cabin nearing.
"Inside." Donovan went inside, followed by the stranger. He turned around at the sound of the door closing.
The man had set the rifle down on a low cabinet next to the door, and had begun to unwind a long scarf from around his neck. When he took off his hat, Donovan realized that the man with the rifle was actually a woman.
As she pulled off a pair of dark brown gloves, she spoke again; "Why didn't you just come up to the house? I would have let you stay for the night."
"If you would have been so accommodating, why did you have that rifle trained on me the whole way here?"
She smiled sarcastically, "Not from 'round here, are you?" Her words were laced with southern honey.
"Boston." His tart answer made her smile widen, and Donovan felt his heart skip a beat or two. When she first took off her hat, he had thought her features plain and rough, but when she smiled, he realized how wrong he was.
Her tanned skin, he now noticed, was smooth and perfect. Blond hair was pulled back into a utilitarian braid, yet the strands were so fine that some had escaped from it's bond to curl around her heart shaped face. On a closer look, dark eyes turned out to be a moody gray color he had never seen before. It was her smile, however, that turned the features he originally thought plain, into something extraordinary.
"Now then, that's a pretty distance. What are you doing out here, love?"
