“Dust
in My Eyes”
Disclaimer: This is a work of
fan fiction, you’re reading it for free. I wrote it for free, so don’t you be
trying to sue. That would be more trouble then I’m worth.
Spoilers: None
Summary: A member of the Favor
outfit awaits his night hawk shift.
***To Grey, thank you for
looking this over! You are awesome!***
* * Author’s Notes: Okay so
this fic isn’t exactly normal, but it does pertain to the characters in Rawhide
(sort of anyway). It’s just from a very different perspective. Once
again I owe my inspiration to the sweltering boredom and isolation that I face
daily in the garden center at Lowes. Enjoy! **
It was evening, the herd was
bedded down and another exhausting day had at last found closure. I stood and
dozed at the hitch line as I awaited my approaching nighthawk shift. A small
rustling in the brush nearby gave me a start, I flinched slightly but not
enough to wake the others. My ears went alert as I assumed a rattlesnake was
going to slither out of that small bush. Instead I was met by a small creature
that timidly crept out from the shelter of the brush.
The small rabbit saw that I was
aware of it’s presence and it froze, unsure if my presence was a threat to it.
Immediately I relaxed my stance, the cottontail acted in kind and started to
groom itself.
“Hello,” I stated softly, the
bunny ignored my greeting and busied itself with the task of grooming its ears.
Once it was satisfied that its ears were tidy it looked up at me in a curious
way. For a moment I wondered if this rabbit even knew how to speak.
“What are you doing here?” The
young rabbit asked hopping a bit closer to me.
“Resting for the night,” I
replied.
“You keep strange company,
Mustang,” The rabbit scratched an itch behind its left ear and then eyed me
suspiciously.
“Oh, you mean the others.”
“Yes. Why do you stay with them,
Mustang? You could break free; join your wild brothers once more. You could be free…like
all of us.”
I chuckled to myself. The rabbit
was right, if I had wanted to I could have broken my tie or even chewed the
line through and ran away. All of us could have left if we really wanted to,
but the colt-like desire to be wild had long since left me behind. “No…I like
traveling with these creatures. They have wisdom that I shall never have and
they take care of me.”
The rabbit rolled his eyes, “Nature
could take care of you if you were free. You could go and do whatever you
pleased.”
“No, I like working with these
masters. I have no desire to leave and be free,” I replied gently.
“Why would you want to be among
these Predators?”
“Predators?” I laughed. “These
creatures are my caretakers, not my hunters. I do not fear them.”
“I do,” The rabbit
mumbled as he looked toward the safety of the bush and his hidden den.
“Understandably so,” I flicked
my tail back and forth gently. “But you are a source of food. I am a source of power,”
The rabbit was quiet, he didn‘t know what to say. “My master, the one the
others call Favor. He is like no one whom I have ever been ridden by.”
“He is a man like all the
others. They are all the same.”
“No, he is quite different from
most of their kind,” I paused trying to think of an instance that had made my
master unlike other men. “Did you see the dust storm that blew by yesterday?”
“Yes, I had to spend hours
cleaning my den of all the rubbish the wind blew in.”
“We were in the middle of that
storm,” The rabbit’s ears flicked up he seemed interested. “My master could
barely see through the dirt in the air, I couldn‘t really see at all and I
relied on him to guide me. When we had finished for the day and mercifully
bedded the grumbling cattle down it was like I had taken a dust bath. Everyone
was completely covered with a layer of fine dirt. We had all become buckskins.”
“Most of the drovers went and
bedded down, but my master stayed with me for a bit,” I shifted my weight and
continued to speak. “I was completely miserable. Every breath I inhaled smelled
of dust, my eyes hurt from it as well. I knew that the master was just as tired
as his men, he needed to eat and sleep. But I couldn’t argue with him. He took
off his bandana and wet it with some water from his canteen. He completely
ignored the dirt covering his own body and took his wet bandana and started to
wipe the dust away from my eyes and nose. It only took him a few moments, but
it was very thoughtful of him.”
“It would take more than that to
make me a slave to his kind.”
“I suppose that is the difference
between you and I.”
Footsteps were headed in my
direction. The rabbit I had been speaking to had disappeared into the darkness
and safety of the night. I recognized the pace of my master, it was once again
time to work.
For a brief moment my youthful
thoughts of running wild with a herd returned to me, followed by the reality
that a wild life was a dangerous one. (Being a cattleman’s mount is dangerous
as well, but I felt protected to a certain degree and would rather chance it
with the men then my own kind.) As the master placed the saddle on my back I
felt a sense of satisfaction course through me. I recognized the mutual trust
between the master and I, something a wild horse would never know. It was at
that moment I was grateful that I wasn’t wild.
The End.