Lou had thought that she had felt ill before, now she felt like death warmed over. Her outsides seemed determined to turn inward and spill her insides outward, child included and it terrified her to death. Although she had never carried a child before, Lou instinctively knew that something was seriously wrong with her..or with the baby itself, yet she refused to give Kid and Jimmy the satisfaction of knowing that something was wrong with her. They would only use it against her..to prove to everyone else that she was as incompetent of caring for herself as they thought she was. So, instead she suffered in silence and in retaliation for the extreme pain that she was in…Lou was determined to put Kid and Jimmy through as much hell as she could in her present circumstances.
Dawn was just beginning to break over the horizon in a myriad of pastels when the trio of riders met up with Buck and Ike at the swimming hole outside of Rock Creek. Neither Buck or Ike looked too pleased to have their fellow riders join up with them, sure that if they all rode into the station yard together that they, too, would get blamed for Kid and Jimmy’s hair brained idea. As Kid and Jimmy dismounted and led their horses down to the edge of the water to drink, Ike carried his newly filled canteen over to Lou, still astride Lightning to let her drink. With a grateful smile, Lou lifted the canteen to her chapped lips and drank her fill and then handed the canteen back to Ike.
“If my tormentors don’t mind, will you help me down Ike so that I can go relieve myself?” Lou said snidely, loud enough for Jimmy and Kid both to hear her.
Ike nodded automatically and reached up his arms to grasp Lou around the waist to lower her off of the horse, but found another set of hands there before him. The dark look from Jimmy was enough to convince Ike that it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to say anything and reluctantly Ike moved away. Lou struggled against the hold Jimmy had on her waist, pushing her clasped hands against his chest with enough force to break his hold on her and she stumbled away from him.
“Are you planning on coming along and watching me or are you going to give me some privacy?” Lou spat furiously in his face.
“You act as if we’re getting some pleasure out of doing this Lou, when we aren’t! Why can’t you just allow us to help you without you raising such a fuss about it? You act as if we are some vile men who are bent on causing you as much harm and pain as we can on you, when all we’re trying to do is help you!” Jimmy exclaimed.
“Last I checked people who were interested in helping out their friends, didn’t track them down like some outlaw, bound their hands together, and force them to go somewhere they didn’t want to go.” Lou retorted, before stalking towards a blackberry patch a short distance away.
Once she was behind the relative shelter of the blackberry patch, Lou unsnapped her belt buckle from its clasp and began fumbling with the buttons on her denims. She began fidgeting from one foot to the other as she became more and more aware of just how full her bladder was and was nearly frantic by the time she had succeeded in unbuttoning all of the buttons as she felt a trickle of something wet and thick slide down the inside of her inner thigh and thought for sure she was on the verge of wetting herself thoroughly. Tears sprang into her eyes at the humiliation of going back out to face her fellow riders with wet denims, even as she managed to tug her denims down and relieve her bladder at last. Relief flooded through her that at least one humiliation had been adverted as she finished her business and tugged her denims back into place on her slender hips and began refastening the buttons. It was only as she started to step out from behind the blackberry patch, that Lou happened to look down and see the red stain on the ground. Fear filled her like an iron glove and squeezed the air from her lungs with such intensity that Lou felt faint and the world to spin around her. She fell to all fours on the ground and fought against the dizziness, by lowering her head and closing her eyes. When her world had stopped spinning, Lou slowly rose upright onto her feet as she heard Kid call out to her that it was time to go. Determined not to let on to what had just occurred, Lou set her shoulders and walked back out to join the others and found that Ike and Buck had already ridden off. Reluctantly she allowed Jimmy to help her back into Lightning’s saddle and the trio of riders started off at a brisk pace on the last stretch of their long ride.
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