Cowboy Girl Annie Read online

  The Cowboy Girl Annie

  Fay Risner

  Cover Art 2015

  All Rights Reserved by

  The Graphic Fairy.com

  Published at Smashwords by Fay Risner

  Copyright (c) 2015

  Fay Risner

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to the actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locals are entirely coincidental. Excerpts from this book cannot be used without written permission from the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  In 2004, this story was entered as a short story in Arkansas Writers' Conference contests as a short story in the White County Creative Writers' Award category and received third honorable mention.

  In 2007, this story was entered as a short story in White County Creative Writers contest and award first honorable mention in the Tell Me A Story category.

  “I don't have time to put on makeup every day; I need that time to clean my gun.”

  Henriette Mantel

  Chapter One

  Cowboy Girl Annie looked up above the buildings at the cloudless, robin egg blue sky. This was a day she could have enjoyed if she wasn't so riled. One of the warmest days yet this spring, and it was still morning.

  It didn't take her long to decide she was warm enough she didn't need the long tan duster she'd shrugged into earlier when the air was frosty.

  Annie stopped her shopping cart and wiggled out of the duster. After she rolled the duster up like a bedroll, she laid it in the back end of the cart. No need to get rid of the duster just yet. Early morning and evenings were still too chilly to go without a coat.

  Annie had just gotten a good start on her daily rummaging hunt, and she was moving too slow to suit herself. Her rusty, shopping cart pushed awfully hard already. The right, front wheel had frozen up, and the other three were squeaking like a sick mouse. That old cart was bound to wear her out before it wore out. Her back hurt between the shoulder blades from straining.

  If the noise didn't drive her crazy, the fact that she wasn't making her rounds quick enough would. Moving slow made her anxious. She wanted to finish her morning rounds of all the dumpsters as early as she could. If she didn't, she wouldn't beat all the other rummagers to the good stuff.

  Annie's brown cowboy hat's wide, floppy brim hung down over her forehead, shading her eyes from the sun's glare. She pushed the hat up slightly, hooked a stray, light brown curl with her finger and stuck it behind her ear.

  Yip, it's a right sunny day. The kind that made folks squint. She surely could use a pair of sun glasses about now, but not much chance of finding a usable pair in the trash. Who would throw away a perfectly good pair of sunglasses? Nobody. That's who.

  Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak! Annie stopped pushing the grocery cart and stood back to stare at the offending wheel. She was feeling very temperamental at it for ruining her day. Suddenly, she kicked the wheel with her worn, knee length, left, black cowboy boot.

  Annie grabbed her foot and hopped up and down. Ouch! That purely hurt my toes!

  The fierceness of the painful action was enough to make her scold herself. What for did she want to go acting so foolish? It didn't do her much good to grumble or have a temper fit that dumb. What if she had broken her toes? She'd be limping forever which wouldn't help speed her morning rummages up any.

  Annie glared at where the toe of her boot used to be. What had been a small hole was now slightly larger. The toe of her reddish gray Rockford sock was exposed.

  That outburst hadn't helped the looks of her cowboy boot at all. If she found herself bootless one of these days, where would she find another pair of boots like the ones she was wearing? No where around this citified area that was for sure.

  For maybe the hundredth time, Annie wished she had a chance of finding a different shopping cart. A discarded one left in some alley that was in better shape than this one would surely be a dream come true. That would be purely grand! Why, it would be just like Christmas.

  Her wide smile, showing uneven gaps in her stain teeth, was caused by her daydream of a shopping cart sporting a large red bow on the handle bar.

  Annie's smile suddenly dried up and was replaced with a down in the dumps frown. Realty set in again. Annie slapped her cheek as if to wake herself up from the dream. There she went again making wishes that could never come true.

  What she'd like to have to make life easier for herself, and what she had to make do with were two different realities. She always figured life was similar to a game of poker. She called whatever happened in her life the luck of the draw. That's the way it would always be for her, and she'd faced that fact a long time ago.

  What is is what is so her old daddy always used to say. She had to put up with the old shopping cart that was hers, because it was all she had. There weren't no use working herself into a dither over it.

  When she had time, Annie figured she'd better walk by Jerry's Auto Repair Shop. She'd look around in the driveway for a puddle of spilled grease to put in the protesting wheel’s axle. That always got the wheel spinning again. She'd have relief for just a little while at least.

  The grocery cart was loaded which made it harder to push even when the wheel didn't freeze up. She had to allow for that, but Annie felt as if her finds were money in the bank to her. She was purely glad for every item she found since she always had something to trade.

  Besides, she wouldn't know what to part with if she had to throw something away to lighten the load. Sure as shooting, what she threw away would be what she needed to trade to somebody for something else next time around.

  The black leather gloves with holes in the fingers perhaps. Nah, if she hadn't traded the gloves by winter, she could use them herself when the weather turned cold. Besides, they weighed next to nothing which wouldn't help the cart's weight problem.

  What about the pair of scuffed men's slip on penny loafers? She couldn't wear them. They were way too big for her unless she wore several pairs of socks.

  Besides, she preferred her cowboy boots. Her boots went along with her outfit, a red cowl necked blouse and a tan riding skirt.

  There was a bit of wear left in the men's penny loafers. Might be someone would want them bad enough to trade her something that she could use for herself or sell for money.

  She didn't see any need to ponder on the rest of the treasures in the cantankerous shopping cart. She'd just make excuses for all the other items. She knew there wasn't a thing she'd get rid of. Not after she worked so hard. She'd spent hours rummaging in the city park trash cans and store alley dumpsters just to fill the cart.

  Annie shaded her eyes with a hand, lifted her head and checked out the sun's position in the sky. It was around noon time. Right now what she needed was some food to eat. She hadn't eaten since yesterday's lunch. As if to remind her, Annie's stomach rumbled like a couple dogs fighting over a bone.

  She pushed the cart by Smoky Joe's BBQ diner. Coming up was the fancy hotel, The Sheradon. Those two establishments shared an alley. Their trash barrels and dumpsters were a good place to look for food scraps at lunch time.

  The hotel had a high society restaurant. At least, that was what she'd been told. If she tried to stick her head in the lo
bby door to find out for sure, Annie figured an hombre, in a black tuxedo, was bound to throw her out before she had time to get a gander at the restaurant.

  Just smelling the delicious aromas coming from the two eateries kitchen exhausts made Annie hopeful. If she was lucky enough to find fresh scraps in a dumpster from one eating joint or the other, she'd have the energy to keep pushing that stubborn cart the rest of the day.

  Getting lucky was the key. She didn't have much faith in her luck these days. If she had a horseshoe in her cart, it surely would be turned upside down to let all her luck run out.

  Annie looked down the alley. The long walk way was as dim and shadowy as dusk on the government range where she once herded cattle. For as sunny as it was on that spring day, not much light filtered between the two high brick walls of the buildings. The cool, dim lighting sent a spooky feeling running through Annie the minute she entered the alley. Her premonitions were usually right so what was going to happen to her next?

  Chapter 2

  A rat, hunkered low and skittered from under a dumpster, about as red as her shirt, on the hotel side of the alley. The nasty creature had the nerve to rush in front of her as if she didn't exist and cross the alley to a stack of blue, cooking oil drums. The critter squeeze in between two drums to hide.

  One time the Square K ranch's cookie, Flapjack Pete, told her that for every rat Annie saw there would be ten more hidden close by. She didn't know for sure if that was true of Montana. Flapjack Pete might have been pulling her leg like he was often known to do, but it sure was a fact in this town, she'd seen that rats were thick.

  She squinted, getting her eyes used to the shadows so she could see if it was safe to enter the alley. Rats didn't worry her much as long as she was fast enough to stay out of their way. She was used to them competing with her for food.

  No humans lurking around as far as she could tell. Now that purely was the good thing. She didn't ever want to be cornered in one of these dark alleys by some galoot that thought she would be willing to bed down with him for a spell. It surely was as plain as plain to her that she might not live to tell about something like that.

  Cowboy Girl Annie studied the red dumpsters lined up by the hotel and then the green dumpsters by Smokey Joe's BBQ diner.

  If she had her choice between the la te da fancy vittles from the hotel dumpster and the common barbecue vittles from the diner, she'd just as soon eat common good old barbecue.

  Maybe this morning she'd be lucky enough to be the first one to search the two bins lined up along Smokey Joe's BBQ diner wall.

  Again growls rolled through her stomach, louder this time. The repeated rumbles sounded like two, fierce, old tomcats fighting in a dark alley in the middle of the night. She'd heard those squalling fights often enough to recognize disagreeable tom cats. Now her stomach protesting that loud was what she called hungry.

  She thanked God that she inherited being tall from her daddy's side of the family. That height helped her to stand on tiptoes and be able to see inside once she raised the heavy, dumpster lid. Well, the three inch heels on her cowboy boots did help some, too.

  The trick was being strong enough to hold that lid up with one hand while she rifled around in the garbage with her other hand.

  After a quick peek, she made a lemonade face as she let the lid down as easily as she could so it didn't bang. Annie didn't want that loud, tinny sound echoing through the alley.

  She sure didn't want to create a racket that would cause someone to look out of the diner's back door. Worse yet, some fancy dressed hombre might come running from that ritzy hotel's side door and tell her to move on. Be her luck, one or the other guy would be mad as an old wet hem. They just might call the cops before they yelled at her.

  Disgusting clean trash! That was all she'd seen in that bin. If there was a bright side to recycling, she reckoned it was that she didn’t have to waste her time rummaging through all the washed, plastic jugs and flattened cardboard boxes in that dumpster.

  Looking in those dumpsters was just a waste of her time. It was plain as the nose on her face that she wasn't going to find any scraps of food to eat in a recycling bin or discover any tradeable items in there either.

  After Annie took a second to ponder about it, she decided there was a bright side to recycling bins. The large, cardboard box, with refrigerator written on it, she swiped from the appliance store dumpster to sleep under last winter was clean.

  At least, the box didn’t smell like rotten meat. The boxes she used to get over the years out of dirty trash behind the grocery store smelled rancid.

  She surely didn't miss the winters she slept under those stinky boxes. She attracted plenty of dogs back then. She'd hear them sniff around the box and paw it, trying to figure out how to get inside to lunch on the rotten meat they thought it held.

  Annie didn't mind the mutts nosing around. She drew the line when they lifted a leg and marked their territory on her box. She'd hear the spritzing sound, and the box would fill up with a caustic smell. That's when she boiled out the end she could unfold and threw her boot at the dogs to run them off. The odor of dog pee didn't fade away very quickly even after the box dried.

  The next dumpster, Annie found more to her liking the minute she opened the lid and took a whiff. A red barbecue sauce stained takeout box was perched on top of the heap. That box was thrown away not too long ago she reckoned since the sauce spots looked fresh and sticky.

  Annie snatched the box up and brought it out of the dumpster. She licked her dry lips as she hoped for plenty of meat on the leftover barbecued ribs. The box was heavy. Maybe a picky eater hadn't liked the hot sauce on the ribs and left most of the meat on the bones.

  She smiled with eager anticipation as she pictured the ribs. Some sucker's being fussy about his food choices was fine with her. She wasn't too choosy to eat hot sauce on her ribs. His loss was her gain.

  Her hands shook from hunger as she fumbled to opened the lid. Once she got a good look in the box, Annie's hands trembled even worse, vibrating the box as she stared into it. In the middle of the sauce stained box bounced a shiny revolver. She'd rather had hot sauce ribs.

  What dummy would hide a gun in a dumpster? Especially in an empty, messy ribs box where the gun could get all dirty.

  She darted a glance up and down the alley, tensing herself to run if she needed to get away. The hollow thud of footsteps warned her someone was coming by on the sidewalk.

  Annie leaned against the dumpster with her back to the sidewalk and froze to the spot. She didn't want to attract a passerby's attention.

  No way did she want to get caught with that gun in her hands if the hombre who put it in the dumpster was coming back after it.

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw a man, in a dark banker's suit, walk by fast without glancing into the alley. For once, she felt lucky.

  Annie wiped the sweat beads off her forehead with the sleeve of her blouse. Sometimes my imagination gets the best of me, Annie scolded herself. It ain't good for my constitution to worry so much.

  Chapter 3

  Annie took a deep breath to steady her trembling hands. When that didn't work, she mentally commanded her hands to stop shaking. She was making too much noise, bouncing the gun against the box. Someone passing by on the sidewalk was bound to hear and be curious enough to check out the noises.

  She glanced from one end of the alley to the other again just to make sure she was alone. This find was going to take some purely serious pondering about. The person who placed the box in the dumpster wouldn't make all the noise the banker man did, walking on the sidewalk.

  No sir! That person would skitter along as quietly as that rat she saw earlier. He'd be about as hunkered down and cagey as that rodent if he decided to come back for his gun and as mean as that rat if he was cornered.

  She eased the lid closed and stared at the box. What should she do with it? Guns were worth a heck of a lot of money. Too much for her to throw away one for no good reason when
she could use the money the gun would bring.

  There, indeed, lay the rub. Something bad had been done with that gun for sure. Like a bank robbery or someone was murdered with it.

  What other reason would a person have for throwing away an expensive weapon like that? Annie wondered.

  The gun might be broken, she argued with herself.

  No, it couldn't be that. If the gun didn't work, there wouldn't be any reason to hide it in a box to throw it away, she reasoned.

  The way the gun had been carefully placed on top of the rest of the garbage made it look as if the owner wanted the box easy to find later. The person might have thought about coming back before the dumpster was emptied.

  Annie had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She sure didn't want to be cornered in this alley with a gun that didn't belong to her. The owner would be in a hurry. He wouldn't be happy to see her holding the ribs box he wanted to take with him.

  What should I do? Annie asked herself.

  That same inner voice said, You get shut of that gun and do it fast. Put that dangerous thing back where you found it.

  Annie reasoned with herself. You sure don't want to be here when the gun's owner shows back up. What would happen when a thug sees you holding his gun box?

  Her inner voice warned, You would be a dead duck. That's what!

  Annie opened the dumpster lid and lowered the box inside just as gently as she imagined the owner had done it. She ought to try and put the box in about the same spot she picked it up from so no one would know she handled the box.

  Besides, she was smart enough to be afraid to drop the box. What if the gun was loaded, and the jolt made it go off. Wouldn't that be an awful thing to happen?