“Don’t Look Between My Legs“ – The Giant Widow Warned But When The Lonely Cowboy Did, He
The wind on the high plains did not simply blow. It hunted. It scoured the earth with a hollow, jealous scream, stripping warmth from stone and moisture from soil. The sky above the territory hung low and heavy, the color of a bruised iron skillet pressing down on the flat miles of short grass that stretched toward a horizon that never seemed to draw nearer.
The air carried the metallic scent of dust and the sharp, coppery promise of snow waiting just beyond the cloud bank, ready to bury the world. Eli Turner rode through the gray emptiness with his chin tucked into the collar of his sheepskin coat. He was a man worn down by miles. His hat was pulled low, the brim battered and stained with the sweat of three different territories. His eyes were the color of old flint, hard and unreadable.
He was nearing 30, though the lines around his mouth suggested he had lived those years twice over. He carried little: a thinning bedroll, a saddlebag with a lump of hardtack and dried beef, and a silence heavier than both. He moved from job to job like a man outrunning his own shadow. Staying in one place meant knowing people. Knowing people meant remembering. Remembering was a luxury he could not afford.
He had left a life behind in Kansas, buried under 6 ft of black dirt, and he had not stopped moving since.
The blue norther struck like a hammer. One moment the air was merely cold. The next, it became a blinding white sheet of ice crystals driven by a gale strong enough to strip the hide off a steer. The temperature dropped 20° in 10 minutes. The cold seeped through Eli’s coat, searching for blood heat. His horse, a sturdy bay gelding long past his best years, pinned its ears back and shuddered.
They were crossing a dry wash, its banks steep and crumbling, when a violent gust shoved the horse sideways. A hoof caught in a hidden badger hole masked by a tumbleweed. The animal went down with a terrified squeal. Eli kicked free of the stirrups by reflex, but the ground came up too fast. His shoulder slammed into frozen earth. His head cracked against a jagged rock.
The world went white, then black, then swam back into nauseating gray. He lay in the wash as the wind howled over the lip like a funeral choir. Blood ran hot and metallic down the side of his face. He tried to stand. The horizon tilted dangerously. His horse struggled upright a few yards away, favoring its left foreleg but standing.
He forced himself up. His knees felt like water. The cold was already gnawing at his fingers. He grabbed the reins. He could not remain still. To stop moving in a blue norther was to die.
He walked, leading the limping horse. Time dissolved in the whiteout. The cold became narcotic, urging him to lie down and sleep. Just as the gray light of afternoon bled into darkness, he saw it: a thin thread of smoke rising against the wind.
He stumbled toward it.
A homestead emerged from the storm, perched on a rise that took the full brunt of the gale. The barn leaned west. The corral was patched with driftwood and wire. In the yard, a woman stood before a massive chopping block, splitting wood with terrifying efficiency. The axe bit through heartwood with sharp cracks.
She was tall and broad-shouldered, with a back straight as a fence post. A man’s heavy coat strained at her frame. She brought the blade down as if trying to split the world itself.
Eli let go of the reins and stepped forward. His boot scraped rock. She spun, the axe coming up in a smooth defensive arc.
“Who is there?” she shouted, her voice roughened by wind.
He tried to raise a hand. “I need—” The wind stole the rest. He swayed.
She approached, the axe held across her chest. Her face was carved from the same hard land: sharp cheekbones, a grim mouth, dark guarded eyes. She studied him with calculation, not pity.
He took another step. The ground vanished beneath him.
Rough hands caught him before he fully struck earth. Strong hands, larger than he expected. She grunted with effort, hauling him upright.
“Come on then,” she muttered. “You are heavy as a dead steer.”
She dragged him inside. The heat of the stove hit him like a blow, burning as frozen skin thawed too fast. She bolted the door against the storm and stripped off her coat. Beneath it she wore a patched gray wool work dress that did nothing to hide the power of her build. She was 6 ft tall if she was an inch.
She knelt beside him. “Sit up.”
He obeyed, bracing against the leg of a heavy oak table. The cabin was sparse and clean, built for survival. A cast-iron stove radiated fierce heat. On a high shelf lay a photograph frame turned face down.
She washed blood from his face with hot water. “Hold still. This will sting.” Corn whiskey burned into the gash on his head. He gripped the table until his knuckles whitened.
“Need to stitch it. It is deep.”
“Do what you have to.”
She passed a needle and thread through a lantern flame and stitched with steady hands, though a tremor surfaced whenever he flinched. When his boot shifted on the floorboards, she startled, shoulders rising. She watched the door bolt often, as if expecting it to fail.
She tied off the last stitch. “Done.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I would have died out there.”
She scrubbed her hands as though his blood were poison. “Rest. Blanket in the corner. Sleep there. Do not come near the bed.”
“I can pay—”
“I do not want your money. I want you to sleep. In the morning, when the storm breaks, you leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He wrapped himself in buffalo hide and wool. She sat at the table with her back to him, staring at the dark window like a sentinel guarding an empty fort.
Morning arrived with deafening silence. The world lay encased in ice. His head throbbed. The cabin was empty but warm. Coffee sat on the stove.
Outside, the barn roof sagged. Fences leaned drunkenly. A herd of perhaps 30 cattle huddled in a windbreak. Near the garden patch stood a fresh grave marked by a plain wooden cross.
In the barn he found her struggling to hoist a heavy hay bale into the loft.
“Let me get that.”
She dropped it, startled. “I told you to leave.”
“My horse is lame. He needs a few days.”
“I cannot feed a hand.”
“I do not want wages. I will work for my keep. Fix the roof. Mend the fence. Break that gelding in your corral. A broken horse is worth three times a wild one.”
She crossed her arms. “Why?”
“I hate owing a debt.”
She studied the sagging roof, the failing fence, her chapped hands. Winter was coming.
“3 days,” she said. “Fix the roof. Mend the north fence. Then you go.”
“Deal.”
She handed him a supply list. “Flour. Coffee. Nails. Take the wagon. My grey mare can pull it.”
Bitter Creek was a cluster of clapboard buildings around a muddy thoroughfare. When Eli entered the mercantile with her wagon, conversation died.
“You working for the widow Conincaid?” the clerk asked loudly.
“Just helping.”
“Brave man,” one of the men by the stove said. “Or foolish.”
“She is strange,” a woman whispered. “Unnatural.”
“I heard she killed him,” another man said. “Her husband, Frank. Crushed him.”
“No proof,” the clerk smirked. “Just that he ended up dead and she ended up alone.”
Eli paid $4.50 and left without comment. Outside, his jaw ached from clenching.
May waited when he returned.
“Store was out of dried peaches,” he said. “Got the rest. Extra pound of nails.”
They ate beans and cornbread in silence.
“Rules,” she said afterward. “You sleep in the barn loft. No questions. You do not ask about the grave. Or my husband. Or me. You work. You eat. When the weather breaks, you leave.”
“I can abide by that.”
She pulled down a Winchester rifle and checked it. “Coyotes.”
But her eyes were hollow.
That night he woke and found her at the table with the rifle across her lap, lantern burning low.
“There is coffee left,” she said softly.
They sat without speaking, the silence between them fragile and warm.
He looked at her mouth as she drank. A hunger stirred in him, sudden and sharp.
She saw it. Stiffened. “Go to the barn, Eli.”
“Good night, May.”
The days after the storm fell into rhythm. Eli patched the roof in biting wind. May reset corral posts using a chain and her mare. She worked like a machine built for endurance.
“You are tired,” Eli said at the well one day.
“I have run this place alone for 3 years.”
“I can see that.”
She shifted the subject to feed shortages. Winter wheat was gone. Grain had to be calculated between chickens and horses. Every resource measured against winter’s length.
“We move the herd Thursday,” Eli said. “I ride point.”
She nodded.
Two nights later, she woke him. “The white-faced calf. He is down.”
They fought for 6 hours in the freezing barn to save it, forcing warm milk and whiskey down its throat, rubbing circulation into stiff limbs. Their bodies pressed together in straw and lantern light. When the calf finally stood at dawn, May let out a half sob, half laugh she did not recognize.
“You did not let him go,” Eli said.
She pulled away quickly, the guard rising again.
Two days later, a deputy arrived with a notice. Voss Cattle Company claimed her southern boundary encroached on their water access. She had 30 days to contest.
“It is winter,” she said. “I cannot get a surveyor.”
“Not my problem, widow.”
When the deputy left, May’s face had gone pale.
“They can take it,” she whispered. “If I go to court they will laugh.”
“I will ride to the county seat,” Eli said.
“No.”
“We will figure it out.”
They went to town together for supplies. At the blacksmith, Silas doubled his rates. Eli paid $6 without further argument.
Children whispered as May passed. “Monster.”
A traveling peddler whistled. “You could hitch her to a plow.”
Eli grabbed him by the lapels and forced an apology.
In the wagon miles outside town, May erupted.
“You should not have done that. They will say I set you on him.”
“I could not let him speak to you like that.”
“You do not get to decide what I can handle. I do not need a knight. I need to be left alone.”
He drove in silence.
That night she mended his torn shirt by the fire. Her fingers grazed his ribs. His breath caught. She recoiled.
“New rule,” she said. “No touching unless it is life or death.”
“All right.”
Rain trapped them inside days later. They played cards. He spoke of Kansas. Of Sarah and Clara. Of bad water on the Oregon trail. He had buried them by an unnamed river and turned back.
“It was ordinary,” he said. “That is the worst part.”
“That is a hard thing to carry,” she replied.
That night she woke from a nightmare, whispering Frank’s name. He approached but stopped short of touching her. She seized his wrist instead, clinging until awareness returned.
He lay awake afterward, realizing he was no longer counting days until leaving.
Two weeks later, a Voss representative offered to buy her land at a fraction of its worth, claiming her deed was invalid.
“I let them take the ledgers when Frank died,” she admitted. “I did not understand the law. I was relieved he was gone.”
“I am going to the county seat,” Eli said.
She grabbed his sleeve. “Come back.”
He found the deed legal. The second boundary claim fraudulent, witnessed by J. Miller, Voss’s foreman.
Ten miles from home, three masked men ambushed him. A rope dragged him from the saddle. They broke his ribs and left him in the cold with a warning to drift.
He crawled home by dawn.
May found him collapsed near the trough. She dragged him inside, stripped off bloody clothes, bound his ribs.
“The deed,” he rasped. “It is real. They forged the second one.”
She worked with shaking hands.
“This is what men do,” she said. “They break things that will not bend.”
Then, for the first time, she spoke plainly.
“Frank was not a good man. He did not hit often where bruises showed. He marked what he owned in private ways.”
When the horse had kicked him, she had felt air return to her lungs.
“That is the secret,” she said. “Not that I am a monster, but that I survived one.”
He covered her hand with his. “You are not a monster, May.”
By evening his fever rose. In delirium he called for Sarah and Clara. She sponged him down. He murmured, “You are beautiful.”
She flinched, bracing for cruelty that did not follow.
Two days later he insisted they go to the judge. Horses in the yard interrupted them.
Sheriff Brady arrived with a posse, claiming $200 in back taxes. She had receipts.
“We seize assets,” the sheriff said.
A deputy leaned too close. “Boys say you ain’t built right underneath that dress. Maybe we ought to check.”
Eli stepped between them.
“You take one more step,” he whispered, “and I will kill you.”
The sheriff ordered the herd seized. They drove off her cattle.
That night she sat in darkness.
“They say I am a hermaphrodite,” she said quietly. “Or turned inside out.”
She unbuttoned her bodice and turned to the moonlight. Scars crossed her skin. Burns. Knife cuts. Ribs set wrong.
“Frank carved,” she whispered. “He wanted to make sure no other man would want me.”
Eli did not stare at the scars. He buttoned her dress.
“I just want you alive,” he said.
She kissed him fiercely, then fled, bolting herself into her room.
From the window he saw orange light bloom on the horizon.
Voss had burned the haystack.
The war had begun.
Part 2
The hay burned through the night, collapsing into black ash by morning. It had been the winter feed. May stood over the ruin, face smeared with soot.
“They took the herd,” she said hoarsely. “Now the hay is gone.”
“Not all of them,” Eli said. He had seen tracks leading into the scrub oak in the deep draw.
“We round them up,” he said. “Drive them to Oak Haven. Sell for cash. Hire a lawyer not in Voss’s pocket.”
“60 mi through badlands in November?”
“Staying here means waiting for them to finish it.”
She looked at the house, the grave, and finally at him.
“Saddle the horses.”
They gathered 18 head and set out under a hammered sky. The land resisted every mile. On the third day, at Iron Creek crossing, men from the Double Bar ranch jeered.
“Bear on a horse,” one shouted. “Mule in a dress.”
May did not flinch. Eli’s hand rested near his gun until the laughter faded.
On the fifth day, freezing rain turned to sleet. They pushed cattle into a canyon overhang. Soaked to the skin, they stripped off wet clothes to avoid hypothermia and shared a single dry blanket.
“Don’t look,” she whispered. “Please don’t look at me.”
“I am not looking,” he said. “I am just holding you.”
“If you get too close you will see what I am.”
“I know what you are. You are the woman who saved my life.”
It was a vow spoken plainly. She turned to him in the dark and kissed him slowly. When his hand touched a scar she flinched. He stopped, waiting. She guided his hand back.
What followed belonged to stone and darkness. It was chosen, not taken.
Morning came brutal and bright. She dressed quickly, fear rising. He rose without claiming anything, moved about with quiet respect.
“We are all right, May,” he said.
“We are all right,” she repeated.
Oak Haven was a railhead town. The hotel refused them rooms.
They slept in a livery loft. The cattle buyer offered $2 per head. Eli secured $4.
With $72, they sought legal counsel. Three offices refused them. An older woman directed them to Whitaker.
Whitaker confirmed fraud and filed for an injunction. But May would have to testify.
“They will attack you,” he warned. “They will drag every rumor into light.”
“File the papers,” May said. “I am done running.”
Outside, Miller and two men confronted them, demanding money and papers. Eli disarmed Miller, pistol-whipped another, and forced retreat.
They rode hard back toward home.
Part 3
The homestead became a fortress. Doors reinforced. Windows boarded. Supplies moved inward. Tobias the sheep farmer signed a statement confirming Voss’s men had moved markers.
Someone tarred “Devil woman” on the fence. A calf was shot and displayed with a sign reading “Warning.”
May buried it herself.
Mrs. Gable arrived and agreed to testify about the injuries she had treated.
Harlon Voss rode in person with Sheriff Brady, offering $500 to sign over the land. If she refused, they would reopen Frank’s death as murder.
“No,” May said.
Inside, Eli asked plainly, “Did you kill him?”
“He attacked me,” she said. “He fell and hit his head. I did not help him up. I told them the horse kicked him.”
“That is survival,” Eli said.
The attack came at 2:00 a.m. Torches hit the barn. They fired through slits. Eli was shot in the thigh.
May dragged him to cover and bound the wound. The riders fled.
“I can’t lose you,” she said.
“Show me,” he whispered.
In lantern light she bared the scars fully. He traced them reverently.
“Every one of these is a victory,” he said.
The hearing was packed. Darrow attacked her character, her body, her husband’s death.
“I admit I survived him,” May said. “He burned me. He cut me.”
Whitaker produced evidence Miller had been in jail in Texas when the second claim was filed.
The judge declared the document a forgery and ordered investigation. He granted protection.
Voss left with a predator’s stare.
Returning home, they found fences cut, cattle gone. A note read: The law stops at the river. Come get them if you want them or leave and live.
“Pack the wagon,” May said.
“If we run, we die slower,” Eli replied.
“Get the rifles.”
They tracked into the badlands and found Voss’s hidden operation: stolen cattle from multiple counties and a ledger recording brands.
Eli drew men off with gunfire. May slipped into the tent and seized the book. Voss raised a pistol; she hurled the ledger, knocking his aim wide, and tackled him.
Eli held Sheriff Brady at gunpoint.
Voss lunged with a broken table leg. May caught his wrist midair and twisted until his shoulder popped.
“I am not a freak,” she snarled. “I am the landowner.”
The deputies surrendered.
They returned to Bitter Creek with Voss, Brady, and the ledger.
Winter remained hard but clean. Voss awaited trial. The sheriff was deposed. Townsfolk tipped their hats.
Mrs. Gable later brought a 14-year-old girl named Alice, orphaned by Voss’s seizures.
“We have a spare room,” May said. “No one will hurt you here.”
Spring came.
May stood before the mirror, scars visible, no longer apologizing for her size. She left the top button of her dress undone.
Eli’s hair had begun to gray. His leg bore a permanent hitch.
They stood together at the new fence line as the sun rose.
“I used to think I was cursed,” May said.
“You were never cursed,” Eli replied. “You were built for a heavy load. Now you do not carry it alone.”
The wind blew. The grass bowed. The fence held.
And they chose each other in the quiet morning.
