“Which is?”Sully muttered, angling his cowboy hat so that the mid-morning sun was shaded from his tired, no doubt baggy eyes.
“Didn’t they hang two bank robbers and that set off the curse?”Dean asked, tugging at his collar like a kid on his way to church.“There’s a webpage about it online, but it wasn’t very good.And yours was more like a sales page, so...”
“There’s a history section on there,” Sully bristled, having written it his own damn self.Edited it and formatted it and cropped the damn pictures, too.“Seems to me like a good little overachieving college boy like you would have sought that out first and foremost like,Dean.”
Dean glanced over, once again giving Sully’s cowboy outfit a sultry once over.“I figured that’s what you’re here for,Sully.”
Sully tipped his well-worn hat and gave his sprightly young passenger a sultry little wink.“You got that right, pardner.”
Dean rolled his eyes but couldn’t hide his cheeky grin.“So, are you gonna do that all day?”
“Do what?”
“Wear that outfit?Use that accent?Talk in cowboy talk?”
“What, you don’t like it?”
Dean started to answer, shaking his head as if by rote, then stopped himself.Nodded.Smirked.“Actually, it’s kinda sexy?”
Sully sat a little taller in the saddle, ehr, driver’s seat, beaming with pride as he explained, “I wear it for the tourists, you know?Ghost town.Old west.Cowboy guide, they really go for it.”
Dean frowned.“And nobody calls you out about the inconsistencies?”
“The what now?”Sully frowned, taking the turnoff from Route 9, heading south on County Road 7 for another mile or two.
“You know, like the fact that Gravel Gulch is in Kentucky, so ...not the Wild West, exactly?And that most of the townsfolk worked at the mill or logged for timber up in the hills, so ...not a lot of actual cowboys?”
Sully took his eyes off the deserted two-lane road, not another car as far as the eye could see.“No, Dean, they don’t.”
“Never?”
“Ever,” Sully conceded, glancing away with a new cut to his jib.
“Oh, well ...sorry?”
“You don’t sound sorry.”
“Well, I am,” Dean insisted, reaching over to squeeze the faded denim covering Sully’s thigh.“Honest, maybe ...maybe now you can tell me the history of Gravel Gulch, you know, like you were going to before.”
“You mean, before you insulted me?”
“Yes, that.”
“I don’t think I want to now.”
“Come on, Sully, you have to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I mean, I am paying for this tour, so...”
“No, you’re not!”
Dean squeezed his thigh anew, skinny little fingers creeping up toward his crotch.“Okay, fine, well pretend like I am then, okay?”
“I suppose when you put it that way,” Sully teased, the two-lane road still deserted as the sun continued to rise behind the towering trees on either side of the roadway.
“Legend has it that, once upon a time, the Carter brothers ran a bloody streak up and down Clay County.They were Civil War deserters, ruffians, bank robbers, murderers, thieves, lowlife scumbags with, apparently, really bad memories.”
