I'm back! This ficlet is for scribblesinink who prompted me with: Cowboy!Dean, complete with horse and duster, please. This may or may not be what you had in mind ... *g* Thank you, however, for giving me an excuse to plunk Dean down in my world. :-D

Title: A Thousand Square Miles of Wide Open
Author: ErinRua
Rating: PG
Length: @ 3200 words
Spoilers: None
Characters: Dean, OC, including the equine kind
Notes/Disclaimers/Summary: Dean gets in touch with his inner cowboy. Set pre-series, shortly before Season 1, when Dean was flying solo.



"Like I told you on the phone, only way to get there is horseback," Tex said. Though no older than Dean, the guy stared from under the brim of his black hat in a squinty-eyed way that measured and seemed to find wanting. "Reckon my old saddle will suit you."

Boots crunched the dry earth as the young cowboy - a real one, gangly legs, spurs, and all - turned and struck an actual mosey towards the corrals and barn that stood beneath giant old cottonwood trees. Dean watched and struggled against the distinct sensation of his stomach sinking.

"Hey, uh ... you know I don't know how to ride, right?"

"Not a problem," Tex - okay, his name was really Chris - drawled over his shoulder. "Horse don't know how to be rode."

He was joking. Right? Of course he was, because yeah, Dean got it: he was the pilgrim and John Wayne, there, thought the situation was funny. If they just built more damn roads out here, they wouldn't be having this discussion, let alone planning a trail ride out to deal with some dead freakin' miner's ghost.

The barn yawned in cavernous coolness, scented with hay and horse crap. Heavy bodies shifted in two stalls, the thud of hooves a warning to Dean's ears. It would be just his luck to get trampled to death before he even got in the saddle. A wall of sorrel muscle faced him when he neared the first stall, and he sidestepped hastily when that muscular rump began backing into the aisle.

"This here's Peso," Chris said as he ducked under the horse's neck. "He'll take care of you."

Dean took the reins, exchanged wary looks with one large brown eye, and plastered on a cocky grin. "Dude, I can take care of myself. Just tell him to keep his hooves where they belong."

Chris cocked a sardonic eyebrow. "Whatever you say. C'mon, we're burnin' daylight."

With that, Chris strode away, spurs clanking, and left Dean to contemplate the logistics of getting his ass to an altitude approximately twice its normal elevation. Okay, he'd seen The Unforgiven: he knew how to get on a horse.

He shoved his sawed-off pump shotgun into the saddle scabbard and only then realized a slight logistical problem. A man's natural physiology didn't exactly lend itself to cranking one knee up towards his ear. However, Dean got his foot in the stirrup, grabbed the saddle horn, and pushed off.

And up, and almost over the other side, only a desperate grab at saddle leather and horse hair saving him from an inglorious splat on the floor. Vertigo set in as the barn began swaying past at increasing speed, and Dean hauled himself upright and yanked on the reins.

Nearly got the back of Peso's hundred-pound skull in his teeth, too.

"Just ask him for what you want," Chris said mildly from somewhere behind him. "Don't need to rip his head off."

Peso blew and shook his head, heavy mane tossing, while Dean clenched his teeth and fished for his stirrups. He really hoped Chris wouldn't be a Chatty Kathy, because that smart-ass nasal drawl was going to get old real quick.

All squared away, he gave Peso a nudge with both heels - ask, okay, he could do that - and found his balance as the animal ambled out the door. Didn't look like they'd have to worry much about that daylight Chris had grumbled about, judging by the clouds building over the rawboned hills across the valley.

"Might want to tie this on behind your saddle," Chris said, and Dean twisted to see him leading his horse from the barn, free hand holding out a length of brown cloth.

Dean took it, and winced at a stink that smelled a lot like axel grease. "What is it?"

Chris cast him a pitying look. "Rain slicker."

Dirty brown canvas soaked in motor oil: that ought to turn rain all right, as well as possible small caliber bullets. Grimacing, Dean glanced at Chris, saw how the man rolled the slicker lengthwise to tie behind the saddle, and did his best to emulate.

Then the cowboy swung into his saddle with enviable grace, and headed them out towards the great beyond. Their walking pace jumped into a swinging trot, and within seconds, Dean knew his nuts would never survive the trip.

"If you can't post a trot," Chris offered without looking back, "you can just sort of stand in your stirrups."

Stand what?

"Otherwise you're just beatin' his back with your ass."

Right. Stand in the stirrups. Stand up on two itty bitty wobbling platforms, while galumphing along at fifteen miles per hour. No problem. Somewhat to his surprise, Dean discovered he could balance upright if he sort of let one hand choke the saddle horn.

Ahead, Chris bobbed easily in his saddle, as if his hip bones were welded into the rhythm of his horse's stride. Dean aimed violent thoughts towards the man, but kept his jaw clamped shut. It did seem a bit easier if he let his knees flex a little, like shock absorbers. Okay, he could do this.

However, as the fences slid behind and a broad sweep of sage and salt grass opened before them, he knew this was going to be one long-ass freakin' day.
Miles passed. The broad valley seemed to hang motionless and unchanging before them. The ranch and its old cottonwood trees shrank to a faint haze of green far, far behind. Puffy white clouds cast swatches of shadow that passed across the arid landscape, but the clouds darkened as their shoulders rose ever higher against the sky. On and on, the drumbeat pace carried them across a parched white playa that shimmered with illusionary water.

By now, Dean felt the hammer blows of each mile joggling bolts loose from his bones, but with his guide trotting stoically ahead, he refused to so much as squeak. If Buckaroo Banzai, there, could keep this up, so could Dean Winchester. Hell, this wasn't so bad at all.

The clouds slowly expanded to dark and bloated forms, until a sharp scent of damp alkali knifed past him on a whirling gust.

"Looks like we're gonna get it," Chris observed.

Dean turned his head, the first time in several miles he'd looked anywhere but grimly straight ahead. "Oh, just friggin' great."

Off to their left, a honkin' big black cloud dragged grey skirts of rain straight towards them. Another gust hit and raindrops the size of poker chips slapped pockmarks in the dust. Thunder rumpled dully and one raindrop splashed all across the back of his hand. He bit back a curse as he wiped it off on his shirt.

Thus preoccupied, Dean almost pitched over Peso's head when the horse blundered to a halt.

"Whoa!" he blurted, and felt his face flush crimson as he recovered himself under Chris' bland stare.

"Reckon we ought to brace ourselves," the cowboy said, and swung from his saddle to begin untying his slicker.

Sighing, Dean turned in his seat to untie his own.

"Might want to step off to do that, else Peso could take exception."

Right. Peel his blistered ass off this animal just so he could get off and climb back on again. Why the hell not.

Sighing, Dean bent forward, slung a leg back and over the horse's butt - and his knees buckled the instant he let his weight drop. A thousand pounds of meat suddenly snorted and lunged, and jerked him right off his feet.

"WHOA! SHIT!"

Everything stopped, and Dean found himself hanging at an awkward diagonal with one hand in a fistful of horse mane, while Peso craned his long neck and blew at him suspiciously.

"Right," wheezed Dean. "Nice horse. Just let me get my bearings, okay?"

By the time he got himself resituated to the vertical, Chris had already donned his slicker and remounted, and stared impassively down from his saddle.

"Trick knee," Dean said, forcing a bright grin. "Old football injury."

A dip of hat brim was the man's only response. Yeah, and Cowboy Bill bought that one. Whatever. Wrapping himself in twenty yards of greasy, smelly canvas didn't seem particularly appetizing, but once suitably attired, Dean braced himself, took a breath, and swung himself back into the saddle.

Oh, god, he never should have gotten off the horse. Now his pelvic bones were going to fracture and split like a freakin' wishbone.

"Good to go," Dean said through clenched teeth.

Chris shook his head. "Should have brought a hat, pard," he said, and turned his horse away, gigging it back into that infernal trot.

A rush of wind and rain forestalled any comment, and in seconds, the deluge whooped upon them. Whoever the hell said it didn't rain in the desert clearly hadn't come out here. Water pummeled and drenched Dean's hatless head, pouring down inside that damned slicker and clear to the crack of his ass. Mud splattered from the heels of Chris' trotting horse and slopped up his own pants legs with each of Peso's club-footed strides.

Yeah, Clint Eastwood would be lovin' this, about now. Not.

Then a colossal CRACK and a white blast of light deleted every thought from Dean's mind but, 'Oh, SHIT!' Peso leaped and slammed Dean back in his saddle, where he scrambled madly to recover his balance amidst driving rain and yards of wet, flapping slicker.

"Come on!" Chris' thin shout pierced the downpour.

Peso leapt into a run at the heels of Chris' horse, and all Dean could do was hang on as the rain slashed his face. Moments later, the dark blur of an old barn appeared through the streaming murk, and towards this, Chris led their sloppy charge. Dean flung himself from the saddle just a heartbeat behind Chris, and dragged Peso into the barn's shadowed interior after him.

"WHOO-HOO!" shouted Chris, and Dean turned in disbelief.

The young cowboy stood just in from the streaming eves, water dribbling from his hat brim, and he wore an enormous grin as bright as any madman's. As if feeling Dean's glare, he turned that manic grin towards him.

"Ain't it somethin'?" And Chris laughed, clearly having spent ten years too long in the sun.

Dean, however, simply stood there in the well-greased cocoon of his sodden slicker, and felt rainwater dribbling into his freakin' armpits. Peso snorted explosively and shook his big head, water flinging everywhere.

"Believe me, buddy," said Dean, patting one rain-slick shoulder, "I know just how you feel."

The thunder bashed and lightning flashed several more times, though none as close as that first. While men and horses huddled under cover, Dean felt his muscles stiffen and silently cursed the delay. At length, the storm drifted ponderously off to the east and sunlight reappeared to lift wands of steam from the puddles.

"Best we go," Chris said, back to his marginally sane, laconic self, and stumped out into the muck, horse in tow.

The very thought of crawling back up on that hard-ass saddle made his knees and butt-bones weep. But Dean stifled a groan, imagined Dad's sardonic command, 'Suck it up, dude,' and forced himself back to the job at hand.

More miles crept past. The day's shadow's shortened. Dean steamed like an oyster inside his slicker. Yet although other storm cells marched across the valley breathing deep-voiced rumbles and the scent of rain-soaked sage, he and his guide escaped any further direct hits by Dame Nature.

By noon, however, Dean wouldn't have cared if the wrath of God Himself had burst upon them. No matter how he tried to ease his balance or weight, the insides of his knees screeched blood raw, and he could feel his pelvis cracking like an old windshield with every bludgeoning step. Obviously, Clint Eastwood used a lot of stuntmen, and Dean wondered if he should have looked for someone else to do this part for him, too.

"Just up there," Chris announced, the first words either had spoken in over an hour.

Dean looked ahead to a steep hillside of tumbled rust-and-white colored rocks. Amongst them squatted a hodgepodge of broke-jawed ruins, where a town had once perched on the side of the hill. High above jutted wooden beams, nameless iron junk, and the gravelly spills of mine tailings; all that remained of busted hopes.

"Graveyard's just yonder on that knoll. Not much left of it."

The horses stopped and Dean contemplated the agony of dismounting.

"Right," he sighed.

Thankfully, Peso had stopped with the driver's side facing an uphill slope, so Dean could ease from the saddle with relative ease. At least, it worked until a rock rolled under his heel and nearly flung him beneath the horse. He caught himself by reflex alone, a warm, patient body catching his weight.

"Good boy," he rasped, and patted Peso's shoulder.

Oh, god, now he had to dig up a freaking grave. Going to be a trick, when he could hardly stand.

"Figure we could take turns diggin'," Chris said.

Dean looked at him. Saw only a bland, neutral expression on the cowboy's sun-browned face.

"Sure. Thanks."

The old graveyard was every bit as pathetic as the remains of the mining camp: jumbles of rocks, dry weeds, and a few boards tilting this way and that as grave markers. He counted four white Victorian stones marking the graves of more affluent souls, mine owners or some such, but even those memorials bore the scars and wear of unforgiving Time. In time, the desert would claim those, too.

A small grey stone marked the grave they sought: that of the Lucky Girl Mine's one-time foreman, Robert Joseph Jones.

"That him?" asked Chris.

"Looks like," Dean replied. "If not..." He shot the cowboy a hard grin. "Looks like your hired hands will just keep runnin' from ghosts."

"Rather not," Chris said, and his eyes suddenly caught and held Dean's. "We keep losin' help, we lose this place. And mister, there just ain't any other place I want to be."

Something in that steady gaze, fierce and fearful at once, clamped a tight lid on any further sarcasm from Dean.

"It's what I do, Chris."

The digging wasn't bad. It almost felt good, in fact, to use muscles that were accustomed to the work, and he traded off the shovel back and forth with Chris. The guy was no shirker, that's for sure, and Dean watched, water bottle in hand, as Chris set aside his hat to bend over the shovel, pale forehead gleaming with sweat. Seems the old folks didn't care for digging this rocky ground any more than they did, for old wood cracked beneath Dean's shovel at only three feet down. He looked up at Chris.

"Hey, you might want to fetch me the shotgun from my scabbard." To Chris' puzzled frown, he added, "Rock salt. Keeps the spooks away."

There in the bright, glaring light of day, the cowboy's expression registered doubt, but he got up and went to fetch the sawed-off. Dean kept digging, until broken wood and dry bones lay bared to the pitiless sun. Curls of dry leather still clasped the poor bastard's skeletal ankles.

"Ain't much left of 'im," Chris observed, as he squatted on his haunches at the grave's edge.

"Nope. Hundred and thirty years 'll do that."

"Why's he still here, you suppose?"

Dean clambered out of the grave and stood to mop his sleeve across his brow. "Hard to say. Guess he left some kind of unfinished business. You got that gun your guys found?"

"Yeah."

Chris unfolded himself and went to his horse: came back with a corroded chunk of metal in his hand, recognizable as the frame of an 1873 Colt Peacemaker. A gun that had taken the life of an innocent young woman, before her jealous lover used it to blow his own brains out. Dean took the thing, tossed it into the open grave, and reached for his discarded coat to fetch the salt and lighter fluid. The cowboy squatted back down to watch proceedings.

"Why's that work?" he asked. "Salt? Lighter fluid?"

As the caustic liquid splashed soil and bones, Dean said, "Fire is cleansing. Purifies." He got the cardboard canister of salt and shook it broadly, white grains spraying in the sun. "Salt also purifies plus repels evil. It's one of the few substances on earth that comes out of the ground in pure form, no smelting or refining required. "

"How's that repel evil?"

"Well, the purity of fire and salt has made them sacred to a lot of cultures, and a few thousand years of perfect faith? That's going to create some serious mojo."

"Gold's pure."

"Sure." Dean flashed a grin. "But salt's a helluva lot cheaper to throw away. Stand back."

His practiced flick sent a book of lit matches arcing into the grave, where a whoosh of pale flames burst towards the sun. A whirl of dust may have been the last of Robert J. Jones, or maybe it was just a farewell cough from the storm clouds fading on the horizon.

Dean slanted a sideways look at Chris, who stared into the hungry flames. "Hey. The next time your guys find some old relic out here?"

Ruefully, Chris nodded. "Tell 'em to leave the damned thing be."

Once finished, they headed back at a more leisurely pace. Either Chris decided to take pity on him, or maybe he trusted that the troubles plaguing his family's ranch were over. Whatever, Dean wasn't going to complain.
They finally stopped to water their horses at a galvanized tank marked by a swath of green grass and a huge cottonwood tree.

"You ever want to ... you know, get outta here? See the world?" Dean asked.

Chris shrugged, his attention on the back of his horse's head as it sloshed its muzzle in the cool water. "I been gone. Spent three years in the army. Farted around and did stupid stuff afterwards. Ended up coming back."

He lifted his head, eyes narrowing into the distance, like a cat on a sun-warmed sill.

"This is home," he said. "That's all. Nothin' else I really want."

Then he bumped his horse's head up from the water, backed the animal from the tank. "You want, you can throw your bed out with us, tonight."

Dean frowned and looked out there to see what might lay hidden in the lap of this empty land: saw sagebrush and sunlight and the shadows of little clouds flowing away across the hills. A quarter mile out, several cows and calves grazed, and the sinking sun bathed the valley in golden haze while stands of rye grass shimmered in the breeze. What would it be like to call ten thousand acres 'home'?

"Nah." Dean looked at Chris and gave a crooked grin. "Don't have a bed to throw. Besides, I'm the kinda guy who wants his bed with pizza delivery, a remote control, and free cable TV."

With a snort, Chris bit back a grin and turned his horse towards home. "Suit y'self."

Directly overhead, the old cottonwood tree sighed and whispered like faraway voices. In moments, the sound of hoof beats faded to stillness.

~ * ~

Ed. Note: Amanda, I know you said 'duster' ... but I've never seen anyone use an actual duster on a ranch, whereas a slicker, which looks much the same, is far more practical. :-)
Also - My apologies to fans who love to imagine Dean as being a rider and horseman, but I can't easily picture him finding the time to learn to ride with true proficiency. Besides, I thought it was more amusing this way. ;-)