illphated
The Lady Takes the Cowboy Every Time
for illphated.com
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They said the Martian frontier would be tamed by men—pioneers, outlaws, ex-soldiers turned contractors. They brought their rifles, their grit, and their legends of Earth. But they didn’t count on women like Loretta Vale.
She wasn’t loud. She didn’t ride in with banners or slogans. Loretta just worked harder, aimed straighter, and smiled less than anyone else on the red planet. And when she walked into a bar with her boots caked in Martian dust and her lasso glowing from a fresh plasma charge, the boys got real quiet.
Loretta was the law east of the Tharsis Ridge, even if she never wore a badge. She ran her own dome-town—Dustwell—where she brokered peace with a loaded blaster and a shot of mesquite whiskey.
But it wasn’t her town anymore. Not after he rode in.
Cal Dorne. Grinning like gravity didn’t apply to him. With his dusty poncho and hydrogen-stirred eyes, he was every inch the cowboy Earthlings loved to romanticize. Word was, he’d broken a dozen hearts across the Kuiper Belt. Some said he left a trail of IOUs and funeral flags.
He strutted into Dustwell like a song you can’t get out of your head. All charm and shoulder rolls, sizing up Loretta like she was some kind of prize behind saloon glass.
Only problem? Loretta didn’t do prizes. And she damn sure wasn’t glass.
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It started with a shootout.
They were on opposite sides of a settlement standoff—Cal hired to protect a mining tycoon, Loretta standing up for the laborers sick of radiation pills and broken pay. The firefight lit up the rust sky like a storm. And at its heart, the two of them danced around each other—blasts just missing, banter sharper than bullets.
By midnight, Cal had switched sides.
By sunrise, they were riding back together in the back of a transport mule, him nursing a plasma burn, her sipping coffee like nothing happened.
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That’s when people started talking.
They’d see them at dusk, arguing over who got the last ration cube or whose speeder was faster. They’d watch them ride out on patrols, both always returning—with dust in their teeth and victory in their eyes. They weren’t lovers, not exactly. They were something wilder. A partnership forged in fire and orbiting something like love, but too proud to name it.
One night, under a dual moon rise, Cal leaned back on the ridge overlooking Dustwell and grinned like a man resigned to fate.
“You win, Loretta,” he said, tipping his hat low. “You always do.”
She didn’t look at him. Just kept her gaze on the stars like she was reading a map written in starlight.
“I didn’t come out here to win,” she said, low and calm. “I came out here to make sure no one forgets who really runs this frontier.”
And that’s when it was settled. Not in a wedding, not in a fight, but in the quiet understanding between two outlaws who knew that freedom was the only real vow.
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They painted posters across the domes after that. Glowing ink on Martian brick, slogans in retro fonts, color palettes pulled from old Earth dreams:
“THE LADY TAKES THE COWBOY EVERY TIME.”
They weren’t love stories. They were battle hymns. Warnings. Promises.
And Loretta? She kept riding.
Because some stories don’t end. They just ride off, boots kicking red dust, toward a new sunrise.
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© illphated.com
Filed under: Mars Frontier Lore, Neon Dust Stories, Feminine Wild West Cyberpunk