Between is just a shortcut (a sort of symlink) to your second query, I guess it makes life easier.
MongoDB has not yet implemented such a shortcut, I have looked around a bit for a JIRA declaring someone wants such an operator however, no luck.
The one and only way of doing ranges in MongoDB is to use $gt
and $lt
(you could count $in
etc but that is a different kind of range, not what your looking for).