The Outcast of Lonely Rock, Chapter Three
"AT MY UNCLE'S RANCH"
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
My uncle's wagon met us on the ride into Lonely Rock, so I disembarked from the stagecoach and boarded the even bumpier feed wagon he favored. My uncle's appearance surprised me; I had visualize a rough, tough cow-wrangler, but he was as stout as my grandfather, and moved with all the grace of a pregnant cow about to give birth. He had taken a fall two years before, which I had known, but I hadn't thought much about what it would have done to the virile strong man of my youthful acquaintance, turned him into a prematurely-gray-haired man with a lined face; he looked more like seventy than the fifty I knew him to be, the wearing down of the body by constant pain.
But there was more to it than his pronounced limp; he had a defeated air about him, like a man who had lost a fight and was now just waiting for all the people who had gathered to watch to leave and let him slink away in peace. It was only the first of my two big disappointments of that day.
When my uncle had written us back East about his "ranch" I had visualized something like a decent clapboard house with broad fences, a large barn stuffed with hay, a corral with horses galloping inside them and cattle milling about in the pastures around, maybe a dog or two; you know, pretty much like a farm back East only bigger and better.
What I saw when I got to the ranch in my uncle's wagon punctured that romantic image immediately. My uncle had a dinky little house that looked to be about five foot by twelve foot at most, and a fair sized barn, and a scraggly corral next to it that seemed to hold the two horses and a lone cow inside it by dint of wishful thinking rather than being any appreciable barrier. Except for the lone cow in with the two horses, no cattle were around, and not much life of any kind.
"I got that bay mare for you." my uncle pointed out proudly. "The lighter one. That other one belongs to my hired hand, Jobias."
"Thanks, Uncle." I looked at the horse with new eyes; it was old and didn't look very healthy. Still, the thought had to count for something.
He looked around his rather-tired-looking place and said to me, "So, what do you think?"
I selected the most discreet of the words I could think of. "It looks nice, Uncle, all it needs is a bit of work to get it up and running again."
"I sure hope so." he said, and that defeated tone was even stronger in his voice. "Well, I can't show you the place; I'll have to let Jobias teach you the things you need to know to make me a hand. Learn well from him, and you can take over this place when I'm gone...if I still have it then."
"What do you mean?" I asked, but he had handed me the reins to steady the horses, and sprung from the wagon with an almost-vigorous jump, landed with a loud groan that nearly spooked the horses--I had to haul on the reins pretty strongly to keep them in check--and then a voice was calling from the horse's heads, "Whoa, whoa! Steady on there, steady!"
I saw the brown hat and red hair, but that was all; the horses' bodies covered all the rest from my view. I got down and concentrated on detaching the horses from their reins and harnesses, and ended up with one of the horses while the man led the other to the barn. Getting them inside, it was tough work to get the horses unharnessed (they were quite tame, gentle creatures, not in the least the spirited mustangs in the novels; I was beginning to wonder if everything I had thought I had known was a lie), and then I was walking over to hang the harnesses on the wall. I saw him from behind still, a big, brown hat covering his entire head and neck from this angle, a strong back that arced back to hoist the oval leather yoke onto the nail, which curved gracefully inward to the small of the back and then out to form two of the most marvelously globular buttocks tucked inside of his denim trousers and strongly muscled legs below, just visible behind the ties of the leather chaps he wore; I had the sudden image of spreading those sturdy legs and my tongue being buried in those buttocks and found myself involuntarily drooling and had to swallow hard and wipe my lips dry.
"You ready for me to show you the place?" Jobias asked me, turning around and I saw him for the first time. Now this was my idea of a cowboy! A strong, young face, only a handful of years older than me, the red mustache that wasn't quite neatly trimmed the way a man with daily use of a mirror would keep it, the eyes that spoke of a man who lived the life he chose to live, with no wistful longings or crushed dreams, the slight smile on his face that meant he was friendly without being effusive. "Or do you want to rest up after your journey?" he asked after a time.
"Huh? Oh!" I realized I'd been staring. "I...guess I ought to tie right in." I said, a pathetic attempt at sounding laconically competent.
"You might as well." He allowed. "Not that much to do right now anyway. The herd's off wandering in the hills. Your uncle owns eighty head of longhorn cattle right now, and twenty-five of them have calves which we branded in the roundup two weeks ago. You just missed that. We're not selling any cattle this year, so that took care of things for this ranch for the year. The cattle take care of themselves the rest of the time. I ride up into the hills once a week or so for two or three days and check on them, the rest of the time I take care of the ranch here."
"Sounds good." I said. It did, I'd have the chance to learn things slow.
"Main thing we're doing now is digging out a well and setting up a windmill in the east quarter." he said. "I'm thinking with you here I might get your uncle to let me hire out to one of the cattle drives for a few weeks. Get off of this place for a while."
"Now you know I can't do that." my uncle said.
If Jobias was embarrassed by my uncle overhearing him, he didn't show it. "You don't have much call for a hand these days." He said. "Especially with so few calves being born." After a moment. "Funny thing how a lot of the Bar C calves were suckling our cows this year, now warn't it? Ignorant critters."
"Let it be, Jobias." my uncle said. "You can fix that corral. I got a load of timber coming in real soon."
"How you paying for that?" Jobias asked. "Got anything to do with that cow in the corral?" He took a breath, "Sir, I think it best if I gave you my notice at the end of this season."
"Now, Jobias, I need you to stay on at least another year. My nephew is green and city-bred; he and I can't take care of this ranch alone."
"Well...all right, sir, but this will be my last year with you. I'll show him how to handle things through to next spring's calf-branding, and then you are on your own. I got to plan for my own future, you know."
"Let it be." was my uncle's only response, and he left again.
"Problems?" I asked when my uncle left.
"Your uncle's going to lose this ranch by this time next year." Jobias said. The horses needed a rub-down after that long ride, so I was helping him fetch water for a tub; we'd wash down the horses and dry and comb them out. I'd done it scores of times back in the city, so it was work I understood.
"What was all that about the calves?" I asked. "I didn't think a cow would let a calf nurse that wasn't her own."
"They won't." Jobias said.
"But you said.... Oh."
"Yep, a nighttime campfire and a brand slapped on a calf that ain't yours. It happens."
"Does the Bar C do a lot of that?"
"Only to ranches it doesn't like." Jobias said. "Course, a man can complain about it, with words or with a gun, but seeing as how the Bar C has thirty hands and your uncle just has me, it's better to keep quiet and lose a few calves instead. Except your uncle can't spare the calves. Next year, his cows won't have any calves at all, I'll bet. Just a lot of Bar C calves nursing at them, and that'll be the end of him."
"So why doesn't my uncle register a complaint with...with whoever?"
"The sheriff, maybe?"
"Sure!" I seized on the word.
"Would, except for one thing." Jobias said. We were now working on the horses, which whuffled gratefully for the pampering after the long, dusty run.
"What's that?"
"Bar C is owned by King Carson. He also owns purt near the whole town. Most of the people here about work for King Carson, one way or another. Enough to choose who's the sheriff come election day."
"Oh." I said after a time.
"Yep, King Carson owns this whole county and part of the next, except for a few places like your uncle's ranch. He'll have it by next year, then set to worrying down the next small homesteader. That's why I wanted to go on that cattle drive as one of his hands, get set up for working for him again."
I was silent for a time, thinking this over. "Is there going to be any trouble over all this?"
"Why should there be trouble?" Jobias said. "King Carson holds all the cards. All he has to do is wait until your uncle goes crawling to him begging to sell. He can wait."
"I see." I said. And I did.
The rest of the morning was busy, for when we had just finished with the horses, the timber arrived and Jobias and I unloaded it, after which the man with the wagon took that lone cow with him as Jobias had predicted. Then we had to dig holes and notch the timber and straighten out used, bent, rusty nails to drive into the timber. When we were done, the corral was at least solid if still not a real barrier to a determined animal.
"Now what?" I asked, wiping the sweat from my cheeks.
"Now we get some lunch and rest." Jobias said. "It's the Mexican way of life during the summer; you work from dawn until noon, and then go back to work near sundown. Take a siesta during the hot afternoon and then work into the night as long as you can."
"Oh." I said. Seemed like a funny way to live, but I'd had my own experience of the heat of the afternoon sun, so it made sense to me. We went to the house and my uncle had stirred up some fried dough. It was a pretty poor lunch to a guy used to eating city food, and hardly what I had expected, but I saw from Jobias' reaction that this was normal fare and so I ate it. Heavy, bland, greasy stuff, I understood why, when we were done, uncle said, "You two wash up the dishes. I'm going to lie down for a time." I felt sleepy myself with that lump of chewed dough lying in my stomach like a brick.
"Yes, sir." I said. The dishes took only a moment, dunking them in the pail of water, and then I followed Jobias out the door.
"Now what?"
"Now we take a nap ourselves." Jobias said. "Don't fight the sun. Hold still and wait it out."
"Okay." I said. "But where do I bunk?" My uncle's cabin was a single room, and had only a tiny cot for a bed; no question of me sleeping there.
"With me." Jobias said.
"In the barn?" I asked.
He led me in and sure enough, in the back of the tack-room (a smaller room built onto the side of the barn, where were kept stored things like ropes, tools, harnesses and such), he had a fairly wide pallet. The walls weren't solid, there were holes over a half-inch wide between each plank, but the room was on the morning side of the barn, the sun itself was gone and we were in the relatively cool shade. The south side, where the pallet rested, was solid planks with only tiny cracks
"What do you do when winter comes?" I asked as I stuck my finger through one of the wider holes.
"Chink them with sod." Jobias said. He reached down and undid the fastenings of his chaps, pulled them off with a rustle like leathery wings. "So, what do you think of ranch life in the West so far? Is it like you read about in them dime novels?" he grinned.
"Not much." I admitted.
"It's a rough life." Jobias said. "But as long as you got someone along with you to cover your back for you, you'll do all right."
"I never did think those dime novels were telling the truth, the lone cowhand out riding the range." I couldn't help but think of Hunter when I said that.
"Cowboys aren't loners, as a rule. A lone prospector, that happens enough, though usually it's two or three. And lone Indians, maybe though you're more likely to see a band instead. But a cowboy out riding alone is in trouble." Jobias said. "He's cut loose from his old ties and hasn't formed any new ones yet. Someone can kill him and nobody would ever know. Another reason I want to take out from this place pretty soon. Don't like being alone."
"Well, you got me now."
"I got an Eastern dude." Jobias clarified. "Remains to be seen if I can trust you." He had hung up his hat on the nail and worked off his boots while standing up, and I was watching. Now he was unhitching his belt. "Get ready for bed, instead of just watching me." He said as he undid his fly and shuffled down the pants, baring his legs but his long shirt-tail still covered him down to mid-thigh.
I jerked, startled--I had been staring--and reached for my own shirt. Undid it while watching him work his own buttons. I had understood that cowboys wear long underwear beneath their clothing, which makes sense when you remember how cold the nights are. But Jobias wasn't out on the range, he was at home, and so a bare chest greeted my eyes as he opened his shirt. He had a scattering of chest hairs, and I touched my own bare breast and envied him those few hairs.
Then he undid the last of the buttons and I was startled to see that he was now totally bare. "Come on, get them duds off and let's hit the sack." He said. "You're goggling at me like a pig watching the slop-bucket." He stooped over and his long dong waved like a bell clapper.
"I'm sorry." I said. I got my shirt off and then my boots, awkwardly. Jobias crawled into bed and to my surprise, put his hat back on. Then he lit an already-rolled cigarette fetched from some place near the bed, lit it with a tinderbox, and puffed lazily, laid back, shifted the hat to down over his eyes, looking as relaxed as can be.
With his eyes now covered, I felt comfortable looking directly at his long, suntanned body stretched out on the pallet. He had made no effort to cover himself, understandable in the increasing heat of the day. Jobias was only a little older than me, and like me, he still had a thinness to him, despite what must be a rigorous life. But the poor diet of our lunch could explain that, you can't build a big body on slop like fried dough! Still, he had a lean masculinity to him that I envied, even in his bareness lying upon a pallet stuffed with straw in a tack-room, a poise and dignity while lying with only a hat covering his face, his ankles crossed.
The slight wind that curled through the wide cracks felt nice against my bare chest. I undid my belt and fly as I regarded his thick, beefy cock, which lay across the top of one thigh like a massive sausage. I got my pants off and now as bare as he was, crawled onto the pallet. A couple of flour sacks stuffed with straw formed our pillows. The straw stuffing of the pallet made a lumpy but comfortable mattress. I scooted up onto the pillow and stretched out like Jobias, compared our bodies, I was a little shorter than him and my skin was whiter. I looked over--even his pubic hair was red the way mine was blond--wondering if our cocks were the same size or not. His was pretty long even flaccid but my own prick while shriveled and small when soft, pumped up to a good size, and I wondered how they would measure up against each other, both of us hard.
I felt my cock surging with the thought of us pressing these two pricks together, and I turned my attention to it, stroking it with the palm of my hand, enjoying the feel of my hands now roughed with work (still far from calloused, they had instead a sort of numbness to the pads of my palm which I imagined felt the same), rubbing it until it was firm and hard, then beginning to pump it slowly while I cast another look over--and saw his cock rising up like a leviathan from the ocean deeps.
I looked over at him, and he cocked his hat back lazily with one finger, to look into my eyes. "How much longer you planning to just look?" He asked me. His hand reached over and he took my cock away from my hand and gripped it tightly. "Nice hunk of meat you have here." he drawled.
I was emboldened enough to go ahead and reach out and take his prong. "Thanks." I said. "You have a pretty nice one myself. I was just noticing."
"Well, I reckon it's time I taught you a little bit about cowboy life that they don't put into those books of theirs." He began to pump my cock up and down, again in a slow, relaxed, unhurried manner, I groaned and began to hunch upwards into his hand.
"Hey, slow down." He said. "We got all afternoon. This is siesta time, a time to rest. Don't want to work up a sweat now, do you?"
"No, sir." I agreed.
"Just take it nice and easy." he said. "Nice and easy. Don't fight the heat, let everything happen at its own pace."
His cock weeped onto my index finger. His own hand on my cock was so slow, so deliberate, I could feel every separate thrill of my cockshaft as his hand skinned it down, gave it a slow waggle at the very base with the cockhead all exposed and pink to the hot air, then he slipped my foreskin up again in his tight grip, and I felt the heavy knobs of his calloused fingers rub over the ring at the bottom of my glans one by one, then again as the little finger held tight to the bottom of the glans, preventing his hand from leaving my cock, then he began to push back down again. It must have taken him five seconds to do each languid stroke, and I forced myself to match his tempo with my own hand, slowly, methodically, we milked at each other's puds.
My breath began to speed up, so slowly, as he kept the stroking slow and deliberate, and I found some breaths catching in my throat, clogged by the moisture of my lips.
"Can I suck your cock?" I asked him after a time.
"Now, that's a nighttime activity." He assured me. "But it's too strenuous this time of day. No, we just take things nice and slow. Nice. And. Slow."
"Oh, God!" I heaved. "I'm going to go mad from this. I got to get off."
"You will, you will." he chuckled. "Not going to stop until I milk this thing dry. But what's your hurry?" But I noticed his own breath was beginning to move his chest a little faster.
The time was interminable. I was lost to time, to space, to anything but the feel of his hand on my cock, my hand on his, both of us pumping away...slowly.
I had never felt my cock get so hard, so hot, as it did beneath his languorously pulsating fingers, his own cock felt like a fire-heated poker in my hand, and still he kept the pace at this same rhythm, the same dilatory movements of our hands and arms throughout the steaming hot, dry afternoon.
Sweat beaded my body and his shone with the stripes of whiteness through the slats, I felt as if I had been here forever in this room, lying beside him, the two of us working each other's pricks with the same leisurely pace; this would go on for an eternity, when the angels blew their final trumpets, they would find me here beside Jobias, the two of us caught up in a rhythm that had gone on beyond stopping, somehow now, beyond even speeding up, either I would reach my fruition at this pace or never, I was no longer able to increase the tempo, to speed up the assault of my own volition, I could not move, I was his prisoner, held by the shackle of his hand upon my pud, and his movement, that sent passion to me not in a tempest but as the gently, long-falling rain of spring upon this summer-washed plain.
I felt it then, to my astonishment, the slow building of the climax in my groin. Not the precipitous rise to climax that a heavy pumping would have done, there was no sudden building, it was the tortured rise of my tormented flesh finally, seizing every scrap of sensation given to it, finally rising to its long-delayed task. It was still a horribly slow and almost painful thing, this tautening of my ballsac, the pooling of pleasure in my cockshaft, the way the flesh came alive and gurgled angrily at the lengthy, recalcitrant pleasure, I was in pleasure and near-agony at the same moment, I burbled the strangled passion from my throat, wincing at the tightrope I was on, one false step and I would lose this hard-attained goal, it was not to be borne, I continued to pump Jobias' cock at the same rhythm as before, not daring to break this cautious success, looked at him with my lips parted, the air hissing painfully through my dried-out mouth, open too long in the quest for climax, I felt my face flush, my eyes widened and I still stared into him, into his face which was unmarred by his own ordeal--but his cigarette had gone out! Gone, extinguished, a white stick hanging from his lips. I searched as well as my passion-wracked flesh could for the signs of my own ecstatic agony in his eyes, and I found it, yes, it was there!
But the tempo remained the same, the slow deliberate strokes on my penis, I dared to let a few sounds of pleasure escape my lips, his own soft groans answered, and that sound, timid and fearful though it was, was the spark that ignited the final burning fuse of ecstasy up my spine and I was there, I was there!
Still trapped and prolonged by the too-slow-hand, I still staggered exhausted up the steps of the temple of glory, I flung open its gates and the light burst from within.
My agonized flesh revenged itself upon it, it was the most wracking, extended, pleasurable orgasm I had ever had! It seemed to need nothing of the brief spurt of jism, though that was the first of the crescendo, it went on and on long after my cock had exhausted itself with the squirts of my jism upon my leg and upon his still-cautious hand and arm, long after the sperm had cooled to sticky clumps, still my body shook with my desire and I groaned under its crushing burden of joy, I let slip brief shudders and groans for nearly a minute after, was left a damp, limp rag of a man cast aside by the departing glory of orgasm, I found my arm still mechanically pumping away at Jobias' still-unerupted prick that was a steaming power of angry-red in my clutch.
"Whew, man, that was a blast of dynamite for you, wasn't it?" he said to me, still panting.
"Yeah, it was terrific!" I agreed.
"Go ahead and finish me off." he gasped out. "I'm about to bust my balls as it is."
"The hell you say." I said. "You got to wait the same as I did."
I laid my head upon his stomach and except for a brief shift to bring my other hand and arm into play, I kept up the inexorable slow rhythm of the pumping of his shaft.
"Oh, come on!" He breathed.
"No way." I said. "You did it to me, now I'm going to do it to you."
"Oh, yeah!" He sighed. "Yeah, yeah!"
"Hold still." I warned him. "You don't get anything I didn't get, and that includes the noise."
He groaned but complied and I admired the way the red of the cockhead turned to purple, the way the veins in the skin seemed to be throbbing, his heaving gasps of air raising and lowering my head, I stared at his cock like at a tower of potency, feeling him groan so softly, so softly for fear I would stop, he shuddered, his cock seemed to surge in my hand, and he was now stuck in my quandary, he was trapped in the prolonged orgasm, and while he tried to cheat it by thrusting upwards with his hips, I rode my hand up with his body and denied him this, continued my slow pace while his body shook, his breaths were as tortured and choked as mine had been, and finally, at last his geyser shot into the air, and rained its human-lava down upon his stomach, and my face. His come was a massive load, seemingly almost entirely clear in composition, it was like watching raindrops fall upon his body in the midst of this hot, dry day, the clear fluid containing only small tadpole-shaped white masses within, swirled around each other, while he groaned and tossed about beneath me, the earthquake that accompanied this volcanic eruption of human lust.
And like me, long after the rain of steaming jizz had ended, his body shook and shuddered with a dozen after-shocks of passion, and I knew he was in the same purgatory I had inhabited and was doing his penance with the repeated blows to his system of almost-crystalline pleasure. So long as he shook, as long as a dreg of pleasure remained within his body still leashed there, I continued to pump his cock, even when it had wilted down to its former soft state, I flexed and wielded this human scimitar of power and only ceased when he had been still and silent for nearly a minute.
I raised up and put my head upon his arm, looked into his face again but this time with our noses almost touching. "You see?" I said. "It was worth the wait."
"Yeah." He sighed out.
"You should take your own advice, go at it nice and easy." I said. "Plenty of time for the energetic stuff tonight."
"Yeah, tonight!" He sighed. "You'd better believe you're going to get it tonight, me bucko!"
I smiled into his own grin. "I'm counting on it. And tomorrow and the day after and the day after that."
"That settles it." He declared. "No way am I leaving this ranch while you're around."
"Uncle will be so pleased you changed your mind." And I kissed my cowboy lover.
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