Fire Down the Valley

"It's just for ten days—until Samuel gets back from Denver."

"I realize that," Cal answered Levi Yost, the owner of the Hayden saloon.

"This is Samuel's job. It's his when he gets back."

"Yes, sir, I understand that."

"Although I'll own that he's gettin' a little long in the tooth and some would like you instead. They'se tol' me as much. So, it's not like it won't happen . . . someday."

Cal didn't see that there was an answer needed to that, so he kept his mouth shut. He wanted to say that he wasn't looking for it permanently, that he was only doing it to pay for lumber for a shed that likely would be burned down as fast as it was built, but he didn't want to close any doors. Besides, for a short period of time it scratched an itch he had. Truth was that after he'd done it before he realized he wanted more of it. Who was to say that he wouldn't want to be doing it more here in this saloon? He'd found he liked doing it, so there was no reason not to do it for money, even though the pickings weren't as good that way as they were when he could choose to take a specific man's cock, or not.

"This is your place, right here at the end of the bar on this stool," Yost continued. "Where you can get a full view of the room. Anybody come in here, they should know the stools at the bar are for you and Sadie, Katie, and Faye. That's how a customer can tell who is a whore for hire and who isn't. Everyone else at the bar stands. They give you trouble on that, William there behind the bar will put them right. Don't you go gettin' into any fights now, ya hear? Keep that face handsome."

"Yes, sir."

"Now we done a little rearrangin' upstairs since you were here last. Two rooms for you, the big one on the east front and then the smaller one behind it. I say when you go up there and what room you are to use, got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"You use the small room to sleep in too. You order the best drinks you can think he'll pay for when it's on a customer's tab. And you drink anything you are given and act like it's the best."

"Yes, sir."

"OK, then. It should liven up here in an hour or two. Maybe you should go take a nap till then."

"I'd appreciate that, thanks. It was hard finding a river crossing," Cal answered. "And it was a rough ride down from the valley. Had to go around the regular road."

"I heard that was the case. Sort of surprised you made it at all. Use the smaller room."

"Yes, sir." Cal rose off his designated stool at the end of the bar, which was right in front of the staircase to the upper level. He wearily reached down for his saddle bags and stood and looked at the steep, rickety staircase—this was about the only two-story building in Hayden as yet. As tired as he felt, he wasn't sure he even could make it up the stairs. And he was more than a little leery about stairs and upper floors anyway. He knew it was coming to Hayden, the taller buildings. But it could hold off for a while as far as he was concerned.

"And, Caleb," Levi answered, putting a hand on Cal's arm to arrest his movement, "I really am sorry about what's about to come down. You best not talk anything but cattle in this town while you're here, though. And I meant it about this bein' Samuel's job permanent like, but you decide you can't go back to the valley, I'll find somethin' for you around here. We'll take care of you. You got value here. There's some private work possible."

"Thanks, Mr. Yost," Cal said, with a sigh, as he looked up at the challenge of the stairs again.

* * * *

Cal lay there, still exhausted, a two-hour nap not having been enough to erase the bone-weariness from the nearly three-day journey from Heaven. Wanting to be anywhere but here just now, he concentrated on listening to the monotonous squeaking of the bed springs and felt as much as watched the loose brass head- and footboards bend in with each thrust and then jerk back as the man was on the rise. The headboard thumped against the wall of the small bedroom while the smelly cowboy, probably straight off three days on the range, crouched on top of him and pounded his ass with a shaft Cal had no trouble sheathing. The man was scrawny and weather-beaten, his teeth—those that he still had—were stained with chewing tobacco, and his dick was nothing to challenge Cal, but he had stamina, Cal had to give that to him.

This was in contrast to Cal's first, rather hesitant customer, who had stood by the bed, still fully clothed except for his dong hanging out of his fly, while Cal sat on the bed and gave him a blow job. That middle-aged man—or maybe not that old, but certainly worked hard—had come quickly and then was too embarrassed to demand more. Cal had to speak soothing words of encouragement to him to put him in the frame of mind to come back in a few days and plunk his money down again for a "real" fucking. Cal didn't think the man would be ready for a real fuck even then, but as long as the man believed it, that was all that mattered.

Whereas the one riding him now, Cal felt, would have to be told that when he came the first time, that was it for the money he'd paid. More than once Cal had thought the man would come but he seemed able to hold it off to gain more time inside Cal.

Cal wished that the men were told they had to bathe before they could get their lay. There was a tub in the larger, much-better appointed front room. But Cal knew that wasn't going to be required—or permitted—for the basic fuck price.

Cal hoped that sometime tonight he'd get a young, big man who would give him a fuck he could think about until he had to start this all over again. There were enough such men around. One should be along soon.

It was a busy night, a Saturday night, and Cal assumed it would get busier. He permitted his thoughts to go to the rhythm of the headboards bouncing off the walls up here on the second floor of the saloon. Not just his; he could tell that all three of the women were entertaining as well. There were sounds of straining sex all around him. He worried a bit whether the building was strongly built enough to take this jarring but decided that was Levi Yost's problem. For now, he needed to concentrate on making this grizzled long-endurance cowboy come.

Cal moved his heels to the backs of the man's calves and rubbed them, snaked one hand between their bodies and rubbed one of the man's nipples—he was still wearing his shirt, but it was open, and other than that he was just wearing his wide-brimmed hat and his boots. Cal had made him take off the spurs; the man obviously wasn't going to think of doing that himself. Cal's other hand went to the man's buttocks and squeezed one cheek, he started calling out that the man was killing him with his giant cock—a great exaggeration—and that Cal had never had it that good, and he began squeezing his channel muscles in a steady rhythm on the thrusting dick. He'd fucked enough to have learned how to use his channel muscles to grip and caress a man's cock.

The man didn't hold off much after all of that started. He shot off, and, with a groan, rolled off to the side of Cal in the three-quarters-wide rope bed.

"Fuck, you're good. Really sweet," the man said. "Maybe we can—"

"Don't think there's time," Cal quickly interjected. "I think we've gone too long now. I lost count of the time because you were doing me so good. But, yeah, I want you inside me again sometime soon. Maybe you can come back. It'll be hard waiting time till you're fucking me again. A real man's man you are. I like it especially good when a man knows what to do with his dick and can keep on giving it good."

That seemed to please the guy. He slapped Cal on the butt and then let his fingers enter him and come back with his own cum and rub it around on Cal's buttocks. "How long you gonna be here? Sam gone now and it's you?"

"I'm just here for a little more than a week. Samuel's in Denver on personal business."

"Don't tell Sam I told you so, but, damn, you have a sweet ass. And you're a real looker. A lot fresher than Sam is. I'll be back next Saturday night."

"I'll count on it. Can't wait. You're a great fucker," Cal answered, almost automatically, although he tried to sound sincere. He told them all they were the best. He'd even found a way to tell the reticent premature shooter he was the best. They all believed it, because they wanted to believe it.

He was making money. But usually there were one or two who made the sex worthwhile—who were all muscle and manhandling and who gave him a big-cocked ride that he felt all the way to the quick. That hadn't happened yet. But it was early and he'd only taken two so far this evening. The man who could touch him in the soft, spongy core should be along soon.

* * * *

The evening was still early and Cal was on his designated stool, now hoping that business would pick up because if he was going to do this thing, it needed to be profitable. He'd taken two guys, but only the last one was in any way taxing and that was from the man's vigor and stamina and how he purposely kept edging off an ejaculation to keep his time with Cal rolling more than challenging endowments. He sensed that he was being watched. Well, he was being watched by more than a few guys, but not that intensely. Most of the men here were zeroed in on Sadie, Katie, and Faye, who were doing brisk business. Most of the men who were looking at him were doing so more out of curiosity. A curiosity borne of thoughts a lot of guys would have out here in the West, where they might be out on the range for long periods of time with only guys to look at and be with. Thoughts they wouldn't have had in the more urban areas of the East—or, if they had them, they wouldn't act on them as readily.

But Cal sensed there was one guy . . . and he scanned the crowded barroom, trying to pick him out. When Cal saw him, he did a double take. It was the sexy half-breed cowboy he'd had the quick-fuck encounter with in freeing the calf in the gully.

A half-breed. Cal had hardened right up for him when they were working together, saving that calf—Cal was hardening up even now. The man had fucked him, but not in the way or for as long as Cal would have liked. The young man was a hunk, and he had a good cock on him.

Cal melted to the Arapaho, Ilesh, too. He got hard for these two faster than he'd ever done for a full-blooded white man. Maybe it was because emotionally, if not physically, Cal was a half-breed himself—changed by those first eight years with the Arapaho.

Seeing that he'd been caught looking, the man rose from the table he'd been sitting at with hard-drinking—from the look of the empty bottles on their table—other young cowpokes and moved slowly toward Cal. Cal was sure that they'd just be touching base from recognizing each other out on the range. But he thought that with a tinge of regret. The man was sultry and arousing. Cal's eyes went to the curve of the young guy's basket and he caught his breath. He'd known and felt the sheathing of that cock—just not long enough. His trained eye picked out the long, thick bulge of the cock snaking over on top of the man's right thigh under the tight material of his britches. The leather chaps he was wearing, exposing the basket between them at the midsection, put the focus on the man's crotch. Cal felt himself go even harder and he had to restrain his hand from moving to his basket as the young man walked toward him.

"So, this was where you were headed," the half-breed said as he slipped in between Cal and an older man in a suit, indicating he was from the town, who was chatting up Katie at the bar. "Not just Hayden but Yost's saloon."

"You knew where I was heading," Cal answered. "I noticed that you followed me practically to the door of the saloon."

"Only as far as the river. You'd done the Double O a favor; I didn't want to see you get into any trouble from any of the other guys out on the range. But was I that obvious?"

"I don't think you would have been to most." Cal didn't mention that he'd been raised with the Arapaho and therefore trained to track and notice tracking in ways the white men never perfected. "But you were noticeable to me."

"You wanted to know where I was?"

"Something like that. I got the impression our business wasn't finished." That brought a smile from the guy.

"I was that obvious back there, when we were helping that calf?"

Cal wasn't sure how to take that, so he let it pass.

"My name is Frank," the young man said, and held his hand out to offer a strong shake. His hand was calloused, even more so than Cal's was. He'd done some rough work. The West was rough and the men working in it were rougher and were prone to violence, so men interested in men out here—which were a quite high proportion as women were scarce and the sex drive didn't respect the restrictions of location—had developed some secret signals to identify each other. Lingering in the handshake and folding the thumb under to rub the palm of the other guys hand was such a signal of checking whether a guy would take cock. Frank knew Cal would take his cock, because he had. The question was whether Cal wanted to take Frank's cock again. In the scheme of such a handshake, an interested receiver would grasp the other man's thumb before they came out of the handshake. It took no more than this to establish interest and willingness, and a contract between a bottom and a top. Another top would push the hand away; a man interested in going both ways would move his thumb between the hand palms to join the other and rub against it. A man not knowing what was being signaled would merely end the handshake, maybe with a bit of a confused look.

Cal merely ended the handshake—not from lack of interest, but because Cal wasn't in the world of white men who were signaling each other this way. He had no idea it was a signal. In this saloon, men didn't need signal. Their money answered for them.

The Arapaho were much more direct. In the Arapaho camps, they managed the man-on-man by keen observation and the top isolating the bottom in the forest and fucking the stuffing out of him no matter what pretense of not wanting it that he exhibited. That's what Ilesh had done with Cal the first time, with Cal crying out that he didn't want it while Ilesh was wrestling him down, and then demanding that it never end after Ilesh had gotten his dick inside him. As far as Cal had any idea of how this worked out, if Frank had wanted him, he would have taken him out there on the range. Cal would have let him.

Even another white man, a burly lumberjack up at Mather's mill, had done the same the previous summer—lured Cal into the forest and fucked the stuffing out of him. Perhaps it was Cal's upbringing—the naturalistic views of the Arapaho and that neither Mrs. Thornton nor the Cowdens were Bible thumpers—but he saw nothing unnatural about a dominating man manhandling him and fucking him. Ilesh had made him aware that he liked to be fucked, and the hierarchy of size and power seemed natural as far as he was concerned. There was nothing in his mind that made him think that he should only let one man fuck him either. He hadn't sought it out from a specific man—at least yet. It had been that lumberjack who had told Levi Yost of how enticing Cal could be for a man—and that, once subdued, Cal was a firecracker bottom in the fucking.

As Cal released Frank's hand, he smiled and said, "I'm Caleb, but folks mostly call me Cal." Levi had told him he should make up another name to give these guys if they asked, but Cal had forgotten to do that with this Frank, he was so besotted with him.

Nonplused by the lack of reaction to his signal, Frank seemed confused and almost stuttered out, "You do know who's stool this is you're sitting on?"

"Samuel's in Denver for a week," Cal answered, not realizing that this wouldn't be seen as a clear-cut answer. This just confused Frank more. He was saved from pressing the question further, and Cal was left thinking they were just casually chatting and that Frank may not have any idea what Cal was here for, when Levi sauntered over and pushed himself into the conversation.

"You men just having a friendly chat, or do you want to talk business, Frank?"

Cal had no idea how Levi Yost knew Frank's name—although it stood to reason that, as a ranch hand with the nearby Double O, the young man probably frequented the saloon a lot. But having uppermost in his mind not wanting Frank to know he was part of the sex service in the saloon and would expect Frank to pay for what Cal was willing to give him for free, Cal nervously answered before Frank could say anything. "He was just passing the time with me, Levi. We met out on the range in passing as I was riding into Hayden, and we were just introducing ourselves. We'll just—"

"Yeah, we can talk business, Levi," Frank said. "I'll buy an hour."

"I've heard an hour with you is a hard ride, Frank," Yost said. "I'd have to add 50 cents to the rate to do it on time rather than a finish."

"I said I'd buy an hour," Frank repeated.

"The small room, Cal," Levi said, as Frank counted out money in Levi's hand—with Cal being so set on edge that he didn't consider that Frank didn't have to ask how much the hour would cost at the base of the extra being demanded.

It was too noisy to talk as they slowly mounted the rickety stairs, being very careful about the strength of the boards as they placed their feet on them. They were following the man at the bar in the suit and Katie, who he'd been chatting up at the bar. The pair were starting the foreplay on the stairs, so they were moving slowly and seemed threatened to go over the banister on every other step. This didn't help with the jitters Cal was feeling. Was he really going to be fucked again, at greater leisure, by this hunk? Why was he melting in anticipation of this more than he did for any other man, other than Ilesh?

At the door to the small room, Cal turned, finding Frank very close behind him. "You know you don't have to pay . . . just for us to talk. I can return your money and we could just meet somewhere else . . . to talk or whatever else you want . . . if you'll still be in town tomorrow morning." Not even Cal knew why he had proposed this. He did want Frank to fuck him, just not here, but somewhere where it wasn't a financial transaction? Somehow, Cal didn't want it just to be another casual, getting his rocks off, natural and impersonal act like had been out on the range. Could it be something purer, more concerned with mutual giving and taking? He just didn't know. He did know, though, that he didn't just want to talk. He wanted Frank to fuck him. He was so hard for it he couldn't walk straight.

"This is on the clock," Frank said, with a bit of amusement showing in his eyes. "I want to fuck you twice—wanted to fuck you out on the range more but didn't know you'd do it—and that's a tall order to get done in one of Levi's short-changed hours. You don't think I can't see that you're hard for me?"

"I was hard for you on the range," Cal murmured. "I was hard for you to do it again out there."

"Then we're wasting time here."

He pushed Cal into the room, hooking an arm around the younger and smaller man's waist while he slammed the door behind them, and pulled Cal to him in a deep kiss while his hands stripped off Cal's shirt and unbuttoned Cal's fly. He quickly went to his knees and had his mouth on Cal's cock, with Cal moaning and digging his hands in the sultry half-breed's thick black head hair, before Cal could even start to gather his thoughts. "God, I wanted to do this out on the range," he growled as his lips came up to Cal's trembling belly and then went back to suck Cal's balls into his mouth cavity.

"The bed, the bed. Fuck me," Cal whimpered, completely off the script he'd memorized to handle customers.