Life Is Good in the Shade

... but in the light it's 'pokes, saloons, whores and a wife

The western was always a staple of TV and movie fare when I was a kid with John Wayne riding tall and Matt Dillon tossing bad guys in the pokey and Miss Kitty pouring shots at a long bar saloon. 44 Colt long barrel revolvers were the fashion accessories of the day and if Matt was putting the talleywacker to Kitty, we never heard about it. Too bad; I'm guessing she was a pretty good toss upstairs.

That said I've never penned a western tale before and had to think how to go about it. I'm hoping this works; if not, I had fun writing it in any event. There are no scenes of underage sex. There are no instances of donkey sex and 'poke's doing sheep on the farm. Then again, not all folk are nice people and folks did things a bit different back then. If you're a feminist, you probably won't like this one and if you can't stand hot lead and frontier justice, well, there's a good Hallmark movie for you to watch someplace, I'm sure.

Many thanks to Randi and the Literotica crew for having a western themed event. As always, there are a couple nimrods whose comments I usually delete; you know who you are. As for the rest, I'm really interested in your comments especially with regard to how this exercise went. If you think I should have read your mind and wrote your story, well, maybe next time, eh?

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The two ugly beasts had been circling overhead for a couple hours since the sun started turning down from its noonday scorch of the canyon floor beneath it. I suppose they thought baked flesh might offer improved dining over the stray coyote or sidewinder that they found repeating the follies of Icarus.

"Jesus, it's hot as Hades" I said to nobody in particular, a given since there wasn't likely a soul for at least a couple days ride between here and the Pecos River. My Lipan Apache guide had stayed back at the river due to a lame leg on his mount. For that matter the last white man I saw was Jim Babb back in El Paso after he crossed over from Juarez almost a fortnight ago. Babb was a critter; a dingy cowboy who worked range herds of longhorn steers up through Abilene on the way to Fort Worth. The last time I saw him, he had the remnants of a .44 Colt cartridge leaving a neat round hole in the middle of his sloped forehead, the worthless peckerwood.

He had snatched the woman from a safe place and dragged her through a brothel across the river after he nutted a few oats into her without asking permission or taking stock of his precarious position. I guess he figured she was game for the taking. He should have checked with me first. She was there for a damn good reason...

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"Nathaniel Crosby, you get in here and get that manhood of yours to its proper purpose, you hear?" She was trying to scowl without breaking into an infectious grin.

I had been taking too much time washing up in the basin, I know, and had left the Missus tending to her flowery wants a bit too long. She loved to diddle her little cunt getting herself ready to take her man in the saddle and I'd delayed her passions a bit longer than I should.

"I'm coming, woman, don't you worry any."

I had to pause at the threshold of the roughed in entrance to the new bedroom of the small abode. She had shucked off her bloomers and let her thighs lay wide open giving me a picture of that glistening handiwork ringed with dark curls highlighted by the tiny pink bud of her pleasure. Her breasts had been freed of the bustier that lay unfastened at her side, her nipples aroused in the cool of the air.

I'd lost the long johns at the basin while washing up and stood there with the cock at full mast as she crooked her finger in my direction. We didn't need another word. It was like sinking into hot, wet jelly. Her hands went to my hips and every thrust was met with a clutching grasp of her own. In seconds we had our rhythm and I rocked my bride to an orgasm for her first followed by my own burst of seed, spilled over that now sweaty mass of coils around her reddened and sated cunt.

We lay there for a while hoping to recover for another go round as usual. She'd been my bride for a few years come spring time and twice a go was the norm for us. She'd do it every day if I asked. The one thing we couldn't seem to get done was getting her to carry a child. She had the hips for it, that was sure, and God knows she could fuck better than a Dallas whore on a Saturday night. We just bid our time and let nature do its thing...

I met Samantha on a trip to Texarkana to pick up a wagon train of farm implements and supplies on the way to Dallas. She was barely eighteen at the time and was traveling with her mother and kid sister. Her Papa had died of the consumption back east and had left the family reasonably well off to make ends meet, at least until they got settled in at a place outside Fort Worth.

First time I laid eyes on her I knew I was going to try to make her mine. It didn't matter that the girl was trading shots of whiskey with the squaw woman of the old man who ran the chuck wagon. She had a wild side to her that I liked and she wasn't afraid to let it show, at least around the right company. It didn't hurt to get her out of her bloomers a couple weeks after I started working on her. She had a good excuse for her Wild West behavior.

"Back east, Papa would have tanned the britches off me and sent me to the two old hawks in Philadelphia, my aunts. They are so stitched up tight I don't know how they can even breathe!" She told me one day after sneaking a shot with the squaw.

"I was supposed to get married when I turned sixteen to a gentleman. Papa didn't know it but we didn't wait for the nuptials. Before the preacher could get us hitched Papa passed on and Mamma put a stop to it. She never liked the man I was betrothed to although she didn't have any idea how many talents he had." She laughed with a sly grin.

"Anyways, once a young miss becomes a woman, there isn't any going back now, is there?"

I couldn't disagree with her logic nor did I want to. We carried on our frontier romance and I probably courted her Momma as much as I did her. In the end it paid off. We got married in the Methodist church a short ways from their new homestead. A couple months later her Momma up and died and soon after I was running a small ranch with a wife and her precocious fifteen year old sister underfoot at every turn.

The girl's name was Penelope and given her looks and manner she was going to be a handful someday, more than her sister was to me. I guess most women would call her an early bloomer; she'd had tits before all her teeth had come in or so it seemed and she had more curiosity than a barnyard full of cats.

She had taken to calling me Big Daddy even though I wasn't but seven years older than her and I had to watch myself. Samantha thought it was cute but she didn't grasp the inferences Penelope concealed with her clever little innuendos.

Samantha still liked her whiskey and she'd get a bit randy when liquored up but since I was the beneficiary of it I had no complaints. Regardless we settled into farm life a short bit out of town and made do the best we could with the sister situation over the next few years or so......

"Mr. Crosby, I'd be mighty thankful if you'd give your blessings to what I've proposed." The bespectacled wiry man implored over hot tea at Grunyard's General Store.

"I'll give it some thought, I will." I replied with studied seriousness.

Pete Brandt had moved his implements business from San Marcos a couple years prior after the river flooded out most of his neighbors and carved out a new path putting him on the other side of the San Antonio Trail coming down out of Austin. A miserable sot of a cattleman wouldn't sell him the spot to build his business back so he said to hell with it and came to Fort Worth.

Pete and his wife Mildred opened up shop using the backside of the General Store for their cast iron and tin goods. The missing proprietor, old man Grunyard had no time for real business while he was off chasing the bottom of a whiskey bottle and any stray cunt hair the old geezer could pinch.

"I know the Missus would be mighty pleased to have your Samantha come to work at the store and if your Miss Penelope takes on the school ma'am job, we'd all be indebted to you, Mr. Crosby."

Penelope had turned nineteen years old a few months earlier and didn't seem to have any interest in settling down with any of the eligible men folk around our parts. I wasn't her Daddy and it wasn't my place to go and make her do something she wasn't fixing to do as a young lady in her own right. Besides, she knew reading and writing and all those things better than most around here and the kids seemed to like her.

Samantha was just as headstrong about it too.

"Papa and Mamma were always raising us up to do right by what we felt we needed to do, Nathaniel. The girl would do good to earn a living and stay out of trouble. If I take the store keep's job the two of us would ride the buckboard into town and be back before sundown."

So, after a good bit of thought I gave my blessings. Pete Brandt was happy as a pig in mud and the Constable who hired the school ma'am couldn't thank me enough. The old spinster who had retired from the job was a damn sore looking thing that nearly scared the britches off the kids...

The Missus and the girl settled into a routine that had them up at the crack of dawn tending to the chores before hitching up a team to head into town. It was a three mile ride by buckboard, about an hour of travel by the time they settled out of the livery. They usually made it back to the ranch before sundown that evening.

As often as not I'd be out on the range and not back in for days at a time especially during cattle roundups. We had a couple hands to help out on the ranch, two brothers from Missouri who were down on their luck after playing games of chance over in Dallas.

Bert and Wilbur Tuttle were barely able to shave when they first showed up on the boardwalk out to town. Samantha had taken a shine to them when they ended up on their asses being tossed out of the Broken Dollar Saloon for being short of worthwhile funds to pay for their drink. We needed a couple hands so after I inspected them to my satisfaction I had them ride out to the homestead and put them through the paces. They started working for me on the spot......

"Yes sir, I'm telling you. Jim told me outright he put his talleywacker right to it in the back room." Wilbur whispered to Bert over the crackling of the campfire.

"I wouldn't believe a word that sheep humper said 'bout anything, especially that. You better keep that foolishness to yourself 'else somebody's gonna get killed." Bert replied.

I was supposed to be asleep on the other side of the fire but I had awakened when one of the brothers threw another chunk of mesquite on the blaze.

"I'm not kidding there, BT. He said they was back in the ladies sipping room at Kitty Lu's and he bent her over some and took what he wanted... fucking, he said."

Bert just looked at him and told him to shut up and I just caught the tail end of his sputtering enough to hear the words that woke me up sound.

"Mr. Crosby' be doing some killing you keep it up talking like that."

I lay there with the embers popping as the blaze died back a bit. I didn't have no call or care for some humper getting a piece of a whore out of Kitty Lu's back room. Half the trail pokes from here to the other side of the Pecos had made a visit at one time or another. The whores would take them to the boarding house upstairs next door and get them happy.

There were two saloons that did most of the business in town, the Broken Dollar and Kitty Lu's. Women folk weren't allowed in the 'Dollar, not even in the back room. They didn't care if the humpers took one upstairs but the downstairs parlors were off limits to the whores.

Kitty Lu's on the other hand was the only place women folk could get served a drink of whiskey anywhere in Fort Worth but in the back room only. That's why the whores liked the place; menfolk could see 'em sitting at the short bar or at a table from the front parlor room.

That said, Bert Tuttle mentioning my name in the same conversation had me thinking there was real trouble and that meant Penelope. Like I've always told the good Reverend when he inquires, that girl has been a handful and while she might not be a precocious young girl anymore, she's still the biggest tart for miles around, school ma'am be damned, at least when she's around me.

I lay there thinking I needed to do a good bit more digging before I had a conversation with the two brothers...

The next couple of weeks kept me over towards Abilene chasing stray cattle on a ride back up to the stock pens hoping to get good coin on the hoof if I could keep them healthy. We were driving three brands in the herd off of free range land to the east of Abilene where the tribes were not causing any problems. If all was good we'd get them to Fort Worth well in time for the cattle drive.

All of Texas was free range; anybody who tried to fence in land would likely either get shot or strung from the end of a rope. In any event the Apache would make short shrift of anybody who tried to drive a stake anywhere west of where we were. The brands were mine and two other fellows, one from Fort Worth and the other from just east of Abilene.

We settled the longhorns in a sheltered valley along a creek just outside of town and a couple of us headed towards the boardwalk hoping to get a hot meal and maybe a shot or two in the saloon.

Unlike Fort Worth, this town was bit more settled in their ways and the local sheriff kept things under a pretty tight wrap. We threw a couple bits down and the barkeep brought a bottle and glasses over drawing a mark on the bottle to let us know how much draw we'd owe him. I suppose we'd been sipping and chewing fat for maybe an hour when the loud scuff of metal spurs, several of them, clanged across the rough board floor with the annoying creak of the swinging saloon doors behind them.

There were three of them, each of them cow hands off a drive somewhere. I knew one of them; Jim Babb who worked cattle well to the south and east of us down in Lipan Indian country who passed through Fort Worth pretty regular. The other two were a couple ugly hombres I'd never seen before, one of them a giant of ugliness not seen in these parts, at least not with sober eyes.

A couple of the whores off to the side of the room rose up from their disinterest, given we'd shunned them earlier, and sauntered over to the dusty looking trio pushing the cleavages of their bustier up for raunchy effect. Big Ugly grinned with interest, his two missing front teeth adding to the ambiance. Jim Babb held back a bit sipping his whiskey as his two companions took up with the whores.

I don't think but a few seconds passed before the retort and smoky discharge of a .44 long barrel sidearm dropped the short hombre like a sack of turnips onto the dirty floor of the scrappy drinking establishment.

"Gip Boone, you move a fucking inch of your butt ugly carcass and the brother to that hot piece of lead's gonna split you like an axe on a piece of pine."

The man with a long whipping moustache and with his hair tucked up under his bowler hat leveled his sturdy Colt revolver straight at the man's chest and began walking towards him, his Sheriff's star shining like a beacon in the light of the saloon's oil lamps hanging above the room.

Big Ugly raised his hands slowly and the whores ran back to their table, one with little blood smatters running down into the crack of goodness between those proud mammary, crying to good effect. The sheriff walked over and put steel wrist shackles onto the big man and led him toward the door. The big fellow never said a word.

"Barkeep, my deputy will be along shortly to take care of matters." The sheriff said and out the door he went with his prisoner. Jim Babb just stood there, eyes wide with bewilderment hardly believing what had just happened.

A short time later a skinny looking fellow with a round badge on his lapel came in and dragged the dead man out into the street where the undertaker was ready with a pine box for his final journey to whatever passed for boot hill in these parts.

"Sheriff wants you down to his office, pronto, you hear?" he said to Babb who still hadn't uttered a word.

Babb just nodded and shuffled out the door as the barkeep tossed a shovel of sawdust on the blood pool on the floor.

"Jumping Jehoshaphat!" My drinking companion exclaimed as he downed a straight up shot to the belly and poured another.

I joined him with one of my own and we struck up a conversation with the barkeep that filled in a few key pieces of information.

"The big fellah's a poke who used to ride trail up into Missouri before they started driving cattle into Kansas. Boone's his name, folks call him Gip. The fellah the sheriff dropped on the floor there was Digger Boone, the big fellah's kid brother. Seems they were wanted for murdering a stagecoach team and robbing it a couple months ago up east of Dallas. To boot, they busted into a ranch and killed the man and stole his wife; she hasn't been seen since. Probably ran her down to Mexico and sold her. There's a bad business for that, you know."

The stagecoach robbery and murders was big news when it happened but I didn't know they knew who did it. The crimes at the ranch on the other hand scared a lot of homesteaders and the constable in Fort Worth started sending deputies out to ride the back trails to the south of us. We had one of them stop by one morning.

After we got him plied up with coffee and biscuits he started telling us his story of a German family that had settled down near Fort Chadbourne a couple years before.

"They come out from back east, the whole bunch of them; the man, his missus and a couple young'uns and two of the prettiest young gals you ever seen. They bought up a water right to graze cattle and grow some crops and had been settled in a sod house for about a year whilst they raised up a timber home.

"Schmidt's they was. Well, they had a bunch of desperados ride in there in the middle of the night and everything turned to hell from that point. They locked the Mister and his two boys in the barn and had their way with the missus and girls till dawn. By the time the sun came up, they had cleared out heading for the Pecos with the woman and two daughters.

"We rode posse after them for two weeks and never caught up. They disappeared into Apache lands and the mister and his boys spent the next year looking for them. Saddest damn thing it was. They found one of the girls put to work in a Mexican whorehouse across the border from Fort Bliss and the other one was sold down into Mexico somewhere. No one knows what happened to the missus. Damn shame. They was fine looking women and good folk."

My trail partner and I saddled up and headed back out to the creek bed after settling with the barkeep and by morning we were back on the trail running herd to the stock pens. We were back in Fort Worth by week's end......

"Nathaniel, you just lie back like that and see to it you enjoy what my man deserves." She whispered to me with the moonlight streaming in from the opened window sash.

Samantha had stripped completely buck naked and straddled me on the feather bed mattress with my fingers toying with her erect nipples as she bent down and took my cock in her mouth. She'd learned fellating from her deceased beau and having enjoyed the experience from a couple of whores in my oat sowing days I wasn't about to object.