Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 11:04:24 -0500
From: George Gauthier <georgegauthier@verizonmail.com>
Subject: White Comanche

				White Comanche
				Naked Prey 5
 				by George Gauthier

Author's Note: This is a tale of a teenager in the American West during the
mid-nineteenth century. It is the fifth story in my 'Naked Prey' series for
the Historical section of the Nifty Archive, each with different
characters. The other stories in the series so far are 'Naked Prey' set in
19th century Africa, 'The Shawnee', set in colonial America, 'Terra
Australis', set during the great age of exploration in the South Seas, and
'Dangerous Game' set largely in the Caribbean in the mid-seventeenth
century.

It contains graphic descriptions of the male human body, of consensual
sexual activity between adult males, and of moderate non-sexual violence in
one chapter.

If any of this would offend a reader, read no further. This is not intended
for persons younger than an age where they may freely and legally select
their reading matter in whatever jurisdiction applies.

It is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living
or dead. Despite the title, it was not inspired in any way by the old movie
of the same name starring William Shatner. Otherwise, it is as historically
accurate in its setting as I could make it, with only minor poetic license
for the sake of the story.

It is offered for entertainment. If it manages to both intrigue and to
provoke prurient interest, it will have succeeded in its aim. Writing this
story has been the most fun I have had wearing clothes in a very long
time. Well, since my last story.

Readers who like these stories might want to try my 'Daphne Boy' historical
tales or my 'Jungle Boy' series of tales in a modern setting, posted in the
Gay/Authoritarian section of the archive. Also, please try my futuristic
'Track and Field' stories in College and my 'Mer-Boy' stories in
Gay/Beginnings. For links to my stories, look on the list of Prolific
Authors on the Archive.

Comments and feedback welcome.

			Chapter 1.  Llano Estacado 1834

The two Comanche youths rode their ponies westward across the sea of grass
known as the Llano Estacado, the Palisaded Plain for the steep escarpment
that forms its northern boundary. Both rode bareback wearing only a brief
buckskin loincloth and moccasins. Their clean limbs gripped the barrels of
their mounts giving them a sureness in their seat that a rider used to a
saddle could never equal. Comanches learn to ride even before they learn to
walk.

Litanka was the leader of their expedition by virtue of being older by a
year or so at eighteen. He had the reddish brown skin and dark hair done up
in braids typical of the Southern Comanche. His companion was something
else, short and slight of build, blond tresses long enough to reach past
his shoulders but loose and blowing in the wind. In contrast with his
companion's standard brown eyes, his own were a vivid shade of green. The
youth's originally white skin was bronzed by years of exposure to the sun
and the elements. Called Kitono or 'Sun-born' by the Comanche as a name
close to his original English name of Kit, short for Christopher, he had
been rescued from an ambushed wagon train years earlier.

They came upon a playa lake, a shallow seasonal rain fed lake and watered
their horses. Since it was so late the afternoon, the youths decided to
make camp there. After hobbling their horses the boys stripped off their
loincloths and splashed in the shallow water, using sand to rub and wash
their skin clean. The Comanche were a cleanly people, bathing more often
than their white enemies, the 'smelly ones' as they called them.

"Are you sure your black stallion will still be there, Litanka?"

The older boy just laughed. "You ask me that every time we camp, my
brother. All we can do is hope. You know how much this means to me."

Indeed, Kit knew that his older brother could never find the bride price
for his intended from among his own small string of ordinary ponies. He had
to bring the spectacular stallion to Monaki's father if he had any hope of
impressing him. Since both boys were still unblooded, they were usually not
taken seriously by the tribal elders. The danger that the boys might run
into hostile Kiowa would just add to their prestige if Litanka brought his
prize back to the tribe's spring encampment.

Once they were clean the boys let themselves dry in the light wind, sitting
close together talking about their hopes and dreams for the future. Of
course they would be become warriors; that went without saying, but even
youngsters like them knew that their way of life was under threat.

Things were changing on the southern Great Plains. White men's diseases had
devastated the tribes a decade and a half earlier. First the Spanish
speakers in Mexico had declared their independence from distant
Spain. Later the Mexicans had invited English speaking Americans to settle
the land they called Tejas. That meant more cattle and horses on the range
to steal in raids, but also more white men with guns. Meanwhile the
American government had been removing eastern Indians along the infamous
'Trail of Tears' to the lands north of the Red River in what is today the
state of Oklahoma.

"You really should braid your hair like a proper Comanche," complained
Litanka once again. Kit just laughed.

"Now who is repeating himself! I like it loose, blown by the wind, a golden
halo atop my head. You are just jealous that I am brother to the sun." he
added loftily, though softening that with a grin.

The older lad reached out and tousled Kit's corn gold hair.  Kit yanked on
one of his braids. Soon the lads were rolling around laughing, halfway
wrestling halfway just holding each other close, kissing and touching each
other everywhere. Not just close friends and brothers by adoption, the two
lads were lovers as well, a common and accepted practice among the tribes
before a youth took a bride.

Litanka was dark and well built, without a scrap of extra flesh. An
aquiline nose lent authority to his handsome features. He bore white scars
on his right arm from when he had tangled with a half grown puma that had
stalked a colt in his father's herd.

A few months short of seventeen, Kitono was a comely lad, short for his age
and slender. He had a fawn-like physique but with a wiry musculature, toned
and taut from hard living. Kit was pretty as a girl with delicate features,
a straight nose, high cheekbones, and large green eyes with a blond thatch
on top, now plastered to his head by his dip in the playa.  He had
virtually no hair on his body, just wisps under his arms and at the fork of
his legs, with hardly a dusting on his lower legs and arms, and there were
no signs that Kit would sprout a beard any time soon.

Litanka loved the way the setting sun painted his lover's skin reddish
gold. Kit was such a beautiful boy, always cheerful and helpful, and so
very complaisant as a lover, doing whatever was asked of him, however
naughty.

The boys made love eagerly with the passion of extreme youth, their kisses
and caresses growing ever more ardent. They rolled on their sides and
pleasured each other's cock orally, hands roaming all over their rumps,
touching, stroking, probing. They came quickly, tasting and swallowing each
other's gism, then shifted to face each other once again.

Without words, they agreed to slow down a bit and make their pleasure last
longer. Kit lay on his back, knees pulled back and heels in the air with
the older lad between his legs. Kit usually bottomed for his brother who
was well endowed and knew how to use his natural gifts to penetrate his
younger sibling. To Kit it felt so good when Litonka thrust into him,
impaling him, filling him up then stroking steadily in and out, arousing
his passions higher and higher.

Kit gave himself to Litanka, letting the older youth play with him like a
toy. Kit loved it when Litanka took charge of him, giving him orders, and
pinching or smacking his butt to show his dominance. Kit was a sexual
submissive who wanted and needed a stronger male to establish his ownership
and control of his delectable body. Kit did not mind the mild humiliations
or the good natured spankings his stronger and larger lover imposed on
him. He accepted that as no more than his due, given their differences in
age, size, strength and attitude.

The older male put Kit on all fours giving him total access to his young
lover's delectable body. His hands roamed everywhere, tweaking nipples,
fingering the chevrons of his ribs, stroking his taut buttocks. The older
boy leaned forward and whispered endearments in Kit's ear as he pumped
steadily, letting Kit stroke himself to keep pace. Kit's own member seemed
spectrally white by comparison, but there was nothing insubstantial about
it. As long erect as Kit could cover with both his small hands, it left no
doubt as to his masculinity, delicate girlish features aside.

"Yes little one, work that cock of yours while I cover you like a stallion
covers a filly. Let us enjoy our time together, my brother, till I
marry. You are so lovely my Kit, actually prettier than any Indian girl in
the tribe. I only wish I could marry you, but then you could not give me
sons. Instead, give me now what you can, much pleasure, and I will do the
same for you."

Kit did derive much pleasure from their lovemaking, maybe too much. The
fact is that, for Kit, sexual activity with a young male was not a stop gap
till marriage. He did not feel any attraction to females at all, only to
males. He wanted to spend his entire life that way rather than start a
family.

That was his existential problem. He was torn between his desires and the
expectations of his people and his family. He had recently realized that he
did not want to take up the life style of the typical Comanche: warrior,
husband, father. Nor could he live the life of a berdache, the third gender
role that Indian society provided for submissive, effeminate males who
typically dressed in women's robes and stayed in the camp. He was a boy,
not a girl in every way except one, and he liked adventure and hunting and
raiding, though, in truth, he had been on only one raid so far and had not
actually fought any Kiowa warriors. He was assertive enough in every way
except sexually, so he did not fit the role of a berdache either. He
certainly did not want to cover up in women's robes; he would much rather
run around in a skimpy loincloth.

Well that made him doubly an outsider among the Comanche anyway. He was
originally a white boy named Christopher Landy whose family were slain by a
Kiowa raiding party eight years earlier. The hostiles had overlooked him
because he had stepped away from their wagon into some brush by a stream to
answer a call of nature. The raiders struck just as he dropped his
trousers, and he had hidden till they had gone. When the Comanche showed
up, attracted by the smoke from the burning wagons, he thought his life was
over with. Instead the fierce Comanche warrior chief had brought the white
boy back to their encampment.

The Comanche adopted Kit into the tribe after the usual cruel initiation
period when the other boys had a chance to torment him and to test his
mettle. For eight years he had thought himself a proper Comanche lad. Now
he had his doubts about ever fitting in. Was there any place in this world
for a sixteen year old boy who was half civilized and half savage, one who
found no pleasure in the female of the species?

......

The next morning the pair of boys road out heading steadily northwestward
toward the valley of the Pecos River which flows for some nine hundred
miles in modern New Mexico and Texas before passing through dramatic cliffs
to join the Rio Grande. In its upper reaches was just a creek that provided
water to the local fauna including a herd of mustangs ruled by a
magnificent black stallion.

Like all Comanche, both boys were excellent riders. Comanches are put up
onto horses very young and actually learn to ride before they learn to
walk. Even for them, capturing a wily stallion would not be easy. Still
they had remounts and could force the pace to exhaust their quarry. Even if
the stallion could outrun them, he would not abandon his harem for very
long. If he got away once or twice, they could simply outwait him. Humans
have a kind of patience that no four footed animal can ever match.

Unfortunately the Pecos River lies beyond the Mescalero Escarpment, the
western edge of the Llano Estacado and is very close to the western edge of
Comacheria, the area roamed by the Comanches. Instead of a herd of horses,
they found a Kiowa hunting party encamped in the valley and looking to
settle in for some days. They would hunt widely, so the best thing for the
boys to do was to withdraw to the north to wait till the Kiowa finished
their hunt and left for their own lands.

Riding alone the way they were, Kit didn't even bother with a
loincloth. The skimpy breechclout he favored really left little to the
imagingation, but he preferred riding entirely bareass when he could,
letting his brother the sun kiss his skin and turn it an even bronze, so he
would look like a proper Indian boy.

After a ride of two days they came to the valley of the river the whites
called the Canadian River, though no white man could explain why. The
Comanche knew full well that Canada was a thousand miles away and the
so-called Canadian river merely a tributary of the Arkansas River, forming
the northern border of the Palisaded Plain.

It was there that the two Indian boys encountered a young white man working
in shirt sleeves over a sketch pad. Tall, lean, red-haired and good
looking, he had brilliant blue eyes and a splash of freckles across the
bridge of his nose which was very slightly turned up at the tip. In other
words, a face to inspire trust, as indeed it did.

Duncan Barrie was a landscape painter, a member of the Hudson River
School. The paintings of the Hudson River School reflect the themes of the
discovery, exploration, and settlement of America in the 19th
century. Barely twenty, he came from a well-off family in New York
City. Duncan had traveled with famed Indian portraitist George Catlin
earlier in the year but had since struck out on his own. His aim was to
capture the beauty of the countryside, not the lives of its inhabitants.

The man continued sketching as the boys rode up to him, clearly more
curious than anything else. Calmly he let them approach him. He could see
they were both very young and the small blond one was entirely naked. What
a beauty too; he would be perfect as a model. Before getting closer the
older one plunged his lance into the earth, disarming himself, to show his
lack of hostile intent. The boys rode in empty handed and with friendly
expressions on their honest faces.

He showed them his sketch pad, flipping several pages so they could see his
work. Both lads nodded. They understood sketching and painting if not the
purpose very well. They had met Catlin and knew that the man 'traded' his
paintings back East for other goods. The Indians had no concept of money as
such.

The tall one who pointed to himself giving his name as Litanka spoke to
Duncan in Comanche and Spanish, but the man just shook his head. Though
fluent in French and German and able to read Latin, he had just enough
Spanish to make it clear that he did not understand. "No entiendo. No hablo
espanol."

Duncan tried English hoping the White Comanche, for that is how the thought
of Kitono, would speak that language. Kit did remember enough from his
childhood and from speaking with occasional traders to be able to converse
with him. They soon were talking away in a friendly fashion. Not much of a
surprise for Duncan Barrie was a gregarious fellow and something of a
chatterbox.

Kit explained the purpose of their journey and why they had detoured to the
north, only to encounter the artist quite by accident. Duncan offered his
help. He wanted to see the Pecos Valley anyway, and he certainly wanted to
see more of lovely Kit. The two Indian boys accepted his offer to travel
with them and they settled into camp with him. During the night, the white
man could hear muffled sounds as the boys lay close together and kissed and
fondled each other, but they refrained from all out lovemaking, knowing
that many white men strongly disapproved of such couplings.

The next morning Kit disappointed Duncan by donning his breechclout. The
artist resolved to get the boy to pose for him in the nude, never no mind
that he was a landscape painter. Male nudes were proper subjects for
artists too, and this extraordinarily beauteous creature was made to order.

Duncan saddled his horse, provoking a scornful remark from Litonka about
the riding abilities of white men who needed saddles so they would not fall
off their horses. Duncan did not take offense but patiently explained the
advantages of a saddle in terms he thought the young Indian would
understand.

He explained that fierce warriors among the whites had invented the saddle
for warfare. A warrior with a lance can put the whole force of the weight
of the horse and rider behind the point of his lance whereas a bareback
rider would be pushed off his horse by the impact. A warrior can stand up
in the stirrups and shoot a bow accurately from a running horse, even
shooting over the back of the horse. Also the saddle-horn was good for
anchoring a lariat thrown over a horse's neck. And yes, it was easier to
stay in a saddle than on a horse bareback. Did Indians never fall off their
horses?

Not that Duncan couldn't ride bareback if he had to. He was a very good
rider himself.

The Indian boys and Duncan roamed the area for six days, getting better
acquainted with each other. Kit's English was coming back to him in a rush,
now that he was speaking it continually. He told his story to the
sympathetic artist, though he did not mention his ambivalence about his
future as a Comanche. Then the entire party headed south to look for the
stallion. To Litanka's bitter disappointment, when they arrived two days
later, they found that they had been forestalled by the Kiowa who had
abandoned their hunt to capture the stallion and his small herd, leaving
the worst mares behind to fend for themselves. The Kiowa were long gone by
then, and any pursuit pointless. Litonka would have to find another way to
win his bride price.

"You go back to the encampment, my brother" Kit told him. "I will stay with
the white man and serve as his guide. Take the sketch he has done of us
with you and give it to our father. I will be back in a few weeks."

Litonka was so disappointed at his own loss that he made no objection to
the sudden change of plans. The two Indian boys embraced and wished each
other well, then set off in different directions.

				Chapter 2. Pecos River

The pair of young white men, one Comanche, one American, traveled together
up the valley of the Pecos River. Near where the village of Villanueva
would one day be built on a terrace deposited from the melting of mountain
glaciers millennia earlier, they set up a camp. Duncan loved to sketch the
scenic river flowing between sandstone cliffs. His sketches and notes would
help him render the scene in oils when he got back East. His water color
renderings were visual notes of the vivid colors the countryside presented
to him: the green of the trees, the white and blue of the sky, the red of
the canyon walls. Not to mention the skin tones of one virtually nude
Comanche boy.

"Oh why won't you let me sketch or paint you entirely naked, Kit? Only your
loveliness can match the beauty of this wonderful country. You must model
for me. Please get out of that loincloth"

"Why are white artists always so eager to depict people without any
clothing on?"

"To my people, the human nude is the most beautiful living thing in
existence."

"Then why don't you paint females? Don't you like girls?" Kit teased though
he had a good idea why Duncan wanted to get him naked.

"What if I promise to reward you with a kiss, Kit? I have seen the way you
have been looking at me, especially when I undress at night."

Early on, Kit had laughed at the white man's night shirt, scorning it for a
woman's dress. Ever since then Duncan had slept in the nude just like his
young companion.

"Very well, but only if you promise not to show your work to Litanka or the
elders. One look and they will know that we are lovers."

"Wha..at! But we are not lovers, Kit."

"Not yet, but by this evening we will be."

With that, Duncan moved forward to embrace the lovely Indian boy, but Kit
held up a hand.

"Tut, tut. Not yet Red Hair. First you must paint me. Let that show me how
desirable I am in your eyes."

The fact is that this was Kit's first real chance to flirt with and to
tease a potential lover and he was making the most of his
opportunity. Indians were much more straightforward about such things, at
least between youthful males. Of course Kit would give himself to the
handsome white man, whom he found irresistible, but the artist would have
to work for it a bit, to court him properly.

So Durand took a deep breath to settle himself and got to work. He tried to
look at the slender youth with a purely professional eye but did not
succeed entirely. The white Comanche boy's naked beauty took his breath
away. Kit was very slight of build, standing a good seven inches (18 cm)
less than his own 5 foot eleven (180 cm). With only weeks to go till his
seventeenth birthday, Kit's petite physique was about as developed as it
was ever going to get. The boy couldn't have weighed more than 8 stone (112
lbs or 51 kg). From the mischievous look on him, this was a boy who,
without being particularly vain about it, was extremely cute and knew it.

The boy's delicate features were prettier than even a girl had any right to
be, with high cheekbones, a straight nose, and large green eyes plus a
wind-blown blond thatch that reached to his shoulders. He looked so much
like a young elf that you found yourself checking for points on his
shell-like ears.

Kitono had a beautiful body, slender yet muscular, taut, toned, and tanned
with narrow shoulders, eight pack abdominals, and narrow hips. His legs
were slender yet well muscled. He carried so little body fat that his flat
belly showed a tracery of downward pointing veins just under the skin. The
beat of his heart was visible on the left side of his smooth chest.

He was virtually hairless. Like his Comanche brethren he had very little
body hair, only a tiny tangle of blond hairs around the base of his cock,
with none on his smooth ballsac and sparse tufts under his arms. His skin
was sleek and smooth and deeply tanned.

>From his tiny red nipples to a deeply indented navel, to narrow hips
framing a surprisingly ample manhood for one so slight in build, Kit was
real beauty. His wiry physique was a vision of youthful male pulchritude.

His sex was proportional with a smooth cock, foreskin stretched over the
head, and a scrotum the size of an apple and held close to the belly. His
genitals didn't look shriveled nor his cock gnarly with veins like a lot of
other males. The foreskin hugged his cock head, outlining the ridge of the
glans under the skin, leaving just the slit at the tip visible. Cock and
balls were reasonably sized but Kit wouldn't be scaring the horses. It took
both his small hands to cover an erection, but only one when he was soft.

This was a boy that Renaissance masters like Botticelli or Leonardo da
Vinci might have fought over to have as a model or as a lover. Kit had a
body someone like Michelangelo might have written poems to celebrate, even
if the man would not have used him for an artist's model. Duncan could
never understand how a boy lover like Michelangelo Buonarotti could have
painted so many bad male nudes. In his opinion, the Tuscan master's nudes
were grotesque, way too muscular and over padded. His figures in the
Sistene chapel were circus strongmen running to fat. Too much! And why had
he painted the father of the human race with infantile genitals?

Even his nude sculpture of David in front of the Palazzo della Signoria was
a few years too old, depicting a young man rather than a youth. The real
David would have been a wiry teenager not the rather more muscular figure
embodied in his statue. Kit would have made a better model for the young
shepherd boy who became a king. Dontatello had had the better idea, even if
his execution left much to be desired. For one thing his David was too
soft. No one looking at Kit's wiry build in the nude would have called him
soft. About the only thing soft about him was his endearing nickname. Kit
means the young of one of the smaller wild animals, say a fox, surely one
of nature's loveliest creatures, as was little Kit himself.

Durand had the boy try various poses till he found the one he liked
best. Kit stood feet apart, his weight on his back foot, front knee
slightly bent, holding a lance in one hand just above his right shoulder as
if about to throw it, with the other arm held out to the front and side for
balance. With his blond hair streaming in the wind he looked like one of
the nude Celtic warriors who had fought Caesar for the control of Gaul. The
stance highlighted the tension in the muscle bundles of arm and shoulder
and accentuated the dimpling of his buttocks while uncovering his
corrugated chest and belly. His tiny red nipples were like twin beauty
marks on small but well defined pectorals.

After the modeling session the two young males, now both naked, ran down to
the river. The stream was shallow in most places and rocky with stones
washed down from the sides of the valley but there were deeper pools
suitable for bathing and swimming. Kit and Duncan jumped in. Both loved to
swim, but their splashing about that evening was more about fun and grab
ass than actual swimming.

Durand was lean and much taller than Kit. Like many red heads, he had very
little body hair and a peaches and cream complexion. No slouch in the looks
department himself, he played handsome swain to Kit's pretty young
thing. They were a stunning couple, laughing, splashing, pushing each other
under, holding and hands roaming everywhere, kissing passionately.

The youths joined lips, tongues dueling. Hot hands stroked flanks and
hips. Their mutual excitement was obvious from the rigid members pressed
between their bellies.

"We might never have gotten together, if I hadn't insisted on painting you
nude, Kit," Duncan chided him.

With that he redoubled his kisses, taking command of Kit's small body,
tweaking his nipples and squeezing the em-purpled head of his cock while
Kit mouthed and licked and nibbled on his large nipples. Then he guided Kit
to a blanket laid on the sandy bank, their love bed now. Duncan had a long
virile member and smooth very like Kit's own, and truthfully somewhat
longer.

No Indian boy had ever played with him quite as the white man did that
evening. No one gives better pleasure with his mouth than another male who
does it by preference, not merely as a substitute for making love to a
female. As they lay together Duncan licked Kit's smooth cock from the root
to the tip. Pointed toward his navel, it lifted completely off his belly as
it cantilevered out from the root, rigid but dipping rhythmically with the
throb and beat of his heart.

Duncan's hands and lips caressed the wiry lad, stroking the length of his
legs, sliding along his flanks, delving between his thighs into his crack,
making love with his hands but touching his eager cock only with lips and
tongue. Duncan swallowed him to the root, bending it, sucking and licking
and swallowing, pumping up and down as Kit's arousal mounted. Duncan pulled
off just in time as the ball sac pulled tight against the fork of the young
man's legs, the head purpled, its tiny lips spreading open. Abruptly, with
only a quick intake of breath and a tightening around Kit's half-closed
eyes, his proud cock engorged beyond its previous impressive girth and
began spurting and spitting his white seed onto his chest. Even after many
strong spurts, the gism continued to drain from the still tumescent shaft
but now in a slow flow, emptying into and collecting in a pool in the
hollow of the belly.

Duncan used the tip of his finger to gather some of this sweet chrism and
brought it to Kit's lips and then to his own. He lapped some of it up and
took him back into my mouth, then sucked and tugged on a cock that had a
moment before spit his essence onto his belly. The boy whimpered; it felt
so good, it hurt. The boy moaned as Duncan teased his softening member,
abdominals flexing as he practically sobbed with pleasure. Duncan was happy
too. He had so wanted Kit's first experience with him to be
memorable. Sighing he lay back to rest. Later Kit pleasured him the same
way, making up in enthusiasm what he lacked in technique and experience,
though he nearly choked on the copious flow from the white man's
balls. Some of it escaped the lips locked around Duncan's cock and dribbled
down Kit's chin.

They broke for supper, then prepared themselves for fully consummating
their new relationship. Kit lay on his back, eyes bright with eagerness,
legs spread wide, knees bent and pulled up. Duncan lay himself atop his
young lover. He was young, strong and vigorous and knew how to please a
male lover. Kit was clearly not his first. He knew that a sexual submissive
like Kit gets a fire going in his belly whenever an large virile member
slides along his cleavage, from tail bone to perineum, poking, prodding and
playing with the anal ring, teasing the boy before the actual fuck. Duncan
fingered the hole, pushing in, lubricating him with a bit of oil,
thoughtfully preparing him for the penetration.

Kit felt Duncan's manhood stretch the anal ring as the head push through
the first ring then the next. The shaft slid inside, first just an inch to
give him time to adjust to his girth, then Duncan fed him more. Duncan's
shaft took on a rhythm of penetration and withdrawal, familiar to Kit now
from his many times with Litonka.

Then came the moment when his cock touched the boy's joy spot. Kit felt
light headed, his whole body shuddering helplessly as his guts clutched in
an internal orgasm.  The boy's slender body was tempest tossed on a sea of
sensation, head whirling, his pulse pounding at the temples, his own member
poking stiffly up from his groin. His lithe torso rippled in a wave that
started at his ass and traveled up the hips and back and neck to the
head. The rapid shaking of Kit's head was a reflex action, an indication of
overwhelming lust. He surrendered myself to the good feelings coursing
through him.

Duncan let the boy's internal ass orgasms go on and on. The sensation
became overwhelming as the older male pumped in and out to reach maximum
depth. Kit's experienced lover intended them to come together, so he batted
the boy's hand away from his own tool and took total control of his
delectable body. Duncan knew to wait for the right moment to provoke the
boy's external orgasm. And when it happened, Kit nearly blacked out with
the intensity of it. A wet warmth spurted inside him at the same time his
own gism shot out onto their bellies again and again. They slumped
together, exhausted. It was the best fucking of his young life.

Afterwards, the two youths lay together sweaty and tired, drained but
satisfied. That night the young lovers slept spooned together, sharing
their body warmth, nuzzling and whispering, happier than either had ever
remembered being. The howl of a coyote woke them briefly during the night,
but Duncan just snuggled closer to the boy, kissed the nape of his neck and
went back to sleep. The happy couple spent six more days in the same camp,
hardly thinking about moving on so Duncan could sketch other landscapes.

Kit posed for more drawings and a fine water color portrait. Some poses
were deliberately provocative and homoerotic. Duncan had Kit lie on his
back over a round boulder, arms and legs wide apart in a spread-eagle, hips
and tumescent cock uppermost, all the while looking boldly and directly at
the artist or viewer. Another sketch drawn from behind had him standing,
legs wide enough apart to reveal the twin orbs in his scrotum, one hanging
slightly lower than the other, hands gripping his buttocks with fingers
digging into their firm flesh exactly the way the viewer would clearly have
loved to do. There were dynamic poses of the boy poised to take off
running, bent forward, muscle bundles in his legs taut, his torso forming a
single curve from shoulders to his cleft buttocks.

Other sketches used static poses like the one that had the boy kneeling,
legs wide apart and bending forward over the boulder, a stance that parted
the buttocks enough to show the crinkly pink anal ring and the back of his
scrotum. An even bolder pose was with the boy on all fours, like a dog,
facing away from the artist, feet wide apart and toes curled to the ground,
showing off his bum and hole and dangling genitals. The shameless and cock
proud boy had even posed several times with an erection, whether pointing
straight up along his belly or sticking out from his groin like a
lance. One of those poses had Kit on his knees leaning back, heels of his
hands grasping his ankles, tumescent cock horizontal and dripping.

The most scandalous were the series of sketches done rapidly from memory
after Duncan had persuaded the boy to pleasure himself into a
ejaculation. The drawings perfectly captured the look of the teenage youth
as he lay back eyes closed while stroking his turgid cock and pinching his
nipples, all the time bringing himself nearer and near to the desired
consummation. One sketch depicted the actual eruption, with a jet of gism
frozen in mid-air.

Duncan wanted to sketch the boy forever, in one lascivious or erotic pose
after another. This was a boy who should be on display for the delectation
of anyone who loves beautiful boys. Kit too liked other people to see him
naked, to admire his trim body. He wanted his lover to record and display
his naked body on sketch paper and canvas that other men, even though
remote in space and time, might admire him. No part of his body was
off-limits or too intimate or private. How could he have secrets from his
lover. As to making drawings for public viewing, Kit knew that the artist's
work would preserve Kit's desirability not just for the brief period of his
actual youth but for the ages.

Aside from all the portraiture, if that is what it truly was, they rode the
scenic country and fished and hunted. Kit even taught his new lover
something of the Comanche method of wrestling, though since they wrestled
naked, that usually ended up in a session of lovemaking.

It was a time for the two youths to get to know one another better, to
share not only their hard bodies but also their hopes and dreams. Duncan's
were fairly conventional for a man of his talents and social class. He
wanted to be recognized for his talent and to become independent of his
family's money. His parents kept asking him to choose a wife from their
sort of people. Duncan was no snob, and he had no interest in female
companionship. He was due to come into some money on his twenty-first
birthday, enough to live comfortably if not in the grand style of his
family. He mentioned all this to Kit. His candor let Kit open up about his
own problems with identity and his ambitions for the future.

Neither could suggest an immediate solution, but they resolved to spend the
summer talking things over as they traveled the Southwest. Kit would be
useful as a guide and interpreter. He knew Spanish as well as English and
Comanche plus Indian sign language. His English was progressing
fast. Duncan had even suggested that Kit learn to read and write. He had
had his letters as a boy, but it had all slipped away during his years with
the Indians. Even if he stayed with the Comanche, literacy woiuld enable
him to help them in their dealings with Anglos, whether Texan settlers or
Americans. For that matter, he already spoke Spanish so learning to read
that language would be easy once he became literate. Spanish is rigrously
phonetic.

Sometimes Duncan was overwhelmed by the cultural gap between the two young
males. The first time the older youth mentioned the Roman Empire, he drew a
blank look on his lover's face. The same thing happened when he mentioned
George Washington and Napoleon. The boy could just recall his folks
mentioning New York and London, whatever those places were. Sometimes
Duncan could only laugh at the enormity of the task he had set himself, to
inculcate something of Western civilization into the mind of the youth who
had been raised among illiterate nomads. He preservered not only because he
had fallen in love with Kit, but because there were a lot of good stories
in history and literature.  They would enrich Kit's life and restore his
cultural birthright. This white Comanche of his must one day stand at his
side as an American citizen.

				Chapter 3. The Jaguar

Duncan extended his sketching expedition, eager to keep close to Kit. Over
the next seven weeks, the two youths traveled far and wide. Duncan filled
his sketch books with images of mountains, rivers, cliffs, canyons,
strikingly shaped rock formations, treeless plains and green forests. He
also made further sketches of his white Comanche lover.  Water colors and
sketches were Duncan's passports among the tribes. Even the Kiowa let Kit
pass through their lands unharmed given that he was in the company of his
white lover. The Indians did not quite know what to make of artists but
accorded them the respect they gave to their own shamans.

One evening became engraved indelibly in their memories, a moment of both
great danger and great beauty. The sun had just gone down behind the hills
to the west, though Venus was still above the horizon as the Evening Star,
and twilight lay across the land. While Duncan was preparing their evening
meal, the boy betook himself to the nearby stream to bathe. Kit had always
been scrupulous about keeping clean, if only with sand and water, and now
that Duncan had introduced him to real soap, he loved to bathe. He had just
lathered up, scrubbed, and dunked himself to rinse off when he looked up
and suddenly froze in position, crouched in mid-stream, water dripping off
his naked body.

On a rock by the edge of the stream a jaguar had crouched down to slake his
thirst. A large male in his prime, beautiful and deadly, he was nearly
triple the mass of the slightly built boy, three hundred pounds (about 150
kg) of muscle and claws and fangs. The jaguar has short stocky limbs good
for climbing, crawling and swimming. It is a stalk and ambush hunter,
pouncing on its prey from behind. Kit knew that a jaguar sometimes bites
the throat and hangs on to suffocate its prey, but it can also use its
powerful canines for a skull bite that pierces the temporal bones and kills
its prey instantly.

The green eyes of the spotted cat gleamed as they stared at the boy,
standing there so still and small and vulnerable, naked prey, caught
unarmed and defenseless in the middle of the stream in water up to his
shins. The shallow waters of a stream would hardly deter a hungry
jaguar. The big cats were excellent swimmers and were known to both hunt
and play in the water.

Kit held himself still, not so much frozen with fear like the faun he so
much resembled as from realization that any movement on his part might
provoke the beast to attack. He wanted to run. Every fiber of his being
told him to do so, but the rational part of his mind told him to keep
still, to ignore the trembling in his limbs and the way his scrotum had
pulled up close to the fork of his legs in fear. He breathed deep but slow,
building strength for whatever desperate action might be called for. He
glanced over at Duncan, imploring him for help yet hoping his friend would
not provoke the creature to attack. Their eyes locked in a wordless
affirmation of their love and trust in each other. Then Kit looked back at
the jaguar. Maybe he would die in a moment, but he tried to put defiance
and pride in his look.

Duncan saw the danger too but made no move to scramble over to his rifle,
also fearful that any sudden movement would provoke the creature to pounce
on its potential prey to rend and tear. Duncan was sick with the thought
that the warm and welcoming body of his young lover might be transformed
before his very eyes into just so much dead meat for the great carnivore to
carry off into the wilds to devour. His heart went out to the brave boy who
stood there strong and proud despite his understandable fear. Not quite
seventeen, yes, but already a man in spirit, if not in body. The three of
them held still for what seemed like the longest time, a tableau vivant of
beauty and terror.

The jaguar must have just eaten its fill because he made no aggressive move
toward the lovely boy crouched only a couple of body lengths away. Instead,
ignoring the tender flesh of the creature poised so near to him, the animal
turned its head down and resumed lapping the water till it had quenched its
thirst. It rose to its feet and stared once more at the boy, one of those
two legged creatures it had learned to be cautious around, mouth half open,
pink tongue licking the last drops off its whiskers. It blinked and opened
its jaws revealing its wicked fangs while a low sound came from its belly,
half growl and half purr.

Kit's nether pucker spasmed. It was all he could do to control his
sphincters. He wondered if this was how he was fated to die, disgracing
himself in front of the man he loved. The boy steeled himself for the
worst, his only positive thought was that at least his death might spare
Duncan. Surely the beast would not kill both of them.

Abruptly the jaguar turned and bounded off, its thick tail whipping the air
as it disappeared into the brush. Kit splashed out of the stream and into
the arms of his lover who crushed the boy's small water slicked body to his
breast, rocking back and forth. They held each other close, murmuring
reassurances, still fearful but also filled with wonder at the mystery and
the majesty of the great cat. The beast could so easily have slain the boy
whose empty hands and fawn like build could not have resisted such an
attack, yet he had spared Kit. Neither knew why, but they were grateful,
each to his own gods.

Their lovemaking was especially tender that night. Both knew how easily the
evening might have ended in tragedy, separating them forever. Duncan
inhaled the aroma of the clean scrubbed boy in his arms, pressing him to
his body. The boy felt so small and vulnerable. Duncan knew he wanted to
protect this lovely lad forever. Kit took his survival as a sign that he
was meant to be with this man, that somehow he would have to return to live
in the white man's world with Duncan Barrie. For his part, Duncan vowed to
never let the boy out of his life. They would make their way together,
somehow.

In time, the painting Duncan would make of that evening of beauty and
danger, would be his very best single work, capturing on canvas the souls
of the artist himself, the beautiful naked boy, and the magnificent
jaguar. The picture was a chiaroscuro of light and dark, contrasting the
great spotted cat crouched low to the ground in shadow with the upright
form of his naked prey bathed in the light of a three-quarter moon. Both
the glowing eyes of the great cat and those of the lovely nude boy were
green. The boy's blond locks were a halo crowning angelic features
expressing both his fear and his courage in the face of imminent gory
death.

Quite aside from the sublimity of the setting or the emotional impact of
the vignette the picture depicted, the full length nude portrait of Kit in
the foreground was itself a masterpiece of portraiture and depiction of the
male form. The slanting light of the moon accented the crevices and hollows
of the boy's corrugated chest and belly, highlighting the ribs and the
rippled abdominal muscles not to mention the surprisingly ample tube
between his legs. The composition did not use the usual coy angles or
convenient shrubbery to conceal the boy's maleness. The nicely formed
genitals at the fork of the legs left no doubt as to the gender of the
beauteous creature depicted in the painting.

The picture showed the youth half turned, his face in three quarter
profile, torso bent over, arms held out from the body, his manhood clearly
visible at the fork of his legs. Perspective made the boy's form in the
foreground larger than the much larger body of the predatory cat. Anyone
could see that Kit's was a beauty worth preserving for the ages: delicate
features that were pretty rather than handsome complemented by a wiry
musculature tensed and poised and ready to explode into action.

Critics were amazed that a landscape painter could render such a compelling
likeness of the youthful male nude. Despite handsome offers, Duncan never
sold the original painting or his preparatory sketches to anyone, though he
did allow engravings to be published. In time, his painting titled 'Naked
Prey' became one of the iconic images of the romance of the American West.

After sleeping in late the next morning, as they broke camp, Duncan teased
Kit about his outfit.

"You know, Kit, if you are going to live in the white man's world, you are
going to have to wear a bit more than that skimpy loincloth in the
summer. You realize that it's the same color as your bronzed skin. Why from
any distance you look quite naked. Hell, from the side you are as good as
naked. And that scrap of deerskin can slip or loosen, uncovering what lies
behind it. Not that I am complaining, of course."

"Indeed?" the boy responded loftily. "In that case...".

Instead of donning the brief garment, he simply tucked his loincloth into
the pack on his spare horse and rode entirely naked for the next few days,
except for his moccasins. What a headstrong wanton boy this was, Duncan
thought, and how delightful his company. In solidarity, Duncan stripped to
the waist, but he did keep his pants on. He did have civilized standards to
maintain, after all.

The next day, as the boys rode out of the area, they saw signs that the
jaguar had been feeding on an antelope it had killed the previous
afternoon. That evening, in keeping with his resolution to return to the
white world, Kit began his reading lessons, painstakingly re-acquiring his
letters. He had forgotten much but had retained the concept of an alphabet,
so it came back to him quickly. Soon he was spelling words aloud as they
rode during the day or writing them in the sand with a stick when they
stopped for camp. Duncan showed Kit how to write his own name, then his
too. When Kit wrote both of them together in the sand, Duncan drew a circle
around them, signifying their love. They kissed tenderly, tears of joy in
their eyes at how they had been so lucky to find each other.

On another day the pair were riding by a sizable herd of buffalo. They
needed meat so Duncan picked one out and shot it. The stolid beasts did not
run at the sound of the shot but held their ground, a herd behavior that
would be their undoing later in the century when hunters would swarm the
Great Plains to slay the bison for their hides alone.

While the boys butchered the carcass for the choicest portions, a bolt of
lightning from a thunderhead set the grass afire. It spread rapidly in the
dry country. Almost every manner of living thing fled before the flames of
the wildfire, predator and prey alike, ignoring each other in the urgency
of the moment. Birds took wing, wolves outran rabbits, deer bounded beside
a tawny cougar, while prairie dogs simply dropped into their burrows to let
the flames pass over them harmlessly.

"Head for those rocks!" Kit called out.

The youths urged their mounts to a canter and rode onto a flat rocky area
that the greedy flames bypassed for want of fuel. All around them lay a
scorched landscape, but Kit assured his lover that nature would soon
restore the land. Grass seeds in the ground would sprout and in a season or
two, the prairie would be as it had been before the fire. Indeed the rain
from the thunderstorm would start the process of germination. The youths
recovered their scorched buffalo meat and continued on their journey.

"See, Duncan." Kit pointed out with satisfaction. "Even a downpour like
this is no real inconvenience to a boy wearing only a loincloth. Or less."
he added, as he slapped his bare bum lightly.

The water simply sluiced off him, washing him clean of the dust and the
smoke and ash that had gotten smeared on them both. The water glistened on
his delightful curves, highlighting his shoulders and and arms and tawny
rump. The rain plastered Kit's blond locks to his head and ran down his
chest and belly dividing at the point where his genitals lay sprawled atop
the back of his mount. His cock was long enough that the head of it reached
past the scrotum so that it too touched horseflesh. Shaking his head,
Duncan had to admit that the blond boy riding next to him stark naked had a
point. This time, he did strip completely, though his clothing had soaked
through already. The downpour had drenched them both in an instant. They
rode off together, happy and joking.

That night at camp, Duncan washed his two sets of shirts and trousers and
linen drawers in a stream and hung them up to dry. The youths stayed at
that location the next day too so his clothes could dry out
thoroughly. Duncan cooked breakfast and sketched in the nude the whole
morning, donning dry drawers at noon mainly because of sunburn on his
ass. Although he had tanned some above the waist, he was pale below or had
been before the sun reddened his cheeks.

"So who is the white man and who the redskin?" Kit pointed out chortling.

"You think that is funny, young man?" Duncan asked, grabbing the boy and
turning him over his knee.

Kit kicked and struggled ineffectually, giggling all the time. A
well-deserved spanking soon turned his butt cheeks red too. Kit tried to
look contrite over his infraction, but the mischievous twinkle in his eye
let Duncan know he would tease him again the very next chance he got.

"Shameless boy!" Duncan declared in mock outrage as he finished spanking
then started to caress the shapely buns lying upon his lap.

Kit wriggled his hips under the strong hands of his lover, enjoying the
kneading and stroking and grabbing as a way for the older male to establish
his ownership and rights to the boy's sexy tush. Duncan stuck a couple of
fingers in Kit's mouth to get them wet then played with his hole, sinking
the fingers into it and stretching him open. The other fingers of his right
hand stroked or tapped the back of Kit's ballsac provoking a quick intake
of breath. The boy twisted and sat up on his lap with the fingers still
inside him. They kissed as Kit's own right hand grasped both their cocks
and stroked them together. His other hand played with their nipples till
they both erupted joyously at the same time. Neither male could recall a
sunnier occasion.

The next day as Duncan got dressed Kit shook his head ruefully as his lover
covered up so much of his body As far as Kit was concerned, the clothing
that white man wore was too much and too confining. Sure Kit had leggings
he could put on to protect him against dense brush. Unlike trousers,
leggings had no seat or front. They sheathed just the legs with the
loincloth covering the groin and the rump as before. James Fennimore Cooper
called them 'leatherstockings' in his novels about Hawkeye. True Duncan's
shirts were loose, but Comanches never wore anything at all on the upper
body, just wrapping up in a blanket in the winter. His form fitting jacket
was far too tight. Admittedly a hat gave good protection against sun and
rain. It made Kit wonder why Indians never wore headgear at all. He tried
it on, but it was far to big for him, dropping comically past his ears.

Duncan's boots were fine for riding with a saddle and stirrups but quite
badly suited for extended walking, though they did protect the calfs from
snakebite. Kit's own tough moccasins were better for riding bareback or for
going on foot. The Plains Indians used hard-soled moccasins because the
ground they walked upon was often rocky with occasional cacti. The
soft-soled moccasins of the eastern tribes allowed the wearer to feel the
ground, perfect for walking on the leaf-covered ground of a forest. Both
styles were light, allowing the wearer to walk quietly.

At twenty Duncan had only a very light beard, still mostly peach fuzz, so
he shaved only once every five or six days. Kit didn't shave at all; he was
as beardless as his Indian brothers, but Duncan warned him that with his
white heritage his chin would not be smooth forever.

"Actually I would like to shave you this morning Kit, if you'll let me. I
want to sketch you that way, without any hair in your armpits or at the
fork of your legs."

"I don't know, Duncan. Wouldn't that make me look even younger, a hairless
boy and not a young man?"

"There is that, but it would make your lines even cleaner without
distracting body hair. You cock would look bigger too, sprouting right out
of your belly wall. And it would make you even more naked than you are
now. Body hair is the very last covering, the last thing you can take
off. Would you like that Kit, getting as naked for me as you possibly
could?"

With some misgivings, but trusting the man he loved, and excited at the
prospect of presenting himself to his lover even more naked than he had
been, Kit submitted to Duncan's razor. It took almost no time to denude the
lad of those sparse wisps in his arm pits and at his groin, though the boy
was visibly nervous as the sharp edge of the razor glided along the bottom
half of his shaft and all around the root.

Not that it really needed it, but Duncan stretched out the boy's scrotum
and drew the razor over that too, turning the blade so it glinted wickedly
and threateningly in the sunlight as it ran over the ridges and curves of
the boy's vulnerable scrotum. For good measure, and because it was sexy and
provocative, Duncan shaved the boy's anal region too, though Kit had
virtually nothing back there. He just wanted Kit trembling on all fours as
Duncan scraped a straight razor along his cleavage and then down the back
of his dangling ballsac. The boy was so complaisant, naked and on all
fours, legs wide apart, offering the most intimate parts of his body for
inspection, for exploring fingers, and so trustingly, for the edge of a
blade that could emasculate him in an instant.

Kit stood up afterwards ran his fingers over his groin and ass crack,
relieved that everything was still there, though it now felt so strange and
smooth. And yes, his cock did look bigger, more blatantly on display than
before. It was so sexy looking and touching himself down there.

Kit's hormones did the rest. The boy felt a wave of heat wash over him as
his ball sac pulled tight to the fork of his legs. He erected almost
immediately, his manhood tumescent, the engorged cock jutting straight out
with its fleshy glans shaped like an arrowhead at the end. A string of
precum hung from the head of his cock, all purple and swollen. Duncan
sketched him rapidly. He thought Kit looked so very sexy strutting his
stuff, hands on hips. It was a composition bursting with youthful male
assertiveness.

The next morning, before setting out, Kit took his knife and cut down his
loincloth to a narrow strip not much wider than his hand. Duncan smiled at
how proudly the boy paraded around in the skimpy garment. It was a wonder
the boy bothered with it at all. He was next thing to naked anyway.

				Chapter 4. Texas Rangers

Kit and Duncan finally headed east toward the spring encampment of the
tribe. About two days out, from atop a ridge they saw a lone rider who was
leading a string of some half-dozen fine horses. Even at that distance Kit
recognized his brother Litonka. He signaled to get Litonka's attention. As
they rode closer the youths could see that the horses on his string were
not Indian ponies at all but larger stock that must have come from a
Mexican hacienda or a Texas ranch.

For his part, the Indian youth could see that the breechclout his step
brother sported was even skimpier than usual and that his artist friend was
stripped to the waist. Nicely tanned, Duncan must have been riding around
like that rather a lot. From the looks the two white youths gave each
other, they clearly had become a couple. Good. He was glad that his young
brother had found a new lover. Litonka knew that he would soon marry and
have to stop carrying on with little Kitono anyway, delightful though their
time together had been. He nodded at Duncan, gave Kit a wink and an
approving grin. Kit's bright smile beamed back at him.

"Look Kitono at the fine horses I have taken from the white eyes. Monaki's
father will surely look with favor now on my suit."

"And just where did you acquire such fine stock, brother mine?" asked Kit.

The Indian brave explained that he had raided the remuda of a nearby ranch
the day before. It was an exploit worthy of a song. Raids like that were
what young braves did to prove their worth in the eyes of their peer and
elders. Acting entirely alone he had run off with six of the man's best
mounts. He had even 'counted coup' when the rancher tried to stop
him. Instead of killing the man, armed though he was, Litonka had knocked
him senseless with the flat of his tomahawk, leaving him a living witness
to his prowess and courage.

Litonka had spared his life not only for the prestige but also because he
had nothing against the rancher and certainly did not wish him any real
harm. Anyone who raised such fine horses was a good man as far as he was
concerned, a fellow admirer of sound horse flesh. True another white man
had got off a shot then tried to chase Litonka and the mares on bareback
but had been thrown by his own horse. So Litonka got clean away with his
booty.

Unfortunately for the young Indian brave, Texas Rangers, led by a man named
Jeb McGraw, were on the trail of the stolen stock and caught up with the
riders the very next day. Though as yet an unofficial formation, the
Rangers were the only law along the frontier. The three youths found
themselves surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. Indeed only Duncan had
any firearms at all, a single shot pistol still in its holster and a rifle
in its scabbar. Litonka had only an unstrung bow and lance and
tomahawk. The rangers forced them to dismount.

"What's a white man doing riding with two Comanche horse thieves?" McGraw
growled.

"Hey look, the little one there is a white kid, not a Comanche at all,"
another ranger called out before Duncan could answer.

"Curiouser and curiouser." was McGraw's comment. "So why is a next thing to
naked blond boy riding bareback on a Comanche pony? You a renegade, kid?"

As he pulled on his shirt to lend himself some dignity, Duncan tried to
talk them all out of trouble. He explained that Kit was not a renegade who
had recently thrown in his lot with the Indians. He had been adopted by the
tribe as a young boy after the Kiowa killed his parents. He insisted that
Kit was innocent of any wrong doing. He had been with Duncan as his guide
the whole time and had not taken part in the seizure of the horses. As for
that, Litonka was only trying to win a bride price. No real harm had been
done there. Litonka hadn't killed anybody, after all, just knocked a man
senseless. The rangers had recovered the horses, and anyway, he Duncan
Barrie, would be happy to pay their owner full price for his mounts. No
hard feelings.

With one of the rangers translating his Spanish, Litonka confirmed that he
had acted alone. He was proud of what he had done all by himself. Just ask
the ranchers.

"A pretty tale but with two big problems. We hang horse thieves in Texas as
a matter of principle, not to mention murderers. What you don't know is
that old George Bailey broke his neck trying to ride bareback after the
horses. That makes it a case of felony murder."

Duncan tried to protest that the man's death was simply an
accident. Litonaka's action in merely knocking that rancher senseless
proved he had had no deadly intent during the raid. The rangers weren't
buying it. The only reason they did not suspect Duncan himself is that the
rancher had said he had seen only one Indian before being knocked
cold. Besides Duncan was an unlikely horse thief: a rich man who carried
paper money and gold coin of far greater value than the horses. Also his
sketch books backed up his story about being an artist. One ranger even
remembered him from when he had traveled with Catlin.

So Duncan himself was in the clear and Litonka definitely not. That left
little Kit.

"Hey look at these drawings of the white kid. He don't have a stitch
on. And those poses. Positively indecent!" one man exclaimed. He had been
leafing through Duncan's sketch book. "Pretty little thing though. What is
it with artists and nekkid people, anyway?"

"Those are just studies for paintings I plan to do when I return east to my
studio. The boy really did encounter a jaguar. I had him pose for the
rest."

He briefly explained the incident that had inspired his planned painting of
the boy and jaguar, pointing out those sketches. The rangers paged forward
glancing back and forth from the pad to the pretty White Comanche boy. Kit
had the good grace to blush as they tsked and tutted or looked over at him
with a combination of wry amusement and appraisal, occasionally shaking
their heads at some of the more explicit poses.

The scrap of deerskin that constituted his extra skimpy loincloth suddenly
did not seem like such a good idea to Kit. It had bunched up in his
cleavage while riding, not that it could ever cover much more than the
crack itself. At least in front down there he had shriveled from
apprehension, so he didn't have to worry about spilling out from behind the
small deerskin pouch at the fork of his legs.

"Out of one peril into another." McGraw noted. "We'll hang the Indian
straight out for a horse thief. You two white boys are coming back to
headquarters with us. You were riding along with the horse thief, so you
could be charged as accessories after the fact. Oh, I wouldn't be too
worried, if I were you. Probably neither of you will face trial, but we
cannot let you go just like that. A kid like blondie here can't be more
than fifteen, so I think the law will go easy on him."

"I've actually turned seventeen," Kit insisted. "And the name's not 'kid'
but 'Kit', that is, Christopher Landy."

"Well you shore as hell don't look no seventeen, Chris..to..pher
Landy. Anyway that Indian with you is a man grown, as we figure things in
these parts."

"All right, Litonka is eighteen, but that doesn't mean you can just go and
hang him!" Kit wailed.

"Of course we can. We are the law. What's that to you anyway? He something
special? I've heard about how Indian boys sometimes fool around
together. Is that it. Is he your lover maybe?"

Duncan wanted to declare "No, Kit is MY lover", but that would not have
helped matters. Instead he let the boy answer for himself.

"Ranger McGraw, Litonka is my brother by adoption and the oldest son of
Chief Natoka. Do you want to start an Indian War over some horses that
Duncan is willing to pay for anyway? And over a man who just fell off a
horse he shouldn't have tried to ride bareback? He should have known
better. Riding without a saddle is for us Comanches."

"Us Comanches is it? Looks like you just picked the wrong side, boy."

This was all going wrong for Kit. He sincerely wanted to return to the
white man's world under his birthname, but he was also loyal to his
brother. What should he do? What could he do? Suddenly Litonka made his
move; all the attention to the drawings and his brother's protests had
distracted his captors for just a moment. He snatched a knife from one of
the rangers and cut his way to a horse, wounding two rangers though not
badly. When McGraw aimed a pistol at him, Kit grabbed his arm and forced it
down. The pistol discharged accidently creasing one of the rangers in the
leg. Two rangers pushed the boy to the ground and bound his arms.

Other rangers fired at the retreating Indian brave. Litonka almost got away
since all firearms in those days were but single shot, but one ranger
managed to pick him off just before he got out of range. The bullet hit the
Indian boy in the back and burst out his chest, killing him instantly.

"Anything you want to add, Mr. Barrie?" McGraw snarled. The rangers
recovered Litonka's body though his horse ran off, heading back to the
encampment. McGraw was angry about his three wounded rangers. Never no mind
that all would live. With Litonka dead, he had only little Kit to take it
out on.

"Three good men hurt by Comanches. Damn them all to hell. Tie up Mr. Barrie
there too so he can't interfere."

While other rangers bound Duncan, the two rangers holding Kit dragged him
to his feet. McGraw walked up to him and slapped him in the face, then
punched him in the belly.

"I think maybe you will stand trial after all, for aiding and abetting a
prisoner to escape and just maybe as an accomplice to attempted murder. The
only reason we don't hang you right now is that you are white. Bind
'Christopher' here to that tree."

"Someone should have taught you manners, boy, long before this," McGraw
growled as his slipped off his broad leather belt.

McGraw saw himself as a fair man. Kids who misbehave should expect a
beating to make them learn their lesson. Anyway, with a wide belt like his,
it probably wouldn't leave any permanent marks on the boy's back or pretty
bum. Just bruises and welts. Like his men, the boy would live through his
experience all right. So the punishment would fit the crime. The idea after
all was to teach him a lesson.

The big ranger walked up to Kit and stripped the lad of his only item of
clothing, using his knife to cut through the narrow deerskin thong around
his hips. The loincloth dropped to the ground around his ankles. One of the
rangers reached down and tossed it out of the way, then, for good measure,
slipped Kit's moccasins off too. They looped his ankles and ran the rope
around the back of the tree to spread his legs and ass cheeks.

Funny thing about that. From the front the boy looked so flat, though well
corrugated with rippled abs, pecs, ribs, and nicely formed muscles. From
the rear, the boy was all curves: the calves, the thighs, the firm globes
of the deeply cleft buttocks, the swale of the lower back, the slope up to
the shoulder blades which formed winglets on his upper back.

Now that they had him entirely naked and vulnerable McGraw ran his hands
over Kit's back and rump, noting that the boy was tanned even there under
his loincloth. He must spend a lot of time going around
starkers. Hmm. White lads his age would probably envy him the freedom to
display himself so openly. White youths hardly ever had a good reason to
take their shirts off and strut their stuff, especially in mixed
company. Yet Comanche males never wore anything on their upper
bodies. Comanche youths wore revealing breechclouts in warm weather. The
only time white boys could take their pants off outdoors is when they went
skinny dipping. Like his tribe, this half wild White Comanche boy went
around all the time with most of his butt and all of his legs bared for
anyone to see.

Yes, he was pretty as a girl but that pert squared off rump of his was too
firm, the hips too narrow for even a skinny female. Flattened at the sides
and dimpled as the boy shifted his weight, these buttocks definitely
belonged to a young male. The ranger suddenly squeezed one of the firm butt
cheeks struck with how frail the boy looked, so small and helpless and
naked. A bum boy if he ever saw one.

He wondered briefly if the artist bent that way too, given how vivid his
nude sketches of the boy were. A man of the world, McGraw accepted that not
all males were as exclusively devoted to the female of the species as he
was. He would never give this kid a tumble, but a blind man could see how
very pretty he was. If there was ever a male that might make him waver it
would be little Christopher here. Small and naked and strangely hairless
even at the fork of his legs though he might be, the lad was bearing up
manfully, neither pleading nor cursing, no doubt trying to emulate the
fortitude for which his adopted people the Comanche were legendary. McGraw
couldn't fault him for that.

The boy trembled awaiting his punishment. He resolved to be silent, to show
his courage like a Comanche warrior captured by the enemy and put to
torture. Just before the whipping started, one of the younger rangers gave
Kit a stick to bite on. McGraw glared at the man but let it pass. It seemed
the boy's beauty and innocence were getting to everyone. Steeling himself
to his duty, McGraw laid fifteen good smacks on the boy's back and ass,
hitting pretty darn hard too. Though a tough hombre when he had to be
McGraw was never needlessly cruel, so he kept up a slow steady beat with
the belt, pausing between strokes, giving the boy a chance to brace himself
for the next blow.

Kit's butt cheeks trembled like he was shivering from the cold instead of
from fear. The hard leather hurt a lot and the smack the belt made on his
bare skin sounded just terrible. Still, though the broad belt raised welts
and bruises, it did not cut his skin, so there would be no scarring. Fine
with McGraw who had been impressed by the boy's silence during the
whipping. Only at the end did the last blow draw a hint of a whimper from
the brave lad. The boy had grit, McGraw gave him that much.

Indeed his grudging respect for the lad led him to agree when Duncan and
Kit pleaded for a chance to bury Litonka. Comanches did not expose their
dead on scaffolds like some of the Plains Indians, but buried them decently
in the earth like white men do. McGraw could honor that. Kit was not able
to bathe the body or paint his brother's face properly but he and Duncan
dug out a pit, put the body in, and piled a cairn of rocks over the grave
to keep animals from desecrating the body. Impatient to move on, the
rangers even pitched it at the end.

The entire party started back for the ranger headquarters in the
afternoon. Duncan was allowed to ride on his horse having given his parole
not to try to run off. McGraw figured he would never abandon Kit and leave
the boy alone with him anyway. Unsure whether Kit himself might ride off to
the Indian encampment, McGraw kept the boy on foot with his hands tied in
front and to a lead to his own horse. The boy had to run behind him, naked
and barefoot on the rough ground. Despite Duncan's vehement protests, they
proceeded that way for a couple of hours.

Duncan had recovered Kit's loincloth and moccasins, but McGraw was adamant
about keeping the boy unclothed and unshod. Duncan's heart went out to his
hapless lover, running in the dust and the heat, sweat gleaming on his
bared body, his back on fire from the beating, his feet cut by stones or
legs slashed by grass stems or thorns. At least McGraw kept the pace at a
walk or a trot so the boy could keep up. The boy ran gamely, keeping pace
with the riders despite his torments.

Now Comanches were not so well known as great runners like the Apaches, but
they did compete in foot races among themselves. Kit had always acquitted
himself well. He was not the fastest at the shorter distances but could
outrun almost everyone else at the longest distances. So the problem for
Kit was not the distance but the rough ground and his bare feet and later
his thirst. Also at times he stumbled and scraped his knees or his
flank. McGraw was careful to rein in and gave him some slack when that
happened. The man clearly did not intend to drag him along the ground, as
he could so easily have done. He even let Duncan give the boy water to
drink.

Finally, moved beyond caring whether he might get shot if he interfered,
Duncan spurred his horse to Kit's side and pulled him up on his mount
behind him. To McGraw he said with quiet determination and defiance.

"I gave my word I would not try to escape, but I never said I wouldn't help
Kit. The boy rides with me."

McGraw let it pass, so Duncan got his way. Kit slumped against Duncan
gratefully. The horse could easily carry both of them for the hour it took
to reach a good place to set up camp. That evening, as Duncan tended the
boy's injuries, the other rangers talked with Duncan and Kit and learned
more about them and about their travels. Duncan summarized their wanderings
across the Llano Estacado, the Pecos River Valley, and the Canadian River
country as he had gone about his business of sketching the scenery of the
region. He recounted in considerably more detail than earlier the story of
the jaguar and his naked prey and how courageously Kit had confronted the
big cat.

After their talk, as a body, everyone, even the three wounded rangers,
prevailed on McGraw to have mercy on the boy. Small and blond and slight of
build as he was, he reminded everyone of a kid brother or a nephew. Give
the boy back his clothes and his dignity and let him ride his own horse.

The chief ranger was feeling guilty anyway now that his initial anger had
passed. This was a plucky lad, as everyone had seen. Yes he had spoiled
McGraw's aim, but it was his own brother the ranger was shooting at. Anyone
would have done as much in the circumstances. The grazing of the other
ranger resulted in only a minor injury and was obviously accidental and
unintentional. Kit had not taken a knife to anyone. That was all Litonka's
doing. And the boy had had nothing to do with the stolen horses. He had
taken his beating manfully, and the long barefoot run had been a
considerable punishment too. With a sigh and a nod, McGraw agreed with his
men. Enough was enough.

Duncan explained to the rangers that Kit, though raised as a Comanche, had
decided to return to white society.  It would not be easy for a boy raised
as an Indian to learn the manners and customs of his birth people. Duncan
had taken him under his wing and would be there to ensure his
transition. He had already taught him his letters. Good manners and
cultural literacy were also on the agenda. When he finished his education,
Kit could take up a profession or trade just like anyone else.

Meanwhile, the lad could earn a good living as an artists' model. Duncan
himself had several commissions in mind after the jaguar picture: Kit as
Ganymede the paramour of Zeus and cupbearer to the gods, Kit as Narcissus,
the beautiful Greek youth who fell in love with his own reflection in a
pool of water and drowned trying to reach it, Phidippides the runner who,
in legend anyway, brought the news of victory from Marathon to
Athens. Other subjects might be Patroclus, friend and lover of Achilles, or
Hylas, shield bearer and companion to mighty Heracles. Duncan was sure that
other artists would jump at the chance to use Kit as a model for classical
subjects.

"Sounds to me like you and your artist friends will want the boy posing
totally naked for all those pictures. Tell me if I am wrong, Mr. Barrie."

"No Ranger McGraw, you are correct. Kit will be working as a nude model. He
is a natural for the job and not just because of his looks. He actually
likes going bare and is even a bit of a flirt that way. Kit has no real
skills that white society values, at least not in the city. That will take
him time and education to acquire. Meanwhile modeling will provide him with
honest work and an income of his own, so he can stand on his own two
feet. I don't want him to have to rely on charity, even my own. Do you see
anything wrong about that? Do our plans offend you? I am laying all my
cards on the table."

"No, I am not offended, not really, Mr. Barrie. Outside of my job as a
ranger, I have learned not to be too judgmental about people. I can see how
much you care for this boy and he for you. Don't tell anyone, but my
favorite cousin was the same way. I only wished I had helped Jack instead
of standing mute while his father drove him away. Good luck to both of
you."

With a nod of agreement, the two older men sealed their truce.

The rangers let the boy sleep with Duncan. The older youth held his young
lover tenderly, curled up in a blanket with him, cuddling him but letting
him rest, knowing how trying his ordeal had been. He did not care that
McGraw saw him kiss the nape of the boy's neck. That simple intimacy
confirmed what McGraw had thought, this was a man who really cared for the
lad; he didn't just lust after his body. The next morning they put Kit up
on a horse for the ride to town, wearing his normal garb.

				Epilogue

As McGraw himself recommended to his superiors, Duncan and Kit never faced
charges. Instead, after formalities in town, they made their way to the
spring encampment of the tribe and reported Litonka's death to chief
Natoka. Kit's foster father did not take to the warpath as he had
feared. In his mind, his son had escaped an ignominious death by hanging
and had died bravely fighting his enemies. Kit, his adopted son, had tried
to help too, fighting to protect his brother. His white companion had even
offered to buy the horses to get Litonka out of trouble with the white
man's justice. His son's was an honorable death during a raid for
horses. Such is the way of the Comanche and the cycle of life.

The chief also thanked Duncan for the likeness he had drawn of his two sons
when they first met. He would treasure it all his days. Natoka gave his
blessing to his foster son Kitono's desire to leave the tribe and live with
Duncan in white society. A wise man who could see far ahead, he knew that
the future held only travail for his people. Their way of life was
ending. Let the two young men make a new beginning for themselves. The two
lovers rode out of the camp and toward the future, determined to make their
way in the world together.

After they arrived in New York, the happy couple settled by themselves into
a pleasant house in a still rural area of Manhattan Island, in today's
Upper West Side, overlooking the Hudson River. Kit was agreeable enough to
wearing white men's clothing when they were out and about in society. At
home he preferred to traipse around in the nude when he was alone with
Duncan or even outside, weather permitting, in their garden. Kit reasoned
that since he was earning his living as an artists' model posing entirely
naked and since he slept naked too, he might as well be comfortable and
live that way too. The small all-male staff soon came to delight in or at
least to accept his casual nudity.

As well they should. Kit might as well stay naked full-time, the way he was
Duncan's favorite subject. The artist was always doing nude sketches of the
boy. Duncan did a series of portraits and scenes from daily life including
a series of Kit asleep in bed looking like as innocent as an angel. Other
series focussed on the youth's incomparable rump or his manhood in every
state of repose or arousal. Duncan did sketches of Kit climbing trees or
balancing on a wooden fence rail and other action poses. The finished
painting of 'Naked Prey' had a place of honor in their parlor where they
received visitors.

As the winter snows closed in Duncan often spent a romantic evening before
a fire reading poetry aloud in a large wing chair, with Kit either on his
lap or more likely on a bear rug where he could stretch out and let
Duncan's bare foot play with his delectable body. Or Kit sat up or knelt by
his chair. Duncan could reach out a hand and ruffle the boy's blond locks
or caress his face. It was very sweet and domestic, unless of course when
he and Kit decided to make love right there on the bear rug in front of the
fireplace.

Kit's book about his life as a White Comanche sold well. Duncan contributed
woodcut illustrations to the book including a frontispiece version of his
painting 'Naked Prey'. A better page turner than other 'captivity
narratives' of the day, it stressed adventure and incident instead of the
more usual theme of redemption found in books of that genre. Kit was honest
enough to admit the faults of his adopted people, but was proud of them too
and had very few regrets about living with them growing up. The book's
success led to a career for Kit as a writer of adventure tales for the new
magazines that were springing up in those days. Duncan's artistic career
flourished too, both at home and in Europe. Whatever they did or wherever
they went, the two young men always looked back fondly on their early days
traveling and adventuring in Comanche country.