Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:39:34 -0500 From: fireflywatcher ford Subject: Short Grass Prairie, chapter 1 The usual disclaimers apply, if you're under 18 or material with sexual content is illegal where you live, read no further. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions. This story has limited sexual content. I'm not great at writing sex scenes and could use some help with it. This is entirely fiction but includes some historical content as accurately presented as I'm able to do. I retain all rights to this story. I have five chapters finished, about 80 pages so far. If there is no interest, I'll rework it and try again some time in the future. Phil Short Grass Prairie CHAPTER ONE by fireflywatcher- Phil Ford I tugged at the rope with both hands, trying desperately to loosen it enough for me to draw a breath. I was on my back in the dirt below the gallows scaffolding, not suspended in mid-air as I should have been and still alive to my surprise. God damn these carpet baggers. I'd been working on the pasture fence and decided to ride to a new store in a community that recently sprung up to the south-west of the ranch. My Uncle Jake, just seven years older than me, was off buying more stock and had been gone three days with the dogs. I wanted to fix a nice meal when he returned and needed some supplies. I just shouldn't have left the wire pliers in my back pocket. I never made it to the general store. These Yankee bastards didn't know any local people, having just arrived a few months back. It was the new Yankee law that anyone carrying wire pliers was judged a rustler and hung on the spot. I don't think they ever took the gallows down. Strong hands worked with mine loosening the noose. "You can't hang him again, it's an act of God and Texas law says he's free to go", a deep voice boomed from the man. His hooded face revealed him to be the hangman. "You damn fools", another piped up, "This is Jim Taylor. He and his uncle have the biggest ranch here abouts and the family was the first to settle here. His is the only ranch that is fenced in this county. If you'd of hurt this boy his uncle would have you buried before God knows you're dead, the whole lot of you, and Austin would look the other way after he did it." I recognized the talking man as Dan Parsons, a man who aspired to be a banker. He had a building, one of four I saw coming into this town, but I doubted he had any money in his damn bank. I doubted any of the dozen or so men surrounding me had any money and hadn't seen any cattle that could have been rustled. I didn't see any women at all. With the rope lifted from my neck, the hangman put a cup of water to my lips, saying, "Drink a little and it will ease the pain in your throat." After I swallowed a few sips I addressed Parsons, saying, "Whose land it it to the west of town, Parsons?" "Well, yours I think", he answered. "And to the south?" I inquired. "Yours", he replied. "And to the north and east?", I inquired further. "Yours", again he answered. "So if I fence this town in and put up a sign saying trespassers will be shot, where does that leave the lot of you?", I inquired of him again. "Shot and buried, legal and proper", I thought to myself. Since I didn't hear a reply, I got to my feet and dusted myself off. I heard the hangman asking for his pay, saying he was done working here and moving on. I hadn't bothered to say that the town site wasn't mine and my land surrounding it wasn't fenced because it was a Comanche winter camp and would be restored to it's former rugged existence when the chill came in this fall and the buffalo moved into the area. I shuffled across the way to the store getting my footing back as I went. I gathered the things I needed quickly, tossed a gold coin on the counter and took my change. When I had the supplies tied to my pack mule, I mounted my horse and headed back in the direction I'd come from. I paused a second and yelled out, "I need my fencing pliers back now, if you please." They were in my hand in a heartbeat and I continued onward. A small creek or bayou passed through the Comanche camp site where the town was rising. It flowed south and a little east on it's way into the Colorado River. Short grass prairie filled the horizon broken by live oak and wild plum thickets, and the buttes or mesas with cedar breaks on their slopes that seemed to rise out of the flat land randomly. The creeks and rivers were lined with pecans, cottonwoods, elms, and willows along the banks. The ranch lay an hour and a half ride away on the high bank above the Colorado. An all season spring rose from the rocks to form a crystal clear pond where my grandparents and parents had built their homes and outbuildings. It's outflow ran down the slope of the bank in a gully to the river. I scared up a young buck as I neared a thicket and he just stood there staring at me, so I pulled my rifle from the saddle holster and shot him before he could run. I gutted him, moved the supplies to my horse, behind my saddle, and hung his carcass over the mules back to tote back for an addition to the supper. Life hadn't been easy on Jake and me for the last few years. The Civil War took my dad and both granddads when I was six and Jake was thirteen. It had been either them going or getting shot dead, so they went. Jake was my mom's younger brother. We were left with three women and two boys to run a ranch. Five years had allowed the men to get the houses and buildings built, most of the land fenced, and a good herd built up as well as other livestock. They had settled in Milam County when Texas was a new country and great granddad and my granddad's sister, my great aunt on my father's side, were still there along with other family members. Both my grandfathers sold their land for ten dollars an acre and bought this land for three cents an acre, putting the balance away in gold coin for when it was needed. I'd been born that first year after they moved, to a young bride and groom. The war ended and the men never returned. After six years it was a certainty they were dead. Three years back Jake and me were away fencing the last break in our north pastures when the Comanche paid a visit, or so we thought. The three women lost their lives while we were gone, leaving Jake and me to bury them. A gift of a couple of cows could have saved their lives. I'm seventeen now and that buck outweighed me but I got him on the mules back. Jake is twenty four. We share one bed in the smallest of the three houses left to us and carry on the best we know how. The year is eighteen seventy one. I spied a horse trailing me and checked the rifle to make sure I'd reloaded it. It was a single shot, though newer models were repeaters. I slowed my pace to see if the rider was up to mischief or had friendly intentions. All the land surrounding me now was mine and Jake's, and we weren't accustomed to visitors. I stopped at the first gate, opened it, and waited. It was the hangman and he was a mite prettier and had a familiar appearance without the hood covering his face. "It weren't no act of God that broke that rope Jim Taylor", the hangman declared, "I'm your cousin Dan Johnson from Milam County and if you got your mail I wouldn't have sat in that miserable town for two weeks and taken the hangman's job to buy some food. I nicked that rope with my knife in so many places, I'm surprised it didn't break before the hanging." "How'd you know it would be me they would be hanging?", I asked. "I didn't. I figured if anyone needed hanging it was that bunch of sorry Yankees and not anyone they brought in. You got off your horse with those pliers sticking out of your pocket and they were itching to get some work out of me", Dan explained. "No one seemed to know who you were or where you lived and I could of got shot looking for you, so I stayed put and waited until I could find out." I shut the gate behind us after Dan passed through. We'd never met but being predisposed to be friendly since we were family had us talking up a storm by the time we reached the ranch. I learned he was twenty, just between my age and Jake's. The three of us favored each other in our features and coloring even though he was no kin to Jake. Jake had the light brown hair like a bay horse, I was a lighter honey hue, and Dan's hair had a touch of red tones. He was bigger in build than Dan, but an inch or so shorter and being the youngest, I was shorter still at just over six feet tall and hadn't filled out at all. Jakes eyes were as blue as sapphires, Dan's were green, and mine were hazel changing from blue to green. Jake said he knew I was up to mischief when my eyes were deep green. He said he could tell if I was lying because I'd have gold flecks in my eyes and they'd always be green then, too. I couldn't hide nothing from Jake even if I wanted to. Dan was sure surprised when he got a look of the houses and buildings at the place. Paw Paw, my mom's dad, had brought a bunch of Mexicans up from San Antonio to get the buildings built while my dad and dad's dad were still back in Milam County. They were low slung, built of flat field limestone. The walls were thick to keep them cool inside and they had red tile roofs. All they had in common with the wood houses back in Milam County was porches all the way around the houses, or so Dan told me. He helped me carry in the supplies and then we went about skinning and butchering the buck. I fixed a brine barrel to soak most of the meat overnight and carried in a rump section to the cook house to put on the stove. I added some jowl from the smokehouse to the pot to flavor the lean venison, along with some potatoes, onions, and carrots from the root cellar. Dan brought his things in and we took the horses to the barn, unsaddled them, and gave them a quick brushing which the mule especially loved. We turned them out into the lot and gave each animal a ration of feed. I led Dan to the pond made by the spring and we shed our clothes to get the dirt from the ride off of us. It weren't about getting clean, it was about boy's play with splashing and dunking, and wrestling around in the water. We tired out after a while and Dan grabbed me around the waist to hold me still. He turned bright red realizing we both had hardons, but I was used to that. It happened to Jake and me all the time and I knew just the trick to make them go down. We climbed up on the drying rock and spread ourselves out in the evening sun. I scooted lower and took Dan into my mouth. He spurted his juice in my mouth after just a few minutes, then turned and did the same for me. I could tell he'd never done it before, but he learned fast and I spurted, too. We walked back to the house in just our boots, carrying the dusty clothes. I spotted Jake with about thirty head of cattle and a few calves coming toward us and turned to get the gate open to one of the lots near the barns. The dogs guided them right through it and I shut it behind them. "I got to get this dirt off me, too", Jake exclaimed, "Who do we have here, Jim?" "Dan Johnson from Milam County", Dan answered. "Turn around", Jake instructed him. "Ok, show me your butt", he added. "Yep that's Dan, I remember that strawberry birthmark on his ass from changing his diapers when he was little. You growed into a right pretty man there Dan", Jake commented. I carried Jakes things inside, stopped at the barn and got the saddle off his horse, turned him in with the others and gave him some feed. At the pond I found Jake and Dan passing a bottle of whiskey between them as Jake washed off. I took a sip as the bottle came round to me. "What in the hell happened to your neck?", Jake bellowed when he finally looked up from the bottle. "They hung me over at the town springing up by Comanche Camp. I should say, Dan hung me, cause if he hadn't I'd be dead and buried now." Jake climbed up on the drying rock beside us and listened to the tale as we passed the bottle until it was empty. Dusk was settling in when we finished and the walk back to the house was a walk in shadows. The orange ball lit the west and peaking over the eastern horizon was a rising full moon. I lit a lantern and brought the venison roast to the kitchen after checking to be sure it was done. "I was going to fix something special but I kind of got hung and didn't get home in time", I told Jake. He and Dan had the table set and a lamp blazing in the center. "I might not have got back today or might have got here yesterday and this roast looks special to me", Jake answered. A loaf of sour dough I'd made the day before soaked up the gravy. When we'd eaten our fill the dogs were staring through the door wanting their supper. Jake pushed away from the table to care for them. He skinned out three rabbits he'd shot on the way home and split each one giving each dog half a rabbit. He salted down the skins and rolled them up to stretch out the next morning. I brought out a bottle I'd bought and we sat on the porch, me playing my mandolin, Jake his guitar, and Dan joined us with a harmonica as we passed the whiskey around taking sips between songs. Jake and me had built the bed frame from pecan wood we cut at the river and it had taken a years feathers from all the foul to fill the feather bed but it was built for two big men to share and easily held a third man. The long day and the whiskey took their toll and we headed to bed early in the evening. I took the center spot and we woke in a jumble the next morning. I crawled over Dan to get the coffee started in the kitchen, and then I took my morning piss off the porch while the fire got it perking. I stirred up a batch of drop biscuits and slid them into the oven. Then I cut off enough slices of bacon from the side I had in the larder to make our breakfast and started it frying. When the biscuits were brown, the bacon was finished and I cooked us each three eggs, over easy. Last, I made bacon gravy from the remaining drippings. "You won't have to make water gravy anymore now Jim", Jake announced over my left shoulder. "I got some Jersey milk cows and a bull in that bunch I brought home. I didn't aim to make us dairymen but thought we'd save a few more orphan calves if we had a few. We can milk what we need for the house, though." We had thirty odd Nubian goats I could milk if I needed it, even one with three teats, but they were ornery as hell and I didn't like milking them. "I saw an Angus bull in that herd, too", I commented. "Yeah, we'll take a look when we get about in a bit. I need to get those bulls separated as quick as I can", Jake replied. Our herd was mostly mixed breed between longhorns and Hereford we'd brought from Milam County before I was born and was referred to locally as shorthorn, but the Hereford tended to get pink eye and Black Angus wouldn't get it. We'd bought Angus bulls for five years now and except for a small herd of pure longhorns we kept, most of our cattle were black. If rustlers were to hit us everyone within two hundred miles would recognize our cattle at a glance. We had them shipped by train from Iowa and drove them back to the ranch. Cattle brought ten dollars a head on the hoof and other ranchers couldn't afford breeding stock. Dan passed through the kitchen grabbing a cup of coffee at a trot asking where the outhouse was. After returning, while he filled his plate, Dan told us he hoped to stay with us and make a life here. He saw no future for himself back in Milam County. We welcomed him but Jake cautioned him to reserve his decision to stay until after he'd been with us a while. We were sorely lonesome, even together, and needed his help on the ranch as well. Eighteen years of work had built the ranch and Dan got the full tour as we tended to the morning chores. We had every type of foul in runs to keep them safe from foxes and varmints. The goats were matched in number by a flock of sheep kept mostly for the wool. Hogs kept the smoke house in use on a regular basis, but cattle were the only practical money producers. We cultivated a few small fields for grain to feed and our own use in the house and for feed, and kept a good size garden that produced abundantly in years with enough rain and spared the blight of grasshoppers that came most years. In those bad years planting an excess assured us enough to get by and hogs could always eat what was over produced. If the produce couldn't be dried or stored in the root cellar, we only had it when it was fresh. We made a few barrels of wine from the wild grapes each year and tried our hand making home brew from the grain. With another mouth to feed the work involved still wouldn't be a burden. There were pecans to gather from the river bank in the fall, wild plums and blackberries ripened in May, and Paw Paw's orchard gave us peaches, pears, apples, plums, and figs as they ripened. Two bee hives gave us some honey and a plot of ribbon cane got turned into syrup and molasses. All we needed to buy was kerosene for the lamps, salt, spices, and some store bought clothes from time to time since neither Jake or me could sew. We could turn out some fine buckskin work, but denim made better work clothes. We made our tack but bought saddles and boots. Distilling whiskey was one thing we never considered. Our family didn't hold with drinking as we grew up and it seemed that if we had more than a bottle or two around from time to time, we'd be tempted to stay drunk and no work would ever get done. Dan got a look at everything close by. The two empty houses that had been my grandmothers' homes were draped in dust covers and shut up tight. If they'd been swept, dusted, and mopped with the coverlets folded and put away, they'd have looked like the old ladies had just left for a while and would soon return. Only the graves by the old oak tree said different. Jake cooked lunch and as we got up from the table when lunch was eaten, he announced he had another short trip to make. He'd take the wagon and return in a day or two. Dan and me hitched up the team and waved him good bye as he headed south east instead of north west, this trip, away from the ranch. "I was going to gather firewood this afternoon by the river but with the wagon gone why don't we go fishing?", I asked Dan. "Sure thing", he told me. "Is there a swimming hole down to the river, too, or does it run shallow?" "Where we're going it has a long deep stretch but you can't do no diving there. That old muddy red water is so thick you can't see your hand just below the surface. The current moves boulders around when it floods and you'd likely break your damn neck diving in", I answered. I got me a trot line strung across the channel and a little john boat for checking it I keep on the bank tied to a tree so it won't get washed away." I got Dan to scratch old Jack's ears while I put the pack frame on his back in case we had more to carry home than we could handle. I tied a few toe sacks on the frame, one holding my stink bait and a can of worms dug up by the chicken run. Jack carried our poles, too, and we carried a shotgun and a rifle to get any game that we ran on to. The mule and the dogs followed along behind us. "I like this country, Jim", Dan told me as we walked. "In Milam County I could spend a life clearing trees and digging out stumps to make one field and here you just need to sink a plow and cultivate it a few times to have one. Making open pasture for grazing is the same work. Some stumps in pasture cleared by your great granddaddy are still there and ain't rotted out yet. I just thank God we had sandy dirt instead of black gumbo or I'd have spent every year of my life up to now dragging a sack and picking cotton." "We can grow it dry land here, but there ain't no help around to pick it or even keep it hoed clean. Cattle take work, too, but between the lots to work them and the help of the dogs, me and Jake manage just fine. You'll make it an even easier job of working them. I'm glad you came, Dan." I got the little boat in the water and started running my line. Dan was anxious to wet a hook and fished the bank as I ran it. I pulled two big channel cats from the line and eight dead turtles. I had to cot off the turtles heads to work the treble hooks out and kept the carcass to feed the dogs after we were back at the house. Dan pulled in a good stringer full of bass, crappie, and perch. I never used my pole. The catch we had was plenty for supper and we'd smoke the rest. We swam for an hour or so and started back to the house. Dan got a couple of rabbits for the dogs as we went. Old Jack followed along behind us carrying everything, just like the dogs. Granny's barn cats smelled the fish and came running when I started cleaning them. They were all the short tail Manx breed and we rarely fed them so they would stay busy catching rats and mice. Their numbers never seemed to change much. Either horny tom cats were killing the litters or coyotes were eating them, or they just didn't produce many kittens. I'd split the turtle shells with an ax for the dogs, and Dan skinned out the rabbits for them, but the cats got the fish cleanings. They'd even clean up what the dogs left of the turtles. The dogs and cats maintained a healthy respect for one another. I even suspected a bob cat might have got mixed into the breed of cats. They were big cats and if a dog got too close they'd arch their backs and growl, not mew or hiss like you'd expect. We salted the fish a little and laid it out to smoke. I basted some of the venison with honey and laid it out, too, then I added a few sticks to the smokehouse fire and we carried the fish we were having for supper back to the house. I poured us some wine to go with the meal. After we finished I went down into the cellar twice more for pitchers of home brew. We drank more whiskey along with the beer and went to bed early, while we could still walk. "Can we do it again, Jim?", Dan asked as we lay in bed. "Do what, Dan? Help each other out like we did yesterday?", I countered. He nodded a yes and I said, "We can do that any time you're a mind to, Dan. I like it a lot and you sure taste sweet." I scooted down on the bed and taking him in my mouth, I began to bob, reaching his short hair with my nose on each plunge. "I was afraid I'd gag", Dan began saying, "but you taste really nice." He proceeded to tell me the story of his lifelong best friend and how they helped each other out all the time. "I always gagged when I tried to take him in my mouth. We worked it out and I gave him my butt. We fucked a lot, but he called it 'corn holing'. He let me fuck him, too. I left because he got married. I couldn't take seeing him all the time, knowing we'd never help each other out again. I think I loved him. Looking back now, I think the difference in the taste is we're cut and he wasn't." I pulled off his prick. "I ain't gelded and neither are you", I protested, "I got everything God give me still intact." "Not quite, Jim. Your dad's granddad was the preacher back home. Boys are born with skin covering their knob and hanging down. He circumcised us all right after we were born saying it was a covenant with God", Dan explained. "Damn. I wouldn't like nothing covering up my knob. I never seen any pricks but mine, yours, and Jakes, so how would I know about that?", I asked. I went right back to work and Dan got so caught up in it he couldn't answer me. After he spurted a good gullet full for me, I asked, "Can you teach me about fucking? Jake and me never did any of that." Dan went to the kitchen and returned with a small crock of lard. We practiced at fucking, between breaks for sleep, until nearly noon the next day. My butt was sore and I was sure his was, too. Lard is the stubbornest thing in God's creation to get off of you. I knew from past experience when I packed meat from the smokehouse into the larder in the kitchen, that only hot water with plenty of soap and repeated washings would remove it. Cool water with soap just spread it around into an even coating all over. The water heated in the stove tank would never be enough to get me and Dan clean. When I fed the chickens, I stacked the firebox under the boiler full of wood and fired it up. Paw Paw had bought this big iron boiler that took eight oxen to haul to the ranch, when it was built. We had a gravity feed line made from Mexican clay pipe that carried water to the houses. Iron pipe brought hot water from the boiler into the washroom and a line to the kitchen, but we used it mostly in the winter when we couldn't bathe in the pond and do our washing there. Mexicans really were ahead of us in a lot of ways. They dug a well in the cellar of each house in case the spring dried up. Then they had a cistern down there that stayed full and closed up for the worst possibility of the well going dry. Then there was the wash room. It had a basin lined with glazed tile that would hold four people or a month's washing at one time. There was an outhouse seat built into the room that carried the waste away to a buried pit, too, so we didn't have to venture out in bad weather. It tended to get a smell if we didn't lime it a lot when it was in use, so it stayed shut up most of the time, too. Dan and me had a long soak and a good wash when the water got hot. I washed out the basin and put all the dirty clothes in there to soak to take advantage of the hot water. Later on after some scrubbing, we rung the clothes out and carried the bunch to where the spring water left the pond and rinsed them out. Another ringing and they were hung on the line to dry. We'd have to find something besides lard to slick us up for fucking. Long about sunset Jake came driving in with a loaded wagon and a boy riding beside him. Behind him were four wagons, loaded full and eight more men. I had a big pot of beans cooked but knew we'd need more than that to feed this many hungry men. Dan went to help unhitch the teams and I went to the smokehouse for some meat. Boiled cabbage, smoked ham, biscuits, and cornbread made the beans a meal. The men headed to the pond to wash up after supper, but I told Jake about the hot water, thinking there would be enough left in the boiler. He and the boy made use of it. Sleeping arrangements were the men in our two spare bedrooms which had two beds each, and the boy bunking with us in the big bed. We could have sent the men to the hay loft or opened the grandma houses, but doing it this way was Jakes idea and more practical. In the bedroom Jake gave a quick explanation before we turned in. He pulled some strings to get the town moved from the Comanche camp and bought more land to buffer us from outsiders as well as a large piece for the Comanche's to use as hunting ground during their annual stay. The boy was Mexican who spoke only a little English, was sixteen, and had been being abused in the town where he was staying. We now had a ranch hand. The other men were to survey and put in fence lines around our perimeter, where it was still open to the prairie. (continued in chapter two)