Cowboy Christmas
Chapter one
By John Yager

This is a work of gay erotic fiction. If such stories are not to your liking or if you are not allowed access to such stories under the laws under which you live, please exit now.

Last spring I posted a story titled Cowboy Blues. Many of you have written asking if I'd continue the story. Until now, I've not been inclined to add to it, but with Christmas upon us, I decided to add another chapter to the saga of Jake and Tom. I hope it brings some cheer to y our holiday season.

I want to express very special thanks to Andrew, who has again done proofing and editing for me.

All stories which I have posted on NIFTY can be found by looking under my name in their Prolific Authors lists.

This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be copied or distributed in any form without the expressed written permission of the author.

I may be contacted at:

jvoyager@hotmail.com

There on the table with the rest of the day's mail, it looked like just another Christmas card, but Jake took special interest when he saw the return address:

Tom Kettering,
1700 George Bush Drive, Apt. 110
College Station, TX 77840

Dave, the old ranch hand, went about his business, getting the evening meal on the table. He knew Jake as well as anybody. He couldn't help smiling slightly at Jake's retreating backside as the younger man hurried to the privacy of his own room. Dave had brought in the mail and had also seen the return address and the name of the sender. He also wondered whether the envelope contained only a Christmas card or if there was also a more significant message.

Dave wasn't an overly curious man where other people's business was concerned. But he cared for Jake the way he'd have cared for the son he never had. He wanted the best for Jake and he somehow figured that a part of that best involved Tom, the young man who'd worked at the ranch all of the previous summer. Dave would bide his time.

Eventually he'd learn more; in fact, he figured, if there was anything of any importance, Jake would talk with him about it when he was ready.

Jake hurriedly tore open the blue envelope and pulled out the card it enclosed. It was a Christmas card, as he'd expected, a scene of stars in a dark blue sky over what looked like an expanse of rolling Texas grazing land. "Let there be peace on earth . . ." the message read, but Jake's eyes darted quickly over it to the note which began at the bottom of the page and extended over onto the back.
 

Dear Jake,

Sorry not to have written for a while but as you can guess, my life is pretty hectic and the classes take up all my time.

I hope everybody at the Lazy Pitcher is doing well. I guess it is just you and Dave and Billy by now. Say hello for me.

The main reason I'm writing is to ask if I could visit you over the Christmas holidays. My folks are going to be with my older brother and his family in Dallas and I'm really not up for two weeks in a house full of little kids. I have a lot of reading to do and was wondering if you'd just let me hold up in the bunkhouse for at least part of that time?

Will your sister and her kids be there? If so, and if I'd be in the way, don't worry about it. I can stay here and have some peace and quiet with my apartment mates away, but it would be great to spend the time on the ranch and I'd really like the chance to see you.

I'll look forward to hearing from you,

Tom
 

Later that evening he, Dave and Billy sat around the old bunkhouse table. It was their custom to linger over coffee and talk about the work that needed to be done the next day. Life on the Lazy Pitcher was slow from late October to early spring. The herd had been shipped off to market and the only chores were mending fences, doing a little work on the buildings and being sure the horses were cared for. There was so little work, in fact, that Jake always sent Dave and Billy off for most of December and January. He guessed this year would be no exception.

"So what did Tom have to say," Dave eventually asked. He assumed Jake would have known he'd seen the name on the envelope and since Jake hadn't yet said anything, Dave figured a direct approach was best.

"Just a Christmas card," Jake replied, sliding his coffee mug in slow circles over the well warn top of the old table.

"Just season's greetings?" Dave asked. "Kind of early for that."

"Well, yeah, but I got a few other cards already."

"Yeah, from the bank and the feed company, but not any other personal cards yet."

"Well, you know Tom. He's always early on the draw. He did ask me to say hello to you two."

"Any chance he'll want to work again next summer?" Billy put in, remembering what a great help the young man had been.

"Didn't mention it, but it's probably too early for him to know if he'll have any time off."

"Don't veterinarian schools run all year round?" Dave asked.

"Maybe," Jake said, feigning little interest.

Dave and Billy eventually went off to their own rooms, down the hall running east from the main room of the bunkhouse. The main room was big, about twenty by thirty feet. It served as the hub of ranch activities during the summer when there were sometimes a dozen or more hungry men to feed.

The big room was part kitchen, part dining room, and as near to a living room as the ranch crew had. Two halls ran off from it in opposite directions, each giving access to a pair of private rooms, each pair with a connecting bath. Further down each hall was a larger bath, big enough for several guys to use at once. Then at the end of each hall there was a larger bunk room, each of which had three sets of double bunks. It was in those larger bunk rooms that the summer hands slept.

Dave and Billy had the two private rooms to the east, sharing the bath which was located between them. Jake had always claimed the first room down the west hall as his own. The room beyond it, just down the hall, but also accessible through the connecting bath, had been Tom's room the summer before.

Tom had been given the room to himself because he'd joined Billy, Dave and Jake in March, long before the other summer hands arrived.

Now, standing alone in the big central room, Jake stood at a window and surveyed the dark ranch beyond the long front porch. The Lazy Pitcher was his kingdom, his home. He'd worked there for five years as foreman, manager, boss. He knew the spread as if it were his own, but in fact, it was not his property, although at times it seemed as if it were .

It was only nine o'clock but bedtime came early on the ranch and the late November nights were long and dark. The shadow of low, rolling hills were just visible against the brooding sky and no moon or stars gave light.

Jake checked the door again and headed off to his own room. Despite the chill outside the room was warm. The space was small and the furnishing simple. A double bed stood against one wall, a simple desk across from it. On the desk was a computer, one of the few hints of modernity.

Jake looked at the bed, larger than he needed, yet somehow comforting. The beds in each of the four private rooms had all been doubles when Jake first came and no one had ever suggested changing them for narrower singles, even though singles would have given more room for other things.

Interesting, Jake thought, as he pulled off his boots and heavy socks. He tossed the socks over toward the closet. He'd add them to his dirty clothes bag later. The well worn boots he placed with his usual care under the chair by the bed. He worked off his tight jeans and laid them over the seat of the chair, then removed his boxers and added them to the pile. Next came his flannel shirt, which was draped in an orderly manner over the back of the chair, and,finally, the long sleeved white T-shirt, the kind he always wore as an undershirt in the winter. Then, naked, he walked into the bathroom.

The image that confronted Jake in the long mirror on the back of the bathroom door was that of a handsome and very fit man of twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. He stood for a moment taking inventory and had to  admit he was pleased by what he saw.

At six feet, two, his body had a natural beauty, the result of long years of hard work and self discipline. His short light brown hair was echoed in the pubic patch which crowned his generous cock and low hanging balls. He was circumcised, as were most men his age.

Apart from the thick but confined growth of pubic hair and the small patches in his armpits, his body was smooth. He had thick, muscular arms and a deep, well developed chest. His shoulders were wide and his waist and hips were narrow. His abdominal muscles were hard and defined. All told, Jake admitted to himself, he was a great looking guy.

He brushed his teeth and ran a damp washcloth over his shoulders and chest, then down over his stomach and groin. More serious ablutions would have wait till morning, when he preferred to shower.

Still naked, Jake started back to his bed but, on a whim, turned instead to open the door to the adjacent bedroom. It was a mirror image of his own, the bed barely visible in the darkness against the far wall.

Standing there in the open doorway, he looked into the dark room. His eyes gradually adjusted to the meager light and he made out the shape of the bed against the far wall. Jake's thoughts went back to the nights he'd stood in this same place and looked in at the sleeping, naked form of Tom. His memory rushed on to the night he'd stood there watching awestruck as Tom and Ryan, one of the summer hands, fucked.

Jake shook himself and, stepping back, closed the door. Those memories were best left alone. He walked back through the bathroom to his own room, tossed back the covers of his bed, and laid down.

It would be several hours before Jake slept. As hard as he tried, he could not chase the images of Tom from his mind. He remembered him naked in the shower. He drew up images of him dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt which conformed to the contours of his muscular torso. Jake remembered the younger man stripped to the waist and drenched with sweat as he worked on fences in the hot summer sun.

Without willing it, Jake's right hand slipped down his naked body, over his firm belly, to grasp his hard, pulsing cock. His left hand moved over his chest, stroking his brown nipples to hard nibs.

Jake remembered the conversation he and Tom had had in the barn just days before Tom left to start veterinarian school. Tom had apologized for what Jake had seen, that night Ryan and he had engaged in such amazing sex, thinking they had the place to themselves while Jake was away in town.

The motions of Jake's hands become more urgent. His body was demanding release.
It had been that day in the barn that Tom had finally put into words the suggestion that had been there, unspoken, all summer long. Tom had offered himself to Jake. "If you ever changed your mind, I'd bottom for you anytime," the kid had said.

Jake's mind was filled with those images, images of Tom, as his body went rigid and his cock exploded, shooting its pent-up load in pulsing bolts over his chest.
The harsh winter wind whistled around the corners of the bunkhouse.

Eventually, exhausted, Jake slept.

To be continued.