Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 08:59:38 EST
From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com
Subject: Outcast of Lonely Rock, Chapter 3

		 The Outcast of Lonely Rock, Chapter Three
			   "AT MY UNCLE'S RANCH"
			   By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
		      WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM

     My uncle's wagon met us on the ride into Lonely Rock, so I disembarked
from the stagecoach and boarded the even bumpier feed wagon he favored. My
uncle's appearance surprised me; I had visualize a rough, tough
cow-wrangler, but he was as stout as my grandfather, and moved with all the
grace of a pregnant cow about to give birth. He had taken a fall two years
before, which I had known, but I hadn't thought much about what it would
have done to the virile strong man of my youthful acquaintance, turned him
into a prematurely-gray-haired man with a lined face; he looked more like
seventy than the fifty I knew him to be, the wearing down of the body by
constant pain.
     But there was more to it than his pronounced limp; he had a defeated
air about him, like a man who had lost a fight and was now just waiting for
all the people who had gathered to watch to leave and let him slink away in
peace. It was only the first of my two big disappointments of that day.
     When my uncle had written us back East about his "ranch" I had
visualized something like a decent clapboard house with broad fences, a
large barn stuffed with hay, a corral with horses galloping inside them and
cattle milling about in the pastures around, maybe a dog or two; you know,
pretty much like a farm back East only bigger and better.
     What I saw when I got to the ranch in my uncle's wagon punctured that
romantic image immediately. My uncle had a dinky little house that looked
to be about five foot by twelve foot at most, and a fair sized barn, and a
scraggly corral next to it that seemed to hold the two horses and a lone
cow inside it by dint of wishful thinking rather than being any appreciable
barrier. Except for the lone cow in with the two horses, no cattle were
around, and not much life of any kind.
     "I got that bay mare for you." my uncle pointed out proudly. "The
lighter one. That other one belongs to my hired hand, Jobias."
     "Thanks, Uncle." I looked at the horse with new eyes; it was old and
didn't look very healthy. Still, the thought had to count for something.
     He looked around his rather-tired-looking place and said to me, "So,
what do you think?"
     I selected the most discreet of the words I could think of. "It looks
nice, Uncle, all it needs is a bit of work to get it up and running again."
     "I sure hope so." he said, and that defeated tone was even stronger in
his voice. "Well, I can't show you the place; I'll have to let Jobias teach
you the things you need to know to make me a hand. Learn well from him, and
you can take over this place when I'm gone...if I still have it then."
     "What do you mean?" I asked, but he had handed me the reins to steady
the horses, and sprung from the wagon with an almost-vigorous jump, landed
with a loud groan that nearly spooked the horses--I had to haul on the
reins pretty strongly to keep them in check--and then a voice was calling
from the horse's heads, "Whoa, whoa! Steady on there, steady!"
     I saw the brown hat and red hair, but that was all; the horses' bodies
covered all the rest from my view. I got down and concentrated on detaching
the horses from their reins and harnesses, and ended up with one of the
horses while the man led the other to the barn. Getting them inside, it was
tough work to get the horses unharnessed (they were quite tame, gentle
creatures, not in the least the spirited mustangs in the novels; I was
beginning to wonder if everything I had thought I had known was a lie), and
then I was walking over to hang the harnesses on the wall. I saw him from
behind still, a big, brown hat covering his entire head and neck from this
angle, a strong back that arced back to hoist the oval leather yoke onto
the nail, which curved gracefully inward to the small of the back and then
out to form two of the most marvelously globular buttocks tucked inside of
his denim trousers and strongly muscled legs below, just visible behind the
ties of the leather chaps he wore; I had the sudden image of spreading
those sturdy legs and my tongue being buried in those buttocks and found
myself involuntarily drooling and had to swallow hard and wipe my lips dry.
     "You ready for me to show you the place?" Jobias asked me, turning
around and I saw him for the first time. Now *this* was my idea of a
cowboy! A strong, young face, only a handful of years older than me, the
red mustache that wasn't quite neatly trimmed the way a man with daily use
of a mirror would keep it, the eyes that spoke of a man who lived the life
he chose to live, with no wistful longings or crushed dreams, the slight
smile on his face that meant he was friendly without being effusive. "Or do
you want to rest up after your journey?" he asked after a time.
     "Huh? Oh!" I realized I'd been staring. "I...guess I ought to tie
right in." I said, a pathetic attempt at sounding laconically competent.
     "You might as well." He allowed. "Not that much to do right now
anyway. The herd's off wandering in the hills. Your uncle owns eighty head
of longhorn cattle right now, and twenty-five of them have calves which we
branded in the roundup two weeks ago. You just missed that. We're not
selling any cattle this year, so that took care of things for this ranch
for the year. The cattle take care of themselves the rest of the time. I
ride up into the hills once a week or so for two or three days and check on
them, the rest of the time I take care of the ranch here."
     "Sounds good." I said. It did, I'd have the chance to learn things
slow.
     "Main thing we're doing now is digging out a well and setting up a
windmill in the east quarter." he said. "I'm thinking with you here I might
get your uncle to let me hire out to one of the cattle drives for a few
weeks. Get off of this place for a while."
     "Now you know I can't do that." my uncle said.
     If Jobias was embarrassed by my uncle overhearing him, he didn't show
it. "You don't have much call for a hand these days." He said. "Especially
with so few calves being born." After a moment. "Funny thing how a lot of
the Bar C calves were suckling our cows this year, now warn't it? Ignorant
critters."
     "Let it be, Jobias." my uncle said. "You can fix that corral. I got a
load of timber coming in real soon."
     "How you paying for that?" Jobias asked. "Got anything to do with that
cow in the corral?" He took a breath, "Sir, I think it best if I gave you
my notice at the end of this season."
     "Now, Jobias, I need you to stay on at least another year. My nephew
is green and city-bred; he and I can't take care of this ranch alone."
     "Well...all right, sir, but this will be my last year with you. I'll
show him how to handle things through to next spring's calf-branding, and
then you are on your own. I got to plan for my own future, you know."
     "Let it be." was my uncle's only response, and he left again.
     "Problems?" I asked when my uncle left.
     "Your uncle's going to lose this ranch by this time next year." Jobias
said. The horses needed a rub-down after that long ride, so I was helping
him fetch water for a tub; we'd wash down the horses and dry and comb them
out. I'd done it scores of times back in the city, so it was work I
understood.
     "What was all that about the calves?" I asked. "I didn't think a cow
would let a calf nurse that wasn't her own."
     "They won't." Jobias said.
     "But you said.... Oh."
     "Yep, a nighttime campfire and a brand slapped on a calf that ain't
yours. It happens."
     "Does the Bar C do a lot of that?"
     "Only to ranches it doesn't like." Jobias said. "Course, a man can
complain about it, with words or with a gun, but seeing as how the Bar C
has thirty hands and your uncle just has me, it's better to keep quiet and
lose a few calves instead. Except your uncle can't spare the calves. Next
year, his cows won't have any calves at all, I'll bet. Just a lot of Bar C
calves nursing at them, and that'll be the end of him."
     "So why doesn't my uncle register a complaint with...with whoever?"
     "The sheriff, maybe?"
     "Sure!" I seized on the word.
     "Would, except for one thing." Jobias said. We were now working on the
horses, which whuffled gratefully for the pampering after the long, dusty
run.
     "What's that?"
     "Bar C is owned by King Carson. He also owns purt near the whole
town. Most of the people here about work for King Carson, one way or
another. Enough to choose who's the sheriff come election day."
     "Oh." I said after a time.
     "Yep, King Carson owns this whole county and part of the next, except
for a few places like your uncle's ranch. He'll have it by next year, then
set to worrying down the next small homesteader. That's why I wanted to go
on that cattle drive as one of his hands, get set up for working for him
again."
     I was silent for a time, thinking this over. "Is there going to be any
trouble over all this?"
     "Why should there be trouble?" Jobias said. "King Carson holds all the
cards. All he has to do is wait until your uncle goes crawling to him
begging to sell. He can wait."
     "I see." I said. And I did.
     The rest of the morning was busy, for when we had just finished with
the horses, the timber arrived and Jobias and I unloaded it, after which
the man with the wagon took that lone cow with him as Jobias had
predicted. Then we had to dig holes and notch the timber and straighten out
used, bent, rusty nails to drive into the timber. When we were done, the
corral was at least solid if still not a real barrier to a determined
animal.
     "Now what?" I asked, wiping the sweat from my cheeks.
     "Now we get some lunch and rest." Jobias said. "It's the Mexican way
of life during the summer; you work from dawn until noon, and then go back
to work near sundown. Take a siesta during the hot afternoon and then work
into the night as long as you can."
     "Oh." I said. Seemed like a funny way to live, but I'd had my own
experience of the heat of the afternoon sun, so it made sense to me. We
went to the house and my uncle had stirred up some fried dough. It was a
pretty poor lunch to a guy used to eating city food, and hardly what I had
expected, but I saw from Jobias' reaction that this was normal fare and so
I ate it. Heavy, bland, greasy stuff, I understood why, when we were done,
uncle said, "You two wash up the dishes. I'm going to lie down for a time."
I felt sleepy myself with that lump of chewed dough lying in my stomach
like a brick.
     "Yes, sir." I said. The dishes took only a moment, dunking them in the
pail of water, and then I followed Jobias out the door.
     "Now what?"
     "Now we take a nap ourselves." Jobias said. "Don't fight the sun. Hold
still and wait it out."
     "Okay." I said. "But where do I bunk?" My uncle's cabin was a single
room, and had only a tiny cot for a bed; no question of me sleeping there.
     "With me." Jobias said.
     "In the barn?" I asked.
     He led me in and sure enough, in the back of the tack-room (a smaller
room built onto the side of the barn, where were kept stored things like
ropes, tools, harnesses and such), he had a fairly wide pallet. The walls
weren't solid, there were holes over a half-inch wide between each plank,
but the room was on the morning side of the barn, the sun itself was gone
and we were in the relatively cool shade. The south side, where the pallet
rested, was solid planks with only tiny cracks
     "What do you do when winter comes?" I asked as I stuck my finger
through one of the wider holes.
     "Chink them with sod." Jobias said. He reached down and undid the
fastenings of his chaps, pulled them off with a rustle like leathery
wings. "So, what do you think of ranch life in the West so far? Is it like
you read about in them dime novels?" he grinned.
     "Not much." I admitted.
     "It's a rough life." Jobias said. "But as long as you got someone
along with you to cover your back for you, you'll do all right."
     "I never did think those dime novels were telling the truth, the lone
cowhand out riding the range." I couldn't help but think of Hunter when I
said that.
     "Cowboys aren't loners, as a rule. A lone prospector, that happens
enough, though usually it's two or three. And lone Indians, maybe though
you're more likely to see a band instead. But a cowboy out riding alone is
in trouble." Jobias said. "He's cut loose from his old ties and hasn't
formed any new ones yet. Someone can kill him and nobody would ever
know. Another reason I want to take out from this place pretty soon. Don't
like being alone."
     "Well, you got me now."
     "I got an Eastern dude." Jobias clarified. "Remains to be seen if I
can trust you." He had hung up his hat on the nail and worked off his boots
while standing up, and I was watching. Now he was unhitching his belt. "Get
ready for bed, instead of just watching me." He said as he undid his fly
and shuffled down the pants, baring his legs but his long shirt-tail still
covered him down to mid-thigh.
     I jerked, startled--I had been staring--and reached for my own
shirt. Undid it while watching him work his own buttons. I had understood
that cowboys wear long underwear beneath their clothing, which makes sense
when you remember how cold the nights are. But Jobias wasn't out on the
range, he was at home, and so a bare chest greeted my eyes as he opened his
shirt. He had a scattering of chest hairs, and I touched my own bare breast
and envied him those few hairs.
     Then he undid the last of the buttons and I was startled to see that
he was now totally bare. "Come on, get them duds off and let's hit the
sack." He said. "You're goggling at me like a pig watching the
slop-bucket." He stooped over and his long dong waved like a bell clapper.
     "I'm sorry." I said. I got my shirt off and then my boots,
awkwardly. Jobias crawled into bed and to my surprise, put his hat back
on. Then he lit an already-rolled cigarette fetched from some place near
the bed, lit it with a tinderbox, and puffed lazily, laid back, shifted the
hat to down over his eyes, looking as relaxed as can be.
     With his eyes now covered, I felt comfortable looking directly at his
long, suntanned body stretched out on the pallet. He had made no effort to
cover himself, understandable in the increasing heat of the day. Jobias was
only a little older than me, and like me, he still had a thinness to him,
despite what must be a rigorous life. But the poor diet of our lunch could
explain that, you can't build a big body on slop like fried dough! Still,
he had a lean masculinity to him that I envied, even in his bareness lying
upon a pallet stuffed with straw in a tack-room, a poise and dignity while
lying with only a hat covering his face, his ankles crossed.
     The slight wind that curled through the wide cracks felt nice against
my bare chest. I undid my belt and fly as I regarded his thick, beefy cock,
which lay across the top of one thigh like a massive sausage. I got my
pants off and now as bare as he was, crawled onto the pallet. A couple of
flour sacks stuffed with straw formed our pillows. The straw stuffing of
the pallet made a lumpy but comfortable mattress. I scooted up onto the
pillow and stretched out like Jobias, compared our bodies, I was a little
shorter than him and my skin was whiter. I looked over--even his pubic hair
was red the way mine was blond--wondering if our cocks were the same size
or not. His was pretty long even flaccid but my own prick while shriveled
and small when soft, pumped up to a good size, and I wondered how they
would measure up against each other, both of us hard.
     I felt my cock surging with the thought of us pressing these two
pricks together, and I turned my attention to it, stroking it with the palm
of my hand, enjoying the feel of my hands now roughed with work (still far
from calloused, they had instead a sort of numbness to the pads of my palm
which I imagined felt the same), rubbing it until it was firm and hard,
then beginning to pump it slowly while I cast another look over--and saw
his cock rising up like a leviathan from the ocean deeps.
     I looked over at him, and he cocked his hat back lazily with one
finger, to look into my eyes. "How much longer you planning to just look?"
He asked me. His hand reached over and he took my cock away from my hand
and gripped it tightly. "Nice hunk of meat you have here." he drawled.
     I was emboldened enough to go ahead and reach out and take his
prong. "Thanks." I said. "You have a pretty nice one myself. I was just
noticing."
     "Well, I reckon it's time I taught you a little bit about cowboy life
that they don't put into those books of theirs." He began to pump my cock
up and down, again in a slow, relaxed, unhurried manner, I groaned and
began to hunch upwards into his hand.
     "Hey, slow down." He said. "We got all afternoon. This is siesta time,
a time to rest. Don't want to work up a sweat now, do you?"
     "No, sir." I agreed.
     "Just take it nice and easy." he said. "Nice and easy. Don't fight the
heat, let everything happen at its own pace."
     His cock weeped onto my index finger. His own hand on my cock was so
slow, so deliberate, I could feel every separate thrill of my cockshaft as
his hand skinned it down, gave it a slow waggle at the very base with the
cockhead all exposed and pink to the hot air, then he slipped my foreskin
up again in his tight grip, and I felt the heavy knobs of his calloused
fingers rub over the ring at the bottom of my glans one by one, then again
as the little finger held tight to the bottom of the glans, preventing his
hand from leaving my cock, then he began to push back down again. It must
have taken him five seconds to do each languid stroke, and I forced myself
to match his tempo with my own hand, slowly, methodically, we milked at
each other's puds.
     My breath began to speed up, so slowly, as he kept the stroking slow
and deliberate, and I found some breaths catching in my throat, clogged by
the moisture of my lips.
     "Can I suck your cock?" I asked him after a time.
     "Now, that's a nighttime activity." He assured me. "But it's too
strenuous this time of day. No, we just take things nice and
slow. Nice. And. Slow."
     "Oh, God!" I heaved. "I'm going to go mad from this. I got to get
off."
     "You will, you will." he chuckled. "Not going to stop until I milk
this thing dry. But what's your hurry?" But I noticed his own breath was
beginning to move his chest a little faster.
     The time was interminable. I was lost to time, to space, to anything
but the feel of his hand on my cock, my hand on his, both of us pumping
away...slowly.
     I had never felt my cock get so hard, so hot, as it did beneath his
languorously pulsating fingers, his own cock felt like a fire-heated poker
in my hand, and still he kept the pace at this same rhythm, the same
dilatory movements of our hands and arms throughout the steaming hot, dry
afternoon.
     Sweat beaded my body and his shone with the stripes of whiteness
through the slats, I felt as if I had been here forever in this room, lying
beside him, the two of us working each other's pricks with the same
leisurely pace; this would go on for an eternity, when the angels blew
their final trumpets, they would find me here beside Jobias, the two of us
caught up in a rhythm that had gone on beyond stopping, somehow now, beyond
even speeding up, either I would reach my fruition at this pace or never, I
was no longer able to increase the tempo, to speed up the assault of my own
volition, I could not move, I was his prisoner, held by the shackle of his
hand upon my pud, and his movement, that sent passion to me not in a
tempest but as the gently, long-falling rain of spring upon this
summer-washed plain.
     I felt it then, to my astonishment, the slow building of the climax in
my groin. Not the precipitous rise to climax that a heavy pumping would
have done, there was no sudden building, it was the tortured rise of my
tormented flesh finally, seizing every scrap of sensation given to it,
finally rising to its long-delayed task. It was still a horribly slow and
almost painful thing, this tautening of my ballsac, the pooling of pleasure
in my cockshaft, the way the flesh came alive and gurgled angrily at the
lengthy, recalcitrant pleasure, I was in pleasure and near-agony at the
same moment, I burbled the strangled passion from my throat, wincing at the
tightrope I was on, one false step and I would lose this hard-attained
goal, it was not to be borne, I continued to pump Jobias' cock at the same
rhythm as before, not daring to break this cautious success, looked at him
with my lips parted, the air hissing painfully through my dried-out mouth,
open too long in the quest for climax, I felt my face flush, my eyes
widened and I still stared into him, into his face which was unmarred by
his own ordeal--but his cigarette had gone out! Gone, extinguished, a white
stick hanging from his lips. I searched as well as my passion-wracked flesh
could for the signs of my own ecstatic agony in his eyes, and I found it,
yes, it was there!
     But the tempo remained the same, the slow deliberate strokes on my
penis, I dared to let a few sounds of pleasure escape my lips, his own soft
groans answered, and that sound, timid and fearful though it was, was the
spark that ignited the final burning fuse of ecstasy up my spine and I was
there, I was there!
     Still trapped and prolonged by the too-slow-hand, I still staggered
exhausted up the steps of the temple of glory, I flung open its gates and
the light burst from within.
     My agonized flesh revenged itself upon it, it was the most wracking,
extended, pleasurable orgasm I had ever had! It seemed to need nothing of
the brief spurt of jism, though that was the first of the crescendo, it
went on and on long after my cock had exhausted itself with the squirts of
my jism upon my leg and upon his still-cautious hand and arm, long after
the sperm had cooled to sticky clumps, still my body shook with my desire
and I groaned under its crushing burden of joy, I let slip brief shudders
and groans for nearly a minute after, was left a damp, limp rag of a man
cast aside by the departing glory of orgasm, I found my arm still
mechanically pumping away at Jobias' still-unerupted prick that was a
steaming power of angry-red in my clutch.
     "Whew, man, that was a blast of dynamite for you, wasn't it?" he said
to me, still panting.
     "Yeah, it was terrific!" I agreed.
     "Go ahead and finish me off." he gasped out. "I'm about to bust my
balls as it is."
     "The hell you say." I said. "You got to wait the same as I did."
     I laid my head upon his stomach and except for a brief shift to bring
my other hand and arm into play, I kept up the inexorable slow rhythm of
the pumping of his shaft.
     "Oh, come on!" He breathed.
     "No way." I said. "You did it to me, now I'm going to do it to you."
     "Oh, yeah!" He sighed. "Yeah, yeah!"
     "Hold still." I warned him. "You don't get anything I didn't get, and
that includes the noise."
     He groaned but complied and I admired the way the red of the cockhead
turned to purple, the way the veins in the skin seemed to be throbbing, his
heaving gasps of air raising and lowering my head, I stared at his cock
like at a tower of potency, feeling him groan so softly, so softly for fear
I would stop, he shuddered, his cock seemed to surge in my hand, and he was
now stuck in my quandary, he was trapped in the prolonged orgasm, and while
he tried to cheat it by thrusting upwards with his hips, I rode my hand up
with his body and denied him this, continued my slow pace while his body
shook, his breaths were as tortured and choked as mine had been, and
finally, at last his geyser shot into the air, and rained its human-lava
down upon his stomach, and my face. His come was a massive load, seemingly
almost entirely clear in composition, it was like watching raindrops fall
upon his body in the midst of this hot, dry day, the clear fluid containing
only small tadpole-shaped white masses within, swirled around each other,
while he groaned and tossed about beneath me, the earthquake that
accompanied this volcanic eruption of human lust.
     And like me, long after the rain of steaming jizz had ended, his body
shook and shuddered with a dozen after-shocks of passion, and I knew he was
in the same purgatory I had inhabited and was doing his penance with the
repeated blows to his system of almost-crystalline pleasure. So long as he
shook, as long as a dreg of pleasure remained within his body still leashed
there, I continued to pump his cock, even when it had wilted down to its
former soft state, I flexed and wielded this human scimitar of power and
only ceased when he had been still and silent for nearly a minute.
     I raised up and put my head upon his arm, looked into his face again
but this time with our noses almost touching. "You see?" I said. "It was
worth the wait."
     "Yeah." He sighed out.
     "You should take your own advice, go at it nice and easy." I
said. "Plenty of time for the energetic stuff tonight."
     "Yeah, tonight!" He sighed. "You'd better believe you're going to get
it tonight, me bucko!"
     I smiled into his own grin. "I'm counting on it. And tomorrow and the
day after and the day after that."
     "That settles it." He declared. "No way am I leaving this ranch while
you're around."
     "Uncle will be so pleased you changed your mind." And I kissed my
cowboy lover.

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