Lesbian Cowboys (22 page)

I tossed the borrowed pistol in a barrel and holstered my Colt. I didn't have a cinch for my shoulder, so I just held it as
tight as I could. There was only one place I thought to go, and I don't recall making it there before I passed out.

 

I woke to see my angel. Caroline was smiling and dabbing my forehead. She wouldn't let me rise and told me my fever had broke that morning. The gunfight at the wire service had happened two days previous, and I was in Proster Dun's barn.

“Your husband was gunned down,” I said.

She nodded without any sign of regret. “I keep expecting that no-account Mr. Bert Lloyd to send his men here for you, but no one's come. I've been living on Maggie's milk,” she gestured at the cow, “and wondering what to do next.”

My boss would probably keep the bonus, but I knew he would clear me of any wrongdoing. The union surely had men watching my horse, or they thought I was dead meat in the woods. I stared at Caroline, not sure what to say, until the baby cooed.

Caroline turned away to check on the girl, and when I sat up, I realized I was wearing only my drawers. In shock, I clasped my hand to my bosoms, and my look of alarm caused such a charming smile on Caroline's face that I smiled, too. The bothersome itch I had first time I saw her was back.

“I tended your troubled shoulder, Mr. Cortland.” She emphasized the name. “And washed your clothes. I'm sorry to say none of Mr. Dun's survived the fire, or I would offer them to you.” The humor faded from her eyes, taking even its shadow. “I don't know where I'm to go. My parents are in Boston, and they would not be pleased to see me under these circumstances.”

I reached a hand to her cheek. “Why are you in such a hurry to be leaving, darlin'?” When I kissed her, she sighed and smiled nervously. She kissed me back. I watched the fear of pursuit and worry of home drain from her eyes as something more friendly took their place.

She lifted the blanket and slid in beside me. I pulled her close. We kissed until the warmth of our bodies and breath made the blanket unnecessary. She stood and tossed her dress and drawers aside, and I stared at her in utter delight. Creamy skin surrounded the bush of black fur nestled between her thighs, and her curves were robust as a new mare. Nature never made a more admirable and comely creature. I was cunt-struck worse than a cowboy after a season on the range.

I told her to turn around and bend over, and she did as she was told, spreading her sumptuous loins with immoderate haste. I got to my knees and slid my hand along her thigh. My fingers hunted their prey and the breath caught in her throat. When I finally cupped her pussy fur in my palm, I wiggled my fingers and whispered, “The man this belongs to is one lucky son of a bitch.”

I couldn't see her face, but her head nodded weakly, as if she was losing her strength. “Mr. Dun,” she whispered as she squatted on my palm, “never touched me so.”

After rising to my feet, I bent over her and roughed up her titties as I kissed the back of her neck. “Well then, since I don't speak ill of the dead, I won't bother mentioning what a goddamn fool he was.” I was no stranger to women and knew to leave gentleness for fillies that had never been broken, especially the wet-and-willing ones. I pushed her shoulders farther down until her ass was high in the air, and she reached for the wall to hold herself steady. I worked her slick hole like I was cleaning my favorite rifle, and she bobbed around like a cat rutting on a pole.

“Is this how you do a woman?” she asked, gasping every time I plunged my fingers into her. “With your hand?”

“Oh, no, darlin'. Fingering is only the beginning.” I dropped on one knee and pressed my mouth to her clitchy cunt. She
tasted of spring—all vital and musky, as if ready to blossom. Her ample bosoms hung low and heavy, and I pinched her nipples, which tightened into tough slugs, bullet-hard and red. When I squeezed one, I felt a trace of milk on my fingers and smeared it around.

Caroline's fertile body made my skin hungry like a morning on the trail. I kept poking and pawing her, and she was clawing leather by the time I threw off my drawers and mounted her. She lay on her back and I rode her saddle-to-saddle, my cunt kissing hers as we writhed like some unnatural beast.

She riled me with her whimpering moans, so I yanked a nipple and let it snap back. I slapped her titties around pretty good, leaving a shade of red behind, and then she started squeezing them and holding them up for me to suckle.

My steam was up and I was panting hard as I watched her fondle those fat titties, so I braced myself on both hands and rode her rough. Before blessed ecstasy could claim me, she cried loud enough to wake snakes, and then rolled her head with a howl, bucking like some feral horse. It took all my strength to bear down until her storm passed.

After she gathered her senses, she said she wanted me to cowhide her, and I was so mad with lust I wanted to, but I'd never raised a hand to a woman, even when she deserved it. I got the whip, and she settled on all fours, but I curled that strap around each of her wrists and flipped her onto her back like I'd roped a calf. She lay awkward on her bound hands, but had no complaint when I went back to nuzzling her cunt, which was soft and sweet as cherry pudding.

I was all fussed-up, so I fiddled with myself, twisting my bloated little nub until I was sloppy as a spring puddle. Caroline didn't mind my self-abuse, and began to spit out all manner of vulgar advertisements. Imagining such filthy amusements as she
described sent a convulsion of bliss through me. I growled and bit at her own quivering nub, swollen again and achy for attention.

I told her it was her turn to ride, so she squatted on my face. She was pleased to grind against my nose while admonishing me for all my unnatural cravings. She ordered that I clean her shame away with my tongue and called my cuntsucking a “penance.” My sweet Caroline was possessed by a foul-mouthed demon, but damned if I wasn't heated to boiling again! I licked everything she told me to, giving myself over to her tender mercies, and we didn't let up on each other until the baby cried, and then, while she nursed her daughter, I slept.

 

“How are we getting out of here?” she asked me as we sat at the barn door looking at the prairie later that day.

“I'm mulling that over, darlin'.” I'd walked plenty of miles on my cases, sometimes hopping trains with the hobos, but I didn't reckon on a mother and baby getting far. Then again, if I turned myself in, I'd get my horse back, but I might not live long enough for the Agency to vouch for me. Not when I had information that the union boss masterminded the murders of half a dozen Irish while the marshal did nothing.

Best I could hope for was everyone thought me dead and Caroline lost in the fire. And that meant, sooner-or-later, someone would come for the bodies. As I watched Caroline tend the baby, I couldn't help but ask, “How'd a woman of such high-strung passions end up with a sorry case like Proster Dun?”

She glanced away but then squared her shoulders and stared me dead in the eye. “He was a customer at the Mikado in Santa Fe, where I went by the name of Miss Pretty Delaney.”

I was indeed familiar with the Mikado. The ladies who worked that fine parlor house were known to me because of my impersonating a brothel inspector for a case three years previous.
To my most genuine surprise and appreciation, I had discovered that as long as a man was generous with his dollars, those decidedly prudent ladies didn't mind if he was, in fact, a woman.

Her defiant stare had me smiling. “Ever ride a cow?” I asked.

“As you are likely aware by now, Mr. Cortland, I've ridden many things. But never a cow.”

And that's how we got halfway to Laramie before meeting up with a stage that took pity on a new mother (and kindly received the promissory note of a Pinkerton detective for eight dollars). We took a train to Kansas City, where I set up house with the new Mrs. Charlie Bluff and our baby girl.

One month later, Bill “Jackjaw” Bivens entered a land stinking of brimstone after a sudden stop at the end of a sturdy rope. Mr. Bert Lloyd escaped into the New Mexico Territory and ended his terrors on this blessed earth as the victim of a bank holdup. My parsimonious boss kept the fifty-dollar bonus, but he did buy me a drink to toast my nuptials.

 

 

 

 

 

But she
was
here. She'd really come. And it hadn't been just the garish lights of the midway last night; even in the noonday glare Carla smoldered, like an ember about to ignite dry leaves. The thought of stirring up that blaze made me sweat. Except it damn sure wasn't all sweat.

“She's here!” Cal said urgently. “Over by the fence!”

“Eyes front, or you're dead meat!” I snarled, just low enough not to startle the horses. The loudspeaker announcing my team drowned out my voice.

“…Ree Daniels out of Rexford, Vermont, driving Molly and Stark, with a combined weight of…”

I backed them out smoothly enough and drove briskly down the drawing ring, grip on the lines steady, attention fixed strictly
on the 4,200 pounds of horsepower surging ahead of me. Two great glossy black rumps pumped in unison, two muscular bodies slowed and began their turn—and Cal stumbled on my right, just managing not to drop the evener bearing half the weight of the two single trees.

Ethan, craning to see, wavered on my left. He sped up—got into position—and the clang of the steel evener dropping onto the stoneboat's hook sent the horses lurching forward with all their strength. The heavy sledge began to move. Shoulders bunched, hocks straining, hooves the size of pie plates chopping at the dirt, they pulled a load of twice their own weight across the ground, responding to my hollered commands without really needing them until the last few feet of the required distance. Training and heart were what mattered most, not driving skill, but I still wouldn't let either of my brothers handle my team in competition.

Not that Cal hadn't given it his best shot last night. “C'mon, Ree,” he'd pleaded, “she said she might come on her lunch break! And I sorta let her think I'd be driving!”

“You think she cares about anything besides the bulge in your britches?” I whapped his butt right across the wallet pocket. “You can strut your studly charms all you want tomorrow night. If you get lucky enough to have a chance at slipping something inside those tight panties of hers once the midway shuts down, you can even borrow my pickup. Tonight you get to bed all sober and early and solitary, 'cause tomorrow morning your ass is mine from dawn to whenever the pull is over and the horses rubbed down and stabled.”

Cal couldn't make up his mind whether to sulk or grin. He'd have looked even younger than his eighteen years if he hadn't been six-foot-six, square-jawed, and built like somebody who'd grown up tossing around fifty-pound bales of hay. My “little”
brother towered over me by four inches, which still left me six-two of height and plenty of bale-tossing capacity of my own.

I almost felt guilty at letting him get his hopes up, but I sure as hell wasn't about to tell him why.

If any slipping inside Miss Carla-from-Boston's panties was going to be done, I had a bet with myself that he wasn't going to be the one doing it. Not Cal, nor any of the other young punks—and some not so young—who hovered around her booth and pretended to be interested in throwing darts at balloons for cheesy prizes, while they watched her working her ass and tits and dark, light-my-fire eyes.

Cal and sixteen-year-old Ethan hadn't been hard to locate last night when I'd cruised the fairgrounds. Both white-blond heads, streaked hot pink and green and purple by the midway lights, loomed above the crowd. I hung back for a while near the balloon-dart booth to get an idea of what they were up to, hardly able to see the carnie huckster through the wall of testosterone-pumping adolescents between us. I could hear her slick come-on, though, and the sly, seductive tone of her voice sent hot prickles across my skin. Just food for fantasy, of course, but damn, she was good.

“C'mon folks, I'll rack ‘em up again. See how Cal, here, got one right in there? Popped that cherry good? Here y'go, show us what y'got.” I caught just enough movement to know she was tossing her long dark hair and twitching her hips for emphasis. “Stick that ol' dart right in! Ri-i-i-ght in there!”

“Right in where?” asked a wise guy. “Show me again!”

“If you can't find the spot on your own, hot stuff,” she shot back, “maybe you better go home and practice some more on your favorite sheep.”

Whoa
. Considering the concentrated beer fumes in the area, she could be asking for trouble. I moved closer and squeezed in
next to Cal just as the guy hurled his three darts too fast to be aiming much, and one balloon popped with a satisfying crack.

“There y'go, I knew you could hit the spot,” she purred. “Prize from the first row, or wanna try again and get an upgrade?”

“How many hits to go all the way?” His leer was unmistakable.

“Sorry, Bud, my ass isn't sittin' up on the prize shelf tonight.” She tossed him a big purple plush snake and moved away. “Who's next?” Her sultry gaze lit right on me, and maybe she figured it was safer not to pitch to another guy right then.

“How about you, honey? I always like to see a lady show the fellas how it's done.” She put one foot up on the low barrier across the front of the booth; leaned an elbow on a sleek, black-stockinged knee; and rested her chin on her hand. The top three buttons of her red satin shirt were unbuttoned, giving me a prime view of peach-tinted flesh barely held in check by a lacy black bra. Her miniskirt was hitched up so high I caught a glimpse of matching garters and tender thighs. “How about it, darlin'?”