Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 16:21:47 EST
From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com
Subject: Hired Gun

				 HIRED GUN
			   By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
		      WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM

     Dust-devils danced in the middle distance, dervishes to the wind's
desires, a swirl of smoky, silken silt. The heat of mid-day was upon us,
and work was all but impossible, Pa and I stayed inside our house and
waited. Watching the horizons around us, wondering if one of the shadows
would resolve into riders, if the pounding of hooves would announce our
death-day. We'd been waiting like this for more than four days.
     Resolution, a shadow was a rider, only one, coming toward us, along
the trail from town, not riding hard and fast, not slouching along
aimlessly, just riding to us, the moderate, ground-eating pace of a
horse-and-rider that had been on their way for days. Four days, maybe?
     "Could it be him, Pa?" I asked.
     "Maybe." Pa said. "Better you stay inside and cover me. I'll go out
and see who it is."
     I took the rifle, the barrel felt greasy in my palms. Maybe it was the
sweat, borne not just of the heat...but of fear. "Pa..." I said. "I ain't
never shot a man before."
     "If we're lucky, you won't have to today, neither." Pa said. "But if
you have to, I expect you to do it. I'll do the talking, if he's safe, I'll
take off my hat. Long as my hat stays on my head, you keep that gunsight
right on top of him. He makes a quick move, any kind, you pot him, you got
me?"
     "Okay, Pa." I said through lips bone-dry past a throat dusty-dry. I
licked my lips with my tongue, a faint film of moisture was all my tongue
could muster to wet them. "I'll do it if I have to."
     "Good boy." Pa said. The rider was getting closer and I could see by
now he was a stranger to me. No detail, just that combination of things
that means it's not one of the fifty or sixty people who were locals. Any
stranger was dangerous right then. I knelt down by the window, pulled the
curtain closed across it, and stuck the barrel of the rifle through the
curtain, turning the line between curtain and sash into my
peephole. Protected while I prepared to commit cold-blooded murder.
     Pa went outside as the man rode up. The man got off on the side of his
horse nearest to Pa, a good sign. Anyone out to kill Pa, or afraid of him,
would have gotten off on the far side of the horse. The man and Pa talked,
and I strained to hear, but neither voice was loud and the wind blew their
words away, mixing it with the dust to swirl among the sagebrush.
     But Pa took off his hat and I heaved a big sigh of relief, pulled the
rifle back inside, and went out to see who our visitor was. Could it be
him? Could it?
     It was. Pa had written for a hired gun, and this man had answered. I
didn't know the details of how Pa had done it, but this man was supposed to
be good, Pa had said.
     Maybe he could keep us alive the next few days. Maybe.
     I looked at him as I stepped outside. Not handsome, he was too
weather-beaten for that. His eyes had developed a perpetual squint from
peering into the hot noonday sun, his face had formed lines into that
squint, pulling his face together, creasing his forehead. A poorly kempt
beard trickled around the bottom of his jawline from one ear to the other,
the skin was reddened and raw-looking. And the eyes. They were as dead as
the granite of a tombstone, and just as gray. Seeing...but they never
seemed to blink.
     "This your boy?" the man said to Pa.
     "Yep, just the two of us here." Pa said.
     The man's mouth twitched into a semblance of a smile, but there was no
mirth behind it. "Kind of young to be toting that gun, ain't he?"
     "I know how to use it." I said.
     "Oh, I believe you." the man said. "Just like I believed a kid even
younger'n you, he warn't more'n nine or ten years old, wearing a
six-shooter on his hip like a real man, he came up to me back in Abilene
and said he was going to shoot me down."
     "What'd you do?" I wanted to know.
     "Killed him." came the laconic response.
     "Really?" I was struck by the tone. Uncaring. It didn't matter to him.
     "Yep." the man said.
     "Why'd you kill him?" I asked. "Couldn't you have done something
else?" I had visions from my reading of yellow novels, he could have shot
the gun from the boy's hand, leaving him stunned and helpless. He could
have performed an acrobatic jump and roll as the boy tried to kill him,
rolling to safety.
     "I might've been able to do something else." the man said. "But
killing him made certain. That way, he was dead and I was alive." The man
kicked back the brim of his hat with his forefinger. "And that's the way I
wanted it to be. Same as I would've picked you right out of that window
if'n your Pa hadn't given the signal to tell you to back off. If he'd
waited ten more seconds, I would have."
     "You couldn't have got me in there." I said in disbelief. "I wasn't
showing more'n an eyeball to the window."
     "That's all I need."
     My stomach clenched up at that. I didn't doubt him at his word. I had
been ten seconds away from dying!
     "We'll set you up a bunk in the barn." Pa said, leading him
away. "Joseph, you stand guard while he gets his horse watered and fed and
gets settled in."
     "Sure thing, Pa." I said. Pa and the man went into the barn, the man
leading his horse, a sorrel mare, and I was left once again scanning the
horizon.
     It was a dry year and the water was drying up. Our ranch, the Circle
J, and the Bar A ranch next door had to share the sole remaining source of
water for our cattle. Trouble was, there were too many cows for that one
little spring to water both of them. The spring started off on the Bar A's
land, but the water drained off onto our spread in a small creek, more like
a brook. It hadn't been much more than a place the cattle would drink from
now and then...until the other sources of water had dried up. Then it
became our source of salvation.
     Trouble was, the Bar A had blocked the little creek that ran from that
spring, stopping the water from getting through to our cattle. That had
been six days ago.
     There's not much that will turn a rancher against his neighbors, but
water is one thing that'll do it. The Bar A had no right to keep that
water, it belonged to all the ranches along that little watercourse over to
Sawgasee Creek, mainly us! Our ranch was the only one without an alternate
source of water, the other ranchers had turned a blind eye to our plight!
     So Pa had brought in a hired gun, someone to fight off the men with
guns who guarded the dam, so we could go onto the Bar A and blow open that
dam. Start the water flowing again, enough to save our herd.
     And that was why this stranger was now bunking in our barn.
     Our cattle were lowing with thirst, after the stranger was done with
his horse and took up what I presume was a watchful position on our front
porch (he appeared to be napping to me!), I went back to hauling water from
our little well. We didn't have enough water to do more than fend off the
worst of their thirst, I had to let them drink a few at a time, drive them
away to let the next batch up to the tub. It left us with nothing more than
mud by the end of the day. Experience with our well had taught me we had to
wait three more days at least to try to draw water from the well, nearly a
month before the water would be clear enough to drink without filtering.
     I went with the pails back up onto the porch. The stranger appeared
asleep, but when I got nearer, he lifted a hand, used the back of his
forefinger to flick the hat back out of his eyes, looked up at me. "Got
something to say, kid?"
     "Yeah." I said. "Whatever you're going to do to get us the water back,
you got to do in the next couple of days. After that..." I set the pails
down, let him see them empty, "...you might as well not bother."
     "You'll have water before morning." he promised me. "I checked things
out on my way in."
     "What are you going to do?" I asked him.
     "Survive." he said and pushed his hat back over his eyes. "It's what I
do best." I shrugged and went back inside. I still didn't know what to make
of this man.
     The next day, the cattle were gone from our yard. I found them at the
creek, drinking their fill.
     The water was back. The dam had been broken and flooded the creek all
along its length, the cattle were enjoying its bounty. I watched them come
back to life, to begin to crop at the yellowed, dried grass again with
gusto...then went back to the house to find our savior.
     He wasn't on the porch, he was in the bunk we'd set up in the barn. I
walked up to him cheerfully and toward his sleeping form...and there was a
flash of blanket being thrown back and I was staring down the barrel of his
gun.
     Then he was putting it back into his bunk. "Shit, kid, I nearly shot
you!"
     "Sorry." I said. "I just wanted to say thank you for getting the water
back."
     "You're welcome. Now shut up and let me sleep."
     I got out of there again. He finally came out in the afternoon, and up
to me. "Hey, kid, how about some breakfast?"
     "It's mid-afternoon." I pointed out.
     "Okay. How about some lunch?"
     Well, he had been up most of the night working for us. "Sure." I said.
     "Where's your Pa?" he asked me when I set the bacon and eggs in front
of him.
     "In town." I said. "He said now you got the water back, he wants to
see what the owners of the Bar A are going to do about you blowing up the
dam."
     "The dam was illegal, wasn't it?" he asked.
     "Sure." I said. The laws of the territory were clear, watercourses
through grazing land were not to be impeded; an understandable law in this
water-poor land; the alternative was, well, what we had, armed banditry and
the law of the gun. "But that didn't stop them from building it in the
first place, and we can assume they're going to try again. Pa is trying to
find out just what."
     He turned his attention to his plate. "Your Pa is a smart man." he
admitted.
     "It's why we hired you for the entire year." I pointed out. "We can
hope that it rains enough this winter to end the drought, and the trouble
will all blow over if it does."
     "Maybe not." He said. "I had to waste two of their men blowing the
dam."
     "Did they see you?" I asked. Maybe there was a squad of horsed men
riding this way right now, bent on vengeance.
     "Nope." he said. "I got them while their backs were turned."
     "That was cowardly." I pointed out self-righteously.
     "Not in my book, it warn't." he said.
     "How's that?" I wanted to know.
     "`Cause they're dead and I'm alive." he said again. "And that's the
way I wanted it to be." He handed me the plate, belched loudly. "Thanks for
the eats, kid."
     I didn't say anything, went out to see about the cattle.
     I avoided the gunslinger the rest of the day except for giving him
supper. Well after sundown, I was sitting at the table, wondering if Pa had
decided to stay in town for the night (it was a long ride to town and back,
after all), and heard the notes of music from outside. A harmonica. The
gunslinger was playing a harmonica! I listened a while; damn, he was good!
     It was wrong of me to sneer at him for killing those two men. They
were there to make sure we couldn't get the water we needed, the water they
had stolen from us. He was all by himself, and facing odds of two to
one. How could he have fought them fair? He'd gotten us the water back, it
was foolish for me to think he should have done it by facing down two armed
men at once.
     So, in a much more charitable mood, I went out to the porch to sit and
talk with him a while.
     He put away the harmonica when I sat down. "Hey, kid." he said. "Isn't
it past your bedtime?"
     "Maybe." I said. "What's it to you?"
     "Nothing. Just wondering." he said.
     "Why are you still up?" I asked.
     "I don't sleep much." he said. He took out a knife and began to
whittle, I saw that this piece of wood was one he'd been working on for
some time.
     "You whittle a lot, then?" I asked him. "At night?"
     "Yep." he said.
     "Oh." I concluded.
     The silence stretched out.
     "So, what's your name, anyway?"
     He cocked one eye my way. "Not a good idea to ask a man that." he
said.
     I knew better than that, sure. "I mean, what should I call you?"
     "The hired gun." he said.
     "I mean a name." I clarified.
     "So did I." he said. "That's what I am."
     "I mean, what did your mother name you?"
     "Don't know." he said. "She wasn't around long as I can remember."
     "What about your father then?" Maybe his mother had died when he was
too young to remember her. Mine had.
     "Don't know who he was."
     "So who raised you?" I asked.
     "Kid, you ask too damned many questions." he said, ending the
conversation once again.
     Another silence, during which I almost got up and went back
inside. Instead...
     "I'm sorry." I said.
     "It's okay." he said. "Just don't ask any more like that."
     "Okay." I said. "So what should we talk about?"
     "You talk about whatever you want to."
     "I meant I wanted you to talk." I said. "God, I grew up right here on
this ranch. Pa taught me my letters and numbers, but other than a few trips
into town, this is all I know. So what's to talk about? You, though, you've
been places."
     "A few." he allowed.
     "So tell me about them."
     "Not a fit subject for a kid like you." he said. "If you think living
the life of a hired gun is exciting, you got another think coming."
     "So what is it like?" I asked him.
     "It's fine as long as you never forget the first rule of being a hired
gun." he said.
     "You mean, make sure you're alive and he's dead?"
     He nodded. "That's the long and short of it. Long as you remember
that, you'll be fine."
     "Gee." I thought it over. "What about drawing fast?"
     "The quickdraw is for showoffs." he grunted. "Oh, it's nice if you can
bring it off, but you don't have to be fast. More important to be accurate
when you do fire. And better to fire first, too."
     "From hiding, like you did with those two men last night?" I
countered.
     He smiled, not at all offended, "Like you were the first time I saw
you." he pointed out.
     I blushed, turned my head away, and he laughed. "Hey, kid, if you want
to do something before bed, I got an idea."
     I looked at him, and he was smiling at me. It looked kind of funny on
that face of his. "Uh, what did you want to do?" I asked him, swallowing
hard. He was so much bigger and stronger than me, if he wanted to....
     "Got any checkers?" he asked.
     "Checkers? Oh, uh, yeah!" I said, getting up hastily. "Come on in and
we'll set up on the table."
     We played for about another hour. Pa still hadn't come home, and I
mentioned it. "You think something may have happened to him?" I asked. By
then, we were talking, at least about checkers and such.
     "Not unless he was stupid or something." he opined. "For him to be in
trouble, he'd have to blab that he'd blown up the dam."
     "Pa wouldn't do that!" I said.
     "Then he's just chosen to stay the night in town." he said.
     "I hope you're right." I said after a pause.
     "Sure. Now get to bed, kid." He said standing up.
     "Thanks for the game of checkers." I said.
     "Sure." He went to the door. "Oh, and kid?" he said his hand on the
open door.
     "Yes?" I looked around.
     "You can call me Charley." He said and went quickly out the door.
     My dreams that night were odd, vivid in color and sounds, it was like
reality. Only problem was, I'd wake up from something happening in the
dream, and feeling scared, and I couldn't remember anything about the
dream. I'd lay back and go back to sleep after a while, and the same thing
would happen.
     Finally, just before dawn, I gave up and got out of bed. Went out to
the barn to get the feed for the chickens.
     Charley (I finally had a name for him!) was lying in his bed, a
blanket thrown over his lower body, but bare from the waist up. A second
blanket under him protected his body from the straw that made up his
bed. It was the first time I'd ever seen a man's body other than my
father's, and Pa wasn't anything like as big as Charley. His arms were huge
orbs of sweat-shining muscle, one flung over his head, the other down by
his side his stomach was a sunken pit beneath his ribs that formed an arch
to support the muscles of his chest, the apex of this cathedral of male
torso was decorated by black hairs that crowned it. And the blanket had its
own spire rising, the inspiration from a dream too vivid...much like mine
had been.
     He moved and his other hand came up...bearing his gun, but it didn't
get aimed at me.
     "Christ, kid, how often do I have to tell you to not sneak up on me."
Charley complained.
     "I'm sorry." I said. "I just came to get the chickens their feed. When
I feed them and gather their eggs, I can fix you some breakfast."
     He sat up and I could just see the white band of his underpants when
the blanket fell away from him. He had left on the lower half of his
underclothes, remained clothed from waist to ankles. That disappointed me
for some reason I couldn't define.
     "What are you going to do today?" he asked me.
     "I need to check the fences." I said. "If the cattle have water and
start to graze again, they're going to wander about more. Besides, I like
to check our fences every few days, just to be safe."
     He nodded. "That's wise. I'll get dressed and come with you."
     "Why?" I asked him. Unless I hit a major repair job, one man was
plenty for this.
     "You might have some people gunning for you." he reminded me.
     "Oh. Yeah." I said.
     His ears cocked over, and he scrambled to his feet. I saw the
underclothes clearly now, hanging loosely off his abdomen. The wet cloth
(it had been a hot night) clung to him like a second skin. That bulge was
there, lying along one leg, shrinking fast. Then he was creeping toward the
barn door and I realized why. "Do you hear someone?" I asked him.
     "Ssst!" he shushed me. "Someone's coming."
     "Maybe it's Pa!" I said, but that was a whisper. I was straining my
own ears, I didn't hear anything.
     "I don't think so." he said, listening to sounds I still couldn't
hear. "A wagon."
     He crouched down behind a barrel in the barn, and I realized that he
would be nearly invisible there in the darkness of the barn from the people
outside.
     "Stay down, kid." he hissed at me. "Wait until they pull up into the
yard and you can get a look at them. Then, if need be, you say the word and
I'll cut them all down."
     "Okay." I said.
     It was Doc Wagner and in the back of the wagon was Pa. I told Charley
that and ran out to see the Doc.
     Pa had had an accident in town, was all that had happened. His leg had
gotten smashed by a freak accident with a wagon. It had broken the leg in
two places when the wheel went over it. Pa was fine now, but he would be
bedridden for a few more weeks and ambling on crutches for a month or more
after that.
     Charley stayed hidden until Doc Wagner was gone and then he came
out. Pa and Charley talked, and I listened. The Bar A owners had a pretty
good idea who had blown up their dam. They had threatened Pa. "Isn't that
unlikely that they had a hand in that wagon coming around the corner when
it did." Pa concluded. "Means we're going to have to be careful from now
on."
     "I need to check the fences." I told Pa.
     "Take the hired gun with you." Pa said. Hired gun, that was all Pa
knew about Charley.
     And I didn't tell him more, it wasn't my secret to tell. Looking back
on it, I don't think Pa wanted to know anything more about Charley. Keeping
him around the way you keep a dog to attack strangers that come onto your
property.
     Charley and I rode around the perimeter of our ranch. We had only two
stretches fenced off. North of us was government land, owned by the
Army. If the cattle wandered onto there a bit, they didn't care. South of
us was the Chamakichi Hills, and cattle from the ranches went there for
free-range grazing. Come springtime, we had to go out there and round them
up, the cows went in there during winter to scavenge for food. But this
time of year, they were happy to keep out of it.
     East of us was our downstream neighbor, the Line K ranch. They had a
border with a river and didn't need our water. West of us was the Bar A
ranch. It was the line I wanted to check. An incursion of cattle in either
direction could be trouble.
     But the western fence (I'd always taken better care of it than the
eastern one) was clean and intact. We reached the post that marked the edge
of our ranch and I said, "Well, that's one of them. T'other's a mile
yonder." I pointed with my chin. "If there ain't nothing wrong with the
eastern fence, we can be home in time to fix Pa some lunch."
     I hadn't checked the eastern fence in more than a week, a section of
it was down. Charley judged it. "Looks more like it was taken down rather
than fallen down."
     "Probably they needed to move some cattle through here and forgot to
put it back." I said. "I'll get this done in a moment."
     "I'll help you." Charley said and got off his horse.
     "Shouldn't you be keeping an eye out for strangers?" I asked him.
     "Look around yourself." he suggested, and I did. We were on a flat
stretch, you could see for a mile in every direction. Nobody around, and
anyone who did come, you'd see them a quarter hour before saying howdy.
     "Okay, you can help me." I said.
     He made a good hand helping me with the fences, setting the rails back
into position in an overlapping way that meant if one post fell down, the
fence would still be mostly upright. I mentioned that to him, and he
answered, "Been thinking that when I decide to settle down, I might get a
ranch somewhere. Someplace quiet and away from other people."
     "Why not around here?" I asked him. Plenty of land was still
available.
     He shook his head. "You can't settle in a place where you've worked
when you're a hired gun." he said darkly. "Have to move somewhere nobody
knows your face or what you've done. My kind aren't welcome except when
there's trouble, like here."
     "Pa and I would welcome you." I insisted. "We could use another hand
on the ranch, especially what with Pa laid up. Besides," I hesitated, and
said it anyway, "I like having you around."
     He looked at me with those gray, dead eyes and I could see the clouds
closing behind them. "Nobody likes having me around, `cept when they need
someone killed. Only thing I'm good for. But I'm good at it. Always a
market in the West for a gun and an owner not afraid to use it."
     "I don't want you around for that." I insisted. "It...it gets lonesome
around here. You stayed on, we could be friends and play checkers at
night."
     "And you could come wake me up in every morning." he said.
     "Yeah." I said, smiling at the memory of him lying there on the straw.
     His hand went down to his pants and I looked up, surprised. "What are
you doing?" I asked him.
     "Got to walk the horse." He explained succinctly and I turned away. It
wasn't polite to stare at a man while he was pissing, Pa had drilled that
into me. It wasn't polite....
     But I remembered that tent in his blanket and I had to look, just had
to. I'd never seen a man's organ before, only my own and Pa's, back when I
was too young to remember it clearly.
     He was just finished "walking the horse" and I saw his cock still in
his hand, white and clean, looking like a fish hanging out from his
trousers, the bulbous head glinting in his fingers.
     I licked my lips, looking at it, how it was so fine a piece of him, so
very like him, strong and knowing what it wanted and....
     "Kid, you ain't supposed to be looking at me." Charley complained.
     "I'm sorry." I said, licked my lips again.
     He took a couple of steps, his cock still out, still in his
hand. "Getting a good look at it?" he asked me.
     "I'm sorry." I murmured again, but I didn't look away.
     "Never seen one before?"
     "No, sir." I said.
     "Know what to do with it?" Charley asked me.
     "I know enough." I said, and I did, thanks to stories told by
schoolmates, and a rather clinical explanation from Doc Wagner when I was
fifteen. Put those two together with my own sexual self-abuse at night, and
I knew enough.
     "Then come on." Charley invited me.
     I stumbled toward him and I don't know if I planned to get on my knees
or just ended up that way. I just know I was down in front of him and his
cock was right next to my face, and I lifted my hand up to wrap my fingers
around it, quivering as I felt for the first time another man's cock. Warm,
so very warm, even hot, that was my first impression. My second was the
strong smell from Charley's crotch, all moist and salty-strong and musky as
a bull that had just serviced a cow. The third was my watching as I pumped
the hard rod, squeezing it up and seeing the clear pearl of salty jizz
bubble up, just as mine did when I yanked it. And Charley's groan, a soft,
longing sigh, that was just like mine when I was really enjoying my
yanking.
     I pummeled Charley's prick, whamming that pud the way I did my own,
get it off fast before Pa came in and caught me at it. Pa hadn't caught me
doing it yet, but it had been close a couple of times. The barn in the
morning would be better, Pa liked to sleep in, he always said morning
chores were young men's work, he needed time to let his bones get used to
being awake, he would cook breakfast while I took care of the chickens and
horses and such.
     "Oh, yeah, work it for me." Charley gasped. "Give it a good pumping,
boy, really make it hum for me. Oh, yeah, I can't wait to get your lips on
it, boy!"
     My lips? What was he talking about? Doc Wagner hadn't said nothing
about this and neither had my friends at school. Get my lips on it?
     I looked at his dong in my hand, my hand now getting sticky from the
precome that oozed down out of the slit and I thought how I'd tasted my own
once, found how salty it was and the thought of tasting that from him made
me drool! I reached out and kissed his cockhead with my tongue and when I
did, Charley's hand got the back of my head and pulled me down onto
it. "Oh, yeah, boy, come on, work it for me!" he urged.
     I choked, coughed, strangled and Charley let go. "You okay, kid?"
     "Yeah, I'm all right." I gasped out. "What were you trying to do?"
     Charley looked at me, understood, and explained to me in simple
words. At his instruction, I began to lick at his cock again and this time
he let me. I worked my saliva all over the cockhead, which drank up my
liquid hungrily, but after a time it became sated and began to gleam silver
in the sun.
     "Okay, kid, now start working it with your lips." he instructed. "Got
to keep everything slicked up and moving smoothly or you'll choke again."
     As I obeyed him, moving my lips up and down on his dong, feeling the
hot pole burning against my gullet, I wondered how Charley knew these
things. But then, he'd been around a lot, he must have learned it from the
professional women in places like New Orleans or St. Louis. I wondered how
I'd compare to such consummate professionals as those!
     But Charley wasn't complaining, he was moaning the way I would on
those times when I was alone in the house and could make all the noise I
wanted to when I pumped my rod, Charley was telling me with such nonverbal
syllables how much he loved this, how much it was working for him, how much
closer he moved to coming with my every motion upon his prong!
     His head was thrown back, those dead eyes were shut to the world, and
on his face was a tenderness I hadn't seen on him before. Even when he was
confiding in me the night before, he hadn't had this look on his face. That
squint was mostly gone, only lines burned into his face told of their
existence, but covering that like a mother's blanket was the softness that
now glowed from within him.
     That spurred me to further efforts, I had reached some part of this
remote man, however temporarily and whatever the circumstances, for now, he
was closer to the realm of manhood than he had been in...who knew how long?
     His sounds of ecstasy climbing rose in his throat, floated around me
like the leaves of autumn, glistening flashes of color, only these were of
sound and even with my eyes closed as I worked his cock, I had the beauty
of the lightning in my ears, echoing over and over again, rising to
crescendo.
     As his moans reached a fever pitch, his hands came back and took
control, by now, I could let him do this, his cock was a known visitor in
my mouth and I knew how it would move and what room it would need, and so
when he grabbed my head and hunched his pud down my throat, I only grunted
and that was from the air being forced past this pistoning prick.
     "Uh, uh, HUH-GNNNHHH!" he said and that was all the words, then he
went to heavy breathing and that, only then, was when his cock burst into
my mouth and down my esophagus, hot salty sperm shooting into me like a
rapid-firing revolver, the gummy packets of sperm fell onto the back of my
tongue and seethed there before slithering like slugs down my dark tunnel
into oblivion.
     Charley kept humping my face even after he was done, until every erg
of his pleasure had been wrested from his dick and only then he let me go,
still panting hard like he'd run a long ways.
     "Hot damn, kid, you did good!" He assured me with his first available
breaths after restoring his exhausted lungs. "Man, but you've got a real
talent!"
     "Thanks." I said to him bashfully. "I liked it, too."
     "Whoo!" he said, his chest expanding and blowing out in a noisy
explosion. "That gives me one more reason to stick around a bit. You sneak
around to the barn after dark and I'll show you a real good time!"
     I smiled at that, though my own cock ached for release. The promise of
later, though, made me a stern schoolteacher to its desire for play. Later,
I told it, later we'll have some real fun. And it went back to its seat and
sat down, real quiet-like.
     We finished checking the fence and had only a couple of small falls to
deal with, and then it was back to the house.
     After Pa was asleep, I snuck out to the barn, and Charley was waiting
for me. He made good on his promise, too, and we ended up sucking each
other, him showing me a real talent. When I blew my wad, he gulped it down
a lot easier than I had when his own had been blasting me. When I asked him
about it, he just said, "You learn a lot of things in an orphanage, whether
you want to or not."
     The next day, I went out to check the cattle. We didn't try to
restrict their ranging, just kept tabs on where they were.
     Six of our cattle had been shot dead. Four more were wounded so badly
I had to put them down myself. Three others, I hoped would heal, they were
too wild to let me do anything for them without some help. I went back to
the house, my heart heavy.
     Charley just nodded, said to Pa, "They know you blew up the dam. I
heard some gunfire last night, but it was far enough off I didn't think it
was aimed at us."
     "Damn it, man, you have to do something!" Pa exclaimed
harshly. "Another few days of this and I won't care about keeping the water
from that little creek. I won't have any cattle to need watering."
     "I'll deal with them." Charley said. "Tonight."
     I couldn't sleep, just listened as I heard gunfire. It was closer this
time but still nearly a mile away. A spell of silence, more gunfire.
     Charley wasn't back the next morning. I was about to go out riding to
try to find him when he rode in, his right arm heavily bandaged and red
with blood. "They won't be shooting any more of your cattle, that bunch,
anyway." he gasped.
     I helped him into the house, put him in my bed. The bullet had pierced
his arm entirely, gone out the other side. I said as much, with some
relief. "It didn't cut the bone or a major artery." I said to him. "A
little while and you'll be good as new."
     "The hell I will." Charley said. "I can't move my right arm enough to
matter now." He lifted it, straining, to show me, wincing with the
pain. "They done took me out of the job of protecting you."
     "What are we going to do?" I asked Pa.
     "Write for another hired gun." Pa said. "Soon as you can ride, you can
leave." he told Charley. "I'll pay you for your work, you done good by us."
     "Hey!" I protested. "Pa, we can't send him away!" If Pa did that, when
would Charley and me have another time in the barn like we had? One time
wasn't enough for me, I wanted more of it! If Pa hadn't been there, I would
have crawled into bed with him right then and there.
     "No, kid, I want to move on soon as I can." Charley said. "I stick
around and it's going to be pretty obvious who killed those Bar A
boys. I've done potted five of them, now, the others are going to be
searching with blood in their eyes, now. And here I am, helpless as a
turtle on my back.
     "They can't have you!" I informed him fiercely. "I won't let them have
you."
     Charley smiled, but it had no power in it, a feeble movement of lips
alone. "We'll see what we see." He said. "I think I can manage to ride a
horse again tomorrow, I'll head east and get out of their way."
     "But you can't go!" I protested.
     "Hey, kid, right now, I'm alive." Charley said. "If I'm going to stay
alive, I have to vamoose. Nothing personal."
     I bit my lower lip, he was right. "Maybe they won't come looking for
you." I said.
     "Maybe." Charley said.
     The next day, Charley was looking better and we had the bleeding
stopped. His arm was well bandaged and he had his gun around so he could
draw it and shoot with his left hand. He wasn't any good left-handed, he
admitted...but it was all he had, so it would have to do.
     For him to ride east, I had to go with him, take down a part of the
fence. That was why I was with him when we ran into the Bar A riders.
     Four of them. They were nearly a quarter mile away, but soon as they
saw us, they began to ride toward us.
     A lone tree was our only possible protection. "Get behind it!" Charley
urged me. Back to back, we stood there, my rifle jutting out the left side
of the tree, Charley's left-hand aiming his pistol out the right.
     The men got closer and I shot at them with my rifle and so did
Charley. One of us, I don't know who, knocked one man out of his saddle,
and he lay on the ground, screaming in pain.
     The others got off, used their horses for protection, holding them
between us and them, and firing around and above and under them. I got two
of their horses with my shots (a horse is easier to hit than a person) and
while neither shot took them down, it was enough to make the horse rear,
whinny and run off, one of them limping badly but still making good time.
     Charley wasn't such a bad shot even with his left hand, he managed to
knock down two of the men, one for good, the other squirming in pain. Just
one was now firing at us. Only problem was, both Charley and I were nearly
out of ammunition. Our ammo was in our saddlebags back on our horses!
     "Charley, I got two shots left." I told him as I reloaded.
     "I got my gun full." Charley said. "It's going to have to do. Only one
man left."
     But we can't get him!" I wailed. He was behind a rise of land, an
impossibly small target. We were stuck behind a tree that just wasn't good
enough. If the man managed to work his way around to get a clear shot at
us....
     He had. I heard the shot, felt it bite my leg, only a nick, thank God!
     "Remember the first rule!" Charley said to me and he took off running!
He got about fifty feet from the tree, and then the shots from the other
man was rewarded by him clutching his chest. Another shot, and he fell.
     But the man was standing up now. I swung my rifle his way and pulled
the trigger, and the man keeled over. I had blown the top of his head off.
     I didn't waste any tears on him. I only saw Charley lying there on the
ground, not moving.
     "Charley! Charley!" I called out as I ran to him. The red on his
chest, that wonderful chest that I had admired before while he slept, now
the white shirt was stained with red! "Oh, Charley!" I said to him. "Why
didn't you stay down if you was going to leave?"
     "First rule of the hired gun." Charley said to me, coughed.
     "But...but..." I couldn't say it, not here, not now. But Charley
hadn't obeyed his own first rule! "But why?" I asked him.
     "Because you're alive and he's dead." Charley said to me. "And that
was the way I wanted it." And Charley's eyes closed.
     I got him back home best I could, and Pa took over caring for
Charley's wounds while I rode like blazes for the Doctor. Clouds started
arriving while I was riding back with the Doctor, and the rains that fell
for the next couple of weeks ended the drought for good, which ended our
range war with the Bar A.
     The doctor patched up Charley, though he was terribly sick for a long
time after, but he's a lot better now. Both he and Pa limp some, Pa from
his leg that didn't mend properly and Charley from the pain in his chest
from the bullet. His right arm still won't let him hold his gun or anything
else steady in his right hand, his days as a hired gun are now over.
     I run our ranch now. Pa can't understand why I keep Charley on as a
hired hand when he can't do a lot of the hard work a ranch needs. "He's
just a cold-blooded killer." he keeps pointing out.
     Charley had stopped being a killer on the same day he broke his first
rule of survival in order to save my life. And there's nothing cold-blooded
about him.
     I just tell Pa, firmly, "We owe it to him."
     And we do.

				  THE END
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