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On The High Plains

By: techsan



Author's note: the following story is purely a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Copperbutterfly for her editing to make this a better story.

*

It had been a long, hot summer, one of many in a chain of such summers in the north Texas heat. The year 1857 had been pretty much just like 1856 and every other year along here: too much sun, not enough rain, and very few people.

It had been almost ... hm, seventeen months, I think ... since I had last seen people, on a week-long wagon trip to Fort Worth. Well, people that didn't have naturally red skin, that is. There were roving bands of Comanche that came through the area from time to time, sometimes giving my place a wide berth but keeping out a wary eye, sometimes coming close enough to kill one of my longhorn steers. When they killed a steer, I had to give them credit; they left nothing behind but a few blood spots on the ground and some bent grass where they had worked. They took everything. I'm not sure how they used some of the parts but they weren't left behind. 

If there were women in the party, one or more of them would leave dragging a travois, a contraption made of two long poles lashed to a horse, held apart by another pole or two and connected by the hide strung between the poles. The majority of the dead animal was carried on its own hide on the travois. I knew the women of the band would spend the night making jerky out of most of the meat, although I wondered what they did with the head and entrails.

On very rare occasions, the band might be just a few warriors hunting for trouble. Usually when they went on the warpath, they were fighting their chief rivals, the Apaches, who normally lived in the region the Comanche considered to be the southern portion of their range. Thus when a war party came by my place, they weren't actually out to attack me ... but as long as I was there on their way, they might as well see if they could "count coup" on me too.

Counting coup was a strange practice to most whites. They were not necessarily trying to inflict harm on the person they counted coup on, but they were showing other members of their tribe just how brave a warrior they were by darting in to the opponent, whether it be a white man or a soldier of another Indian tribe, and touching that person, either with a hand or with a coup stick, and then darting away unharmed. Of course if the opponent reacted violently, as often happened, counting coup became a matter of life or death.

The problem most opponents had was not knowing whether the attack was simply counting coup or if the attacker actually meant to kill the opponent. Thus, discretion being the better part of valor, it was a natural practice to defend one's self with whatever weapons were available.

It had taken three separate and very bloody battles for the Indians to give my place a wide berth. It was fortunate that my weapons were more advanced than theirs. Although I had single-shot rifles just like theirs, mine were breech loaders, theirs the older muzzle loaders, at least those who had them. Many of the braves still used bows and arrows, although they were outstanding at their use. Still if they got close enough, my trio of Colt revolvers with six shots each could be an effective deterrent. I hadn't escaped without my share of wounds but I fared better than the several braves that went home draped over their horses' backs.

A couple of times, I'd had to make some major repairs to my dugout home. I'd gotten a great belly laugh, afterward, at the brave who thought he could ride his horse over the top of it, only to find that, when the horse stepped on the sod roof between the rafters, there was nothing to hold him up and he had come crashing through, hoofs flailing to gain purchase. The rider had scrambled to safety, although he took a bullet in one shoulder and had a lot of damage to his pride. Fortunately the horse finally managed to extricate himself but my roof had suffered major damage. But, with a sod roof and new rafters down at either the South Wichita or the North Wichita Rivers just waiting to be cut, it wasn't too difficult a job to patch and the only cost was my time.

Now, having finished shocking -- tying - the last of my winter wheat crop into tight little bundles for drying, I would have liked nothing better than to strip down and stand under my washtub shower and cool off, but with my meat supplies running low and needing to be built up before the winter set in -- yes, west Texas does have winters, with snow and ice and winds and miserable conditions. There's a saying that there is nothing between west Texas and the North Pole and snowfalls of 10 to 12 inches were not unusual. They weren't here yet but I had to be prepared when they came. So I left the confines of my humble barn and headed toward the South Wichita, hoping to find a white tail along the greenery that marked the river's path.

Usually the deer were plentiful in this part of the state. However with the lack of rain, they had become a little scarce and I hadn't spent much time hunting since I was working diligently to get my crops in for winter supplies. However it was always better to have some meat to supplement a vegetable diet. I could have had beef, of course, but I was still trying to build up my little herd, which right now numbered only 101 - unless some of the cows had dropped a calf in the last couple of days.

Once I reached the river, I turned west ... well, a little south by west, since the river meandered, but it was more west than anything. I picked up signs of deer feeding almost immediately and kept walking, being careful to keep from stepping on sticks that would break and give away my stalking, thus ending my hunt. I also had to be careful of rattlers. This area was a haven for the diamondback rattlesnake. An encounter with one of the highly poisonous creatures could lead to my death.

I was probably four or five miles downstream when I spotted something that seemed out of place. Most animal tracks were familiar to me but this was something different, a pair of parallel tracks that looked like something or someone had dragged something with a bit of heft to it into a pile of undergrowth. Cautiously I turned to the undergrowth and inched forward.

I was more than a little surprised, when I brushed some leaves away, to find a moccasin-covered foot. After more uncovering, I realized it was an Indian woman, a Comanche by the design of her dress. At first I thought she was dead but close examination showed that she was unconscious, breathing although her breath was ragged and shallow. Her heartbeat was rapid and quick. I carefully turned her over onto her back and found the remains of a broken Apache arrow in her left shoulder, an ugly wound. There was blood all down the front of her dress so I loosened the rawhide strings that tied it together and began searching. Nothing. I lifted the skirt and looked and there, between her waist and hip, was another hole, this from a rifle ball from the looks of it.

Not being a doctor, I didn't know if I could help this woman or not. Nevertheless, I would do what I could. Carefully I lifted her over my left shoulder, keeping my rifle on my right shoulder, and started the long trek home.

I knew I had to be jostling her with every step I took and if she had been conscious, she might not have been able to stand the trip. However if I was to be able to do anything for her, I had to get her into my dugout. It seemed to take forever and it was well after dark when I finally felt my way down the steps into the darkness of my home. I eased her down onto my rather crude mattress and lit an oil lantern.

There was no way to work her dress off without reopening her wounds. Besides the huge bloods stains had probably ruined it anyway so I cut it the rest of the way off, leaving her completely naked. Examining the arrow, I decided I had no choice but to just pull it back the way it had entered and hope that the head did not have barbs. Even with my pliers, it took most of my strength to pull it out, and even in her unconscious state, she groaned loudly at the pain. Sure enough she began to bleed, though not profusely, whether because she had already lost so much blood or because it was not badly reopened I didn't know.

I got a basin of warm water and some clean rags and began to clean the wound as gently as I could. Although I wasn't a doctor, I had years of experience with animals and had a few medicines for use with them. I hoped that there wasn't that much difference in caring for animals and humans. I sprinkled the wound with a powder I had used on my animals, bandaged it, and hoped for the best.

Turning to the lower wound, I found that the ball had gone all the way through her side and hoped that it had missed her vital organs. I washed the top side, powdered it, repeated the process on the back side, and then bandaged her by wrapping the rags all the way around her slim body.

She was covered from head to toe with mud and dirt and leaves, so I began to clean her up. It had been so long since I had even been close to a woman, let alone a naked one, that I couldn't keep myself under control. Her skin, except for the wounds, was beautiful and smooth. She had the smell of the woods about her but there was also a soft, sweet underlying fragrance of a woman who cared for her body.

Although her face was scrunched up a little in acknowledgement of pain, there was an innate beauty about her. Her long black hair was so tangled and matted that it did not add to her attractiveness but I could imagine that it would when it was cared for properly. Her breasts were large and full and even lying on her back, they stood tall and proud, possibly indicating something about her young womanhood. The dark brown nipples lay in an oval sea of crimson, the areolas that I yearned to touch. However, except for running the warm cloth over them as I washed her all over, I refrained from indulging my desires. 

Skipping over the bandage, I moved down to her feet, removing her beaded moccasins for the first time. Her feet seemed tiny to me, at least compared to my big boots. As I washed between and beneath each toe, I thought I heard her moan but the sound didn't repeat so I resumed washing. Her calves were shapely, the muscles covered with smooth round flesh indicating that she was active and strong. Her thighs were equally strong, yet the flesh was smooth and soft, particularly the inside. I have to admit to staring at her treasure slot, covered with a wild thatch of curly black hair. I had a throbbing hard-on before I moved back up beside her, kneeling as I faced her side.

Carefully I rolled her toward me and washed her backside, from her neck down to her softly pliable buttocks. Once again, I was unable to control my penis as it tented the front of my pants. I tried to ignore it, as I laid her on her back again. I pulled a fresh sheet out of my simple collection and gently covered her from armpits to toes, adding a blanket to held ward off shock.

Using a spoon and mug of fresh water, I managed to get a few drops of liquid into her mouth; just enough to wet the tissues of what I figured must be a very dry mouth. I prepared a little broth from water and some jerked venison. Although it took a while for the boiling water to soften and dissolve some of the meat into a sort of thin gravy, I hoped it would provide a little nutrition for her. Again using a spoon, I got a few drops into her mouth and felt better when I saw her throat move in a swallowing motion. We repeated the process a few times, enough I hoped that she would gain something from it.

For the next 72 hours, the only time I was not by her bedside was when I went to make sure the horses had water or I went out to relieve myself. Every so often, I got her to take a little bit of water or a little of the broth. I changed her bandages twice, adding more powder each time. I also bathed her twice more, then made an attempt to brush her long black hair. It was a miserable attempt since I couldn't lift her head but at least it helped a little. 

On the morning of the fourth day after I found her, I awoke from napping in the chair by the bed to see her dark eyes open and staring at me. There was no expression on her face. I jumped up and sat on the edge of the bed, putting her hand in mine.

"Wow!" I said. "You don't know how good it is to see you awake. Do you want anything? Something to drink? Are you hungry? How do you feel?"

She just stared. Nothing moved except her eyelids, as she blinked occasionally. Only then did it occur to me that she surely didn't speak English. She had no idea what I was saying. How do you communicate with someone who doesn't understand?

I got up and got the mug, pouring fresh water into it. Coming back to the bed, I knelt beside her and lifted her with one arm behind her shoulders. At first she looked frightened but when I brought the mug to her lips and she tasted the water, she drank thirstily.

Finally drawing the mug back, I pointed to it and said, "Water."

I had to repeat it a couple more times before she softly said, "Wata."

I grinned and nodded, letting her back down to the bed. I put the mug down and held my hand up, signaling for her to stay. I stepped over to the kitchen area and dipped a ladle into the fresh broth that was simmering over the fireplace, pouring it into another mug.

Bringing it to the bed, I lifted her again and let her see the steam from the mug so she would know it was hot. She brought her good hand up to the mug and carefully lifted it to her lips. She took a tentative sip, nodded her approval and began, devouring the broth sip by sip. By the time the half full mug was empty, she was exhausted. I eased her back to the bed and pulled the sheet back up under her arms. She was asleep in seconds.

After that, she awoke every few hours and I fed her, gave her water, and changed her sheets. Every day, I changed her bandages and washed her from head to toe, although she watched me suspiciously as I washed her breasts or between her legs. On the third day, she was able to sit in the bed long enough for me to sit behind her and brush her long hair out, finally pulling out the tangles and leaves and dirt that had accumulated during her ordeal. After I finished, she gave me the strangest look. I wasn't sure if she approved or not.

Even though she didn't seem to have any real inhibitions when I was washing her body, she still surprised me on the third day after she woke up. I was washing her, having started at her top and come to her waist, then moved to her feet and up her legs. I thought I was finished and was about to get up when she spread her legs and motioned toward her core, then to the wash basin. I finally understood that I had not done a good enough job. While she held herself open with the fingers of her good hand, I washed among the folds of her pussy and, almost as an afterthought, spread her buttocks and washed her anus with slow, gentle swipes of the warm wet cloth. She sighed and nodded her appreciation but didn't say a word.

After I had put the things away and covered her back up, I sat on the edge of the bed and pointed to myself, saying, "Jason," repeatedly.

She finally said, "Jase," very softly and I nodded. That was close enough.

I pointed to her and made a questioning gesture with my hands. At first she didn't understand, but I repeated my name and then the gesture at her.

She said something that sounded like, "Moxa," except it was much longer. 

When I frowned, she repeated it several times and I tried to say it but about all I could get out was, "Moxie."

She sort of giggled and made a nod of acceptance so we became Jase and Moxie.

By the fourth day, her wounds seemed to be healing well enough to leave the bandages off, although I knew she needed to take it easy for quite a while yet. Still that evening when I offered her some of the last of my venison along with baked potatoes from my root cellar, she scarfed them up like she was starved, although she was a bit puzzled at first with the potato. But once she tried it with some butter -- yes, you can make butter from the milk of longhorn cows, in case you wondered - she seemed to like it.

In the following days, I brought the sheaves of wheat into the barn, preparatory to threshing it, and spent some time at the river hunting deer. On three consecutive evenings, I was successful in bringing back a nice sized buck. By then, Moxie was even feeling well enough that she helped me dress them and hang them in my smokehouse, where the meat would be cured enough to last through the winter ... what we didn't eat first.

Our communication was slow at best and often ended in frustration on the part of one or both of us. Even trying to develop our own sign language was difficult; how do you make logical signs for some of the actions that we do? I tried to ask her about the band of Comanche that she was from but she didn't seem to understand. I knew the Comanche was a nomadic tribe and wandered by bands all over the south plains area so at any given time they could be located anywhere in the wide open spaces of the Llano Estacado of Texas and points both north and west. I wondered about returning her to her tribe but finding them was like looking for a needle in a huge haystack. She might not even be welcomed back if we found them, since she had been doctored by a white-eyes.

By the time she had been in my home for two weeks, she was up and around most of every day, doing pretty much whatever she felt like. For clothes, she dressed in one of my old shirts and pair of trousers, although she looked rather funny since they were much too big for her. When I went to the barn to care for the horses, she trailed along behind me and tossed hay down to them or brought water. Whatever I did, she mimicked. Occasionally she cooked but some of my food was so foreign to her that she didn't know what to do. I showed her and she learned eagerly. 

It was amazing how well we got along with practically no words spoken between us. In the evenings when it was too dark to work outside, she tanned the hides of the deer I had killed and made herself a new dress, although it didn't have the extensive bead work that her original had. Instead she mixed minerals and water to make a sort of paint that she used to carefully decorate the buckskin. She soon had new moccasins ... and then made a beautiful pair for my big feet.

I had been sleeping on the floor, on a pallet beside the bed. One night I picked up the blankets to make my pallet and Moxie grabbed them, vigorously shaking her head as she pointed from me to the bed. I finally understood that she wanted me to return to my bed so, somewhat hesitantly, I climbed into the bed where she had been sleeping, wondering what she planned to do. 

I was surprised when she climbed into the bed, laying across the foot, and pulled my feet to her stomach. I was even more surprised when she began massaging my feet. I moaned with pleasure. We were both asleep a short time later, but not without me having some very erotic thoughts.

The next few nights were carbon copies of that one. Then one night, after giving me her magnificent foot massage, Moxie moved one of my feet down to her crotch and pressed it into her crease. A man can only take so much, right?

I reached for her and pulled her up in the bed with me. It seemed like she came willingly, although it was too dark to really see her expression -- if there was one. Still when I began to kiss all over her face while my hand stroked her breasts, she didn't seem to mind. Nor did she object when I bent down to suck one of her magnificent tits, her nipple hard yet soft. At the same time, my hand drifted down between her legs and found her crease damp with her moisture. 


On The High Plains Ch. 02



The remaining days of summer and into fall were, as usual, filled with work to make sure we could get through the winter. I had always preserved plenty of food to get me through but I added to that this year since it looked like there would be two of us to feed instead of one.

As we gradually became better able to communicate with each other through a mixture of English words, Comanche phrases, and lots of sign language, I talked to her about her desire to go back to her tribe. I had no idea how we would go about finding them but she might.

However she had something else in mind. Every time I asked her about it, she acted like she did not understand. It was only after several attempts that I realized this was Moxie's way of saying that she had no intention of going back to her tribe. I had heard sometime back that some tribes believed that, if someone saved the life of a person, that person subsequently belonged to the one who saved him or her. I began to wonder if that was her thinking.

Although she was not used to farming, she was a quick study and when I showed her how to do something, she picked up on it the first time, usually. She did have a bit of a hard time trying to milk my two wet cows. They were still half-wild and required some manhandling to get them to cooperate. I think a couple of times she would have liked to pull out the long knife she carried in a belt sheath and cut their throats when they were being stubborn with her.

On the other hand, she watched me shucking corn and threshing wheat and immediately became proficient, if not an expert. When it came to drying and jerking venison for storing, she was much better at it than me. Of course that would have been something she did from her earliest days, so it was more natural to her than to me.

When it became obvious that I needed a new buckskin suit, I started work on it but Moxie took it away from me with one of her few grins and set to work. Three days later, I had a beautiful new set of buckskins that looked too good to work in -- but I did anyway.

One of the natural benefits of being near the South Wichita River was the presence of two particularly intriguing trees: the first was a huge spreading walnut tree while the second, just a bit smaller, was a native pecan. When the nuts began to ripen in late September and early October, we gathered every one we could keep from the squirrel population and hoarded for treats in the coming months. When we occasionally splurged on a cake or bit of homemade candy, adding the nuts was almost as good as finding gold nuggets -- maybe better.

After the first time that Moxie had slept with me, I wasn't sure what to expect from her. If I thought she was going to sleep with me every night, it didn't happen! She made a thin pallet beside my bed every night and slept on the floor. I got the message that my mattress gave her a backache. 

However if I crooked my finger at her, she came willingly to bed and we screwed passionately. She was not a passive lover; rather she was active with her hands, with her legs, with her pussy, and with her mouth. I couldn't have asked for a better lover. And she was very expressive when she climaxed too.

Afterward she would let me snuggle with her and hold her for a while. She returned my kisses just as passionately as I gave them. But then she'd slide back down to her pallet and spend the rest of the night.

In early September the climate was just barely beginning to mitigate, becoming slightly cooler in the evenings. It was enough that, if you knew the high plains well, made you know that winter was on its way again. From there on until the snow flies, I'd have to be extra alert for roving bands of warriors, because it was the time of year when they began to migrate from the northern reaches of their territory to the more moderate winter area south of us.

That meant that at any time, a group of braves with their families could be coming through the area. While they now knew enough to be wary of me, they didn't avoid me completely. And if the could steal one of my horses or cows, that was just part of life, what they considered to be fair game. I didn't mind providing a meal for a group passing through but I didn't want to lose an entire animal.

In late September, I was well out away from the house pulling ears of late corn off the head high stalks and tossing them into the wagon for transporting back to the house when I spotted a little cloud of dust on the horizon to the north. At first I thought it might be just a little dust devil, miniature tornadoes that often came through stirring up the dirt but not doing any damage.

But as I watched, I realized it was not just dust -- even a dust devil would be more compact and organized than this. It was a fairly broad cloud that just floated along in the direction of the house.

Unhitching one of the horses from the wagon, I climbed on his bare back and set off home. Long before I pulled up in front of the house, I could see that it was a band of Indians -- Comanche from the markings on their headbands. There must have been 20, maybe two dozen, but it wasn't a war party. There were women and children and old people riding on travois pulled by horses.

I slowed my pace so as not to spook the visitors and walked the horse into the yard. Moxie was fronted by a trio of braves who were talking rapid fire in their own language, and getting back the same kind of responses from her. I had no clue what they were talking about but pulled my horse to a halt and sat watching the conversation.

While the four of them palavered, the squaws had set about taking fresh water to the older people who were too infirm to fend for themselves. The children had naturally begun to find things to play with, obviously glad to have the opportunity to get out of the dust and off their travel mode, whether they had been on horseback or on a travois.

I dismounted and walked closer to Moxie. She beckoned me closer and began to relay to me the Indians' request. They wanted to cut one of my cows from the herd and kill it for food. She had been adamant that they could not do that. I told her that we should give them a modest supply of our jerked meat to tide them over. She had also baked several loaves of bread that morning and suggested we give them three of the loaves. I agreed.

By the time Moxie went into the house to bring the food back, the squaws had a small fire going over which they were heating water for a kind of tea. The braves, never cracking a smile or even changing their solemn expressions, sat cross-legged around the fire and invited me to join them. Although I couldn't understand a word they said, they spoke at length with lots of hand motions; I think they were describing their migration to the southern hunting grounds.

When Moxie came back with the food in a hand-woven basket, the braves were suspicious of the bread although once she pulled it apart and chewed a bit of it, they joined her and made exclamations that they liked its taste. It was soon passed around to the elders, women and children, along with pieces of jerky and it was like some strange kind of picnic.

It seemed a little funny to me that Moxie settled on a spot a few feet behind me when things were quieted down and everyone was eating. Then I noticed that the squaws with the braves had mostly picked spots behind then and squatted down to eat, some with their children nearby.

I didn't think too much about it until the braves had leaned back, rubbed their full stomachs and burped. They began talking again among themselves but with frequent gestures toward Moxie. A couple of times she shot back a string of rapid-fire words at them and then was silent again. Abruptly the braves rose, spoke to the squaws and everyone began making preparations to leave. Less than ten minutes later, the whole group moved out as a unit in a sort of organized chaos.

I watched the group leave until they were well south of our place -- funny how it had gone from my place to our place! They didn't try to take any of the animals but took the straightest, smoothest path to the south. When they were gone, I mounted up and returned to my work in the corn patch.

When I came in at sundown to find dinner on the table as usual, I washed up and sat down to eat. Moxie rather timidly sat across the table from me. I asked her what the braves had been talking about at the end of their visit. She finally made me understand that they were asking her to join them. However she told them that she was my woman!

I had a rather eclectic group of animals around the place. When I moved in, I had brought a team of two horses to pull my wagon and I sometimes used one or the other to ride around the area when I was checking on the cattle or looking for any new strays to add to my herd. I had a stubborn old mule that I used mostly for plowing and I had to keep a watch on him; the Indians liked nothing better than eating mule meat so he often was the first warning that there was a traveling party of redskins about. They didn't put up a concerted effort to kill him after our first major encounter when they carried their dead back but if they had caught him unawares, I have no doubt he would have been roasting over a spit that evening.

On a trip out to the Davis Mountains a few years earlier, I had trapped a couple of goats and took them back home with me. They were thriving in my neighborhood and I was thinking about the possibility of harvesting some mohair for weaving in the future and perhaps butchering one occasionally for the variety of cabrito, a very tasty treat when slow-cooked over an open fire. It made my mouth water just thinking about it but that was still somewhere down the road, after the herd had begun to grow a little better.

By mid-November, we had all the crops in that we were going to be able to salvage and my dugout larder was about as full as we could get it. We'd gathered hay into several stacks in my pole barn against hard times in the coming winter, although most of the time the cattle could fend for themselves. We might yet harvest another deer or two but for now we were in good shape.

One of the byproducts of the harvest was that I threw away my old corn shuck mattress -- well, the filling, at least - and replaced it with fresh dried corn shucks. Since we'd had an excellent crop that year, I stuffed the mattress a little fuller than it had been. Of course as the year goes by, the shucks settle in the ticking and the mattress becomes gradually flatter. However this time I folded up my rope-bottomed bed and put the mattress directly on the floor. After that, Moxie slept with me every night.

Having sex on a corn shuck mattress can be interesting. The mattress is always adding little sounds to the natural sounds of a man and woman coupling. Occasionally a piece of a shuck would poke through the ticking and jab me, usually at a most inopportune time and place, but at least it wasn't as hard as straw. I have to say that I didn't often let those little distractions take away from my enjoyment of fucking Moxie and she never -- NEVER -- made any signs of being bothered. I loved being able to cuddle with her all night after an evening of delightful sexual release. I don't know if she liked it or if she just subjugated herself to me out of obligation but she never resisted and it seemed like she participated freely.

I decided it was time for a trip to Fort Worth to replenish supplies that we couldn't grow ourselves: coffee, sugar, things like that. Moxie was apprehensive about going into a white man's settlement, something she had never done before, but I assured her it would be all right as long as she was with me. 

In the spring, I had trapped a few beaver and cured their pelts to use for trading on this trip. Moxie had made several extra pairs of moccasins, which she would trade for whatever she wanted. Since we had collected more walnuts than I thought we would need, we took a flour sack full for the same purpose. With two bedrolls and food enough for two weeks, we set out on the long, tiring, boring journey. If it hadn't been for Moxie's company, even as stoic as she usually was, I think I would have gone crazy from boredom before we arrived.

We were bone-tired when we finally arrived. Most of our joints felt like they had been misplaced by all the bouncing and jouncing of the wagon so it was a relief to reach the end of our travel. The fort looked like a metropolis compared to the loneliness of west Texas.

The town was thriving -- sort of. I noticed that, since I had first come through a little over five years earlier, it seemed like the private sector -- that is, the people who were part of the settlement but not associated with the military -- was somewhat larger than it had been. When I mentioned that to the owner of the general mercantile store, he said that the population had grown to four thousand or more, he guessed, although some people were talking about the need to go back east to join the confederate army, if the south votes to secede.

Although Texas was not big on slavery, there were some slaves scattered around the state. In fact, I had noticed several following their rich masters around town or lifting and toting for their mistresses. Somebody said that about ten percent of Fort Worth's population consisted of slaves.

Putting that aside, I watched as Moxie wandered around the general store. Her eyes were wide and even her usual stoic expression showed wonder at the variety of goods available. I noticed that she was particularly drawn to anything that had bright colors in it, like bolts of colorful cloth or boxes of brightly colored beads.

I noticed the merchant was leery of letting her in his store, but he saw her come in with me and I think he was concerned about denying her access as long as I was there. When I motioned her over to the counter to show him the moccasins she had brought for trading, his demeanor changed. He would be glad to trade with her, knowing that the moccasins would sell quickly.

Moxie went back to touring the store. The expression on her face when she came to an open barrel of dill pickles was priceless. I told the merchant to put a pickle on my bill and then picked one out for her. On the first bite, I thought she was going to spit it back into my face so I took a nibble and showed her how to savor the flavor and she decided it might not be so bad. She put most of it in her tote bag to take back home with her. She was puzzled when she looked into another barrel and found crackers. She tasted one and decided she didn't need any more.

The merchant agreed to take my walnuts and the beaver skins in trade for the goods we needed. He put a big bag of sugar on the counter, added two smaller bags of coffee beans, a good sized bag of salt. He gave me a small keg of nails; up until now most of my house was held together with rope or leather pigging strings or, for rare spots, held together with laboriously fitted wooden pegs. Now with a goodly supply of nails, perhaps I could expand my buildings -- assuming I can find enough of the other materials I'll need.

Moxie decided on a small box of beads and two red plaid blankets in exchange for her goods. When she put her things on the counter with mine, she picked up a few grains of the spilled sugar and touched it to her tongue. For the first time on the trip, her face broke into a grin.

We stowed all of our purchases in the wagon and covered them with a tarp; it probably wouldn't be needed but you never knew when a sudden rain shower would crop up. Leaving the wagon in the merchant's back lot, we walked back to the street to find a restaurant so we could eat a hot meal before we set out for home.

We had just turned onto the boardwalk when a male voice behind us said, "Hey, mister, I'll give ya a quarter fer a piece of that thar squaw."

I knew from the sound of the boots that there were several of them but I turned on my heel and laid a haymaker on the hook-shaped nose of the guy out front. He went down like a falling rock.

I stood over him, challenging any of the other men to take me on. Nobody moved to his defense.

I bent down and jerk the guy's collar until he was inches from my face. "Mister, she's not a squaw and she's sure not a whore. She's my woman and if you forget that again, you'd better be reaching for that six-gun you're packing 'cause I'm gonna be filling you full of lead. Understand?"

He was holding his re-broken nose, blood oozing between his fingers, but he managed a nod of understanding. I let him fall back to the boardwalk, took Moxie's arm and guided her toward the restaurant. She gave me a strange look as we turned into the place but didn't say a word.

That evening, we drove several miles to the west before sundown, when we made camp beside a small creek. We didn't bother with a fire, since the temperature was still very comfortable and we had already eaten. We cleared side-by-side spots on the ground and spread our bedrolls.

I climbed into my bed and relaxed. Moxie climbed into hers and moved so her butt was against my side. I was tired and was just about to doze off when I felt Moxie's hand between my legs. My cock responded immediately. Moxie turned over, opened the drawstrings of my buckskins and pulled out my pole. Lifting herself to straddle me, she pulled up her skirt and slowly lowered her wet pussy around my shaft until she was sitting on me.

There seemed to be something special about screwing my woman -- or having her screw me -- in the open air with the clear sky filled with thousands of pinpoint lights of stars. It just seemed to make the entire act larger than the two of us, for some reason.

Moxie began slowly gyrating her hips on me, not even lifting her bottom from my crotch because I could feel her buttocks roving around my most sensitive parts. It was dark enough that I couldn't see much of her facial expression but several times she stopped moving momentarily and I heard a sharp intake of breath or a little gasp or just felt a little shudder and then she'd resume her movement.

Gradually she moved faster, leaning forward until she was pulling off a couple of inches and plunging back down. At last she had geared up until she was plunging up and down several inches of my prong very rapidly, slamming her bottom back onto my thighs and balls until she shuddered hard again and collapsed on my chest, too spent to continue. I grabbed a handful of her bottom in each hand and forced her up and down until my balls could hold back no longer and I filled her with hot cum.

That night I think we slept closer together than ever before.



On The High Plains Ch. 03



We made it back home without any major incidents, as long as you call seeing a party of moving Indians on the horizon minor. I'm sure they saw us because there is no way a wagon could move across that dry country without raising a dust cloud and Indians were nothing if not alert for movement around them. I swear they could spot a baby rabbit two miles away!

Oh, yes. There were two other incidents along the way. Major? Yep, in my book. Life threatening? Nope. It was just Moxie's way of getting to know me. Every second night when we rolled into our bedrolls, she let me get settled in and then got me aroused and mounted me. It sure was a hell of a way to travel!

At one point, I irreverently thought that it might be a rather dangerous activity though. For protection from any unexpected downpours as well as the morning dew and as some protection against a possible attack from either Indians or raiders, we always laid our bedrolls under the bed of the wagon. Now that old wagon was tall enough that Moxie could sit on me and not bump her head, 'though it might have been a different story if I had been on top. 

Anyway, she took the initiative so I didn't have to find out. One night I did take charge but that was after she had done her thing and emptied my balls once. We lay spooned together for a long time and I didn't seem sleepy that night. Snuggling up to her soft curvy bottom made me hard again and before long my prod was poking around between her legs looking for a place to hide. She reached back and lifted her top leg, giving me easy access to the wet slick entrance to her pussy and my throbbing pole found it quickly. I held her cuddled in both arms while my bottom rocked back and forth for some minutes until I shot another hot load into her depths.

This time, I went to sleep before my slowly deflating spear slid out of her tight confines.

One of the great things about the high plains of west Texas is that, at least in our area, we could often get two crops from the ground in a year's time. That was almost always true of pasture that I cut for hay, unless it was a really dry year. In the ground where I planted our earlier harvested vegetables, once the spring crop was in, I prepared the soil again and planted winter wheat. As long as we didn't have a freak storm -- which had only happened once since I'd been there -- I got a nice crop of wheat to add to our stores.

By the time we got back home, the wheat was up and showing nicely in the gently westerly breezes that usually kept things livable in that area. It was a few weeks away from heading out so that it could be harvested, so I had time away from crops to tend to the animals and see to any repairs or changes that needed to be made around the buildings.

One of the first things I wanted to do was raise a new barn. My first one was nothing more than a pole barn, which was much better than the open ground but not by a lot. It was only about 18 feet tall, the sides were covered with saplings of whatever small trees I could readily cut at one of the rivers, woven into place with strips of leather or their own branches. It had done a good job -- but it was never intended to be a long term solution. This new one would not be artistic but it would be sturdy.

The two rivers near my place were both sources of logs, with several good sized stands of white pine that grew upwards of 80 to 90 feet tall. More prevalent were elms, cottonwood, scattered hickory, and a miscellaneous blend of smaller trees. There were a scattering of nut trees -- pecans and walnuts mostly -- but I wanted to be sure to avoid cutting any of those; they were too valuable for their annual harvest.

To make this a worthwhile endeavor would be a huge undertaking for me. I would have to take the horses to the site, use a combination of axe and saw to cut the trees down, remove the limbs, and then use a chain around the logs so the team could drag them back home. Then the real work began.

It would take the team of horses, the mule, and all the ingenuity I had to put together a tripod shaped lift to hold a set of pulleys that could be used to raise the logs into place. It would have been nice if I had a sawmill like I'd seen back east but the closest one I knew of was on the banks of the Mississippi. No fucking way could I afford to buy lumber milled over there and ship it to my place to build a barn -- or anything else for that matter. So I'd make do with what I had.

For the barn, the building didn't need to be weatherproof, just as much protection as I could make. That meant that I'd use the straightest logs I could find, shape them where necessary, and fill in the gaps with mud and/or smaller saplings. I worked out a design in my head, marked off the spot of land where I wanted to put it. Then I went to work on my crane; it would be primitive at best but essential to my building, since I had to do the work myself.

I had cut and dragged down the three midsized logs for the crane when I was presented with another problem. For the last week, it seemed like Moxie was not herself. She was even less talkative than usual and sometimes she seemed to have a strange coloring to her skin. Several times I asked her what was wrong but she just waved me off.

One morning when I awoke before dawn and went to get up, I realized that she was not in bed with me. A quick look in the small house showed that she was not there. I went outside and found her on the other side of the big pin oak in the yard, bent over retching. I grabbed a cool wet washcloth and ran to see if I could help her but, although she let me hold the cloth to her forehead, she didn't want to talk.

On the third consecutive day that happened, I kept at her to try to find out what was wrong. She kept patting her stomach and rattled off a long something in her native tongue, none of which I understood. I thought she was saying that she had probably eaten something that didn't agree with her.

I kept a close eye on her for the next several days and noticed that her appetite was lagging. Food seemed to make her gag, no matter when it was. She drank plenty of water and peed frequently so I knew her kidneys were still working well. However I was eating the same food she was and it didn't make me sick, so I was at a loss about what was causing her problem.

Every morning it was the same thing. I'd wake up to find her out in the yard throwing up, mostly the dry heaves because she hadn't eaten that much. On the seventh day, I asked if she thought it would help if I made her some stew. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. Then, as if she had lost her's, she threw back her head and began to laugh wildly -- something she had never done in my presence thus far.

She began to pat her stomach again. Then she made half-moon shaped images with her moving hands, as if she was going to add a bundle and carry it in front of her. I was completely puzzled -- until she circled her thumb and forefinger of her left hand and started stabbing her right forefinger in and out of the circle, pointed to me and herself, then to her stomach. Suddenly the light dawned. She was saying she was pregnant! Damn! How dumb could I be?

I grabbed her in my arms and went to kiss her but she turned her face away. However she returned the hug. We went inside where she could get a drink of cool water and then I got my kiss -- well, maybe a hundred times over. I was going to be a daddy!

In the next few weeks, I started work a little later than I had planned, staying at the house to help Moxie get started with her day before I headed off to the river to work. I started off felling four tall pines to use for center poles. Working by myself, it took a while to cut down each tree, trim off its branches and then hook it up to my chain drag. I had made a small four-by-six foot skid of sturdy split logs with the bottom formed into two wide but relatively smooth runners with rounded front ends so that I could tie the butt end of the log on the skid and make it easier for the team to move. That way the butt of the log wouldn't dig into the ground as we dragged it home.

Although Moxie's appetite had all but disappeared for a period of time, the morning sickness faded away into nothing after a relatively short time and, with it, her appetite returned with a vengeance. She seemed to be eating for two -- I guess she was! Her overall demeanor seemed much better then too. Is it any wonder?

Even at that it was slow hot work. I had plenty of time to think while I walked along with the team or while I was swinging my axe. I thought a lot about Moxie and what she meant to me. It didn't take me long to ponder out that, if I was ever going to love a woman, she was it. I had never been in love before and wasn't sure what it felt like but I certainly had some special feelings for her. And it was more than just sex.

I came to believe that what I felt for Moxie was love. I wondered if I were to ask her whether or not she would marry me. I knew marriage, as the white man knew it, was not in the Indians scheme of things but they did have an arrangement whereby the men and women became permanent partners. Of course we might live out our natural lives in this sparsely settled area and never see a preacher or a judge who had the authority to perform a marriage ceremony.

I decided to try to let her know that I loved her and, successful or not, I would treat her as a loving wife and mother. That didn't necessarily make her life much easier, but it wasn't because I didn't try. I'm not sure that Moxie understood the concept of love but I'm sure that she knew I had special feelings for her and she never seemed to mind my displays of affection, when I hugged her every day after another trip to the river or just a day of working in the barn area.

By the time I got the four center poles and eight outer wall support poles cut and back to the site, it was early December. So far it had been a rather mild winter, as is often the case and I had not needed any sort of coat or extra layers of clothing to work in. I set about digging the holes for the support poles. It was still more hard work, but of a different kind, to dig four six-foot deep holes big enough to sink those logs into but they would need that much support.

I had topped off the center poles at 56 feet. Setting up the first one with my homemade crane and the team of horses for power, we got the butt placed at the hole, cranked the upper part with a winch arrangement using the crane and I gleefully watched it slam into the pre-dug hole. It wasn't perfectly straight but by the time I had tamped as much of the excess dirt around the pole to tighten up the hole it was as straight as I was going to be able to make it.

Each time I got a pole in place and packed so that it stood firmly in place, I felt a real sense of accomplishment. I had a long way to go but each step completed made it just a little easier to go on. The center poles were also useful in helping to raise the side supports. By then it was Christmas, and time for a little celebration.

Moxie didn't understand what Christmas was all about but her face lit up when I gave her a few little trinkets that I had managed to squirrel away during our trip to Fort Worth. They weren't much but they were all I could afford and she seemed to appreciate them. With her culture, I didn't expect anything in return but she went to her workbag -- where she kept her leather working and sewing items -- and came back with a beautiful pair of new moccasins for me. They had been decorated with a sort of geometric sun on the toe and were much too precious for everyday wear. I decided to keep them solely for wearing at home, sort of like shoes for the house.

It was about that time that Moxie's interest in sex seemed to take an upward turn. We had been limiting our activity to me on top, her on top, or me spooning behind her and only once every three or four days. Something piqued her interest and we began to experiment with new ways of connecting. The number of times we tried increased too until it became and every second night occurrence and sometimes two out of three nights.

One of the first we tried was with Moxie on hands and knees and me behind her like a stallion mounting a mare or a dog pumping a bitch in heat. I found out why most of the species in the world used that position: it was fantastic! I loved the feeling of extra depth my prong got into her wet heated center and the sensations of her soft round bottom molding themselves to my crotch were just priceless. This arrangement seemed to accentuate Moxie's curves and made my hands itchy so that I couldn't keep them in one place; they roamed all over her back, her ass, her stomach, her tits, and even back between her legs occasionally. That turned out to be probably the favorite position for both of us but we still liked many others that we tried too.

We experimented with a scissors position were our bodies lay in a sort of X and our legs were intertwined. She seemed particularly interested in my upper leg pressing on her abdomen because she put both hands on my leg and worked it this way and that, always putting pressure on it to mash into herself. She'd start muttering the words of sex that I had taught her -- fuck, pussy, cunt, cock, ass, and a few others -- and some of her own language that I didn't understand. However her squirming bottom and use of my leg against herself made me convinced that she liked it. I don't think the words meant that I should stop pumping into her.

In late January we had a couple of small snowfalls, probably not more than two inches each, but the temperature had dropped enough to force me into wearing long johns and sometimes a coat while I worked. I had harvested a number of logs of such girth that it would have been impossible to support them whole on the barn so I set to work splitting them. At least that let me cover more of the walls with fewer logs but it was tough work splitting twenty foot sections of fresh cut trees.

I had begun to have my doubts about being able to finish the barn satisfactorily during that season, because it was taking so long to do the cutting, trimming, dragging, raising and fitting. With the planting season coming early on the plains, there was not a lot of time left, some of which might be lost to weather.

But at least I had made a good start. The center poles and side supports were all in place and stabilized. I had installed logs for joists to support a loft floor. Then I had started building the sides, at first with twenty foot sections harvested from some medium sized trees, and later with the splits from some of the bigger logs. All of them had to be carefully notched to fit together with some shorter lengths which would form walls for interior stalls or specific use storage areas.

In February, we got socked in by a blizzard that dumped eleven inches of snow in a little over 24 hours. That is when work became a real pain. The packed snow had blown up against the door of the dugout, making it a big job just to dig my way outside. It wasn't too bad getting out to the old pole barn but getting into it was, since there was another drift up several feet high around everything large enough to stop the blowing snow. 

I finally managed to get inside the pole barn. The horses and mule had sought shelter from the snow by coming in the opening in the backside. I made sure they had plenty of fresh water and tossed down some hay from one of the big stacks. The goats were still outside, at their preference, but I gave them some fresh hay too. Each of the animals required care except for the longhorns; they would, as usual, fend for themselves, except for the two cows that we were milking.

Working on the barn, or anything else, became impossible for a few days. Of course it wasn't long before we had a west wind blow in and much of the snow melted fairly quickly. It left the ground too muddy to be able to drag any more logs from the rivers but I had several laying at the barn that needed to be split so I set to work getting them ready to lift into place. By then I had partial walls up about 10 to 12 feet high everywhere except where the front and back openings would be so I had some protection from the wind.

Moxie's tummy began to round out a little, showing the beginnings of our child. I found myself taking pleasure in rubbing that growing mound as we lay together in bed at night. One night she seemed to be in some discomfort and tried to rub her feet. Seemed to me I had heard that pregnant women often had unusual problems with foot and leg pain so I got her to lie down and took over the job of massaging her feet, later moving up to her calves, around her knees and even her lower thighs. She began to make sounds like the purring of a cat, so I put that in my list of things to do every evening after dinner. Moxie showed me her appreciation by offering herself to me to fuck even more than we had been.

When I first settled on the land, I had dug a well about 30 feet from the house and between it and the barn. I didn't have to go too deep before I hit the water table with a goodly stream of fresh sweet water. Thus far it had provided plenty of water for our needs, although I was frequently concerned in the summer that the water table might recede. I'd built a small stone wall around the well opening, erected a small shed over the top tall enough I could stand under it to crank the bucket up and down, and put a moveable cover over it to keep varmints and dirt out. 

Going out to the well to draw a bucket of water had never bothered me. In fact I usually enjoyed it, because there was a bit of cool damp air that escaped when I moved the cover back, so in summer it was a bit of a treat. Even in winter it didn't bother me too much; it wasn't that far that it was so bad, even in cold weather.

Now I was rethinking that decision. With Moxie pregnant, I didn't like that she sometimes had to go out in this kind of weather to draw water if I was out working. Yeah, sure, she had to go out to the outhouse to take care of her daily toilet but drawing water was a little different; she was in the open and having to pull up a heavy bucket.

I tried to tell her that I'd come to the house and draw water for her anytime she needed it but she looked at me like I'd lost my mind. It took a while, fumbling and bumbling through our variety of communication methods, but she finally told me in no uncertain terms that she'd lived her life doing things much harder than drawing a bucket of water and she wasn't about to change now. I was taken aback and let the subject drop. However I had already put on my mental to-do list checking out the purchase of a hand-pump and some piping on our next trip to Fort Worth.

Thinking about that trip to town, I had been tending a couple of runs of traps, as I had been doing every winter. The beaver and rabbit pelts were full and furry with the heavy winter we were having. The beaver especially seemed to be thriving on some of the little creeks that fed the rivers and I managed a pretty good harvest. When I'd take the pelts back to the house, Moxie delighted in stringing them on frames and scraping them to remove the last of the flesh, then hanging them up to dry in the old pole barn. It looked like I might have a nice stash of pelts from trading when the trip came around.

As soon as enough of the snow had cleared, I put my old saddle on one of the horses and rode out to check on the longhorn herd. As I knew they would, they had managed to scrounge for themselves well enough, pawing through the snow to get to dried grass for food and finding plenty of water that hadn't frozen over. If we'd had a big sleet on top of that snow, it might have been a different story, since getting through solid ice to food can be a problem for any creature but fortunately that was not the case.




On The High Plains Ch. 03



The days passed slowly, probably even slower than was natural because of my impatience to get out and be working. However I must say it would have been much more unbearable if it had not been for Moxie. She always had something to do: cooking, working on the pelts, sewing something new in leather, whatever. She spent a lot of time teaching me new words and phrases in the Comanche language and learning new things in English.

We got to where we understood each other pretty well, although we still found things that puzzled each of us from time to time. One of her favorite phrases I understood perfectly: "We fuck?" I don't think I ever failed to oblige her.

With March rapidly passing, I noticed that Moxie's body was making significant changes. I'm sure that wouldn't be a surprise to experienced parents but to me it was a wonder I couldn't get enough of. Her stomach rounded out like some sort of giant ball while her tits grew and filled out. She went through a spell when her tits were extremely sensitive and she couldn't stand for me to touch them. That became a major problem for me because every time I saw her the palms of my hands itched so bad to hold them. Sometimes it physically hurt me to keep my hands to myself.

On the other hand, she never grew tired of my rubbing her tummy, and the bigger it got the more she seemed to like it. She also had come to expect her nightly foot and leg massage, which was okay with me. More often than not, she'd turn over onto her knees, raising her bottom into the air, expecting me to enter her from behind and take my pleasure. She didn't complain either when I got into the habit of rubbing her lower back while I plunged in and out of her warm welcoming pussy in that position.

At the weirdest moments -- out milking one of the cows, pulling a dead beaver from a trap, swinging my axe against one of the large tree trunks or, like now, when pumping back and forth into her silky depths -- I thought about my feelings for Moxie. We made a strange couple, I know, and many people would say that we should not get involved in a cross-race relationship, but I felt differently. I ... yeah, let's face it ... I was in love with her! No two ways about it and I wouldn't try to get out of it even if I could. Moxie added direction to my life. Before we met, I was plodding my way through life; now I was tiptoeing through the tulips.

'Aw, don't get sappy on me, guy! You know you're still just a big ol' country boy,' I thought to myself. 'I just happened to fall into a trash pile and came out smelling like roses, so to speak.' I was sure I didn't deserve her but as long as she was here, I was going to make the most of my time with her and hope it would be for the rest of my life.

By the later part of March, it was warm and dry enough to begin turning the soil, getting it prepared for planting. It was a slow arduous task, plowing one row at a time, later going back and breaking up the clods into loose dirt.

I was well into the initial plowing when I noticed a dust cloud moving from southwest to northeast on a line that would come close to the house. Considering the flatness of the land, I spotted them several miles before they got to the house. I'm equally sure they could see the dust I was stirring up with the plow.

As I finished another row at the end closest to the house, I figured the travelers would be at the house soon so I ground-hitched the horse by a patch of fresh grass and walked to the homestead. I had already confirmed that the party was a migrating band of the Comanche, possibly the same one that had come through in late fall. I went on unhurriedly to haul up a fresh bucket of water and wet my parched throat.

The travelers turned out to be the same band and they came into the yard, asking permission to make camp for the night so the women could take care of a couple of oldsters who were not doing well. I offered fresh water to all the braves, who drank their fill before allowing the women and children to drink. It wasn't as if they didn't have water with them in skin bags but this was fresh and cool. Ultimately they refilled the skins while the women got with Moxie and started cook fires.

The men all noticed Moxie's condition and turned to me spouting long speeches. Moxie interpreted, explaining that they were congratulating me on making her pregnant. It was always an honor for a man to become a father.

Before the light faded, I made an effort to see the ailing people to see if there was anything I could do. One old man was suffering from the ravages of age and I couldn't think of any way to help him. On the other hand, one elderly woman had fallen and jabbed a stick into the flesh part of her calf. It had become infected and was looking bad. 

I asked the leader if I could try to treat it and, with Moxie's help in explaining, he agreed. I cleaned the wound with soap and water, washed it until it was clear and then sprinkled it with a sulphur powder that I used on my animals sometimes. I gave a sliver of soap and a little cloth-wrapped bundle of sulphur powder to the younger woman caring for the older one and, with Moxie's help again, explained how to use it. We'd have to see if it worked.

Later I sat around one of the campfires relaxing with the men of the tribe after we had eaten. Using Moxie as a go-between, I asked how the hunting had been for the tribe that winter. The leader, a man named Tosawi who later became one of the major leaders of the Comanche, looked disgusted and shook his head. Moxie interpreted that they had killed deer and wild longhorns enough to sustain themselves but they considered buffalo to be the best meat and the buffalo were scarce in west Texas that year.

They were hoping the hunting would be better in the territory that had recently been named Kansas, where the tall grasses grew as far as the eye could see and in years past the ground had shook from the hooves of thousands of moving buffalo. We asked if they needed food to tide them over until they reached better hunting but he said they had enough to make the trip comfortably, just not what they wanted. We didn't have buffalo either so we couldn't help them.

I was a little restless that night, sleeping with Moxie inside with a band of roving Indians camped outside our door. I wondered more than once if we'd wake up in the morning to find our cantankerous old mule roasting over a spit but it didn't happen. The whole group was up, ate, packed and ready to move out before sun-up. Moxie and I watched them leave, wishing them well. I didn't know if we were being accepted because of my history of defending my place or because Moxie had become part of my family but I was willing to accept a ceasefire, even if it was a little tentative.

Ah, well, it was an interesting break from one of the duller duties of farming. Back to the spring plowing.



On The High Plains Ch. 04



It is amazing how quickly time passes when you are busy. In the following weeks, I plowed, harrowed, and planted most of the various vegetables that we'd use for food as well as a relatively small plot where we'd raise a variety of herbs for seasonings and a few for medicines. I took a partial day off here and there to run the last of my traps before hanging them from the barn rafters for the season.

Just as I got finished with the planting, instead of having time for a breather I started harvesting the winter wheat. It was another long arduous task, cutting and collecting the stalks into shocks, tying them together for drying and later moving the shocks back to the barn for the final drying, threshing and milling. As soon as that was completed, I prepared the same land for planting field corn.

However that would imply that the events ran smoothly along from one task to another and that is not how it went. Smack dab in the middle of the wheat harvest, one night Moxie groaned and grabbed at her stomach. With my vast world of experience, I still had no idea that she had just gone into labor. I guess it did shortly occur to me that it was not completely unlike one of the animals about to give birth but with her in obvious pain every time one of the contractions hit, I felt a very physical shock of pain myself. Usually that was a sympathy pain but some of it was because, as I sat close to hold her or wipe her brow with a cool cloth, her hand would suddenly clamp into my wrist like a vise being tightened far too firmly.

To say that I was apprehensive would be like saying that the sun occasionally shines in west Texas! I'd heard stories about boiling water and clean rags and ... damn! My mind went blank. How would you use boiling water? Would you scald the baby? No, that didn't sound right. And you wouldn't use it on the mother either. Maybe it was just to keep the father busy so he didn't get in the way.

Moxie had already prepared what she needed. She had taken one of the blankets she bought in Fort Worth and cut it into quarters, sewing neat hems around the cuts. She had taken some of my old flannel shirts and cut into usable sized rags ready for use to clean up the baby. 

Diapers were not part of her culture; children were often allowed to go naked until they were several years old, except when the weather was too cold. Even then clothes were designed for ease of flushing bodily wastes. However Moxie has spotted a mother with a baby in diapers on our visit to town and she was determined to try that, at least in the beginning so one of my few sheets was sacrificed for that purpose.

Mostly I spent about 12 hours wiping Moxie's forehead with a damp cloth, holding her hands, giving her little sips of water now and then, and worrying enough for the both of us. For the most part, she spent the time half-sitting, half-laying against the cool earth wall of the bedroom with her legs spread and knees drawn up near her buttocks. The pains came more and more frequently and seemed to be ever-increasing in intensity. I wished over and over that I could take some of the pain away from her but all I could do was let her squeeze my arms -- even my sun-browned arms began to take on a bluish tinge as she bruised me and we would later laugh about it many times.

Finally she rocked up into a squatting position above our shuck mattress, covered with a little nest of fresh blankets and newly prepared soft cloths; it looked like Moxie was going to pee. Instead the head of a baby oozed from between her legs, quickly followed by shoulders arms, body and legs, all covered with blood and goo mixture. She had already prepared me for tying off the cord and while I was fumbling with that, she stuck a finger into the baby's mouth and cleared it of mucus, smacked it on the backside and listen to its first cry. When I got the cord tied and cut at her direction, I noticed for the first time that the baby had an "outie" - not its belly button but between its legs. It was a he, a son!

He was wrinkled beyond belief and had a full head of black hair. The way his forehead was pushed back at a steep slant, I figured something must have gone wrong during the birthing process but Moxie said that was normal and he'd be fine. No matter what, I couldn't help but have a feeling of intense pride when I looked at him -- and at her.

By the time Moxie took a basin of warm water and lovingly cleaned him up, he looked more like a normal baby. He had a healthy set of lungs and used them freely in his first hours. Moxie's tits had rounded out quite noticeably in the last weeks of her pregnancy so that they filled my hands completely by the time he was born. As soon as she had him cleaned up, she put him at her left tit and he greedily began to suck. It would take two days before her milk came in but he seemed perfectly content if he could just keep her nipple in his mouth; I guess maybe he got that from me 'cause I'm about the same way.

I had always been an admirer of a former leader of the state of Texas, Sam Houston, so I talked Moxie into naming him Sam -- for her, it usually came out sounding like "sum" but he would learn to respond.

I attempted to cook and do things for Moxie, assuming that she would need some recovery time; in fact, I had no idea how much time she might need. Instead she got up almost immediately and resumed her usual chores, in addition to caring for Sam. I didn't know if that was typical, just the nature of her culture, or my own ignorance. After putzing around for a couple of days and being chastised for being in her way, I went back to my work in the fields.

Moxie had taken a buckskin and formed a sort of pouch held to her chest by a pair of straps crossed over her shoulders and under her arms. When she got up in the morning, as soon as Sam woke up, she'd shrug her dress off her shoulders and let it hang from her waist. Then she'd put Sam into the pouch, hang it from her shoulders and go about whatever tasks she planned for that day. Sam would nurse until he fell asleep. Conveniently his food was there waiting for him every time he woke up. The only time she took him out of the pouch was to change his cloth diaper or to put him to bed at night.

For most of three weeks, I slept cuddled behind Moxie as we both watched our little boy sleeping on the mat in front of us. Of course I had a constant hard-on, snuggled up to her butt that way, but I didn't try to enter her; I didn't have any idea how much time she would need to recover after being spread wide enough to give birth to a child. I will admit that on several mornings, I started my day by masturbating in the barn before going to the field.

Late in the third week, Moxie reached behind her one night and wrapped her fingers around my shaft. After a few moments of fondling me, she tugged me toward her pussy. I found her opening very wet and slick and I slipped inside her easily. Moxie sighed loudly and I think I did too. She was still a bit sore so we took it easy but when she shuddered with an orgasm, I knew she appreciated it. A few moments later, I had a magnificent explosion, shooting a load into her for the first time since the baby was born. Afterwards I covered her face, neck, shoulders, and tits with kisses, tasting her sweet milk for the first time. It wouldn't be the last, by any means!

With the crops finally stabilized for a while, I turned my attention back to the new barn. I had a renewed vigor to my step as I worked so the progress seemed to go faster than ever. I got all of the side walls up to their maximum height, then turned to closing in the extra parts of the ends in preparation for hanging doors, which would not be solid but rather a pole frame with pole rails hung with leather straps for hinges. However that would come after the roof, which would consist of poles laid closely together, covered by a layer of sod like the roof of the house. That would make it as near to weatherproof as I could make it and would also provide some insulation from the burning sun.

I thought that with all the additional work Moxie had taking care of Sam might impact our sex life but as it turned out, about six weeks after Sam was born we were back to the every other night and sometimes two out of three. If anything it seemed to me like we were closer together than ever before, more loving, more considerate of each other. 

One night after a long and particularly passionate session, I undertook to convey the idea of love to Moxie, particularly how much I loved her. I'm not sure how successful I was but I think she understood that my heart felt something special for her. Whether or not she really understood, she used her hand on my cock to get me hard again, then climbed on top, rode me hard, and put me up wet -- satisfied, totally.

The vegetables began to mature to the point of harvesting. Moxie was familiar with techniques for drying foods as a way of preserving them but was not knowledgeable of the white man's ways of preserving foods. I wouldn't classify myself as an expert in current day canning but I did have some skills. Over the years, I had collected a supply of glass jars, the tin lids and sealing wax used to make the jars airtight.

We started off blanching and canning tomatoes, since they were among the first to ripen. Onions, big bulbous white onions and an even larger red variety, came in about the same time. They were tied in bundles and hung on poles under the loft of the new barn to dry. Okra cut into bites and sweet corn cut from the ear was blanched with stewed tomatoes and chopped onions into a soup base and stored in wax-sealed jars; during the winter, any kind of meat added to the soup base made a very nutritious meal.

Potatoes, both sweet and Irish varieties, were bagged and stored in the pantry, an adjunct to the house that was dug a few feet lower for the additional cooling insulation of the ground. During the coldest of the winter, I had cut blocks of ice from the creeks and hauled them into the pantry. Covered by layers of hay, they would last well into the year, adding to the coolness of the pantry and even occasionally providing bits of ice for cooling drinks, though that was a very special treat.

When the cabbage came in, Moxie and I worked together to run it through the chopper, cutting it down into shredded strips, put into large crock pots, coated it with salt and covered it for aging. In time the salt would draw out the water from the cabbage and ferment, making sauerkraut which would last for as long as we needed it.

We snapped green beans, cooked them, and packed them in their cook water in wax-topped jars. Because that was not always a foolproof way to keep the food from spoiling, we packed some jars with beans, added a few spices, and covered them with vinegar and a bit of salt. That made a sort of pickled bean that I didn't like as much as the regular ones but it was a surer method of preservation and beggars can't be choosers.

We picked cucumbers at a variety of sizes. When cleaned, we filled other large crock pots with them, added vinegar or sugar water and spices, depending on the type of pickles we wanted and stored them away to allow the spices to permeate the cucumbers. We made more of the sweet variety but I liked dill and Moxie was beginning to acquire a taste for them as well. We added leaves of wild grape vines for color and sprigs of dill from our spice plot for flavor.

There were other things too. Some of them were dried, some were canned, some were pickled, and all provided meals every day. I taught Moxie ways of cooking foods that she was not familiar with while she surprised me with many of her own methods. I knew how to roast ears of corn. Moxie had been surprised at making butter from the cows' milk but then putting butter on hot roasted corn made her react like she'd just eaten candy. 

Funny how different things can impact different people so much. The way she cooked Irish potatoes in a cocoon of hot coals and then filled them with some chopped wild onions and natural herbs she picked from the woods not far from the house was fantastic.

With fresh vegetables available all through the summer and early fall, we ate well, supplementing them with a goodly supply of venison, some beef that we used sparingly from one cow killed each fall, and a miscellaneous supply of small game. Still I think the thing that impacted my diet the most was that every night after Sam was fed and tucked away in bed for the night, I suckled an ounce or two of warm sweet milk from Moxie's swollen tits; Sam never completely drained them. 

Sometimes Moxie even came to me to suck her if he had not drunk enough to relieve the pressure sufficiently. It was either suck some of the milk out or squeeze her tits and watch the milk squirt out, only to be wasted. Being a basically frugal man, I couldn't stand to see that happen. So I sacrificed, and sucked those precious globes!

Funny too how my sucking her tits seemed to make her squirm and fidget, often leading to her fondling my cock until I slipped it inside her and fucked her to a climax. Every time that happened, we went to sleep cuddled into the smallest space two people could occupy.

By the time the fall began to gradually impact our weather, I had pretty much finished the new barn; I guess it would always be a work-in-progress but at least it was usable. I moved the milking buckets and stools into the new barn close to the milking stalls. The critters -- at least the domesticated ones -- had places for their food either inside or very close by the back entrance. I installed pegs for hanging tack I used with the animals, particularly the horses and mules, but left space for expansion for whenever we were able to add to our little community. 

I was planning to build a workbench when I got time, a place where I could work on projects indoors; I had plans to add on to the house and build new furniture as Sam got bigger and needed new accommodations. When I began to cut the new crop of hay, once it had dried, I moved it into the new barn into piles as high as I could pitch it. It kind of felt like a working man's mansion!

One of the things that needed to be done even sooner than the workshop, however, was the building of a stone hearth and chimney - a forge - so that I could improve my metal handling ability. Blacksmithing was an important part of farming: keeping shoes on the horses and mules to keep their hooves from wearing down; building, straightening, and sharpening plows and other earth-working implements; and keeping metal tires on wagon wheels for durability. 

When I hit a little bit of a slow spot in the harvesting process, I hitched the team to my skidder sled and walked the team out about three-quarters of a mile where there was a rough outcropping of rock, an area that I had avoided in the farming process. However it was not without value, because I found many pieces of crumbled limestone small enough for me to maneuver onto the sled. There were other pieces far too large for me and team to move but I got all I needed and didn't even leave a dent in the terrain.

It took me several trips to get enough stone to get started. I built up a base for the hearth so it wouldn't be such backbreaking work to get to the fire. I enclosed it with a rough square of limestone chunks, held in place with a mortar comprised of earth, sand and water, mixing in a little straw to help it all hold together.

Since air is essential to creating a fire hot enough to make the metal molten, I built a chimney of the same limestone and mortar up through the pole roof of the barn. I was careful to insure that sparks from the furnace of the forge could not get to things like stored wheat or hay and burn the barn down. My bellows for heating the fire was homemade by creating a couple of boards carefully split from a log, formed so that there was an air spout at one end and handles on the other, then connected with buckskin to gather air and force it through the spout into the fire.

I'd brought a well-used anvil and an old pair of blacksmithing tongs when I'd settled here and I would make my own charcoal, for now using limbs I'd trimmed from logs earlier in the year and later using new growth.

As far as the basic metal is concerned, there didn't seem to be much of it in west Texas, at least not that I was aware of so I would purchase iron bars from a merchant in Fort Worth and then make do with what I could haul back home.

As the leaves turned from green to gold and yellow and red and orange, leaving only the scattered stands of evergreens still in the summer colors, we began to plan our trip to Fort Worth. I got the old wagon fixed up, cleaned up and greased up. Moxie had been working on a supply of moccasins to trade and had also made a small number of extra buckskin dresses with beautiful bead work across the front. I had my bundles of animal pelts as well as two big crocks of extra pickles I hoped one of the merchants would accept. We had a list of things we needed to purchase, prioritized by most important first.

Wouldn't you know it? About two weeks before we planned to leave on the trip, Moxie began to be sick every morning again. When I asked whether she was pregnant, she grinned and nodded her head. Oh, boy, Sam was going to have a little playmate! I asked if she wanted to postpone the trip but she was adamant -- we WERE going!

All loaded up with trade goods and camping supplies, we set out as planned. Moxie, with Sam in the chest carrier, rode beside me on the hard wagon seat. On the third night out, we came to a rather large ranch house and asked permission to camp in a copse of trees away from the front of the rambling house. The weathered rancher was a bit wary but gave permission. However when his wife saw that Moxie was carrying Sam, she made a big to-do over them and invited us into their home.

Mr. Joshua Parker became friendlier after his wife made such a fuss over Sam. He invited me to have a seat at a huge dining table while his wife put on leftovers from their evening meal for Moxie and me. He told me how his brother Isaac had brought a group of people into the area a number of years prior and had petitioned the state to form a new county, a request that had been granted just before the end of 1855. 

He had claimed the land the ranch was on, stating that it had originally been part of a grant to Stephen F. Austin, who in turn made a deal with Isaac Parker and his party to settle the area. Most of the settlers had left Dallas, Tarrant, Denton and Collin Counties as a result of a malaria outbreak in the early part of the decade. I guess I had been lucky enough to come through back then fast enough that I wasn't even aware of the problem.

Although it was after dark, Mr. Parker -- Joshua, he preferred -- showed me around the home grounds of his place. He had a very nice setup. They had even hauled sawn lumber from a rough mill just south of Fort Worth on the West Fork of the Trinity River for building the house, barns, and ice house. By my standards, these folks were rich.

Although they were raising longhorn cattle, they were experimenting with various types of feed. Longhorns generally produced a rather stringy, tough meat resulting from the animal's need to scratch out a living in semi-arid land that often produced little edible food. However the longhorn is nothing if not resourceful and they managed to subsist on foods that other creatures were not capable of digesting.

However the Parkers were finding that the longhorns also adapted well to being fed a better class of forage mixed with grains, particularly corn, and the resulting meat was tastier and not so tough. He said that many ranchers were trying different things and it might be years before they knew whether they would stay with longhorns or look for another strain of cattle.




On The High Plains Ch. 04



I noticed that they had a wide variety of animals in the barnyard, including a sizeable contingent of chickens. I had been thinking for some time about the advantages of raising chickens, both for eggs and for occasional meat, so I asked if he every sold any of them. He informed me that the chickens were his wife's property and he never did anything with them without her approval. We both laughed at that truism.

Back at the house, Joshua asked his wife, Lizbeth, about me asking to buying some chickens. Lizbeth said that she didn't have layers that she'd be willing to sell right then but she had a group of chicks that had just hatched and she'd be willing to work out something. I asked Moxie about possibly trading one of her buckskin dresses and, when she saw it, Lizbeth was ecstatic. She agreed to swap two dozen baby chicks for the dress. We asked if they could hold them until we were headed home and they agreed.

Although the Parkers offered to put us up in their home, we decided that the easiest thing would be just to continue our practice of sleeping under the wagon, so we thanked them for the offer and went out to make our beds. By then we had it down to the work of just a couple of minutes.



On The High Plains Ch. 05



The next morning at dawn we continued our journey, nodding twice to passing riders but otherwise seeing no one until we pulled into the outskirts of the settlement around the fort. We spent the next two days trading with different merchants and catching up on the news of the world. It seemed that there were ever more rumors about a war between the north and south and most of the people in Fort Worth were vehemently opposed to abolishing slavery; otherwise how could cotton ever be harvested so that the planters could make a decent living. I thought that was kind of funny since very little cotton farming was done that far west.

We started out stockpiling our necessities: foodstuffs that we couldn't grow at home. After that, I made a deal with a blacksmith for a goodly number of bars of iron. I found a merchant who swapped pelts for a hand pump and enough lengths of pipe to go from the house to the well and down to the water level. At noon, we found an old man just outside the fort selling corn shuck wrapped tamales three for a nickel so we splurged for a dime's worth, eating in the shade of a tree. 

Moxie traded some of her goods for a bigger supply of beads, some spools of thread, two steel needles, and a bolt of blue cloth to use for clothes for Sam and his sibling. Moxie found a woman who bought her three remaining buckskin dresses for five quarters each; that was more than the cost of a good longhorn! Moxie used part of that to buy two other bolts of cloth, one white and the other in a bright colored plaid.

We had left the wagon, with the team unhitched but staked out, in a copse by the river where the horses could get plenty of grass and water. We'd go back there that night and have dinner, then unroll our bed under the wagon for the night. With all of the day's trading, Sam had gotten cranky and Moxie was tired so she walked back to the wagon while I stopped in at a saloon for a drink. I hadn't had a beer in over two years.

I was standing propped on the bar savoring the taste of a cool one when two men walked in. They looked like the average working man.

While the bartender was drawing two glasses for them, one said, "Man, did I get me some good tasting pussy last night!"

The other man looked at him like he was crazy. "Good tasting? Pussy? What are you talking about?"

"Hey, haven't you ever had any good stuff? Man, you don't know what you're missing. This little woman was sweet. I got her legs spread and licked my way up and down and then made a pig out of myself. Before long she was screaming and shaking and she tried to stuff my head inside her. After that, there was no doubt about me fucking that little widow. She couldn't get enough. It pays to eat pussy, even if you have to acquire the taste for it."

I was startled by his tale of lechery. I had never thought of doing such a thing to a woman but ... hm, well, maybe this ol' dog wasn't too old to learn some new tricks. I'd have to think about that. Maybe I had been missing out on something.

The next morning we were up early. While Sam nursed, Moxie and I ate breakfast of stale biscuits and jerky, washed down with steaming hot coffee. Moxie still couldn't drink her coffee as strong as I liked mine but she was getting to where she did like it mixed with about half a cup of water. I laughed every time I saw her fix a tin cup full of the weak stuff, but she just made a face back at me and went on.

After we cleaned up, we walked back into town to finish our shopping. Well, actually a lot of it was just looking and wishing, because I couldn't afford all that much, but we still had a pretty good sized wagon load of goods by the time we were finished. At mid-afternoon, we found a cafe and ordered food that we didn't have to cook: steaks and fried potatoes and some kind of greens, along with all the coffee we could drink. Moxie and I both still had several coins left over that we would put aside for another trip, so we felt pretty good about it.

Since there were several hours of daylight left, I hitched up the team, mounted up the family and we pulled out toward the lowering sun. The following day we pulled into the Parker's ranch yard late in the afternoon. Once again, they invited us to stay, this time having dinner with them at their big dining table, along with nine ranch hands. One of them started to say something about an Indian squaw but shut it off after a dark look from Joshua.

We were up before daybreak the next morning and Joshua had a hand bring out a little wooden crate filled with baby chicks. Lizbeth gave us some instructions for keeping them cool and fed, and we were off again. Unfortunately keeping baby chicks cool is harder than it sounds and we lost two of them before we could get them home, even though we added extra stops to make sure that had access to water.

Upon arriving home, we unpacked the wagon first, with Moxie's goods all going inside with the foodstuffs and the chicks. The rest of the stuff went to the barn for later use. Of course my first task the next day was to build a coop for the chicks to call home. I had plenty of feed for them, between the wheat and corn, but it had to be milled down a bit so they could digest it. Once we had a place where we could turn them loose, they took to it like ducks to water.

We settled slowly back into the routine of home life. Sam had begun to turn himself over in bed and was trying to crawl although he had more bumps than success at moving himself. It would just take time.

Talk about time, I had been spending a lot of mine thinking – thinking about what that man in the saloon had said. I knew I was going to try it; it was just a matter of when and how.

I had spent most of the day installing the new pump on a newly made kitchen counter, hooking it up to a pipe I'd run through the earth wall into a small trench I dug out to the well. I'd had to break off work on putting the pipe down to the water pickup point until the next day. Moxie had dinner waiting when I washed up. She still wouldn't eat until after I had taken several bites although I had tried to convince her that we were equals and could eat at the same time.

Afterward we puttered around for a bit in the light of a beeswax candle she had made but then went to bed fairly soon after she laid Sam down for the night. We lay together for a while, me rubbing her tummy, her purring like a kitten. Then she rolled onto her back and stuck her right tit in my face so I began to suck. She tasted so good! A few minutes later she had me change to the other side and while I sucked on her, I couldn't resist the temptation to finger her pussy. As usual she was already a bit damp and I decided that was the night for new things.

Leaving Moxie's tit, I kissed my way back and forth down her stomach and across her abdomen. At first she giggled, a sound she made about as often as it rained pennies. But when I moved around and pushed her legs apart, keeping my face in her soft folds of flesh, she gasped with surprise. I was surprised myself, at both the fragrance which was a delightful odor of arousal and the taste which was a cross between sweet and tart. Maybe, as the man said, it was an acquired taste but I immediately believed I could acquire the taste without too much effort.

I began to work my tongue up and down the puffy sides of her pussy, pondering closely for the first time the soft lacy flesh that guarded her precious entrance. There was a steamy heat emanating from her core like I had never known before. And with every lick of her crease, every taste of the sweet nectar that coated her soft flesh, I came to love what I was doing more and more.

I pushed my tongue deeper into her split and dragged it upward. Just as I reached the puffy mound at the top, Moxie's legs clamped painfully tight onto the side of my head and her body arched upward of our mattress. I was terrified that I had done something to hurt her. She began to shake like something had exploded within her and suddenly I realized my face was being flooded with warm liquid; I could only hope I had not done something to make her bleed. But the taste was not salty like blood; it was more of the sweet/tart taste from earlier.

After a few seconds, Moxie dropped back to the bed and her legs relaxed. I started to pull my head back to assess the damages but her hands were both clenched tightly in my hair, holding me pressed into the softness between her legs. Well, I figured I might as well resume licking her and see what happens.

Although she eventually released the pressure of her hands, she didn't move them away from my head so I assumed she was not in pain. I found that if I carefully held her folds apart with my fingers, I could delve into her open vagina with my tongue and find new flavors awaiting me. Still I noticed that she reacted most favorably when my tongue touched a little knob at the top of her crease, so I spent more time circling it and teasing it with the tip of my tongue. After a few more minutes, she had another one of those spastic reactions where she yanked my hair to force my face deeper into her pussy. It wasn't quite as explosive as the first time but she seemed to like it.

I was going to continue with the same activity, because I was having fun and I certainly did like watching her explode like that. However when she relaxed again, she pulled my hair, indicating that she wanted me over her.

When she said, "We fuck now, husband, we fuck hard!" there was no doubt about what to do next!

That night, Moxie tried to sleep inside my skin!

The next day I finished putting together the fresh water system but couldn't get the pump to work. Oh, the handle worked fine but nothing but air came out. I went back to the well and checked and rechecked to make sure that the pickup was below the water level. I rechecked all of the joints to make sure that they were watertight and not leaking. Nothing.

Smacking myself upside the head, I remembered what the seller had told me about priming the pump before using it. I took a bucket of water I'd drawn earlier and poured it into the priming tube and began to pump. Presto, chango! We had water! Moxie celebrated with me in wonder, not expecting to see water gush out of the pump's spigot. Ah, another successful project.

It was time to harvest the field corn, which had been left on the stalk until it dried. It would serve the dual purpose of providing food for the humans and the animals as well. Short term storage was on the ear in the shuck; long term storage included the kernels only but at least there was time to do the shucking as other tasks slacked off.

I had been thinking for some time that expanding the house was going to be a must do task, with a second child on the way. Basically the original house was just two rooms: one for kitchen/sitting room and the other for bedroom use. Chances were the dugout form of housing had some limitations space wise but I thought I could probably double the space and still keep a practical roof over it all without too much trouble. I also wanted to begin using some of the crumbled limestone blocks to make the walls, both exterior and interior, more sturdy.

Digging out the ground to a depth of three to four feet was a challenge. I used the mule pulling my plow to turn the earth at the upper crust but could only go so deep with that method. The last couple of feet plus squaring walls and corners was up to me and my trusty shovel. Actually I dug about six inches deeper than the original, deciding to put in a hard stone floor instead of relying on the packed dirt of the first two rooms.

All during the days when I was building onto the house, Moxie and I maintained our steady, satisfying pace of sex. Almost every night that she wanted to fuck, I now started out by kissing my way down her body – her gradually rounding body – and settling between her legs to kiss and lick and suck her pussy. After her shock from that first night, Moxie welcomed my attentions to her soft sensitive center. After that I don't think there was any doubt by either of us that we each loved the other, although we may have known it by different words sometimes.

One of our favorite activities evolved by experimentation after that first time I had made Moxie climax by eating her pussy. Moxie still loved having her feet and legs massaged but when I made her cum, she wanted my cock inside her. We found out that I could sit just below her bottom with my legs along her sides while she held her legs up in a wide vee, slip my cock into her pussy and then let her legs rest on my shoulders while I took my time rubbing her feet and legs.

I'd start with her feet, spending several minutes on each one, before moving down her legs. By the time I got to the inside of her upper thighs, she was oozing nectar and squirming from need and usually climaxed from the touch of my fingers. Then we'd migrate into any one of several positions, more often than not with her on her knees and me behind her, and have a deliciously fantastic fuck. The night's sleep that followed was deep, restful, and recuperative.

I had to take a break from the construction work to make a few hunting trips. It turned out to be a pretty good year for harvesting whitetails, although it seemed like they were not as fat and sleek as they had been in some years. However that just meant that I needed to bring in greater numbers. Since Moxie made it her job to take care of smoking or jerking the meat and preserving the hides, I spread the hunting trips over several weeks with a few days between each successful hunt for her to catch up while I returned to the construction project.

Slowly the new rooms began to take shape. I got the floors in, although they weren't the smoothest I had ever seen; still they were solid and easier to care for than the dirt floors – I hoped. I moved to the outer walls, bringing them all up to the outside ground level before taking any of them higher. 

There were days that were devoted just to going out to my little personal quarry, loading up the skidder sled with stones and bringing them back. Once at the house, I laid them out roughly so they would fit together but that wasn't a major problem with limestone; it often just naturally broke along smoother lines than a lot of other types of stone which wound up in all kinds of shapes. Sometimes I had to use my sledgehammer to shape the stones a bit, or else add more mortar between the stones to hold them in place.

Eventually I'd have a little more than half of the walls below the natural terrain and the rest above it. I already had poles installed on one side of the original, what was about to become the center line of the house with the addition. Those poles, roughly six inch thick logs, held another log notched in horizontally which became the support for the roof poles which, in turn, were the base for the sod roof. With the new section, I would use the same center pole but slant the roof slightly to the other side; just enough to let rain run off, but there wouldn't be much slope.

I had good success with the deer crop but it is always nice to have a little variety so I rode down past the South Wichita one morning just to see if there was anything else available. I spotted a goodly number of tracks of several animals but didn't actually see the critters. There were lots of deer tracks and some intermittent longhorn tracks, as well as a few smaller creatures. Then in the afternoon, I spotted what I'd hoped for: tracks of a small herd of buffalo.

I trailed along behind them for a little ways, enough to see that they were just moseying along, in no big hurry, grazing as they went. They were quartering to the northwest, toward a loop in the river. I was hoping to find them before they crossed.

Sure enough they were grazing close to the river and would probably wade in and cross in a few minutes. I found a high spot, pulled out my rifle and settled down in a prone position for maximum accuracy. I selected what looked like a hefty two or three year old and carefully squeezed the trigger. He took three or four steps, stumbled, another step and then slowly folded down to the ground.

The rest of the herd probably smelled the blood from the downed animal and began moving off, quickly dropping into the shallow river and making it to the other side.

I retrieved my horse and rode down to the downed bison. My horse shied a bit but I ground hitched him and set about field dressing the kill. In order to handle that much meat, I had to chop it into chunks that I could move around.

The only way I could get him home in one trip was to use the Indians' method: a travois. Even at that, it was no picnic. I chopped down a couple of nice sized young trees and stripped off their branches, tying them on each side of the saddle. The horse didn't much care for the different rigging but he didn't have a lot of choice either. I got the hide tied onto the poles, tossed the various chunks of meat into the hide and then tied the whole thing together to make the trip home.

I had to start off holding the reins tightly to get the horse's mind off his cargo but after a couple of miles he seemed to get used to it. I still walked close to his head because I didn't want him spooking at something and dragging that meat all across the open countryside. I was glad the river wasn't any deeper or wider than it was or it would have been a nightmare to cross. As it was we made it home without any real problems and Moxie was ecstatic with my surprise.

Moxie busied herself for the next several days making dried smoked meat and jerky and in the meantime we feasted on delicious hump roasts. When she had time, she used pieces of sharp bone to scrape the inside of the hide until it was completely clean. When it was dried, she rolled it and stowed it away in the rafters for working later that winter.

I was glad to get back to the construction project. We badly needed the meat for the coming winter, of course, but I had high hopes of getting the new addition boxed in with walls and roof before really bad weather hit. Then I could work on the interior and retrofitting the old walls and floor with stone as time permitted.

I went back to work on the outer walls and soon had the stones cemented into U-shaped outer walls with only the doorway and two openings for windows still left open. For the next several days, I made a daily trip to one of the rivers where I spent the day harvesting as many tall young trees as possible, stripping down the trunks of all limbs and leaves. At the end of the day, I would have several bundles of long slender trees tied onto my sled for dragging back to the house.

When I figured I had about enough, I begin to work at tying the new "rafters" in place on the center pole and down to the outer wall. Moxie made a supply of long leather straps from deerskin for me to use in tying the poles together at several places along the new roof; we didn't want the poles separating during one of the infamous west Texas windstorms and letting sand from the New Mexico Territory to drop in on us. It turned out that I had underestimated but only by four poles. I didn't even take the sled back for them; the horse and I made quick work of a trip to the river to bring back the last of the rafter poles.

I remembered how backbreaking the work was cutting sod to roof the original house and had been thinking about some way to improve the process. For some time, I had been toying with the idea of a sod cutter. Now it was time to see if the idea had merit.

I adjourned to my forge. Not long after we had returned from the last trip, I had set up a wood burner to capture the burned off gases and feed them back into the fire as fuel, a process that had been used to make charcoal for many years. Although it was the first time for me to make such a burner, I had inspected several operating burners and spoken to a number of users which turned out to be great knowledge. The branches I had cut as excess from the barn and house construction projects made great wood for turning into charcoal. Given that I would need soft wood to make a hotter fire and most of the trees I had cut were not hardwoods, the situation was ideal; I easily got my basic fuel and cleaned up the area in the process. Suddenly I was an environmentalist!




On The High Plains Ch. 05



Now with the forge ready for firing and the fuel stockpiled, I was going to attempt to make a sod cutter. The idea was sort of like making a plow, except that the whole thing was designed to go no more than two inches into the soil and then to cut strips as wide as I could. Being an optimist, I was hoping to be able to cut about 24 inches, starting with a diagonal cut into the earth, letting the team pull the cutter for the length of whatever available sod I could find, and then coming back to chop it into 36 inch pieces for ease of handling.

I formed a wooden pyramid frame, although it wasn't exactly a geometric design. It was more of a right triangle with the hypotenuse being the leading, or cutting edge. I added a couple of handles, held in place with a cross member about halfway up. Then it was time to start forming the business end of the cutter, the blade. That turned out to be quite a challenge and took a number of starts and stops before I finally worked out something I thought might actually cut sod. 

I realized that I had been overly optimistic when I thought I could build a cutter 24 inches in swath. What I wound up with was one that cut more like 13 inches – if it worked at all. At that it took me most of two days to hammer it out into the shape and sharpness I figured I'd need. Still if it worked, it would save me a lot of pain and agony.

Bright and early the next morning, I loaded the cutter on the sled, hitched the team to the sled and headed to the North Wichita, to a bend in the river that sported a continuous strip of thick grass. Once we got there, I dropped of the sled and hitched up the cutter. Looping the reins over my shoulder, we set off to see if my idea would work.

It did. Like I said, it cut a swath about 12 to 13 inches wide and about two inches deep – if I didn't let the nose dig in a bring everything to a halt! I managed to do that several times before I seemed to get the hang of it. Looking back at the first 150 feet, I was glad there wasn't anyone else around to see how crooked my cut had become. I was so intent on trying to keep the cutter level that I didn't pay enough attention to where the team was going. Ah, well.

I found out on the first turn that I needed a little modification: I needed a skid on the back side of the cutter so I could push the handles down, raising the cutter on the skid and letting me turn it. As it was, I had to manhandle the cutter around as the team struggled to understand my commands. If I had thought it would be a breeze with this device, I was mistaken. However I had to admit that it was still better than cutting it with my old trusty shovel!

After two passes, I figured I had more than a sled full so I took the shovel back and cut it into manageable lengths, which I rolled tightly. Given that the grass was mid-calf length at that time, the rolls weren't all that tight. By the time I had loaded a little more than one pass worth, the sled was about as full as I thought we could handle.

When I arrived back home, I left the sled near the new addition and took the team to the barn for a much-needed rubdown and a treat of a scoop of corn each along with their regular ration of hay. They had free run into the small corral in the back of the barn with plenty of water.

I went back to the sled and began to carry rolls of sod to the new roof. Starting at the lower corner, I unrolled sod across the rafter poles, slowly working to cover the entire roof. I figured if I could continue to keep the same yield, it would take about six passes to cut enough sod to cover the roof. Hopefully I could bring that all home in the same number of loads, make one last trip back to bring back the cutter, and have the roof completed within about a week.

That's pretty close to what happened. I finished the roof in eight days, taking one out in the middle to make a hunting trip for fresh meat. When I came back with an eight point buck and two rabbits, we had rabbit stew the first night and venison steaks the next two nights while Moxie smoked the rest of the venison. Then it was back to the roofing for me the next morning.

In my earliest days here, I had installed a crude shower on one side of the old pole barn. It required hauling water from the well and dumping it into a raised tub, then pulling a plug to let the water drizzle over whoever stood under it. It was still a crude process but better than trying to get into a little bathtub. And with my work with the sod, I was grateful for the shower every night. Just working with sod meant getting dirt all over you from head to toe so knocking it off every night was essential if I wanted to make love to my sweet Moxie.



On The High Plains Ch. 06



And one thing I had come to want out of life was making love to my sweet Moxie. It was amazing how much life had changed – how much I had changed – since I had found her. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought about finding a woman to love – and who would love me – like Moxie and I did. Oh, sure, I'd dreamed about finding a woman to fuck often but I didn't know what love was until we came together. Now she and my growing family put new meaning into making life worthwhile.

One night a couple of weeks after I had eaten Moxie's pussy for the first time, I was laying in bed after massaging her feet and legs, sort of planning the next day's work while about to doze off, when things changed again. Moxie quietly turned around and began fondling my flaccid cock. It didn't stay that way long, coming to life quickly. It surprised and amazed me when Moxie's warm mouth closed over my spear, since no woman had ever done that to me before. I wasn't sure what to think but, after a moment to puzzle about it, I knew that I liked it and if she didn't mind, I was not about to stop it.

At first she sucked on me like I was a piece of hard candy. Then I felt her tongue snake out and stroke along the big vein at the bottom of my penis. That sent little shockwaves through my system but no less than the ones that coursed through my body a few minutes later when her tongue began running around the underside of my mushroom-shaped helmet.

She spent the next several minutes alternating between sucking me, licking my head, and licking my big vein, while her fingers gingerly maneuvered my balls. I felt myself getting close to climaxing and tried to tell her but she ignored me. When the first shot of sperm hit her mouth, she coughed and gagged slightly but went back to sucking my cock until the last dribbles oozed out. She coughed once more but swallowed it all, licking my cock until it was clean again. Then, looking pleased with herself, she turned around, snuggled back into my form, pulled my arms around her and went to sleep.

After that night, Moxie and I traded oral sex with the other on many nights. Both of us liked the pleasure of savoring what the other was doing without the distraction of doing it to the other, so we seldom both did it the same night but that worked out well for us. I think we were both well pleased with what we had.

By the early spring, Moxie's tummy was again rounding out with the growing life she was carrying. I sometimes mused at the wonder of her still wanting to have sex with me after I had caused her to grow like that. But she did. We were still doing the foot and leg massage thing every night and especially those nights when we fucked. She loved the attention to her feet and legs and I think it even added to her horniness. Some nights she climaxed only once or twice but a few nights she had so many orgasms that she was totally exhausted when we finally curled up and slept.

I had finished the work on the new house addition. I'd had to board up the window openings with some old lumber until we made the next trip to Fort Worth where I could buy some glass. I had spent several days splitting down an old dead hickory trunk and working it with my adze and plane to get it down to boards roughly two inches thick. Just two of them were wide enough for the door but I also carved out a couple of cross members used to hold the two boards together. As a final touch to the outside, I brought dirt up from the fields to bank against the outer walls to add insulation. Moxie found seeds from wildflowers that she sowed in that area and added a little color to our house once they grew up and bloomed.

With the coming of spring and warm weather, the typical tasks rolled around: plowing up the fallow ground, harrowing it into loose soil, plowing again into plantable rows, dropping the seeds and covering it. This was probably my favorite time of year because it always renewed my faith in the ability of the earth to come back from a season of hibernation and turn green again.

Back in the fall when we were in Fort Worth, we had picked up some seeds for fruit trees and decided to try our luck at growing fruit to add to our diet. Everyone we had talked to told us that fruit seeds like to germinate over the winter months so that they are ready to grow when the weather begins to turn warm. So we had laid out a plot of ground to the east of the house, a place where the soil was a little more sandy than in other areas, and planted the seeds far enough apart to give the trees room to spread. Now I took pride in seeing the little sprouts in the fruit tree plot, hoping that we might be able to harvest apples and pears and peaches in a couple of years.

In May of the year 1858, a small wagon train stopped overnight just out from the house. The members of the party were all from one extended family, moving west from Tennessee. We invited the folks to spend the evening with us and we shared coffee and a big pot of venison stew for dinner.

They obviously thought Moxie was something unusual but they were very friendly with her. The people had an eastern European accent themselves, so talking was interesting all around. It was not unusual for one of them to revert to words of a foreign language, possibly German, which puzzled both Moxie and me but we got through the evening just fine.

The family had decided to move to New Mexico Territory to try to find a new place to settle that would not be impacted by the coming civil war. They were neither pro- nor anti-slavery but just wished not to be caught up in a war. It seemed that was the main reason they had moved to America in the first place.

When the men found out that I had a forge in the barn, they asked permission to stay over a day and use the forge. They had had the misfortune of taking one of the rougher trails out of Fort Worth and in the process had damaged three wagon wheels beyond use. They had fashioned new spokes for those damaged but needed the forge to work the tires back on the wooden rims.

That night the family pitched camp just out of our yard. They had two young girls that were enamored with Sam, who was just beginning to toddle around on rather unsteady legs. They pretty much adopted him while the family stayed over the next day. Although Moxie kept an eye on them, it took a bit of a burden away from her and let her visit with the women of the party. On the other hand the party's three young boys went off exploring on their own, wandering back every so often to check in with their parents.

That day the men worked on the new wheels, returning them when finished to be tied under each wagon as a spare, a very important part of cross-country wagon travel. While the forge was hot, the men checked the shoes of their horses, deciding to replace several. Since they had their own materials and provided the labor, I didn't mind letting them use my forge and even helping here and there.

The following morning we bid the family goodbye before dawn and watched them drive off to the west. Then it was back to the usual chores.

Three weeks later and just two days before Sam's first birthday, Moxie gave birth to another child, a healthy beautiful little girl. We discussed naming her at length and eventually settled on both a Comanche and English name. I have never been able to pronounce the Comanche name, which means Dawn Light because she was born with the first light of the morning. We both call her Dawn most of the time, although I sometimes heard Moxie crooning to her in Comanche when she lovingly used Dawn's Indian name.

The longhorn herd was doing well. Over the last two years, we had 21 new calves dropped, of which only five were young bulls. Since my herd bull was still in his prime, I castrated the youngsters and would fatten them up for slaughtering whenever we needed meat. We did have two old cows that I would be culling out for slaughtering that fall; both were beyond reproducing and if we waited any longer we might not get the benefit of their meat. 

It was always a dreaded possibility of finding a dead cow out on the range past the point of being able to salvage the meat. Given Moxie's abilities for letting nothing go to waste, we've used almost every part of the animals, including the hooves and horns for making glue. And there was always a use for leather so the hides would be treated with care.

One thing that had begun to bother me was water. There were times when the two rivers were little more than a trickle and the several creeks within what I claimed as my range actually did dry up at times. Although there were places where cacti was plentiful and spines could be burned off to let the cows eat the watery pulp, it was not as plentiful in our area as further south. We had a good source of water at the house but it could be a problem on the range.

I figured I had a reasonable chance of putting in a well somewhere on the range – ultimately maybe several but for now just one – if I could arrange a method to get the water up to an open reservoir of some kind, that would be ideal. Of course I had heard about and seen several windmills that used the natural power of the wind to power a pump to raise water to a tank. That sounded like the solution I needed to pursue, although to accomplish the whole project, I would need to make parts of the machine and purchase other parts. 

I could make the wind vein and paddles for the wheel out of wood. I'd need to buy the pipe and probably most if not all of the pump parts. Of course all of that was dependent on being able to find water below ground. I started looking for what I thought were likely spots. I finally settled on a spot that seemed to be about equidistant from the two rivers on the north and south and roughly the middle of my range from east to west. If I got lucky and hit water, at the least I'd have a place I could draw water by hand to pour into a water trough or something to hold water until I came up with a long-term solution.

When we had a little break in the vegetable harvest, I took a few days to start digging a well. Like with my original well, it would be roughly 36 inches in diameter, with a stone wall inside to help keep the dirt from falling into the water – assuming I hit water. I set up a tripod over the dig site with a pulley so I could use buckets to pull dirt out of the hole as well as a way to get myself down and back up after I had dug so far down. Moxie had volunteered to come down and operate the pulley to remove bucketfuls of dirt once I got down too far to crawl out. That was an enormous time saver.

It turned out that I hit water at 23 feet. I kept digging until I was down about 26 or 27 feet, leaving a fairly good sized pool of water to draw from. It was difficult to work in waist deep water so the last part of the digging to try to shape the walls had to be done with a posthole digger, since I couldn't bend over and haul shovelfuls of dirt out of the water. But I had tasted it before I stirred a lot of dirt into it and it was cool sweet water and there seemed to be a reasonably strong stream.

Moxie hauled my tools up after the last bucket of mud and then I used the rope to haul myself up to the top. I still had the wall lining to handle in the next few days but that seemed like an easy chore compared to the digging. A few days later, we both went back to more typical chores but with a well in the field available for providing water as needed. Every few days, I'd take a ride out to the well and draw buckets of water to fill a trough I had built; it wasn't great but the cattle used it enough that I knew they were grateful for it.

July turned out to be hot and dry that year. Sure it wasn't all that unusual for west Texas but this was worse than normal. I spent a lot of time drawing buckets of water for the cattle reservoir as well as filling a couple of barrels on the wagon which we hauled out to the crops. The ground drank it like sponges. But it kept the plants alive for a while longer. The harvest wasn't too bad.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I was coming back from a run with water one day when I heard a gunshot. Dropping the reins of the slow team, I grabbed my rifle and raced back to the house.

The only thing I could think of was an attack by the Indians. However since I'd taken Moxie into my house, the Comanche had seemed to be friendly or at least tolerant of us. I wondered if something had set them off.

When I came around running through the barn and skidded to a halt just inside the front door, I could see a band of six or eight Indians racing around the house in a big circle, firing at or into the house. I could only hope that Moxie and the kids were protected behind those new stone walls.

The next thing I noticed was that these were not the Comanche that occasionally came by on their migration moves. These men were not dressed like Comanche warriors. I noticed that several of them had vests like I'd seen some Mexican men wear and I remembered hearing in Fort Worth that the Apache had adopted some habits of the Mexican people. The Apache were enemies of the Comanche so we had no "credits" with them. In fact this was the first time I had seen them.

They were running their horses around the house in a wide counterclockwise circle. As fast as they were moving, they weren't good targets but then that had to impact their ability to hit anything in the house as well. Using the two foot thick center pole to steady my rifle and provide support, I took aim on the next brave who turned down the nine o'clock leg because that meant that for a few seconds he was coming directly toward me.

My shot was lost amid the sounds of their shots and an infrequent shot from out one of the windows of the house, letting me know that Moxie was still okay. However the Indian I had fired at was not; he was on the ground not moving, while his horse was rearing and shying away from his body. The next brave in the circle came to a sudden stop, looking around nervously to see what was happening. That was his downfall. My next shot caught him square between the eyes. 

Suddenly the circle broke as the whole party realized that things weren't going their way. I shifted a little more inside the barn, turned my rifle to the three o'clock position and took out another milling brave. Just as quickly as they came, they began a retreat to the north, away from the barn. I put a bullet in one more brave but just wounded him; he bent over his horse's neck with blood blossoming from his left shoulder as they raced away.

Wasting no time, I raced into the house and checked. Moxie was just fine, coolly ejecting and reloading one of my revolvers while the two babies cooed and played as if nothing unusual had happened. There had been no real damage done, although it certainly could have been serious.

There was nothing to do but to return to our chores of daily life. As hard as it was, any settler in such a land had to take such things in stride and go on. If you failed to defend yourself and yours, you were dead and worrying didn't help. However you took your gun or whatever you needed every day, wherever you went, just as a precaution. Sometimes I used my rifle to kill rattlesnakes; that day I used it to defend my family. Just another fact of life.

That night after a shower and dinner, Moxie nursed both children and put them to bed. We cuddled tightly for a long time that night; it felt unusually special to have Moxie hold me and to be able to hold her. Even knowing the way life was, I thought about not having her for the rest of my life – or not being there to watch my children grow up.

Eventually we made love that night, perhaps the most poignant sex we'd ever had. We took our time, hugged and kissed often, and the whole night was filled with tenderness. My cock slid slowly in and out of her wet velvet channel while our tongues searched the other's mouth and soft lips met soft lips. We didn't say much that night but we didn't need to either; we both knew what the other was feeling.

It wasn't until late that fall that we heard more news about the Apaches. The Comanche band came by on one of their meandering migrations and stopped overnight. Moxie sat beside me and translated for me.

It seems that the Apache and Comanche had always disputed parts of south Texas, with both tribes claiming that land. At times, they have clashed violently, although sometimes they went for several years between major battles. This year they had a significant battle in the hill country of Texas and out of that both tribes had sent raiding parties against the other tribe. Any whites in the way were subject to attack too. We were fortunate to come out so well.

Eventually the country did become engaged in a bloody civil war, over a lot of issues although slavery was one of the major ones. I managed to avoid participating, mostly because I didn't believe in slavery but if I had joined the northern army, there would have been nobody to take care of my family and it would have made it impossible to return there to live, no matter what the outcome of the war.

Moxie and I continued to work at building our farm/ranch, getting to the point that we had some excess produce that we sold or traded to merchants for other things we needed. Our cattle herd continued to grow and multiply until we were able to sell some cows every so often which also helped with other areas. 

I purchased the pump I needed to get my windmill working. Using the team and a home-fashioned blade for dirt moving, we dug out a small reservoir that the windmill fed constantly. It still provides a consistent source of water for the cattle – and the wild creatures that visit from time to time. In subsequent years, I wound up putting in three other wells around the property, the last two with more modern machinery that I purchased rather than made.

Besides Sam and Dawn, Moxie and I had another daughter, Skye, and a second son, Daniel, in the next five years. During the birth of Daniel, something seemed to happen differently, causing Moxie a lot of pain and requiring many days of recuperation before she was back to her normal self. However there were no more babies after that.

That hasn't impacted our love for each other however, nor has it significantly slowed our desire for each other. Oh, I guess the frequency of our lovemaking has slowed a bit but we are still usually at each other passionately a couple of times a week. As we have aged, it has lengthened our sexual activities and made them even more pleasurable.

The high plains have become more settled as the years have passed. We had a neighbor move in as close as four miles a few years ago, which made it seemed like the land was closing in. A number of small towns have sprung up between our place and Fort Worth, so that we can make a trip to town and back overnight now, instead of taking nearly two weeks. Still it isn't the same because Fort Worth had grown to almost 10,000 people the last time we were there. It was crowded!

In another way, it is nice to have people closer. Now that Sam has turned eighteen, he has been courting young Amy Thompson over to the southeast of us; he just has a ride of seven miles to go see her and I think they are already getting pretty serious. I can't begrudge him the love of a young woman. After all, if I hadn't found Moxie and her love, Sam wouldn't have ever been born; then what would I have had to be so proud of? Just as I am of all my children.

Having neighbors has been a boon another way too. Several times different families have gotten together at one place or another to work jointly on a project. One project a couple of summers ago involved about six families getting together at the Johanson's, about nine or ten miles to the west of us, to erect a new barn for them. Jergen Johanson had hauled in a steam engine and the works for a saw mill. By the time we arrived, he and his son had enough rough-cut lumber to raise the barn. We had enough teams and men to build the barn in less than two days.




On The High Plains Ch. 06



When Carter Brannon's house was flattened by a fierce windstorm, we all met and rebuilt his house, better than ever, in three days. The men, in turn, helped Sam and Daniel and me erect the last two windmills and dig the reservoirs for the water. That's the way of neighbors; you help others when they need it and they help you when you need it. As diverse as our backgrounds are, nobody cares about that.

In other ways having neighbors creates more work. In the past, there was no one around to claim those cattle that I had herded onto my land. Now with other people around, it became necessary to brand them with a unique symbol so that no one else could claim my cows.

I had never bothered to fence off all that much of my land. Oh, I had put some fences between my crops and the grazing land to keep the animals out of the vegetables but mostly it was open range. Lately we've found it necessary to erect more outer fences. It wasn't a serious problem but maybe the fences have kept them from being more serious.

Life has continued to be long, hard, and often boring on the west Texas plains. Day after day it is the same thing over and over. As somebody once said, you can go for miles and miles and see nothing but miles and miles. On the other hand, the land is rich and provides a living to those who are willing to work it. When you've got a loving family and basically enjoy the work, it makes a pretty good living.

The End



On The High Plains



A little finger action up and down her slit and then into her opening seemed to meet with her approval, assuming soft moans didn't mean discontent. When the pad of my thumb grazed her clit, she nearly jumped off the bed and I thought she was going to bite off one of my ears as her hands jammed my fingers deeper into her opening. She had gushed fluid so that my hand was coated and it was dripping onto the cornshuck mattress.

Moxie's hands were all over my body, seemingly unable to stop moving. She touched my cock, rubbed my balls, then grabbed my head with both hands and tried to pull me inside her breasts. Her tongue traced the contours of my ear and tried to get inside while I kept sucking her tits. Her hands covered my back and squeezed my butt, then found my cock again and explored it all. Yet when my thumb circled her clitoris three times and then nudged the little bud, she again nearly jumped out of her skin, bucking me like an untamed mustang.

This time when she calmed down again, her hand went unerringly to my cock and began to tug, her intent unmistakable. I worked my way around between her legs and let her guide my spear into her target. I eased forward into her slick treasure and bumped into a barrier. She was a virgin! I was a little taken aback and stopped to think about that. However Moxie wasn't having any delay. She wrapped her feet behind my butt and gave a strong yank and suddenly there was no barrier.

She grunted when I plunged into her but then it was done and we were both lost in the ecstasy of sexual pleasure. I have to admit that most of my experience had been with the shady ladies of the night with an occasional tryst with a willing lady. Here, though, there had been no ladies at all until I stumbled across Moxie, as if fate had brought us together. My mind was a jumble of unanswered questions, like how did this happen, what was she thinking, where was this going, were we developing a relationship, could it last and many others.

I shoved those aside and began kissing her ... and she kissed me back. She pressed her breasts up against my chest and her hands continually ran over my back and shoulders. I knew I couldn't last long with that kind of treatment, considering how long it had been since I had been with a woman. Still, for however long it lasted, every stroke, every movement was absolutely luscious.

And then suddenly I was shooting hot sticky cum deep into Moxie's welcoming pussy. I gripped her hips and held us together, feeling the need to empty myself as far into her as I could. And then Moxie was bucking up at me, pulling hard with her feet as if trying to force our bodies to become one. I was pretty sure she had cum again too, judging from the look on her face. It was no longer her usual stoic expression.

Life on the high plains wasn't nearly so bad after that ...