Chapter 1

With the dispatching of time comes change. It was the turn of a new century, and although the first running, gasoline-powered American car had been around for a couple of years, the Paxton family, depended still on horses and wagons.

The Paxton’s, Charlie with wife Sara, had come a long way from the first time they set foot in the Lone Star State.  The original homestead was a tranquil prairie farm. However with time come changes.

Twenty three years had sailed by like the wind, and now Charlie’s little farm was known as the Paxton Ranch, located three miles out of Abilene Texas.

Hundreds of beef cattle including some Texas Longhorns clustered together in groves while hundreds more in the upper pasture, of the Paxton Ranch, swooped across the land under a cloudy southern sky.

Ranch owners found Longhorns easy to raise without the continuous supervision often required by other breeds. Charlie had mastered close to a thousand head of beef cattle including some longhorns.

The cowpokes, working the ranch, were Ben, Alex, Dan, John, Randy, Ross, and Mickey. It was Dan, who called it, the “Paxton’s Ponderosa,” and it was all of that.

There is something controlling about a farm. The work never stops and you are never satisfied, so things are constantly changing. Sara was feeding the chickens, gathering eggs and picking vegetables for mealtime. The boys went off doing the chores and heavy lifting. Everything else simply fell into place on the edge of hard reality.

All the ranch hands slept and ate meals in the bunkhouse. Charlie was not stumbling in the dark, but the bunkhouse was already filled to capacity. It held six bunks, becoming crowded when Mickey, the last to be hired, hitched on making number seven.

Ben was the oldest and a typical cowboy being good looking and a womanizer. For Ben however, women were far and few behind, except for the saloon whores in Abilene. He tried sleeping with a whore, but it turned out nasty and disgusting. His best friend Alex knew everything about Ben.

Growing up on a rural farm, at the end of the eighteen hundreds, didn’t present teen-age boys with much exhilaration when it came to constant hard dicks and continuous “jerking and jacking.”

Ben and Alex were extremely close since childhood. By the time they were teen agers, they were having sex together in the hayloft. Their behavior folks would brand as sick and queer, so nobody talked about it.

They thought pecker playing was horsing around and a game between friends, however, they never kissed on the lips.  Kissing another man, would label them queer, so that didn’t happen.

Alex was the “pretty boy” in the bunkhouse. He was three years younger than Ben, who was twenty-five.  Alex being twenty-two, was well endowed and they often joked about who had the bigger pecker. They never measured, but Ben beat him by so little, that one could hardly tell the difference.

Alex had dark green eyes with dark reddish crisp hair that flourished across his head and flowed around his ears like waves hitting the shore. His hair stuck out from under his cowboy hat, with a smile where his upper lip would curl at one end like Elvis.

He didn’t like sex with women; he was gay (called homo at that time) and wanted love from a man, but not from his friend. Ben was just somebody to fuck. That was it.

Ben was the opposite, from Alex, always hoping to poke a woman and fuck until the sun came up.  He loved getting his dick wet and he thought about it constantly. He was having sex so often with Alex that it made him wonder, how straight Ben really was.

They each wore their clothes tight, clinging to their bodies, accenting muscular chest, crotch bulges, and hard packed butts.

“We are a heap alike,” Ben would say to Alex. “We each have a pillar of strength inside us.” They stayed together always being a matched set.

******

Then, there was Dan, who some folks called Danny. Dan came to the Paxton ranch a year ago and won the friendship of the wrangler’s right from the start. Alex remembered the first time Dan rode onto the Paxton ranch looking for work. He spotted Sara about to carry wood into the house.

“Hold on there, ma’am, that isn’t a fitting job for a woman. Where are the men folk around here?” He asked, stacking the split wood in his arms. 

“I thank you kindly young man, there is somebody coming to help me. Something we can do for you?” asked Sara. 

Alex came from the barn hearing Sara talking to the stranger. “That’s right, is there something we can do for you? This is private land.” 

“I don’t mean to trespass. I’m a good worker and I do what one needs to know about farming and ranching. Is the boss man around?”

Dan pushed his hat back from his brow and smiled friendly like at Alex. Their eyes for a brief moment clicked and Alex was hooked. This wrangler wasn’t just any saddle tramp; he was progress, fresh out of Abilene.

Alex stared at his crotch. This cowboy sported a killer body, especially his chest and legs. He stood erect with his legs spread like a genuine Texan.

Alex could see a frog shifting in his pants, and looked away, but had to look back. It became awkward however when Dan saw him eyeing his crotch.

There is no accounting for a man’s interest in another man, unless one is gay. Alex was truly gay, keeping his desires to himself.

Alex was born with several talents and liking men was one of them. He had the experience that he shared with his closest friend, but sex with Ben, didn’t count.

Looking at Dan felt different – much different. No farmer wanted a queer son; nevertheless, that moving frog was hypnotizing, worthy of a proper greeting.  Some things yearn to be shared, and it’s people who count.

Alex and Dan each scooped an armful of wood and carried it into the house filling the wood box by the stove. The second trip, the boys left the wood by the fireplace. It was warm during the day, but cold on the prairie at night. Often Charlie would burn a little wood to take away the chill.

“Come on, let’s go, and talk to Randy.”  He’s the ranch foreman and does the hiring. “Say, can you break wild horses?” asked Alex.

“Sure, I can handle that. Just give me something to do and I will do it,” replied Dan, walking towards the corral to find Randy.

“Oh, by the way, I’m Dan Carter, and you are Alex. I heard your ma call you Alex.”

“Yup, only that woman is Sara, not my ma. Here on the farm, everybody calls Charlie pa – and Sara ma. They prefer it that way. To strangers, they are Mr. and Mrs. Paxton.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that, if I get the job,” smiled Dan.

Randy was at the corral and the men were taking turns breaking horses. One by one, they would get thrown to the ground and not improving with the second or third try.

“Ride Cyclone,” Randy, the foreman, said to Dan. Think you can do it? We sure as hell can’t.”

“I’ll give her a rip,” smiled Dan already making an impression on the other wranglers.

Dan mounted Cyclone and after tremendous bucking and thrashing, Dan was still mounted and the horse accepted having a rider on his back. Dan had tamed Cyclone, in the matter of minutes.

“You got the job,” Randy proudly announced.

That afternoon was a day Alex would always remember. It brought Danny into his life in ways he never would have imagined.

******* 

When Ross came along last season, it was a cloudy dark day. He was a reform saddle tramp, with no place to call home. He had his flaws when it came to polish, but could do the work of two men. Randy had no qualms about hiring him. Besides being smart, Ross was big, but not clumsy big. Randy liked big men, and the two of them hit it off right from the start.

The other wrangler was Martin Sparks, who went by the name of Mickey. He was in his mid-twenties, cute as a button, and all around good guy. Mickey was a lot like Alex, but lacked Alex’s sex appeal and handsome face. He played guitar and sang songs, every one of which, he wrote himself. He was rather protective of his guitar that once belonged to his pa, who sang in a saloon for a drink of whisky. His pa was shot by a jealous lover one dark rainy night while poking a whore who happened to be the shooter’s woman. The realism scared Mickey more than a little. Despite the tragedy, he had bucket loads of good memories. The best memory was the guitar that his pa left him.

Mickey was like a member of the family. He spent time around Sara watching her bake pies and whipping up hearty meals on the old cast iron cook stove. Watching Sara cook didn’t set well with Randy who farmed out jobs every morning. It didn’t seem to bother Charlie, so Randy didn’t make an issue over it. Mickey worked well and did his job like everybody else, and what more could anybody ask?

******

In the morning, the boys (all the men were called ‘The Boys’) ate a hearty breakfast of flapjacks and sausage, and then set out to do the ranching chores on horseback. It took a crew of men to run everything smoothly, especially during branding, cutting, and baling time.

Not every job happened out on the range. The barn and coops needed shoveling out, the cows, (although not many) milked and plenty of slopping and feeding of the animals. The farm still housed calves, chickens, pigs, and a skimpy herd of goats.

Charlie raised horses for trading and selling as well as ponies. He was now a gentleman farmer, no longer working alongside the men like in the good old days. Now, he handled the books, and paper work. It was Randy’s job to run the farm.

“I’ll be back rightly,” said Dan to the boys in the bunkhouse.

Nobody responded with as much as a wink. The wranglers paid little attention to somebody coming and going, unless it was work related.

Ben turned to Alex; “Dan is heading towards the house. Suppose he’s going to talk with pa?”

“I reckon he is, but you know how he says a little, and works a lot.”

“Do you suppose he’s moving on?” quizzed Ben.

“No, maybe he’s asking for a raise…..wait, this is Dan, money is nothing he gives a hoot about,” continued Ben. “What do you suppose he is up too?

“Suppose you ask him,” replied Alex, concerned, but not showing it.

******

To be continued……