Chapter 4

 

 

TWO glorious days of travel later, plenty of which Gideon had decided to spend on foot strolling along beside Jed because darned if Jed wasn’t right, Star was the slowest of the three of them over a long, hard day. She was plenty fit, but she traveled as much by train as any other means of transportation, and didn’t have the stamina she ought to have. She’d earn that stamina on the road, though, and until then, he was glad to have an excuse to keep Jed from pushing too hard.

The sun was blinding by the time Gideon thought he could smell Virginia City coming up. They topped a rise, and he saw brick smokestacks. Coke and coal burned hot, smelting the metal right out of the ore and throwing thick black smoke into the air. The city was twice as big as Livingston, at least, and Gideon perked up right off even though they clearly had three or more miles of walking and one more valley to cross before they reached the city limits.

“Hot bath, hot meal waitin’ for us,” he said, feeling his mouth water.

“For you,” Jed said. “I will wait here.”

“Come on! We’ve been out here for three days!”

“I live out here,” Jed said, harder than he’d said most anything else since they’d met.

 “Still,” Gideon argued, “that’s no reason not to visit.” Gideon looked at him and frowned. “Not everywhere is like Livingston,” he said, hoping that was Jed’s worry. “There are good white people—we didn’t have trouble in Bozeman.”

Jed met his gaze as he answered, “No, we did not have trouble there, but we barely entered it.” They had come across it in the midmorning and, by agreement, skirted around it, to keep moving. Jed’s expression softened a little as he went on, “I know there are good white people. You are one of them, as was that doctor, and the woman who let us stay in her house—let me stay there. But I do not crave the company you do. Cities….” He looked back toward Virginia City, and Gideon thought he might have shivered a little. “Cities have little to offer me—work, sometimes, more at the forts than at the mining communities. I do not visit them unless I have need of a white man’s town.”

“Baths are a need, in my book,” Gideon said, testing. He’d seen Jed strip down to his pants to wash—hell, he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away, those times—in just about every creek they’d camped by, using handfuls of fine, clean sand to scrub at his skin then bending precariously over the water to rinse it away. Gideon had caught himself once hoping Jed would fall in, just so he’d peel off those buckskin pants.

“I agree. Which is why I’ve bathed,” Jed said, quirking an eyebrow at him and purposely wrinkling his nose.

Gideon grinned. “Hey, that water’s cold. It could do damage to important parts of me.”

Jed smiled and shook his head. “Then go into the city, if you will. I prefer it out here, where I can think.”

“Sounds awful lonely,” Gideon said, because it did.

“I am not always alone. There are many reservations between here and the great ocean. I have visited some of them. We may visit some of them on our trip.”

That sounded right exciting. Gideon had never been to a reservation, though Bill Tourney’s show had played close enough that they’d had Indians in their audiences. Stone-faced and quiet, a little bit like the Chinese, they weren’t the most easily impressed audiences, but they still came, and usually they warmed up real good once the show was underway. “Still,” Gideon tried, “you don’t think a nice, hot bath is reason to wander into town?”

“Not yet, no,” he said, slowly, like he was thinking about it. “But you are free to go.”

Gideon frowned. “Won’t be as much fun without you,” he admitted. It was a small admission, one Jed must surely have figured out by now. Gideon wasn’t exactly hiding his friendly feelings toward the man.

That earned him another frown, though. “Your choice. I will camp south and west of the city.”

That decided him. “Aww, come on, Jed, at least let’s camp east of town. Give ourselves a little daylight to hunt up supper.”

Jed’s face didn’t twitch, but Gideon could still tell his friend was surprised. Maybe even pleased. “There is a pond just west of the city. The water will be warmer for the bath you crave.”

“Warm enough not to make me look like a boy when I come out of it?” he asked.

Jed’s laughter was low and soft, a little like his chanting. “Not that warm.”

Gideon tried to hide his disappointment, because he really had been looking forward to friendly company and a hot meal somebody else cooked—butter, bread… his mouth started to water, so he dragged his brain off what it wasn’t gonna get—he’d had some practice at that all his adult life, and plenty in just the past few days. “You’re cooking,” he said.

Jed didn’t even shrug. “Can your horse lope for a few miles?”

“She c’n trot, anyway. Why?”

Jed didn’t answer, just picked up his pace until he was jogging along, so Gideon eased Star into a trot. His suitcase rattled a little, so he tilted sideways as he settled into her pace and put one hand atop it to keep it from bouncing. They turned south when they hit a creek, and Gideon let Star splash through the water beneath the short trestle bridge Jed jogged across—no way would Star like to pick her way across that. Cutting along the bottom of a hill that had been stripped bald for mining timbers, he was glad he’d used some of the time in Livingston to get Star new shoes—they were good on the scree. She was sure-footed, as sure as Jed at least, and when they crossed a set of tracks that ran south, Gideon saw the pond Jed must’ve been talking about and reined her in. Her sides worked, her breath coming heavy but not hard, so he stopped only long enough to pull off her saddle and gear, then walked her around for a bit, cooling her down while Jed set up camp.

The sun was low over the mountains now but still bright enough to blind him, and he was glad to turn his back on it and head to the fire Jed had burning. “I never did learn how to start a fire with flint,” he admitted easily.

Jed looked up from where he was adding sticks to the fire to build it up, curious brows raised. “How does one grow to manhood without learning that?”

“Their daddies know where to buy matches,” Gideon replied.

Jed nodded. “Flint is almost as easy and more reliable. Even if it is wet, flint still strikes a spark.”

Gideon hadn’t camped much since he’d become a man, preferring the familiar comforts of tent or train car or hotel room. Still, he and his daddy had gone off now and then when he was a kid, and his shooting made him a damned good hunter. Problem was, it was a lot more convenient to buy the bird in the store with its feathers already plucked off. “Most of what I know, I learned from my folks,” he said as he dug in his bags for the curry comb.

“My parents used flint,” Jed replied, a fairer trade of information than Gideon usually got. He had the impression Jed was glad of his company tonight, and even if that was just fanciful imagination, he liked the idea of it in his head. “Build up the fire,” Jed said, rolling to his feet and reaching for his rifle. “I will find meat for dinner.”

“Ain’t really that hungry,” Gideon said, thinking about bathing in the pond. He kind of wanted sunlight for that, so he could see what he was doing. See what Jed was doing, too.

“You’ll be hungry at breakfast,” Jed replied.

Gideon shrugged and held his hand out for Jed’s rifle. Everything but Gideon’s handgun was packed in trunks and traveling with the show, but he had no trouble with Jed’s Winchester. “I’ll see to supper and breakfast, you see to the fire.” Jed looked doubtful enough that Gideon rolled his eyes. “I shoot for a living, Jed,” he said, exasperated. “I haven’t had any trouble scaring up food yet, have I?”

Jed’s doubt cleared, but he still shook his head. “I will leave you to future hunts then,” he said easily. “I know this area. I will be faster at flushing out game.”

Gideon wanted to argue so Jed would relax and get off his leg, but they’d traded off hunting since that first night, and Jed was walking well by now. “Fine,” he said, and set to pulling out his gear while Jed walked into the shadows.

He laid out his bedroll and plopped down on it, tugging off his boots and socks and wiggling his bare toes in the grass. Maybe Jed was right, he thought, looking at how his socks wanted to stand up on their own. Maybe he needed a bath more than he’d thought.

He got up and found himself a creosote bush and used his pocketknife to cut a long, scraggly branch, then shucked off his pants and shirt and, after a brief hesitation, his underdrawers, and threaded everything onto the branch. With a piece of string he tied it off and dropped the whole pile of laundry into the fast-moving part of the creek, the better to kill any fleas that had hopped on for a ride west. Then he sat back down to feed the fire, dressed only in his hat and his oilskin coat. He felt half a fool, but the picture made him smile, too, a naked cowboy catching the last of the evening sun while he waited for his buddy to bring home dinner.

He never heard the rifle crack though, and after a time Jed returned empty-handed. Gideon earned himself a surprised look for his dress, no doubt, and Jed launched into an explanation without being provoked. “I saw ducks in the reeds along the pond,” he said. “Too small to waste bullets on though. I set snares.”

“Don’t seem like many folks have camped here before us,” Gideon said, just making conversation. He’d seen no charred ground from older fires, and as pretty as this spot was, that was a bit of a surprise.

“Indians, mostly,” Jed said. He tilted his shoulder and started walking, so Gideon followed, to a circle of stones some hundred feet out from the pond and well away from the train tracks. Enough boots had traveled across this ground that he’d first mistaken it for a game trail. But it widened around a cold fire pit, with trampled grasses and even some marks on the charred stones. Gideon had little talent for tracking, so he shot Jed a surprised look.

“You knew this was here? You’ve—what, been through here before?”

“Yes. Many of my people travel this route east or west.”

“On foot,” he said, testing.

“Mostly. Horses….” He paused, clearly looking for words that wouldn’t offend, “Indian ponies tempt white men.”

Gideon couldn’t fault the logic of that. White people’s horses tempted thieves, too. If Star weren’t plenty fast, and he’d been traveling alone, he might have been looking over his shoulder more, himself. “Why didn’t we camp here, then, if there’s a fire pit already?”

Jed led the way back to the flickering light and shadows of their fire, much nearer the pond with its tall grasses and stubby trees. “Bath,” he said shortly, then after a brief pause added, “More private. And the snares, now. We’ll likely have duck or rabbit for breakfast.”

“What about supper?”

“Thought you weren’t hungry,” Jed replied easily, then started stripping off his clothes.

Gideon cleared his throat and pretended not to watch, not even when the buckskins came off, revealing a narrow ass and lean legs… and the long scar that Doctor MacCray had worsened when he’d dug out the infection in Jed’s wound. But the wound looked a lot better now. Jed had been right about the infection being the worst of it.

“What?” Jed asked.

“What, what?” Gideon countered, tearing his eyes away.

Jed said nothing more, just moved to the creek and started scrubbing his body down with coarse sand. Gideon, who’d packed no soap, decided to try it, too, and knelt a few feet from Jed to copy his movements. His efforts brought a smile to Jed’s mouth, so Gideon quirked an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“You are learning the way Lakota children learn,” he said quietly, scrubbing a hand full of sand up his arm and into his armpit. “They watch their elders and copy them, only asking questions when they do not understand.”

Gideon chuckled at the thought of that and at the image of Jed, a rail-thin kid, rarely wasting words as he mimicked what his daddy must have done. He cleared his throat. “That the way Indian kids learn most things?” he asked.

Jed nodded. “Most things,” he said.

Was there a certain weightiness to his voice, or was Gideon just being fanciful? He shrugged off the thought and followed when Jed stood and moved to the pond, wading in waist-deep then bending backward to duck his head under the water. The water was cold, but Jed was right; it wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the creeks they’d crossed that were mostly fed by the snow on the mountains. Still, it was cold enough to shrivel his prick and bring goose flesh up everywhere else. By the time he hurried out he was past ready to drag his bedroll almost into the coals of the fire and plop down, wrapping his coat back around him and watching Jed, who still stood by the pond, naked as a jaybird, wringing out his long, glossy hair. That got blood pumping south, reaffirming his manly parts and annoying the crap out of him. They were only three days into this trip, with at least three weeks in front of them, and already, Jed’s form was driving him right round the bend.

He slid his arms into his coat and his bare feet into his boots and dug out the pemmican he had bought back in Livingston, handing across a strip when Jed came over and wrapped his blanket around his hips like a woman’s skirt. Rock-hard nipples stood out from the flat chest, casting tiny pointed shadows. Gideon sighed and dragged his eyes away before he invited a scalping. “Coffee?” he offered.

Jed nodded. “Warm.”

Gideon filled the pan in the creek and set it near the coals, poured in a measure of coffee grounds, and sat back to wait. The silence preyed on him, just the sounds of running water and birds calling, not even cattle lowing on this barren ground. He watched the sun slide behind the western hills and sighed, disgusted at himself. Seemed he’d be taking matters in hand when it was dark enough, and picturing that flat butt and those perky nipples while he did. He tried to recall Miss Lila’s body—he’d seen her naked a couple of times—but he was hard pressed to hold the image, not with this living, breathing, pretty man beside him.

When the water boiled, he pulled the pan off and filled two cups, passing one to Jed and watching him grimace at the bitter taste, then cup his hands around the tin, soaking up the warmth. “You burned it again,” Jed told him.

“You were as near the fire as I was,” Gideon groused, moody now. “You could’ve pulled it off.”

Jed sighed and nodded, and Gideon watched the light from the fire glint off runnels of water that dripped off his hair and down his bare back. “I could have.” Then he glanced over at Gideon and grinned. “So could you.”

Gideon huffed out a breath and took a deep gulp of bitter coffee, feeling the warmth of it spread through him and pretending it didn’t taste as bad as Jed said. It did; he couldn’t make coffee worth a damn, never had been able to. Seemed like the more complex a thing was, the more likely he was to do it well. “Reckon we might as well put our heads down,” he said after a time.

“Fetch your clothes from the water,” Jed reminded.

Gideon huffed again, as annoyed at the way Jed made the words an order as he was by the fact that he’d plumb forgotten about them, but he got up anyway and tromped creek side to fetch back his stick and his clothes. He threw them over a bush to start them drying before he rifled through his suitcase in the dark for a fresh change. Behind him, Jed pulled a clean, if rumpled, cotton shirt from his bag and slid it over his shoulders, but the man made no move to button it. Gideon sat back down on his bedroll, pulled off his boots and put on clean socks, and he was reaching for his drawers when Jed knelt beside him and put his hands on Gideon’s bare shoulders, gentle pressure encouraging him to lie back on his bedroll.

He stiffened against the pressure. “What are you doin’?”

The pressure on his shoulders eased, and Jed knelt back on his haunches. “Men sometimes say things they don’t mean, when they think another is dying,” he said, sounding uncertain.

Gideon’s mouth dried, and his throat tried to close up on him. “I… what?”

“I heard you, when you said your words. That you wanted things… that you did not take advantage.” Jed frowned, hard enough that even with only firelight and stars to see by, the hard lines of it were drawn clearly on his face. “‘Take advantage’…” he said, as if he were testing the words in his mouth. “You may take advantage now.”

“I….” He resisted the urge to shove Jed away for the insult and growled, “A man don’t take advantage of nobody.” He knew what was being offered, knew the brave knew he wanted it, and it made him feel smaller than an ant on the ground to be thinking about accepting.

Jed didn’t react to the harsh words, though. He just tilted his head and nodded as if to himself. “As I thought. Still, if you want me, I am yours.”

Gideon swallowed again, powerfully tempted. “You… you go for men?”

Jed nodded.

“You ain’t just trying to pay me back?” Not that he might not still accept, but he’d sure as hell feel bad about it, after.

A shrug this time, and Gideon felt the weight of Jed’s eyes on him. “Perhaps a little. But no, I would not trade something I was not willing to give. Not even for my life.” He leaned forward again, and water from the strands of his hair dripped down onto Gideon’s bare thigh. “Now. Did you think you were speaking to a dead man or a living man, all those days ago in that room?”

Gideon’s body responded so quick, he thought he might sprain something. He reached, pushing his fingers into the cold hanks of Jed’s long hair, and pulled him forward. Jed hesitated at that, and kept his mouth closed for the kiss Gideon urged on him, even when Gideon used his tongue against the seal of his lips. “What?” he asked, drawing back a little and trying to see in the firelight.

“Lakota do not….” Jed touched his own mouth with a fingertip, rubbing his lips before he reached to touch Gideon’s. He bent forward, though, and pressed his closed lips to Gideon’s. Gideon didn’t try to open his mouth again. He just stretched back on his bedroll and grunted his pleasure when Jed’s weight stretched out atop him. It was good, better than it had any right to be with long wet hair drawing chill fingers over his shoulders and chest. Better than last night when he’d lain awake thinking about Jed’s mouth and things that had nothing at all to do with kissing.

A rush of heat swept him at the thought, and he buried his face against the join of Jed’s shoulder and neck and breathed in the clean, cold, earthy smell of the man. “Lakota do other things with their mouths?” he asked, hopeful as hell.

Jed had tucked his arms in along Gideon’s ribs and levered himself above Gideon on his elbows. His hair hung down, screening his face from the weak light of the fire. “Like what?” he asked, and rolled his hips, brushing his smooth, hard cock against Gideon’s.

Gideon had to grind up against that, it felt so good. “Like sucking private parts,” he panted.

He heard a short laugh, warm and amused, before Jed’s weight settled more fully on him, and Jed’s hands cupped his face, holding him still for another quick, close-mouthed kiss to his lips. “I know how to do that.”

Good Lord, did Jed know how to do that. Gideon propped up on his bent arms and watched, shivering as that cold, wet hair trailed fast down his body, and shivering some more when Jed’s warm, wet mouth engulfed the head of his prick with no hesitation at all. He felt the chill of air when that sweet hot mouth opened around the head of his shaft, and worried for a second about something Miz Howard had said about how redskins smelled funny. He didn’t want to smell funny or taste bad, because this felt too good to give up after one time, and they had weeks on the trail to do it again and again.

Whatever Jed thought of the taste of him, the man’s mouth drew off only for a second before the heat was back, and Jed was sucking down more of him.

He grunted at the pleasure of it, that mouth doing more to him than his imagination had allowed for. Jed’s tongue was wide and wet as it licked up the length of his shaft before catching on the flare near the tip, and despite himself, Gideon let his eyes fall closed and his head fall back to hang limp between his scrunched-up shoulders. He was caught up in the space where his thoughts and hopes from the night before met the reality of this minute. Dropping flat on his back he reached with both hands for that wealth of hair, but as soon as he touched it, Jed’s head jerked off him and away.

“Don’t—” Jed started, and Gideon leaned up on his elbow, trying to peer through the darkness. The fire was close enough to cast bright glints of light down Jed’s side, to show Gideon the length of one thigh outside his own, to show the shadow of Jed’s cock where it jutted out from his groin and the lean line of his body, even the ribs that showed after fever had eaten all the fat off the man. But there wasn’t near enough light to penetrate the screen of hair and show him whatever was hiding on Jedediah’s face.

“Jed?” he tried. “I wasn’t—” He didn’t know what he was or wasn’t, so he started over. “I like your hair. Wet like that, it feels like water flowing through my fingers.”

After a second’s silence, Jed’s hand returned to his cock and stripped it once, forcing Gideon’s belly muscles to ripple in want and his hips to thrust up into the touch. “All right,” Jed said, and bent back down.

Gideon accepted the offer but carefully, gathering up the hanging hair and clutching at it and doing his best not to try and guide Jed’s movements. He’d had a man or two who liked to take over the show, and didn’t particularly appreciate it himself unless he was real, real overheated, so he reckoned he could understand the hesitation. Still, there wasn’t any hesitation in Jed’s work down there, not in the firm suction or the flat stroke of his tongue, not in the hand that gripped his shaft and slid the skin up and down it, working him fast and sure. It seemed like seconds before he was on the edge, and just like he would with a gal, he grunted out, “Gonna come!” in time to let his partner pull away.

Jed did, sitting upright astride his thighs and using both hands now, one pulling strong and sure, the other polishing over the head as his cock spat jism, slick and warm, that Jed swiped over the head and down the shaft, making it feel even better.

Gideon lay there shuddering until he couldn’t take no more, then he reached, grasping Jed’s wrists to tug the hands off him.

“Too much?” Jed asked, letting his hands be drawn away and up to Gideon’s chest. Both were sticky-warm, and Gideon figured that meant another bath before they broke camp tomorrow, but he chuckled at the question.

“Real good,” he praised. “Just enough.” He panted, letting his fingers play with the backs of Jed’s hands, feeling sharp bone and lean tendon as his breath slowly began to settle. “You like it, too?” he asked. “Getting your prick sucked?”

Jed’s answer, like many of his answers, wasn’t in words at all. He just climbed off Gideon and stretched out beside him, on the edge of Jed’s bedroll furthest from the fire, turned his head Gideon’s way, and waited. Gideon didn’t have any trouble returning that favor, not even just in his socks and raincoat, which he knew he’d find funny when he thought about this in the future. Jed didn’t touch him, didn’t guide him at all, not with hands or words, but his body was taut with the need for release, and Gideon ran his hands around the narrow waist, measured the curve of his hip, and sucked the smooth, dark cock all the way down.

Like his smell, the taste of Jed was different, woodsy and with a hint of musk, but clean and cool. Gideon had been with other men whose smell put him off long before he got this close, but Jed’s taste was new and different and easy on his tongue, and rich enough for him to want more. His cock wasn’t the biggest Gideon had ever seen, but it was big enough, filling his mouth just right. Polite, too, not struggling to get down his throat or bang against the top of his mouth, but letting Gideon do the entertaining.

Jed didn’t grunt or groan, which disappointed Gideon some but didn’t surprise him. Jed wasn’t what he could call an overly vocal man. Jed was more what he could call practically mute, he thought, his lips stretching tighter as his mouth tried to smile. Still, it weren’t but a couple of minutes before Jed’s hand touched his forehead, pushing his head away, and he sat back, watching as Jed grasped his shaft and milked it the last of the way, watched it spit and surge, white droplets turned gold by firelight arcing onto his concave belly.

On his back, his hair didn’t get in the way, and Gideon greedily watched the way pleasure drew itself on Jed’s face, the way his teeth pressed together, and his lips pulled back almost in a grimace that Gideon knew didn’t have nothing at all to do with pain.

He grinned, fonder than he ought to feel, and grasped the tight balls, tugging them gently and watching how Jed handled his manhood, storing away the speed of the stroke for future reference.

This trip had been entertaining enough already, but it had just now got a whole hell of a lot better. He reached to tweak a dark nipple that had kept him so fascinated even when Jed was abed and sick with fever, and he grinned more broadly when that smooth chest arched toward the touch. “Can I kiss it?” he asked, not wanting to make a wrong move that might scare this brave off, not after this.

Jed blinked his dark eyes open and frowned. “What?”

Gideon flicked the nipple again. “There. Y’all don’t kiss on the mouth, I didn’t know if….”

In answer, Jed just reached up and slid his hand around the back of Gideon’s neck, drawing him down. Gideon fell forward, catching his weight on his hands, and suckled that little teat like a hungry kitten, feeling a thrill run through him at the tiny sounds Jed made. So that gets him going. Gideon admitted to himself that it did plenty for him. His prick twitched violently, but that was a lost cause, at least for a little bit, so he eased off the suction and fell down beside Jed, his back to the fire, wrapped his hand around that lean waist and pressed right up against him, relaxed and sated to his bones.

“We should dress,” Jed whispered.

“We should do that again first,” he countered.

“We are off the trail, but not so far that our fire can’t be seen or smelled by passersby,” Jed said, and Gideon felt a chill run down him that dampened his lust effectively.

“Uh… yeah,” he said, and took one last, hungry look. He didn’t want Jed covered up yet, loved the way his shirt hanging open made him look more naked, more appealing than if he were stripped bare. But he sure as hell didn’t want to get caught at unnatural practices with a man, neither. Jed was right, darn it all. Still, Gideon nuzzled the long neck one last time, smelling that fresh wild scent of the man before he rolled to his hip and reached for the clothes he’d pulled out. He shook out his union suit and tugged it up his legs, sliding the sleeves up over his shoulders and buttoning slowly. Nobody’d make a thing out of a man sleeping in his underwear. Nobody’d make a thing out of Jed now either, his buckskins pulled up but loose at his waist, his dark feet bare, his shirt buttoned.

“That was….” Gideon swallowed and chuckled a little. “That’s sure as hell gonna make nights in the wild more appealing,” he admitted. Then it struck him to ask. “Why now?”

“Why now, what?” Jed asked, and Gideon remembered all those times women frowned at a man for answering questions with ‘what’.

“If you heard what I said all the way back in that whorehouse in Livingston, why’d you wait til tonight to mention it?”

“Because you respected my wishes,” Jed said.

Gideon frowned his confusion, even though Jed wouldn’t be able to see it. “Huh?”

“About entering the town. You could have tried to press me to go with you into the city. You could have gone in alone. You chose to stay with me.”

Gideon’s heart warmed at the thought that it was just that simple kindness of friendship already grown between them that had pushed Jed toward this. He rolled on top of Jed, settling comfortably and holding his weight off the man with knees and elbows. “Have to say, I’m damned glad I did,” he said, and leered.

If Jed understood the look, he ignored it. “Dawn will come early, and I’ll have snares to empty.” He stared up at Gideon for a long moment, though, before using his hips to nudge Gideon off. He rose easily to his feet, the leg not giving him any trouble at all that Gideon could see, threw a few more sticks they’d collected onto the fire, and tugged his blanket around until it made a little angle with Gideon’s. They slept head to head, their bodies stretched away from each other, as innocent a picture as two men could make if someone came upon them in the night.

“‘Night, Jed,” Gideon said, watching the fire and listening to night birds, scarce insects, and Jed’s even breaths. “And… well, thanks.”

“Good night, Gideon,” Jed replied.

Gideon smiled. It sure had been.

 

 

WHEN he woke the next morning, Jed was gone. He’d become accustomed to it since they’d left Livingston, but this morning, after what had happened between them last night, Gideon had a few seconds’ frustration that the man had risen and run off so quick. Morning wood was clearly pointed in the direction of Jed’s blanket—or where Jed’s blanket had been.

When he’d blinked himself a little more awake and smelled the coffee on the fire, he sat up and looked around. Jed’s blanket was tied off on the back of his traveling pack, which sat on the other side of the fire. The coffee was good—not scorched—and he drank it down gratefully, wondering where his Indian had learned how to make coffee.

His Indian. The idea stirred a fire in his belly, plenty of which was lust, but he knew some of it was friendly affection, warmer than just the idea of a poke and something more like he’d felt for Miss Lila after they’d spent some time getting to know each other. Before he could study on it for long, he heard the soft tread of feet coming near and looked up to find Jed making his way through the tall grass, carrying a duck in each hand.

Jed frowned when he saw Gideon and shook his head. “Morning,” Jed said, and Gideon raised his coffee cup, still a little bleary-eyed in the pre-dawn light.

“Good coffee, thanks,” he offered after he’d swallowed down a few more sips. His prick, which had started to settle down like a gentleman, was reacting to Jed working purposefully around their camp, to the way Jed’s hip showed so clearly through that soft buckskin as he knelt down to start the hard work of plucking the feathers off the birds.

“I don’t know how you white men sleep so hard,” Jed said. “I woke, I loaded the fire, I made coffee, put up my bedroll, and left to get these,” he said, shaking the birds for emphasis. “If I had been someone else, you could have been injured or worse,” he added, right chatty, for him. “You could have been killed half-dressed.” He waved his free hand, indicating Gideon in his union suit and socks, so Gideon looked around for his pants—which Jed had moved, draping them over his suitcase instead of that creosote bush where he’d hung them last night.

Gideon grinned. “You’re no better. Hell, night before last I got up to relieve myself and you didn’t even blink an eye.”

“It was very early, just before the moon set,” Jed said, surprising the hell out of Gideon.

Gideon remembered that, seeing the waxing crescent just touching the horizon and giving him barely enough light to point his prick. “I was quiet!”

Jed snorted. “I suppose you thought you were. You should be more alert.”

He shrugged off the admonition. Indians got raised for a whole different set of skills then citified folks like himself, and Harold Crowe, the star brave in Bill Tourney’s show, had the same kinds of talents Jed seemed to. “Good to know you’re worried about me,” he said and laughed as Jed rolled his eyes.

The morning light was bright enough for him to see the flush that stained the Indian’s high cheekbones, and it brought back that warm feeling he was enjoying so much.

Gideon finally forced himself up and into his clothes and pitched in with the birds, pretty mallards, and they had them cooking about the time the sun crested the hills to the east. The ducks cooked quickly, fat sizzling and melting into the fire until Jed emptied the pan of coffee, rinsed it in the creek, and set it under the birds to catch the drips. They were on their way soon after, skirting around Virginia City and heading south. Jed set the pace as he had the three days before, and they made good time. They were quiet at first, and Gideon wondered if he had misjudged Jed’s attitudes about last night. But as the sun climbed and the day warmed up, Gideon found himself caught up in the rhythm of Jed’s chanting. Gideon wasn’t chanting along, but he was humming to it, softly and without thought.

About the time he realized it, he found Jed looking over at him, a smile on his thin lips. Looking at those lips reminded him of other things they could do, and Gideon smiled in recollection, wriggling a little in the saddle. Got an answering smile in return, so he was looking forward to stopping tonight. Definitely.

The further they got from Virginia City, the wilder and rougher the country became, and Gideon slid off Star and loosened her saddle’s girth, leading her along as he walked shoulder to shoulder with Jed. By the time the sun reached its zenith they were wandering through a flat valley floor covered in dry brown grasses and not much else, with tree-covered hills sticking up on both sides. They were moving a mite slower, too, over the rockier ground. Jed had been doing well for the past three days, but Gideon noticed that he was limping a little now.

“You all right?” he asked as they made their way more slowly down a hillside into the ravine they’d been following. “You could ride for a little, if you like.”

Jed frowned, but nodded, and Gideon was pleased that Jed wasn’t about to let manly pride slow him down. Gideon still kept the reins though, mostly because Jed didn’t reach down for them, and when Jed started chanting again, Gideon listened to the guttural sounds, hynuh-hyah hyah hyah. “What do the words mean?” he asked.

Jed seemed startled by the question, and his answer was accordingly spare. “Words of thanks,” he said after a long hesitation.

Gideon shrugged acceptance of that, and kept his mouth shut when Jed started up again a few minutes later. The chant was quieter this time, but Gideon ignored it, or pretended to anyway, and they walked along in companionable silence, both in their hats to ward off the hard afternoon sun. Just about the time Gideon was getting ready to complain about being parched—he’d emptied his canteen an hour back—he heard water running up ahead. They skirted around a small hill to find a wide, shallow river burbling along and a wider ribbon of green grass and trees that relieved the dull browns they’d been walking through the past few hours. The grass gave Star her own reasons to want to stop, and Gideon wondered if maybe he and Jed couldn’t enjoy a little break, too. Still, he set to business after Jed slid off Star, watering his horse and himself, refilling his canteen, and then pulling off her bridle with a command for her to stay close, and then sitting back on his butt to let her munch on the tall grass for a bit. Jed seemed content with the break—he even broke out some of the leftover duck, and they munched on it happily, supplementing it with wild onions picked along the way, green tops wilting in the heat. But damn, they tasted good.

“Ready?” Jed asked a few minutes later.

Gideon was ready for plenty, but he kept his mouth shut for once and called Star with a whistle, scratching her behind the ears and giving her a kind word, since he’d run out of apples and hadn’t found another tree yet. Jed didn’t mount up this time, so again they walked side by side on a road that ran just beyond the trees, whose roots fed off the nearby river. Gideon found himself dragging, not to slow them down but just so he could watch Jed’s butt move, a tiny sway to his hips that spurred more than Gideon’s imagination. He had to adjust himself in his pants.

“We ought to stop for the night,” he suggested, “maybe get to bed early.”

He hadn’t meant to be lewd, exactly—even though it had been hard not to think of Jed and the pleasure they’d shared last night as he’d followed that buckskin-clad butt over the course of the day—but Jed looked back over his shoulder, frowning. “The trail slows us enough,” he said. “We should go as far as we can. We still have enough duck for tonight and tomorrow so there is no need to hunt.”

“How’s your leg?” Gideon asked just before he slid over loose rock and sand and nearly landed on his ass.

“Better than yours,” Jed answered with a snort.

The next time they turned toward the river, the game trail they’d followed dumped them in a little glen of aspens. Late afternoon sunlight dappled the grassy earth and sparkled off the river, and Gideon was about to put his foot down about stopping, the place was so pretty. Before he could ask, though, Jed set about making camp, clearing a spot for a cook fire and scouting around the glen, checking for—Gideon hadn’t asked what Jed checked for, had just assumed it was any hints of cougars or bears, maybe signs of other travelers nearby.

“Hey, what are you lookin’ for?” he called as he took off Star’s saddle and bridle and left her to eat and drink and rest.

“Boar scat,” Jed said, sounding irate.

Gideon chuckled and shook his head. It sure did vex Jed that he’d gotten himself caught by that wild pig. “You ain’t more worried about bears out here?” They’d seen some sign, but hadn’t run across any live ones yet.

Jed patted his rifle and untied his blanket. “Bears are shy creatures,” he said, working as he talked. “They are no more interested in us than that tree over there,” he said, pointing.

Gideon frowned at the idea, because he’d heard plenty of stories about bears showing plenty of interest in the larders of folks’ homes. But he wasn’t going to argue, not as long as Jed kept his rifle close. “That duck’s sure gonna be good,” Gideon said, changing the subject. It would be. He was hungry enough, and he still had a little hardtack left, but he was wishing for a stove-cooked meal, biscuits or cornbread, stewed tomatoes and greens. 

“The river has trout,” Jed countered, and looked his way. “You like fish? Save the duck for tomorrow?”

Gideon nodded eagerly. “Fine by me.”

Jed dragged two flat rocks from the riverbed and set them by the kindling Gideon had piled up nicely. “Start the fire,” he said, so Gideon did. Jed hadn’t had much success at tickling trout to the surface in the shallows, so Gideon knelt down with him to help, doing the luring with his fingers so Jed could stab them with a sharpened stick. Once they’d pulled up a few, he pulled out his knife and gutted each fish, and Jed laid the cleaned fish on the flat rocks to roast. Gideon wasn’t surprised that while the fish cooked and the sun slid toward the western hills, Jed stripped down and bathed in the water, again ducking his head into it and cleaning his long hair. He was less surprised when his manhood hardened at the sight, looking forward to more of what it had got last night. Gideon was torn between two hungers—the smell of cooking fish making him salivate, and the sight of Jed’s naked body, knee-deep in cold water and arched back as Jed wrung out his hair, making his prick twitch almost painfully.

He was a little surprised when Jed waded out of the river and walked naked to Gideon’s gear, untied the pan from the saddle bag, and turned straight for him. Jed pushed Gideon’s knees apart and settled between his legs, opening his pants with a familiarity that made Gideon forget all about the fish. In fact, as Jed deftly unbuttoned first Gideon’s shirt, then the tiny buttons on the fly of his union suit and reached inside to draw him out, Gideon forgot about pretty much everything.

“Yeah,” he panted—not the most brilliant sex talk, but it earned him a grin from Jed anyway.

He watched Jed’s dark hands on him, handling his balls and his cock, and sucked in a breath when Jed dipped his fingers into the duck fat he’d saved from last night, stroking it down Gideon’s rigid shaft. “Hell, yeah,” Gideon hissed this time. The feel of the fat, making his prick slick like a woman’s juices would, eased the friction and increased the pleasure tenfold. That was before Jed reached back into the pan and then behind himself, and when Gideon realized what Jed was doing to his own backside, he didn’t have any words left. He dropped flat to his back and grabbed Jed by the waist, urgent to bury himself in that skinny little ass. Jed didn’t hesitate, just slid his knees up beside Gideon’s hips and squeezed them tight, like he was holding on to the barrel of a galloping horse, and Gideon tried not to smile at the image because there was sure to be some bucking involved in the next little bit. He peeled one hand free of Jed’s waist and used it to hold his shaft, slid the other hand back over a neat little butt cheek and tugged it open, feeling with his shaft, lining it up and tilting his hips up to get the head in.

Jed groaned at that, and Gideon couldn’t tell if the look on his face was pain or pleasure. He knew what he was feeling, though, and that tight heat, slick with goose fat, felt like a little slice of heaven to him.

“You, uh… you okay?” he asked, resisting the urge to just pull Jed all the way down onto him. As much as Jed had resisted the idea of Gideon’s hands on his head last night, he didn’t seem to mind Gideon’s hands at his waist now, even though Jed had to know what Gideon wanted to do with ’em.

“I….” Jed’s muscles squeezed his manhood almost painfully tight, then relaxed some, and Gideon gave into his need as gently as he could, urging Jed’s hips down with his hands. Jed went, slower than Gideon might’ve wanted but quick enough, his face still caught in that grimace that could mean pain or pleasure or both, but Gideon had been on the other side of this more than a few times. He was pretty sure he knew what he was seeing.

Jed had gone quiet again, but Gideon wasn’t nearly so reserved. He gasped and groaned, he cursed, “Aww fuck, aww fuck,” over and over again, and set to the slowest motions he could manage until Jed’s lips parted and the intense concentration on his face eased some. “Aww fuck,” Gideon said again. “Jed, I—can I—”

Jed dropped his weight fully down, closing that last bit of distance between their bodies, and Gideon felt Jed’s tight-drawn balls press against his pelvis, rubbed up a little to feel his own balls touch the tiny curve of Jed’s butt cheek. His hands kneaded compulsively on those cheeks, fingers burrowing into the crease and tugging them gently wider. Jed opened his eyes and looked down at him, and when Jed smiled, Gideon learned he’d never really seen Jed smile before. Tiny grins, looks of amusement he’d seen, sure, but not this full-hearted smile of pleasure, of joy even, white teeth glinting in the early evening light.

“Yes, go on,” Jed said simply, and leaned forward a bit, grasping Gideon by the shoulders, setting himself as surely and confidently as any bronc rider ever did.

Gideon didn’t need no more permission than that, and he started the ride for them both, pushing up and in, watching the little bursts of pleasure cross Jed’s face with each thrust, watching that pleasure get bigger and better when he peeled a hand off a butt cheek and grasped Jed’s rock-hard shaft, stripping it in time with his thrusts.

It was fast. It was hard. It was so fucking good Gideon saw stars when he came, his hips arched up off the ground hard and high enough that he was holding Jed’s weight, letting it put him as deep inside Jed’s body as he could go, clearly as deep as Jed wanted him from the way his eyes shone and his mouth parted and his hands clamped like talons on Gideon’s shoulders. Fingernails bit into his skin when Jed grunted and came all over him, and those little crests of pain just made the come better, made the bursts of pleasure harder, and Gideon sank back to the ground with Jed atop him, gasping, his body wanting to just explode with the feel-good of it.

Jed looked to be no better off, and his ribs moved like a bellows as he dragged in great gulps of air. “That—” Jed swallowed and coughed, still panting. “Very good.”

Gideon might have preened at the compliment if he’d had an ounce of energy left in his body. As it was he felt limp as a wet rope. He cupped Jed’s cheeks again, fondly now and less urgent, and nudged Jed up to let his softening prick pull free. He didn’t know what he’d expected Jed to do once their bodies separated, but it sure wasn’t what Jed did, dropping heavily against him and pinning him to the ground, legs squeezing his hips and thighs, arms pressing hard against his ribs, mouth buried at his throat pouring hot wet gusts of air over the skin there. Still panting, Gideon let his arms wrap naturally around Jed and held him while their bodies quieted, while the dusk finally faded and the stars came out over Jed’s back, peeking through breaks in the leaves on the trees that stretched above them.

“Can’t believe you’re a brave who rides backwards,” he said softly, feeling like lady luck, who had always followed him, had outdone herself tonight.

A huff of laughter tickled his throat. “‘Brave who rides backwards?’ Where do you learn these phrases?”

Gideon grinned and used his fingers to pull all of Jed’s hair to one side where it tickled his shoulder. “The Indians I know in Bill Tourney’s show. It sorta came up one night that I had me an unnatural interest in men, and they said it weren’t unnatural, just different, like there’s different kinds of snakes and different colors of skin. They said that to their people, I was just a brave who rode backwards.”

“Hmm, I understand,” Jed said lazily. “My people say a man or woman is a two-spirit person, if they desire others of their own kind.” Gideon blinked at that. Somehow he hadn’t considered that women could get on with their own, but it made sense to him.

Finally Jed rolled to the side and stretched out, still naked where Gideon was still almost fully dressed. He looked down at the spatters of come on his union suit and wondered whether he should wash them out now. He wouldn’t; he liked the idea of them stains being there, hid under his shirt while they trekked on tomorrow.

Jed’s skin was spattered from his belly to his throat, the drying seed shining in the soft light of the fire. It looked oddly pretty, the droplets sparkling on his smooth skin. Jed’s eyes were closed, one arm pillowing his head, the other thrown back, and Gideon thought Jed might be sleeping, or at least on his way there. He took the opportunity to stare, soaking up the strange beauty of the man beside him. 

Working in the traveling show, he’d met all kinds of men, some with the show, but more often in the towns they passed through, and he’d been with a few. He was good-looking and charming, and he didn’t have trouble attracting people who appealed to him, if they were of that bent. But this was the first time he’d been with an Indian. The ones he knew, while more tolerant of the attraction some men might feel for each other, weren’t themselves given to taking their pleasure with other men. 

Looking at Jed now, in the aftermath of what they’d shared, was as different from seeing him naked in that sick bed as a fuck was from getting poked in the foot with a stick. Back then, his appreciation had been tempered by the expectation that Jed was going to die and the struggle to keep him cool and calm. Now, resting easily with come drying on him, Jed was beautiful, his long hair thicker than most women’s Gideon knew, and his features were strong but oddly delicate. High cheekbones, a long, slender nose, and finely-arched eyebrows gave him an almost feminine beauty that was tempered by the thin lips, sharp chin, and flat chest. His body was slim and almost hairless, his nipples not large but not small, and a darker brown that made Gideon think of molasses cookies.

Below the waist just as above it, there was no doubt that Jed was all man. Even now, his cock worn out, it curled soft and slim along the crease of a thigh, surrounded by a thin bed of hair as black and straight as the hair on his head. 

Gideon’s hand rose of its own accord, wanting to touch, but before his fingers found the warm flesh, Jed started, his eyes opening and his body jerking. He stared up at Gideon for a second before he caught himself, then he smiled. “You shouldn’t have let me sleep,” he said, pushing himself up. “I should be dressed—”

“I like looking at you,” Gideon said quietly, letting his fingers drift down Jed’s arm. 

Jed blinked, his eyebrows drawing together. “You have simple tastes,” he said. But he held Gideon’s gaze for several seconds before leaning forward and putting his lips gently against Gideon’s.

When Jed drew back, Gideon felt that pull in his belly, the one that wasn’t about fucking, but something else entirely. It stayed with him as Jed rose and stretched, flinching as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

Gideon reached, worried, and touched Jed’s nearest leg. “I go too hard on you?”

“Yes,” Jed said dryly, “you are a stallion.”

Gideon whapped the leg he’d just been tender to. “I’m serious, darn it.”

Jed edged out of reach, still moving like he was reacquainting himself with his body. After a minute he said, “You were there. You know I desired it.”

“Don’t mean I wasn’t a little rough,” Gideon groused, not quite sure why he was arguing about it.

Jed looked at him, and after a moment he knelt into a careful squat. “You were eager. It was very good. There is no need to be concerned.”

“Yeah, but if you’ve got the leg and your ass slowing you down tomorrow….”

“It will be a shorter day, just like you’ve been whining for since we left Livingston.”

Gideon’s ire rose until he realized Jed was teasing him, so he laid back flat on his bedroll and tucked his prick back into his pants. “You are such a pain in the ass.” But he said it fondly.

Jed snorted as he headed back to the water’s edge to wash off. “Not yet, but possibly. Eventually.”