Epilogue: A Tale of Two Campfires
"The old massa," Lester spat contemptuously into the fire, "wasn't here
when they ruined Reenie. For all I know, he never even knew about that night
that Robert and the others raped her. But he was the one that raised Mr. Robert
up to be the animal he was."
"They had me to play "Amazing Grace" at Mister Robert's Funeral, Mr. Casey.
'How sweet the sound', it was indeed."
Lester passed the bottle of liquor back to the Irishman, who took a long
pull from his dwindling bottle, as he marveled at the dark undercurrents from
the past that had cursed the Wilson ranch.
"Anyway, after that I figured I'd settled my score with Wilson. A few
years after the war ended, Honey was born, and a few years after that, Henrietta
- that was Mrs Wilson - passed away."
"And then I buried the past behind me. I stayed on here, I worked hard,
and like the rest of you I watched young Honey grow up into a beautiful young
lady. Like everyone else she drove me crazy with her teasing ways, but there
wasn't anything much I could do about it. And she wasn't really a bad sort.
Just high-spirited and wild, like a young colt."
"It wasn't until that last night of the cattle drive, when Wilson and the
rest of us were up there in Abilene, that it all came rushing back to me."
"I wasn't allowed to stay in the hotel the others stayed at, of course,
being colored, so I kind of propped myself up outside against the back of the
hotel that night hoping to get some shut-eye. Do you remember that young Negro
girl that worked in the kitchen at that hotel, where you-all stayed?"
"Sure, I do, Lester. She was a pretty young thing, wasn't she? What was
her name again?"
"Dulcie, Mr. Casey. Her name was Dulcie." Lester looked at the Irishman,
troubled that even a decent sort like Casey had no idea of the name of the
colored girl that had waited on him for two days. "We're all just niggers to
them," Lester thought to himself.
"Dulcie -- it means 'sweet', Casey, doesn't it?"
Casey nodded.
"She was a sweet young thing, " Lester continued. "Only fifteen."
Casey looked up in surprise -- Dulcie had had a young girl's face, but she
had had the body of a woman. She could easily have passed for eighteen.
"Anyway, Casey, to make a long story short, our church-going boss, old man
Wilson, got drunk that last night, and he told Davidson, the bastard that ran
that hotel, that he was tired of all the old whores in town. That he wanted
someone young and fresh. He wanted Dulcie. And Davidson, the miserable
son-of-a-bitch, rented her out to him. For the night.
"I was camped right under Wilson's upstairs room that night, Casey. And I
heard that bastard cursing her, telling her that he'd paid good money for her,
and by God, she'd better do like he told her. But she wouldn't. So he took his
riding whip to her. He must have stuffed a pillow in her mouth to keep her
quiet, but I could still hear her muffled screams begging him to stop. But she
still wouldn't do what he wanted her to do. So he whipped her some more.
"When he got tired of that, I heard him light a match. And a second later
Dulcie screamed. He must have gone through a couple of dozen matches in the
next hour, Mr. Casey. He had his way with her eventually, of course -- I could
hear her moanin' and strugglin' all night, but there was nothing I could do --
I tried every window and door in the hotel, but it was locked up tighter than a
drum -- But I know this -- little Dulcie never did give in and do what Old Man
Wilson wanted. Cause I heard him complaining to Davidson about it in the
morning.
"So on the long ride back home that next day, I was just a-boiling over
with hatred for Henry Wilson. You remember that he and Clem stayed on for
another couple of days, cause they wanted to talk to that congressman about
water rights?"
Casey nodded, and took another slug from the bottle; water was a big issue
for the ranchers in west Texas.
"Well, late that next afternoon , when the rest of us rode up and saw
Honey, naked as a jaybird, like some kind of virgin sacrifice, hanging on that
corral, all the old rage and bitterness came back. And for Dulcie's sake, this
time, I wanted to defile the one thing in the world that Henry Wilson treasured
most. Just like he had defiled Dulcie Robinson. And just like Mr. Robert had
defiled my Reenie."
"I don't know why, but the idea came over me in a flash -- we weren't due
back for another day; we could sneak up on her, and as long as everyone kept his
big mouth shut, we could have a little party with Honey, and I could use my
little bit of Comanche to confuse her. There aren't really any Comanches within
a hundred miles from here, Mr. Casey, so there was no real chance of any
innocent Indians getting blamed for it."
"Thank God she seems to be all right, now," said Michael Casey. Then the
two men heard the sound of horses and wheels approaching.
"Shhhh!" Casey whispered. "Somebody's coming."
Moments later the two men saw the buckboard approaching from the turn-off
to the main road. Henry Wilson, fresh from his council meeting, held the reins.
He got down slowly; he seemed to have aged twenty years since his return from
Abilene. He had been a vigorous, iron-jawed man who had looked younger than his
sixty years when he'd left on the cattle drive. But tonight he looked almost
eighty.
"Up late tonight, Lester?"
"Yes, suh, Mistuh Wilson." Lester had lapsed back into "colored" dialect,
Casey noticed. "Me and Casey, here, been talkin'. Not about nuthin', of
course."
"Lester..."
"Yes, Mistuh Wilson?"
"Play it for me."
"Sho will, Mistuh Wilson, sho will." Lester knew what Wilson wanted to
hear. "Amazing Grace". Ever since he'd come back from Abilene, to find Honey
violated, he'd asked Lester to play it, every night.
And the old black man picked up his harmonica, and played. And the old
white man sat silently in the darkness and listened. And Michael Casey, the
Irishman who feared damnation, sang the words softly:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
Lester played several verses, with a sweetness unusual even for him, as
Casey sang on, in his fine tenor voice.
After a few minutes, Casey noticed that Henry Wilson was sobbing silently,
his shoulders shaking, his hands trembling.
"Are you all right, Sir?" Casey peered into the roaring campfire. In a
burst of Irish fancy, the fire seemed to symbolize the hell into which fate had
thrust both of his companions.
Wilson took a long shuddering breath, expelling a great column of air,
almost as if he were purging a noxious mist. "Yes, Casey, I think I am. Now."
Lester continued to play, as the old rancher continued.
"That last night in Abilene, Casey, I committed a great sin. A horrible
sin. And God punished me by taking out his vengeance on my daughter. The sins
of the father fall on the daughter, they say."
And Lester, looking deep into the campfire, said in a sad, tired voice, "I
had a daughter once, too, Mr. Wilson. I know how it is."
Wilson looked at Lester. "My son told me that she'd run away back in '63,
Lester. Weren't you ever able to locate her after the war?"
Lester looked Wilson squarely in the eyes. "No suh." Was there any point
now in telling this tired old man the real truth?
The old Negro thought silently for a moment. "But sometimes I feel that
she's still with me. Ridin' back from Abilene last month, I could almost feel
her arms around me."
Lester stood up, holding his harmonica at his side. "Be sure to tell Miss
Honey that I hope she's feelin' better, Mr. Wilson."
And Lester walked away, slowly, toward the bunkhouse, followed by
Michael Casey. And Henry Wilson listened to him play, "The Yellow Rose of
Texas", at an almost dirgelike tempo, until his steps and his music, receded
into the stillness of the night air.
********
Two slender figures, one tall, the other short, huddled around another
campfire that night, a lonely campfire that burned in the high country of
Chihuahua, south and west of El Paso. The charred, mesquite-scented carcass of
a scrawny rabbit and the pungent aroma of stale coffee lingered heavily in the
cool night air. The two men had covered a lot of ground in three weeks.
"Geesus, Jackson, how wide is this fuckin' desert anyways? I feel like
I ain't breathed nuthin' but trail dust since we crossed the Rio Grande."
"We still got a ways to go, Ern. There ain't really a good crossing
point 'til we get to Nogales. Nogales is a helluva long way from west Texas, so
I don't reckon the law will be lookin' for us there." The tall figure lay back
on the ground and pulled his hat down over his eyes, so as to blot out the
starry desert sky. "Now why don't you get yerself some shut-eye; if we're
lucky, we might make it to the Yaqui River in three, maybe four more days."
The men lay in silence for a long moment, before the high-pitched voice
piped up again. "Tell me, Jackson.
"Geesus, Ern, why can't you go to sleep? Tell you what?
"You know; the story you told me you wuz gonna tell me the other night.
About you and her. That mornin'."
"Dammit to hell, Ern! Ain't you a little old for bedtime stories? Go
to sleep, fer chrissakes!"
"Mebbe yer fergettin' who it was who busted you out of the joint? And
who set you up with Honey Wilson."
Jack was more than a little irritated by his sidekick's persistent
manner. But Ernie Gibbs was as stubborn as a cross-eyed mule; he figured he
might as well tell the damn story and have done with it. "Shee-it, all right
then. But pay attention, goddammit, so the next time you feel like a bedtime
story you can tell it to your own damn self."
"Yeah, all right, Jack, I'll do that," Ernie the Weasel said with his
familiar cock-eyed grin. "Just tell it."
A coyote howled somewhere out on the arid prairie that they had crossed
earlier that day. Black Jack Slocum reached for his saddle bag and pulled out
their last bottle of Henry Wilson's whiskey. His throat was parched from their
days in the Chihuahua desert; if he was going to have to tell his damnfool
partner a story, he at least deserved a drink.
After hoisting the bottle to his lips, Jack glanced over at his partner;
Ernie Gibbs was sitting there waiting for him to start, as eager as a Baptist
widow at a revival meeting.
"Well, let's see How did it all start? I guess I had left you and
Blondie in the kitchen so I could get some shut-eye. Remember I'd been ridin'
all day, and then I'd fucked our blonde princess to a fare-thee-well over that
kitchen table. Hot damn! She had one fine ass, didn't she, pard? For whippin'
and fuckin'!"
"Anyways I dozed off while you was still hollerin' at her to wiggle her ass
for you. And you know who I dreamed about that night? Daisy Thompson --
remember her? Shit, us and the boys had some fun with her sweet ass, didn't we
Ern?"
Ernie Gibbs nodded and leaned forward eagerly. Jack had touched on his
early morning adventure with Honey Wilson back at the ranch, but ever since he
had seen those dark indentations around Honey's breasts when Jack had brought
her, still dripping, back from the swimming hole, he had wanted to hear more.
"Well there I was, just about to lay your pappy's strap across Daisy's fine
young titties, when I heard that gunshot." Jack passed quickly over his
spur-of-the-moment decision to chase Honey Wilson rather than stay and attend to
his wounded sidekick. But hell, Jack thought to himself, I'd do it the same way
again in a heartbeat. What man in his right mind wouldn't chase after a
big-breasted half-naked blonde rather than play nursemaid to an ornery cowboy?
"So I come down to the corral and whistled for Cyclone, and before you know
it, we were chasing that long-legged blonde down."
"She was a good-runner, Ern. She might 'a made it to the Dunbar place,
too, if'n we hadn't 'a whipped half the life out of her legs that day. That had
to slow her down some."
"Man, you should'a seen her runnin' in the moonlight, Ernesto. Those
beautiful legs stretchin' out so nice, her torn white panties barely coverin'
that jiggling behind. When I got up closer to her, I could see those big juicy
knobs bouncing like ... like..." Jack threw his hands up in the air at his
inability to think of a proper simile. "Well, I don't know what they wuz like,
but you never seen such a sight in your life."
Slocum briefly told how he had finally caught up to Honey Wilson at
daybreak, some two miles down the road, in a field studded with prickly
chaparall only a few hundred yards from the safety of the Dunbar Ranch.
"Now she pissed me off, when she done that, Ern. Me and Cyclone didn't
much care for racin' through that brush. Took me a few minutes to chase her
down and lasso her, but I did it. When I rolled her over on to her back, I could
see that she'd really taken a beating tryin' to run naked through that
chaparral. She had prickers and thorns stickin' in her everywhere, but it was
the ones in her tits that done gave me the idea.
"First I stuffed my red bandanna into her mouth, to keep her quiet, and
then I tied her hands behind he with my lasso rope. Wrist to elbow, Ern -- you
can imagine how that made Honey's tits stick out.
Gibbs nodded excitedly. "Yep! Go, on, Jackson."
The tall desperado kicked a stray piece of mesquite back into the campfire.
"Then I went and got that coil of black rope out of saddle bag -- you know, that
Mexican cord?"
The ferret-faced cowpoke nodded. Jack had always been fussy about rope. He
liked to keep different grades of rope for different purposes -- his 'cuerda
mexicana', as he called it, was thin and tough. Ernie felt his cock swelling in
his dungarees at the thought of Jack looping that flexible rope around Honey's
magnificent breasts and then pulling it tighter ... tighter ... tighter.
"Geesus, Ern, you should seen those tits that morning! They must've had
three or four kinds of prickers and thorns stickin' out of 'em. And they
already had to be sore as hell from the shots you gave 'em while you was ...
workin' on yer footwork."
Ernie grinned and looked down at his hands and flexed his knuckles, trying
to recapture the overpowering feeling of mastery he'd had when he had driven his
gloved fists into Honey's firm young breasts.
"It took me a few minutes to rope 'em up," Jack continued. They wuz still
greasy from fryin' up that bacon, so I had to sand 'em down some, first."
Ernie the Weasel felt another brief shudder of lust shoot through his
cojones; he tried to envision the young blonde writhing in misery while his
rangy partner wiped her big, be-thorned bosoms down with coarse Texas sand.
"Yeah. What had happened then, Jackson?" Ernie was breathless with
anticipation. Jack was about to get to the best part.
"Well, Ern," Slocum continued with a chortle, "I did what any Texas
gentleman would have done in my situation."
Slocum went on to relate how he had taken the first length of cord and
started looping it around one of Honey's succulent, pink-nippled breasts.
Ernie listened breathlessly; he and Jack had shared a lot of adventures
with women, but somehow he'd never been around to see one of Jack's tit-ropings.
Jack related how he'd wound the black rope as tightly as he could around
Honey's pinkening pleasure-globes, tightening the cords mercilessly, until the
faint bluish veins in her breasts stood out, and the numerous scratches from the
brush of that lonely field began to seep tiny trails of scarlet. How the
voluptuous blonde had looked at her swollen and pain-wracked breasts in agonized
disbelief. How the excruciatingly tight bondage had slowly caused her breasts
to darken in color, even as it accentuated the pebbly texture of her areolae and
the tautness of her defenseless nipples.
Black Jack paused in mid-story, to take another pull from the bottle they
had swiped from the Wilson ranch. He had stared deeply into the glow of the
campfire, as if trying to recapture the erotic events he was describing. Ernie
had squirmed awkwardly during this brief interval, his aroused cock so hard that
it pressed painfully against the crotch of his pants.
Jack went on to recount how he'd told Honey that her bulging tits reminded
him of the sweet round grapefruits he'd picked as a boy. How he had used to like
to take a pair of those firm ruby-red grapefruits and squeeze 'em until the
juice ran out of 'em. When he got to that point in the story Slocum looked down
at his huge hairy hands, curling his fingers inward until his hands resembled
mighy claws, while he silently relived the thrill of crushing Honey's
tightly-bound pain-melons in his powerful fingers.
When he went on to tell Ernie how he had taken Honey's swollen breasts in
his huge hands and squeezed 'em as hard as he could, just like he had done with
those long ago grapefruits, Ernie had almost come in his dingy dungarees.
Slocum continued by relating how he had tried to lift the lovely blonde by
her rock-hard nipple-buds, and then, a little displeased at having failed at
that pleasant diversion, how he'd given a throbbing, rubicund breast a ferocious
slap with the hard-knuckled back of his hand. How the blonde beauty, her arms
bound tightly behind her, had fallen to her knees on the dusty road, and how he
had picked her up and back-handed her other bulging pain-globe with equal
savagery.
Then he quickly told how he had taken the long leads from her breast
ropes, and tied them to Cyclone's saddle horn. How the great black horse had
dragged the young blonde beauty by her throbbing, trussed-up tits all the way
back to the little swimmin' hole on the Wilson Ranch, while Jack had followed
alongside on foot, occasionally flicking Honey's creamy ass with his whip.
How, when they got to the pond he had untied the beautiful blonde, so she
could clean up a little, and after she'd washed up, he'd thrown her down on the
soft grass along the edge of the tiny lake. After a brutal struggle with the
athletic blonde, Jack had half-choked her by cramming his massive horse-cock
down her throat, before finishing off the enjoyable matinee by fucking the shit
out of her glorious pink-nippled tits.
After Jack finished his thrilling narrative and rolled over to get some
shut-eye, Ernie lay there in the starlight, his cock throbbing, visualizing in
his mind's eye each incident in Jack's erotic adventure, reliving it
vicariously, and trying to commit it to memory. When Jack's snoring grew
regular, Ernie the Weasel undid his fly and knelt before the campfire stroking
himself vigorously while his lurid imagination searched the flames for
tantalizing visions of black rope tightening inexorably around deliciously
sun-tanned breasts, biting deeper and deeper into Honey's sensitive
pleasure-melons. As his hand moved faster and his excitemount mounted, Ernie
could almost see Honey's tasty nipples standing out like pink rivets, while her
moans of suffering echoed across the lonely prairie...
Not long after Ernie had spilled jet after jet of his seed on the hard
Mexican ground, Jack Slocum's sleep was enlivened by the same stimulating dream
that he had had on that night at the Wilson Ranch. The tall, dark gunslinger
dreamed once again of his boyhood encounter with Daisy, the pretty young
sharecropper's daughter. His four adolescent buddies each had a grip on one of
her brown limbs, as they pinned her wriggling body to that memorable elm stump
out by the old shed.
At the Wilson Ranch Jack's dream had been interrupted by the gunshot
just at the point when he had directed his pals to flip their nubile victim
over, so that he could give the front of her tender body the same Slocum strap
treatment he had meted out to her sweet, brown bottom.
But tonight there would be no gunshots, no interruptions to Black Jack
Slocum's dream of boyhood dominance. Tonight, just as on that long ago
afternoon, Daisy Thompson would not escape.
And through the long night, each explosive crackle of dry mesquite in
the campfire was transformed by the mysterious alchemy of dreams, into the
sharp, thrilling report of leather on young female flesh ...
