THE BATTLE FOR LONELY ROCK
Conclusion: The Closing of the Suzy Lee
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
It took some convincing of King Carson, but I talked him into letting me ride north toward the Union forces. If I couldn't find Hunter, maybe I could convince the Union officers to help me blast the mine shut. With two companies of Confederate soldiers headed this way from Houston and Fort Worth, I thought they'd listen to reason. The battle I'd witnessed was between only about a hundred Confederates and some three hundred Union soldiers, the next battle would have men on both sides numbering in the low thousands. Call it ten times worse than the slaughter I'd seen.
King Carson headed toward the Suzy Lee, if he could do it unhindered, he would set a fire inside the mine. Mines don't burn that well, but a couple days of steady careful work tending and rekindling the flames, a man could accomplish much the same thing as a dynamite blast by burning. Remove enough beams and the ceiling would collapse. But would his men even take his orders on that, given that they would be burning their livelihood and their jobs?
The sun was hot on my brow and I sweated profusely, wished I had waited long enough to provision myself for this ride. I didn't even have a canteen with me. If the Union forces had moved more than a short ways, I'd be looking for water.
Well, that was less trouble than it had been when I'd first arrived in Lonely Rock some weeks before. I now knew the approximate locations of the few streams and sources of potable water around. When I thought how some six months before I had been a starry-eyed kid reading yellowish dime-store novels and dreaming of adventure, I knew then how much my life had changed.
The Union camp had been struck; I should have expected that. They needed to crush the Confederate forces and then establish a defensive base, their campsite had been no help for either of that. That, or they had moved north to join with the forces coming down to join them. This was a lull in the storm of the war, but no more.
I looked at the sun, it was only a handspan from setting. I needed to find a place to lie down for the night and tether my horse, and this former campsite was as good as anything for that. I looked about the campsite for some time, hoping for scraps of food or a blanket or such to have been left behind, but there was nothing. Union soldiers are nothing if not tidy in their habits, all I found was a lot of churned-up ground and holes where tent-pegs had been driven. A few short lengths of rope, useless. I spent the last bit of the daylight giving my horse water and then staking him out by his bridle to a patch of grass near the streams edge. He nickered unhappily and didn't seem to care much for the grass he cropped a few mouthfuls of, but he was getting more supper this night than I did.
I tried in the darkness for some time to start a fire using dried grass and smacking two rocks together. They would spark...but not enough to ignite anything. I finally gave up, stretched my saddle out for a pillow and lay down. The night got colder and I shivered, miserable, through the night. I was lucky enough it was summertime, a man could freeze on the desert in the winter but was just uncomfortable without a blanket in the summer.
I awoke early the next morning, with dawn barely lighting up the sky beyond that of total darkness, to the sound of a horse-drawn wagon pulling up nearby. This wasn't that surprising, the Union campsite had been built by the trail here. Nobody back East would have called it a road, but it was a traveled area that a person with a horse or wagon could get through without hitting large rocks or falling into deep holes, and with wagon-tracks to show you the way to go. Not a road, but not quite cross-country either, if you see what I mean.
My new neighbor was almost formless in the way he sat on the buckboard. Dusty, worn black pants, a dark gray shirt, a battered black hat. Just your ordinary farmer or prospector or rancher traveling the road with his load of goods. Several large boxes sat in the wagon-bed, two unhappy-looking brown horses that didn't seem very well trained to the wagon-hitch, and a saddled riding horse tethered on behind. God knows what this man was doing driving his wagon in the middle of a war zone, but I wasn't going to ask him any questions...except maybe, my stomach growled to me, to see if he had anything to eat. Except I didn't have any money to pay him with for it if he did. I could try to work for my food. Hell, I could suck his dick for some food; I hadn't eaten since early afternoon of the day before, my stomach was about to make me forget my pride entirely the way it had when I was a prisoner.
This man got off the wagon rather wearily, and went over to the stream to drink, ignoring his horses. He stooped at the bank and, unlike me who had simply put my face down to the water, began to scoop water up in his two hands and drink like that. I was reminded of the Bible story of Gideon's band, who were made up only of men who drank like that; the preacher said it was a clear sign that they knew they were in a dangerous area and were alert for trouble. But he didn't seem aware of me.
I saw the gun at his waist and decided I'd better holler from a distance. I held my hands out before me and away from my body and said, "Howdy, stranger."
Sure enough, he turned and whipped out his pistol, going from his kneeling position to up on one knee. His face was heavily shadowed, for the sun was behind him and he grumbled with a deep rasp, "Shit, kid, I nearly shot you!"
"I'm sorry, sir." I said. "I camped here last night. My horse is over there behind that tree." No wonder he hadn't known I was here; with those bushes and the tree between, I'd been invisible to him driving up, and I hadn't noticed. The light at dawn can be tricky, shadows are still heavy and hold sway over much of the land; it yields only reluctantly to the light, a little at a time. "I was just seeing if you have any food with you and maybe you'd share? And maybe see if you knew where the...the soldiers are?" I wasn't ready to admit my Union sympathies to a stranger.
He holstered his pistol and relaxed and said, "Now why would you want to go back to either of those, Ben?" And a careless flick of one finger knocked the hat back from his forehead so I could see his face.
"Hunter!" I said. "God, I'm glad to find you!"
He grinned that easy grin. "Not going to call me Joshua?" he asked. "Oof!" That last because I had stooped over and grabbed him, was hugging him hard as I could.
"You scoundrel, you were impersonating a Union officer!" I said. "I could have been in serious trouble if I'd stayed in that Union camp another half-hour."
"Why do you think I was so quick about getting you out of there?" he said.
"Well, now I got to go back." I said.
"Why in the name of Hell would you want to do that?" Hunter asked me. "Got some tucker in the saddlebags on my horse. Not much, but bring it over and we'll split what there is. I'm kinda hungry myself."
The grease-bag held two pieces of hard-tack and a few small strips of already-fried bacon. "Kind of an odd tucker." I said. "The bacon's still warm."
"Raided it off a campfire while I was waiting to get the wagon." Hunter said. "Some poor sentry got a knock on the head instead of a midnight snack."
"So I guess you aren't with the Union anymore." I said. I handed him two of the strips of bacon (there were five pieces, but I kept the three smaller ones, I was fair about it) and one of the pieces of hardtack. Then I wolfed down my own bacon and it was ambrosial, hickory smoked and salt-cured from the flavor of it. Then I set to the work of chewing the hardtack, a long and not-very-pleasant experience, unless you're as hungry as I was just then. I finished and then got a drink, making a mess of it because I tried to do it like Hunter had. I was reduced to scooping it up with one hand and slurping it off my palm, a slow and unsatisfying process when you'd just had a salty breakfast.
"Kid, you sound like a pig at the trough the way you drink." Hunter commented laconically.
I felt better just looking at him. "Well, if the sound of my slurping mouth bothers you, maybe you got something that would fill it?" I teased.
He laughed easily, but shook his head. "Kid, I got a troop of men looking for me by now. I came here because I figured it would be the last place they'd look for me. But I got to get this wagon on down the road. Now tell me why you want to find the soldiers, and which ones? Union or Rebels?"
"Either, maybe." I said. "I got to get hold of some dynamite or gunpowder, as much as I can. Probably the Union, they got more of it than the Confederates do."
"How much do you need?"
"Enough to blow up a mine." I admitted.
"Which one?" He asked. I found it odd he didn't ask why.
"The Suzy Lee." I said. "It's the only one producing any silver to speak of."
"You're right about that, but how did you know?"
"King Carson told me so." I admitted. "He was drunk and moaning about how they took all his silver, and only the Suzy Lee left to produce any of it."
"So you want to blow it up, to get back at King Carson?"
"Actually, it's King wants to blow it up, only the Confederates took all his blasting powder with them, as well as all the silver in town they could get hold of. He figures on blasting it shut and re-opening it after the war is over. Rebels want to take it, and only give him their Rebel scrip in trade."
"So he sent you to borrow some from the Union?" Hunter said.
"Well, with the Confederates bringing up men from the south, I didn't think they'd object to closing the mine right now." I said. "I figured it was worth a shot."
"Nah, it wouldn't do you any good." Hunter said. "They won't have any powder to spare you."
"Why not?" I asked, ready to defend my rather tenuous plan.
"Because I got a good bit of it right there in my wagon." he said, tossing his head toward his wagon. "It's loaded with boxes of dynamite, actually."
One of these days, Hunter is going to stop surprising me. This wasn't such a day. "You have an entire load of gunpowder there? Didn't they ask you what you wanted it for? Or try to arrest you?" Last I'd heard, Hunter was being sought out for arrest for impersonating Joshua Whelan, a Union officer.
"They would have if I'd asked them, instead of just taking it. You're on the run from the Rebels, Ben, I'm on the run from the Union right now."
"But why did you want that much gunpowder?" I asked.
"Why, I want to blow up the Suzy Lee." he said. "How does that sound to you?"
"But why?" I asked him.
He just cocked one eyebrow at me and I shut up. Hunter had been patient...for him...in answering my questions. Instead, I said, "Well, in that case, let's go do it." The Suzy Lee was a good twenty-five miles away, by heavily-loaded wagon, that was a four or five-hour drive over the rough terrain.
"In a bit." Hunter demurred. "I have been awake for 48 hours straight now, and I need to take a nap."
"With the Union troops looking for you?" I said. "You can't! Uh, tell you what. You lie down in the wagon and try to sleep there. I'll drive us to the Suzy Lee."
It wasn't settled that easily, but he was ready enough after I countered his arguments. He was dog-tired and needed sleep and ready to risk capture in order to get it. With me to drive the team and him under a blanket in the wagon, he was that much safer. So we got aboard, shuffled the boxes around to make room for him inside, and his horse was happier with the saddle and blanket off of it and over Hunter. My own horse joined his behind the wagon and off we went. I had to drive through Lonely Rock to get to the Suzy Lee, but I wasn't worried about that any longer. Lonely Rock was deserted.
Not quite, it wasn't. The Confederate troops had come to Lonely Rock. I didn't recognize any of them, a new troop just arrived, or some company or part of company I hadn't met before. They didn't know me, but they recognized the contents of my wagon.
I was met by sentries who stopped me and looked in my wagon. Hunter was inside there and covered up, perhaps completely asleep now (I hadn't heard anything from him for quite some time) but their eyes were focused on the boxes. "Dynamite! Hey, Cap'n, this man's got an entire wagon full of dynamite!"
My heart sank as the officer strode up to me. Another stranger, that was my only hope. I had to stay calm. Act like it's perfectly sensible to be driving a wagon full of dynamite through Lonely Rock. Where? Where was I going?"
"Where are you going with that dynamite?" the officer barked at me.
I looked right at him and decided then that, if I was going down, I was going down with style. "The Suzy Lee Mine, sir." I said.
"Why are you taking dynamite to the Suzy Lee Mine?" he asked suspiciously.
I drew up in righteous indignation. "Sir, how else can you blast a mine than by using dynamite? You want the South to have the silver, don't you?"
"Well, yes, but...."
"We can't peck at solid rock like chickens with a pickaxe!" I stormed at him. "Got to blast it loose. King Carson...Colonel King Carson," I emphasized, "is at the Suzy Lee right now, waiting for this dynamite. Do you want to come with me and explain to him why he can't have it?"
The officer looked baffled, and quite young. I wondered how he'd gained his rank, it wasn't by dint of his being a solid citizen. Probably from a rich family.
"All right." he said just when I thought he was going to make me step down from the wagon after all. "I'll send a contingent out with you. You make damned sure you go right to the Suzy Lee, though, or they'll shoot you in the back!"
"Yes, sir." I saluted him and he returned the salute and stalked away triumphantly.
A half-dozen young men on horseback were assembled. I regarded them haughtily. "My partner is asleep in the wagon." I said. "Don't get jumpy when he wakes up, you hear? Hauling dynamite is hard work. You'd better ride up ahead a ways so your horse-clatter and jabbering won't bother him."
They obeyed me like I was General Lee myself. When we were clear of Lonely Rock, I heard it. Softly at first, then louder. Hunter was laughing.
"What else was I supposed to do?" I said defensively. "It worked, didn't it?"
"It sure did, kid!" he chuckled. "It sure did. How much further to the Suzy Lee?"
"Another hour or so."
"I'm going back to sleep then." And he did. Me, I had butterflies in my stomach. What was I going to do when I got there?
"Hunter?"
"Hmm?" He had gone right back to sleep!
"What do I do when I get there?" I asked him.
"Beats me, kid." he said. "I'll think about it. Wake me when we get there."
Yeah, right, like that was going to be a cinch.
I woke Hunter as we got close to the Suzy Lee. Of all of King Carson's mines, this one was the biggest operation. A long sloping shed led from the mine shaft down to the water. There was a foundry to melt down the ore, and mercury to let them bake out the silver into its pure form. Raw metal ore came in one end, and pure ingots of silver left the front gate.
King Carson was standing on the tower that was the ventilation shaft. They actually used a windmill to pump air through the shaft, so the workers could breathe. I knew it was a nasty, thick, noxious place to be just the same. And men worked in it fourteen hours a day, six days a week, spending their money in the small store King Carson had set up nearby their camp. I knew from talking with people that nobody who went to work there ever seemed to get ahead by a nickel from one week to the next, it was subsistence wages and what you had you spent on the food which was horribly overpriced. Most of the miners were never seen in Lonely Rock.
He worked a whistle that used the windmill's power to blast a loud note through its metal throat. "Ta-hrooooo!" it called out. I had heard it faintly even back in Lonely Rock sometimes, here, it was deafening.
Hunter clambered up onto the buckboard beside me.
"You got a plan?" I hissed to him, for the soldiers were now all around me.
"Maybe. You got a piece of paper on you?" he asked me.
I did, a letter I had been writing on to my mother. It had been in my vest pocket and had stayed there through my long incarceration. I pulled it out.
He stopped me from giving it to him. "Perfect." He said. "You just hand that to King Carson and let me do the talking."
"Great!" I said and meant it.
"Shipment of dynamite for you, sir!" the sergeant in charge of the squad with me called to King Carson.
King Carson looked at me. "Got it for you right here, Colonel, sir!" I called out and handed him my letter to my mother.
As King Carson unfolded it, Hunter said, as if casually, "Message to you from General Hammond, sir, about what you're to do with this here dynamite."
King Carson rose to the occasion. "Hmm, yes." He said as he read my screed like it was official orders. The mine began to disgorge its work force of men.
King Carson motioned them over and climbed onto the windmill where a cross-bar gave him an impromptu dais upon which to address the men. They gathered docilely; this must be a common enough thing for King Carson to do. When they were gathered, some fifty or sixty men, he spoke up, "Men, upon orders from Richmond, I am to close this mine for a period of forty-eight hours. Rest assured that you will not lose wages for this period, and you may return at that time. Foreman, is anyone left inside the mine?"
"Just Kepler, sir." the foreman said. I happened to know Kepler was a watchman; he kept an eye on the mine when it was closed.
"Fetch him out." King Carson said. "Closure is to be complete. Men, you may return to your homes now, and return this Sunday morning. I'll work you the next two Sundays to make up your time lost here now."
There was grumbling at this, but the men seemed more willing to accept it now they knew they'd have to make up the time than they had when he'd offered it to them without a catch. I guess miners expect to be taken advantage of.
Done with that, there were only the half-dozen men who had come with Hunter and me. "You, too, you must leave now."
"But sir...why, sir?" the sergeant asked. "Our orders were to protect the dynamite."
"And you have." King Carson said. "We'll unload it here and hide it where no damnyankee will ever get hold of it."
The soldiers chuckled at that and they departed, and now it was just King Carson, Hunter and myself at the Suzy Lee.
"You look familiar, sir." King Carson said to Hunter. "Have we met before?"
"Not to my recollection." Hunter said.
"I hope my friend's trust in you is not misplaced." King Carson said to him.
Hunter looked at me. "Ben is my friend, too, sir. As good a friend as he is to you."
King Carson frowned at that, but he said, "Do you know the proper placement and handling of dynamite, sir?"
"I do." Hunter said.
"I don't." I admitted.
"Just watch me." Hunter said. "It'll be easy enough."
And it was, they simply piled the boxes against the beams. I was surprised that the fuse was run all the way down the middle to the back; when I asked, they explained. "Dynamite has to breathe the same as you and me. We ignite the front boxes first, the others won't blow, they'll be stifled by lack of oxygen. At that, half of this may not blow in the first charge."
"All the better." was King's only grunted comment. King was a gentleman, but he knew dynamite as well as anybody I'd ever seen before or since. I guess a man who's a miner has to know this sort of thing.
Done, we went outside. King Carson said to Hunter, "Will you do the honors, sir? I find myself unable to shoot my own dog."
"Fair enough." Hunter said.
"Come, Ben." King said, putting an arm around my shoulder. "We'll watch the death of my best mine shaft from the ventilation tower."
"I'll be right along." Hunter said as he reached into his pocket for a match.
King nearly rushed me to the tower. I was surprised but when I clambered up onto the upper deck with him, I found out by his question to me. "How long have you known this man?" he demanded.
"About as long as I've known you." I admitted. "I count him as a friend and he's the one who rescued me from the Rebels."
"Have you? Has he?" King said, each not an incomplete sentence, he meant just what he asked. And it was enough.
"Yes." I admitted.
That took some wind out of his sails. "Will you be going with him?" he asked me.
Hunter was a drifter and a man of mystery. "No." I said. "My home is in Lonely Rock. I won't leave it unless I just have to."
"You won't have to." King Carson said. "I can see to that. I know the way, now."
"I'd appreciate that." I said to him.
"This war has taken my men and my silver." King Carson said. "It won't get you, too. I swear that to you." And he stopped, as if trying to say something more.
And I knew what that was. "King, there are times when I look at you and want you really bad. And there are times when I look at you and you scare the shit out of me. At times like that, a friend like Hunter is a real comfort."
"Which way do you feel now?" he asked me.
A fair question. I'd be dependent upon King Carson's intervention to stay out of the Confederate prison. That put me in his power. But his power was about to take a real beating, leaving the rest of him behind.
"A little of both." I said truthfully. "At the same time."
Hunter was climbing up to join us. "She'll blow in about another ten minutes, long as that fuse it." he said. "I just hope to Jesus it doesn't splutter out on us and have to go in and find it. A fuse that burns too slow can ruin a man's entire day by setting off the powder just as a man gets to it wondering what happened to the kablooey."
I looked at Hunter, then at King, then at King looking at Hunter and at me, then Hunter looking at King and at me. Then King looked back to Hunter and said to me, "I'll share you with him."
"Good." I said.
"That's good." Hunter said. "Last time, you made me just sit and watch while you fucked him."
King looked at Hunter. "So we have met before. I thought so. Why did you conceal that from me?"
"I can keep a secret." Hunter said. "Like your role in this mine going sky-high. But I can keep it better if you're willing to share."
Hunter walked up to us and grabbed my butt. Really grabbed it, hard. "Mmm, I've missed this tight little ass of yours." he said. "I got to ride like hell when this mine blows up, but I'm going to get one more time with you before I go."
I couldn't help it, I had to sigh, the rough feel of Hunter's hand on my butt, squeezing it like an overripe melon, threatening to burst wide with every pulse of pressure upon it.
I gasped as he squeezed once particularly hard and that opened my mouth and Hunter pressed his lips over mine and kissed me hard, open-mouthed, his tongue shoving into me like a thick pink snake, it seemed to fill my mouth and I half-choked, groaned as the hand closed on my crotch.
Hand? But Hunter's hands were one across my chest holding me in place and the other still holding with a death-grip on my buttock.
King Carson. He was stepping in to share me...stake his own claim being a better way to phrase it. His teeth nibbled at my ear and I wondered if I was about to be torn between these two men.
King's hand was bringing my cock to surging, pounding life, it strained at my pants and he palped the turgid flesh, his other hand sidled in to the small of my back and he pressed his own manhood against me. Hunter did the same and I was pinned between two shafts of burning male desire, hard pricks were rubbing against my thighs and side from both directions. Now Hunter had hold of me by my shoulders, he had relinquished the lower ground to King Carson and King moved his hands up to caress my savaged buttocks from behind and to feel for my fly buttons with the front.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned, ignited by his own hands. While King Carson's dreams were burning down the fuse, by his own hand, King Carson was playing with me. I knew then what was driving these men. King and Hunter were each in their way taking their lives in their hands by this act, more than I had, the unknown person in this conspiracy. The Union men knew Hunter had stolen the dynamite and the blown-up mine was an obvious use of it. The Rebels knew King Carson had accepted the dynamite and again, the mine would tell them clearly what he had done. In this dangerous position of theirs, they had me, pleasure and delight, perhaps for the last time. They would take me while they still could.
King had my pants undone, my belt unfastened, I felt it first as the cloth loosened about my waist and my clothes were coaxed from me. I found my mouth free as Hunter released me to fumble at his pants, and I let out a groan before King claimed my mouth for his own. His kiss was close-mouthed but ardent, he was kissing me, kissing me long and sweet.
"You can have that end." Hunter said. "I'll take the other. You can fuck him when I'm done."
I felt King Carson tense at this, then relax again in the manner of a cat held fast in your arms. He would accept this...for now. Later on, at some other tryst, Hunter might find things different.
I softened the blow by reaching for King's fly. He felt me do so and helped me, and we got the buttons undone together just as Hunter pulled my lower body out and bent me over. King Carson fumbled at his fly and a pink dong appeared in his gray uniform, accompanied by a rush of male aroma, clean and silken and delicately perfumed. King Carson poured perfume in his baths, I knew. I hadn't noticed before this that King Carson had bathed only some short time before this. I was dusty and Hunter was downright grimy, but King Carson was clean and his skin tasted and felt like a delicate velvet cake my mother had made once, and I had enjoyed pressing it with my tongue against the roof of my mouth, feeling the softness and smoothness of the cake. His cock was like that, exactly like that, as the cockhead compressed against the roof of my mouth and my tongue rose up to cup it and hold it there tightly.
Hunter made some heavy, almost disgusting spitting sounds, and I knew he was rubbing his saliva onto his cock. I was about to get that fat schlong shoved into me once again, and I knew I couldn't help but groan happily about it. I began to nurse King's cock and hoped he would treat my sighs as sounds of contentment as I sucked his cock.
The hard shaft plunged into my bowels with the familiar fury of a locomotive entering a tunnel, a well-planned fit, and I moaned, turned my mouth and rocked my lips about King's prick, and King gasped in pleasure.
Hunter pulled back out and shoved his prick into me again and each time, I again couldn't help but emit my murmurs of delight as he moved within me.
"See, this boy loves having a man's cock up him." Hunter said, and I knew he was being a deliberate contrast to King, the gentleman and the ruffian, the dandy and the laborer, gentle and rough, clean and dirty. I was caught between two worlds of joy, that of refinement and that of grittiness, I could share these men in my heart because of their different natures, revel in their distinct attitudes and actions.
I think King picked up on this, or perhaps he merely saw the way to gain an advantage in their contest for my body. "Let's lower him down onto his knees." He suggested. "Then I can get under him while you pummel him from behind and give him some pleasure for his own."
"Why not?" grumbled Hunter.
They moved me, my pants about my shins and hindering me, onto my knees and then King crawled down to lie upon the deck and sidled under me. His head found my crotch as his cock returned to the range of my lips, and Hunter's dong found its entrance again as well and as I sank onto King's cock, Hunter's prong plowed into me once again.
"Gmph!" I grunted as he shoved in hard. The lubrication was gone now, only my relaxed bowels eased the way for his second assault upon me. That and the pleasure that poured from me as King began to suck my cock.
Hunter began to slam into my body, he was past any gentleness now, and he was humping me furiously. I moaned a protest sound at him and he said, "Going to blow any second, kid! It's going to blow!"
He was close, I decided and I let him continue to pound and abuse my buttocks for his joy, his rough hands were clutching my waist and I felt the hard callouses upon them like distinct scratchy areas. King's hands, though, which caressed my thighs and absorbed some of the impact from Hunter's thrusts, were smooth and soft, without any pads of thickened flesh upon them to diminish their sensual, sinuous dance over my tender thighs.
"Uh, guh, guh, guh!" Hunter panted. I felt his sweat splash upon my back as he thrust at me, felt his body heating up not just in his crotch, but all over, and I knew he was nearing his climax. I relished the thought of this, this rugged plainsman was humping my ass while an officer and a gentleman sucked my cock as I sucked his, the mixture was delightful, the contrast was ecstatic. When Hunter's groans reached their crescendo, I found my own passion rising as well and my world became blurred by climactic splashes playing throughout my body as my ears were filled with the roars of male lust and then the hot seed poured into me as Hunter's moans became more urgent and less potent in their fury, he was gushing out his energy, his maleness, his strength was draining from him, filling me with his jism, and I moaned out a cat-like cry of my own as my desire reached its peak and I ejaculated copiously into King's sucking mouth.
King choked on it, I think he was caught by surprise and perhaps he even had meant to pull away from me when I reached my peak, but with Hunter having brought me to climax, he felt he must match that in some way and he held on, I felt his lips sucking me as I squirted into his mouth, he was trying to actually drain my sperm from me, I couldn't pump it out as fast as he drank it, he was literally draining the very energy Hunter had poured into me, taking it back out for himself.
I finished my climax, and knowing that I had stopped sucking King while I had been wracked by my orgasm, I grabbed hold of his pud and I pumped at him while I continued to hold his cockhead in my mouth and I wobbled my lips about the glans.
King gasped, his own pleasure was expressed in soft sighs of sounds, reaching nearly an ooh-ooh-ooh at the end, and then he gushed upwards into me and I studiously drank him down, determined to wring every bit of pleasure for him I could in this, and my hand jerked at his spit-slimed column as I savored the salty man-juice, and then he was done and I licked the last droplets from his cockhead and then rose up to rest my butt upon my heels and regarded this Confederate colonel, this power in Lonely Rock, lying beneath me panting, his broad chest heaving in his pleasure as he caught his breath once more.
"Quite an explosion, eh?" I said to Hunter.
"Hasn't gone off yet." Hunter said. "I hope I don't have to wade in there after it."
I started to speak, and that was when it blew.
It wasn't a ka-blam, it was more like thunder. Low, solid, rippling sound, and each puff of sound was louder than the one before, and then it was a small spike of fire and black smoke that billowed out, and then it was done and there was a rumbling, but this was the rumbling of falling stones.
I looked and the long shed wavered at its highest point and then slewed over to rest on the ground to one side, but that was the entirety of the damage done there.
"That did it good." Hunter said. "What did you think of it, kid?"
I stood up and began to pull up my pants. "I expected the noise to be louder."
He smiled and shook his head. "Loud sounds take up energy. We put that where it would do the most good. Nearly a half-mile of solid rock now closes up the Suzy Lee."
"And now I am nearly destitute." King Carson said as he finished fastening his fly and regarded the ashes of his dreams. "War has now taken everything I had built up for ten years."
War. It had forced me to suck cock in exchange for food, it had taken all of King Carson's riches and left him merely prosperous (he still owned a lot of ranches and livestock), it had turned Hunter into a wanted man if he hadn't been before. It had changed everything, and yet...in another way, it had changed nothing.
"I'd better take on off, kid." Hunter said.
"Do you know where you're going?" I asked him.
"Around." he smiled. "Just need to lay low a while, until people can forget what I looked like. Maybe I'll shave off this mustache and crop my hair, go bareheaded like you do."
I had to laugh at that. But if he did just that, I wouldn't be able to recognize him, and I was sure nobody else would, either. "Maybe you should do that."
"See you around, kid." Hunter turned and unhurriedly moved toward his horse. He saddled up and rode off just as the men from the miner's village arrived to assess the damage.
I looked at King Carson. "What are we going to tell them?" I asked him.
"The truth." he said. "I can keep the men busy on my ranches, building fences and such, for quite some time. They'll have work and a chance to clear out their lungs. And I'll encourage those who will to join the army."
"Which one?" I asked.
"Does it matter?" he said.
I reckoned it didn't. I went to find me some long-delayed luncheon, while King talked to his men. After that, I'd head back to the Salcedo ranch, and wait there for my next adventure to arrive.
THE END
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