Lulabelle in the West Bk. 01

Friends, this is something a little different. I enjoy experimenting with different styles and genres, so I wrote a Western for you. It's a very long story but the sections are numbered to make it easier for you to read bit by bit if you wish. It uses the sexual parlance of the day; words and phrases like pussy, blowjob and sixty-nine weren't yet in use in 1875, but a little research showed me that the language of the day was just as colorful, maybe even more so, much to my happy surprise. I may write more stories featuring Lulabelle, so I'm calling this Book 1.

This is a fantasy Western, and in this first book at least, there are precious few guns and bad guys. It's designed to evoke a feeling, an Old West that I wouldn't have minded being a part of...

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Chapter 1

May 17, 1875

Arizona Territory

The three sons of Edwin Perry — Boone, Wesley, and Elijah — sat on the front porch of an Arizona whorehouse, one in a rocking chair, one slouched in a straight chair, and one leaning back into the arms of Lulabelle Flowers. The early morning sun, golden and pure, rose slowly in the sky, the fresh air and quiet of the new day not yet spoiled by the dust and clatter of horses, wagons and townsfolk.

"You boys better get back to the ranch," Lulabelle said. "Thaddeus will tar and feather you if you're late again."

"I've never met a more ornery boss than that man," Elijah said. "Lula's right. We best get a move on."

"We'll be back tonight Lula," Boone said. "Keep yourself ready for us."

"I'm always ready for you boys. You're my handsome favorites."

The boys all smiled, stood up, and stretched the morning stiffness out of their muscles. They walked down the unpainted wooden steps and were mounting their horses when a man approached. Dressed nicely, he waved a white envelope in his hand. "Got a letter here addressed to you Perry brothers. It come all the way from Virginia."

"Virginia?" Lulabelle said. "Who do you boys know who's all fancy in Virginia?"

"Heck if I know," Wesley said, looking at the envelope he held as the man walked away.

"You don't have to read it here if you don't want me in your private business," Lulabelle said.

"No, we don't mind," he said. He handed it to the oldest brother, Boone, and Boone read it aloud...

"Dear boys. This letter comes to you from your loving stepmother, Henrietta Perry. It is with sadness that I inform you of your father's death. Edwin Perry left this world on October the last, and the final words he spoke were these — tell my boys I'm proud of them. He meant it, very sincerely. He spoke often of the three of you, and he hoped to one day be reunited as a family. He had a dream that seemed impracticable to me, a dream to create his own town called Perryville, out in the wilds of Colorado. He planned on finding you boys when he had enough of it built to entice you to stay. It was a dream that seemed impossible, but you know how powerful dreams can be. Your father dreamed big.

"He acquired the land in a poker game, which won't surprise you boys, but the rest of the story might. He and I traveled to Colorado, and he hired some hands along the way. A tent was erected on the valley floor, next to a river, with snowcapped mountains and forested woods a short ride away. Trees were felled and a bunkhouse was built, one with an indoor kitchen. A small blacksmith shop was constructed. There are three barns, and two corrals to hold cattle and horses. Perryville is a fine place, and Three Sons River, which your father named, sparkles with clean, drinkable water. All of it is yours, boys. All of it is yours.

"As you can probably tell already, your father's fortunes changed for the better not long after you left. He made some risky investments that paid off, so there is money to buy cattle to start a proper ranch of your own. If you would like to see what your father built for you, I have enclosed a map. Send a letter back to me at this address and I will meet you in Perryville, to deliver the financial part of your inheritance. All you have to do is be there, to claim as yours everything that was your father's. I look forward to hearing from you. Your loving stepmother, Hetty."

Lulabelle looked into the faces of the disbelieving Perry brothers, her own face just as surprised. "Do you think it's real?" she asked.

"Sounds like something he might do, if he had the money," Boone said.

Tears welled in Elijah's eyes. "Father's dead," he said.

Wesley wiped away some tears of his own. "I knew we should have gone back. What's it been, four years since we've seen him?"

"Four years," Elijah said. "I wonder how he died."

"Hetty can tell you," Lulabelle said. "You're going, aren't you? Will you take me with you?"

The boys all looked at each other and nodded. "We won't leave you here," Boone said.

Lulabelle smiled brightly. "I can cook, you know. And I'll pleasure all you boys until you can't take it anymore."

"If we put all our money together we probably have enough to head out tomorrow," Boone said. "We'll need a good horse for Lula. Do you have any riding clothes?"

Lula shook her head. "Virgil makes sure we don't have any plain clothes. He'll shoot you, you know, if he catches you taking me away."

"Nobody in the world's gonna know where we're going, right boys?" Boone said. "If we all keep our mouths shut nobody'll know. That goes for you, too, Lula. You can't even tell your friends."

"I'll be as quiet as a church mouse," she said.

"You'll have to wear our clothes and dress like a man until we get clear of town, and then we can stop and get you dressed better. Can you tie up all that hair and fit it under a hat?"

Lulabelle nodded, her eyes bright with excitement. "You should write back to Hetty right away."

Boone looked at the map Hetty had enclosed. "I'd say it might take us two and a half or three weeks on the trail. Perryville. Good God, brothers! We've got our own namesake valley!"

The brothers whooped and hollered with mixed emotions. It no doubt woke up a few folks in the still quiet town. Lulabelle smiled.

—

Chapter 2

June 12, 1875

Colorado Territory

The ride had been long and dusty, but not without its pleasures. Virgil Cotter, the owner of the whoring establishment and Lulabelle's former boss, didn't take kindly to her disappearance. The other girls were questioned and slapped around, but Lula had taken Boone's suggestion to heart and she hadn't said a word about her departure or where she was going. Virgil sent out a rag-tag posse, but they reported back to him empty handed, and drunk. He pounded his fist on the table, but Lulabelle was gone.

She'd been one of his favorite girls, as fine a whore as he'd ever owned, red haired, bright in the eyes and bright in the mind, with a twenty-four inch waist when she was cinched in a corset, and a firm but jiggly thirty-six inch bosom when she wasn't. Her heart-shaped behind was as nice as they come. Girls like Lulabelle don't grow on trees, and Virgil Cotter knew it.

She didn't hate the job of a whore the way some of the girls did, but being free and heading for a new life felt like being drunk on good wine. The first day on the trail — dressed in Wesley's clothes, riding at a fast clip and covering their tracks as best they could — exhilarated her to the point of giddiness. When she and the brothers made camp that first night they had sex like animals in the dirt, Lulabelle taking on the three hard cocks like a wild west thoroughbred. It set the tone for the first few nights, but then things settled and she bedded down with one brother per night, on a rotating schedule. She felt like the most loved woman in all the land.

On the twenty-sixth day she woke up snuggled against Elijah's warm body. The month of June, nearly half over, still harbored cold mornings. Lula's dusty, dirty body needed a stream to bathe in but there was none that day. For the past three days the boys had wanted to press on even when they passed a bathing stream, stopping just long enough to water the horses. Lula would strip off her pants as quick as she could and splash water on her crotch and her bottom to wash things up a bit, but she still felt crusty all over, from the dust, and the boys' semen, and the sweat.

On that twenty-sixth morning, Elijah was still sleeping. She pulled his arm around her and soaked in as much of his heat as she could. Boone was up, in the light of the dawn, stirring up the campfire with the toe of his boot. He set a pot on the hot coals, poured water into it, and tossed in some ground-up coffee.

Wesley sat up and stretched. He looked happy even though he was tired. It was a big day. According to the map and Boone's calculations, they might ride into Perryville that evening. Wesley's stomach growled. The four had survived on hard tack and salt-cured sowbelly for the last week or so, but the sowbelly was gone.

"I surely hope stepmother Henrietta has a big pot of hot stew on the stove when we get there," he said.

He pulled on his boots and stood up and stretched some more. Elijah woke up. He nuzzled on Lula's neck and she smiled.

"We need to be careful," Boone said, swirling the coffee around in the pot with a spoon. "About Lula, I mean. It's not Christian, the way we've been traveling with her, and Henrietta won't like it."

"We can be careful," Lula said. "She won't be staying too long, will she? Just until we can get her to another train, I'd imagine."

"Most likely you're right," Boone said. "But let's all just keep it in mind. Lula's a friend, nothing more. It should only be that way for a few days, like Lula said."

"That means Elijah drew the lucky straw," Wesley said. "He got to spend the last night with her."

"Awe, you're sweet, honey," Lula said. "Just for that I'll let you dress me this morning." She threw back the blanket and showed her naked self to the world, her skin goosebumpy and her big breasts pointy from the cold morning air. She leaned back against Elijah and raised her legs toward Wesley. "Put those breeches on me," she said.

Wesley picked them up but instead of helping her into them he spread her pretty legs wide, buried his face in her crotch and took a few licks. She smelled dirty and womanly, and he loved it.

"Careful, honey, you'll get me all wet with tail-juice!" she said. "I don't like to be wet with it when I'm riding."

"Sorry," Wesley said. He withdrew and ran his hands along Lula's slender legs, down to her ankles, and he guided her little feet into her breeches.

"Don't be sorry," she said, smiling at the boyish look on his face. "Never be sorry for giving a woman pleasure."

Breeches, the first layer of a woman's underwear, are crotchless, to make it easier when nature calls. Lula didn't mind her boys seeing her wearing nothing but the most unmentionable of women's unmentionables. She stood up and stretched, her arms up high toward the sky, pulling the most perfect breasts the boys had ever seen up higher on her chest. She did it every morning, and they never tired of the sight.

"You know what's next, right? You've watched me enough times."

Wesley nodded and reached for her cincher, a waist-trimming garment with hook-and-eye fasteners in the front and laces in the back. It is in essence the lower two-thirds of a corset, one that leaves the breasts uncovered but somewhat supported from below. Lulabelle kept her arms up and let Wesley get it in place around her slender waist. She tugged at it to get it up under the sizable heft of her bare bosom just so, and she let Wesley fasten the hooks on the front of it. When he was done he went around behind her to adjust the laces that tightened it.

"No, honey," she said, "it's fine like this. I like to be comfortable when I ride."

"Why do you wear all this stuff?"

"It holds my boom-booms up," she said. "Keeps 'em from bouncing too much on the trail. And around town it just makes me look more like a woman. Don't you boys like 'em when they're up like this, above a slender waist?" she asked, cradling her big naked breasts with her hands. The boys all agreed that they did.

Elijah stood up and he put on his brown canvas pants and his dirty blue shirt. A bandana tied around his neck remained in place, having been there for days. "I'll surely be glad when we can wash these clothes," he said.

Lula wiggled her breasts with her hands to get them to lie on top of the cincher the way she wanted them. "My teats are as cold as ice," she said, holding her fingers over her hardened nipples.

Wesley helped her into a camisole to cover the cincher, and a man's canvas shirt to cover that. The camisole, or a similar layer called a bodice, was usually worn under a cincher, but she liked it on top more often than not; it stemmed from her whoring days when a cincher was often worn alone. Wesley handed her her canvas pants and she put them on, and then she pulled a knee-length split skirt on over them, one designed so she could ride in a saddle the way a man does. All her clothes were dirty and in need of repair. She draped the dusty blanket over her shoulders for extra protection from the morning chill, and she took the cup of hot coffee Boone handed her.

"So what's stepmother Henrietta like?" she asked. "I like that she calls herself Hetty. That's a sign that she's not as old fashioned as some."

"She's as nice as can be, as far as I remember. A good Christian, I think," Boone said. "It's mighty nice of her to deliver our inheritance in person."

"I was wondering about that," Lula said. "Do you think she's counting on anything? Maybe getting something in return?"

"We'll find out soon enough," Boone said.

As the oldest brother, and the one with the most financial sense, he was already mulling over the different possibilities. Had Hetty already received her share, he wondered? Was she interested in the property in the valley in some way? Time would tell, and the day was upon them when they would get some questions answered.

With everyone eager and the horses in good spirits, Boone pushed the pace on the trail. Arriving from the south meant the last three hours were trail-less, following a creek of snowmelt partway up a mountain, cresting a ridge, and hoping for the best. If luck was on their side the descent would bring them to their valley. Perryville. The place all of them had dreamed of for nearly a month.

The mountaintop was snow covered, blindingly white in the bright June sun, and as pure and clean as anything Lulabelle had ever seen. She wanted to stop and roll around in it, to clean her body and her clothes, but the valley floor was visible from the ridge and a small settlement lay in the middle of it. Five buildings, just as Hetty had described it. A lone horse grazed in its corral, and a buckboard wagon sat at the ready next to one of the barns. It was all still a long way in the distance, but the valley was beautiful and to the travelers Perryville looked like utopia.

The buckboard belonged to Henrietta, and she didn't arrive on it alone. She made the ten hour journey with her sister, Augusta, the day after they'd arrived in the Colorado Territory by train from Virginia. They'd had a busy afternoon after disembarking the train. A good looking horse and the buckboard were procured. Hetty asked for the axles to be greased while she and Augusta went to the supply houses where she ordered the things she wanted to pick up the next morning. She knew there was a chicken coop attached to the big barn, so she bought six laying hens, a rooster and a dozen chicks, and she bought dried beef and salted sowbelly. Flour, cornmeal and sugar were purchased, along with potatoes, coffee and tea, yeast powder to make bread, salt for curing and lard for cooking. She bought as much dried fruit as she could afford, and bathing soap for cleaning up. They were simple rations, but they would do until the boys arrived.

Augusta wasn't happy with the ten hour journey on the wooden seat of the buckboard, but she was impressed with Hetty's pioneer-woman ways. Upon arrival at Perryville, the bunkhouse was aired out and the women walked around checking the barns. Everything was intact. If anyone had been there in the eight months since Hetty had left, there was no sign of it. Either the place had been untouched or the visitors were respectful guests.

The next day, Hetty surprised her sister Gussie with a hot bath. Down near the riverbank, not far from the house, a copper water tank sat on two cribs of rocks, with a fire pit underneath it. A wooden trough transferred hot water to a metal soaking tub. Hetty had used it often the previous summer. She filled the tank with buckets of water from the crystal clear river and she lit a fire underneath it. When the water was steaming she doused the fire, and she went and got Gussie. The God-fearing Bible-toting woman was appreciative, but it took some convincing to get her to strip off her clothes in the great outdoors, in the middle of a wide-open valley with mile-long views across the prairie. An unmarried forty-two year old spinster, Gussie wasn't one to have less than five layers of clothes on unless she was alone and behind closed doors. When she finally did render herself naked she scrambled for the tub and quickly sunk herself under the water, right up to her chin.

"You're a fine looking woman, Gussie," Hetty said. "You've held up well. Far better than so many of your friends."

While Gussie washed herself she and Hetty talked of breads and other things they could prepare in the kitchen with the staples they had on hand. When Gussie was close to finished with her bath, Hetty went to the house and walked back out to the tub stark naked.

"Hetty! What if someone sees you!"

"Would they find me ugly?"

"No, they would not," Gussie said, her soft, southern accent a bit richer than Hetty's. "You're the spitting image of our mother, God rest her soul."

"We're lucky to be the daughters of a beautiful woman," Hetty said. "I'll be fifty in a few years, but I don't feel it. There are men who still gaze on us approvingly. I saw it with my own eyes on the train."

"How can you stand there so comfortably without a stitch on!"

"I showed myself to my dear husband," Hetty said. "You'll get used to it, too, when you have a man. You'll be surprised at the things you'll do, dear sister, when the flesh becomes your playground."

"Do you forget the Bible in the pocket of my dress?" Gussie said. "Should I have brought it into the tub with me?"

Hetty smiled and looked up at the sky. "God is smiling at us. I feel so alive!"

Augusta watched as her naked sister pirouetted with arms out wide at her sides, hands up like a ballerina's. Hetty danced her way to the river's edge and dipped her toes in the ice cold water. "What I wouldn't give for a man right now, or two men, one for each of us."

"The dreams of old women are rarely listened to," Gussie said. She lifted herself from the still-hot water, and the sun sparkled on the shine of her wet skin. "The towel, dear sister. Quickly. I don't care to show the world things no one should see."

Hetty handed Gussie the piece of soft cotton cloth they used for a towel. "Don't run off," Hetty said. "Let the sun dry your skin. There are no eyes here but mine." Hetty stepped into the bath as soon as it was vacant, moaning as she sunk herself down in the warm water, all the way to the tip of her chin. "How wonderful. A hot bath in paradise."

The tub had been used twice more by the sisters in the days leading up to the brother's arrival, but it was empty when the Perry boys and Lulabelle rode down the side of the mountain onto the prairie that belonged to them. Lula was bringing up the rear, enjoying the scent of the late-spring wild flowers. When they reached the corral nearest the big barn, they were surprised to see two women exit the bunkhouse, both of them wearing long dresses. One woman smiled brightly and waved at the weary travelers with both her arms high above her head, and the other stood stoically, silently thanking God that she wasn't naked in the tub at that very minute.