On The High Plains Ch. 02

The remaining days of summer and into fall were, as usual, filled with work to make sure we could get through the winter. I had always preserved plenty of food to get me through but I added to that this year since it looked like there would be two of us to feed instead of one.

As we gradually became better able to communicate with each other through a mixture of English words, Comanche phrases, and lots of sign language, I talked to her about her desire to go back to her tribe. I had no idea how we would go about finding them but she might.

However she had something else in mind. Every time I asked her about it, she acted like she did not understand. It was only after several attempts that I realized this was Moxie's way of saying that she had no intention of going back to her tribe. I had heard sometime back that some tribes believed that, if someone saved the life of a person, that person subsequently belonged to the one who saved him or her. I began to wonder if that was her thinking.

Although she was not used to farming, she was a quick study and when I showed her how to do something, she picked up on it the first time, usually. She did have a bit of a hard time trying to milk my two wet cows. They were still half-wild and required some manhandling to get them to cooperate. I think a couple of times she would have liked to pull out the long knife she carried in a belt sheath and cut their throats when they were being stubborn with her.

On the other hand, she watched me shucking corn and threshing wheat and immediately became proficient, if not an expert. When it came to drying and jerking venison for storing, she was much better at it than me. Of course that would have been something she did from her earliest days, so it was more natural to her than to me.

When it became obvious that I needed a new buckskin suit, I started work on it but Moxie took it away from me with one of her few grins and set to work. Three days later, I had a beautiful new set of buckskins that looked too good to work in -- but I did anyway.

One of the natural benefits of being near the South Wichita River was the presence of two particularly intriguing trees: the first was a huge spreading walnut tree while the second, just a bit smaller, was a native pecan. When the nuts began to ripen in late September and early October, we gathered every one we could keep from the squirrel population and hoarded for treats in the coming months. When we occasionally splurged on a cake or bit of homemade candy, adding the nuts was almost as good as finding gold nuggets -- maybe better.

After the first time that Moxie had slept with me, I wasn't sure what to expect from her. If I thought she was going to sleep with me every night, it didn't happen! She made a thin pallet beside my bed every night and slept on the floor. I got the message that my mattress gave her a backache.

However if I crooked my finger at her, she came willingly to bed and we screwed passionately. She was not a passive lover; rather she was active with her hands, with her legs, with her pussy, and with her mouth. I couldn't have asked for a better lover. And she was very expressive when she climaxed too.

Afterward she would let me snuggle with her and hold her for a while. She returned my kisses just as passionately as I gave them. But then she'd slide back down to her pallet and spend the rest of the night.

In early September the climate was just barely beginning to mitigate, becoming slightly cooler in the evenings. It was enough that, if you knew the high plains well, made you know that winter was on its way again. From there on until the snow flies, I'd have to be extra alert for roving bands of warriors, because it was the time of year when they began to migrate from the northern reaches of their territory to the more moderate winter area south of us.

That meant that at any time, a group of braves with their families could be coming through the area. While they now knew enough to be wary of me, they didn't avoid me completely. And if the could steal one of my horses or cows, that was just part of life, what they considered to be fair game. I didn't mind providing a meal for a group passing through but I didn't want to lose an entire animal.

In late September, I was well out away from the house pulling ears of late corn off the head high stalks and tossing them into the wagon for transporting back to the house when I spotted a little cloud of dust on the horizon to the north. At first I thought it might be just a little dust devil, miniature tornadoes that often came through stirring up the dirt but not doing any damage.

But as I watched, I realized it was not just dust -- even a dust devil would be more compact and organized than this. It was a fairly broad cloud that just floated along in the direction of the house.

Unhitching one of the horses from the wagon, I climbed on his bare back and set off home. Long before I pulled up in front of the house, I could see that it was a band of Indians -- Comanche from the markings on their headbands. There must have been 20, maybe two dozen, but it wasn't a war party. There were women and children and old people riding on travois pulled by horses.

I slowed my pace so as not to spook the visitors and walked the horse into the yard. Moxie was fronted by a trio of braves who were talking rapid fire in their own language, and getting back the same kind of responses from her. I had no clue what they were talking about but pulled my horse to a halt and sat watching the conversation.

While the four of them palavered, the squaws had set about taking fresh water to the older people who were too infirm to fend for themselves. The children had naturally begun to find things to play with, obviously glad to have the opportunity to get out of the dust and off their travel mode, whether they had been on horseback or on a travois.

I dismounted and walked closer to Moxie. She beckoned me closer and began to relay to me the Indians' request. They wanted to cut one of my cows from the herd and kill it for food. She had been adamant that they could not do that. I told her that we should give them a modest supply of our jerked meat to tide them over. She had also baked several loaves of bread that morning and suggested we give them three of the loaves. I agreed.

By the time Moxie went into the house to bring the food back, the squaws had a small fire going over which they were heating water for a kind of tea. The braves, never cracking a smile or even changing their solemn expressions, sat cross-legged around the fire and invited me to join them. Although I couldn't understand a word they said, they spoke at length with lots of hand motions; I think they were describing their migration to the southern hunting grounds.

When Moxie came back with the food in a hand-woven basket, the braves were suspicious of the bread although once she pulled it apart and chewed a bit of it, they joined her and made exclamations that they liked its taste. It was soon passed around to the elders, women and children, along with pieces of jerky and it was like some strange kind of picnic.

It seemed a little funny to me that Moxie settled on a spot a few feet behind me when things were quieted down and everyone was eating. Then I noticed that the squaws with the braves had mostly picked spots behind then and squatted down to eat, some with their children nearby.

I didn't think too much about it until the braves had leaned back, rubbed their full stomachs and burped. They began talking again among themselves but with frequent gestures toward Moxie. A couple of times she shot back a string of rapid-fire words at them and then was silent again. Abruptly the braves rose, spoke to the squaws and everyone began making preparations to leave. Less than ten minutes later, the whole group moved out as a unit in a sort of organized chaos.

I watched the group leave until they were well south of our place -- funny how it had gone from my place to our place! They didn't try to take any of the animals but took the straightest, smoothest path to the south. When they were gone, I mounted up and returned to my work in the corn patch.

When I came in at sundown to find dinner on the table as usual, I washed up and sat down to eat. Moxie rather timidly sat across the table from me. I asked her what the braves had been talking about at the end of their visit. She finally made me understand that they were asking her to join them. However she told them that she was my woman!

I had a rather eclectic group of animals around the place. When I moved in, I had brought a team of two horses to pull my wagon and I sometimes used one or the other to ride around the area when I was checking on the cattle or looking for any new strays to add to my herd. I had a stubborn old mule that I used mostly for plowing and I had to keep a watch on him; the Indians liked nothing better than eating mule meat so he often was the first warning that there was a traveling party of redskins about. They didn't put up a concerted effort to kill him after our first major encounter when they carried their dead back but if they had caught him unawares, I have no doubt he would have been roasting over a spit that evening.

On a trip out to the Davis Mountains a few years earlier, I had trapped a couple of goats and took them back home with me. They were thriving in my neighborhood and I was thinking about the possibility of harvesting some mohair for weaving in the future and perhaps butchering one occasionally for the variety of cabrito, a very tasty treat when slow-cooked over an open fire. It made my mouth water just thinking about it but that was still somewhere down the road, after the herd had begun to grow a little better.

By mid-November, we had all the crops in that we were going to be able to salvage and my dugout larder was about as full as we could get it. We'd gathered hay into several stacks in my pole barn against hard times in the coming winter, although most of the time the cattle could fend for themselves. We might yet harvest another deer or two but for now we were in good shape.

One of the byproducts of the harvest was that I threw away my old corn shuck mattress -- well, the filling, at least - and replaced it with fresh dried corn shucks. Since we'd had an excellent crop that year, I stuffed the mattress a little fuller than it had been. Of course as the year goes by, the shucks settle in the ticking and the mattress becomes gradually flatter. However this time I folded up my rope-bottomed bed and put the mattress directly on the floor. After that, Moxie slept with me every night.

Having sex on a corn shuck mattress can be interesting. The mattress is always adding little sounds to the natural sounds of a man and woman coupling. Occasionally a piece of a shuck would poke through the ticking and jab me, usually at a most inopportune time and place, but at least it wasn't as hard as straw. I have to say that I didn't often let those little distractions take away from my enjoyment of fucking Moxie and she never -- NEVER -- made any signs of being bothered. I loved being able to cuddle with her all night after an evening of delightful sexual release. I don't know if she liked it or if she just subjugated herself to me out of obligation but she never resisted and it seemed like she participated freely.

I decided it was time for a trip to Fort Worth to replenish supplies that we couldn't grow ourselves: coffee, sugar, things like that. Moxie was apprehensive about going into a white man's settlement, something she had never done before, but I assured her it would be all right as long as she was with me.

In the spring, I had trapped a few beaver and cured their pelts to use for trading on this trip. Moxie had made several extra pairs of moccasins, which she would trade for whatever she wanted. Since we had collected more walnuts than I thought we would need, we took a flour sack full for the same purpose. With two bedrolls and food enough for two weeks, we set out on the long, tiring, boring journey. If it hadn't been for Moxie's company, even as stoic as she usually was, I think I would have gone crazy from boredom before we arrived.

We were bone-tired when we finally arrived. Most of our joints felt like they had been misplaced by all the bouncing and jouncing of the wagon so it was a relief to reach the end of our travel. The fort looked like a metropolis compared to the loneliness of west Texas.

The town was thriving -- sort of. I noticed that, since I had first come through a little over five years earlier, it seemed like the private sector -- that is, the people who were part of the settlement but not associated with the military -- was somewhat larger than it had been. When I mentioned that to the owner of the general mercantile store, he said that the population had grown to four thousand or more, he guessed, although some people were talking about the need to go back east to join the confederate army, if the south votes to secede.

Although Texas was not big on slavery, there were some slaves scattered around the state. In fact, I had noticed several following their rich masters around town or lifting and toting for their mistresses. Somebody said that about ten percent of Fort Worth's population consisted of slaves.

Putting that aside, I watched as Moxie wandered around the general store. Her eyes were wide and even her usual stoic expression showed wonder at the variety of goods available. I noticed that she was particularly drawn to anything that had bright colors in it, like bolts of colorful cloth or boxes of brightly colored beads.

I noticed the merchant was leery of letting her in his store, but he saw her come in with me and I think he was concerned about denying her access as long as I was there. When I motioned her over to the counter to show him the moccasins she had brought for trading, his demeanor changed. He would be glad to trade with her, knowing that the moccasins would sell quickly.

Moxie went back to touring the store. The expression on her face when she came to an open barrel of dill pickles was priceless. I told the merchant to put a pickle on my bill and then picked one out for her. On the first bite, I thought she was going to spit it back into my face so I took a nibble and showed her how to savor the flavor and she decided it might not be so bad. She put most of it in her tote bag to take back home with her. She was puzzled when she looked into another barrel and found crackers. She tasted one and decided she didn't need any more.

The merchant agreed to take my walnuts and the beaver skins in trade for the goods we needed. He put a big bag of sugar on the counter, added two smaller bags of coffee beans, a good sized bag of salt. He gave me a small keg of nails; up until now most of my house was held together with rope or leather pigging strings or, for rare spots, held together with laboriously fitted wooden pegs. Now with a goodly supply of nails, perhaps I could expand my buildings -- assuming I can find enough of the other materials I'll need.

Moxie decided on a small box of beads and two red plaid blankets in exchange for her goods. When she put her things on the counter with mine, she picked up a few grains of the spilled sugar and touched it to her tongue. For the first time on the trip, her face broke into a grin.

We stowed all of our purchases in the wagon and covered them with a tarp; it probably wouldn't be needed but you never knew when a sudden rain shower would crop up. Leaving the wagon in the merchant's back lot, we walked back to the street to find a restaurant so we could eat a hot meal before we set out for home.

We had just turned onto the boardwalk when a male voice behind us said, "Hey, mister, I'll give ya a quarter fer a piece of that thar squaw."

I knew from the sound of the boots that there were several of them but I turned on my heel and laid a haymaker on the hook-shaped nose of the guy out front. He went down like a falling rock.

I stood over him, challenging any of the other men to take me on. Nobody moved to his defense.

I bent down and jerk the guy's collar until he was inches from my face. "Mister, she's not a squaw and she's sure not a whore. She's my woman and if you forget that again, you'd better be reaching for that six-gun you're packing 'cause I'm gonna be filling you full of lead. Understand?"

He was holding his re-broken nose, blood oozing between his fingers, but he managed a nod of understanding. I let him fall back to the boardwalk, took Moxie's arm and guided her toward the restaurant. She gave me a strange look as we turned into the place but didn't say a word.

That evening, we drove several miles to the west before sundown, when we made camp beside a small creek. We didn't bother with a fire, since the temperature was still very comfortable and we had already eaten. We cleared side-by-side spots on the ground and spread our bedrolls.

I climbed into my bed and relaxed. Moxie climbed into hers and moved so her butt was against my side. I was tired and was just about to doze off when I felt Moxie's hand between my legs. My cock responded immediately. Moxie turned over, opened the drawstrings of my buckskins and pulled out my pole. Lifting herself to straddle me, she pulled up her skirt and slowly lowered her wet pussy around my shaft until she was sitting on me.

There seemed to be something special about screwing my woman -- or having her screw me -- in the open air with the clear sky filled with thousands of pinpoint lights of stars. It just seemed to make the entire act larger than the two of us, for some reason.

Moxie began slowly gyrating her hips on me, not even lifting her bottom from my crotch because I could feel her buttocks roving around my most sensitive parts. It was dark enough that I couldn't see much of her facial expression but several times she stopped moving momentarily and I heard a sharp intake of breath or a little gasp or just felt a little shudder and then she'd resume her movement.

Gradually she moved faster, leaning forward until she was pulling off a couple of inches and plunging back down. At last she had geared up until she was plunging up and down several inches of my prong very rapidly, slamming her bottom back onto my thighs and balls until she shuddered hard again and collapsed on my chest, too spent to continue. I grabbed a handful of her bottom in each hand and forced her up and down until my balls could hold back no longer and I filled her with hot cum.

That night I think we slept closer together than ever before.