Blackfeather
5 Caught
“I’D JOIN YOU but I’m a little sore down there,” Aubrey giggled. She was staring at me from just inside the door. What?
I got my bearings. I was sitting on my bed leaning against the wall with my hand in my pussy. Oh, fuck!
“Sore?” I said.
“Don’t give me that. Sitting where you are, I know you were listening. Was it as good for you as it was for me?”
“Aubrey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” I was breaking up into tears. We failed. I got sucked into another time where I could have done something and we failed. President Lincoln was assassinated. And not only that, Kyle was there. And Miranda made him fail.
“Hey. It’s all right. I think I owe you that much. Oh god! Ramie, it was so beautiful. I came a dozen times. How many times did you come listening to us?” Aubrey asked.
“Aubrey! I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to… Once. I think I passed out.”
“That good? Wow! I was near passing out a couple times, but he just kept going and going. And I kept coming and coming. Your brother is an Energizer Bunny!” she laughed. “Can we get a little sleep before we have to get up? I’m exhausted.”
We turned down the covers and crawled in. She had no idea what really happened. And Kyle just kept fucking the whole time? Crap! What’s he made of?
In the morning, I woke up with Aubrey snuggled against my back. She had an arm across me. It wasn’t uncomfortable or anything sexy. In fact, I imagined that after having her cherry busted last night, she just wanted to be close. I rolled back a little and put my arm around her. It was after seven and Moms would be calling us for breakfast if we didn’t get up pretty soon. Aubrey sighed.
“Thank you for last night,” she whispered.
“I didn’t actually do anything,” I laughed. “I think it’s Kyle you want to thank.”
“Oh, yeah. I plan to. A lot.” She giggled and I couldn’t help but join in and be happy for her and Kyle. “But you made it happen, Ramie. And afterward, when I had to leave his room or risk getting caught, you let me cuddle with you so I wouldn’t be alone. I know how much Kyle means to you and I’m just so thankful that you trust me with him.”
“Hey, Kyle is his own man. But I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. If you hurt my best friend I’ll geld you.”
“I don’t have balls, Ramie!”
“Fine. Then I’ll spay you!”
We both broke up giggling.
After lunch, I drove them into town. I think I was more eager to get her home than Kyle was. I was bursting to talk to Kyle about time traveling. They took so long hugging and kissing at the door I fell asleep in the car. Kyle nudged me awake and we headed back toward Snowy Range Road.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Ky-yle. Tell me about it.”
“That’s kind of personal, Ramie. Besides, I bet Aubrey told you all about it already.”
“You’re going to make this hard on both of us.”
“Drop it, Ramie.” His voice was cold. I started getting angry. Damn it! I saw him there.
I pulled into the ranch and followed Kyle straight to the barn. He saddled Dado without hardly brushing him down. I grabbed Pooky and got my saddle cinched.
“You don’t have to come,” he said flatly.
“Yes, I do,” I said as emotionlessly as I could. It wasn’t easy.
“Why?”
“’Cause I got your back, brother.” He looked at me and grabbed me in a fierce hug. I swear I felt tears splash on my cheek from him. Then he swung up into his saddle and was off at a fast jog. I pulled myself up onto Pooky and followed.
When we’d been out about an hour and were on the other side of the watering hole, he finally pulled up, jumped down out of the saddle, and dropped his reins. He walked to the water’s edge and splashed some of the icy water on his face. I put a hand on his shoulder.
“I know what happened. Talk to me.” I said softly. He just looked down like he couldn’t look at me.
“I don’t know how to share this with you Ramie. She’s really beautiful. It was like being lost in a dream. I didn’t plan on really falling in love with her. I don’t know for sure, but I might be. What if she doesn’t feel that way?” he said.
“Or it might be that you just got laid for the first time and she’s always going to have that special place in your heart. If you didn’t have feelings for her, I’d be pretty pissed at you.”
“We talked a lot, too. You know, all the time we’ve been dating, we were just working up to last night. We never really talked about things. She’s really different than us.”
“I guess there’s worse things. Tell me about the time travel.”
“You don’t believe in any of that. I guess I don’t either now.”
“But Kyle…”
“If any of that stuff is real, I guess you can’t just plan it and say ‘I’ve had sex, now take me away!’ The thing is, I couldn’t even get disappointed about it, even after she went back to your room. I just kept thinking how wonderful she was and how it all felt. Time travel? Well, it either happens or doesn’t. I don’t much care right now.”
“I went,” I whispered. “I know you did, too.”
“Yeah. Right. You don’t have to play those silly games with me, Ramie. I’m a big boy now.”
What the goddam fuck? He thinks he can just push this off? I saw him in the eyes of that young man we tackled. I saw him!
“Kyle…”
“I really don’t want to talk about it for a while, sister. I just kinda want to think about it.”
“Sure.”
We mounted up and rode for an hour before we got back and brushed down our horses. We really didn’t say much else. Was having sex really that much better than time traveling?
Well, if he’s going to be that way about it, fuck him.
I had plenty of time to think about it that last two weeks of school. I covered for Kyle and Aubrey so they could get it on after school a couple times. I drove him into town one last time before he got his license and parked the truck near the old train station where there weren’t many people. I went to the Arcade and drank sweet coffee at Coal Creek Coffee Company. Kyle and Aubrey stayed in the truck. I had to pound on the window and wait for them to finish when I got back two hours later. The truck really smelled sexy.
I guess I understood a bit about why Kyle didn’t want to talk. It was weird. I had a hard time believing it wasn’t just a dream, myself. I guess if I had a lover to occupy me all the time, I’d probably not want to think about it. I had to do something, though. Especially after Kyle got his license and drove himself to Aubrey’s for their dates.
I started planning my horse ranch.
It was Sunday and I was sitting in Kyle’s room waiting for him to finish in the bathroom so we could go in for dinner. I was fooling around with his computer, checking some of my favorite sites like HorseClick and EquineNow. I had some money saved and was clicking through just to see what was available when this one pair caught my eye.
“Oh no!” I screamed. “Kyle, we gotta do something.”
He came out of the bathroom in his jeans and bare feet with no shirt on. At least his pants were fastened, though the belt wasn’t buckled. He bolted to me like I was on fire.
“What’s wrong, Ramie? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Quit hugging me. Look at this.” I showed him the ad.
“Pair of cart horses. Might be lame. Take both for $200.”
“The slaughterhouse will get them,” I moaned. “We’ve got to go get them.”
“Pa would kill us. How are we going to get them?” I liked the way Kyle jumped straight from the objection to the solution.
“Let’s go talk to Pa. Hurry! They could be gone already.” Bless him, Kyle shoved his feet into his boots without any socks and grabbed a shirt. I carried his laptop to the house while he snapped up his shirt. Moms stared at us as we ran through the kitchen to Pa’s office. “Pa! Pa, we gotta talk to you.”
“Whoa, kids. What is it?” Pa asked. He was in his big chair with the newspaper propped open and a mug of coffee.
“Pa, we gotta save these horses. Please. Look at them. They’re beautiful.”
“Part draft and part pinto cart horses? What do we need them for?”
“It’s not what we need, Pa. It’s what they need. Look. $200. The slaughterhouse will get them,” I complained. All right, I’m usually pretty tough, but there were tears in my eyes.
“Ramie, it says they might be lame. That’s no way to start a horse ranch. Are you sure? If they are in pain, they might have to be put down anyway.”
“I’ll pay for them,” Kyle said. He’d what?
“Kyle, I didn’t mean for you to have to pay,” I said, hanging onto my brother for support. “I just think that we could take care of them and give them a home.”
Pa had already reached for the phone and was dialing. I know he hates to see horses go to slaughter almost as much as I do. In ten minutes, he’d closed the deal. He told them we’d be there by three o’clock and not to let anyone else have them. He hung up and I jumped in his lap.
“Thank you, Daddy. Thank you!” I said. I almost never call him Daddy. I’m sixteen years old and I feel like his little baby girl again.
“Come on and let’s eat dinner. We need to tell your mothers what’s going on and, if you don’t mind, I’ll stand behind the two of you so they don’t throw anything at me,” he laughed.
By three o’clock, we were ten miles east of Fort Collins and the owner had led two tender-footed matched pintos out of the corral.
“I picked them up when I bought out a stable in Denver,” he said. “These two have just been worked so hard they can barely walk. I really expected the slaughterhouse to call. In fact, they did just after you called this morning.”
“People should be shot for treating animals like this,” Pa said angrily. “Look. There’s hardly an inch of hoof on them.”
“We’ll do our best for them, Mister,” I said. “We’ll put them in the deep pasture and check on them every day. Maybe they’ll just need a rest.”
“Well, good luck to you, kids. Send me a picture when they’re all healed up.”
It took us a few tries to get them up the ramp into the trailer. I climbed in the middle seat of the truck between Pa and Kyle. I wrapped my hands around Kyle’s arm and buried my head against his shoulder so nobody could see my tears.
We stabled the horses until we could get the vet to come out and look at them. He got here Monday afternoon and his assessment wasn’t great. The hooves had been worn down right through the sensitive laminate and into the coffin bone. He shook his head.
“They’re standing,” he said. “Keep them on a soft surface if you can. When everything dries out this summer, you might need to put them on straw or sawdust. Mostly it’s going to be wait and see.”
Kyle and I brushed them and combed out their manes and tails. We left them in the barn on a fresh bed of straw. In the morning, we carefully led them out into the near pasture. We’d moved the other horses to the south pasture. I didn’t want the other horses getting feisty with them. The pasture was lush with late spring grass and the horses loved it. Kyle and I rubbed them down again. Caitlin and Phile were standing at the edge of the pasture holding hands. If you just happened to see them, they were cute kids. It was when they were doing something or saying something that they turned into monsters.
“Ramie,” Phile said when we got closer, “can we help?” What? What did you do with my little brother?
“I suppose so,” I said cautiously. “Mostly they just need rest. You know you can’t go chasing them around like you do the other horses.”
“We don’t…” Caitlin started automatically. Then she hung her head. I’d seen them. “We won’t,” she amended.
“The vet says they need to stay off hard and uneven ground while they heal. We’re just trying to make them comfortable as we can and let them know they’re safe now,” Kyle added. “Can you do that?”
The kids weren’t paying attention. I looked around behind me where they were staring. Both horses were standing right behind Kyle and me. We stepped aside. The two horses hesitantly stepped forward and nodded their heads to Caitlin and Phile. The kids let them snuffle them and breathed softly near their nostrils. Just because they’d never shown affection to the horses before didn’t mean they hadn’t been taught how to act around them. But this was way beyond anything I’d ever seen them do. Kyle and I stepped around the kids as they started petting the horses. We left them out in the pasture.
“Bells and Bows love being here at the ranch,” Caitlin bubbled at the dinner table. She and Phile were shoveling food in as fast as they could between words.
“They hated the city,” Phile said. “They want to be ridden. They don’t want to pull carts.”
“Uh, you’ve been talking to them?” Kyle asked.
“Not really,” Caitlin said. Okay it was just a game, I guess. “They’ve been talking to us. It’s like I can hear what they’re saying.”
“Ramie, Bells said I should tell you I love you. I do, you know. Thank you for bringing Bells and Bows to the ranch,” Phile said.
Moms and Pa were sitting at their end of the table with mouths open and food or drink forgotten as they stared at us. I’m sure they were wondering who the aliens had left in place of the brats.
Kyle and I got sent to the upper pasture for two weeks. It was kind of an emergency. One of the hands fell and broke his leg. We had to send a helicopter in to pick him up. It took both Kyle and me to replace one good cowpoke. I mean that seriously. Things were tense up on the range. We’d lost two calves to wolves. Still, no one had seen the damned things.
We were on twenty-four-hour alert. That meant Kyle and I rode together right after breakfast until about six. We had a walkie-talkie so we could check in with the base camp every half hour. Somebody was always on the horn while two others slept. When we got off, they started rotations all night long. I was sound asleep before sundown.
It still wasn’t clear what we could do if we saw a wolf. The Forest Service was being kept busy verifying kills and writing checks. Of course, they only paid us for a calf, not for what we could sell it for when it matured. We had to leave dead animals where they lay until an officer could come up and register the complaint. At least we had some compensation for killed animals. They still warned us that we could chase the wolves off, but we couldn’t touch them. I wondered what would happen if I accidentally shot one. Oops.
Pa sent two more hands up by the time Kyle and I got to come home. At this rate, it was going to be as costly as Pa’s range war. We only had 500 head.
Kyle was pretty damned happy to get back to the ranch. I figured he’d call Aubrey as soon as we set foot in the house. When we got close enough, we saw Caitlin and Phile out in the pasture with our two rescued paints. The horses were just grazing. The kids were…
“Kyle? Are they picking up rocks out of the pasture?”
“Damned if they aren’t, Ramie.” We rode over and watched Caitlin and Phile as they walked back and forth over the pasture pushing a wheelbarrow. Every few feet they’d pry a rock out of the ground and put it in the wheelbarrow. At the barn corner of the pasture there was a pile of rocks four feet high.
“Whatcha doin’, squirts?” I called.
“Bells and Bows don’t like the stones in the field. They hurt their feet. We’re just clearing it out for them,” Caitlin said. I glanced at the pile over in the corner and shrugged. I looked at Kyle and he nodded.
“Want some help?” I asked.
Kyle took off Friday night and a plume of dust followed him all the way to Centennial. Aubrey sure had him pussy-whipped. Wish I had somebody. I actually spent some time with Phile and Caitlin watching TV. I swear, something’s come over those two. Ever since I brought home those horses.
I finally got tired and headed out to bed.
Around midnight, I heard the truck pull in and Kyle’s door close. I was almost back asleep when I heard Aubrey giggling in his room. What? Kyle you stupid… If Aubrey was out here, they’d either get caught in the morning or she’d need to be in my room. Damnation. I went to make sure my door was unlocked. Then I went back to bed.
Only I couldn’t sleep. I could hear them right through that thin wall, giggling and moaning. I couldn’t help myself. It was like getting addicted to porn or something. I leaned up against the wall. It’s not like I had my ear plastered against the wall, but I was close enough to hear. I pushed my panties down and pulled my T-shirt off. How could I possibly sleep with them having sex next to my head? Just a few inches away.
A flicker of movement caught my eye and that old one-eyed raven landed on my windowsill. It was almost like he was a pet these days. He was always hanging around. There was something about letting him watch me masturbate, though. His one good eye turned toward me. I stared at him as my fingers flicked against my clit. Next door, I could hear Aubrey moaning, saying, “Yes, yes, yes. Give it to me, baby.”
I threw my head back and squeezed my eyes closed as my climax rushed in on me.
Awkawkawkawk!
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