On the High Plains

The next morning at dawn we continued our journey, nodding twice to passing riders but otherwise seeing no one until we pulled into the outskirts of the settlement around the fort. We spent the next two days trading with different merchants and catching up on the news of the world. It seemed that there were ever more rumors about a war between the north and south and most of the people in Fort Worth were vehemently opposed to abolishing slavery; otherwise how could cotton ever be harvested so that the planters could make a decent living. I thought that was kind of funny since very little cotton farming was done that far west.

We started out stockpiling our necessities: foodstuffs that we couldn't grow at home. After that, I made a deal with a blacksmith for a goodly number of bars of iron. I found a merchant who swapped pelts for a hand pump and enough lengths of pipe to go from the house to the well and down to the water level. At noon, we found an old man just outside the fort selling corn shuck wrapped tamales three for a nickel so we splurged for a dime's worth, eating in the shade of a tree.

Moxie traded some of her goods for a bigger supply of beads, some spools of thread, two steel needles, and a bolt of blue cloth to use for clothes for Sam and his sibling. Moxie found a woman who bought her three remaining buckskin dresses for five quarters each; that was more than the cost of a good longhorn! Moxie used part of that to buy two other bolts of cloth, one white and the other in a bright colored plaid.

We had left the wagon, with the team unhitched but staked out, in a copse by the river where the horses could get plenty of grass and water. We'd go back there that night and have dinner, then unroll our bed under the wagon for the night. With all of the day's trading, Sam had gotten cranky and Moxie was tired so she walked back to the wagon while I stopped in at a saloon for a drink. I hadn't had a beer in over two years.

I was standing propped on the bar savoring the taste of a cool one when two men walked in. They looked like the average working man.

While the bartender was drawing two glasses for them, one said, "Man, did I get me some good tasting pussy last night!"

The other man looked at him like he was crazy. "Good tasting? Pussy? What are you talking about?"

"Hey, haven't you ever had any good stuff? Man, you don't know what you're missing. This little woman was sweet. I got her legs spread and licked my way up and down and then made a pig out of myself. Before long she was screaming and shaking and she tried to stuff my head inside her. After that, there was no doubt about me fucking that little widow. She couldn't get enough. It pays to eat pussy, even if you have to acquire the taste for it."

I was startled by his tale of lechery. I had never thought of doing such a thing to a woman but ... hm, well, maybe this ol' dog wasn't too old to learn some new tricks. I'd have to think about that. Maybe I had been missing out on something.

The next morning we were up early. While Sam nursed, Moxie and I ate breakfast of stale biscuits and jerky, washed down with steaming hot coffee. Moxie still couldn't drink her coffee as strong as I liked mine but she was getting to where she did like it mixed with about half a cup of water. I laughed every time I saw her fix a tin cup full of the weak stuff, but she just made a face back at me and went on.

After we cleaned up, we walked back into town to finish our shopping. Well, actually a lot of it was just looking and wishing, because I couldn't afford all that much, but we still had a pretty good sized wagon load of goods by the time we were finished. At mid-afternoon, we found a cafe and ordered food that we didn't have to cook: steaks and fried potatoes and some kind of greens, along with all the coffee we could drink. Moxie and I both still had several coins left over that we would put aside for another trip, so we felt pretty good about it.

Since there were several hours of daylight left, I hitched up the team, mounted up the family and we pulled out toward the lowering sun. The following day we pulled into the Parker's ranch yard late in the afternoon. Once again, they invited us to stay, this time having dinner with them at their big dining table, along with nine ranch hands. One of them started to say something about an Indian squaw but shut it off after a dark look from Joshua.

We were up before daybreak the next morning and Joshua had a hand bring out a little wooden crate filled with baby chicks. Lizbeth gave us some instructions for keeping them cool and fed, and we were off again. Unfortunately keeping baby chicks cool is harder than it sounds and we lost two of them before we could get them home, even though we added extra stops to make sure that had access to water.

Upon arriving home, we unpacked the wagon first, with Moxie's goods all going inside with the foodstuffs and the chicks. The rest of the stuff went to the barn for later use. Of course my first task the next day was to build a coop for the chicks to call home. I had plenty of feed for them, between the wheat and corn, but it had to be milled down a bit so they could digest it. Once we had a place where we could turn them loose, they took to it like ducks to water.

We settled slowly back into the routine of home life. Sam had begun to turn himself over in bed and was trying to crawl although he had more bumps than success at moving himself. It would just take time.

Talk about time, I had been spending a lot of mine thinking – thinking about what that man in the saloon had said. I knew I was going to try it; it was just a matter of when and how.

I had spent most of the day installing the new pump on a newly made kitchen counter, hooking it up to a pipe I'd run through the earth wall into a small trench I dug out to the well. I'd had to break off work on putting the pipe down to the water pickup point until the next day. Moxie had dinner waiting when I washed up. She still wouldn't eat until after I had taken several bites although I had tried to convince her that we were equals and could eat at the same time.

Afterward we puttered around for a bit in the light of a beeswax candle she had made but then went to bed fairly soon after she laid Sam down for the night. We lay together for a while, me rubbing her tummy, her purring like a kitten. Then she rolled onto her back and stuck her right tit in my face so I began to suck. She tasted so good! A few minutes later she had me change to the other side and while I sucked on her, I couldn't resist the temptation to finger her pussy. As usual she was already a bit damp and I decided that was the night for new things.

Leaving Moxie's tit, I kissed my way back and forth down her stomach and across her abdomen. At first she giggled, a sound she made about as often as it rained pennies. But when I moved around and pushed her legs apart, keeping my face in her soft folds of flesh, she gasped with surprise. I was surprised myself, at both the fragrance which was a delightful odor of arousal and the taste which was a cross between sweet and tart. Maybe, as the man said, it was an acquired taste but I immediately believed I could acquire the taste without too much effort.

I began to work my tongue up and down the puffy sides of her pussy, pondering closely for the first time the soft lacy flesh that guarded her precious entrance. There was a steamy heat emanating from her core like I had never known before. And with every lick of her crease, every taste of the sweet nectar that coated her soft flesh, I came to love what I was doing more and more.

I pushed my tongue deeper into her split and dragged it upward. Just as I reached the puffy mound at the top, Moxie's legs clamped painfully tight onto the side of my head and her body arched upward of our mattress. I was terrified that I had done something to hurt her. She began to shake like something had exploded within her and suddenly I realized my face was being flooded with warm liquid; I could only hope I had not done something to make her bleed. But the taste was not salty like blood; it was more of the sweet/tart taste from earlier.

After a few seconds, Moxie dropped back to the bed and her legs relaxed. I started to pull my head back to assess the damages but her hands were both clenched tightly in my hair, holding me pressed into the softness between her legs. Well, I figured I might as well resume licking her and see what happens.

Although she eventually released the pressure of her hands, she didn't move them away from my head so I assumed she was not in pain. I found that if I carefully held her folds apart with my fingers, I could delve into her open vagina with my tongue and find new flavors awaiting me. Still I noticed that she reacted most favorably when my tongue touched a little knob at the top of her crease, so I spent more time circling it and teasing it with the tip of my tongue. After a few more minutes, she had another one of those spastic reactions where she yanked my hair to force my face deeper into her pussy. It wasn't quite as explosive as the first time but she seemed to like it.

I was going to continue with the same activity, because I was having fun and I certainly did like watching her explode like that. However when she relaxed again, she pulled my hair, indicating that she wanted me over her.

When she said, "We fuck now, husband, we fuck hard!" there was no doubt about what to do next!

That night, Moxie tried to sleep inside my skin!

The next day I finished putting together the fresh water system but couldn't get the pump to work. Oh, the handle worked fine but nothing but air came out. I went back to the well and checked and rechecked to make sure that the pickup was below the water level. I rechecked all of the joints to make sure that they were watertight and not leaking. Nothing.

Smacking myself upside the head, I remembered what the seller had told me about priming the pump before using it. I took a bucket of water I'd drawn earlier and poured it into the priming tube and began to pump. Presto, chango! We had water! Moxie celebrated with me in wonder, not expecting to see water gush out of the pump's spigot. Ah, another successful project.

It was time to harvest the field corn, which had been left on the stalk until it dried. It would serve the dual purpose of providing food for the humans and the animals as well. Short term storage was on the ear in the shuck; long term storage included the kernels only but at least there was time to do the shucking as other tasks slacked off.

I had been thinking for some time that expanding the house was going to be a must do task, with a second child on the way. Basically the original house was just two rooms: one for kitchen/sitting room and the other for bedroom use. Chances were the dugout form of housing had some limitations space wise but I thought I could probably double the space and still keep a practical roof over it all without too much trouble. I also wanted to begin using some of the crumbled limestone blocks to make the walls, both exterior and interior, more sturdy.

Digging out the ground to a depth of three to four feet was a challenge. I used the mule pulling my plow to turn the earth at the upper crust but could only go so deep with that method. The last couple of feet plus squaring walls and corners was up to me and my trusty shovel. Actually I dug about six inches deeper than the original, deciding to put in a hard stone floor instead of relying on the packed dirt of the first two rooms.

All during the days when I was building onto the house, Moxie and I maintained our steady, satisfying pace of sex. Almost every night that she wanted to fuck, I now started out by kissing my way down her body – her gradually rounding body – and settling between her legs to kiss and lick and suck her pussy. After her shock from that first night, Moxie welcomed my attentions to her soft sensitive center. After that I don't think there was any doubt by either of us that we each loved the other, although we may have known it by different words sometimes.

One of our favorite activities evolved by experimentation after that first time I had made Moxie climax by eating her pussy. Moxie still loved having her feet and legs massaged but when I made her cum, she wanted my cock inside her. We found out that I could sit just below her bottom with my legs along her sides while she held her legs up in a wide vee, slip my cock into her pussy and then let her legs rest on my shoulders while I took my time rubbing her feet and legs.

I'd start with her feet, spending several minutes on each one, before moving down her legs. By the time I got to the inside of her upper thighs, she was oozing nectar and squirming from need and usually climaxed from the touch of my fingers. Then we'd migrate into any one of several positions, more often than not with her on her knees and me behind her, and have a deliciously fantastic fuck. The night's sleep that followed was deep, restful, and recuperative.

I had to take a break from the construction work to make a few hunting trips. It turned out to be a pretty good year for harvesting whitetails, although it seemed like they were not as fat and sleek as they had been in some years. However that just meant that I needed to bring in greater numbers. Since Moxie made it her job to take care of smoking or jerking the meat and preserving the hides, I spread the hunting trips over several weeks with a few days between each successful hunt for her to catch up while I returned to the construction project.

Slowly the new rooms began to take shape. I got the floors in, although they weren't the smoothest I had ever seen; still they were solid and easier to care for than the dirt floors – I hoped. I moved to the outer walls, bringing them all up to the outside ground level before taking any of them higher.

There were days that were devoted just to going out to my little personal quarry, loading up the skidder sled with stones and bringing them back. Once at the house, I laid them out roughly so they would fit together but that wasn't a major problem with limestone; it often just naturally broke along smoother lines than a lot of other types of stone which wound up in all kinds of shapes. Sometimes I had to use my sledgehammer to shape the stones a bit, or else add more mortar between the stones to hold them in place.

Eventually I'd have a little more than half of the walls below the natural terrain and the rest above it. I already had poles installed on one side of the original, what was about to become the center line of the house with the addition. Those poles, roughly six inch thick logs, held another log notched in horizontally which became the support for the roof poles which, in turn, were the base for the sod roof. With the new section, I would use the same center pole but slant the roof slightly to the other side; just enough to let rain run off, but there wouldn't be much slope.

I had good success with the deer crop but it is always nice to have a little variety so I rode down past the South Wichita one morning just to see if there was anything else available. I spotted a goodly number of tracks of several animals but didn't actually see the critters. There were lots of deer tracks and some intermittent longhorn tracks, as well as a few smaller creatures. Then in the afternoon, I spotted what I'd hoped for: tracks of a small herd of buffalo.

I trailed along behind them for a little ways, enough to see that they were just moseying along, in no big hurry, grazing as they went. They were quartering to the northwest, toward a loop in the river. I was hoping to find them before they crossed.

Sure enough they were grazing close to the river and would probably wade in and cross in a few minutes. I found a high spot, pulled out my rifle and settled down in a prone position for maximum accuracy. I selected what looked like a hefty two or three year old and carefully squeezed the trigger. He took three or four steps, stumbled, another step and then slowly folded down to the ground.

The rest of the herd probably smelled the blood from the downed animal and began moving off, quickly dropping into the shallow river and making it to the other side.

I retrieved my horse and rode down to the downed bison. My horse shied a bit but I ground hitched him and set about field dressing the kill. In order to handle that much meat, I had to chop it into chunks that I could move around.

The only way I could get him home in one trip was to use the Indians' method: a travois. Even at that, it was no picnic. I chopped down a couple of nice sized young trees and stripped off their branches, tying them on each side of the saddle. The horse didn't much care for the different rigging but he didn't have a lot of choice either. I got the hide tied onto the poles, tossed the various chunks of meat into the hide and then tied the whole thing together to make the trip home.

I had to start off holding the reins tightly to get the horse's mind off his cargo but after a couple of miles he seemed to get used to it. I still walked close to his head because I didn't want him spooking at something and dragging that meat all across the open countryside. I was glad the river wasn't any deeper or wider than it was or it would have been a nightmare to cross. As it was we made it home without any real problems and Moxie was ecstatic with my surprise.

Moxie busied herself for the next several days making dried smoked meat and jerky and in the meantime we feasted on delicious hump roasts. When she had time, she used pieces of sharp bone to scrape the inside of the hide until it was completely clean. When it was dried, she rolled it and stowed it away in the rafters for working later that winter.

I was glad to get back to the construction project. We badly needed the meat for the coming winter, of course, but I had high hopes of getting the new addition boxed in with walls and roof before really bad weather hit. Then I could work on the interior and retrofitting the old walls and floor with stone as time permitted.

I went back to work on the outer walls and soon had the stones cemented into U-shaped outer walls with only the doorway and two openings for windows still left open. For the next several days, I made a daily trip to one of the rivers where I spent the day harvesting as many tall young trees as possible, stripping down the trunks of all limbs and leaves. At the end of the day, I would have several bundles of long slender trees tied onto my sled for dragging back to the house.

When I figured I had about enough, I begin to work at tying the new "rafters" in place on the center pole and down to the outer wall. Moxie made a supply of long leather straps from deerskin for me to use in tying the poles together at several places along the new roof; we didn't want the poles separating during one of the infamous west Texas windstorms and letting sand from the New Mexico Territory to drop in on us. It turned out that I had underestimated but only by four poles. I didn't even take the sled back for them; the horse and I made quick work of a trip to the river to bring back the last of the rafter poles.

I remembered how backbreaking the work was cutting sod to roof the original house and had been thinking about some way to improve the process. For some time, I had been toying with the idea of a sod cutter. Now it was time to see if the idea had merit.

I adjourned to my forge. Not long after we had returned from the last trip, I had set up a wood burner to capture the burned off gases and feed them back into the fire as fuel, a process that had been used to make charcoal for many years. Although it was the first time for me to make such a burner, I had inspected several operating burners and spoken to a number of users which turned out to be great knowledge. The branches I had cut as excess from the barn and house construction projects made great wood for turning into charcoal. Given that I would need soft wood to make a hotter fire and most of the trees I had cut were not hardwoods, the situation was ideal; I easily got my basic fuel and cleaned up the area in the process. Suddenly I was an environmentalist!