In most senses Bran had been invisible at the Hayden saloon the couple of months he'd been there. But as he came out of the back room into the main saloon hall, carrying the bucket of water Levi Yost, the saloon keeper, had told him to use to freshen the bowls in the rooms upstairs, he looked at the tall Christmas tree in the corner. Sadie, Katie, and Faye were busy happily decorating the tree with colorful bows from their own drawers. The tree had been his idea.
At first Levi had given him the fish eye when he'd suggested that a tree would liven up the room and make more men come into the saloon. The saloon and brothel manager had been skeptical.
"We don't need no reason to entice the men to come in here; they show up on their own and fill the place every night. And I just don't know. A live fir tree indoors? I've heard of it, of course, but that's more for those hoity-toity sissies back East."
It was a Christmas tradition that had come from back East, for sure, Bran knew. His family back in Pennsylvania had always had a Christmas tree, bringing the tradition with them from Germany. It was one of the few family memories Bran still had. He'd lost his family to an Arapaho war party when coming over the Rockies below Hahn's Peak in a wagon train. Somehow Bran had been overlooked in the slaughter and had been taken in, here in Hayden, Colorado, on the Yampa River, by the family that owned the livery stable.
Bran had lived with them for a few years, being treated more like a slave that the Union not long ago had fought a war to get rid of. But when old man Toliver had found Bran laying under his son, Quin, on a haystack in the back corner of the livery one night, Bran had found himself working at the Hayden saloon the next day and living in a shed out back.
"That's the place for you," Toliver had said, "and you keep away from my son, you hear?"
And since old man Toliver was holding a shotgun when he'd said that and was looking real mean, Bran had agreed to stay away from Quin—although it had been Quin, of course, who had accosted him.
Bran hadn't been told his duties at the saloon would involve lying under men, although Bran had no illusions that it would come to that. The saloon did have a male prostitute for men who swung that way, the life of a cowboy on the range helping to make a man settle for another man—Sadie, Katie, and Faye, being the girls for the regular customers—and Bran was small, blue eyed, with curly blond hair and had a body that was perfectly formed, and thus ripe for the job. But Bran hoped that he'd have found a way to move on—or back to Pennsylvania to find family—before it came to that. Yost had him carrying water, cleaning up the rooms upstairs between uses, keeping fires going in the fireplaces now that winter was setting in in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, and doing general fetch and carry duties.
As it turned out, Yost was pleased with the Christmas tree idea, not least because the girls were enjoying decorating it so much that they were bouncy and flirty with the customers, which seemed to be increasing the saloon's revenues.
Bran had worked through the women's rooms on the west side of the second floor and was moving over to the east side, when he became aware that the "best" room on the front east corner was in use. The women had a "best" room at the front on the west corner to entertain the more important and high-spending men too, but this one was the "best" room for Sam, the male prostitute. Behind that room on the east was Sam's room for regular customers, which, of course, wasn't near as grand, and then Sam's own bedroom was behind that, at the back, which wasn't grand at all. It was grander than the shed Bran was sleeping in, though.
From the sound, Bran knew there was quite a session going on in the "best" room. He hadn't realized that any of the rooms were in use this early in the afternoon, but Levi had told him to change the water and towels in all of the rooms, so Bran knew he'd have to slide into the front-east "best" room as unobtrusively as possible and get on with his business.
It was groans and heavy breathing that he was hearing, but it wasn't Sam. Sam was off in Kansas visiting his sick mother. The guy who was moaning was Caleb, Sam's temporary substitute from up Slater Creek valley. Business had picked up with him here. He was younger, fresher, and, some of the clients said, better looking and with a better body than Sam. Levi was making noises about maybe Sam just not coming back, but Bran had talked with Caleb. He just wanted to have money to rebuild a barn for his foster father up in the valley. He wasn't looking for this to be permanent.
Caleb was making more noise than he usually did. Bran decided this meant his customer was extra demanding. He clicked the door open and moved around the side of the room to the water bowl on a bureau. There was a pail beside the bureau. He'd have to empty the old water in that, put fresh water in the bowl, exchange the towels, and creep back out of the room with the dirty towel and pail of dirty water.
It was a big room and fancier than the regular rooms. Both of the "best" rooms were just that, outfitted more like fancy parlors, with red-velvet coverings on the walls and heavy drapes at the windows, upholstered chairs at the fireplace, a braided rug on the floor, and a copper bathtub in the center of the room.
In the "best" rooms, the clients were treated to a bath before the sex. The women and Sam liked using these rooms the best, of course, because they got the men clean for probably the only time in a month—and before if not during sex. The sex usually started when the men were still in the tub, and Bran saw that there was no difference here. Water was sloshed out of the tub and onto the floor like there had been some sort of wrestling match going in the tub—which probably was true. Bran hadn't been called on to fill the tub with water heated up down in the back room of the saloon—one or both of the serving girls must have done that—but he knew he'd be the one to have to clean up after Caleb and this man were done.
The man was tall, broad shouldered, and barrel and hairy chested. Probably in his forties, but a hands-on worker, because he was heavily muscled. His waist wasn't thin, but his abs were laid out in plates like the illustrations of Roman soldiers Bran had seen in picture books.
From what Bran could see of the root of the man's cock as he fucked Caleb at the foot of the four-poster bed, the man was big in that department too. His balls certainly were big. They were flapping on Caleb's buttocks as the man worked on Caleb's hole. Caleb was on his back, running along the foot of the bed, one leg extended to the floor and the other one running up the man's torso. The man was standing on the floor with one leg and had the other one bent on the bed. There were pillows under the small of Caleb's back that turned his pelvis up to give the customer a deep angle.
Caleb was naked and the man was naked too other than that he was still wearing his boots. Bran wondered how they had managed that—whatever had gone on in the tub before this—with the man still wearing his boots. Keeping one's boots on wasn't that unusual, though. One of the things the prostitutes were careful to do was to make sure the man's spurs weren't still on the boots. The prostitutes only made that mistake once. Bran had seen customers in these rooms who didn't even take off their hats—just opened their flies and bent Sam or Caleb over the bed.
Caleb's eyes followed Bran as he moved through and back out of the room. They seemed almost to be pleading with him for some sort of help, and he was groaning and moaning to beat the band. Bran needed no more evidence than that to know that the man was huge in the cock department. But there was no help to give Caleb. He was doing what he was here to do—what he was being paid to give.
Bran trotted downstairs with the dirty towels and pail full of dirty water with mixed feelings. The man's body was powerful looking and it was arousing to think of accommodating a huge cock like the man must have—Quin's cock hadn't been oversized. Neither had been Mr. Toliver's, whose problem with Quin fucking Bran had probably been more one of jealousy than propriety.
The light was dim in the back room when Bran got down there. He threw the dirty towels on the pile beside the wash tub and went out into the back yard and dumped the bucket of dirty water, leaving the door to the outside open when he'd returned and pumped clean water into the pail from the pump at the sink.
He didn't know whether Toliver had been in the room all the time or had come in through the open door, but he suddenly found himself in the embracing arms of a strong man behind him, a man who was panting heavily, a man who held a calloused palm over Bran's mouth and pulled his head back, arching his back to the man's chest. Bran's britches were being jerked down from behind and fingers were forcing themselves in his channel. And then a man's cock. Bran knew it was Mr. Toliver because of the crook to the right of the cock. Quin's cock crooked to the left.
Toliver was in high fuck, and Bran was just standing there, taking it, half in relief, because it had been a while since Quin had last fucked him and Bran had left the "best" room upstairs in arousal, when Levi Yost walked in on them.
