Riverbend Equestrian Park was a pretty fancy name for a pretty fancy place. It was located just west of Lexington, Kentucky, in rolling green-pastured hills sectioned off with gleaming-white fences and was a "have-it-all" sort of enterprise when it came to horses, or nearly it all.
Colonel Jameson, the man who lived in the white-brick antebellum house in the middle of the complex and who seemingly controlled everything he could see, was musing about the "not all" of it one late afternoon. He was grousing to Tony Vera, the nameplate of the complex's School of Dressage, as they sat on the verandah of the "big house" and watched Sid Shelton put one of his jockeys and a racehorse through their paces out on the nearby practice ring. The show racetrack was located closer to the road winding out of Lexington so the Saturday and Sunday handicappers didn't traipse over the more manicured part of the complex, and the riding school stables were entered from a half mile down the highway.
"It's something we don't have."
"Yes, it is, that's for sure. But will it attract the right sort of people?" Vera queried the old colonel. Shelton always tried to defer to the Colonel with respect—although he always found a way to make the Colonel see the light—his light—of any issue. There could only be one man at the top of the heap here, and, while letting the Colonel think it still was him, Tony Vera and the rest of those working here knew it really was Tony. There was a hierarchy here. The stable hands and the riding school were at the bottom, the race course and Riverbend's own string of race horses and their jockeys were in the middle, and, even though the Colonel, sitting here in his wheel chair that would no longer take him beyond the portico of the big house thought he was at the top, he wasn't—Tony Vera's School of Dressage, the place where Olympic equestrians came to train, was at the pinnacle.
Tony liked to take new hires out to the entrance into Riverbend's administrative hub from the main highway and point to the unusual sculpture at the entrance.
"What does that look like to you?" he would ask, pointing to the art work rising on a knoll beside the intersection of the highway and the Riverbend drive.
"Why it looks like one of those Alaskan totem poles, but in bronze rather than wood," they invariably answered.
"Right," Vera would answer with self-satisfaction. "And what is unusual about it?"
"It includes the heads and legs of horses intertwined around the heads of men—riders."
"Precisely. And the first thing you need to understand around here is that there is a pecking order here. Everything falls into order. Those in the riding stables, like you, answer to and respond to anyone above them. Above you are the race track operation employees and above them are my dressage equestrians. And at the top of each of the separate operations are the men who ride. And I trust you can understand what I mean by the "men who ride." We are very special men here. You were hired because of that. Do you know what is special about your being hired?"
"No," the new hire invariably would say, hoping in his heart of hearts it was not what he feared, because men who were known to want other men were not normally hired into jobs like this.
"It's because all of the men we hire here prefer other men—and they only remain here if they honor and respond to the pecking order. Do you hear what I'm saying?"
"Yes, sir," most of the new hires would respond and then, to drive the pecking order concept home, Tony Vera would take the new hire straight to the tack room in the big horse barn, command him to strip and spread his legs, and would take first cocking rights. Others knowing of the new hire and being somewhere higher in the pecking order than the new hire would have also gathered nearby and, after Vera was done, would take their turn, from top rank down, in a rite of initiation that told the new hire exactly where he fit.
Occasionally a new hire taken to view the totem pole would note that horses were supposed to be king in Kentucky and at this enterprise. One had even had the gall to note that the face at the top of the totem looked more like a Wild West cowboy than a distinguished and refined dressage champion such as Tony Vera or even the white-bearded Colonel. When one did this, though, he was released from his job obligations right there and then and set out on the highway to Lexington to fend for himself.
Tony Vera had schemed hard to get to the top of that totem pole.
And it was for this reason that he probably should have been a little sharper of mind when the Colonel suggested an expansion of their operations.
"I think a rodeo would be a wonderful addition here. It would bring new life into the operations. What do you think, Tony?"
Tony hated this sort of thing. He usually found out what cockamamie idea the Colonel would have next and was prepared to ditch it or reshape it to his advantage before the Colonel brought it up with him. But this had come completely from left field—prompted, apparently, by the brochure of a rodeo troupe coming all the way from Wyoming for a performance at the Tennessee State Fair outside of Nashville.
"I think that would be great. That's a Wyoming-based rodeo, though, isn't it? It's not something permanently setting up back East." Tony felt reasonably safe to be agreeable about something that couldn't happen.
"I've had letters from them. They, in fact, are trying to find someplace to set up permanently in this area. I think the pasture by the lower forty might be a place to put in a rodeo ring. We could have an entrance put in right off the highway and there'd be no rodeo traffic to contend with up in this area. What do you think?"
"It's certainly something to think about," Tony answered.
He should have paid more attention to what the Colonel was saying, perhaps. But just then, his eyes were on the practice racetrack and he noticed that Sid Shelton was lifting the new jockey prospect, who was being interviewed for a position, off a horse and setting him on the ground. Even from this distance, Tony could see that they were kissing.
This was outrageous, he thought. The jockey wasn't even hired yet. Tony hadn't given him the totem pole talk followed by a proper initiation. He left the portico as soon as he could break away from the Colonel, not hearing at all what the Colonel had gone on to say after suggesting the addition of a rodeo, and marched deliberately toward the racetrack stables.
Sure enough, he found them in the corner of one of the unoccupied stalls. The jockey's jodhpurs and Shelton's trousers were hanging provocatively and challengingly on the side of the stall, and they hadn't even bothered to swing the stall door shut. They were down into a pile of hay, the jockey on his back, with his legs spread wide and held out with his hands while Shelton was grunting and groaning between the small jockey's thighs, working hard to get his thick cock into the small hole. He succeeded and started pumping away, bringing moans of satisfaction from the jockey, who was pumping his hips up into Shelton to get the full length of the plunging cock as Tony stood at the stall door and watched, his hand traveling down to his own basket.
