Cowboy Summer - 3. Lakeside History

In the land of sunrise and sunset, the days in august started nightmarishly early. Rhydian was just starting to think about what he wanted as his fantasy for the morning when the sound the breakfast bell rang through the house. There were groans and moans as the noise got louder, and Rhydian new in his little half-attic room that he had better be up before the breakfast was all gone.

After a ten second shower and a quick brush of his teeth, he found he needn’t have worried, because the only people occupying the long rough-hewn pine table were Caleb and Sam. The native American man was sitting sideways in the lap of the big Texan, jam on his fingers, while Sam took a bite of the toast he’d just been given.

“O-oh…”

“Mornin’ Rhyder,” Sam spoke around his breakfast, still munching, “Pull up a pew and dig in before the wolves get here.” Caleb made a move to get up, and Rhydian didn’t miss the quick tightening of Sam’s arm around his waist, “Stay cher. Rhyder’s cool, aren’t ya bud?”

“Erm… yes?” Rhydian sat down at a chair about halfway along and reached for a piece of toast. Caleb was watching him carefully.

“Not that I would expect some of these new kids to eat anything. Some of those girls weighed less than their saddles.”

“But they’re good riders,” Caleb interjected, “And paying customers. You can’t eat the view babes.”

Moreta arrived as her son finished speaking, with a fresh jug of strong smelling coffee and a chipped white and blue enamel kettle of tea. She set both down on the table just as the rest of the Iron Hill Lake guests came tumbling in. Besides the three pony-club girls there was a middle aged Yankee with her grown up daughter who had brought their own horses with them to ride the trails, and a native man in his mid-thirties with classically long hair and a small tight smile. Everyone made noises about good smelling food, and Rhydian was at least pleased that when Pal showed up with a platter of bacon and sausage that he got dibs for being the first guest down. People chatted about the usual things, weather, flights, and horses, length of stay and preference of riding. The pony-club trio jabbered excitedly about their planned ride and the jumping that they hoped to do. The next time Rhydian looked around, Sam and Caleb were gone.

“Sam said for you to meet him out back when you were finished,” Moreta said when she saw Rhydian looking befuddled.

“Thanks Moreta.” Rhydian started to hand her his plate, but the older woman pushed his shoulder back down gently.

“Eat some more kiddo. There’s no rush and you’re just skin and bones. You’re going to need the extra energy when Sam has you in the saddle for eight hours solid.”

Rhydian smirked at the thought of being ‘in the saddle’ for eight hours with a big, beautiful Texan, and grabbed another piece of toast before getting up.

“Gotta go!” Rhydian dashed back up the four flights to his room, found his boots and changed for his riding jeans before nipping back down to the back door. Sam was waiting for him looking like a Western wet dream. He was leaning against the porch railing with his hat drawn low over his eyes, thumbs hooked into the front of his belt, chewing gently on a piece of long grass, boots crossed at the ankles. Rhydian stopped and stared at him, his mind focusing on the loose bulge of denim at his crotch, and the soft, chapped lips, chewed on by even white teeth. Rhydian gulped.

“I c’n hear ya breathin’ Rhyder,” Sam pushed his hat away from his eyes and stepped of the porch, “Let’s go then bud.”

Sam walked with the new kid out towards the stable block and was pleased when Rhydian took the initiative to go in and grab the head collars that they were going to need. If Sam had been by himself he would have just hefted his saddle and gone out to the paddock, but he figured that might be a big jump for the kid who was still a little bit nervous. Sam held out his hand for the head collar and found Rhydian’s fingers touching his own. The big Texan ignored the contact, but he could tell that Rhyder was following him around with that puppy-dog sort of look. Caleb had been right with his warning, he needed to be careful.

Sam whistled between his teeth to the horses as they reached the paddock and Ikara and Shura came trotting on over to the sharp noise. Boy Latte was already gone, and Caleb had departed to work the top fields. Sam had wanted to go with him, but if Rhyder was ever going to learn to ride confidently, the boy needed a whole day on horseback.

He greeted Ikara with a palm to the gelding’s white snipe and stroked the velvet nose before looping the head collar over his ears. The pale boy managed to get the head collar on OK, but could not get Shura to move. Sam tucked the lead rope through the cheek piece and Ikara followed him with a nose at his shoulder over to where Rhydian was standing looking confused.

“He won’t budge.”

“Did you ask him to?” Sam ran his hand over the buzz cut of Rhydian’s hair before he’d thought about what the movement might have meant.

“I pulled on the rope.” Rhydian tugged on the lead rope and Sam sniggered as the dapple grey horse simply stood there looking bemused. “I don’t think he likes me.”

“Well why should he?” Sam took the lead rope from Rhydian and aligned his left shoulder with the horse, then gave a little snicker and took a step forwards. Shura moved with him and Ikara simply followed his cowboy towards the gate.

“H-how?” Rhydian nearly trotted along next to him as he walked with the two horses, quiet as sleeping lambs.

“As nice as you are Rhyder, you’ve ridden this horse once. If you want him to do things for you, with you, you need to spend time building that relationship. You need to make your way easier than his way.” Rhydian held out the lead rope to Rhydian, who took it gently, and kept pace with the taller blond, “Trust me, you ain’t goin’ ta win in a fight with a horse that weighs three quarters of a ton.”

Rhydian patted the neck of the dapple grey horse as they walked. The buckskin quarter horse followed Sam as though glued to the big Texan’s shoulder, and Sam held the lead rope with a loose hand as they walked.

“It takes time and confidence to build that relationship y’know. You should see Caleb when he works with the horses, it’s like he’s one of them. He can work with any horse so quickly. They trust him.”

“Why?” Rhydian glanced at Shura. Despite the fact that he was holding the lead rope, the horse was still obviously following Sam.

“From the moment he approaches them, he moves like they do, but he displays that he’s in charge. He isn’t a threat, but he builds on that relationship from the get go.”

“Sounds amazing.” As they reached the yard Rhydian snickered to his horse and smiled when Shura followed him into the stall.

“You remember how to do your tack right?”

Rhydian nodded, checked that the stall door was bolted and dashed off the to the tack room for his gear. Sam tacked up in three minutes flat and Rhydian managed to get Shura dressed correctly in a shorter time than it had taken the previous day.

“You gonna talk to that horse while you saddle ‘im up?” Sam was in the stall, leaning against Ikara’s shoulder, the horse’s soft nose in his cupped hand. As Rhydian watched the big velvet ears turned to the blond Texan and Ikara snorted softly. “If you wanna build a relationship you need to talk and listen. He should know the sound of your voice. C’mon.”

Sam clicked to his horse and lead Ikara out with one finger on the reins. Feeling like an idiot, Rhydian stuffed on his hard hat and followed him out with Shura.

Ten minutes later they were headed out and along the fence line towards the distant hills. Sam rode first, and he clicked and whistled and spoke to Ikara constantly. Rhydian watched Shura’s dappled ears twisting back and forth and clicked as he stroked the horses mane experimentally. One ear turned back and focused on him and Shura snorted softly.

“Sam?”

“Hmmm?” The big cowboy rode with one hand, tapping his leg, the leather of the saddle, the shoulder of the horse playing with Ikara’s thick mane.

“What you said about listening? What am I listening to?”

Sam chuckled and re-settled his hat over his hair.

“When you start to listen, you’ll find out bud. Caleb thinks you have potential. He likes to be proved right.”

What followed were the hardest few hours of Rhydian’s life. Sam rode him out to the furthest paddocks to check on the horses who grazed in the foothills below the woodlands. Sam showed him how to open a gate from horseback, and then made Rhydian do every one after that. They got on and off the horses a dozen times to checks hooves, run hands over hides and eyes and teeth. Rhydian was nervous about approaching the strange horses. They seemed half wild until Sam started talking to them in his low Southern drawl. Rhydian watched him carefully, and began to check over the horses in the slow, soft and subtle way that Sam was.

“You givin’ him your life story uh?”

Rhydian swallowed noisily and froze, his hand on the animal’s leg, his voice dying in his throat. He’d had very little to say to the strange horse, so has simply started tell the beast about his house, his parents car, his sister’s university scholarship.

“Um…”

Sam’s big hand ruffled his short hair and Rhydian felt a hot shiver of lust down his spine. Sam’s deep voice made his knees quiver and shake and he could feel himself start to blush as his jeans got tight. His heart thudded so hard in his chest that the boy imagined that the Texan could hear it. Sam’s hand vanished from the nape of his neck and Rhydian exhaled in relief. Being touched by Sam was so good that it was almost more than he could bear. Sam patted the roan horse Rhydian had been talking to and grinned.

“Well he seems fine. Let’s go Rhyder.” Sam walked back over to Ikara and swung himself up into the saddle without a care in the world. “It’s hot. Let’s go have lunch by the lake eh?”

The route to the lake took them through the low foothills before curving back down again and Sam kept them on a gruelling pace of fast trots and short walks. By the time the flat mirror surface of the long tear drop shaped lake came into view, Rhydian wondered if he’d ever be able to sit down normally again. When Sam stopped, he fell rather than dismounted from Shura’s saddle.

The dapple grey horse bent his head to where Rhydian stood with his hand on his knees and nuzzled his shoulder ever so gently.

“He cares about you Rhyder. You need to let him know you’re OK.”

Rhydian straightened up slowly and patted the horse’s neck as Shura continued to nuzzle at his shoulder and neck. The horse’s nose was velvet soft and fine and Rhydian found himself breathing in time with the dapple grey steed as his muscles relaxed and his mind cooled down. Eventually Sam’s clicking pulled him from his reverie and they took the horse’s saddles off and Sam attached to their bit’s a couple of extra-long lead ropes which would allowed them to graze, drink from the lake and lie in the shade of the twisted tree he looped them round.

“Welcome to Iron Hill Lake.” Sam said in a big show-and-tell sort of voice, “This is our bit of water.”

“It’s huge.” Rhydian stared in awe at the lake. He could just make out the other side through the heat haze, and in most places the grass seemed to grow right up to the water’s edge, giving way here and there to little beaches of rusty-yellow sand. Huge red boulders and flat topped rocks stood about the place as though a giant had scattered his marbles and then vanished without a trace.

“It’s about half a mile at the widest point, and it never seems to run dry. This place is how the Ranch got its name.” Sam took off his Stetson and resettled it on his hair, rolling his shoulders, “When Caleb’s grandfather first came here he stood on the shore and said ‘there’s iron in ‘em hills’, he was right o’course, because there’s rust in all the rocks ‘round here.” Sam yawned with his hand over his mouth and absent mindedly began to rip open his pearl snap button shirt, “So you wanna go for a swim in the lake Rhyder? We’ll have a bit of lunch before I whip ya into shape this afternoon.”

Rhydian stared as Sam’s body was revealed. There was no way the big Texan was showing off for him, but Rhydian couldn’t tear his eyes away. Sam was perfect; tan all over with all the right muscles in all the right places, and a ribbon of gold hairs leading from his navel into his sky blue boxer shorts. Rhydian gulped. Sam stood on the edge of the water in nothing but hat, boots and underwear and grinned at Rhydian in a way that made his heart jump.

“C’mon bud.” Sam kicked out of his boots, set his sat down and walked on into the lake until it was hip height, then vanished under the glassy surface.

Rhydian had never gotten undressed quicker.

Sam bobbed in the water and watched the boy swim out towards him. He knew this was risky, but he kept on forgetting himself. He and Caleb always swam when they came out this way, and mostly their underwear stayed dry too. When Caleb had warned him to be careful, Sam had heeded his lover’s words, but it was not in his nature to be guarded or unfriendly, and Lord knew that the boy needed a friend out here. Four weeks half the world away from anyone you actually knew? Sam didn’t fancy it so much himself, and Rhyder was seventeen, he was just a kid. Alright, so at that age he had been travelling hundreds of miles to rodeos and shows, but he doubted that Rhyder had experienced his sort of upbringing.

Sam made sure to keep an easy but clear distance between himself and the boy as they splashed about, and when they’d cooled off enough, Sam directed them both back towards the shore. They sat on the saddle blankets to dry off and Sam doled out the lunch from his saddle bags; jerky, apples, big ham sandwiches with pickles and mustard, a bottle of water that they had to share, carrots for the horses. Rhyder ate slowly, but Sam wolfed down his food in two minutes flat and settled back against his saddle, pulling his hat over his eyes. His fingers found a sweet grass stalk and he chewed it gently on one side of his mouth.

“How did you meet?” Rhyder’s voice was soft, almost like he wasn’t expecting an answer. “You and Caleb?”

“I knew I loved him from the first time I saw him,” Sam folded his hands over his abs and flicked the tail end of the sweet grass with his tongue as he spoke, “He took a lil’ longer t’come around though.”

Sam had shown up with Ikara in a beat up trailer and a pick up that was barely making twenty miles an hour with his foot of the floor and pretty much broken down in the driveway. Moreta and Pal had taken him in, helped him move the truck and found him a stable for Ikara. When he’d finished rubbing down his horse, clicking and talking to him, calming him, letting the big quarter horse know that he cared, he had turned to find a figure watching him from the half shadows near the door. Tall, dark, strong, beautiful, slender in a wiry muscled sort of way, watching him from under a black pinch fronted felt hat. Sam had smiled in that easy Texan way, and he’d seen the strange young man’s lips curve upwards just a little.

Ikara snorted and broke the moment.

“The following day I saw him working with this mad wild bronco horse that another rodeo cowboy had brought in. Poor thing had a bad scare in the ring and just wouldn’t settle in the stall at all. Second anyone got near him he just bucked and bucked like his life depended on putting his feet over his head. Caleb just connected with him on some deep spiritual level and within two hours he was leading that horse around like he was a little lamb. It was beautiful,” Sam smiled with the grass in his cheek, “I knew I loved him right then.”

And like a well raised, polite Southern boy, Sam had made his intentions clear and asked Caleb out on a date. He’d been pretty sure of the native man’s orientation from that first smile, and the hard blush and stammered response had made him sure. But unlike the way he was with the horses horse, Caleb was a bit backwards about talking to humans, and it had taken weeks of good horsemanship, early morning reliability, sweet smiles and little casual touches to remind Caleb that Sam wanted him, to get the dark eyed cowboy to accept a good old fashioned date.

Sam summarized for his young friend.

“Sounds cool.” Rhydian’s voice sounded awfully low and close, and Sam opened one eye and lifted his hat to find the boy next to him, leaning over him a little, a kind of lust-dazed look on his face like he’d been thinking about Sam’s lips. The big Texan sat up and leant around Rhyder before jumping up.

“Hurmmm,” He cleared his throat as he scooped up his jeans and began pulling them on over his boots, “We should head out bud. Got much more riding to do.”

They rode home via a few nice little slopes where Rhyder finally managed a couple of very short canters. Sam wanted nothing more than to ride out to wherever Caleb was and hug his man really hard. At the beach by the lake, Rhyder had looked like a boy in love, and Sam had kissed enough pretty boy’s before he’d found Caleb to know what that look meant. Caleb had always been smarter than him. He badly wanted to speak to his lover about the boy, and he hadn’t been careful enough with Rhydian.

Back at the yard, Rhydian watched as Sam packed away his tack, brushed down his horse and lead Ikara out to the paddock without a word. Shura nudged at his shoulder, and the boy started after the big cowboy and his horse with a little bit of hope. Sam was probably the most beautiful man Rhydian had ever seen, and even though he could hear the love in his voice when the Texan spoke about Caleb, it wasn’t enough to thwart the feeling growing in his chest.