Chapter 2
The color-beauty of the Sierra canyon was not as rich in summer as in early fall, but nevertheless richer than one could hope to find nearly everywhere. Almost every leaf was tinted, though the goldenrods were not yet in bloom; but most of the color was given by the ripe grasses, willows and aspens. At the near end of the canyon lay a small lake surrounded by a trembling aspen grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away to right and left round the shores swept a curving ribbon of meadow, green and brown dotted with pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple.
The walls of the canyon, too, were dashed with bits of bright color that gleamed out of the neutral granite gray. But neither the wall, nor the margin meadow, nor yet the gay, fluttering grove, nor the lake itself, flashing with spangles, could long hold one's attention; for at the head of the lake a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the main aspen belt of the basin, which seemed the very fountain whence all the color below it had flowed, was where one's eyes were filled and fixed.
Just beyond the lake's outlet, where a small gurgling creek meandered through gouged banks of red earth, lay the heart of the Dow ranch; corrals, pasture, barns, bunk house, sheds, and owner's living quarters a large rambling affair of rough-hewn redwood.
At eleven in the morning a few ducks were sailing on the lake, apparently more for pleasure than anything else, while robins and squirrels were busy in the groves, intensifying the feeling of grateful isolation without ruffling the deep, hushed calm and peace.
But while the canyon was the hub of activity on the Dow ranch, there were also thousands of acres of virgin timber, lush pasture land and meadows, and bubbling trout laden streams stretching for several miles in all directions.
In a remote corner of this acreage, one of Ned Dow's ranch hands was jamming a post-hole digger into unyielding earth. Swearing, he left the long-handled tool resting in the six inch deep hole while he wiped the back of one hand across his sweating brow, then turned his aching eyes upward, mentally chastizing the overbearing sun. An unfathomable thought passed quickly across his eyes. With sure but laborious steps he left the unfinished hole and headed toward the sorrel horse grazing contentedly not far away. With shaking hands and pain-pounding head, the ranch hand mounted the surprised and unwilling steed, kicked him gently, and began guiding him toward the steep trail rising from the canyon.
"Come on, you slow witted nit," Ken Chester mumbled half aloud as he urged the horse toward the crest of the ridge, bending dejectedly forward in the saddle and digging his aching knees into the sorrel's flanks. "Come on, dammit! We're both gonna get wet!" he exclaimed, glancing back at the blue-gray clouds that were quickly gathering and moving toward them.
Laurie Dow leaned lazily against a corner post of the corral her uncle used only for pack animals, thinking, all guilty thoughts of the previous night forgotten as she reflected happily on the fact that she was finally home for the summer, for almost three months, and free, free to ride and swim and just be herself again. Not that she disliked school; it was simply that her summers on the ranch, away from the restrictions and madcap pace at the private school, were times she cherished and especially looked forward to with great excitement.
If there was one thing she loved more than any other, it was riding out alone to explore the meadows and canyons and bathe her nostrils with the scent of pine and the sweet-smelling flowers that grew in tiny clusters beside the many streams in the area. Sometimes she even stripped off her clothes and took naked sun baths while her horse grazed on the patches of succulent grass along the banks. Then, she would rise and sit directly in the middle of the icy pool of water, allowing her deliciously rounded young buttocks to turn blue with the cold, until at last she could bear it no longer. Oh yes, it was a life Laurie loved better than any other.
Suddenly it began to rain. Big soft drops splashed down on Laurie, soaking the light shirt and faded jeans she wore, and cooling her off for the first time since she had arrived at the ranch that morning.
She turned, then, and raced girlishly for the tack room with a breast-bouncing gait, her long red hair bobbing up and down as she went.
At the crest of White Chief Ridge, Ken Chester rose in the saddle again, glanced at the sky, and guided the tired horse along the ridge's spine while he mopped the perspiration from his forehead and the back of his neck with a red bandanna. The effort of the climb had set his body screaming again; every muscle in his powerfully built frame felt like lead weights had been attached to it and the black sheep of the leprechaun family that ruled his Irish heritage had returned again to busily begin sandpapering the backs of his eyeballs.
Some two hundred yards short of where the trail dropped down toward the White Chief
Canyon line shack, the Dow Ranch's newest hand tugged the nearly empty bottle of tequila from the sorrel's saddlebag, pulled the cork out, and tipped the bottle to his lips.
"Shit!" he bellowed into the still air as he returned the bottle to its resting place and wiped the back of one dirt-covered hand across his lips. "Whoever said 'a little hair of the dog' oughta be shot."
Rider and horse were halfway down the steep trail when the summer storm caught them.
One minute the sun was a hot, angry blister in the blue skin of the late morning sky, and the next the richly molded clouds that had been rising over the Sierra's had swelled with a visible motion straight up. In less than an hour they had attained full development and stood poised in the blazing sunshine like some colossal mountain now covering the calm, sunny sky with its white, pearly form relieved by gray and purple shadows in the hollows.
Presently a thunderbolt crashed through the still air, ringing like steel on steel, sharp and clear, its startling detonation breaking into a spray of echoes against the cliffs and valley walls. Then down came a cataract of rain, big drops sifting through pine needles, pattering on parched red-brown earth, covering the ground and making it shine with a continuous sheet of water that, like a transparent film, fitted closely down over all the rugged anatomy of the landscape.
In a few minutes the cloud withered to a mesh of dim filaments and disappeared, leaving the sky perfectly clear and bright, every dust particle washed away. Everything was refreshed and invigorated, a steam of fragrance rose, and the storm was finished: One cloud, one lightning-stroke, one dash of rain . . . one early summer thunderstorm reduced to nothing.
By the time Ken reached the line shack at the north end of the aspen grove on White Chief Creek, the sun was out again, but he was thoroughly soaked. Swearing, his Irish temper heightened by the agonizing hangover, he unsaddled the sorrel, wiped him down, and turned him loose in the small corral.
Carrying his saddlebags into the small shack, he laid them on the rough-hewn table, extracted the bottle of tequila, and took another healthy pull. "Fuck Ned Dow," he thought as the liquor burned down his throat, "That's all the work he's going to get out of this body today."
Carrying the bottle with him to the lumpy bed built into one corner of the single room shack, Ken set it on the floor, stripped the wet clothing from his aching body, and lowered himself gingerly onto the hard wooden-framed bed and its excuse for a mattress. He covered his lean naked frame with an old surplus army blanket, and gratefully let his drifting thoughts take him into refreshing sleep.
Ten minutes after the rain stopped Laurie had caught and saddled the young chestnut stud, which she had named Sniffy, and now was riding along the worn path that fringed the creek bank. About a hundred yards above the lake, she urged the stallion into the water where a wide shallow place in the stream afforded an ideal spot to cross to the other bank.
When she had made the crossing, she rode awhile beside a grove of aspen full of trembling light, and marveled at how the leaves shimmered in the breeze. It was the way she felt, free and airy, as huge herself as the stretch of canyon that led up the Chiquita Range and poured away into the distance on either side of her as far as she could see. She rode in silence for twenty minutes or so, then felt Sniffy begin to snort and breathe heavily as he began the steep ascent of the trail up into a canyon between two ridges. She knew there was a pool another mile in and intended to take a quick dip in the raw, to cool off again, once she got there. The rain had stopped before she had finished saddling Sniffy, and it was once again becoming swelteringly hot.
Just as she had thought, the pool was still there when she finally reined in her mount, a short time later, and dismounted to look around. Laurie smiled as she saw small squirrels scurrying away in the underbrush, roused from their foraging by the approach of her footsteps. The pool itself was higher than she had ever seen it in past years at least twenty feet deep and a dark cold blue. It looked so inviting that she resolved then and there to make good her promise to herself to have a good refreshing soak.
She unbuttoned her blouse and jeans, peeling them off eagerly until she stood there in the sun-mottled shade, clad only in her skimpy white bikini panties and brassiere. Then she reached behind her back and unfastened the hooks of the lacy brassiere, her full young breasts spilling free and bouncing voluptuously for a moment from the sudden release, the small pink nipples hardening responsively at the sudden exposure to the air. Then she leaned over to slip her white nylon panties down over her lushly flaring hips, tugging and pushing at them until they were rolled in a thin useless circle around her ankles. Kicking them free, she laughed and raised her slender arms over her head, reveling in the wanton nakedness of her ripe young body.
After a moment's pause, she waded into the water up to her trembling thighs, standing still just long enough to allow her naked young body to absorb the cold shock. Then she lunged forward with arms out and splashed full length into the pool, shrieking and giggling from the painful jolt of the icy water surrounding her completely exposed skin. She dove under and came up a few seconds later, surfacing with a sudden whoosh, then tread water leisurely as the exertions of her limbs warmed her and made her less uncomfortable. She swam back and forth across the short oblong length of the pool, sometimes stopping to float on her back and catch her breath, then tucking up her legs to roll over for another furious sprint to the slick rock wall at the far end of the pool.
At last, exhausted, she emerged dripping and walked to a smooth scooped out boulder where she lay down nakedly to bake her face and heaving stomach in the hot sun.
When Ken Chester awoke, his headache was gone. He sat up in bed rubbing one large hand across his sleep-filled eyes and yawned. Swiveling on the bed, he dropped his feet to the floor, accidentally kicking over the empty bottle of tequila. As it flopped over, spinning slowly away from him across the bare wooden floor, his eyes registered something akin to hatred; a glassy stare that reflected the disgust he felt with himself. Slowly his eyes lifted from the now spent bottle and caught a glimmer of light reflected off last night's soiled and empty glass which stood on the table across the room next to his portable typewriter.
Ken's shoulders slumped and a sigh escaped his lips as he stared wearily at the silent typewriter and the finished manuscript beside it. For several minutes his gaze remained fixed on the bulky stack of dog-eared paper the fruits of four month's labor. Four months crammed with days of blistered hands and nights of pecking and straining his eyes under a kerosene lamp. Four months of breaking his back for Ned Dow and four months of feeding his own ego. Four months of frustration that erupted last night and sent him scurrying for the bottle.
Fuck it! Ken thought. What I need is a week of doing nothing. Just lazing around, soaking up sun, swimming in the pool in the aspen grove, drinking.. . Shit! What I really need is a woman. A woman. It had been nearly a year. At first it had been his conscience. At first he had told himself it was only respectful to at least wait until the grass had begun to grow on the small cemetery plot. And then it had been the dream of getting away from it all and writing the great American novel. And so he had come to the Dow Ranch at his brother's suggestion.
He had gotten the job, even volunteered to mend fences and live in the line shack. And he had thrown himself into the work, both the labor of day and the agony of night, trying to keep the memories of his dead wife from overwhelming him. And he had succeeded. Until last night. Until he had forced himself to read the completed manuscript at one sitting. It had been so full of self-pity that it disgusted him.
And so he had drug out the bottle of tequila and gotten thoroughly and rip-roaringly drunk. But it hadn't helped. And he was still faced with rewriting the novel. Fuck it!
It can wait. So can Ned Dow. He was going to take a few days off. When he felt like it he would return to the fences, working from sunup to sunset if necessary to catch up. Then, and only then, he would start on the rewriting. But, dammit! Finding a woman would sure help.
Buoyantly, Ken rose from the bed, walked to the old duffel bag in the corner and extracted the faded blue swimming trunks. He had one foot inside them when suddenly he thought: Hell! If I'm going to be liberated, I might as well start now. He kicked the trunks aside, grabbed a towel, and left the cabin, striding stark naked down the path to the pool in the aspen grove.
The rays of the sun had grown too warm, and Laurie rolled over on her stomach, exposing her naked back to the sun, staring down into the now glassy calm water to watch the reflected clouds which were beginning to gather once again. For perhaps ten minutes she relaxed, blanking her mind to all but the drowsy warmth of the sun and the sound of the stream cascading into the pool from an outcrop of rock above and behind her. Then slowly her mind drifted back to the lewd spectacle of the previous night in the motel.. .
As Laurie lay there, her mind recreated the salacious scene vividly and she could almost see herself on the patio outside the motel room looking in at the nakedly writhing couple on the green carpet. Her mind focused on the lust-inciting memory of the prurient activities with the same precision as a camera with an automatically focusing lens: The beautiful raven-haired girl was slithering forward on her knees with that hungry expression glowing lewdly in her eyes, taking the muscular youth's long hardened penis in her hands, squeezing, caressing and stroking it, pursing her red lips as it swelled before her passion-filled eyes.. .
I can't think like this! Laurie's mind screamed in warning. It's naughty! Sinful! But she continued to lie there motionless, holding her breath, feeling a tantalizing series of lewd involuntary sensations churning deep in her belly as she-let the licentious images filter incitingly through her aroused young mind.
The teenage girl's lips ovaled as if she had waited forever for this magic moment! Her cheeks hollowed as they sucked the expanded shaft into her mouth, obscenely bloating with the lewd effort to take all of its massive length, choking as it rammed deep into her throat. As it slowly withdrew, her soft sensual lips clamped tight over the lust-bloated cock-head contorting the youth's face in depraved pleasure. With only the bulging head of his blood-engorged shaft now buried between her tightly pursed lips, the youth grunted and flicked his hips, ramming the glistening rod of flesh forward. Only the wiry blond curl of his pubic hair could be seen nestled against the young girl's face, tickling sensually at her pert nose and passion-flushed cheeks.. .
Laurie could almost feel that massive length of swollen male flesh buried in her own throat, could almost feel those wiry pubic curls tickling her own face, and she realized that that was exactly what she had wanted last night what she wanted right now!
The pretty adolescent realized, admitted and understood now what she had refused to believe before. She rolled over onto her back and looked down at her passionately quivering breasts and saw the unmistakable proof. Her small nipple-buds were turgid, jutting out from the blood-darkened areoles of her heaving breasts like tiny pink mountain peaks.
A tender aching had begun between her involuntarily flexing thighs in spite of the revulsion she knew she should feel for her evil thoughts. She moved one hand to cover a tautly aching breast and felt the contact of her own fondling hand intensify the obscene throbbing that was building in her vagina. Her entire being quivered with a lewd arousal that spread rapidly through her body, its heat outdoing even the warmth of the sun as her thoughts avidly returned to the couple in the motel room . . .
The naked young girl was lying on her back, feet planted on the floor, with the whole plane of her black-haired pussy-slit spread open to the blond youth's lustful gaze. Then he was kneeling, slithering between those wantonly spread thighs, falling forward, fiercely crushing his lips to the girl's. Pushing up, he lapped at one excitedly stiffening nipple after the other, then licked a fiery trail down over her panting belly into her lust-dampened pubic hair, and finally stabbing his tongue deep into her uplifting cuntal mount.. .
Laurie's own hips jerked upward as if it had been her seething vagina that received that hotly stabbing tongue. A wave of shame flushed her cheeks crimson as she fought to control her passion-stimulated body. She was wildly aroused and there was no way of deluding herself that she wasn't. Oh, God . . . God . . . she needed release! Needed it desperately! Her obscene arousal was tenfold what it had been last night!
She began to massage her throbbing breast.. . slowly . . . rhythmically. Her mind blotted out all the evils she had been led to believe came from wickedly fondling her own body. There was only her passionate urgency now, her naked need for release from the intense arousal of her young quaking body.
The trembling young redhead continued to massage her breast, avoiding the desire-stiffened nipple at first. Cupping the cream-white mound in her fingers, she kneaded the translucent flesh until whirlpools of passion seethed crazily within her. Finally, she touched one achingly taut nipple with her thumb, feeling it quiver and harden with the firm contact, then began rolling the ball of her thumb back and forth across the rising nipple in her sexual frenzy.
Arching her back, she raised her curvaceous hips and red-gold pussy mound up off the smooth rock, braced her pelvis by pressing the soles of her feet against the hard granite, and spread her muscular thighs open wide to expose the fluted pink edges of her pussy. Still she massaged her wildly throbbing breast, teasing the hardening nipple, pinching it between thumb and forefinger until it pulsed with a life of its own.. .
In her lewd memories, the highly aroused girl was positioned in the same manner, only between her spread-eagled thighs a glistening tongue stabbed unmercifully into her squirming loins, and on her face was registered the forbidden pleasure of that lewdly plunging tongue.. .
Laurie had no such tongue, but it didn't matter. Her free hand had crept in between her wide-splayed thighs and found there the moist warm secretions from her excited vagina. Gently she slipped her middle finger into the slippery pussy-flesh and began manipulating the soft inner lips until she could feel her bud-like clitoris become rigid and tingling. The middle finger of her other hand sought and found the tiny trembling pleasure-bud, and she began to gasp in total abandonment. Her hips thrashed and her hands squeezed, one alternating between her aching nipples, the other slithering in and out of her wetly seething pussy. Faster and faster her fingers squeezed as she blanked her mind to all thoughts except last night's lust-inciting memory.. . and today's wild release . . .