by MJ Lyons
A different place indeed, for only those who enjoyed the company of the same-sex were allowed to live and love in Little Hope. A few of the women glanced at one another knowingly, smiling. They’d clearly heard of the place, for better or worse, and Narciso, as well, spoke up: “I thought Little Hope was a legend.”
I walked over to the bar, picked up the one good bottle of whiskey Sam had kept in the place and took a swig. I hated to admit it, but taking a man’s life, even one as lowly as Butler’s, always jangled the nerves. “That’s what Slick Sam said about the Obsidian Devil, and it didn’t serve him any.”
I set out that hour with four of the women and Narciso, who each had little enough to pack but seemed intent on finding out if Little Hope was a legend or not. In private, I’d expressed to Old Carol I thought she’d be joining us. She admitted it was tempting, if I told the truth about Little Hope, but said she’d stay behind and help the remaining girls try and find a civilized life, or else a way on to California or back to their families for those who had ’em. “I’m good with a rifle and the blacksmith is sweet on me, pity for him, so I reckon I can keep this place running,” she said.
“I figured you were a sturdy gal,” I answered, but was caught off guard when the big woman swept me into a tight embrace between her two big, meaty arms.
“Thank you, whoever you are,” she whispered.
I led the girls and Narciso on foot out of Last Ditch, heading on the road north towards the closest bend of the Rio Grande. For their part the women were each settlers who figured they could make an independent or adventurous life for themselves somewhere on the frontier, and Narciso was a young man up from a little farm in the south, abandoning his family in search of a more fulfilling life. The boy offered to carry my rucksack, but I growled at him, “You ain’t my slave,” although I admitted he could thank me in some other way later, and he seemed just fine with that.
“Some people say you were a hero of the Louverture slave uprising out east,” said one of the young women, a rancher’s daughter from Mississippi named Hilda.
I shrugged as we followed the lantern light through the dusty darkness. “That’s what they say.”
One of the other women, a clever financier’s daughter named Francis Desrosier of Boston—who’d come out west looking for adventure—scrutinized me. “If that’s true, you must be seventy years old. You don’t look a day over twenty.”
I didn’t even give her a glance, “Looks can be deceiving.”
“They call you a hero back east,” Hilda said, her eyes wide in wonder. “Black folk and white alike.”
“Believe me,” I muttered, “I ain’t no hero.”
Narciso, walking by my side, spoke up, “I’ve heard some people say that for every soul you send him, the devil grants you another year of life.”
“Some people do say that,” I admitted, “I don’t say much, and I much prefer the same of those I travel with.” I casually raised my hand to the handle of the Iron Queen to adjust it in the holster and didn’t hear another word as we pressed on into the darkness.
After a couple hours we came to the river and began to follow the twisting skein of the Rio Grande northwards. A few hours before dawn I spotted a fire burning near the river, an encampment with a few horses hitched nearby. We approached slowly, making sure to keep the lantern in plain sight, and as we drew close enough I heard a deep, surly voice call out. “Hold up there, hombres. Identify yourselves if you mean to approach.” I could see the glint of a rifle raised at us in the moonlight.
“Come closer to me,” I returned. “Push close my lovers and take the best I possess.”
“Yield closer and closer and give me the best you possess,” the voice called back in her thick Spanish accent. We approached the campsite where Dalia and a couple of her gunslingers awaited, roused from their sleep. Dalia eyed the new women up, and then turned to me, “Took yer time.”
I grinned, “Keen on some fresh meat, Dolly? Be gentle with these girls, they’ve been through the mill.”
She glanced over my shoulder where Narciso looked on at the women, armed to the teeth and dressed in ponchos and dusters, each every inch a bandito every one of ‘em. “Kept a prize for yourself, I see.”
“He followed.” I shrugged, then brushed right by Dalia to where Haughty Shade stood pawing the earth. I’d been placed in the care of the beautiful Appaloosa after I’d aided a group of Nez Perce horse breeders down from Oregon, when they’d gotten tangled up with rustlers north of Albuquerque, and we’d been together almost five years now. I’d never put my stock in men grown so fond of their horses you’d’a thought there was something perverse going on, but Haughty Shade was smarter than most men, and had saved my life so many times I couldn’t help but think of her as some fierce, sassy protector spirit from beyond the veil of this world. She was a storm of black spots on white, and the patterns on her rump made me think of thunder clouds blowing out of the north.
I fed Haughty Shade an apple as Dalia rolled her eyes at my administrations and turned to the folks from Slick Sam’s. “Well, come along you lot, you must be feeling wolfish. We set out at dawn so you’ll want to eat, drink and catch a few winks.”
“I was actually hoping to wash off the filth of Last Ditch,” I said, and one of Dalia’s women pointed me down a little slope. “Come along you,” I growled at Narciso, goosing his prat, and he followed readily enough.
The half-moon shone enough to light our way down to the embankment where a shallow eddy in the Rio Grande sloshed quietly against the rocks. I sat down on a flat rock, sighing. “M’dogs are barking,” I admitted to Narciso, who stood nearby, suddenly playing the shy maid. “Help me shuck my boots . . . ah, now that’s a mercy.”
The boy squatted between my legs, having relieved me of my malodorous footwear, and ran his hands up my legs, then my thighs. I smirked down at him. So much for any shyness. “What did you and that woman say to each other back there?” he asked, reaching for my pistol—although the Iron Queen stayed holstered on my side, if I make my meaning clear.
I leaned back on the rock, enjoying his attentions through my trousers as my snake began to wriggle. “Christian folk have the Gospel, back at Little Hope we have the word of Whitman. ’bout the only holy book we’ll allow to be read openly.” He worked at the buttons of my trousers. “We all learn a little of it by heart, helps us identify one another from outsiders.”
He had me at attention now and almost out of my rough spun clothing, but I moved his hand away. “Why don’t you head on in and test the water for me? I prefer some cleanliness afore a rutting, and I probably smell like the devil. Head on in, and I’ll quote you a little of what I know.”
He smiled and untucked his linen shirt, pulling it over his head to reveal a lithe, lean body, peppered a little by hair on his chest. My length strained at my trousers. “The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes,” I began, reciting what I remembered from memory, “or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market, I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.”
He wriggled out of his breeches and let his underclothes fall off and brisked up right quick, bathed by the moonlight in all his glory, a tasty piece dangling tantalizingly between his legs, before turning and taking a few steps into the water, shivering although from the cold or in delight I couldn’t say. “Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,” I continued, standing and unhooking the holster from my side. I placed the Iron Queen on the ground where I could reach from the water. “Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in the fire.”
I pulled my shirt up over my head, and parted with my trousers just as quickly. Narciso quickly learned that I didn’t much bother with fineries like underclothes. He stood in the water, half submerged, gaping at my length. You’d think my beau had never seen a cock before, the way he stared.
I slid into the water, shud
dering from the cold of the Rio Grande. “From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements, the lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms.” I bade him over to me and then turned him around, wrapping my arms around him and bringing my lips and teeth to his neck, nibbling the way I loved to. Narciso gasped as I reached down and found his stiff cock. I continued in barely a whisper. “Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure, They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.”
“That’s . . . pretty . . . ” He gasped as I returned my mouth to his neck. He could feel my enthusiastic little partner pressing between his legs. “Wh-what do I call you? The Devil?”
“Ezekiel will do, but only when we don’t have any clothes on, mind,” I murmured, stroking him. “Just don’t call it too loudly or you’ll bother the girls.”
I could see the tip of my length poking out underneath his own, and I began to thrust gently as he pressed his thighs together expertly to get me groaning. I was half tempted to send him scrambling naked up the riverside to see if the girls had brought any cooking oil; tired as I was, I wouldn’t deceive myself denying the couple of spared dreams making Narciso beg for it. Still, there’s plenty a couple of healthy young men can do that don’t involve cooking oil and their cocks. After getting well acquainted with his thighs I turned him around and we let our cocks become familiar as he pressed himself against me. There was a desperation to his kisses.
We ended up on the rock back with the Iron Queen, Narciso working me over with his pretty little mouth, the dark skin on my hands disappearing into the tangle of hair on his head, the two mingling in the shadows of the night.
After catching our breaths I dragged a spent Narciso up the embankment and deposited the half-naked boy in my tent before sidling over to Dalia. She was chatting up the Desrosier dame something fierce. Dalia kept a harem of girlfriends back in Little Hope; she had a habit for picking out the ladies who would end up running the settlement.
When she saw me Dalia bid her new companion into her tent, then stood and led me up an outcrop where one of her riflewomen, Kitten, was keeping lookout. They consulted before Dalia turned to me. “We’ve seen some lantern flashes south of here. Don’t mean nothing, unless one of your girls failed.”
I shrugged, “Poison’s less of a sure bet than a bullet to the head. Could be one of the men got a bum dose and raised the alarm.”
She clicked her tongue in irritation. “So much for getting any sleep tonight. Kitten, rouse everyone and break camp. We’re pushing for Little Hope by noon.”
Haughty Shade didn’t brook a stranger astride her, but I managed to calm her enough that little Narciso could ride with me. We doubled up on our mounts to make better time, especially with the threat of pursuit, and so by the time the sun reached its zenith we rolled into the valley of Little Hope. “I met a seer, passing the hues and objects of the world,” I called to the hidden lookout above the mouth of the valley, where one of Dalia’s girls surely had her rifle trained on me at the head of the queer bunch.
“The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, to glean eidolons,” a high, singsong voice called back. Irish was watching over us this afternoon. I pitied the fool who tried to get by the scope of her rifle and live to tell.
“Any crooks abound, Irish?” I called.
“Better fifty enemies outside the house than one within,” she called back. This was our usual greeting, a well-rehearsed exchange but comforting. If I had a home, Little Hope was it, I reckoned.
The settlement was called “Little Hope,” because when we’d founded it a decade back I’d said there was little hope we’d make it a year. The dozen or so settlers who’d followed me to find the abandoned Spanish homestead had proved me wrong, for here we were, ten years on and nearing a few hundred people in the valley.
And we’d begun to be known beyond the few trustworthy traders who passed through, for every few months some troubled young man or woman would stumble into town hearing tales of a “Greek colony” or a “landlocked island of Sappho.” Romantic euphemism for a village of Sapphists, bum chums, molly boys, lesbians, sodomites and the assortment of other folk we’d collected. A queer philosophy, admittedly, but we were a queer bunch.
The settlement inhabited a small, verdant valley just out of Mesilla Valley, about a day’s ride along the Rio Grande north of Las Cruces. The region enjoyed a sizeable tributary to the Rio Grande we called “Sweet Lickings,” that provided the life waters for farmers and townsfolk alike. Outside of Little Hope were a dozen small homesteads where men or women had paired up and created queer little ranching families. The town proper was a couple dozen ramshackle wooden buildings we’d repaired and built upon over the years, which we neared now.
“Over there’s the law enforcement office.” Dalia pointed to the first building we passed, where a couple of women waved. “I’m ’bout the closest thing to a sheriff you’ll find in these parts, but my women and I will look after you well enough.”
She nodded to a small house with a rough painted sign depicting the Rod of Asclepius. “That there’s Doc Poppy’s place. He’s a queer fish and he’s better with animals than people, but enough whisky and stitches and you’ll be near as new.”
We crossed a bridge over the stream, fat with the spring runoff, and passed Little Hope’s trading outpost, the burly blacksmith’s, the inn and tavern we called “Little Temperance,” a jest, as there was little temperance that occurred within. Then we came to Whore’s Corner at the centre of town. Dalia explained that there was a gentleman’s club and a bordello catty-cornered to one another that served men and women, respectively.
“Whorehouses work differently in Little Hope, mind. They’re owned and run by the . . . er, ladies and gents what work there, and they’ll run you off if you’re too unhygienic or unfriendly or un-sober.”
I could see Narciso eying up the gentleman’s club, and couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Like most of the young nancy boys that rolled into town I’m sure he pictured a New Sodom, a land of a thousand pleasures where handsome young men were worshipped and enjoyed nightly wine-filled bacchanalia or some such nonsense. Sure, he had looks, and he’d enjoy no shortage of bed-warming, but like life outside the confines of the valley, Little Hope was more hard work, backache, heartbreak and banality than handsome gentlemen and orgies. He’d learn.
We pulled up at the meetinghouse just off Town Square, a stone’s throw away from Whore’s Corner. Mother Josie, the informal leader of the town’s Friends, came out with a big, motherly grin for the newcomers, and began to help them off their horses and offer them hugs and welcome. The Quakers had shown up shortly after the founding of Little Hope and hadn’t left, despite being asked to. I didn’t put much stock in the holy book, and considered preachers a blight on the land. Josie was a Sapphic sister same as any of the women in town, but that didn’t seem to matter too much to her and her people. They were a mild, sheepish bunch, popular among those with vestiges of a Christian life who’d come to Little Hope, and so they’d been allowed to continue their meetings and tend to the spiritual and charitable needs of the community. With this flock’a sinners, I admitted someone had to.
Mother Josie explained that they could spend the nights comfortable enough in the meetinghouse before finding some place to make themselves useful. Most newcomers ended up apprenticing around town to find out the work that suited them best. I could tell Desrosier would end up working with the traders, and Narciso would probably sling booze at the gentleman’s club afore tiring of that.
When I moved to lead Haughty Shade away and head on over to my hovel Narciso went to grab my hand, but I pulled away from him. “You ain’t my problem any more. Make yourself useful and keep out o’trouble.”
His pretty little face fell at that, and Mother Josie shot me a look, but I had already slung my leg over Haughty Shade’s back and taken her into a trot. I was tuckered out and wasn�
�t interested in playing house with a nancy boy.
My cabin was on a little outcrop over the Sweet Lickings, a little single-room bach with a stable better furnished than the house proper. By the time I had Haughty Shade brushed and fed, Little Miss slinked onto the scene, eying me disdainfully.
“I don’t need any attitude from you,” I growled at her as the cat dodged between Haughty Shade’s legs, making the horse whicker in upset. I figured Little Mississippi was as close to a wild bobtail as a housecat could be. She was an unholy terror, as innocent looking as she was evil, a pint sized beast, scaring off visitors and tearing my bare legs whenever she could. We got along famously when we weren’t gunning to kill each other.
Little Miss followed me inside and promptly curled up in a ball in the middle of my bed. Once I’d shucked my travel-dirtied clothes I flopped on top of her, sending her into an apoplectic fit. The possibility of pursuit and my exertions riverside with little Narciso had kept me up all night, so I was out an entire night’s sleep and sorely missing the shuteye.
So I returned to normal life in Little Hope . . . as normal as life could be there. I patrolled the homesteads with Dalia and her girls, or took long lonely watch shifts where we had lookouts. I sometimes tended the herds of cattle with ranchers, else I made trading runs up to Albuquerque, or down to Las Cruces. Elsewise I spent my nights holed up with Little Miss and a book or two from Mother Josie’s coveted collection, or else on nights I was feeling sociable I’d pop into town and visit the Empress’.
Empress Haddock’s was as queer a place in Little Hope as any, the feminine name of the establishment betraying the masculine clientele of the gentleman’s club within. The proprietor was a lady as ugly as she was old, a terrible tart who would dress up in the finest French fashions and parade her debauchery about as she served drinks and flirted with anything that breathed. She claimed she was a world renowned burlesque star that none of us had ever heard of, but as she kept the place running and the boys of Little Hope happy no one complained about her excessive eccentricities.