Chapter 3

They were pretty much all out to the fence watching Running Eagle put the finishing touches to the last section when the Anderson boys, Hector and Jethro came riding up along with their favorite cousin Butch riding a grey Appaloosa that looked like some kind of "Ghost" horse. The Indian took one look at that mount and started to chant under his breath like he was trying to ward off evil spirits. Dixie was not one much to taking to such foolishness but she noticed the rider Butch was one of those loose and devil-may-care range riders who treated life like a book opening up for their enjoyment. She did her best to knock off some of the dust from the dirty fence raising job and smiled like an idiot girl waiting to be invited to the dance.

"So this is the new sheriff?" mused the tow-haired youth.

He was sitting with one leg pulled up across the saddle like he needed some rest for his hip and his knee. Hector and Jethro were both on the slender side for young looking western boys but Butch was built like a solid cord of wood real skimpy below the belt with long legs and up on top he had shoulders that belonged on a lumberjack. She could see why the boys were bragging on his expertise in a face to face knuckles fight because his hands were rugged and huge. They were not at all like a gunfighter's hands that tended to be long, slender and soft like a girl's tender bottom. A lot of the hired guns out at the Rocking "R" were in the habit of wearing thin leather gloves and she knew from experience that was a dead giveaway of their gun slinging ways.

Suddenly, Dixie knew it was time for her to learn more about men and why they wanted to put their hands all over her lush young body. She knew all about the birds and bees and she had been clued in by the nasty twin female sisters who lived right next door to the parson. They were always talking about "cock this and cock that" and telling her it was better to take it in her backside and not worry about getting pregnant. It all seemed like a lot of foolishness to her but now that she felt some strange tingles just looking at Butch sitting with his crotch spread wide open on top of his horse, she knew she wanted him to give her some new information on the "doing it" thing that the Anderson boys were always pestering her about. Even if she was almost seventeen, it still seemed pretty young to be pleasuring a man and pretending like she was all grown up and ready for being a woman.

The fact that these were not normal times and that now with her responsibilities of running the farm and acting as temporary sheriff there was not much time left for social friendships. Ever since the two strapping sons of Manuela came to the farm she had been fighting those urges to peek at them when they took their baths and she found that she spend more than just daydreaming time thinking about the bulges in their jeans. Of course, it could just be that she was hot-blooded like her Auntie Rose who ran off with a traveling salesman with a liking for Irish whiskey.

Dixie could tell that Pablo didn't appreciate her riding off with Butch to check out the south forty. They were only farming the core forty acres because her daddy couldn't afford hiring actual hands to help him and his son. The Indian Running Eagle was good for building fences and heavy work but had no interest at all in farming with an attitude that saw it all as an assault on mother earth. They had to leave the remaining 120 acres fallow because of the lack of hands to work the land without proper equipment. Still, it was necessary to fence the entire property in because they could always shift from one section to the other in alternate years saving the nutrients in the soil for another day. She was certain her father was thinking ahead for when he and her mother had more sons to work the land.

She rode behind Butch allowing him to lead even though she was the one showing him the lay of the land. He was just like most of the young men out west wanting to be in the front and not taking any instructions from females because their place was in the home and raising young ones. It had shocked her that they made her the sheriff because females didn't get much respect in being responsible for things outside their own home. Her suspicion was that they were impressed at how she was the only one who came up with some sort of plan to fight back against the Rocking "R" wild bunch and the fact that she had already marked "paid in full" on one nasty raider buried out on her farm.

They rode to the southwest corner of the property and she showed Butch how they had to repair the barbed wire that had been snipped and ripped up for almost one hundred feet destroying the fence posts and tangling the wire so it could not be used again. The mess was sitting in a small ravine on the outside of the fence and eventually they would cut it up into small sections and bury it where it would pose no danger to small animals or nocturnal wanderers. It was backbreaking work to put back together but only took minutes to tear down with the use of lassos tied to the saddle horns.

Butch shook out his saddle blanket and patted the place next to him stretched out like a long drink of sweet tea looking for company. At first, Dixie was a bit skittish but after a few moments, she tentatively planted her suddenly frightened buttocks on the blanket right next to him. She was wondering if this was to be that magic moment when she would enter the ranks of womanhood with full carnal knowledge of a man's tool between her legs. It didn't seem overly romantic to her like she had imagined with some handsome stranger falling head over heels in love with her and whisking her away to a life of luxury and ease in some big city.