The boys reached the cabin up the valley in the heart of the Sawatch Range northeast of Gunnison, Colorado, near nightfall and also at the time the snow started falling.

“I’ll stable the horses and check the cattle,” said seventeen-year-old Thad. “You find the candles and get a fire going in the fireplace.”

“I don’t like this snow,” Thad’s fourteen-year-old half brother Cory said. “We could get stuck up here for days.”

“Your ma told us to stay up here for four days,” Thad said. “So it don’t matter much if we’re snowed in or not. In fact it might be a good thing. I gotta check that the cattle are in shelter and have enough feed. You get on into the cabin now and start warming it up.”

“Seth was just up here last week and laid in all that was needed to the end of winter. I don’t see why we--”

“You don’t have to see why, Cory. Just git in the cabin and do what I say.” Thad had had the boy up to here already, complaining and asking questions he should be knowing about all the way up from the ranch down near Gunnison. Thad knew as well as Cory did that Seth had already come up and winterized the mountain section. That’s not why they were up there. And why they were up here had Thad tied up in knots.

He couldn’t complain much once he got into the cabin. Cory had a good fire going, had found the candles, and also had the wood stove going and was cooking the beans and fat back they’d have for their dinner. Then it was straight to bed, hopefully without too many questions.

But there were questions, and they came while the two were stowing the beans, fat back, and coffee away in their stomachs. Both boys were handsome and trim lads. All of the Stanton men were lookers, hard bodied, and virile. All the women in the Gunnison area set their caps for them no matter how peculiar and wild they were in their ways. The women knew the Stanton men came always sniffing for it and ready to go both ways, but the women wanted what the Stanton men had between their legs anyway. Cory’s ma had been no different on that account.

“Nobody had to come up here today,” Cory said. “And why would we have to stay four days? What ain’t you tellin’ me?”

“I sure as hell didn’t need to come up here today. It’s you who needed to come up here. And your ma wouldn’t let you come alone. She never thought of the burden she put on me for this. All she ever thinks about is her precious little Cory.”

“Why? Why me?”

“Don’t make me say it, Cory. You know as well as I do. You know what it means to be in season for the boys of the Stanton family. You’re in season now. There, I said it.”

“But so what?”

Thad didn’t answer for a long minute as his memory went back three years to when he was fourteen, when he came into season. It came upon him in the barn, in an empty horse stall, where he’d just finished mucking up. When the hand reached out and took his arm, he shrank away, trying to get around and out of the stall, but it was too late. He was pressed up against the side of the stall, a strong hand cupping his chin, pulling his head back into the hollow of a muscular chest. His jeans were jerked down off his buttocks and fingers were inside him, opening him up. He tried to scream, but a dirty bandana was stuffed in his mouth, causing him to gag. And then the cock was invading him, working its way inside him, fucking him.

He had struggled against the muscular power of the older man until he realized that he was undone the second the mushroom head of that thick cock had breached his sphincter muscle and shaft had followed into his channel. Then he’d laid back and taken the shaft moving in and out inside him, and the man’s heavy breathing matching his own, and their shared groans, the cock moving ever deeper--until, with a small cry, the pain of it having embarrassing been taken over by pleasure and a since of deeper connection than he’d ever had with the man before, he came. The man had continued and then Thad was going with him, moving his hips in consort with the man’s thrusts, resigned that it now would ever be how it was to be with this man.

He lost his virginity to a man at the age of fourteen. All Stanton men lost their virginity at fourteen. It was known as coming into season. Their virginity was taken from them at this age by other Stanton men. Stanton men married too and had children--their satisfied-looking women popped out a child every year as long as they were in seas--and when they had male offspring that reached the age of fourteen, they had come into season and a Stanton man fucked their virginity out of them. It wasn’t spoken of in the family. It was just done.

More than resenting that he’d had to bring Cory up here when the boy had reached his fourteenth year, Thad resented that Cory’s ma should try to save her son from the same fate that Thad and every other Stanton boy had experienced at fourteen. What made him so special? Thad had liked and accepted a new ma when his had died and his pa went courting again, but he couldn’t help but resent that she was trying to save her son from what all Stanton sons who lived to be fourteen experienced.

“But so what, Thad? You know why. Why can’t you tell me?”

“OK, if you’re old enough to be in season, you’re old enough to know all that it means,” Thad said. He would tell him straight out. Why should he be coddled? The rest of them weren’t. “Your ma made me bring you up here because the cavalry is coming in to Dennison for three days before moving back down into the Arizona territory.”

“What does that mean? Why does that mean we have to come up here for four days.”

“Pa is a scout for the cavalry. He’s been run off the ranch, but he’ll be back in the area for the next three days.”

“And so?”

“It’s Pa who is most likely to take you out of season--to steal your cherry--to grab your virginity to men from you. If he found you down at the ranch, sure as can be, he’d hop your bones and give you your first male fuck.”

“Pa? Surely not Pa.”

“Yes, Pa. Who do you think did me the first time? It was Pa. Trapped me in a horse stall and fucked the crap out of me. All Stanton men are bred to do it both ways. Once done the first time, boys can decide what of it they want or nothing. Most Stanton men then respect that. Some don’t.”

“Some don’t?”

“Pa don’t. That’s why your ma don’t want him at you for the first time. He got me first and he kept right on fuckin’ me until they throwed him off the ranch. And ma’s made me bring you up here so he won’t fuck you. It’s all about you.”

“But she’s tryin’ to save you too, ain’t she? She’s sent you away from him too.”

“I didn’t want to be sent away from him. I want to be fucked by Pa. Pa’s got the biggest pecker of all the Stanton men, and he knows what to do with it.”

“Pa?” Cory said again in a far-off voice, not wanting to believe it. He knew Pa wasn’t around much anymore, but he thought it was just his scouting job with the army. Thad was saying he was run off. “You said Pa was run off the ranch.”

“He sure was. He didn’t just initiate the Stanton boys, he kept at them. And he was rough. He near broke my arm trapping it behind me and fuckin’ me hard from behind--and that was just last year. I wasn’t no good workin’ the ranch for months. The others decided they couldn’t afford having Pa around ruining the hands that was meant to keep the ranch runnin’.”

“And still you want him at you?”

“Yeah, I do. You haven’t been bred yet. You don’t understand how the need for it grips you.”

“But if not Pa--”

“Yes, Cory. You’re a Stanton boy and you’re fourteen and you’re in season. It will be some Stanton, but they don’t want it to be Pa. He could ruin you.”

“But you don’t think he’s ruined you.”

“Not unless you count not being able to get enough of it from him. Your ma don’t want it to be your pa.”

But it will be some Stanton, Thad thought. He and Cory’s ma had already discussed that. That’s not what he said. What he said was, “I have call on the bed. You get the pallet. And let’s get to it. It looks like it might snow all night. We may have to dig out to tend to the horses in the morning.”

The embers were sputtering out in the cabin’s fireplace and it was turning cold in the room. Thad woke up slightly chilled. He was surprised he had been asleep; he’d been awake for the longest time, the need gripping at him, struggling between “should” and “want.”

He looked over at the form of his half brother, Cory, on the pallet on the floor and saw that the boy was shivering in his sleep. With a sigh, giving into the need, the older brother slipped out from underneath the covers and the quilt on the bed and padded over to the pallet in his long underwear, lifting his feet high and hopping along in reaction to the cold floorboards.

He shook Cory, whose eyes slitted open. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit in here, Corey,” he said. “This way of sleeping ain’t doin’ neither of us a lick of good. I’ll build up the fire and you go climb in bed. The two of us together plus a live fire should make us warm enough.”

Half asleep, Cory rose and went to the bed without questions. Thad stoked the fire and was back in bed within minutes. Cory had gone back to sleep, turned on his side, toward the wall. Thad climbed into the bed, stretched along Cory’s body, embraced his brother, and lay there, thinking, still struggling inside himself. After a few minutes he was running his hands over Cory’s body on top of his brother’s long underwear.

Cory slowly came awake moaning, increasingly becoming aware that Thad was embracing him and running hands over his body ... intimately. He had the flap of his own long johns open and Cory felt the hardness of his half brother’s cock against his back.

“Thad,” Cory whispered.

“Shush,” Thad responded. His hand came around to Cory’s front, unbuttoned the boy’s flap, freed Cory’s cock and encased it with a hand. Cory started engorging immediately.

“Thad ... what?”

“It’s always a Stanton man; it has to be a Stanton man. Lay here and take it, Cory,” Thad murmured. “I won’t do it rough like the others would--like Pa would.”