Chapter 39

Jerl Lorida was a handsome young man with an easy smile, dark eyes and dark hair. He wasn’t a big man, but at just under six feet tall, he was built solid and walked with a swagger that everyone noticed, especially the women, young and old. He was a man that had never lacked for attention from all the ladies he came in contact with, married or single. He grew up in central Missouri where he lived with his ma and pa and worked on the farm until he was almost twenty.

Jerl played poker in the saloons and could always manage to win a few dollars. He once played in a game with a couple of cowboys that were passing through and one put up his holster and Colt sixshooter to meet the pot. He lost and Jerl had a gun.

Jerl would wear his handgun on the farm and practice his fast draw, he got fairly good at it and could hit his mark more than he missed.

Then, because of his attraction to more than one young wife or daughter in the area, he was escorted out of the county by a group of vigilantes made up of farmers and their farmhands.

Jerl had the shit scared out of him when they first put a rope on his neck, one move from his horse and he would’ve died under a hanging tree.

The vigilantes had all sat in a circle under the tree and smoked a cigarette while they talked it over loud about hanging the man. All this, while he sat on his horse with the noose around his neck.

Finally, one man said he wasn’t gonna be a part of no hanging and got up from the circle. The man mounted his horse and rode up next to Jerl. He slipped the noose off his neck and jerked him from the saddle. Jerl fell to the ground, hands still tied behind his back and rolled in the dirt until he could get his knees under him.

Kneeling in the dirt, hands tied behind his back, he raised up just in time to catch the point of a boot right in the middle of his good parts. Another man walked up and kicked him in his lower back, and another put a boot under his lower jaw that made him black out.

When he came to, he was beaten and bloody, his shirt was torn from him and his boots were gone. He felt a hurtin in his straddle like he was on fire. He looked down and he was bloody from his waist to his knees, his britches had been cut back and the end of his peter had been cut off, it looked like. It was so bloody and raw, he couldn’t really tell and he was afraid to even know.

He saw his horse tied to a limb nearby and his saddle was still on him. He hoped his handgun was still in his saddlebags. He worked his hands until he finally got the rope loose and tried to crawl over to his horse.

His face felt like it was on fire and he ran his swollen, numb fingers over the side of his face and felt the dried crusted blood from the cuts on his face.

He knew they had used a knife on him, he could feel the crusted trail of blood from his ears to his chin, then back up the other side.

They had made sure that he wasn’t the ladies man with that struttin’ swagger any more.

Jerl pulled himself to the saddle and rode west until he came to a widow woman’s farm, that he had frequented between trysts with the younger women closer to home.

The woman took him in and doctored his cuts better than most doctors could have. She took the smallest needle and thread she had and sewed up the deeper cuts on his face with over two hundred small stitches after she had washed the cuts clean with coal oil and whiskey mixed.

She made a bandage out of an old gown and bandaged his peter where they had cut the foreskin from over the end of it. She tied the bandage around his hips and down between his legs to keep it on. This was the worst of his cuts, if this healed, he’d live.

She nursed him back to where he could walk standing up straight without hurting too bad.

Three months later, Jerl saddled up in the middle of the night and rode west, without even a word of thanks to the woman that had put him back together. He had gathered up a grub sack of biscuits and dried meat, and ate very stingy all the way across Kansas.

When Jerl left Missouri, riding through the southern part of Kansas, and across the Arkansas River, he was heading over to Colorado. He stopped to make camp away from any towns he came upon. His beard grew out dark and heavy, covering most of the thin scars that were still red and healing.

It was at his campsite near the Arkansas River, in Indian Territory, that he met up with Oren and Bill Slaughter. They were on their way back out of Dodge City, headed back to a trail herd south of town.

They came to be friends and shared stories about where they’d been and what all they’d been into.

Jerl left the Slaughters with the promise from each that they’d meet up again somewhere down the trail.

Jerl came upon a small ranch house in southeast Colorado not far from the Kansas line. The small house sat nestled up against a rocky hillside and over looking a small green valley with a spring fed creek running out from behind the house. After hunkering down behind some rocks for over two hours in the hot sun, looking the place over, he rode in hungry and tired of running

“Hello the house.” He hollered.

A woman stepped to the door with a shotgun in her hands pointed right at him. He saw a movement from the corner of the house and glanced that way. There stood a tall thin girl just a few years younger than him, she too had a gun pointed at him as he sat his horse, and wished to hell he’d never stopped here.

No one said a word as the women eyed the stranger, as if he were a snake, and the man eyed both women trying to figure out if they were gonna pull the trigger or tell him to keep riding.

“I mean no harm, I’m tired and hungry and in bad need of water. If you folks’ll let me, I’ll just ride on out and leave you be,” Jerl said.

“Hold your place rider, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” The woman asked. She spoke with a mix of English and Indian accent. She stood back in the shadow of the doorway and all Jerl could see was from her shoulders down.

“Ma’am, I was just passing through and saw your spread. I was hoping you’d need some help around this place. If you’d let me talk with the man of the house, maybe he’d let me work for a few days and get some grub in my belly before I ride on.”

“The man of the house is out workin, like you should be instead of riding up on people like this,” The girl now spoke and Jerl looked her way.

She had stepped out from the corner of the house, and lowered the scattergun just a little. Jerl looked her over good.

Damn, this girl was a looker he thought, as he took in her dark eyes and long dark hair that hung down her back. She was wearing a long, faded gray dress that she’d long ago outgrown.

“If you’ll just lower the ends of them scatterguns a bit, I’ll turn slow like, ride back out and keep on going.”

“So you can come back and sneak in after dark and take what you like, we know your kind out here, you think women don’t know how to look after their selves,” The woman in the doorway had stepped out on the small covered front porch and Jerl got a good look at her too.

“No Ma’am, you can bet that buckshot in them guns, I won’t be coming back this way ever again, if you’ll just let me ride on out,” Jerl said as he looked her over good.

She was the spitting image of the girl that stood at the corner of the house, she had to be the mother, but could pass as a sister. Jerl could feel the stirring in his britches, that he thought were gone for good after the beating and cutting he took back there in Missouri.

Jerl let his best lady gettin’ grin spread across his scruffy face in hopes the two could see he was not a bad man, but just a lone rider down on his luck and needing a good meal.

“What the hell you grinnin at rider? You see somethin that’s funny to look at?” The woman spoke again, but he knew she was letting up just a bit by the tone of her voice.

“No Ma’am, I was just admiring the two best looking women I’ve run across since I left Missouri a coupla weeks ago,” Jerl said as he let them see his eyes run from the ground up their bodies as he looked them both over again.

“Well, you can get off that horse and lead him to the water trough over there, but one wrong move and we’ll cut you in half.”

Jerl felt a stirring in his britches now like old times, as he mustered his best swagger, on the short walk over to the watering trough.

“What’s your name rider?” The woman asked.

“Jerl”

“That the only name you got?” Her daughter asked.

“Jerl Lorida.” He knew what he was doing, he’d played this game a bunch of times in the last four or five years since he was as young as fourteen years old.

“Where you from Jerl Lorida?”

“I’m from over in Missouri.”

“You sure don’t give out much about yourself, seeing as how you’re here beggin for food and water. What are you doing all the way out in Colorado, if you’re from Missouri?” The girl asked.

He knew he had them now, “I got run out of the state cause I was messing around with the women folks, and the daddy’s and the married womens old men didn’t want me around no more.”

“Well, looks like we got us one of them fellers that thinks he’s got a gift between his legs for women folks,” The woman said. “What’d they do to you that made you want to leave your stomping grounds?”

“They almost hung me from a tree, they kicked in my privates, they used a knife on my face and chest to mark me up, and they scored my peter with a knife too.”

“Whatta you mean, they scored your peter?”

“They took a knife and cut the skin from around the end of it. Took over two months to heal up enough to where I could even set a saddle again.”

“You mean they cut the skin off your pecker with a knife? At your age wonder it didn’t kill you,” The girl said.

“It nearly did, least ways it felt like I was gonna die, sure killed my ‘want to’ any way.”

“You don’t look no worse for their trouble, I reckon that beard covers some of the scars on your face does it?” The girl asked.

“Yep.”

“Well, just so’s you don’t get any ideas about my girl ‘n me, let me tell you now. I’ll not use a knife on your face, but I’ll put a load of buckshot where your pecker used to hang.” The woman threatened.

“Yes’m, I reckon I learned my lesson, least ways I ain’t had a hankering to lay with another woman since they worked me over, and I left Missouri.”

“Well, if you’re that beat up about it, I reckon we’d let you have some grub. Get the saddle off that horse and come on in to the table,” the woman told Jerl.

“Winona, you get a pail of fresh water from the creek and we’ll all set down for a meal here in a bit. Mr. Jerl Lorida, if you so much as look at my girl crooked, I’ll cut your nuts from you with a double load of lead, you hear me?”

“Yes’m, I don’t even know that I could if I wanted to, Ma’am,” Jerl said as he grinned while washing his face and hands in the water trough.

Winona walked by on the way to the creek with the water bucket, she couldn’t help but cut her eyes over at his tight britches as he was bending over the water trough to wash up. She stepped lively now, her long legs moving in straight long strides as she walked barefoot over the pebbles and smooth stones on the path, smiling and swinging her wooden water bucket by the rope bail, her butt swaying under her long dress.

“I reckon you’d do good to get a good bath down at the creek from what we can smell, smells like you done rotted, where you was cut up,” The woman told him as they sat at the table.

“Yes’m, I reckon I could stand to wash some of the dirt and grit off me, I’ll do that when I ride on out here’n a little while. Sorry to be smelling up the place.”

“You got a change of clothes on you, you won’t do much good by washing your nasty ass if you put them same ol’ dirty clothes back on.”

“No I didn’t have a chance to grab any more clothes when I left, this is all I got.”

“Winona, when we get through eating, get him some of your Pa’s britches and we’ll scrub these stinking rags up while he scrubs his rotten ass down at the creek.”

“Yes’m.”

“Ma’am, I don’t even know your name so I can thank you proper, I heard you call the girl here by her name twice now.”

“I’m not a girl you ignorant sumbitch, I’m as much a woman as you are a man, with your stinking, ugly ass all cut up and your little pecker all whittled back on the end,” Winona screamed at him.

“I reckon you’ll call my girl, a girl again, now won’t you?” The woman laughed at the look on his face after her daughter had scorched his ass good with her tongue.

“I reckon you’re right about that Ma’am.”

“Winona, I reckon I didn’t mean that you was a little girl. I only meant that you’re a good looking young woman, with your dress all filled out on top like that, but you still look like a young girl in the face. I just didn’t want to say it the wrong way and get your Ma all riled up at me. Hell fire, y’all been out here in this damn God forsaken valley so long that you’ve come to be plum hostile to men folks,” Jerl added.

“You may have spoken the truth there Jerl Lorida, but we don’t get many drifters through here, I reckon that’s why my man picked this place for us a house. He works up in Denver and only comes home once a month to spend a night or two and get his little ol’ bird pecker worked out good.”

“What in the world does he do that he has to go all the way up to Denver to do it. I figured he was working cows down in the valley when you said he was out working.”

“He was workin up at the refining company when him ‘n and me met up way back yonder, he’s been workin around them gold refinery’s all his life he said. When he knocked me up with Winona, he wanted to find us a quiet place to build a house so’s me ‘n the baby would have a place to stay while he worked. Hell, I didn’t know he was gonna find a damn place a hundred miles away.”

“I reckon he didn’t want a fine looking woman like you living close to Denver while he worked, he knew he’d have to fight off all them horn-dogs just to get in the door at night.”

“Jerl Lorida, you sure got a strange way of sayin a woman’s caught your eye,” the woman laughed.

“Well, from what I’ve learned while I been here, I reckon I’d better watch my tongue or I might just get it shot off. I gotta tell you both though, if I hadn’t been whittled on back there in Missouri, I’d be having some kinda bad thoughts while lookin at them tight fitting dresses.”

“I can see now why the women folks liked you so much back there in Missouri, you’re good with words that make them think you want more than you’re getting. Ain’t he Winona.”

“Yep, I think he’s got a sneaky way of talking to a woman that gets her all lathered up listening to his palaver, but I’ll tell him now, that his smooth talk don’t make no lather on my ass.”

“Girl, you been hanging round that bunch of Mescan’s that live in the hills back there, you’re starting to sass just like them whore’n ass young girls of that old woman’s up there.”

“Whoa, what’re you talkin about now, maybe I need to ride on up in the hills a ways and get acquainted with that family if they’re that friendly with men folks.”

“Well, just head off up there Mr. High and Mighty Jerl Lorida, but I’ll tell you now that none of them fucking whores look near as good as my Ma and me, do they Ma?”

“I was just about to tell you that I’d druther stay here ‘n just look at you two handsome women than go mess with a whore.”

“I was just meaning that I been getting put down since I been here. I do thank you for this good food and the cool water though. I’ve had enough of messing around with a man’s wife and even his daughter. Like I told you, I nearly lost my life and my manhood back there. I don’t think I could be tempted to mess around with you two, even if you were buck assed nekkid right now, so if you’re still offerin to clean my clothes up some and let me wash off in the creek, I’m about ready to take you up on the offer.”

“Why, so’s you can traipse off up that hill and git your little whittled up pecker worked out after me ‘n my girl clean you up some?”

“Well, no Ma’am I reckon I’d be thankful enough to stay here, that is if I’d be able to sleep in the barn for a night and rest up some.”

“Get him some of your Pa’s britches Winona and show him where the pool is where we bathe, just don’t be getting nekkid with him up there.”

“I wouldn’t get nekkid with this stinking ass, whoring bastard if he’d never been with a woman. Let alone all them he’s done bragged about that shook their asses at him like a mare in heat.”

“Ma’am, I never did learn your name. Since you’re not so mad at me any more, wouldn’t it be better if I knew what to call you, in case I wanted to call you that is,” Jerl said, ignoring Winona’s remark.