Author's Introduction:

For anyone looking for quick gratification from a cut-to-the-sex story, this is probably the wrong one- I'm hoping to create an engrossing, long term storytelling experience. I will update it as often as possible but often real life gets in the way (EDIT: Currently updates every friday, stay tuned!)(ANOTHER EDIT: Have been delayed by real life but will update in a few days!) As you will soon tell, I enjoy telling a good yarn as much as I enjoy writing the more NSFW scenes, which isn't for everyone.

If that is your sort of thing, however, then sit back, relax, and enjoy the story, and in the words of 2pac, let me welcome everybody to the wild, wild west...

-HerrOttoFlick, U.K., December 2016

(Author's P.S.: To get a more immersive experience when writing, I like to listen to themed music, which I highly reccomend you do as well- for this story I listened mainly to a compilation of Ennio Morricone's theme music, a live album of the Spaghetti Western Orchestra, and my own playlist of Western cinema scores, all of which can be found online. It really helps me get in the mood, so do give it a go!)

(Author's P.P.S: The more astute readers may notice that the story is filled with a large number of cinematic references to classic films of the genre, in this case Westerns- have fun spotting them!)

Fort Worth, Summer 1879

It started, as it always seemed to, with a drink.

It had been a hard run, and a long run. They had left San Antonio in the early morning as usual, twenty men in trail denims, open shirts and stetsons with rugged, young horses and rifles slung over their backs, whipping three hundred head of cattle through the dust and heat of the Hill Country, over the dry ranges and cracked creek beds, heading north to the markets and the bars of Kansas. John had been riding in the vanguard, his usual position, Winchester repeater in his hand ready for any sign of trouble as his pony negotiated the dirt ahead, part cattle driver, part cattle protector. The drive was relatively small by local standards- he had ridden with herds ten times its size before- but, as John had learnt many times, no day in the West was ever easy. The ride out of Bexar had gone fine initially, with only a couple of cattle being lost to injuries sustained while negotiating a steep bank, and by the time they had hit the open range he had began to believe that this might be an easy job- easier than the previous month, when he had done a bounty job out in Colorado and ended up on the wrong end of a shotgun. Things began to get rough after a few days, when one of the younger wranglers had headed off after an escaped longhorn. After a few hours of no response to the other cowboy's whistles, John and another fighter known usually as Angel Eyebrows by his friends had followed him down a creek to find him being held at gunpoint by a group of bandits. Luckily they had managed to free him, Angel distracting them by pretending to negotiate while John had scaled a tree and taken out the men holding the wrangler with a few well-placed rifle rounds. Angel had immediately gone for his revolver and finished the rest off, but in the commotion he had received a round to the upper arm. It wasn't a serious wound, but it had hurt, and he had done the rest of the ride with it strapped to his chest on the orders of the group cook, who had failed medical school before going into the cattle business and ran an impromptu surgery out of the back of the meal wagon. Riding one-handed did nothing to improve Angel Eyebrow's usually bad mood. After that they had headed through the Indian Territory, through Choctaw Country for the Kansas border, which John had advised against- it had been a bad year for Indian attacks- but Rooster, the group leader, had insisted that they needed to make up for time lost. Over the next few nights they were continually shadowed by scouts from the local tribe, and no invitations to parlay seemed to help. A number of men were injured by arrow strikes out of the darkness, one of them so badly that he had to be carried the rest of the way on the wagon, and a couple of dozen cattle disappeared. To avoid the Indians they had taken a risky ford across a river, and had lost more of the sluggish creatures in the fast water. By the time they finally rode into Dodge City two weeks late and down to 150 head of cattle with a number of men injured, John had almost felt too tired to join in with the celebrations with the rest of the men amid the brothels and saloons of one of the West's fastest growing boomtowns- almost. As his friends and many lovers attested, John could never turn down a woman. He hadn't got the nickname 'stallion' for his abilities with horses.

On the way back down they had stopped into Fort Worth, a bustling cattle town on the Texas plains where the actual settlement was dwarfed by the vast cattle stockyards surrounding it, and everyone seemed to be either a cowboy or someone trying to fleece the cowboys of their hard earned money. Now John sat in the Longhorn Saloon, one of his habitual haunts, a classic cattle driver's bar where men crowded around the bar to turn their pay into glasses of bourbon and smokes, prostitutes sold their wares in corners, and lawmen on the door gave a menacing glance to anyone whose hand was too close to their shooter. All in all, it was John's sort of place.

He sat in a booth off to one side, the velvet seat and dirty table lit by a flickering gas lamp, a double whiskey in one hand and a half-burnt cigarillo in the other, lost in his thoughts. He was a tall man and handsome, with a rugged, weatherbeaten face dressed with stubble like the filings from a new gun barrel, and a deep, strong look in his eyes that always had the ladies falling for him. Now, though, he had no interest in love, only in drink and rest. He had a couple of days here before he had to go and meet the rest of the group and decide to stick with them for the season or to find alternative employment. After such a hard cattle drive, he was sick of dragging cows out of cacti by the horns. Maybe he'd do another bounty run, although if he did he'd have to get the trigger action on his six-shooter looked at by a gunsmith. He sighed. Being a cowboy and part time bounty hunter was a lot harder than it looked. He took another drink of the whiskey, a rough Tennessean drop that tasted like it had been brewed in a wigwam somewhere, and slammed the empty glass back down.

Suddenly, a familiar voice made him stop.

'Stallion John, how ya doin' ?'