Walk Softly: A Texan Tall Tale

by cverratro

Fandom: Tarzan

Pairing: Bill/Tommy Bill/Tarzan

Rating: NC-17

Summary: In the wilds, Tarzan runs across Teddy Roosevelt and his rough riders

Warning: Non-con/fisting/rimming

Walk Softly: A Texan Tall Tale

By Cverratro

The group of grizzled cowboys gathered around to view what surely would be their dinner for the next week or more. The great beast lay where it had been felled, by a single bullet neatly drilled between it’s now glassy eyes. It’s evil, twisted horns glinting in the still blazing evening sun.

"Dangdest Longhorn I ever did see, by Crackee!" Cookie half-spat, half-sang in his cracked Kansas drawl.

"Ain’t no Longhorn, that steer’s what they call a Water Buffalo, Cookie." The reply came from the tall, handsome cowpoke whose still smoking gun signaled he was the one responsible for the kill. With not a trace of a smile he continued. "Yep, live underwater they do, just like them Hippos we seen upriver. Real skittish too. They can hear a man breath a mile away, and will duck under water faster’n you can blink."

"Howdya get this ‘un, Bill? The Congo’s a day’s walk from here?" piped up young Tommy, Cookie’s assistant.

"Well, son. It’s like Our Fearless Leader always says: ‘Walk softly and carry a big stick.’ Just had’ta beat ‘em at their own game is all. Sucked up a chestfull of air and walked along the river bottom for a spell, until they got used to me followin’ them about. Then I sneaked up under the biggest of ‘em and picked ‘em up and ran out on land. He kicked and put up a fuss, but after carryin’ him in the hot sun all day he give up, jus’ like a fish left floppin’ on the bank. When I got close to camp I decided to put ‘em out of his misery. That’s where the big stick come in handy," he said, brandishing his gnarled rifle.

"Toted him all day didya? And you hardly sweating" Cookie cut in, with a sly wink to the others.

"Corse not. Didn’t I tell ya I carried the beast over my head, jus’ like a schoolmarm’s parasol. Right shady under there. Sorry I put him down now. This African sun will bake your brains if you give it half a chance", Bill replied.

"Make way for the President!" someone shouted.

The circle of men parted for a burly, bespectacled older man. "Water Buffalo, eh? Good work. And so close to camp we can butcher it right here and have Cookie and Tommy serve it up. Who took it down?"

"Weren’t close by, Mr. Roosevelt, Sir. It was trapped in the Congo river, and drug back here," Tommy piped in.

"Oh, I see. So that answers my other question. Must have been Bill took the shot," the President said with a smile and a sideways glance to Bill.

The President had taken his most trusted men, many veterans of his Rough Rider’s troop, on his latest hunting expedition to the heart of Africa. "Shame you had to carry the brute, though. Maybe if you hadn’t left your saddle here in camp you could have rode him back, Bill. You do like to say there isn’t a creature you can’t break and ride, isn’t that so?"

The cowboys broke into laughter at the President’s sly jibe at Bill’s well-known boasting.

"Why mistuh’ President. Never crossed my mind to do it the lazy way. I guess that’s why you become President and me just a poor old cowpuncher", Bill grinned back gallantly.

Somewhat sourly Cookie mumbled under his breath to Tommy: "Least he would have found a use for the blamed thing. Why Mr. Roosevelt let him take that thing along I’ll never understand. He should have left it behind with the horses and other ridin’ gear upriver when we got to this blamed jungle. Coulda used that Black that totes it along to carry provisions."

"Well, we certainly won’t starve as long as Bill is along, Cookie." Tommy softly replied, trying to mollify the crusty old man.

"Never said he wasn’t a dang good cowboy, kid." Cookie shot back short-temperedly. "But if you believe half of what he says, he can saddle a cyclone and lasoo the wind."

"Still," Tommy ventured, "if it wasn’t for Bill pickin’ up the local lingo so fast we mighta never got the natives to guide us here. They still seem mighty skittish every time some critter rustles the treetops. Guess that’s cuz of that Devil they keep mumbling about, that Half-Man-Half-Ape they call Tarzan. He’s s’posed to guard the game in this place. Spect they think he’ll come flyin’ outta the sky and tear into ‘em if he sees them helpin’ us hunt his friends."

"Humpf, Man-Ape! These superstitious darkies would give Bill a run for his money with their Tall tales" Cookie groused, as he leaned over the carcass and pulled out his mule-skinner’s knife. As he did a shadow passed over their heads.

Tommy flinched and looked about. "Don’t go getting’ spooked by that foolish talk, boy. Just some buzzard circlin’ about. Vultures they call ‘em here. Musta disappeared into the trees."

*

Meanwhile, Bill had gone back to camp and immediately retrieved his saddle from the native bearer. He carried it a short distance away where he’d made his own bedsite, beside a waterhole where he could guard the camp. He sat down on the nearest rock and began lovingly rubbing oil into the weathered leather gear. As he did so a rustle in the bushes drew his attention. He quietly reached for his rifle and lay the saddle aside.

He sat quietly for a moment or two and then silently slipped through the bushes to his right. He crept stealthily down to the water’s edge and peered through a break in the tangled vines.

What met his eyes startled even the seasoned Indian-fighter and adventurer. Striding silently through the shallow water, with such grace it barely rippled about his muscular legs, was the handsomest man he’d ever seen. His sun-bronzed body looked more like a gilded Greek statue than a thing of flesh. Dark, ringleted hair fell in cascades over his broad shoulders. His large, fierce eyes shone in the gathering dark like a panthers. His face was smooth, almost boyish, but his strapping build, especially the swelled mound beneath the skimpy skin loincloth strapped about his narrow waist, was that of a very virile man. His arms were as massively muscled as any blacksmith he’d ever seen. At his side, in a leather sheath strapped to his massive thigh by thin thongs, was a wicked looking knife.

Bill instinctively lifted and cocked his gun.

The intruder spun about, his reflexes more of a wild beast than a human.

"Afa bwen! (Hold Still!), Bill commanded in the local dialect he’d picked up.

The stranger seemed to understand, which startled Bill, as he was clearly, beneath the sun-darkened sheen, a white man. "Takkala (Who are you?)", Bill shouted, brandishing his rifle.

"Tarzan. Tarzan Bundulu", the stranger replied.

Bill didn’t know what Bundulu meant, but he guessed from the way the young man snarled the word (almost like an animal’s cry) it didn’t convey good intentions. Tarzan he knew. The native’s had made a fuss about him since he first approached them to act as bearers and guides.

Bill, like the others, thought him a myth.

Even the President had said as much, discoursing learnedly (the man read a book a day, which impressed Bill no end) on other wild men of legend and lore such as Romulus and Remus, and the Wild Child of France.

Was he really saying he himself was Tarzan? If so, Bill was wise to keep his gun trained on him. Killing that poor beast was, according to the natives, sacrilege to the jungle-born Tarzan.

"Fire-stick kill Hunruh. Now Tarzan kill you!" the wild man shouted in words that left no doubt Bill was in for a fight.

Still, he didn’t want to shoot him in cold blood, especially as the savage had yet to reach for his weapon. He thought there was still a chance to palaver with him, since at least they spoke a common language. He ostenstaciously lowered his gun and made motions indicating he’d toss it aside, pointing and motioning with his free hand for Tarzan to do the same with his knife.

He was gratified when he responded by unlacing the thongs and dropping the still sheathed knife into the water. Bill was obliged to toss his own weapon into the water as well. They stood facing each other in awkward silence, scrutinizing and sizing up the other.

"You move like ghost. No man ever surprise Tarzan before" the savage ventured.

Bill replied: "An old man I know has a saying: ‘walk softly and carry a big stick.’"

"He is a wise man. You should have listened to him, and not throw stick away," Tarzan said.

And before the import of the words could sink in, he leapt on Bill like a leopard.

Bill silently cursed his foolhardiness. He shouldn’t have expected a savage said to have been brought up by wild apes to honor a truce.

(2)

Two hundred and thirty pounds of hard muscle and sinew slammed into Bill, sending him head over heels into the shallow depths. He emerged, sputtering and stunned, ready to grapple to the death with the jungle savage.

To his surprise, however, Tarzan was already engaged in a death struggle, but not with him. At first Bill thought he was insanely hugging a floating log and thrashing about in the water hole. As his head cleared, however, he realized it was the ‘log’ that was thrashing about. It was a giant Gator, as they called them in the Lower Floridas, but here they were known as Crocodiles.

It must have lain in wait, having escaped notice when the hunting party first set up camp near the water hole. It had been mere inches behind him, perhaps with jaws already gaping, as he faced the ape-man.

Bill struggled to his feet, only to be slapped back beneath the water, as if by a giant hand. The creature’s huge, scaly tail flailed about blindly and churned the water to foam as it attempted to free itself from Tarzan’s death grip. Bill broke the surface a second time, this time grasping his rifle in his grip.

Tarzan had clamped its’ jaw shut, and was leaning back across it’s shoulders, bending it’s snout back until it nearly touched it’s own back. The monster spun about like a top, the jungle savage grimly maintaining his grip even though he disappeared beneath the water a dozen or more times.

After a terrific struggle the beast seemed to tire. Tarzan swung his leg over it’s serrated back, and literally rode the living nightmare, twisting its head further and further back. There was a loud crackling, like green wood in a campfire, and the beast was suddenly limp.

Tarzan reared up on his haunches, beating his massive chest with his cupped hands like a drum. An unearthly cry issued from his throat. It was like a Kiowa victory cry, but more animal than human.

Bill had only heard the like once, in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest while hunting. Later, he’d found the footprints of a giant, and met up with a band of prospectors who told a wild tale (even for Bill) about being attacked in their cabin by a huge man-ape, a ‘Sasquatch’ as the local Indians called such things. Bill froze, stunned by the passion in the savage’s cry.

Tarzan suddenly focused on the gun Bill still lowered in his direction. Misinterpreting Bill’s intent, he growled angrily and crouched, seemingly ready to pounce once more on the cowboy.

Suddenly, in its death throes, the croc gave one last, convulsive shudder. The great tail swung over its’ side and swept Tarzan off like a fly. He splashed into the deepest part of the water hole and sank from sight.

Bill slogged towards the now lazily floating beast. Unsure if it was truly dead he raised his gun and aimed between it’s large, glassy eyes, determined to dispatch it if it moved. Whether his weapon would still fire after being submerged was a question he hadn’t the leisure to examine.

Before he could squeeze the trigger, however, the scene was suddenly illuminated by a dozen torches brandished by several members of the expedition, struggling through the bushes ringing the edge of the water.

The President, half-dressed, was in the lead, everyone shouting and gesticulating. Cookie and Tommy brought up the rear, and Bill noted

Tommy was buck-naked. Doubtless he’d leapt up from his bedroll without a thought when he realized the trouble seemed to originate from Bill’s station.

Bill knew Tommy was a strong young farm-lad, but now he saw how beautifully formed he was, with a smooth, creamy ivory skin stretched over swelling muscles, and a surprisingly huge member crowned by a gold ring of pubic hair that matched his own curly mop of wheat-blond hair.

Several firearms were cocked and aimed at the Croc, but within seconds it was clear it was dead, and they fell instead to questioning what happened.

Bill scanned the shadows beyond the ring of light cast by the torches, but could see nothing. Had Tarzan drowned, or simply escaped in the confusion?

Roosevelt had stumbled over Bill’s saddle as he raced to the scene, and handed it over to Bill with a silently quizzical frown. It was too good a moment to pass up. Bill launched into a story of how he was bored being back in camp, and decided to look for a little action. Spying the Croc wallowing in the water he snatched up his saddle, threw it over the creature’s ridged back, and rode the monster like a wild mustang. Unfortunately, however, he overestimated the monster’s strength, and broke it’s back attempting to teach it to gallop.

Titters arose from all of the group, the President not excepted. Only Cookie and Tommy refrained from the general round of backslapping and sly winks.

Cookie, sour-faced as usual, spat contemptuously upon the huge carcass.

Tommy, guileless as always, stood in wide-eyed, slack-jawed admiration of Bill’s apparent victory over the nightmarish water-dragon.

Bill sidled over and placed his hand on Tommy’s broad shoulder, and with arch interest asked him "Forget something, Tommy?"

Tommy seemed puzzled by the question for a second, then looked himself over and blushed. "I thought you were in trouble, Mr. Bill, I just wanted to help," he stammered in his embarrassment.

"And what were you going to do, Son, beat it to death with that?" Bill grinned, his eyes dropping down to Tommy’s member. As he did he noticed, not without some interest, that it had not only lengthened but had become half-erect.

Tommy, who had followed Bill’s lingering gaze to the source of his interest, gave out with a girlishly high squealing cry and turned and fled back to camp.

Bill admiringly watched the firm, round buttocks bounce as the lad hot-footed it into the gathering dusk.

Cookie sidled between Bill and the stranded hulk of the croc. "Rode him to death, huh, Bill?" the old curmudgeon mumbled, almost absent-mindedly.

"Told you so, didn’t I Cookie?" Bill answered gruffly, tired of Cookie constantly needling him.

"Just thought you mighta’ talked it to death, is all. Actually, look’s more like a Hippo sat on the poor thing" Cookie ventured.

"You see a Hippo anywhere? Maybe he’s hiding behind that a reed or that lotus pad," Bill challenged.

"Nope, don’t see no Hippo. No tracks neither. Just your big boots, and a pair of naked feet. Wonder what that means? Course, you’re the tracker, Bill. I’m just an old trail cook" Cookie replied, seemingly lost in thought.

"An old trail cook that’s had it in for me ever since we signed on the same cattle drive back in El Paso. What’s the burr under your saddle, Cookie?" Bill challenged.

Cookie spat another wad of tobacco juice, this time dangerously close to Bill’s boots. "Don’t cotton to dudes who tell whoppers at the drop of a hat, just to make themselves seem bigger in another man’s eyes. Or a young boy’s" he added, with a fierce glance into Bill’s eyes.

"Nothing wrong with a little Texas brand of Truth now and then, Cookie. We can’t all be sober-sided Missourans like you" Bill replied sarcastically.

"All I know is every time you started braggin’ about all the tail you got ever time you left camp and went scouting some green young cowpoke got all big-eyed. How would some kid who never was off his family farm before signing up for the drive know there wasn’t a woman within days of the trail. Musta’ seen half-a-dozen boys on all the drives we did together, sneaking off after you, riding all over creation lookin’ for your supposed love nest. Comin’ back to camp days later their backsides so saddle-sore they warn’t worth dry spit. Couldn’t even mount up for days. And now you got Tommy under your spell with all your high-falutin’ yarns, runnin’ after you like a puppy dog" Cookie concluded.

"’Fraid you’ll loose your kitchen-slave, Cookie?" Bill asked with forced gaiety.

"Just tellin’ ya what’s on my mind, Bill. I’m just an old trail cook, like I said. The President trusts you with our lives, and that’s gotta be good enough for me. Don’t have to trust you myself, though."

"Nope, guess you don’t. Everyone’s got free will, like the preachers say. Even Tommy" Bill noted.

"Yep, guess you are right. And I guess everything happened here jus’ like you said, Bill. Texans never lie, do they?" Cookie jabbed.

"Don’t know about that, Cookie. Can tell ya this, though, they never take an insult without slappin’ leather over it. Think about that, old man" Bill coldly answered.

Cookie scowled, seemed ready to spit once again, but apparently though better of it. Instead he turned and ambled silently back to the chuck tent. There, he found Tommy huddled under his blanket, sobbing softly.

*

Bill felt along the shallows, finally lifting free the still-sheathed knife from the mud. He pulled the wicked-looking blade free. "Damn" he thought to himself "makes a Bowie Knife look like a letter-opener. Should skin this beast pretty good, though. Natives use these skins like fine leather hereabouts. Should be good to trade along the way." He turned towards the croc, then stopped cold. He’d cinched his saddle onto the carcass’ back while he demonstrated how he rode the beast. Now it had vanished. He gripped the knife tightly and scanned the shadows once more. Nothing but blackness and silence met his search. The Jungle Lord wasn’t finished with him, then. Well, he thought, Texans don’t take lightly to having their saddles stolen, either. Tommy would have to wait. Tarzan was first.

(3)

(3)

Bill made short work of the scaly beast. He’d skinned these monsters before, crocs he’d hunted alongside the Seminole braves down in Florida while he and the others prepared to follow Roosevelt to Cuba.

It was supposed to be a training camp, but the rag-tag group of grizzled cowpokes, rich college boys and thrill-seeking ne’er-do-wells Teddy collected over his youthful travels had turned it into a weeks-long party. Wenching, carousing and fighting with the locals were their daily drills.

Bill stretched the fresh hide on the bank, pegging the sides with broken twigs. The sun and the ants would do the rest, cleaning and drying the skin. Bill squatted beside it for a moment, lost in thought.

It was in Cuba he’d nearly lost his saddle before. Teddy had chafed when he and his Rough Riders were sidelined in favor of the more professional soldiers. He had taken matters into his own hands, overriding direct orders, when the attack on the heavily defended San Juan Hill took place.

Teddy mistook the smaller, lightly guarded Kettle for the former, and led his troop up the hill. Ironically, it made for a damn fine charge, inspiring the nearby troops on San Juan forward and outflanking the positions of the Spanish.

Bill rode alongside Teddy, the only two mounted Cavalry men.

Dismounting near the crest, Teddy was almost picked off by a sniper, but was thrown clear by Bill, who interposed his own body into the missile’s whistling path. He’d unsaddled his horse after dismounting, however, and was carrying it over his left shoulder. The bullet lodged into the thick leather and stopped against a silver tracing, just a hair from his heart.

Teddy was as much astonished that Bill would carry the heavy saddle into the crossfire as he was grateful for Bill’s courageous action. Bill had explained then to Roosevelt what he’d told no other man before or since. How his father, a cowboy as famous for his bad temper, drinking and womanizing as his riding ability, had taken Bill to the corral one morning.

He took his prized saddle, won in a rodeo show run by Wild Bill Hickock himself, and saddled Firestorm, a wild stallion even his father had feared to mount. Then he tossed Bill, six years old and never having sat even the old nag that plowed their field, on the bronc’s back. Then he turned and walked off, mumbling over his shoulder that he had to grow up quick and be the man in the family. Bill never saw him again.

And his old man had never seen him ride Firestorm. Ride and break him, and make him his mount, the same mount that he’d ridden on the charge up that hill.

Impressed, Teddy had repaired his saddle, and made certain he’d never have to part with it, as long as they were together.

And now that savage had stolen it out of spite. Well, he’d regret twisting this lion’s tail, Bill thought. He was already picturing the revenge he’d take out on that Jungle-boy’s ass!

He softly tiptoed down to the main camp. Despite the excitement, it had quickly settled back to sleep after an exhausting day of marching through rough terrain.

Even old Cookie, who claimed he never slept much anymore, was snoring soundly.

He stepped over his inert body and knelt beside Tommy’s blanketed form. He too was asleep. But in the clear moonlight Bill saw the dried tracks of tears on his rosy cheeks.

Bill reached over to shake his shoulder, but suddenly remembered that Tommy slept in the nude. He carefully peeled back his covers, marveling again at the whiteness of his alabaster skin that even the harsh African sun couldn’t darken. The huge prick was still swollen and hard, and Bill whistled softly to himself when he dared to run his fingertips over the smooth globes of his hairless buttocks.

Bill burned to take the lad right then and there, clap his hand over his mouth and screw him senseless right in the middle of his trail mates and the President himself. Bill half-suspected Tommy wouldn’t put up much of a struggle.

Still, he couldn’t bring himself to do it, anymore than he could lure him outside the camp, as he’d done with countless other boys, and seduce and abandon him. Bill sensed this one was different than all the others.

Instead, he leaned over the cherubic head, kissing him deeply on those full, ruby lips. Tommy’s eyes flashed open, but he raised no cry, only stared awestruck up at Bill like he was a vision or an angel.

Bill touched his finger to his lips to indicate the others were not to be aroused. He softly told Tommy he was going away for a spell, to scout out the area and find better hunting grounds. He knew better than to wait until morning and try to explain to the President, who would surely overrule him.

Besides, the trail was growing cold already.

Tommy promised he’d tell the others why he left in the night, but held Bill’s sleeve as he rose to leave. "B-Bill, Cookie tells me plumb awful things about you, but I don’t believe him. Even the President says you’re the most remarkable man he know", he stammered out, the words rushing out from him like a a torrent from a burst dam. "I-I been a’thinkin’, Bill. Maybe we could partner up, you know, like other trail mates do. Share our adventures and our winnin’s. Share ever’thin’!"

"Even our bedrolls?" Bill cut in archly, snatching aside the blanket he’d only seconds before used to recover Tommy’s nude form.

Tommy’s eyes followed Bill’s burning gaze to its source once again, but this time he didn’t blush or run. Instead he tugged harder on Bill’s sleeve, pulling his hand down to the source of Bill’s stare, and placed it heavily onto his jutting member. "Share ever’ thin’ Bill, always" he stated boldly, with barely a quaver in his voice this time.

Bill closed his fingers about the stout shaft, and gently stroked it once. Tommy gasped and threw his head back, his Adam’s Apple bobbing in his smooth throat. Bill continued to silently caress the throbbing member, as Tommy writhed in ecstasy in his bedroll, kicking aside the remaining blankets. Bill reached under his nut sack, and tickled the soft flesh beneath. Tommy reared up, exposing his glorious buttocks. Bill thrust his finger unto the crack, burrowing between the sift mounds and touching his most private part.

The boy squirmed and let out a squeel, and Bill was forced to silence him with a look. Tommy froze as he watched the older man bend over him. Only momentarily flicking the rosy tip of his dick with his tongue to bring it to full attention, Bill swallowed the monster in one smooth swoop. The boy thrashed about, gripping the blankets tightly with both fingers and toes as he struggled to contain himself. He bucked like a skittish colt and begged Bill to finish him off.

But Bill, to his dismay, pulled off. Tommy collapsed onto his back, stunned and confused. He didn’t deserve to be taken like this, stifling his virgin joy for shame others would hear and see them. Bill wanted to take him properly. Alone in the wide hills, by their own campfire, naked and unashamed under the stars. Shouting their lovemaking to the jealous moon.

He turned and rose. "I’ll be back soon. I’ll be back for you…" He promised, and then added "Partner!"

Tommy’s eyes lit up, and he smiled that angel’s smile of Youth. But then he pulled the blankets about him, suddenly shy of other eyes, and silently watched him disappear into the night.

For many long moments he writhed under the covers, breathing heavily. Then, a long, final groan heaved from his bosom. The dying embers of the campfire beside him hissed as though a sudden sun-shower passed over. And then the boy sighed and lay still, and dreamed a beautiful dream.

(4)

Bill took only his walking kit and his sidearm. A quick check of his rifle had confirmed his original fear. The water and muck had jammed the mechanisms badly. He couldn’t afford to delay setting out after the Jungle man in order to clean and test it.

Besides, there was a reason they used bearers for those huge Elephant guns-they weighed only slightly less than their intended targets. Besides, he had Tarzan’s knife, so he would be facing an unarmed savage with two weapons and two decades of Indian-fighting experience.

He’d been tangling with various tribes ever since the "blanket Indians" who hung around his family farm decided raiding, poaching and stealing from the scattered local settlements was far easier than attacking the pony soldiers in their stockades, or the heavily armed trading posts. He’d tussled with the native boys as a youth (in fact, they had been his earliest lovers, for man-to-man love was not unnatural, strange or unholy to them-indeed, quite the opposite).

When he ran away and became first a prospector, wagon train guide, and then Calvary scout (among other jobs) he met and learned much from the native warriors. Especially hunting and tracking skills, for which he had such a legendary reputation even among the tribes that he never needed to enhance it with excessive boasting-but did so anyway as it was his nature to embellish the bald facts whenever possible.

It didn’t take much of a tracker to follow the ape-man at first, however. He even began dragging the saddle at one point, leaving a trail in the dusty plain any fool could follow.

Bill suspected it wasn’t because he’d tired so fast of carrying it as it was his way of rubbing Bill’s nose in the fact that his lovingly cared for possession was in his enemy’s hands to do with as he pleased. Bill was totally unprepared, therefore, for the trail totally disappearing into thin air.

Especially as the flat featureless plain gave way to the jungle’s edge, where dry branches, thorn scrub and forest floor debris should have both slowed his progress and left numerous clues to his passing.

Nothing, his footprints just vanishing mere yards into the underbrush, as those he’d grown wings and flown away.

Bill paused and studied the layout. He noted casually the monkeys and other tree-dwellers chattering and leaping about. Then, one, frightened by his presence, seized a trailing vine and swung easily to a tree hundreds of feet away. Of course, the native’s had described Tarzan gliding like a ghost through the dense jungle, swinging vine to vine and leaping tree to tree without touching ground for days on end.

How could he follow a man who left no path? Bill tried to think of a time he’d nearly been stymied in this way. A passing cloud, round as a barrel, drifted lazily past.

Suddenly a memory struck him. During the Civil War the enemy employed an observation balloon to scout out their troop deployments and defenses. He’d been sent out to harass them with sniper fire and drive them off.

But they would disappear in the evening twilight, only to be redeployed at some point of their choosing. They led him a merry chase for a while, until he studied how they moved. They did not steer their craft, just allowed them to drift in the wind. But how to predict which way the wind would blow?

Simple, he fashioned an Indian smudge pot from a camp chamber pot, and watched the direction where it’s thin dark column of smoke wafted. Within the hour he’d gotten the drop on the balloon crew as they met up with their ground handlers. Sneaking near like a buffalo hunter in the tall grass, he got close enough to unleash several volleys from his double-barreled shot-gun while the unarmed men scattered for cover, eviscerating the billowing craft. He hadn’t been forced to divine the course of the wind, just had to observe a like craft navigating it’s unseen currents.

He filled his pockets with pebbles, and set off after the skittish monkey. He didn’t allow it to rest, tossing a handful of stones in its direction whenever it threatened to turn back towards its troop.

Bill saw how, in ways invisible to his untrained eye, the vines naturally trailed in but two directions, due north and south. Tarzan had entered the jungle from the south, and the Congo was due north. He could dispense with his simian guide now, and head straight to the river. Still, it was slow going through the thick underbrush. Tarzan may as well have wings. His only hope was that the heavy saddle must be throwing him off his stride a bit, hampering his natural grace.

Even the monkey, which had refused to release an armful of choice fruit while being chased, seemed to move painfully branch to branch while his brother monkeys scattered like Spaniards at the Charge up San Juan Hill.

Thankfully, the trees began to thin and suddenly, the sluggish roar of the great Congo could be heard. And here, again, the unguarded trail. Bill suspected no trick this time. Tarzan doubtless thought the stranger would be foundering about the thicket, lost, for days. He headed straight for the riverside. But, here, at least, Tarzan showed the guile of a jungle hunter. He entered the shallows at a point where the waters were too deep to ford, and too turbulent to swim with the heavy saddle.

Yet the swift current swept away all trace of his footprints just inches from where he entered the water. He could only travel in two directions, down (or up) river to a spot where he could easily cross over.

Bill would waste precious hours scouring the bank for the spot where he clambered back up the bank and headed to his intended destination. If he picked the wrong direction Tarzan would have crossed a day ahead of him and disappeared into his home turf before

Bill backtracked in the opposite direction. Bill paced like a cat first up than down the bank, trying to summon all his tracking lore to solve the dilemma.

Then he noticed the different nature of the riverbank from north to south. North the ground was hard and pebbled, as it passed the rapids it became soft and muddy as the slowed waters seeped into the banks rather than cut deep into the bedrock.

Obviously, emerging on the harder ground would make it easier to disguise his tracks than on the soft ground. But how could he pick up the trail if Tarzan had in fact picked that path? Bill broke into a fevered run, racing along the riverside in a hunched trot, his eyes low to the ground.

Suddenly he froze and dropped to his haunches, scanning the ground with an unblinking scrutiny. It was the palest shadow, a slightly darker hue to the pebbled surface in a single spot. Even as he looked it disappeared under his gaze.

But it had been there.

He carefully picked away the surface stones. Beneath, in between the crevices, the ground was still slightly damp. He had waded ashore here, lightly padding over the hard ground without so much as disturbing a grain of sand. But he had dripped buckets from his big body.

Had he arrived only a few moments later all trace would have vanished, the trail grown dead.

He loped along the bank now, staring now at the shallows nearest the bank. There, a mile upriver, a single footprint remained, stubbornly resisting the washing action of the current.

The water was low and still here, an eddy in the otherwise swift flow. Bill waded across, warily alert to crocs and water snakes. The trail over the plain was again easy to follow, Tarzan no doubt certain he’d lost the clueless white man.

But Tarzan had gained even more of a lead, and off to the far distance was a jungle vaster and thicker than Bill had yet seen. He would surely lose him for good if he gained its cover.

Then there was another seemingly magical vanishing trick, the footprints stopping less than a hundred yards from the river. And yet here were no trees to disappear up into. In fact, he had reemerged near a huge grove of Banyan trees, but had only clear ground ahead of him. Even smugly assuming he’d lost his trail it seemed odd Tarzan would have taken to open ground when he couldn’t be absolutely sure he wasn’t still being trailed.

On the flat, featureless expanse a tall man carrying a saddle would leave an unmistakable silhouette, even if he tried to screen himself by traveling alongside the vast herd of grazing beasts, such as the strange cattle-like gnus, loping giraffes or swift, striped zebras that even now passed by in silent, unhurried procession.

Bill thought of a trick an old cattle rustler had taught him during an enforced stay in a Mexican jail. "As old as Hercules and Cacus", he said, whatever that meant. Anyway, it involved leading the cattle backwards so they walked back on their own tracks, disguising their true direction.

Tarzan had simply walked out far enough to indicate a direction to follow, then carefully backtracked over his own footprints, and reentered the grove. Doubtless he was resting there in the cool shade, chuckling to himself over his own cleverness. Bill turned and circled about to the southern end of the grove, stealthily entering it again.

*

Tarzan lazed across a huge out-sweeping branch of the giant Banyan, idly inspecting the strange object. It was animal hide, beautifully worked. But what was its purpose? He only knew from how he’d assigned a black to guard it in his absence, and lovingly cared for it, that it was valuable to him. Reason enough to take it from him, leading him into the wilds to die of thirst or fall prey to the jungle folk. Teach the others not to come with their fire-sticks into his domain.

He dozed for a second, tired from his headlong flight back across the river. He was used to traveling light and free, the bulky leather trophy had been more of a burden than he thought at first.

Needing his arm free to swing, he’d been forced to grip the low-hanging saddle with his prehensile toes, forcing him to tire his legs when he usually rested them. The struggle with the croc had worn him out, and he hadn’t been able to rest until now. His long-lashed eyelids fluttered for a second, then closed.

"Wake up, sleeping beauty!" Tarzan heard from below him. And though it was spoken in the Black’s tongue he knew it must be the white devil.

He leaped up, and stared down the trunk. But as he did so the voice spoke again, in the foliage just above him. "I should tell you sometime how I beat Ol’ Paul Bunyan’s big ass in a tree climbing contest."

How could Tarzan know Bill had been a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest and was used to scrambling up sheer trees like this? Then he had used special spikes strapped to his ankles to gain a purchase on the tough bark while he shinnied up the trunk. But in a pinch his spurs had served just a well.

As Tarzan strained to spot movement in the branches above a voice from behind caused him to spin about. "It must be getting right frustrating, me sneaking up on you instead of the other way around. I’ll have to teach you some Injun tricks sometime. Right after I teach you not to take a man’s saddle," Bill smirked.

He pointed his six-gun right between the handsome savage’s unflinching eyes. "This here fire-twig will kill you sure as my fire-stick dropped that pet of yours, so hand it over."

Tarzan raised the saddle he’d been cradling in his lap. "This a saddle? You want? Tarzan give you back saddle."

With a speed and ease Bill didn’t think possible Tarzan heaved the saddle towards Bill. It crashed into him with the impact of a Brahma bull. His gun went flying and Bill himself nearly toppled over the edge of the branch.

Just as he was righting himself Tarzan leaped on him. Bill unsheathed Tarzan’s blade, but was seized with a grip of steel before he could turn it towards his adversary. He struggled with the bigger, stronger jungle warrior, slowly losing ground.

In desperation he thrust a knee into the invitingly big target between Tarzan’s wide-set legs. Tarzan grunted and released his grip on Bill’s knife hand. But before he could take advantage of the new situation Tarzan turned and leaped off the tree, still gripping Bill’s free arm he dragged them both into a wild freefall.

There was neither a vine nor branch to catch hold of. Was Tarzan trying to kill them both? As they tumbled in midair, however, Bill felt the ape-man flex his magnificent muscles, twisting and turning his huge body with the litheness of a falling cat manuevering to land on its feet. He was positioning Bill’s body under his, to cushion his own fall while crushing him under his own huge body.

His knife arm was still free, however, and just feet from the ground he managed to strike out, half-burying the blade into the trunk of the massive tree. The force of their fall immediately yanked the knife from his grip, but the slight alteration to their rotation spun Bill on top.

Before Tarzan could react, he thudded hard into the roots of the sprawling tree. A split second later Bill landed on top of him, his knees thudding into the muscular warrior’s rock-hard belly. Tarzan let out a loud grunt as the air was driven from his body. He kicked Bill off of him, but rose very slowly and shakily to his feet, shaking his head as if to clear it.

"Ok, Big Boy" Bill challenged, getting to his own feet and assuming a boxing stance, "Let’s see what you got, mano a mano like the Mexicans say."

Bill saw the quizzical look on Tarzan’s face as he bobbed and weaved and danced about his bigger adversary. Bill shot a jab right down the pike, busting the taller man across the bridge of his aquiline nose.

Tarzan growled in pain and charged Bill. Sidestepping the onrushing giant, he dug a vicious hook into his belly, doubling him up. Tarzan spun about with outstretched arms, trying to enfold him in his long muscular arms and drag him to the ground. Bill brought an uppercut from somewhere near the soles of his boots, snapping the ape-man’s head back and staggering him backwards. Bill couldn’t believe Tarzan, the terror of the savage black warriors, was defending himself so poorly, even as hurt and worn out as he must have been.

Then it suddenly struck him. The Indian boys he knew, the "blanket Indians" who grew up in the shadow of the White settlements, knew how to use their fists. But the wild Indians of the plains, for all their warrior skills and wrestling ability, had never developed the art of fisticuffs.

Indeed, the very idea of making a closed fist was foreign to them.

He’d won more than one hand-to-hand with a fierce brave by refusing to close with him, instead picking him apart from outside his reach with his boxing skills. He remembered one match in particular; a handsome well-built chief’s son who’d called him out during a feast. Bill thumped him so badly the young brave refused to get up after being downed for the umpteenth time.

Instead, he offered the "victor’s right" to him, pulling off his loincloth and inviting Bill to take him as a sign of the young brave’s submission. Bill mounted him right in view of his father and the other braves. And so humiliated was he that he offered to be his "contrary wife" since he could not play the warrior prince anymore.

He moved into Bill’s guest tepee and Bill enjoyed him all during the hunting season. He took him with him when he left, but sold him to a lonely trapper. He didn’t think the "civilized" town he was heading for to trade his furs would countenance their "arrangement’, nor be a fit place for one born to the wilderness and a savage nobility.

Realizing his advantage, Bill pressed forward, attacking Tarzan with both guns, as he didn’t need to defend any blows from his opponent. Punch after punch thudded into Tarzan’s firm flesh, driving him back.

The tall man seemed to be shrinking under the barrage, sagging from the punishing body blows and staggering from shots to his massive jaw. At last a haymaker caught him on his temple and Tarzan’s legs went out from under him. He was chopped down and felled like a tree in one of Bill’s logging camps, toppling over and landing face first into the dust.

Bill reached down and seized two handfuls of his long raven tresses, dragging him back up onto his feet. "Get up and take your beating like a man, you lousy thief, I ain’t through with you by a long shot" Bill bellowed into his groggy foe’s face.

He thrust Tarzan back until he slammed into the huge trunk of the tree.

Tarzan sagged under his own weight, feebly holding himself up by reaching behind himself with both arms and gripping onto the tree. This left him totally vulnerable and unprotected, and Bill took full advantage. He worked the beefy frame of the jungle man over like a heavy punching bag in a boxing gym. The rippling abdominal muscles slowly buckled and then caved in to his two-fisted assault, Tarzan grunting like a stuck pig every time Bill buried his leather-gloved fist into his aching gut.

Just to ‘wake him up’ when he seemed ready to pass out, Bill shot a stinging uppercut periodically into the loincloth-bound package jutting out from between the smooth round thighs, or straightened up the sagging mass of muscle with an equally stiff uppercut to the beardless youth’s chin. Bill continued to pummel him for close to an hour, yet to his credit the big man refused to go down. He doggedly kept his death-grip on the tree trunk, leaning his weight on it rather than his wobbly legs. Bill repeatedly grew arm weary from beating the living daylights out of the ape-man.

Rather than break off the attack, however, he leaned his upper body against his, seizing twin handfuls of Tarzan’s massive bulging pectorals, twisting and mauling the mounds of flesh and pinning his shoulders against the trunk. Then he pumped first one knee then the other into Tarzan’s body, changing up from attacking the groin, belly or muscled thighs so Tarzan never knew where the blows would land.

In this way he changed up his attack, resting first his upper and then lower body without letting up for a moment the brutal assault on the hapless jungle fighter.

Bill was not a cruel man normally, but something about this exotic Adonis made dominating him physically erotically exciting. Indeed, it was the burning need growing in his groin that made him cut short his punishment of the wild-man.

For all the variety of his brutal attack, he hadn’t hauled off a and thrown a huge punch to Tarzan’s head-partly for fear he may move his head and cause Bill to miss and break his hand on the tree, and partly from a lack of desire to finish him off prematurely.

Now, however, he seized the savage by the hair, twisting the long locks around his hand and pinioning Tarzan’s handsome face in place. Reaching back with his free hand he swung with all his weight and power, smashing into his target with a fearsome crack. Tarzan’s eyes rolled in his head, and his grip on the tree trunk finally slipped. He crumpled forward, sinking to his face and toppling forward.

He would have fallen for a second time flat onto his face, had Bill not pressed forward. Tarzan’s face nestled, instead, against Bill’s groin.

Still controlling his head with his hair-hold, he ground the beautiful face against his burgeoning package. Bill pulled him away briefly, enjoying the look of disgust and humiliation in Tarzan’s eyes. "Not enjoying it yet? You will, boy, once you get a proper taste!" Bill taunted.

With horror in his eyes Tarzan watched Bill fumble with his free hand with the buttons in the fly of his blue denim jeans, releasing his gigantic erection.

Tarzan resisted with all his remaining strength Bill’s pressing his face forward once again.

"Tarzan Bundulo!" he screamed again, defiantly yet feebly.

Ignoring him, Bill seized his right wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. Applying pressure to his hammerlock until Tarzan winced in pain, he thrust his enormous erection forward.

Wordlessly, Bill offered Tarzan a choice. Accept the degrading act or risk having his arm painfully broken. What Tarzan did next, however, took Bill completely by surprise.

(5)

Bill tugged on Tarzan’s hair, and cinched in his arm-lock even more securely, anticipating a monumental struggle as he forced the jungle beauty ever closer to his waiting rod.

To his amazement, however, Tarzan suddenly lurched forward. Unbidden, he flicked out his tongue and tasted the tip of Bill’s enflamed glans. The sharp point of his tongue hungrily probed the piss-slit for several seconds.

Bill groaned in shocked surprise, and a convulsive shudder shook his loins. Tarzan withdrew slightly, and Bill saw he’d extracted a single dewy drop of pre-cum; glistening on the tip of his tongue like a pearl. Tarzan drew in his tongue and rolled it about in his mouth, savoring the taste.

"Holy Santa Ana," Bill cried out to himself in astonishment: "he’s a natural born cock-sucker!!"

Tarzan half-smiled, and licked his lips. Then he proceeded to lick and lave every inch of Bill’s huge prong.

And there were a lot of inches to cover. Twelve ¼ inches to be exact. Bill knew his exact measurements, both length and girth and diameter of his balls.

Back on his Mother’s farm a handsome traveling carpenter had sweet-talked the lonely abandoned wife into doing some unnecessary improvements to the barn at exorbitant prices. He passed himself off as a master carpenter, but as he was only a few years older than Bill himself he suspected he was a runaway apprentice using his good looks and strapping build to charm widows and single women like his mother out of their savings.

He pretended to take Bill under his wing and make him his helper, but out of sight of his mother’s watchful gaze he showed a not-so charming side. He bullied and ordered Bill about, and found fault with every thing he did. He made a fetish of measuring everything minutely, repeating the saying "Measure Twice, Cut Once" like it was a passage from Holy Writ.

Finally, his temper got the best of him and he snatched up his steel ruler and threw Bill over his knee. No man but his father had ever whipped Bill, and this smooth-talking phony wouldn’t be the first.

Bill broke free and took the older boy on toe-to-toe, whuppin’ him good. He stripped him and shucked off his own clothes, and forced him to his knees.

He made the handsome teenanger suck him off, and for his first time he did almost as good a job as Tarzan was now doing to his throbbing meat. He made the cute blond workman take up the ruler again and measure him at full erection. Slack jawed with astonishment, he read off the prodigious numbers.

Then Bill picked him up by his ears and tossed him over his own sawhorse. Greasing up the steel tool he inserted it into his asshole, forcing it up as far as it would go until it wedged against some internal obstruction in his spasmed guts. Bill dramatically shook his head as he studied the point where the ruler had stopped. "Tsk, tsk! Look’s like we got a piece of lumber a good three inches longer than the socket we got to fill. Looks like I’ll have to do some drilling and boring until it’s reamed out to the proper dimensions.

And he did, giving the stud the deepest and most brutal fuck Bill had ever delivered to any man to that point. No man had yet took Bill all the way, even a strapping seven foot Swedish giant of a lumberjack Bill nicknamed Paul Bunyan who had an (almost) bottomless asshole. But the carpenter came close, taking it nearly to the hilt before passing out.

Once Bill had the ‘measure’ of his man, they made a good team. The work went slowly, mostly because they took breaks every half hour up in the hayloft, coming down more exhausted and sweaty than when they were working.

The jobs stretched out all summer, until one day the stranger packed up his tools and disappeared, leaving a note for his mother that no pay was necessary for the work done, as he was amply rewarded just by knowing her, and especially her son.

Bill broke from the pleasant memory. Tarzan was definitely not getting the job done. What had started out to be a surprisingly wicked blow-job was dragging on. At first Tarzan had worked miracles with his ravenous tongue. Now he was puffing out his cheeks and mechanically running his lips up and down the full length of the shaft, leaving the prick to dangle midair in the deep shaft of his throat. He seemed to be purposefully avoiding letting the sensitive throbbing glans touch his tongue or even the insides of his cheeks.

At first Bill chalked it up to inexperience, although why Tarzan should have started out like gangbusters and then slowed to a crawl now was puzzling.

"I’m glad you are enjoying yourself, Monkey-Boy, but it’s time to close the show. Get that magic tongue of yours working again, I’ve got a juicy little treat for you." Bill teased.

Yet Tarzan ignored him, mechanically sucking Bill’s well-lubed shaft.

"What the fuck’s wrong with you Boy?" Bill growled, losing his patience. He doubted the jungle orphan, raised without human contact, quite knew what he was doing. Bill knew some boys new to sex quailed at the thought of swallowing a load, but someone as naïve as Tarzan probably didn’t even know his prong was useful for anything other than pissing, at least until now.

And he certainly had a high gag reflex, as he was taking it deep down his gullet without so much as a whimper. Maybe his first instinct to force him, face fucking him until he shot his load down his throat, was right.

But if Tarzan did gag as he came it would spoil everything, aborting a satisfying conclusion. Maybe he should just pull out now and ram it up his ass. He was planning to do it eventually anyway, and he might as well give it to him good with his first hard-on. There would be plenty of time later to teach this savage the finer points of sex-play.

Bill pulled out, noting a strange look of reluctance and disappointment registering on Tarzan’s face.

"Damn" Bill thought to himself "he must have really been enjoying it."

Bill yanked him unceremoniously to his feet, and let him know with gestures and words exactly what he was planning to do to him.

Tarzan’s eyes became big as saucers, and Bill thought he caught a flash of anger for just a second.

"Kiss Tarzan first?" Tarzan asked under his breath, entreatingly.

"Shit!" Bill snorted, "Someone’s been watching the natives courting from up in the trees. So you want a little romance first, eh? Well, Beautiful, pucker up those sweet lips of yours, cuz’ your going to get your first kiss. Followed by another first you’ll never forget." Bill untangled his hand from Tarzan’s hair, and eased up a bit on the painful hammerlock.

Tarzan moved in closer, and leaned down to the upraised face of the shorter man. Their lips met, and again Bill was surprised by the aggressiveness of the less experienced man. Tarzan briefly brushed their lips together, Bill thrilling to the plush, velvety sensuousness of the smooth-faced, full-lipped Adonis. He thrust his tongue inside, exploring territory only penetrated by his prick so far.

Tarzan tasted sweet and fresh, as a vegetarian would, with just a hint of Bill’s own salty smegnum lingering on his tongue. Bill locked lips with the reciprocating wild-man, and began groping his firm body with his free hand. He had sensed Tarzan’s pectorals and nipples, especially, were quite sensitive when he was mauling him up against the tree. But Tarzan winced when he pinched and kneaded his voluptuous breasts, still sore no doubt from being manhandled. He moved down to the rippling belly, fingering the deep folds and ridges, but again Tarzan reacted in discomfort. The same reaction ensued when he rubbed his smooth round thighs.

"Damn" Bill thought, "where isn’t he bruised and tender?"

Tarzan solved the dilemma by guiding Bill’s fingers with his free hand, moving them to rest in the small of his back. Then he reached around Bill’s arms and gently enfolded him in a lover’s caress, a gentle hug that drew their bodies even closer together.

Then it flashed on Bill’s mind. He may have been beating Tarzan’s ass metaphorically for the better part of two hours, but his back and buttocks were about the only body parts Bill hadn’t pounded to mush, aside from his arms, which were out of harm’s way behind him during the assault.

Bill reached around with both hands, relinquishing his hold, and groped the firm round ass-cheeks. They were as smooth and firm as marble.

Bill loosened the thong running between his legs and up his butt-crack, and substituted his fingers, spreading aside the buns and delving in the hidden valley between. A shudder went up and down Tarzan’s entire frame, and Bill was certain it was a thrill of pleasure this time rather than a shock of pain or discomfort.

"MMMMnnn! This is good, Candy Lips" Bill gasped, breaking off their marathon kiss-fest. "But it’s time to get serious. I could do this slow and easy, but you still have to pay for crossing me. So I’m going to take you hard and rough and nasty at first, just so you know who is boss. But after your tears dry we have all day to do it the way you like it too."

Bill ground his hard-on against Tarzan’s package, the friction and warmth quickly building his erection up to another feverish peak. He moved his hand up to Tarzan’s slim hips and gently began turning him around. He reached for Tarzan’s right wrist, to reapply the hold. He would need to control the savage during the lengthy and brutal ass-pounding he planned.

But Tarzan gently but firmly resisted turning about and bending over for his deflowering. He hugged Bill more closely still, and locked him in another deep kiss. They swayed and danced in this manner for several moments.

Bill enjoyed Tarzan’s coy half-resistance. It would make it all the sweeter when he ravished him.

Tarzan swept him up in his arms, squeezing him in his tightest embrace yet.

Bill was surprised by the strength in his arms, especially when Tarzan could barely support himself without Bill propping him up. But then, again, his arms were pretty fresh, having rested from the vine-swinging and not having taken any punishment during their battle.

Tarzan squeezed harder yet, his hands clasping together in the small of Bill’s back and lifting him off his feet. A light flashed in Bill’s brain again, a horrible moment of belated clarity.

"Tarzan Bundolo!!!!!!" Tarzan bellowed in that animal tongue of his, and shook Bill like a rag doll.

Bill saw his hard-on wagging like a dog’s tail between his legs, and suddenly felt foolish and impotent. With inhuman strength Tarzan tightened his grip like a python’s coils. Bill’s ribs felt like they were caving in, and his spine began dislocating where Tarzan’s huge fists dug into the hollow of his back. He couldn’t draw in the tiniest bit of air, although his mouth gaped open like a fish out of water. His arms were pinned helplessly at his sides. How could he have been so stupid!

Tarzan was playing him all along. He deliberately took a fearsome, nearly crippling beating. He even swallowed his dignity (not to mention Bill’s dick) to play for time. All the while he was resting and protecting his arms, worn out from swinging through the trees and carrying the heavy saddle and its attendant gear.

He maneuvered Bill into position where he could secure a firm hold without having to fight past his dreaded fists. His powerful back, shoulders, and bulging forearms were strained to the limit, attempting to crush the life out of him in one last desperate expense of his waning strength.

Bill could not get over the low animal cunning of the jungle warrior. He played possum to the point of sacrificing his manhood, doing anything to gain an advantage. He would salve the wound of his loss of pride, of his dignity being scarred for life, with the satisfaction that his trick enabled him in the end to ultimately defeat and kill his adversary.

And death was coming swiftly, too.

Bill could feel his back near to snapping in two, but worse yet he was suffocating for lack of air.

Tarzan growled like the savage beast he was, shaking Bill’s limp body like a rag doll in his crushing bear hug.

Bear Hug!

A Bear Hug was nothing new to Bill, he’d been in the real thing back out West, and as near to dear as now. A huge, mortally wounded grizzly had charged him, gripping him in its typical mauling manner no different than Tarzan was now.

He’d freed himself the only way he could, smashing his forehead into the beast’s sensitive snout. The brute released him just long enough for him to finish it off with his Bowie knife. Bill strained his neck and shoulders back, pain shooting like lightning up his spine and into his skull. He began blacking out, and knew this was now or never. He thrust forward with the last of his strength. His forehead rammed into Tarzan’s aristocratic nose, drawing blood.

Emboldened, Bill butted him again and again, cracking his forehead against his opponent’s own forehead.

Tarzan staggered slightly and loosened his grip.

Bill could feel the surge of strength had peaked and was now ebbing dramatically. Able to draw a few breaths and revive himself, Bill struggled in Tarzan’s slackening grasp. A final headbutt rang his Bell, allowing Bill to slip down enough to gain a footing. He brought a swift knee up between his legs.

Tarzan grunted again "Tarzan Bundol---uuAAAAH!!!" and broke his hold as Bill’s knee hit its mark.

Both men swayed like drunks, hurling looks of pure hatred but neither able or willing to press an attack. Then Bill, with a foolish bravado he couldn’t control since childhood, begged Tarzan to bring it on. Rising his fists again in a boxing stance, he challenged Tarzan to come get a worse beating than before.

In truth, Bill was near to collapse. But his bluff worked. Tarzan had never met any man, not even a group of warriors, who could out-track and outfight him to a standstill.

With a final, empty threat, he reached down and threw a cloud of grass and dust into Bill’s face. Then he turned on his heels and staggered off into the open.

Bill tried to go after him, but finally sagged against the trunk of the Banyan, panting like a dog.

Tarzan began with a stagger, straightened up to a lope, and was now running with surprising grace and speed onto the veldt. He sped straight towards the mixed herd of grazing animals, which parted respectfully before him like the Red Sea before Moses.

Tarzan turned and pointed in the direction of the grove, grunting some command.

Suddenly, the placidly meandering mass coalesced. Galvanized, it turned, gathered itself and thundered straight for him. In seconds the gigantic herds swept about him like a tidal wave. In the lead were the swift, fierce zebras, their sharp black hooves ripping up the earth.

Bill calmly picked up his saddle and unlimbered the coil of rope from the saddlebag. This wasn’t the first stampede he’d faced in his life (although it had a good chance of being his last).

He called out over the thudding hooves and bellows of the massed beasts. "I’m not finished yet, Lord of the Jungle. If I have to lasso an Earthquake and ride the Thunder itself I’ll find you. You’re ass belongs to me!"

Bill looked up as the cloud of dust parted momentarily, as a gigantic zebra stallion reared up before him, and prepared to trample him under his cruel hooves.

(6)

Tarzan sprinted another hundred yards, turned, and watched the herd trampling through the Banyan grove and dispersing. He bent over, hands on knees, and retched-dry heaving into the tall grass.

It wasn’t the exhaustion, or even the fearsome gut-wrenching belly pounding he’d received at the hands of the white demon. He felt sick at himself, and disgusted at what he’d done-at what he’d allowed to be done to him. He could stand under the waterfalls of Nairobi for a year and not feel cleansed of his defilement.

Worse yet was what had almost happened. Still unsure his strength had sufficiently returned to challenge the powerful fighter, he had planned to continue playing for time.

When Bill had announced his intention to fuck him, Tarzan had actually considered letting him have his way with him. Perhaps when he’d finally spent himself on him Tarzan could take advantage of a vulnerable moment to exact his revenge.

It was only when Bill lovingly described in minute detail what a butt-fucking truly entailed that Tarzan was so revolted he knew he could not go through with it. He instinctively felt he could not be mounted like a she-ape in heat and count himself a man.

He sucked in a ragged breath, and looked back at the grove again.

At least it was over.

The white devil was ground to dust by now, not even enough to attract the vultures that wheeled overhead. His shame was not so easily eradicated. The silhouette of what appeared to be a small giraffe trotted in his direction. As it approached closer he grew confused. The markings and scent borne on the wind was of a zebra, not a giraffe. And yet, he could clearly discern the head jutting out on a long column from its shoulders.

Suddenly, a cold shiver went through Tarzan’s body. Another scent there was in the wind. A man!

The strange beast drew closer still, a beast of fable from a Black’s campfire tale. Half beast below and half man above, a Centaur!

The Zebra thing brayed, the man-thing whooped and hallooed and yelled ‘Hyah, Hyah, Gitup, Mule!’

It drew to a halt just a hundred yards from him.

Tarzan squinted into the evening sun, his jaw dropping when he realized the truth. The White Demon lived, and bestrode the back of the wild zebra, the leather saddle thing perched like a seat beneath him.

"Hello again, Jungle-man! Thanks for sending a fresh mount my way, I was getting tired of marching around like an damn infantryman. I’m thinking of calling him Hard Time, cuz’ he looks like the clothes they made me wear in that Mexican jail. As you will find out soon, there’s no man or beast I can’t break or ride."

With that he spurred the beast forward, charging as if to run him down.

Tarzan took off like an antelope pursued by a lion. At top speed, no animal, even the swift Cheetah, could outrun him over a great distance.

But his condition was nowhere near its peak. Already the breath burned in his lungs. The huge muscles in his thighs had been so badly pummeled they were already knotting up. Only his ability to change his direction at a whim saved him from being outrun.

As fine a horseman as Bill was, the still wild zebra only reluctantly accepted his direction. He was no trained cutting horse like Firestorm.

Tarzan dodged and weaved for a good twenty minutes, crisscrossing the vast open plain in a jagged, purposeless flight that could only end one way.

Bill circled the frantic, exhausted ape-man.

Tarzan spun about dizzily, looking for an opening. Bellowing his blood-curdling yell, Tarzan caused the zebra to rear and buck in fright.

While Bill struggled to control his mount Tarzan broke free and ran for the trees, still miles away. He didn’t get far when he heard Bill thundering down upon him again.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Bill spinning some sort of vine around his head, making a strange whooshing sound like when he swung through the trees.

Tarzan ran with all his might, Bill close at his heels.

Suddenly, Bill leaped up to a standing position on the saddle, still spinning the circle of vine above his head.

Tarzan heard a hissing cut through the air, and felt something slither around his body like a python. His arms were pinned to his sides, and he watched with stunned confusion as Bill re-sat his mount, wheeled him about, and charged off in the opposite direction.

The rope grew taut, and Tarzan was suddenly pulled off his feet and onto his belly. Bill dragged him over the flat, grassy ground.

Hitting a rut or snag, Tarzan would take to the air momentarily, bounding over the hard ground like a skipping rock over water. His package ground into the soil, leaving a jagged rut like a Black farmer’s plowing-stick digging a row for planting.

He was dragged for miles before the zebra, unused to such long spurts without some predator at its heels, stopped dead and refused to move, for all Bill’s spurring and whipping of its flanks.

"Hiyah, Hiyah, Gidup, Mule" he screamed, but the beast refused to move.

Tarzan seized the moment. Seizing the slack trailing rope he gave it a powerful jerk, yanking it from Bill’s gloved hand. With his arms still bound he took off at a run again.

But Bill soon had control of his ride again, and began running him down once again.

Once more he leaped up like a circus rider on the pommel of the saddle, as the zebra was pulling alongside Tarzan while in full stride. Bill leaped from the back of the beast, over the head of the tall ape-man.

As he plummeted down he seized Tarzan in a headlock, dragging him to the ground while they were both still moving forward with full momentum.

"Heeeyaaahh!!!" Bill yelped as he bulldogged the jungle titan, driving him face first into the ground with sickening impact.

Tarzan’s head was nearly planted into the ground like a spear.

Bill straddled him, and with blazing, practiced speed looped the trailing end of the rope around his wrists and ankles. Securely hogtied, with his face still half-buried in the sod, his butt sticking up in the air, he was helpless. Bill stepped between his hunched legs, stepping on his bonds and pinning him in place. He pulled the short leather riding-strap from his belt.

Leaning over, he whacked Tarzan’s protruding buttocks.

Tarzan winced, determined not to let the white devil hear him cry out. But as the sharp cracks filled the air, with nothing but his thin loincloth partially protecting his buttock and thighs, Tarzan couldn’t control tears of pain from flowing.

Bill taunted him, asking if he was ready for that butt-fucking now.

Tarzan refused even to answer him, and when he walked around in front of him, barking the same question right into his face, Tarzan summoned up what little moisture remained in his dry mouth and spat in his face.

Bill roared with laughter. "Now that’s my Wild-Man! I’m glad you still have some fight in you. Tell you what. I’m nothing if not a sporting man. Never met the mount I couldn’t break and ride, but I’ll give you the chance to be the first. If you can make it to those trees you’ve been making for all this time, you’re home free. You buck me off and I’ll turn you free myself. We’ll part just like friends, and no one needs to know what’s gone down between us but our own selves. How’s that?"

Tarzan scrutinized him credulously.

"Oh, you’re probably wondering what’s in it for me. Well, son, if I ride you into the ground before you make it all the way your ass is mine. For keeps!"

Tarzan shot him a look of disdain, but thought it over for a second. The trees were so close, less than a mile. He could smell the rich fruit and cool pools of rainwater, almost feel the cool shade reaching out to him. Almost feel the freedom caressing him like the evening breeze.

"Tarzan not zebra! No man ride Tarzan. No man mount Tarzan like she-ape. Tarzan Bundulo!" Tarzan roared defiantly.

"Yeah, right, you’ll Bundulo my ass. Or maybe I’ll Bundulo the Bejeesus out of yours." Bill grinned "Either way it sounds like we got us the makings of a good ol’ Texas rodeo. Let’s saddle you up."

Bill went over to the zebra, now calmly chewing grass as if nothing had happened out of the ordinary. He unsaddled him and carried it over to the bound jungle-man. He heaved it across his broad back.

Reaching under he cinched the belly straps in good and tight, so it wouldn’t slip sideways. Then he took the free end of the belly strap and passed it between his legs and tied it to the rear of the saddle.

Tarzan groaned piteously when the strap cut into his tightly bound package.

Bill cut Tarzan’s hands and feet free, then took up the reins in his gloved hands and swung his leg over the saddle. Tarzan rose up on all fours, testing the strange feeling of bearing the full weight of a saddled rider on his back.

Bill pulled his legs up tight, resting his toes on the shelf of Tarzan’s broad buttocks. He snapped the whip at his exposed butt, and Tarzan was galvanized into action. Bill was a bit surprised at the speed with which Tarzan trotted along, the long arms and legs moving with a steady gait. Bill sunk a spur tip into his exposed butt-flesh, and Tarzan reared, snorting like a Brahma Bull. He bucked and tried to roll Bill off, but Bill just stuck out a leg to brace them from toppling over sideways. Then Tarzan reared up on his haunches, trying to toss him off his back. But Bill clapped his knees tight to Tarzan’s sides, and held firm. On they marched in the hot sun, Tarzan grunting and struggling on. Bill yipping and yelping and having the time of his life, taunting Tarzan by pointing out how close they were gaining to the agreed finish line.

But Tarzan was tiring quickly, and Bill had to spur and whip him on to keep his anger up.

With the tree-line scant yards away, Tarzan got a sudden rush of adrenaline. Sensing he could not make it, however, he put an all-out effort into trying to unseat the smug cowboy. He bucked and reared and twisted in the air, trying to shrug him off with pure athleticism.

But Bill’s balance and anticipation was uncanny, and he reveled in the test.

Spent, Tarzan turned again to doggedly plodding ahead, but he had miscalculated again.

The furious attempt to throw Bill had exhausted his last strength. His arms gave way first, and his chest sank to the ground. Unable to rise up again, be tried to crawl to the beckoning jungle, crawling on his belly and sprawling like a monitor lizard through the tall grass.

Finally, in a last ditch attempt he threw himself forward, but collapsed onto his face.

Bill whipped and spurred him, but Tarzan lay inert, too spent even to react. Defeated. "Damn, that was one spirited try, jungle-boy! Best damn ride I ever took!" Bill exulted, "Sorry it had to end this way. Another twenty feet and I would have had to admit I was beat. Tell you what, monkey-man, I’m feeling damn generous today. I’ll give you one more try. You make it the rest of the way or buck me off and you go free and clear. And this time no saddle."

He stripped the saddle off of the sweat-soaked jungle-man.

Tarzan felt a fresh rush of hope and energy. Without the heavy saddle, on his slippery back, he should have no problem bucking him off.

Or, failing that, with these few precious minutes of rest, he could easily make it those last few feet.

"Oh, just one thing, pretty-boy. I’ll be riding you bareback, but not the way you may think. You see, you’ll be trying for your freedom, but you already lost the contest for your manhood. I’ll be fucking the daylights out of your pussy ass all the time I’m riding you."

Tarzan gulped, but nodded his assent. It was still his last, best chance not to become this man’s slave. All he had to do is go all out to reach the safety of the jungle and attempt to forget the nightmare of this day.

Bill peeled off his gloves shirt and jeans, retaining only his boots and spurs. He reached beneath Tarzan and undid his leather loincloth. His exposed thighs and inner buttocks had been whipped red and raw. But where the thin skin covering had provided some protection it was unmarked.

Bill held his breath for a second. He had never seen an ass like this before. Surprisingly, it was as alabaster white as Tommy’s, shielded as it was from the elements. Everywhere else Tarzan’s flesh was a tawny brass.

He ran his hand over the smooth, hairless globes. They were solid muscle, with a slight springy give on the lower portion where it met the flesh of the thigh, but otherwise hard as white marble.

Tommy’s little bubble buns were like twin stones polished smooth and shiny in a stream. Tarzan’s were like a single massive boulder, cleft by a sculptor’s chisel and polished by a master mason’s hand.

Bill bent closer, spreading the buns apart. Deep inside the milky white cleft winked a pink virgin rosebud. Bill pressed his face deep into the cleft, and flicked his tongue against the opening.

Tarzan flinched, but remained on all fours.

Bill thrust deeper, then deeper still. Tarzan ground his hips and moaned, while Bill’s tongue fucked his cherry ass. Bill pulled out and stood up. He straddled his back again, settling down in the hollow of his lower back. He slid easily backwards over Tarzan sweaty’s rump, until his private parts dangled down. Bill moved slowly and deliberately, dry humping Tarzan’s ass, rubbing his prick and balls between his ass-crack until he stiffened and grew hard.

He taunted Tarzan, telling him how he’d make him moan like a girl and shoot his own load before Bill did his. He picked up the pace, his erection reaching it’s full, towering height.

Bill reared back; giving himself room to direct the tip against Tarzan’s virgin rosebud. He prodded experimentally a few times, but Tarzan resisted him. He lay on Tarzan’s broad back and reached under. Taking a bulging breast in each hand he squeezed softly, massaging the relaxed muscle, and pinched the sensitive nipples until they hardened into burning nubs of flesh.

Tarzan moaned and relaxed slightly. Bill suddenly reared back, and plunged forward. Taken by surprise, Tarzan was penetrated before he could mount a resistance. Bill pumped his hips forward, his feet braced solidly on the ground. He battered Tarzan’s ass, screwing deeper and deeper with each thrust. Soon he was inserted halfway up the length of the shaft, and was ready to mount the jungle-man in earnest. He levered Tarzan’s ass up with his prong until it pointed heavenward, then swung his legs over his slim hips, twining his legs inside his inner thighs and hooking his boots under the rise of his heels.

The sharp spurs prodded Tarzan’s ass when he tried to sit back on his haunches. Bill took a handful of hair and twisted it, reaching under with his other hand and taking a handful of man-tit again. Using his long hair like reins and spurring him forward, Bill began pounding him like the mechanical hammer digging a tunnel in that classic battle with Big John Brown. Only this contest was man against man.

Tarzan raised himself up on all fours and lurched forward. Bill screwed him unmercifully, plunging deeper with each thrust.

Tarzan could neither concentrate on resisting him or relax and adjust to the new sensations riddling his body and mind. He gritted his teeth and pressed forward, but the world was spinning around him.

Bill whooped and hollered, slapping his ass with his free hand periodically, when he wasn’t mauling his tits or tickling his sore ribs.

Tarzan tried to tell his arms and legs to move in unison, but he found himself rocking back and forth on his heels like a hobbyhorse. He was rolling his hips unconsciously, responding to the forceful screwing.

For a full minute he stood stock still, moaning as Bill dragged his gigantic prick out of his tortured tunnel of flesh, only to plunge in once again, deeper than before. Moan after deep moan purled from his gasping mouth. He remembered what Bill had said, and it was true. He was moaning like a new bride in the marriage hut. His dick was aflame, swelling and flailing against the ridges of his own taut belly muscles. He never knew there were sensations like this, never knew sex was like this.

He tried to focus, to move forward. He was not tiring this time. Far worse he was losing his will to fight.

Bill slammed his big meat so far up his back end he feared it would come up into his mouth. Tarzan was taking all of Bill, over a foot of hard, hot flesh. Bill ground it in to the hilt, his big balls and bristling bush grinding into his tender buttocks.

Once again, Tarzan bet it all on one last gamble. He reared up on his haunches, heedless of the spurs digging into his ass. Bill released his nipple and seized Tarzan’s throat, turning his head to face him. He leaned low and clamped on a deep kiss, while grinding his cock in places where no man should be touched.

Tarzan waggled his ass and shook his huge shoulders.

Drenched in sweat, Bill was losing his purchase. Only being so deeply embedded inside Tarzan kept him from slipping off. But then he too gambled, drawing his huge weapon almost fully out, only the mushroom head remaining at the portal to keep the back door ajar. This forced Bill to pull far back and sit low on Tarzan’s massive thighs.

Sensing his last opportunity, Tarzan reared up onto his knees and shook his mighty frame, trying to dislodge Bill for once and for all. Bill’s hand slithered fee of his sweat-soaked hair, and he began falling backward off his back.

With one last effort Tarzan tossed him into the air. Bill came down with all his weight on his hips, however, and gave one last gigantic thrust. His gigantic prick slid as easily as a sword into its scabbard, right up to the hilt.

Tarzan convulsed, losing control. His dick, untouched, responded to his first, violent orgasm. He shot wad after milky wad into the dusky air. He cried out in his unintelligible animal tongue.

Bill howled a battle cry, and ejaculated as well, pumping like an uncapped oil well deep inside the jungle warrior.

Tarzan collapsed into the dust, Bill too sagging, spent, onto his back. Tarzan swooned, and when he came to he groaned inwardly when he saw he was mere inches from the line cast by the shadow of the trees. Bill, still naked, knelt at his side and caressed his ass.

"Yeah, close enough to spit over. Or, in your case, shoot your wad. Yep, Ol’ Paint, it was a magnificent ride. But like they say, close only counts in horseshoes. Speaking of horses, now that you’re broke to the saddle I got some serious training to do with your ass. We’re going to start off slow, learning to pace yourself. Next time around we’ll break into a trot. Then I’ll teach you to run. Then gallop. And finally, we’ll do a full, headlong military charge. Yes Sir, it may take the better half of tonight and tomorrow, but you’ll be the best-trained piece of horse flesh this side of the Congo."

Late in the night, a curious Hard Time sauntered over to where the strange creatures moved about in the tall grass. He snorted, smelling the unmistakable scent of rutting. Excited, he reared up and whinnied. From deep in the shadows of the night, Tarzan too reared and whinnied, the smaller man mounted upon him.

(7)

"Cookie, Mr. President! He’s back! Bill’s back!" Breathless, Tommy charged down the high ridge where he’d been a one-man lookout the last three days.

"I can’t wait to hear the fool yarn about why he stranded us here cooling our heels while he was shashayin’ all over Africa doin’ Gods knows what." Cookie groused irritably.

Roosevelt, a man of somewhat volatile temper himself, held himself in check. "God knows indeed. God knows Bill’s heart, both the size and depth and strength. It isn’t ours to judge."

Cookie bit his lip. He should have known better than to badmouth Bill in front of the President. For some unknown reason Bill could do no wrong in his eyes.

But what troubled him more was the look in Tommy’s eyes whenever he looked at Bill or even heard his name. "He’s back, walking in along the dry river bed like he was taking a stroll along a country lane."

Even as he spoke Bill’s head popped up over the bank of the Wadi.

"Well, if it isn’t ‘Wild’ Bill himself. You have some explaining to do, Mister!" Roosevelt bellowed in his stentorian voice. Everyone knew, however, there was no real anger in his tone. He was like a doting, indulgent parent when it came to Bill’s antics.

"Oh, just taking the lay of the land, Mr. President" Bill drawled, " So to speak. Oh, by the way, you don’t have to worry about that Tarzan fellow anymore, I took care of him."

"Tarzan? Bill, don’t start-I’m not in the mood for your tall Texas tales. The King of the Jungle is a myth, he doesn’t exist." Roosevelt opined.

"Guess he doesn’t, anymore." Bill said, rubbing his chin Thoughtfully.

"You didn’t kill him, did you Bill?" quavered the tender-hearted Tommy.

"Naw, just beat his ass and showed him who’s the real top man out here. By the way, Mr. President, I found a real fine hunting ground the other side of the river. And I got a local who can do the job of a hundred beaters, herded them right past our guns."

"Well, well, seems our Bill has had a real productive outing. We’ll break camp in the morning and head for the river. But I’ve got some bad news, Bill. Your saddle is gone. I suspect one of these thieving natives made off with it, Son." Roosevelt concluded, with tender compassion in his voice.

"Nothing of the kind, I brought it with me this time, is all." Bill assured him.

"Oh, I suppose you stuck it in your back pocket!" Cookie interjected, his voice dripping sarcasm.

"Nope, Cookie, just took Mr. Roosevelt’s advice this time out" Bill returned cheerily, ignoring the old man.

"My advice, Bill?" Roosevelt shot in, puzzled.

"Yes Sir, don’t you remember? You said it made more sense to saddle and ride the game out there than drag it back to camp. So I did. Broke me a fine Zebra stallion, and rode him back here to camp. I’m thinking of breeding him with Cookie’s old red mule. Should make for some fine ‘Morning News’ foals."

"What’s a Morning News foal, Bill?" Tommy asked, swallowing the bait.

"One that’s Black and White and Read all over." Bill rejoined with a barely concealed grin.

Roosevelt burst into a hearty fit of laughter, as did Tommy and the others.

But there was one in their midst who wasn’t charmed by Bill’s high spirits. "Consarn you Bill! Enough of your fool talk!" Cookie sputtered in high dudgeon.

"Nobody’s ever rode a wild zebra. Not even the locals, and they’ve been living alongside them since Adam was a pup. I’m calling you out this time, you lying Son of a Bitch. If you rode up to camp, where’s your saddle."

Bill didn’t deign to answer. Instead he turned and whistled softly into the distance. Everyone stared off into the blinding sun.

Cookie could not be constrained now, despite warning glances from Roosevelt. "You blamed idiots! He’s got you believing his fool yarns! If there’s a zebra out there carryin’ his saddle I’ll mate with it myself."

"Suit yourself, Cookie, but you might want to bathe first. Hard Time has a pretty delicate sense of smell." Bill rejoined with a smirk.

Cookie was fairly hopping mad now, but before he could speak again Tommy caught his sleeve.

"Um, Mister Cookie, Sir. I think you should look over there in the Wadi."

Cookie turned and froze, his bearded jaw dropping lower than a snake’s belly.

From the deep ravine trotted Hard Time, still sporting Bill’s silver-trimmed saddle. He trotted up the bank, sidled near the stupefied Cookie, snuffled him over, and snorted contemptuously.

"Told ya, Cookie. Real particular like." Bill deadpanned.

Even Roosevelt roared and rolled on the ground, laughing.

Cookie stormed off, and could be heard rattling his pans and cursing for days afterward.

Bill gave the zebra’s reins to Tommy and asked him to look after him while he conferred with the President on their move.

*

Later that night Bill finished his daily ritual of lovingly oiling his saddle. He rose and whistled softly into the night. He waited patiently for a moment, then whistled again.

A slight form loomed into the circle of light cast by the campfire. "That you whistlin’, Bill?" Tommy asked with a strange look on his face.

"Yep, felt like goin’ for a little ride. Why?"

"Bill, I got s-somethin’ to tell ya. Promise not to h-hate me." Tommy stammered, his eyes downcast in fear.

"That would take some doin’ on your part, Son. Spit it out."

"I…I let Hard Ride loose a…a while ago." Tommy said, struggling to get the words out.

"You did what? You let him get loose? I thought you were a better wrangler than that, Tommy." Bill said, trying not to sound to harsh.

"He didn’t get loose, I set him loose. I...I just couldn’t stand that look in his eyes. He’s a wild thing, Bill. This is his home. He might have a family out there in the herd for all we know. All the others gawked at him and laughed at his stripes like he was a painted pony at the circus. He was meant to be free. I’m sorry, Bill. You can punish me all you please, Bill, but don’t stay mad at me. I had to do it. I just hadda." Tommy said, near tears now.

Bill placed a reassuring hand on his trembling shoulder. "It’s ok, Tommy. I think I understand." Bill said in a calm voice. "I did the same once myself."

He thought of his beautiful Indian lover, whom he left with a trapper friend who’d lost his partner to an Indian raiding party. Doubtless they were together still, in his secluded cabin far away from prying eyes. He had left him behind because, even though he couldn’t return to his tribe, he belonged in the wilderness.

"It took a lot of courage to do what you felt was right. It took a Man to do that." Bill stated, his gaze melting into Tommy’s tearful eyes.

"Y-You mean you ain’t gonna tan my hide or nuthin’?" Tommy blurted out, seeming almost disappointed.

"Oh, well. You did let him loose after I entrusted you with him. I guess some punishment is in order." Bill said, grinning wickedly. He sidled up to the boy, cupped a hand on his round buttock, and stroked it appreciatively. "Tell me, Boy, do you still sleep buck naked?" Bill whispered into his ear.

"Y-yeah, Bill, why?" Tommy answered, a bit confused.

"I just might visit you tonight, and give you that hiding. Maybe if I warm that little bottom of yours real good you’ll think twice about followin’ orders."

"Promise, Sir?" Tommy replied, archly, his eyes lighting up with joy.

"That’s a promise, boy, and you know a Texan never lies." Bill said, winking broadly.

Tommy practically skipped over the ridge back to the main camp.

Bill looked at the saddle laying by his bedroll. Damn, and I felt like a good ride. Well, there’s more than one stallion I broke across the river. Bill leapt up to the top of the high ridge, whistling sharply down into the Wadi that ran like a deep scar across the hillside. He waited for some time, until he heard a slight snapping of a twig. He tossed his blanket over the dying fire, instantly enveloping himself in darkness. There was a brief moment of silence, followed by a splash. Bill cautiously made his way down to the side of the pool. A tall dark figure emerged from the shadows.

"’Bout time you showed up. Hell, Ol’ Hard Time came faster when I called fer him. But then, you were a hell of a better ride, as I recall. Come over here, Candy Ass."

Tarzan stepped out into the shaft of moonlight illuminating the edge of the pool. "Well, what do we have here?" Bill asked.

"Are you that glad to see me?" he smiled, reaching out and pointing at the massive bulge in Tarzan’s loincloth. "Or…" he continued, slyly reaching into the waistband of the leather loincloth as Tarzan’s eyes betrayed a sudden fear "…is that a knife in your pants?"

Bill whipped out the naked blade, bringing it in one smooth motion to Tarzan’s throat. Bill seized Tarzan by the hair, and forced him to lie on his belly, the sharp blade still at his throat.

"So, you still have some balls, I see. I thought I fucked all the manhood out of you days ago."

Bill quickly stripped, and roughly yanked the skimpy loincloth off the jungle-man’s prone form. "I like spirit. It’s what I look for in a good mount, or a lover. But what’s sauce for the goose, as they say. I can’t face Tommy later knowing I let you off scott-free. I’ll have to think of some way to teach you once and for all not to mess with your betters."

Bill ran his hand over Tarzan’s magnificent ass. He poked a finger between the cleft, prodding and exploring. "Damn, you’re as tight as when I first took you. Anyone else would’a been stretched wider than the Grand Canyon after what we did the last few days. Lemmie see if I can’t do something about that." Bill leered, spying the jar of saddle oil in the pocket of his castoff jeans. He poured a generous portion over his left hand.

Flicking the sharp blade near his Adam’s Apple to signal his demand for his compliance, he made a fist with his greased hand and wedged it into the cleft in his magnificent buns. He forced a knuckle inside, past the protesting asshole, then screwed his fist in. Knuckle by knuckle, until his hand disappeared up to the wrist inside the vainly writhing muscleboy. Bill pumped his fist, brutally raping the helpless, twitching mass of gorgeous flesh.

Tarzan’s mouth gaped open in a silent scream while Bill pumped and twisted his big fist in his tortured ass. For nearly an hour the cowboy made a puppet out of the muscular warrior, manhandling his victim.

When he finally pulled out, he tossed the knife aside, certain no further intimidation would be needed. Silent throughout the ordeal with the blade at his throat, Tarzan allowed himself the luxury of sobbing quietly.

Bill gripped his hard shaft in his greasy fist. "You should be loose as a goose now. It’ll give me some dancing room to try out some new steps. I know you think I taught you everything about being rode, but these are what you might call trick riding skills. I hope you’re as flexible as you look, cuz some of these positions would make an Indian Fakir scratch his head."

Bill seized Tarzan’s ankles and flipped him onto his back. Tossing his long legs over his shoulders, he plunged inside his gaping ass.

Tarzan lost control and screamed, but his cry was muffled when Bill leaned forward and clamped his mouth over his. Tarzan struggled briefly, but then surrendered to the inevitable.

Many hours later Bill staggered into the cool waters of the pool, laving the grease and sweat from his tingling flesh. Refreshed, he emerged and stood over the inert giant.

"Sorry I have to cut this short after only a half dozen or so goes, Ape-boy. Especially after priming you so well for an all-nighter. But I got a hot date, and I don’t want to wear myself out before I get there. Just so you won’t feel cheated, I prepared a little substitute until I get back."

Bill picked up the limp savage, hoisting him to his feet. He walked him over to where he had positioned his saddle on a flat boulder. He made him bestraddle it, and then carefully lowered him down upon it. The high pommel passed between his legs, and Tarzan winced as it struck his ravaged hole. Bill pressed down on Tarzan’s broad shoulders, forcing him to squat lower. He turned his torso this way and that, screwing him down onto the pommel.

Tarzan swooned, but Bill slapped him to attention.

"There now, just so you won’t be jealous of the boy-yeah, I know you were listening to us earlier-here’s a little friend you can play with whenever I’m otherwise engaged. And by the way, you should be thanking the boy. He convinced me I can’t have you forever. You are a God in this place, but you would just be my whore back in the states. Tommy reminded me of that. Wild things need to be free. Of course, that’s when we leave, which won’t be anytime soon. Not if you live up to your promise to herd your friends in range of the hunting party. And don’t worry so much. Teddy has this thing about only taking down the sick ones, and the ones too old to breed. Calls it Evironmentalism or some such ten-dollar word. So we’ve got a lot of hard riding and happy trails ahead of us, Ol’ Paint. Best get used to that pommel, it’s the only thing might loosen you up so’s you don’t keep fainting when I shove my widow-maker up your sweet behind."

Bill turned and left without a further word, but before he passed over the ridge he glanced back over his shoulder.

Tarzan swiveled his hips. Squatting on his powerful legs, he raised himself up and then sat heavily down, moaning luxuriantly. Seizing his huge dick he pumped it in his fist in unison to his movements on the pommel. As the rhytmn of his squatting increased, so did the furious pumping of his fist. His breathing became heavy as he plumped his hard ass down heavily. He let out a stifled cry and came, spewing a geyser-like shower of semen over his face and chest. He rested briefly, then wiped off some of the milky droplets from his lips and inserted his fingers into his mouth and sucked softly on them.

Then he reared up and began the pumping action again, slowly picking up the speed as he reached for his flagging dick once again.

*

Bill sauntered buck-naked into the sleeping camp, to where a mass of covers lay. He whistled softly. A blanket was pulled aside and he lowered himself beneath it. It closed over his head, covering both occupants. In the darkness his lips found those of his lover.

END