Excerpt Day: Ride the Man Down by William Maltese

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Ride the Man Down, #1 in A New World Shaman series, by William Maltese
Release Date: 07/2009
Publisher: MLR Press
ISBN# 978-1-60820-030-6 (print)
978-1-60820-031-3 (ebook)
Publisher Link: http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=RIDEMAN1

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Amazon Kindle: Ride the Man Down

Blurb: The Ridgemonts are wealthy and influential New Mexico Territory landowners. Their status purportedly is purchased by seemingly inexhaustible capital provided by their reputed Deadmen Hills' gold mine. It's only human nature that others want to share in their bounty. That these others have to die has less to do with keeping the "mine" location a secret than with concealing other mysteries bequeathed by the long-lived and elusive native-American shaman Calenza. Secrets even the Ridgemonts can likely never fully comprehend.

Excerpt:

SOMEONE UNFAMILIAR with the region might have been amazed at such a large expanse of sticky mud in the middle of seemingly dry-bone badlands, not a cloud in the clear-blue sky and none having been visible for days on end. Brendon knew, though, that rain sometimes fell beyond the horizon to make its way, miles and miles, through usually bone-dry runways. Some of it, as had happened here, finally emptied into large flat basins where it pooled and, with no immediate exits, turned muddy and eventually dried completely. Somewhere out there, with probably nothing to have witnessed the miracle but a few scrubland bunnies, and a vulture or two, was a truly wondrous explosion of colorful deep-desert flora advantaging its sudden relief from sometimes literally centuries of drought. Within a matter of just hours, plants could miraculously green, grow, blossom, and produce the seeds that would become smothered in wind-blown dust, to sprout again if and when the rain ever deigned return.

As for Graham Janely, his clothes off, his pale-pale body streaked with muddy veneer, wet and drying; his orange hair flashing like firelight in the midday sunlight, he was a Ridgemont ranch hand with every right to be there. In fact, it was his duty to be there, trying his best to push the thoroughly stuck cow the distance necessary to allow him to lasso her from the dry shore where Graham’s horse waited to pull the bovine from the muck. Also waiting, none too patiently for its mother, was a very thin calf that looked so scrawny that it was evident its mum had been stranded where she was for a very long time. The only mystery was how the calf, making its lowing racket, had escaped this long without drawing every predator in the area to take advantage of a meal on the hoof. Maybe, just maybe, the calf had been saved by the same forces of nature which had bogged down its mother; predators found it easier to catch meals wherever thirsty animals gathered at better pools than this one to advantage the novelty of sky-fallen water.

That wasn’t to say that Brendon wasn’t disconcerted by what he saw. He felt it a definite betrayal not only of Eduardo, but of Cal, that Brendon was as physically drawn to Graham, now, as he had been from the moment the young, pale, orange-haired cowhand had signed on.

While Eduardo didn’t find Graham unattractive, Cal did.

“I keep expecting him to have pink bunny eyes,” Cal had said with an accompanying visible shudder; actually, Graham’s eyes were the color of the green grass likely sprouted as a result of the recent far-away rainfall.

Neither Eduardo nor Cal was receptive to Brendon’s hinting that Graham be recruited to expand their threesome to four.

Brendon couldn’t help that he found it so damned excitingly and exotic the way Graham’s coloring, or lack thereof, made the ranch hand stand out from every thing and every one. Not that the young man was white as a sheet all over. Naked as he was, even streaked with mud, it was obvious his head, to the base of his neck, and his hands, to his wrists, had experienced more sun than the rest of him and was a different shade of pale than his arms, torso, back, butt, and legs.

Watching how Graham struggled with the stranded cow made Brendon’s cock get harder — if that was possible. What with Brendon’s anticipation of finally getting back to Eduardo and Cal, after all of the time spent at the Piclicwin Ranch successfully courting Glenn Piclicwin’s niece, Angelica, his cock had been hard most of the ride from the Piclicwin Ranch to the then and there.

Brendon adjusted the lie of his hard prick within the bulged crotch of his pants. He shifted his position in the saddle, avoiding any squash of one or both of his nuts between his ass and hard leather.

His ongoing sexual fantasies about walking up behind the straining Graham and slipping dark-complexioned dick to black-haired furry balls between pale-pale asscheeks and into the depths of the ranch hand’s studly ass were hard to shake. Nonetheless, he tried to shake them. Granted, fantasizing wasn’t the same kind of betrayal as the real thing, but doing so still made him feel more than a little unfaithful to Eduardo who likely hadn’t had sex with anyone or with anything, with the possible exceptions of Cal and fist, since Brendon rode off in the sunset to do what he’d had to do. Brendon hadn’t been gone nearly as long as expected, because Glenn Piclicwin saw all the advantages of joining his acreage with the Ridgemont spread via the marriage of his niece to the Ridgemont heir apparent.

Had Brendon reined his horse in an other direction, right then and there, having decided it was the right thing to do, rather than lingered for a few more moments to watch Graham’s continued strenuous but unsuccessful efforts to budge the cow — the ranch hand’s muscles danced and quivered beneath mud-streaked white flesh — he would have preserved a fairly clear conscience.

However, he did linger and for long enough for Graham’s sixth-sense, or whatever, to detect his presence — rather, the presence, of someone. Automatically, Graham’s right hand groped his right hip for a revolver which wasn’t there. His gun, along with his horse, his lasso, his clothes, his boots, and the still-bawling calf, had been left on dry shore.

“It’s only me, cowboy!” Brendon provided identity to put Graham at ease. It didn’t put Brendon at ease. “Need a hand?” He hadn’t wanted to ask. Well, okay, maybe, he had wanted, but he shouldn’t have, even if, as far as preserving Ridgemont reputation and property, it was the right thing to do. Ridgemonts had never held themselves all that far above the people who worked for them; they were appreciated for always being more than willing to get down and dirty.

“We don’t get this mother out soon, she’s not going to last much longer,” Graham predicted.

Immediately having second thoughts about helping, Brendon’s third thought was the possibility of tying their two lassos together in order to rope the stranded cow from the shoreline. However, it was doubtful even the undeniable sturdiness of the ropes in question would withstand the stretch exerted over such a long way by a dead-weight cow on one end and a pulling horse on the other.

“Give me a minute,” Brendon said. He dismounted, let his horse’s reins drag and his horse graze on whatever was available for snacking (admittedly not much). He walked as far as the pile of clothing Graham had left behind.

No way, of courses, could Brendon bring himself to strip as conveniently naked for the dirty chore as Graham was. If just because, he’d have a hard time explaining the genuinely burgeoned state of his erection to Graham who would, without doubt, notice, even if he was gentleman enough not to comment.

Brendon did remove his boots, his socks, his bandana, his shirt, his chaps, and his hat. He left on his pants. He left on his long johns buttoned from his hard-dick to almost the top of his muscled chest. Reflexively, he re-fastened the lone button, at the very base of his neck, which had come undone — or, most likely, he hadn’t bothered to button as far back as when he left the Piclicwin Ranch that morning.

“You’re going to get those pants pretty damned dirty,” Graham warned but didn’t sound as if he, for prurient reasons, hoped Brendon would drop them.

“The pants are new and need breaking in,” Brendon excused. Quickly, he took the three steps that buried him and them, up and over their cuffs, almost to his knees, in the muck. No way did he throw all caution to the wind and, stark naked, join the buck-naked Graham behind the swishing tail of that stranded cow.