Journey to Mirage Ch. 11

It was another long day of driving over mostly flat and undistinguished and dusty landscape from Dallas to Amarillo, Texas. Driving through the town and almost to Cimarron, the convoy of two vehicles turned south onto a dirt road under a log archway with "The Big C Ranch" engraved on a plaque overhead and drove three more miles until they came upon a long, low ranch house building made out of logs, with a porch running across its entire front. The porch was supported on log posts and the wood railings had wagon wheels set in them.

There was a courtyard in back with a double row of rust-splattered white trailers fanning out in a semicircle three quarters of the way around on the east side. There were three evenly spaced doors in the largely identical thirty-foot trailers. On the west side of the semicircle were two rows of carports under one roof. These canvas hangings functioned as doors of each carport space, seemingly to protect the cars from the harsh elements out on this dusty plain but were, as Rick soon surmised, more accurately present to guard the IDing of the cars and their license plate numbers from curious eyes.

Coming out onto the porch of the log house to greet them was a near duplicate of the Lefty they had encountered back in the Virginia foothills of the Blue Ridge. He was dressed like an old West card shark, and, Rick guessed, probably was the modern-day equivalent.

"Welcome, welcome. Glad to accommodate you," he bellowed out to Groton as Groton swung the Saab around abreast of the porch in the front car turnabout. "Great idea; hope you win; and, yes, I'd be appreciative of the listing of the ranch in the credits. Make sure it reads 'Gentleman's Gentleman Ranch,' please."

Groton waved to him from the open window of the Saab and put the car into park.

"Ah, yes, nice, very nice indeed. Which one?" the man called out as Groton, Billy Dan, and Rick unfolded themselves from the Saab. The Dodge Truck was just coming up the drive, announcing its arrival by raising a long dust plume behind it.

Groton pointed to Rick, and the card shark, who was being introduced as Sam Easton, the proprietor of the Big C gentleman's gentleman ranch, repeated, "Very nice indeed. Yes, this will be fine." Other men had come out onto the porch to see the arrival. All of them were good looking and well built. There was an assortment of large and small, white and Hispanic and Native American—with one black—and light and dark, bald and hirsute.

One stringy, thirtyish guy broke out of the pack as they exited the front door and walked, bowlegged and none too steady toward the carports, where he lifted a canvas hanging and drove a red Ford 150 pickup out and down the drive toward the main highway. The truck swerved from one side of the road to the other, and Rick murmured a little blessing that they hadn't met this guy on the road on their way in.

After introductions, with Easton pointing out to Groton three particularly burly and hirsute, dark-haired men standing off to the side and then a tall, lanky American Indian in the group of men nearer the door for approval, which Groton provided, Easton said, "You can put your vehicles in any available slot. You can use the third trailer from the left, front row, out back. There are three compartments and you can divvy up beds and work space as you like. I'll show Rick here around inside the main house."

In the main building, Easton's tour of the rooms, most set up for public entertainment, card playing, and deal making—the more private business going on in the trailers behind—stopped behind his office, where his private studio apartment was located.

As the men were filing out of the door, Groton laid a hand on Rick's forearm and said, "Not you, Rick, you're staying here with Mr. Easton."

Rick turned and looked quizzically at the big man standing in the middle of the room. "I'm gonna see how good a ride you are, son," Easton said.

The bed was a brass one, and, after stripping and examining Rick like he was a horse on the sales block, Easton laid him down on his belly on the bed, tied his wrists over his head to the headboard, spread Rick's butt cheeks with strong, callused hands, and tongued his ass until Rick writhed and moaned—and until Rick begged for the fuck.

Easton knew all of the cocking techniques and put them to lustful and prolonged effect. The mattress was lumpy and the bed creaked and groaned as Easton straddled Rick's hips and rode his ass. But the bed, made to accommodate sexual gymnastics, endured—as did Rick.

Groton was lost to them after supper, and, since he was still in the third compartment, unshaved and disheveled and working on his laptop in the morning when Rick came back to the trailers, Rick assumed Groton had worked on his notes and video trimming and reediting throughout the night.

After dinner, which was after Easton released Rick from his bed, Rick had gone to take a look at the trailers. Groton was pounding away on his laptop in the trailer cubicle to the right and Rick didn't do more than check him out and then he closed the door and backed away. Roger was in the middle cubicle, which had a single bed and a cot in it, checking over and adjusting the video equipment.

Rick heard the sounds in the left cubicle before he opened the door. But he opened it anyway. There was a three-quarters bed in there, where presumably Groton and Billy Dan were supposed to sleep—which immediately alerted Rick to the reality that he himself, once again, had been part of the compensation for the accommodations arrangement and had never been slated to sleep in the trailer.

Howard was on his back, naked, on the bed and Billy Dan was riding his cock with abandon and glee.

So much, Rick thought, about any man being a safe choice for cameraman in Groton's crew. But then, Rick mused, that was Groton's problem. Rick was faced with enough of his own problems.

Rick went into the middle compartment. He asked Roger if he wanted to fuck, having a certain nasty streak running through him on sticking it to Groton yet more. Roger said he'd love to, but he'd learned his lesson with the others. He wanted to stick with this job to Mirage.

"Maybe after the showing in Mirage?" he asked hopefully. "It's not like I wouldn't like to have a piece of that sweet ass of yours."

"Yeah, maybe," Rick answered, being aware for the first time that he had no intention of arriving in Mirage. As soon as he could get hold of Phil, he planned to be out of here. "Well, what about a game of Black Jack then?"

"You got it. Just as soon as I get this camera back together."

By the time he had, Howard was back in the room, glowing but looking sheepish too. And that's where the three of them were, in the middle compartment, playing poker—until one of the hunky guys came looking for Rick.

"Boss would like you over at the ranch house," he said.

"Soon as I finished this hand," Rick answered.

"Don't make it too long," the man said and then he was gone. "Boss don't like to wait on anybody."

When Rick entered the ranch house, the entertainment was in full swing. He didn't see the three hirsute men that had been pointed out earlier in the afternoon, but otherwise at least half the men who'd been on the porch when they arrived were there—with a handful of obvious customers. Rick had seen the sets of tires under the gap below most of the canvas hangings in the car ports as he came to the ranch house, and some of the trailers out back seemed to be almost rocking off their foundations, so he had little question where the rest of the "gentlemen's gentlemen" were.

The music was loud and the voices set at high babble level. So Rick was sure that no one could hear him cry out and moan and groan or the raspy creaking of the brass bed in the back corner of the log building where, throughout the night, Easton showed him why his was the number one cock at the Big C. Rick loved being bound and being taken so fully, often, and masterfully.

There was a bit of a set-to the next morning when it was discovered that Billy Dan had left the trailer in the late evening and come into the ranch house and run through most of the tops that had been there. But after Groton had made Billy Dan hand over all of the money he'd been given to Easton and Groton had produced doctor's notes showing that his two boys were clean and had been checked regularly while on the road, Easton simmered down. Groton then laughed and politely—but after some thought, Rick noticed—turned down Easton's offer to buy both Billy Dan and Rick.

"I need them both through the end of the filming," he said.

That wasn't exactly a flat no, Rick thought.

* * * *

Groton walked his film group out to a grove of cottonwoods running along a stream not far from the Big C ranch house early the following afternoon. Rick was surprised to see that the cameramen had been augmented by a couple of the guys from the ranch who Groton must have enlisted to help. Rick wondered why the extra cameramen were needed.

He asked Groton.

"We're filming two scenes."

That explained, Rick thought, why both he and Billy Dan had been costumed out in Western-style clothes.

As Groton separated the cameramen out in two groups, Roger and a guy from the ranch being told to go stand by Rick and Groton himself moving with Howard and another guy from the ranch over by Billy Dan, Rick spied a group of the Native American ranch guys coming over from the main house. They were dressed minimally as glorified Indian warriors, in war paint and loin cloths and moccasins and not much of anything else.

Roger started herding Rick and the other cameraman back toward the ranch house, as the Indian "braves" arrived and, at Groton's instruction, began circling Billy Dan menacingly. Groton positioned his cameramen at angles around the group and, as they raised their cameras, the stripping and gangbanging of Billy Dan began. In contrast to what Rick remembered of Billy Dan's dream of this scenario, where the braves just circled and taunted Billy Dan, the Indian warriors were taking turns fucking him.

Rick and Roger watched for a while and then Roger nudged Rick toward the back of the ranch house. At the corner of the ranch house, Rick turned to see the tall, rangy Native American Easton had pointed to on the porch the previous day, ride into the cottonwood grove on a saddle-less pinto horse. The warrior was decked out in full TV Indian regalia—except there were only the moccasins and the war paint. He had a magnificently upcurved erection, which the group of Indians swarming around Billy Dan sheathed by lifting Billy Dan up on the horse in front of the Indian brave and lowering his channel to where the erection disappeared from view. As Groton and Howard boarded a jeep being driven by the local cameraman, the Indian brave turned toward the open range in a trot of his horse and already had Billy Dan bouncing up and down on his skewering cock.

And then they were off, the Indian warrior and his sheathing captive white man, galloping across the range, with a jeep and cameramen driving alongside, cameras pointed at Billy Dan's fantasy of an exotic fuck.

Roger's hand went to Rick's sleeve and he turned and followed the cameraman toward a building beyond the trailers. It was a squat building of some thirty by thirty foot dimensions, made out of logs, like the main ranch house.

The three burly hirsute men Easton had pointed out the previous day were standing by the door into the building. Rick couldn't see any windows.

"What's that building?" Rick asked.

"The bathhouse."

That was all he needed to hear. He almost had forgotten that fantasy he had spun for Groton—the last one he'd told the man. In fact, Groton had stopped, before they reached New Orleans, trying to masturbate any fantasies out of Rick. And, to Rick's knowledge, he hadn't pulled any more out of Billy Dan, either. Evidence, coupled with Groton's frenzied work now with the footage he already had, that they were coming to an end of the collection phase—and, Rick, realized, to the end of his usefulness to Groton.

Inside, the bathhouse was quite modern. There were lockers and shower stalls and a Jacuzzi. And there, in the middle of the room, on a dais, was a large, modern rendition of a claw-footed, high-lipped soaking bathtub. The modern part was that the bathtub was translucent, probably made out of Plexiglas. It was half full of water.

Bringing one of the burly hirsute cowboys forward, Roger said to Rick, "Groton says that you are to strip down now—keep on the boots, the hat, and the red scarf around your neck. When the cameras start to roll, you are to help undress this man, make love to his cock, and then he's going to fuck you in that bathtub. Groton wants him underneath you in there and your legs hooked over the side, with your booted feet swinging at the sides of the tub. We'll be able to see what's going on under the water, so make it look good. Got it?"

"Yes, I get it," Rick said. And he did; it had been his fantasy. "But what are the other two guys for?"

"Groton auctioned you off to these local guys. Top bidder got you in the tub first. The other guys get to watch. The next highest bidder gets you in the trailer for an hour and then the last guy for a half hour after that."

"Oh."

As in the fantasy, after helping to undress the standing burly cowboy with his hands and lips, Rick sank to his knees in front of him and, for the cameras, made love to the guy's cock with his mouth while he was running his hands over the curly black hair of his barrel chest and hard, man's belly, and his beefy thighs.

When sufficiently aroused, the man lifted and carried Rick over to the tub. He got in first and settled back against one side. Then he lifted Rick, Rick being careful to drape his booted legs over the side of the tub, and settled Rick on his cock, reclining Rick's back against the opposite end of the tub. Taking a lighted cigar in one hand and reaching for Rick's cock with the other, the man, in ten-gallon hat and blue scarf to mirror Rick, began to puff smugly on his cigar and to send the water moving in waves by the upward thrusts of his cock inside Rick's channel.

Later, the third hirsute cowboy overstayed his time with an exhausted Rick by a half-hour, but he paid the extra—as did the first guy who wanted Rick again, this time belly down on a bench in the bathhouse.

That night they locked Billy Dan into Groton's cubicle, but Groton made the mistake of giving Howard the key, and, as far as Rick could discern, Groton spent the night with his laptop in the third cubicle. There was a single bed in there, though, so as far as Rick knew, he did get some sleep. Groton must have been deeply engrossed in his film editing, Rick thought, because Billy Dan and Howard were making quite a bit of noise in their fucking even before Rick had returned to the ranch house.

Rick got little sleep. Sam Easton hadn't gotten any fucking all day, like Rick had. So that night Sam Easton was fresh for it, and, once again, the old brass bed in his room was creaking and bumping up against the log wall throughout the night.

The next day, Groton came to breakfast looking disheveled and red eyed, Roger came from one of the other trailers looking quite satisfied, Billy Dan came in looking sleek and well cared for—which caused Groton to raise an eyebrow and take a long, sweeping, searching look around the dining room—to no apparent result. Howard stumbled in looking confused and sloppy grinned, and Rick was barely able to drag himself to a chair and heavily lower himself into it, unable to fully close his legs.

Of all of them, Rick looked the most disgruntled. This wasn't because of Easton. Easton had taken good care of Rick in the night. Rick felt whatever itch he had of that kind had been effectively and fully scratched. Rick was unhappy, though, because his scheme was to use one of the telephones in the ranch house and call Phil to come get him. But when Rick had gone to find the scrap of paper Phil's cell phone number was written on, he couldn't find it among his things. He decided that the last time he had tried to use it, when he was zoned out from the meeting with the vampire, he'd dropped the number in the bed sheets at the Dallas hotel and hadn't retrieved it.

Now he wasn't sure what to do. By the end of the meal, however, he was resolved to cut off from Groton right here and now. He obviously wasn't needed by Groton anymore and there was no telling what the man would do to him from here on out. Obviously, Groton was using him as man candy in any way that served Groton's purposes. And Groton hadn't cocked him with that superlong dick for several days. The longer Rick went without that, the easier it was to resist doing what Groton demanded.

He accosted Groton in front of everyone in the dining room, pointing out the he'd done three men in the tub after an auction and hadn't seen any of the money. He wanted some of what he'd earned, right now, and more than just chickenfeed; he'd seen how much had exchanged hands the day before. Groton opened his mouth to retort but then for some reason he thought better of it and pulled out his wallet and counted out ten hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Rick and told him to sit down and shut up now.

While the others were finishing up their breakfasts, Rick excused himself to go to the can. He went to Easton's room and picked up his duffle bag. Then he went out one of the back doors of the ranch house and walked swiftly to the cottonwood tree grove and hid there from view—and watched the front of the ranch house.

In time, the cars were brought out to the front and loaded. There seemed to be some effort to find Rick—but not much. And then after Rick saw Groton and Easton talking and Easton going into the ranch house and coming back out and handing a pile of cash to Groton, all search efforts stopped.

So, that was it, Rick thought. Groton had given him the money so easily because he felt a bit guilty. He'd already decided to sell Rick to the ranch, and he wanted to leave thinking he'd done right by Rick.

Within minutes the Saab and Dodge truck were raising dust as they drove toward the highway from the ranch house. Rick was free. Just like that.

Or so he thought.

He was standing from his crouch in the cottonwoods when hands grabbed at his arms from both sides. He had been found by two of Easton's ranch boys.

"Mr. Easton wants to see you inside," one said in a voice not to be questioned.

"It's OK," Rick said. "I'm going. I'll leave the ranch on my own."

"I don't think so," the other one answered in a gruff voice. "Easton's bought and paid for you. I dare say you're going to be doing what the rest of us do here from now on—at least until you get old and out of shape enough that no one wants to pay for your ass."