Gay Erotic Stories

Chase Hogan and his partner Smitty had spent three weeks riding a herd through a stretch of desert when they decided it was time for Smitty to return to Fort Laramie for some more supplies. It would be about a four day trip and Chase told him they’d meet up at Silverrod, where he’d wait at the local hotel. After they’d parted, Chase spurred his mare, turned and rode off in the direction of the town.

Silverrod was a worn down looking place, a collection of dusty clapboard buildings set against the foothills of the silver-rich mountain which had given the town its name. The largest building in the town was the stone structure housing the City Hall, jail and courthouse. It was set on the edge of a large square, overgrown with a collection of Mesquite, Joshua trees and cactus. The people moving about on the raised wooden walks generally looked as worn as the town did. The women wore old, but clean dresses and the men didn’t look as though they cared much about their appearance. A more prosperous looking group however was seated on the porch of the City Hall, watching the comings and goings of the others, particularly the arrival of the big stranger slowly riding past them.

Hogan reined his horse up in front of the hotel and dismounted, casually pulling up his gun belt and swiping a layer of desert off his shirt and chaps. He pulled off his flat-brimmed hat and beat it against the side of his jeans, sending up another cloud of dust.

“Howdy...,” called a man from among the group in the chairs. “Care to step over here?”

“Don’t mind..” replied Chase in his thick baritone as he slung his saddle bags over his shoulder and climbed the several stairs onto the wide deck. His boots fell hard on the thick planks and his spurs jangled out a discordant song as he strode toward them. The man surveyed the height and build of the handsome young stranger and glanced toward the others.

He appeared to be well over six feet, much bigger than most men of that time, wide shouldered and broad and muscular in the torso. His shirt, which he wore open at the collar, revealed a generous crop of nearly black hair that curled from his chest up toward his neck. He was striking, with a ruddy complexion, piercing blue eyes and a three or four day growth of beard shadowing his hardy features. Long, dark hair grew out all around the brim of his hat and swept onto his forehead. His gun belt and chaps hung low on his trim hips, framing the mounds of his solid butt and an ample pouch in front, between his long legs.

“What brings you to our quiet corner, son?” asked one of the other men.

“Just passin’ through...meeting up with my pardner in a few days.” He pulled off his hat again and drew a big, gloved hand back through his thick mane.

“What’s your calling, mister?”

“No disrespect, but can’t say that’s anybody else’s business, mister.”

“You mind your tone with the judge, son,” said the Sheriff, who was among them.

“Well...am I being questioned for somethin’?”

“I think you are in contempt of court...What do you say, John?”

“I agree.”

“Now...hold on there. What court? We aren’t in a court,” Hogan spat.

“You’re in my courtroom now, boy, and I’m fining you Fifty dollars for disturbing the peace.” The Judge suddenly produced a gavel and hammered the arm of his chair.

“All right... Here.” Chase pulled a few bills from his shirt pocket and tossed them toward the older man.

“Now, that is contempt. Pick that up, boy or spend thirty days in the lock-up.” demanded the man.

“Pick it up yourself,” he responded.

“Very well, thirty days....and by the way, did you happen to read the sign behind me....see”?

Chase looked up and saw a sign for the first time which read, “No side-arms will be worn at any time within the city limits.”

“That will add one hundred dollars to your fine or sixty days.”

“Why...you should know I ain’t got a hundred dollars...”

A young man, tattily dressed in a suit mounted the stairs loudly and moved in next to Chase.

“What’s going on? What are you doing to this fella?” “Mind your own business, Wade...go back to your newspaper...this boy has violated several laws already and the Judge is about to pass sentence.”

“This is bull shit,” shouted Hogan.

The young man stepped in closer to the others.

“I’ve stood by and watched this mockery too many times, now I’m speaking up. You can’t continue this fake court of yours any longer. I’m calling in the Federal Marshall.”

“You can do that as soon as you’ve served your sentence.”

“Sentence? ...what sentence?”

“The sixty days you’re gonna serve with this fella for contempt.”

“Contempt? ....I’ve got contempt, alright...for all of you and this here kangaroo court.” He waved his arm in a broad gesture at the group.

“Ninety days, Wade. You looking for more? Sheriff...these two are all yours.”

Hogan stepped back, ready for a fight but he and the other young man were quickly seized by several deputies who held them fast while another removed Chase’s gun and the belt from around his hips.

Together, the men were roughly shoved into the building and both of them put into one cell behind the sheriff’s office. In the next cell waited two other young men, looking plenty dejected.

“What’s going on here, Wade?” Hogan gripped the bars in his fists and watched as their jailers left the cell room.

“That bunch trumped up some phony laws and fines a few years ago to generate a work force for Larsen’s mine up the side of the mountain. I’m afraid we both fell into their trap. You’re really their type...big and brawny....Looks like they can get a lot of work out of you, I’m afraid.”

“Me, too....Who’s this Larsen?

“Oh, he’s the big noise around these parts....owns the town, the sheriff and the judge...what’s your name, anyway?”

“Hogan, Chase Hogan.” He extended his thick hand to the other man.

“I’ve heard of you,” he said, shaking the big man’s hand. “You took on that bunch over in Sherron ....what a fight. I’m Ben, Ben Wade. I write the local newspaper...not that there’s much I’m allowed to publish.”

“They watch that, too.” Since there were no beds in the small space, Chase put one of the blankets they’d been given in the corner and settled himself onto it, while Wade sat down facing him.

“Oh, yeah....They don’t want too much information getting out about anything goin’ on in these parts.”

Later, the two men ate the soup they were given, talked for awhile and then settled into sleep in the corners of the cell.

In the morning they were all given gruel and coffee, then they were shackled, ankle and wrist. The guards loaded all their prisoners onto the back of a buckboard and drove them out of town and up into the hills.

After awhile the wagon jolted past several armed guards at a wide gate and traveled along a broad drive and past the main house, a large stone building with wide verandas all around it and rich draperies at each window. On the second floor Chase saw the faces of an older man and a young woman watching with dour expressions as the wagon passed. Well behind the house, the buckboard drew up beside a long, low shack and the prisoners were pulled off the back and shoved inside.

The place smelled of old sweat and urine and was dim even in the bright light of the early morning. There were double bunks, enough for several dozen men lining the walls and an iron stove, plain wood tables and benches in the center between the rows. “Pick an empty rack, men. This here’s gonna be home for quite a spell. Breakfast’s at five thirty, latrine right after... supper’s at six, and nothin’ but work’s in between. When Russ here takes off them bracelets, I want ya’ all stripped out of your shirts and ready to go to work. And, you’re not gonna have no time for talkin’, so don’t bother.” The man recoiled the bullwhip he carried and tapped it against his leg while he waited for his prisoners to settle themselves. When they were ready, he marched the bare-chested group up a narrow foot trail to the mine, their ankle shackles jangling along on the rough path. They were met there by a foreman, a handsome young man they called Max. He, too was over six feet tall, wide through the shoulders and held a rifle cradled across his thick chest.

“You all go in and meet Red. He’ll put ya’ to work. You there...big fella’,” he said motioning to Chase, “I want you on the cart...helping Mason...go on, now...and I wanna see a coat of sweat on them big muscles of yours afore long, too.” Hogan shuffled the dozen yards to the narrow tracks where another big man was struggling with a large cart brimming with ore.

“Mighty glad to see you...these damn things get plenty heavy,” he grunted. Together they shoved the groaning cart up the track and dumped it before pushing it back toward the opening of the mine and inside, where the other men worked with pick and shovel at the rich stone. When they had loaded it again the two men pushed it up the track and emptied it. They continued the process, trip after trip until finally Max announced it was time for them to be taken back to the bunk house for the night. They were all handed over again, exhausted, to the man armed with the bullwhip.

As the noisy parade passed the house Chase observed the woman from the window, this time standing at the edge of the veranda, casually watching her slaves pass. He noticed her trim and handsome figure, dressed in a leather skirt and a mans shirt, open at the collar, exposing the top of her full bosom. Beside her stood Max, the young foreman, his right arm wrapped brazenly about her small waist.

While they ate a meal of stew brought by the guards from the cookhouse, the men talked and complained about their situations, as if they could do anything about them.

“I’ll tell you what...when I get outta here day after tomorrow, I’m gonna be back home soaking in a hot tub and getting a shave and a rub down. Then, I’m gonna buy me a woman and spend the day in bed fuckin.’”

“What are ya here for?” asked Chase.

“I got thirty days for disturbin’ the peace, mister. But day after tomorrow my time’s done...”

“They’ll find a reason to keep you here, boy,” said one of the others.

“What do ya mean?” asked the newspaper owner.

“They always do...tell ‘em, Roy....” said another.

“He’s right...Sorry, boy...but I was sent here for thirty days, too...that was a year ago, now.”

“NO... They can’t do that...I won’t let ‘em.” he shouted. “I’ll get a gun and shoot my way out.” He jumped up, away from the table.

“Quiet down in here,” yelled the guard, coming through the door. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

“Nothin’, mister. Just a difference of opinion,” said Wade. “It’s done...”

“Better be...You don’t want me in here with the whip...now, hush down,” he said on his way out.

“Yes sir...”

“Say...What’s goin’ on with the foreman and the boss lady?” Chase asked, pulling himself away from the table and glancing once at the angry young man on his bunk. “He’s her toy...at least this month,” answered one of the men. “…Seems she picks one every so often. Max was one of the prisoners a time back, and then all of a sudden he’s the foreman.”

“What about her husband...the old man?” Hogan pulled his big body onto the top shelf of the bunk.

Wade cleared his throat loudly and the men quieted as the guard strode back into the room. He began at the end of Chase’s row, locking the men’s ankle restraints to short chains at the foot of each bunk. Secured in that way the men were just able to roll onto their sides during the night but move no further. When he’d finished he blew out the flames in the lanterns lighting the space.

“Lights out and keep it quiet in here...” He closed the door behind himself.

“Don’t see the old man much...I ain’t seen him twice since I came here,” One of them whispered.

“Me neither,” rejoined another.

In a short while darkness had settled over them and the men became still as the sounds of gentle snoring filled the room. He guessed it was the middle of the night when Chase was awakened by a presence at the edge of his bunk. He stirred and started when he realized it was another man. It was too dark for him to see any feature but rough hands were on his exposed abdomen, working down his belly toward the top of his pants.

“What the hell....?” he was able to say before the face in the dark hushed him.

“Not a sound....I have a knife,” a voice whispered while unseen hands unbuttoned his fly and spread open the gap.

Chase obeyed, feeling both fear and mounting excitement as a cool breeze stirred around his pubic patch. He winced and pulled back while firm fingers located the root of his cock and worked the fleshy column up to the opening. He could feel himself hardening even as the hooded head of his sex popped free of its confines.

“Uuumm...,”crooned the unseen face.

The big man sighed aloud as a warm mouth engulfed the crown of his throbbing prick Chase knew it had to be one of the guards ministering to his equipment, for no one else had access to the secured prisoners.

“That’s right...enjoy it, big man. You taste so good,” he said and then dove back down onto the thick shaft, taking the whole length of him into his mouth, wedging the bulbous head into his throat.

He pulled off and slowly licked up and down the stiff surface of the cock then down onto the skin of the big mans soft sack, sucking one ball and then the other into his hot mouth and chewing them tenderly until Hogan was moaning and thrashing beneath him. Slicking his tongue back up the shining cock he teased the area just beneath the crown while Chase cried and his body shook. Slipping the tip into his mouth, the man sucked hungrily at the long slit, spreading the soft lips with his tongue and then pressing into him.

Chase felt a tickle in his cock as a stream of pre-cum was pumped through it, flowing toward the tip. The man drew the sweet juice greedily into his mouth while the big man struggled and moaned in ecstasy. Suddenly a wad of cloth was shoved between his teeth, filling his mouth. He garbled and sputtered behind the gag.

The man had begun a steady up and down movement on the veiny cock, rotating around the entire length, sucking, licking and tantalizing the sensitive head and delicate piss hole as he withdrew, driving his victim steadily to the brink of his orgasm. He closed his fist around the wet, tightening flesh of Hogan’s bag, rolling the egg-sized balls between his rough fingers while his mouth went on consuming the rampant prick.

All at once, Chase closed his hands on the back of the man’s bobbing head, forcing him even more forward, nearly choking him with the uncut bulb of his cock while he howled into the cloth gag. Then he pulled him back just enough to allow him to breath while the first jolt of his pungent seed erupted from the tip of his clenching prick and splattered on the back of the man’s mouth before it was followed by the second blast, then another and another.

He swallowed quickly, savoring each salty-sour blast of flowing juice on his tongue before it passed into his gullet. When the flow had ended and his victim lay panting on the hard bunk, he sucked the last of the spunk from Hogan’s wilting cock then licked the manly scent from his crotch while the big man thrashed under his ministrations.

While Chase pulled the gag from his mouth and regained his breath the man who had pleasured him disappeared through the door of the shack and into the dull moonlight as quickly as he had appeared.

In the morning none of the men seemed to have been aware of anything odd happening during the night and Chase spent the day, while pushing the heavy ore cart, searching the eyes of the guards looking for any indication that one may have been his night visitor. However, he saw no sign on any face.

It was in the afternoon when Ray and another guard approached a group of men working deep in the mine and called Dawson forward. The young man came from the group, breathing heavily, his face and bare chest smudged with ore dust and sweat.

“Dawson, I got here a letter from the Judge extending your sentence to ninety days for causing a ruckus in the bunk house the other night...” Ray said.

“NNNOOO...” the young man screamed and before any of the others could do anything, he swung the pick back and buried half of it in the guard’s chest.

A look of complete surprise washed across Ray’s face as his knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground like a big, broken doll, his useless hands still clutched around the handle of the tool as if he could have removed it.

Suddenly a shot exploded in the mine and young Dawson grasped the bloody hole in his chest and fell backward; dead before he hit the pile of rock. The men scattered toward the exit, stumbling over one another in their ankle shackles and panic. Soon Max and the others had regained control of the group and drove them all back toward the barracks.

That night there was an eerie silence and an air of dread in their bunkhouse-prison while the men ate supper and finally went to their bunks, waiting for their jailer to secure their legs for the night.

Chase lay awake for some time, contemplating the murderous events of the afternoon, then finally fell into a restless sleep. He’d been asleep for several hours when he was awakened again by another presence and a halo of thin light from a lantern. The prisoners around him stirred but kept quiet as the man removed the chain from his ankle restraints.

“Get up and come with me....here, put your shirt on.....get your hands around in front.” said the guard, and closed a set of handcuffs around the big mans wrists. It was not the mystery voice from that past night.

“Where are we going?” Chase asked.

“Did I say you could talk? Just keep quiet and come along.” He lead Hogan through the dark night toward a shed used for storing tools. Inside the building he rushed him forward to an empty table, pulled Chase’s wrists up high and dropped the chain connecting them over a hook in an overhead beam, leaving the man just able to keep his bare feet on the ground.

Hogan twisted and turned his body, but he was held fast. A moment later the door creaked open again and Mrs. Larsen entered the building. Chase noticed again how attractive the woman was as she crossed the room.

“Leave us, Matt.” She spoke to the guard but her eyes were on the big prisoner hanging before her.

“Sure you’re okay, ma’am?”

“I think I can be left alone with a shackled prisoner. He doesn’t look like he’d be too dangerous in this condition. Now, get out.”

“Yes, ma’am, Ms. Larsen,” the guard said, going through the door. She circled Chase slowly and when she had come back around to the front she looked him up and down.

“Everyone’s heard of Chase Hogan and that gunfight at Sherron. I’m impressed...and surprised you survived it...and now to think you’re one of my guests.” As she spoke she began unbuttoning his shirt at the bottom, revealing a wedge of his belly flesh and then most of his hair covered chest. She ran a gloved hand through the black fur and over his pouting nipples.

“What’s going on?” Chase tried to twist away from her attentions.

“Just checking out one of my prisoners....actually, I’m looking for a certain man...and when they told me you would be joining us I knew I had found him.” She dropped the flat of her hand to the front of his pants and in the bulge of his crotch found the length of his tumid cock under the fabric.

Hogan turned sharply away from the caress. “Now, hold on....What’s going on?”

“All in good time; you’ll figure it out, Mr. Hogan. We’ll talk again in the morning. Good night.” She instructed the guard to leave Chase hanging uncomfortably where he was until she gave other instructions.

Chase spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of a tortured sleep, the ricocheting pain spreading down his arms and across his shoulders his only company. As dawn began to break and impotent light crept through the window of the dirty room, Chase became miserably aware of a clawing need constantly growing in the base of his body. He tried desperately to force it back but in time the pressure became too overpowering and he had no choice but to relax as he felt the steady flow travel down toward the tip of his cock. Warm piss tickled at the opening and then caressed the inside of his leg as it soaked his pants and dripped through the cloth and into a puddle between his feet, leaving the big man humiliated and wet.

Before long the door opened and two of the burly guards entered and approached their quarry. “Look here, Buck. He’s done pissed his pants. Couldn’t hold it, huh, big boy? Well, come on now, you got somewhere to go.”

“Before you take him down, Whitey....get them pissed up pants and under-gear offa him. The Missus wants him buck nekkid anyway when we bring ‘im.”

The young man reached for the big man’s belt and Chase started struggling and shouting; kicking at him. “Get your damn hands off me. Whatd’ya think you’re doing?”

“Here...shove this in his damn mouth and tie it off.” Buck tossed him a wadded-up colored handkerchief and a length of leather thong.

“Come on...open up...” But when Hogan resisted, twisting his head away from his advances, Buck delivered a rapid, hard punch that caught Chase just below the center of his rib cage. As his breath escaped with a huge gasp he took the opportunity to wedge the cloth into his open mouth and secure it before the prisoner ever had a chance to recover.

With him somewhat more quiet Whitey had little difficulty unfastening his pants and removing them and his sodden underwear down and off his feet, leaving Chase naked except for his open shirt. His struggling and squirming set his lengthy, uncut cock and full sack flopping between his thick thighs.

“Uumpf...uumpf....” Chase sputtered behind the gag.

Whitey whistled, calling Buck’s attention to their naked victim.

“What a body! Boy’s hung too, alright...big ole cock and a set on ‘im.”

“He is...Get ‘im down, now...let’s go. They’ll be waitin’ for us,” Buck said.

After they had wrestled him out of the remnants of his shirt and one of them had re-cuffed his hands behind the curve of his bare butt, Chase was pushed forward through the door and outside to a waiting buckboard where they loaded him like a sack of grain onto the wooden bed. Buck drove the wagon higher into the hills while Whitey followed behind on his horse, his rifle trained on their sorry captive.

The awareness of what was going to happen crushed in on him while Hogan was pulled from the wagon and staggered to his feet between the two guards. He shuddered in his nakedness with a sudden, violent fear.

On the left of the high clearing, in the shadow of a large dead tree a silent group of people had gathered; Mrs. Larsen, the judge from the porch of the City Hall and the others, guards from the mine and at the center of them all, a man sitting in a wheelchair, staring straight forward as if nothing were happening. Above them a rope noose swung from a thick, barren branch, casting a dancing shadow on the group.

“Bring him here,” barked the judge.

Naked and humiliated, Hogan stumbled forward on the rocky ground, half bent as if he could somehow shroud his obscene male equipment.

“Stand up straight, man. Face your accusers.” He ordered.

Chase sucked in a deep breath and drew his shoulders back, standing a head taller than the others, brazenly exposing himself to their stares.

“Is this the man, Mrs. Larsen?”

“He is,” she answered quietly, while looking the big man over again, her gaze lingering too long on the area between his long legs.

“Hogan, do you recognize the man in the chair?”

There was something familiar in that vacant, staring countenance, but Chase shook his head and mumbled behind the gag.

“Ummf...umff...nooooo.”

“Do you deny that you shot this man, Jason Larsen, crippling him and nearly killing him during the gunfight at Sherron two years ago?”

Suddenly, the past flashed back across his mind and Chase saw the image of an innocent stranger grimacing in pain as a bullet spun his body around. But, he had not been the man holding the gun. The other deputy sheriff with him had fired that fateful shot. Chase remembered he had run out of ammunition while the McCluskey brothers scattered on the other side of the street. He was reloading from his gun belt while the deputy was returning fire.

“Oohhh....NNNooo...uumpff....nnnnoooo,” he shouted, shaking his head violently. He jerked his powerful form in the guard’s grasp. “Ooottt....eeee....ooott...eeee.”

“Take that rag out of his mouth. I don’t want it ever said that I didn’t hear this man’s side before I hung ‘im.”

“Well, what happened, son?”

Chase spit and tried to regain his breath. “Everything was happening so fast, Judge. The sheriff was dead and the other deputy and I was hunkered down behind a turned over wagon. I was reloading with McCluskey bullets flying all around us. I heard glass shatter and saw a man, I reckon it was Mr. Larsen there, inside a store front, grabbing for his back and falling. There was just too much goin’ on. Nobody could get to ‘im then. But, I know the other deputy shot him by accident. He was just in the way.”

“That’s a lie!” shouted Mrs. Larsen. “Everyone saw this man shoot toward the store.”

“We had to fire toward the store,” Chase shouted. “But I didn’t fire, then. I couldn’t.”

“You recall the name of that other deputy....the man beside you?” The judge asked.

“Miller... Sam Miller.”

“That’s a lie, too. Sam works for us, now.” Mrs. Larsen was on her feet. “He’s the one who told me this man had shot my husband in Sherron. I’ve been waiting for two years for him to come through here. Now I mean to have justice.”

“Where’s this Miller, now, Yvonne?” asked the sheriff.

“He’s gone. He took some ore to Jackson.”

“That’s convenient, ain’t it?” Hogan argued.

“Hush, now. Speak when you’re spoken to.”

“It’s true, judge. Miller bore witness again’ Hogan ‘fore he left,” said one of the other guards.

The judge looked down for a moment and then up at the naked prisoner. “Mr. Hogan, I am accepting the witness of these citizens against you, a convicted felon who is currently serving time. I have tried you and found you guilty of the attempted murder of Jason Larsen...”

“NNOOO...” cried Chase before the men could wedge the gag back into his mouth.

“Silence!!! And I hereby sentence you to forty lashes before this assemblage and then to be hung by your neck until you are dead; sentence to be carried out immediately. May God...etc...etc.” he said while the guards took Hogan, partly stumbling and half being dragged to the other side of the clearing, followed by the group of onlookers.

Chase was struggling and shouting into the gag as he was shoved ahead toward a Sioux rack; a simple rectangular frame constructed of four thick poles, joined at their corners and held, leaning forward, by two other long poles. In that way the victim secured to it would be suspended facing precariously down, as if falling onto his face. The Sioux had used the effective device on captured soldiers while performing a number of horrible tortures.

The guards wrestled him into position, two of them binding his wrists to the upper corners of the frame, while others secured his ankles. When they were done he was severely spread-eagled, his head dropping forward between the mounds of his hulking shoulders and his vulnerable cock and balls dangling down from the vortex of his tortured legs. Someone approached from behind and he felt firm hands spreading thick, stinking grease onto his broad back and sides, over the taut mounds of his ass, then between and down the thick columns of his legs to his feet. The hands left him and his body clenched as the bullwhip split the air behind him in a practice strike.

“Commence,” he heard the judge intone.

Chase felt the movement of air on his slick skin, and heard the tongue of the whip crack before the horrible, searing pain finally drew a swath along his lower back and onto the top of his butt. He howled into the gag and tugged up with his wrists trying vainly to escape the agony of the first lash.

Yvonne Larsen had insisted on delivering the first twenty lashes to the trussed- up Hogan. She shook out the whip behind her each time and waited a full thirty seconds between strokes so her victim could absorb the anguish of his beating while he anticipated the next strike. She watched the angry red welts rise on his glistening, greased flesh as she created a patchwork of agonizing pain on Chase’s thick back and tender sides. His bulging muscles coiled and recoiled beneath his flesh and a coat of sweat soaked his body and dripped onto the rocky earth below him.

He fought against the whip, struggling as if he could tear himself free and escape the burning bites of the leather but by the tenth lash he had become barely conscious, garbling and crying audibly into the gag while his body sunk further forward from the frame. His chest heaved as his oxygen starved lungs grabbed for air.

“Wet him down, Roy,” she ordered. “I don’t want him passing out.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her henchman fetched a bucket of cold spring water and poured it onto Hogan’s head and along his spine. He noticed, while he stood beside him that Chase’s cock had risen to a full erection from its dense nest and throbbed against his flat belly to the rhythmic beat of his heart.

Chase gasped and shuddered from the shock, shaking his soaked head.

Approaching her victim from the other side, Mrs. Larsen also noticed the change in Hogan’s sex and reaching beneath him, closed her gloved hand around his turgid penis and drew the foreskin back, exposing his flared head. A patch of clear fluid leaked from the slit, glistening on the tip.

Behind them, many of the others looked away, embarrassed by her brazen gesture.

“Your body seems to enjoy the lick of my whip, Mr. Hogan. I think I’ll have you turned so I can concentrate its touch directly to this member. With only a few well placed lashes I can easily incapacitate you as completely as your bullet did my husband; destroy everything that even distinguishes you as a man” she said, leaning seductively toward his ear.

“Nnoo...nnoo, ‘lease,” he begged between labored, panting breaths.

“...Or, you can admit to me right now that you did fire that shot and save yourself more, and much more terrible pain...” She slowly drew her fingernails through the bloody stripes on his back until he shrieked into the gag. “I promise I’ll have them hang you quickly and it will be all over.”

“Nnoo... Eeei idn’t oot ‘im, Gooog...leese.” Chase began to beg.

“Very well, Mr. Hogan ...Turn him over, boys...and raise the frame...I want him standing almost straight.”

The men did as they were instructed, wrestling with the big man’s nearly limp body and retying him to the rack, his muscular arms extended on the crossbar and his thick legs wide spread beneath him.

Yvonne Larsen took her time, shaking out her tongued whip and assessing Chase’s magnificent body quivering before her, anticipating the first viscous blow. She took aim and released the whip which whistled through the air and crossed her victim’s chest from his arm pit to his upper belly, ripping out a chuck of hair below his nipple. Her second blow crossed his left nipple, nearly tearing the pouting tit from its background as he howled from the fresh, searing pain.

Reveling in his reaction, she started to rain every lash down on his chest, aiming carefully for the dollar sized targets on his chest, until the sweat that trailed across his convulsing belly ran red as it passed through the wet pelt just above his drooping cock and dripped from his legs to the stony ground. Gradually she worked down, across the plain of his ridged abdomen, striping his flesh with the patchwork of open welts while his body jerked with each heavy blow and his cries became barely audible.

No one noticed the sound of horses until the small group of men had ridden into the clearing and dismounted.

“What’s going on here?” demanded the man with a silver star gleaming on the breast of his shirt. “Release that man and for God’s sake cover him. This is a disgrace!”

The judge stepped forward, pushing out his chest, looking important. “I have found this man guilty of the attempted murder of Jason Larsen, the poor soul in the wheelchair. He has been sentenced to endure a whipping, and then to be hanged before these witnesses to serve justice.”

“Sam...tell him,” Yvonne Larsen said to Morgan, who had ridden in on the other horse.

“I have, Yvonne...we have seen your justice. I’ve told him about the phony laws in this town and the arrests and fake trials that are held just to supply men to work as slaves in your mine. This man is guilty of no more than riding into Silverrod, Marshal.”

“You lie,” she spat, “He shot Jason, you said so.”

Sam Morgan headed toward Chase and gently wrapped a blanket he took from his saddle around his wounded shoulders.

“I also told him that for two years, now, I have lived here, caring for Mr. Larsen as if he were my own father and knowing that it had been me who fired that shot. Chase couldn’t have. He was busy reloading his gun and trying not to get shot. Now, I will have to live with what I have caused here by hiding the truth.”

“We’ve done what was necessary,” said the Judge, “We have had to preserve the law in this town.”

“Marshal, you talk to the publisher of the newspaper, who is also one of their victims in the mine, and find out what kind of law exists here.”

“No... he lies,” cried Yvonne Larsen.

“Mrs. Larsen,” said the Marshal, thoughtfully. “I am arresting you for assault and the attempted murder of this man. And, Your Honor and Sheriff...you are under arrest for false imprisonment and kidnapping....and other offenses which I am sure I will discover. This is a new West, people. I will not abide vigilante law any longer or stand still for lynching in this territory.”

The Marshal’s men quickly handcuffed their prisoners while the rest of the crowd disbursed quietly before they, too could be caught up in the arrests. They were marched down the hill while Morgan and another man helped Hogan onto the back of the wagon for the short ride into town.

A day later Smitty had arrived in Silverrod and stood with Sam Morgan at the edge of Chase’s bed.

“I swear...can’t leave you alone for a day, you don’t go get yourself in trouble.”

“Don’t be too hard on him, Smitty ...you gotta say this. Now he’ll have two men takin’ care of him.”