Just me and my horse.

Nobody else around.

Just me and my horse.

And some buzzards circling overhead in the dusty midday sun.

Other than that, just me and my horse.

Just then, a large crowd of tourists, most of them obese and clad in loudly-colored, mismatched shorts and T-shirts, came pouring out of the Bell teleport station set in the rock face of a canyon to the west. I spotted Trix in the crowd and waved at her. She looked as lovely as ever. She didn't see me. I sighed.

"Giddy up!" I said to my horse. He looked at me indolently for a second and went back to grazing.

Later that week, I caught up with Genba in a mining town west of Albuquerque. I had ridden across the desert. He had splurged and blown a gold dollar on the teleport, and had amassed considerable earnings at poker by the time I arrived.

I ordered three fingers of rot gut. My horse ordered a beer.

"What kept ye?" Genba asked.

"Strange things are afoot at the Circle K Ranch," I replied.

He nodded knowingly. I sipped at my whiskey and didn't say much for a good while. My horse went outside to take a leak.

The acrylic domes of Jackson Hole glistened in the sun away across the grassy plain to the west. I wondered how they kept them so clean, way out here in the middle of nowhere. A rusty cargo shuttle hung motionless in the sky, awaiting permission to land.

My horse was telling me about a theory of his concerning why the grass in Wyoming was sweeter than the grass in Kansas. I feigned interest, but I wished I had an apple to shove in his mouth to shut him up.

As we drew nearer to Jackson Hole, we came across a snake oil peddler's wagon painted in bold letters touting the wonders of Cream of Caulk's wondrous cure-all. I looked at my horse, and he at me. We both shrugged.

"Giddy up," he said.

Is this a Zane Greene fanfic??

Are you gotta write in a sex scene with me and Zane Greene?

(05-02-2018, 02:21 PM)Trix Wrote: Is this a Zane Greene fanfic??

Are you gotta write in a sex scene with me and Zane Greene?

More like a Zane Grey fanfic, wouldn't you say?

There are no vulgar sex scenes in the old west. All of the ladies are wholesome. I can make you a showgirl in a saloon, if you like. You could show a little leg that way.

Nah hey man that's cool, I was just curious!!!

(05-02-2018, 02:32 PM)Trix Wrote: Nah hey man that's cool, I was just curious!!!

I would like to do a piece about your lovely legs, but I don't want to offend you. Whatever you think is best.

Work me playing in the mud somewhere in there...

It'd be accurate...

In the spring of '73, some enterprising Comanche warriors hacked the Bell security codes for the teleport system and managed to send a sizeable raiding party to Washington, D.C., where they wrought considerable havoc before the Union army squelched the uprising.

I was down in the newly formed state of West Mississippi fighting on the side of the Confederacy at the time. My horse was working in Wild Bill's travelling show. I envied his turn in the limelight somewhat, but I had to do my patriotic duty.

While on furlough, I bumped into Trix in New Orleans, where she was performing in a burlesque show. There was one dance she did where you could almost swear you could see her knickers. Inspirational, to say the least.

After the show, Trix sat at my table for a spell. I bought her a drink - champagne imported all the way from the country of France in Europe. She didn't drink, so she watered a potted cactus with it when I wasn't looking.

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then asked, "Who do you think will win tomorrow, the Cowboys or the Indians?"

"I think it's game over for the Indians at this point," I said.

(05-02-2018, 02:39 PM)Trix Wrote: Work me playing in the mud somewhere in there...

It'd be accurate...

Accurate or not, ladies didn't play in the mud in the old west. Let's face it, you're going to look like Mother Theresa by the time I'm done with you. With a slight hint of sluttiness so as not to bore the readers, of course.

I was in Cheyenne with my horse back in '61 when President Barron Trump hammered the golden spike that connected the continental atomic monorail tracks from east coast to west. Bell's teleport would render the trains obsolete a few years later. Genba invented faster-than-light space travel later that year, but it would be another quarter century before he developed a practical working apparatus.

My horse had just dropped out of college to live in a commune. I took to hanging around an old Indian wizard to try and take my mind off of Trix.

It wasn't working.

I sprang my horse from the commune and took him to a quack in Minneapolis for deprogramming, then we headed west to find Trix. The doctor told me to take a sack of apples along, but all I had was peyote. My horse regaled me with all manner of occult stuff and nonsense as we mosied across the lower fifty-three states.

In Boulder, I got word that Trix was dead.

(05-02-2018, 01:56 PM)Guest Wrote: "What kept ye?" Genba asked.

(05-02-2018, 03:20 PM)Guest Wrote: In Boulder, I got word that Trix was dead.

Me and my horse rode on a cattle drive from the Texas panhandle up to Dodge in the autumn of '63. After my horse collected our wages and divvied them up fair and square -- he got sixty percent and I got forty -- we rented a shotgun shack outside of town and took up hog farming for a spell.

One night, I heard a scratching sound at the window. I thought it was a tree limb at first, but then I remembered there were no trees in Kansas. I got up and went to the window to investigate.

Lo and behold, there was Trix looking me straight in the eye, not six inches from my face.

In Monterrey, GG had started a mariache band and was churning out the hits hand over fist. My horse bought a few of her wax cylinders to play on his Edison gramophone, but they melted in the desert heat after a few plays.

The ghost of Trix was hanging around fairly regularly then. Some nights I'd wake up in a cold sweat to find her floating above me, grinning in my face like a Cheshire cat. I'd gotten used to it, but it's the kind of thing that always startles a feller no matter how many times he sees it. Since me and my horse were the only ones who could see her, she had ditched the petticoats and bustles in favor of something a little more comfortable.

Well, a lot more comfortable, really.

We would occasionally put her up to playing practical jokes on unsuspecting yokels. One day, we spotted a couple of men panning for gold in a creek west of Salt Lake City. Trix snuck up behind one of them and knocked his hat off his head. He spun around and didn't see anybody but his friend in the creek up to his ankles, some twenty yards away. My horse snickered. I nudged him in the ribs to make him keep quiet. The man fetched his soggy hat from the creek, put it back on his head, and went back to panning.

Then she drifted up behind the other man and knocked his hat off. My horse was braying like a jackass with laughter at this point, and so was I. This went on a few more times until the two men came to blows. We tired of the festivities after awhile and headed back to camp.

The last time I saw Dark Dick, me and my horse were receiving honorary awards at a rodeo clown convention in Abilene, summer of 1901. Abilene was a bustling metropolis of 28 million by then. I tied my horse to a hitching post in front of a saloon in the Arab Quarter and mosied inside. The Arabs were peculiar folk. They didn't let horses drink inside like a normal saloon.

Genba had found a way to reincarnate Trix the previous year, and there she was with Dark Dick and Cream of Caulk. The women folk were helping to rope the yokels into a shell game Dark Dick was running near the back of the establishment.

I took off my hat and approached the trio. "Evenin', ladies, Dick."

Who are you callin' a lady?" said Creamy, true to form. I heard my horse snicker outside.

Dick said the locals were becoming disgruntled at being relieved of their hard-earned money. There were murmurs about getting up a lynch mob. I shuddered at the thought of poor Trix having to suffer through death a second time.

We hastily packed up the shell game and Dick's winnings, and prepared to vacate the town. We were met at the door by men with guns.

A lot of men with a lot of guns.

My horse bought a new hover car with the money we made from our last cattle drive in 1905. By then, the teleports were cheap enough that beeves could beamed directly from the Bell stations out west to the big station near the slaughterhouses in Chicago. Our rustic way of life was quickly coming to an end.

He took me for a spin on the red dirt backroads of East Texas. We saw Trix hitchhiking there and picked her up. She was wearing booty shorts, which were all the rage back then.

"Nice ride," she said.

"Thanks," the horse replied. "Nice booty."

Trix giggled. I strapped myself in as he floored it. The car ascended above the treeline and headed toward the blue stratosphere.

(05-02-2018, 05:15 PM)Guest Wrote: Trix giggled. I strapped myself in as he floored it. The car ascended above the treeline and headed toward the blue stratosphere.

Whoa...

That's pretty fucking amazing, TBH.

When General Washington repelled the first reptilian invasion in 1776, we thought we'd seen the last of them. But, alas, it wasn't so.

Lewis and Clark found the Louisiana Purchase teeming with reptilians and reptilian-human hybrids. The Sioux had had minor success at slowing their encroachment, but their bows and flint arrowheads were no match for directed energy weapons. Something had to be done.

Trix and my horse set about working up a binding spell while I went down to Mexico to rustle up reinforcements. The banditos shrugged and said they didn't have a dog in the fight.

Next, I appealed to the Negro free states down South, but they were still nursing a grudge against the white man despite having won their freedom in that famous landmark Supreme Court case in 1806.

As I mosied back to St. Louis to see how Trix and my horse were coming along, they came galloping up. Trix was covered in mud from head to toe.

"What happened to you?" I asked her.

"Well," she said, "the spell worked -- sort of -- but it had an unexpected side-effect."

"What kind of side-effect?" I tried not to snicker at her soiled condition.

Trix mopped a dab of mud from her brow and slung it at me. I ducked.

"We conjured the river gods to rise up and drown the lizard people as they crossed the Mississippi, which they did. But after the river swelled up, it plopped back down again and splattered mud all over the countryside."

"At least the cornfields will be fertile this year," I replied with a shrug.

Trix feigned flinging more mud, but waited for me to duck before she flung it. Hit me right in the face that time. My horse snickered.

"Meh, shuddup," I said.

(05-02-2018, 05:44 PM)Trix Wrote: Whoa...

That's pretty fucking amazing, TBH.

Thank you. I found a way to work you playing in the mud into the story.

One hell of a story right there!!!