Riding Drag

By Whitney Bishop

A Chinese-American traveling salesman and snake oil salesman picks up a runaway prostitute who's not what she seems -- but when trying to survive on the margins of late 19th-century frontier society, no one is. Contains cross-dressing, deceptive gender-bending, and (as the title might imply) more than one kind of drag.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Whitney Bishop
• Release date: Apr 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310245190

Whitney Bishop

Editor-in-Chief of http://www.shousetsubangbang.com/; stories published there are under the name 'shukyou'.

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Riding Drag

Published by Whitney Bishop at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Whitney Bishop

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Velly solly, honorable sirs, he said, all the while thinking, fuck your mothers.

The posse was six men strong, and he recognized all of them from one poker game or another. He'd only been in Amarillo four days, but with a town that small and a saloon that big, it was almost a guarantee that any observant eye would see the entire adult male population wander through. And his eyes were more observant than most. The eldest of the bunch, a hothead with an expensive hat, pulled his mount a little closer to the front of the wagon while two younger riders circled the back. Maybe you heard something, then. A rider, or someone on foot.

Wu shook his head, and that was the honest truth. No, honorable sirs. Listen, but no. Quiet, and then honorable sirs here.

It wasn't the answer any of them had been looking for, that much was clear from their faces, but Wu didn't flinch under what they surely thought were their hardest stares, and presently the lead man lowered his lantern. There's a reward for her. You understand 're-ward', don't you? Money. Cash money, you bring her back.

Cash money, yes, sirs. About then, Wu would've agreed to anything to get rid of them and be on his way. They didn't seem to bear him any particular ill will, but he had puckered circles of scar tissue on either side of his right calf, twin entry and exit wounds, living proof of how quick that sort of thing could change. He would have fucked their mothers, though, and given them a nice time, because women deserved some compensation for having idiot sons like that. But no girl. I see, I bring back.

There was a heavy fluttering sound as one of the oilcloth flaps that covered the rear of his wagon got dropped back into place. Smells like dog shit in there, said one of the young boys, a damn fool who'd lost a pretty penny at the table the night before. Ain't nobody could stand being back there what weren't a Chinaman.

Wu kept his face blank, as though he didn't understand, and the leader of the posse nodded again before reining his horse back toward the path. Cash money, he repeated, and then he and his boys were gone off down the trail toward the last violet lights of the evening. High summer meant long days and late dark, but everything still faded.

He rode on another hour or so before pulling the wagon up next to a sheltering rock formation by a small creek; he liked travelling after dark, but the new moon meant he couldn't do much of it safely at the moment. He tethered the mules so they could drink up and eat what they could find in the way of scrub grass. Lucky for them all they weren't picky. He walked a short ways away and relieved himself, then walked around the wagon a few times to get the stiffness out of his legs. The cloudless night sky robbed the air of warmth, but heat still baked up from the rock. He took a deep breath with his mouth and tasted alkali on his tongue; rain, maybe, or more likely just a wind down from some distant snowy peak, too far off to be seen from here even in the daylight. The posse must have taken some long loop, because they hadn't doubled back and he didn't figure they'd stray too far off on account of a whore and some hurt pride.

Well, there was no getting around it, at least not if he wanted some supper. He hung his lantern on a hook just under the lip of the roof, unlocked the wagon door, and pulled back the flap behind it. All right, come on out now, he said to the dark interior, and he wasn't at all surprised when something behind his crate of provisions stirred.

~*~

She was a pretty little thing, and she was a mess. Her curly brown hair was wild around her bare, pretty shoulders, half-hiding the mascara run down her cheeks, which in turn did a good (but not good enough) job of hiding the ghost of a black eye. Her eyes were dark and her skin was darker than white, but whiter than Negroid, and too light to be Indian but too dark to be Oriental. He didn't know what she was or where she'd come from, but he gave her a good five minutes' worth of her crocodile tears and blubbering into his handkerchief, mostly to see how long she'd keep it up. At last, when she paused to take a breath, he held up his hand and waited until she looked up at him and nodded. You don't have to tell me what happened, said Wu, and I won't take you back either way, but if all you're going to say is bullshit, you can save your breath.

Her pretty little mouth quivered for a minute, then rose into a wry smile. Well, good, she said, rubbing the square of cloth over her cheeks until the black was gone. She could keep it; he'd never get that makeup out. She cleared her throat and took another long, slow breath. What's to eat?

Well, he had to admire her nerve. You cook?

"I whore, she said, and though it hadn't been hard to figure that out just by looking at her, he hadn't expected her to be so up-front about it. Well, if she'd expected to be shocking with that, she'd picked the wrong man; he had great respect for whores, both as people and as professionals. So, no. I don't cook."

Then what's to eat is in there. He pointed to the crate she'd taken to sitting on, and she scooted off it, tugging her skirts up as she went and exposing her bare legs to her knees. They were trim and shapely and downed with light brown hair to her ankles. He could see how she'd be popular at her job.

He opened a tin of beans and poured half of it onto his one plate before adding two biscuits to it and handing it, with his one fork, to her. She'd made herself comfortable on the pile of sacks