A River of Time

By Dale Chase

It's 1895 when Luke Straily returns to Gunnison, Colorado, after a twelve-year absence and reluctantly heads to the cattle ranch owned by Jack Hinch, the only man he’s ever loved. Looking to make amends for an intolerable act, Luke hires on at the ranch, but Jack makes it perfectly clear he's unable to forgive or forget just yet.

It'll take everything in Luke's power to set things right with the man he wronged and placed in jeopardy before he ran away, but he aims to earn back Jack's trust no matter the personal cost. Complicating matters, though, is ranch foreman Tim Dutcher, who’s been enjoying a sexual relationship with the handsome rancher during the intervening years and thoroughly resents Luke's intrusion.

As Luke and Jack gradually rebuild their severed friendship and renew their former passion, jealousy flares, leading to a volatile confrontation. Can the men settle matters without any shots being fired?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Mar 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781634863384

Dale Chase

Dale Chase started out writing fiction for motorcycle magazines, then wandered into gay erotica over a decade ago and found a home. Since then she has had nearly 150 stories published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including translation into Italian and German. Her sole literary effort was published in the Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly and her only non-fiction, Straight Pen For Gay Men, appeared in the Gay & Lesbian Review. Her next story collection, The Company He Keeps: Victorian Gentlemen’s Erotica, is due from Bold Strokes Books in 2011. Dale is also a lifelong artist.

Book preview

A River of Time

By Dale Chase

Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2017 Dale Chase

ISBN 9781634863384

* * * *

Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

* * * *

A River of Time

By Dale Chase

I turn forty on the way north. The day is like any other, sunlight upon me as I ride along, my horse, Ned, content with walking. Occasionally he gets an idea we’re going too slow and starts acting like a colt, fairly dancing along, so I give him his head. We then have us a good gallop, and it’s Ned, not me, who decides when it’s over. We’ve been together seven years, longer than I’ve lasted with any man.

We ride north from Tombstone, headed for Colorado, and I’m in no hurry to get there. I tried like hell not to go. Spent a week drunk in Tombstone, fucking whatever held still, but once I sobered up, the past sat waiting on me, bigger now, like holding it off gives it strength. It was over and done, twelve years’ worth of done, but now it’s raised up and won’t lay back down. A river of time has come and gone, a damned flood, yet here it is again, Jack Hinch with it. Me and Jack Hinch.

That’s the trouble with Ned and me walking along. Too much time to think. When events come calling, I click to Ned and he’s off again. We enter Colorado in pure heat, location confirmed when we hit Durango, a fine town that’s most welcome. I take Ned for a slow turn along its streets and find myself telling him how the place has grown.

We come upon a livery, and I leave Ned there with orders to the worker for extra oats and a good brushing. Take it easy, I tell Ned before I take bedroll and saddlebags from him and set out for a hotel. All my possessions are in what I carry.

I recognize some places and enjoy the familiarity at the same time I enjoy not being known by a soul. There’s much to be said for being a nobody, and this is one of those times. I take a room at a modest hotel, The Evergreen, where I can enjoy a bath in my room. This is possibly the best of progress, personal needs accommodated right there instead of down the hall or down the street in a bathing establishment. Things are changing as we approach 1900. Five years to go, but it seems society is racing to get there and I am fine with that. Running water still tickles me, as does indoor plumbing.

While Ned enjoys his brushing, I wash away trail dust, then enjoy a good soak. Lying back, I attempt to savor the situation but, being naked, Jack Hinch comes to mind. Maybe because of what we did in the tub and lots of other places. I take my dick in hand and give it a slow pull, pushing away all but the good parts of the past.

I’d gone to work for Jack on his Hinch Brothers Ranch back in 1878, coming up out of Texas the year before. Jack and his older brother, Jim, owned a spread north of Gunnison, grazing cattle in the North Fork of the Gunnison River Valley. They ran Herefords and Shorthorns, and I’d become their employee, noting Jack right off. Around my age, he was lean and muscled, like most cowboys, but it was his eyes that did it. Dark brown, they’d drilled me to where everything in me stirred, dick included, and I knew that minute, that very second, that he went my way and further, that he had been interested.

Now, my dick is stiff with