Ranches and Rope (Updated 15/10/2015)

Postby cyrus6347 » Thu Sep 10, 2015 7:18 am

Welcome to my first post on this site. This is a fictional story which is drawn from inspiration from various visits to my cousins in America. This is not anyway a true story. Before I reveal the story, just gonna state that as a student, updates will vary wildly. Hope y'all enjoy!

Oh, and the protag/speaker is called Gareth
___________________________________________________
The Beginning
___________________________________________________

In the midst of a fifty-acre of ranch land, the following words could be heard

“Got ya again, cousin!”

I lay on the ground, breathing heavily after the run and consequent fall. I reached for the rope at my ankles to begin loosening it. From behind me, I hear Matt call out “Yah” and there was a clink of boots. Suddenly, the rope tightened and began to drag me across the grass for a good couple of meters before Matt slowed down and eventually his horse stopped. We’d been doing this for a while now, well not specifically dragging me across the field. I’d only arrived at my uncle’s ranch a few days ago and here I was trying to learn how to use a lasso with Matt’s assistance although it seemed to alternate between me actually practicing and me avoiding his lasso as he “practiced” when he would get bored. A couple of the ranch hands had tried assisting me earlier but that must have been a couple of hours ago. Matt got off his horse and began to walk towards me, his spurs clinking with every other step. His buckskin gloved hand reached down and I firmly grasped it as he pulled me to my feet. He opened his mouth to say something but my stomach interrupted him. He gave a low chuckle.

“Come on. Let’s get something to eat, Gareth. Its half two already and all you've done is practiced”

I dusted myself off, wiping off dust from recently-bought jeans., “I think my stomach agrees with you”.

Matt gave a long whistle. It wasn't but a few moments until the sound of hooves were approaching and another chestnut horse akin to the one Matt was riding came racing across the field. When the horse came within a few meters, he changed direction slightly and stopped right in front of me, whinnying slightly.

I stroked her forehead as he, Niko simultaneously nuzzled my hand. Niko and I had bonded over the several visits I had to the ranch through the years and could recognize me on sight.

Both Matt and I climbed up on our, well his and my uncle’s, respective horses and raced back across the field. From a distance, some of the cattle in various fenced portions looked up to momentarily watch us as we trampled grass beneath our horses’ hooves. It ended in a splurge of kicked up mud and a reasonably close finish but Matt’s horse, Nitro didn't have his name just for show. Niko put up a decent fight but he wasn't trained to race like Nitro was. Yes, its kinda ironic that a horse in the country is called Nitro but that’s how it goes. Guess you could link it to the pick-up trucks though. Matt wiped his forehead with his bandanna, the weather continuing to be gloriously hot, a clear contrast to the usual soggy weather I had to experience back home in England.

We had missed lunch and my Uncle had thought it better to leave us whilst we seemed busy. Matt took matters into his own hands on the creation of our lunch. It kinda felt strange as for the third time, I was standing about watching someone else prepare my own lunch because I had no clue about the location of anything within the kitchen, almost as though I was being rude by not doing it myself. I took out my phone and began to trawl through a number of emails that I had received whilst being outside, nothing of any real urgency.The smell of fried eggs and sausages began to waft throughout the kitchen which was large enough to be the dining room as well. I had a brief check on various notifications on Facebook when Matt put down two plates on the dining room table that I was seated at. He sat down across from me and we both began to eat the baguettes.

A short while after we finished, I had volunteered (well felt obligated) to wash up and began to fill the sink. After a brief pause, Matt got up, “Gareth, I’m gonna see you later. Got people to meet, things to do. Hope your roping skills improve.”

“Thanks, see you around then”

“Oh and don’t forget,” Matt said as he was opening the door. “You’d better wear something half decent for later.”

“Why?”, I assume he was referring to my current T-shirt, a silvery wolf and dragon facing off upon the black surface, can’t see him having a problem over my boots and jeans. Matt was also wearing cowboy boots and dark blue jeans, although he also wore the hat, a leather brown jacket and a belt with a buckle that he had won from one of the various rodeos he had attended.

“Darn it, I did tell you several mates of mine were coming over at 6. Must’ve slipped your mind whilst you were falling over.”
He winked and a sly grin crossed his face.

“Sure, go on, go before I learn to lasso that grin off your face and then we’ll see whose laughing.” I retorted.

He did that low chuckle again and left, closing the door and leaving me to continue washing the dishes. It was only when I finished that I realized that I still didn't know where they went. A sigh escaped my lips before I set to the almost impossible task of finding where everything went. I could swear that he had used two plates with different designs just to make it awkward for me, especially when I found out that they were in separate cupboards.
Last edited by cyrus6347 on Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Ranches and Rope

Postby mikeybound » Thu Sep 10, 2015 3:10 pm

So far so good. Always nice to have some new blood here.
Could you write some descriptions for the characters?

Re: Ranches and Rope

Postby xtc » Fri Sep 11, 2015 2:48 am

Welcome to the League of TUGwriters. Post when ready.
Boxer shorts are cool,
but little speedos rule!

More by the same author: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22729

Re: Ranches and Rope

Postby chadmc90 » Fri Sep 11, 2015 7:33 pm

Nice read for my comeback to the forums. There were some confusing spots, but you have potential. Might be a good idea to have someone proofread your chapters before posting them. Good luck.
Check out my latest story A Cowboy's Dream!

Feedback highly appreciated! Feel free to Private Message me if you prefer to not post on the public forum!

Re: Ranches and Rope

Postby alex967 » Fri Sep 11, 2015 7:59 pm

Sounds interesting, can't wait to read more

Re: Ranches and Rope

Postby cyrus6347 » Thu Oct 15, 2015 4:57 am

Thanks for the comments guys, I hope I haven't gone without posting for too long a time. Twas trying to comb through for any mistakes :worried:

.......

The Party and Zane

When it got to about 5 minutes to 6pm, I reluctantly slipped into a western shirt. It just didn’t look right with me or perhaps I just couldn’t give the full effect as I looked in the mirror, my brown eyes exploring this new image of me, all 5’ 8” of it. Jeans and shirt and a pair of boots don’t make a cowboy and yet that didn’t make me either so I was somewhat in between and thus my appearance was totally inconsistent. Admittedly I had no Stetson or other to hat to cover my short brown hair, but it was my physical appearance that I think ruined. Although I had several trophies for sprinting at home and did a reasonable amount of sports, I was still very pale from the amount of indoor gaming. My hands were soft and uncalloused and were used to stroking my pet hound over manual work. My dog had definitely helped make my body lean and athletic through the amount of boundless energy that had to be expelled whenever he needed walking. I’m not particularly muscular but people sure did find it difficult to stop me when I’m trying to push through whilst playing rugby. Throw a hint of martial arts in the mix and you can probably imagine the resulting mix.

I heard noises from the front door and turned to exit the room except that something had got caught. The coil of rope around my waist had got caught around the bedpost, momentarily leashing me to it. I looked at it, realising that I still had it on from earlier. I removed it and hung it on the back of my door. Then I began to descend the stairs.

It was more than a couple of friends. Drinks were brought out and country music began to blare into the evening. A couple of families had actually turned up and they were sitting outside, chatting and so forth. It was an actual party and I was so out of place. Being used to parties but not being known is excruciatingly difficult. Especially when you’re introduced by your cousin as a cousin from England. That didn’t really help when I felt like a pale imitation of my cousin. He looked pretty damn fine in his clothes, looking completely relaxed. He was decked in full leather cowboy gear. Well, he had taken off his buckskin gloves that he was wearing earlier and now was wearing chaps overs his jeans, shrouding them, the jeans themselves still having little splatters of mud from working on the ranch. My eyes began to point out all the creases in his white shirt where his muscles lied underneath, making me feel inferior by a truckload although we were the same height roughly. As he talked he would do that cliche action of tugging his hat brim under his dark green eyes but still totally pulled it off. Matt seemed to know pretty much everyone. Luckily I managed to get on reasonably well with the few people I spoke to but being absolutely hideously bad at remembering names, I was reduced to merely attempting to remember their faces and hope that I had grasped their names.

Partway through, Matt and his friends broke off from the rest with me in tow, leading to the ranch’s arena. It seems that they weren’t the only ones who had an idea in relation to it. Several other cowboys, ranch hands and spectators had gathered. Just as we arrived, the gate to the arena floor was opened and a horse with an unwanted rider clinging on its back leaped out. It spun and bucked chaotically and in a few seconds it was over, the cowboy had been thrown.

“Cmon, I’ll show you how it’s really done cousin”

One of his friends, Blaze I think, turned to face Matt, “Hell, the day you can ride broncs better than me will be the day that I won’t be able to move. I’ll show Gareth.”

Thus they both rushed ahead of the others to join the queue to ride.

They weren’t lying when they say they could ride. It was damn impressive how they could ride whilst atop a bucking horse. It wasn’t long before they had had multiple goes and other people began to drift back to the party. Amongst the drinks in between they began to make a couple of crazy comments and they crossed the point of replacing my name with “Greenhorn” everytime they spoke to me for the rest of the night.

Then the peer pressure came, the jeering and calling of chicken for me to ride a bronc. I won’t lie but the last time I tried, I got thrown off almost instantly and that was without the crowd. But with booze in my system, I relented. First thing that had to happen though was for me to put on chaps and during those moments my mind cleared momentarily, making me want to retrace my steps but they would never let it go if I didn’t ride now. The ranch hand who was operating the gate to the pen recognised me and wished me a gruff “good luck”, having watched some of my attempts during the previous years. I clambered over the bars and sat atop the sable-coloured horse’s back.

The body of muscles beneath me seemed to shudder with power, threatening me to get off or else. Ther horse’s head turned and glared at me from the corner of its eyes. Then it blinked, I nodded and the gate was opened. Leaping into the arena, the sable horse twisted, bucked and almost managed to headbutt me on numerous occasions. I was thrown backwards, forwards and sideways, all the time forcing myself to hold on with only one hand. The snorting of the horse, the pound of hooves and the beating of my own heart blocked out the noise of the various spectators. Then, I was suddenly dislodged from the twisted bucking mass of flesh and thrown to the ground. Dazed but aware of the danger, I rolled away to avoid the horse’s hooves and staggered out of the arena. My head felt slightly woozy after the fall but I was alright. I felt embarrassed, having known I would fail to suppress the power of such a horse. As Matt came around the arena to meet me and I did the same, the ground started to swirl slightly and I tripped. As I fell towards the ground, I reached out with my hands to break my fall only to find that I knocked into somebody else, steadying myself in the process only to find myself pushed backwards onto my ass.

I looked up and looked back at the staring brown eyes of the person I had knocked into. He looked my age but it was obvious that he was an actual rodeo rider. He wore a black rodeo jacket, snug fitting jeans, with one hell of a large rodeo belt buckle and black leather cowboy boots. He towered over me, his muscles clearly defined, clearly strong enough to wrestle me to the round with ease. He actually looked as though he owned the place. He glared with me and was flanked with another male.

“I dare ya. Try to push past me again and I’ll throw you to the ground and hogtie ya.”

“Sorry, it was an accident”

“Accident, my arse”

I slowly stood up, wary and yet apologetic. He continued to glare at me as I got to my feet. Then I found my legs swept out from under me as he moved forwards so fast I barely had time to register the movement before I found myself lying on the ground again.

“Moron,” I muttered but it had registered in his ears and suddenly a boot was planted in my stomach. He leaned over me, putting his weight on the leg that was suppressing my body, as he looked down upon me from his dominant position

“A fall is nothing compared to what I will do with you... Boy”

“Oy Zane, get off him now!” came Matt’s voice who had just arrived at the scene.

Zane angled his boots so his spurs dug into my stomach and whispered, “Calf. Go. Home.” before he slowly stepped off of me, casually as possible before turning to glare at Matt. “This lost lamb yours?”

“Yeah, he’s my cousin so don’t touch him else you’ll have me to deal with”

Zane and his buddy turned and walked off before calling out over his shoulder, “Tell him about me. Maybe then he won’t cross me again.”

“You alright? Come on then, get off the floor. Dust it off, Gareth. What happened?”

You could tell that the effects of the beer had started to wear off as he said my name this time over greenhorn. I told him what had happened and Matt looked partially worried. Then he informed me that Zane was person that I didn’t want to get involved with. “He’s a natural thug, had people beaten up for spilling a drink over him. You’re lucky you only bumped into him and from the sounds of it, lightly bumped into him.”

“I’m sure worse was going to happen if you hadn’t intervened, thanks”

“No problem, you’re family after all, and he ain’t gonna be botherin’ you from now on as long as you stay away from him. Now let’s go back to the house, the party’s starting to die down and to be honest, I think you would feel more comfortable too, right? And if not, well we’ll do out best to make you feel comfortable”. He put his arm around my neck and rubbed his fist through my hair. “Greenhorn”. At that point, I couldn't tell whether it was just affection or him calling me a greenhorn for not having a stetson to cover my hair.

Re: Ranches and Rope (Updated 15/10/2015)

Postby fratboydanny » Thu Oct 15, 2015 6:00 am

Thank you, Cyrus, for sharing your writing talents with us.

Re: Ranches and Rope (Updated 15/10/2015)

Postby xtc » Thu Oct 15, 2015 6:06 am

Welcome back. Nice to read this continuation.
Boxer shorts are cool,
but little speedos rule!

More by the same author: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22729

Re: Ranches and Rope (Updated 15/10/2015)

Postby CowboyTiedUp » Sun Oct 16, 2016 6:22 pm

Anymore???

Re: Ranches and Rope (Updated 15/10/2015)

Postby bondagefreak » Sun Oct 16, 2016 7:48 pm

CowboyTiedUp wrote:Anymore???


Another member who I enjoyed immensely.
He logged in a few weeks ago for the first time in months, but hasn't posted anything in quite a long time.
Image