The Last Wish Blues

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4-14 Available On

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Chapter Three

For Brenda, the feeing of suddenly being "alone", out in the wilderness, as she thought of it, also brought a mixture of other feelings. Bob was there, of course, but he was riding ahead of her, and not talking. He'd said they had to cover ten miles before they'd reach a suitable camping spot, and at this pace, that would take hours and hours. She was impatient to see something ... get somewhere ... BE a camper. At the same time, the gentle swaying of the horse was comforting, and the absence of all sound, save the clopping of eight hooves, made her feel like she was already a thousand miles from civilization. At least Buttercup didn't seem to be interested in stopping all the time. She walked more quickly than the horse in the picture back home, too.

Suddenly, Bob was right beside her. She hadn't seen him do anything ... hadn't heard him give any command to his horse, but he was suddenly there, close enough to reach out and touch. His horse, and hers, nodded at each other and rubbed noses as they walked.

"Running a horse is very different than walking," said Bob. "Your legs have to get involved, flexing at the knees, so you can moderate the weight of your butt on the saddle. Otherwise it will beat you to death. Have you ever cantered or galloped before?"

Brenda looked at him with wide eyes. "I guess not," she said. "I just thought you sat there while the horse did whatever he does."

"Hold on to the saddle horn with both hands," said Bob. He made a clucking sound, and his horse jumped forward, moving into a trot. Buttercup followed instantly.

Without warning, Brenda was suddenly bouncing around like she was in an earthquake. She had automatically reached for the horn, at his comment, and gripped it frantically as she felt like she was being tossed three feet into the air. One foot came out of the stirrup, and she wailed, knowing she was going to fall.

"Whoa," said Bob, and both horses slowed to a walk again. They had only gone thirty feet.

He looked at her, without smiling.

"See what I mean?"

"Ow," she said, leaning to rub at her bottom.

He explained what she had to do with her knees and thighs, and they tried it again. She thought she would be beaten to death, at first, but seeing him watching her made her ... a little angry, maybe ... and she concentrated on her legs. It took another thirty seconds or so before she found the rhythm, and her violent jounces settled into rapid bumps. She was still hitting the saddle hard, and her butt hurt. She realized in an instant that, if they kept this up, she wouldn't be able to ride more than a mile or two before it would hurt too much to sit.

He slowed them to a walk again.

"Now, a gallop is completely different," he said conversationally. "You'll learn to use your abdominal muscles then. It's a different rhythm. Even though the horse is going faster, you're body's reaction to the movement will be slower. We'll only go a short way, and this time, I want you to NOT hold on to the horn. You'll find your arms help with balance. Don't pull at the reins, though. Buttercup stops on a dime, and if you aren't ready, you'll fly right over her head. When you're ready to stop, just lean back and tug them enough to let her feel it. DON'T jerk them!"

This time he asked her if she was ready and, when she nodded nervously, he gave a "Heayah" kind of sound. Buttercup launched ahead like a rocket, and by the time Brenda had let out the breath she had been unconsciously holding, and took another, she felt like she was flying.

This rhythm she caught onto instantly, leaning forward a bit, and flexing her knees. The horse's back seemed to rise and fall almost gently, and she had no trouble keeping her butt on the saddle. She felt her gut tighten and loosen, as her upper body seemed to stay at the same place, relative to the ground, while the horse, and her lower body, dropped and rose in a measured beat.

This ... was glorious.

She heard a high pitched scream, and realized it was her own voice that had made it ... a scream of delight as the ground flashed by beneath her. She looked ahead, and then to her left, where Bob was flying beside her on his big, black horse. He was grinning, and she realized her lips were stretched wide in the same way.

It seemed to go on forever ... and yet all too soon he yelled at her to lean back. "GENTLY!" he called.

Feeling like she was glued to the horse, she leaned back and tugged gently on the reins. Buttercup dropped into a canter immediately, and suddenly she was bouncing all over the place again.

"WHOA!" she called, and tugged harder.

Only the fact that she wrapped her arms around Buttercup's neck, and the saddle horn, digging painfully into her gut, stopped her from flying forward as Buttercup skidded to a halt. The horse tossed her head, and looked backwards, as if to say "What?"

Bob had gone on ahead, and turned his horse to come back.

"You OK?" he asked.

She sat up, panting. "This is a lot harder than I thought it would be."

"Takes years to get really good at it," said Bob.

"I don't have years. I'm going to have to learn a lot faster than that," she said grimly. Then she smiled. "I like galloping."

He smiled. "Everybody likes galloping. It's hard on the horse if you do it too long, though. They can keep a canter going all day long."

"Of course they can," sighed Brenda. "The one thing I can't do, a horse can do forever."

"You'll get the hang of it," said Bob. That's how to cover a lot of ground." He looked at her. "That IS what you want to do ... right?"

He was giving her a chance to back out of this, and she knew it. She was stubborn, though. "I'll get the hang of it," she said firmly.

He kept them at a canter. It took another half hour, and her butt was so sore that she wasn't at all sure she'd be able to do this, when, suddenly, the bouncing just stopped. She looked around in confusion, but the horse was still moving along at a trot. Her head was still moving up and down, but it wasn't the jarring bump that it had been for what seemed like hours. To her chagrin, as soon as she recognized that, the bumping started again. It took her another ten minutes to get the rhythm back in a way that she could recognize how to do it consistently.

"You need to stop?" called Bob. He'd been riding ahead of her, picking the path, while Buttercup just followed the stallion.

"Yes," she called out, "but not yet. I just figured out how to do this without killing myself."

She watched as the big man turned in his saddle, his rhythm unbroken, and watched her for half a minute while his horse went on ahead without any direction that she could see. She watched in amazement as Ranger dodged to one side to avoid a boulder, and Bob's body compensated for the movement he couldn't possibly have seen coming. When Buttercup did the same thing, she was just as amazed to feel her own body sway in the saddle, leaning automatically so she kept her place.

"You're a quick learner!" he called back, grinning.

"My butt's killing me!" she yelled back.

"We could stop for a snack," he yelled.

"Just a little farther," she shouted, leaning forward just a tad and feeling how that took the strain off her legs.

He led them on for ten more minutes, and pulled up beside a copse of trees. He dismounted with a fluid grace she tried to emulate, but failed miserably at. Her legs felt like they were made of rubber, and her butt cheeks felt like they were on fire. Even the insides of her thighs felt raw. She hobbled, walking bowlegged, to lead Buttercup next to Ranger.

"I have something for the pain," said Bob, dropping Ranger's reins to the ground. "Let her reins hang loose like that," he instructed the girl.

He got into his saddle bags and pulled out a mason jar that had a thick, pasty brown substance in it.

"Bob's patented saddle-sore solver," he said, holding it up to her.

"What do I do with it?" she asked, skeptically. "It looks like it would taste nasty."

"It WOULD taste nasty, if you were foolish enough to eat it." He grinned. "Smear it on your butt and inner thighs. Rub it in pretty well. In about sixty seconds you won't be able to feel a thing."

She stared at him. "I don't suppose I put it on the outside of my clothes ..."

He grinned again. "Of course not. Rub it into the skin. It's an old Indian remedy that deadens the nerves. One of my hands makes it up for me. When it wears off you'll think you're going to die, but I have enough to last two or three days, and by then you should be toned up enough that the pain won't be there any more."

"And where, exactly, am I supposed to do this?" she asked archly.

He pointed to the copse of trees. "Go in there. I won't watch."

She looked at the paste, in the jar, in her hand.

"How much longer before we get to our first camping spot?" she asked.

He looked at the sun. "Well, it's about ten now, and I figure we'll be there around two this afternoon. That will give us plenty of time to set up camp and do any exploring you want to do before supper. Once supper is fixed and eaten, I imagine you'll be wanting to sleep."

Brenda looked at her watch. It was eleven minutes after ten. She looked at his wrist, and saw it was bare.

"Four more hours?" she asked, pain in her voice.

"With several breaks," he said easily. "Go put that stuff on. You'll feel much better. I promise."

Brenda stood in the middle of the trees. There was thick brush all around her, and she couldn't see anything, but she still felt nervous about dropping her pants. Her inner thighs were still burning fiercely, though, and that drove her to unbuckle her belt, unzip her jeans, and push them down. She realized she'd have to push her panties down too, to get to her buttocks, and looked around nervously again. She opened the jar and sniffed, jerking her head back instantly. The stuff smelled awful! She could just barely get her fingers far enough into the neck of the jar to scoop out some paste.

She tried it on ibe inner thigh first. It felt cool, and before she'd even gotten to her other leg she could feel the soothing relief, as the pain just vanished. When she finished with her other thigh, it felt so much better that she ignored her nervousness and pushed her panties down quickly. She felt stupid rubbing her own bottom, but as the ache disappeared she got over that too. She pulled her clothing back up and took a few steps, bending this way and that, astonished that she could feel nothing but the coolness, penetrating to her sore muscles. She decided it felt a little like what the dentist did. Reaching back she ran her fingers over her butt lightly, and couldn't feel them at all. It was just numb.

When she pushed back out of the brush, to see Bob sitting on his horse, she grinned.

"That stuff is amazing!" she said.

"I know," he said smiling. "You ready to try it again?"

As she had dismounted her horse, the only thing she could think about was how hard it was going to be to get back up in the saddle. Now, though, with the pain gone, Buttercup didn't look quite so tall as she had before. Lifting a foot to the stirrup, Brenda sighed at the fact that it didn't hurt at all, and pulled herself up into the saddle. It didn't feel as foreign to her as it had before, and she smiled brightly.

"Yes!" she said happily.

For the first twenty yards, she bounced, and then got back into the rhythm of the canter. For the first time she was able to look around, at the country they were riding through.

They stopped three more times, to let her get down and stretch her legs. She had to apply the salve again, the second time they stopped. This time he walked around a big boulder while she slid her jeans and panties down. She looked, to make sure he wasn't watching her, but didn't feel the nervousness she had before. When she called out that she was decent again, and he sauntered around the boulder with a weed sticking out of his mouth, she looked at him closely, for the first time.

That he was tall, she remembered. She hadn't realized how brown his skin was, and that his face was covered with tiny lines that made him look older than his body suggested. She saw sliver tips at the ends of the hair in front of his ears, and realized that, if he got a haircut, those ends would not show. The rest of his hair was a uniform dark brown. He had the kind of crinkles around his mouth that suggested he smiled a lot. Of all the adult males she knew, and who were about his age, he was the thinnest. He looked muscular, somehow, but was thin. She decided that it was the way he moved that made him look muscular. He walked like he was weightless, and could jump six feet straight up in the air if he wanted to. She guessed he was in his late thirties.

Brenda cocked her head as he sent her an inquiring look. She knew instinctively that he wanted to know if the salve was still working.

"Good stuff," she said.

"That's good," he answered. "You hungry?"

They ate sandwiches from his saddle bags. They were mashed flat, but she didn't care. This ham and cheese was the best she'd ever tasted, as far as she was concerned.

At the third stop he had her climb a tall rock spire with him. It used different muscles, and she felt weak as she struggled to follow his effortless climbing. He showed her where to put her hands and feet when it got steep, and moved beside her.

"Aren't we supposed to use ropes and stuff?" she asked nervously at one spot where it was ten feet straight up.

"This is pretty easy," he assured her. "There are lots of niches to put your fingers and toes. Besides, we're almost there."

She crawled along a sloping ledge that went around a bulge, and saw that it opened up to a flat area that was ten or fifteen feet across. When she stood up, she had to take a step to counter the force of the wind that whipped her hair and shirt, plastering it against her body.

She felt like she could see for a thousand miles. The country they were riding through was littered with large boulders, many bigger than the horses themselves. For the last few miles she had been unable to see more than a hundred yards in any direction before her vision was blocked by what she had thought were hills. Now, from up here, she could clearly see that the wind had blown slops of soil up against huge chunks of rock, over the years, and plants had taken hold in that soil.

"Wow," she gasped, staring out at where they had just ridden.

"That's our back trail," he said, standing beside her and pointing. "You can see the path through the rocks from here."

She could, too. It was an obvious line that meandered between boulders. Down there she had just thought he was going around them, always heading up, more or less, but from here she could see that he had taken the only real route to get where they were. Any other path would have taken them to a dead end, and they'd have had to turn around and retrace their steps.

"The ranch is over there," he said, pointing. He stood behind her and laid his triceps on her shoulder so she could see right down his arm to his pointing finger.

There was a haze in the air, but she stared, finally seeing a dark smudge that looked like the roofs of several buildings. Looking further she could see a line that looked wrong, somehow, and realized it was the highway that went by the ranch. As she watched, there was a glint of bright light on that line as the sun glanced off the windshield of a car she couldn't even see.

"It's so beautiful," she sighed.

"View's like this are what keep me here," he said, almost in her ear.

She shivered, and realized it was his breath in her ear that had caused it. She was suddenly intensely aware that there was very light contact between his front and her back. He felt very close to her in that second. Instead of stepping away, though, she almost stepped back into him. She felt very alone way up here, where no one could see them. Her parents were at that dark smudge he was pointing at, but even if they were outside waving like maniacs, she wouldn't be able to see them. Having him so close to her made her feel better, somehow.

His arm was withdrawn, and returned. There was a pair of binoculars in his hand. She took them and held them up to her eyes, trying to find the ranch. He wasn't touching her, but she could still feel his closeness, behind her. She finally found the dark smudge she'd been looking at, as it sprang into view. It was still so far away that she coldn't make out any people, but the buildings were those she was familiar with.

She turned, handing him the binoculars, and looked behind them. The mountain looked like she could jump from where she was to its slope, it was so close. It kept going up and she saw where the trees stopped suddenly, and gray rock reigned supreme. There was white at the tips of the rocks above that.

"Where are we going?" she asked, reaching her hand to keep in contact with him. She felt dizzy, but it wasn't the tumor kind of dizzy. It was the dizziness of being so small in such a huge place. "We're not going clear up there, are we?"

"No," he said. "We'll stay in the tree line. We're going to start north, along the mountainside, over there." He pointed to their right. "There's a spring about a mile over that way. It comes out of the rocks, but is fed from up above. There's a good place to camp there." His arm kept moving to the right. "Then, the next day, we'll work the side of the slope, going on over to Bear Rock. We'll keep going in a big circle, coming back down to where the grass is. I run some cattle over there, where there's good grass and water. Eventually it will bring us back to the ranch."

"It looks different over there," said Brenda.

"Geologically it's completely different than where we are now," he agreed. The vegetation will depend on the altitude we're at, but we'll see a lot of the same stuff.

"This is so cool!" she said earnestly.

Brenda shivered again, this time from the cold. The wind never let up. He saw it and took her back the way they'd come.

Going down was much more difficult than climbing up had been. He was below her, this time, and sometimes he placed her feet so that she was in the right places to come down easily. Twice he grasped her around the waist and lifted her down. She felt like she weighed only ten pounds in his hands.

She felt a moment of terror when they got back to where they'd left the horses, and they were gone.

Bob whistled, and both animals trotted around a boulder and came up to nuzzle at their riders.

"I was afraid they'd run away," she gasped, having to take a step to compensate for the strength of Buttercup's nose-nudge.

"They won't run away," he said. "They're greedy. They know I have apples in the saddle bags. They don't want to wait until we camp. They're reminding us that they came, when called, and would like to be treated because of it." He addressed the big stallion. "But you're not going to get an apple right now, are you sweetie?" he said, as if he was talking to a little child. The horse tossed his head and whickered.

For the next twenty minutes they climbed steeply, having to go in single file. Neither horse seemed to labor, but they stayed at a walk. Then the trail turned and became a three foot wide flat area, with steepness above them, and sharp drops below them. Had Brenda seen this part first, might have decided not to go on. Now, though, she felt completely safe, perched on her strong, and sure-footed mare's back. She could see better, because when she looked down-slope, she was looking at the tops of trees. When the trail went back down she felt a pang of loss as they descended into the trees, and she couldn't see very far any more.

They hit a down slope that had the horses moving at a trot when, almost without warning they rode into an open area that was thick with grass. She saw a circle of rocks, with the obvious remnants of a campfire in it, and was looking at that when Bob's horse went to the left and stopped. Buttercup was still trotting, and, without thinking, Brenda yanked on the reins and yelled "Whoa!"

An instant later she saw Buttercup's head ... upside down ... as she flew forward in an imperfect somersault. The world whirled crazily as the reins were torn from her grip. She felt her toes touch the ground and twisted, instinctively to keep from landing flat on her face as her body continued its forward momentum. She felt her hip hit the ground hard and a cry burst from her lips as her arm hit the ground and skidded in the tall grass. The breath in her lungs exploded through her mouth as her side hit the ground and she flopped onto her back. She rolled one more time before coming to rest on her back, still unable to draw a breath into paralyzed lungs.

She saw thick, white, puffy clouds as she tried to assess if, and how badly she was hurt. Bob's face appeared, hovering over hers, as she fought to make her diaphragm take in air. She tried to sit up, and Bob's hands came to her shoulders.

"Don't move," he said calmly. His eyes didn't look as calm as his voice sounded, she observed.

Something in her chest released, and she took in a deep, rasping breath. Air had never felt as good in her whole life as it did right then.

"I'm going to check for broken bones," said Bob, again calmly. "Tell me if anything hurts."

His fingers went to her left arm, lifting it gently and moving along it to her shoulder. Then he did her right arm. She lay there gasping for breath as she felt his fingers run over her ribs. She felt his fingers brush the outer parts of her breasts in the process and she lifted her head to look at his hands. She was watching them slide down to her legs, to examine them, when she realized something didn't feel right.

Her scalp was cold.

He had left her hands free, and she lifted them to feel her bald pate. Her wig had come loose during the fall, and was gone.

"My wig!" she gasped, trying to crane her neck to see if she could see it anywhere.

"Lie still!" he ordered. "I told you not to move!"

"My wig!" she said again.

"It's over there," Bob tossed his head. "Now lie still. Don't move your head any more!"

When he'd finished going over her legs, he started having her move things, just a little, at first. She had no trouble with her arms and legs. He had her turn her head, gently, from side to side.

"Any pain in your neck?" he asked. "Anything at all?"

"No," she moaned. She felt like she'd ... fallen off a horse.

"I think you're a very lucky girl," he sighed, finally. "Let's try sitting you up."

He let her pull with her arms, telling her that if she felt any pain anywhere to lie back down. She felt pain everywhere, but it wasn't the kind of pain he was talking about, and she sat, to lean back on her hands. His fingers went to her bald head, flowing over it gently, and she winced.

"I don't feel any soft spots," he said.

"You weren't supposed to see me without my hair," she said, realizing he though he'd hurt her.

"You think you're the first bald-headed woman I've ever seen?" he asked.

She felt a tiny thrill at being characterized as a "woman", but ignored it in her shame.

"How many bald women have you seen?" she asked.

"OK, so you're the first," he admitted. "It's not so bad."

"It's horrible," she moaned.

"Look at me," he said.

She lifted her face and realized there were tears in her eyes when he looked all wavery.

"I think it's kind of sexy," he said softly.

"Liar," she snapped. She didn't like pity. She got way more pity than anything else. It had been that way for over a year.

"I'm not lying," he said firmly. "It's a different look, I'll admit, but it makes your facial features stand out. You have really beautiful eyes. I never noticed that before," he lied. The first thing he had noticed were those big, blue eyes.

She blinked and looked into his eyes. She didn't see pity there ... not like the others, when they saw her like this. He seemed sincere.

"Really?" she whined.

"Feels pretty good too," he said, continuing to run his fingers over her scalp. "I don't think I've ever felt anything that smooth."

"Really?" she repeated.

"Really," he said. "You sure nothing hurts? That was quite a tumble you took."

"I think I yanked the reins," she said, feeling foolish.

"Yup," he said. He could have said "I told you so," but he didn't.

"You want to try standing up?"

"OK."

He pulled her up and she felt a little dizzy. She leaned against him, her arms going around him for support. She had a fleeting feeling of warmth as his hands slid across her back to hold her. She could feel his warm breath on her scalp too. Nobody had ever breathed on her bald head before, and if felt strange, but nice, somehow.

"I'm OK," she said, stepping away from him. She looked around for the wig, and saw it a few feet away. It looked foreign, lying there on the lush green grass ... something dead and synthetic, surrounded by life.

She went to it and bent to retrieve it, feeling things stretch and complain in her ribs. It was just sore, though, and not a sharp, dangerous pain, so she ignored it. She held the wig in her hands, trying to figure out what to do now. She wanted to put it back on, but that felt stupid somehow. She thought about going without it, but couldn't stand the thought of that either. Finally she pulled it back onto her scalp. Her head was warmer immediately.

Bob didn't say anything as she got herself back in order. She looked like she was moving all right, and he didn't think anything was seriously hurt. He'd keep an eye on her for a while, but things looked a lot better than they had a few minutes ago. If she'd have been hurt badly, he'd have had to get the chopper in here to take her out, and that would have been difficult. There was no place within half a mile for the chopper to land.

"Thank you," said Brenda, suddenly.

"All I did was check you over," he said.

"I mean for what you said about my hair."

"Oh." He grinned. "No problem. I probably shouldn't have said it looked sexy, huh? You're almost young enough to be my daughter."

"Nobody ever told me I looked sexy before," she said. "Not even when I still had my real hair."

"Boys your age have no brain," said Bob, easily. "And men wouldn't say that to you because they'd be afraid of being arrested for molesting you."

"You did," she said, wondering again if he'd been telling the truth, or just trying to make her feel better.

"Nobody around here to arrest me." He grinned again. "And you DO look sexy. All I did was tell the truth." He sobered. "I'd appreciate it, though, if you didn't tell your Pappa I said that. He might not see the humor in it."

"He won't even look at me when I'm not wearing my wig," she said. "My parents feel sorry for me."

"That's not so strange," he said.

"I know," she agreed. "I know everybody means well, but they get so morose and sad. It's just something that happened. There's nothing anybody can do about it. It's not anybody's fault. It's just there. I wish they'd just ignore it and get on with things."

"Your parents love you," said Bob. "They're sad because they know that some day you won't be here any more."

"I know that too," said Brenda. "But I'm not dead yet, and everybody treats me like I am. I've got several months left to live, and I want to LIVE those months, not worry about what will happen later. It's hard to feel alive when everybody treats you like you're dead ... or almost dead."

"Well, since you're not dead, you can fix supper," announced Bob. "How's that?"

"I'm a terrible cook," she said.

"You have no idea what a terrible cook is like," said Bob. "You'll find out ... the first time I cook for us."

They set about unpacking the camping gear, and taking care of the horses. As soon as the saddle bags were on the ground, both horses were nosing at them, looking for the apples they knew were in there. Bob took two out, cut them up, and showed her how to safely feed the chunks to Buttercup. The horse seemed very appreciative, whickering and nosing her. She slid her hands down the long nose, to the soft skin at the end.

"There's something that feels as smooth as my head," she commented.

Bob looked over at her. "Naw, it's completely different. Yours is smooth and hard. Hers is smooth and mushy. It's not the same."

Brenda hid a smile of satisfaction as she realized he was just talking ... saying what he actually thought, and not what he figured he was SUPPOSED to say to a girl ... in her condition.

He was the first adult she could remember who just treated her like another human being.

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