Billy the Kid

By Waldo

 

All rights reserved by the author.
May be posted on any site for Free distribution.
Send comments to Mellin6695@aol.com.

 

Chapter 1 - The shootout
Chapter 2 - He’s dead
Chapter 3 - Saint Francis
Chapter 4 - A new look
Chapter 5 - Melissa
Chapter 6 - Winter then Spring
Chapter 7 - The Stranger
Chapter 8 - A change in needs
Chapter 9 - Life without Melissa
Chapter 10 - Old Habits

 

Chapter 1 - The shootout

“Billy! Billy Boney! It’s Sheriff Pat Garrett. Don’t shoot. My posse’s got the cabin surrounded. You sure as hell can’t escape from all of us now, especially because of the way that we’ve got your hideout completely surrounded. Throw your pistols out the window and surrender to me. You know me. I’ll make sure that you get a fair trail.”

A pistol barrel slowly pulled back out of the broken window, disappearing into the darkness of the old abandoned log cabin. There was total silence except from the whistling wind blowing through the rocks, for several long seconds as the posse impatiently waited for the cabin’s supposedly only occupant to accept the Sheriff’s order. Then a young man’s high-pitched voice came from the hidden recesses of the remote cabin in response to the Sheriff’s offer.

“Pat. I thought that you were my friend. What are you doing out there with all of those guns pointed at me? You.…..You of all people, should know that Billy the Kid won’t give up without a fight to the death. Is that what you want? Do you want me to prove AGAIN that I’m the deadliest man in the whole fucking world with a pistol? I’ve got enough damn bullets in here with me to hold off a fucking army. And I’ll do it too.”

The Sheriff tilted his sweat-stained dirty Stetson hat back on his head and looked at a nearby grimly-looking man with a big handlebar mustache. The man was twenty feet away from the Sheriff and prudently hiding behind a big rock, using the granite boulder as protection as he carefully pointed his rifle barrel in the general direction of the cabin. Instead of watching the cabin, the man was staring at the Sheriff, patiently waiting for the Sheriff to do something to end the impasse. Garrett knew that this silent man was the real leader of the posse, which was composed entirely of hired gunslingers from the Chisome Ranch; a posse that was composed of men that responded only to the mustache man’s purse. The Sheriff knew that this man and his rifle was really there to make sure that Billy the Kid didn’t live long enough to ever tell his side of the story in a courtroom.

Knowing that he had to do something to comply with the law and to also to try to help his long time friend, the Sheriff knew that he had to make sure that no one started any shooting. Sticking his head up over the big rock that he was using as protection, Sheriff Garrett yelled toward the cabin.

“Billy. I know that if anyone could possible break free from this encirclement, that it’ll be you. You’re the deadliest shot that I’ve ever seen and I’m willing to bet that you can pick most of us off before one of us gets lucky and permanently takes you out. But there’s too many of us out here and this ain’t your ordinary posse. I’ve got men out here that can shoot almost just as good as you. There’s Sam Higgins, Hump Winger, Cactus Jack Brown, Dave Trowler, and a whole bunch more of people out here with me who you know are deadly shooters. You’re a fast draw and in a one to one contest, my money’s definitely going to be on you. But this isn’t an even contest. It’s a turkey shoot, you’re the turkey and these men came prepared to do some very intense turkey shooting. Billy, we’ve been friends for many years. I don’t want to see you die like this because we rode a lot of range together. We also drank a lot of beer together and you’re one of the best pards that I ever had in my whole life. That’s why I want you to surrender to me. I’ll do my damnedest to make sure that you get out of here safely and get a fair trial. What’d you say? Throw your guns out and come out with your hands high and I’ll make sure that you get a fair shake in Judge Belvin’s courtroom next month.”

“Pat, you’re talking like a idiot for the first time in your life. If Cactus Jack and Sam are out there, then I know that fucking asshole Henry Storm is out there too. There’s no way that Henry’s going to let me live long enough to get to jail, much less live long enough to get to a courtroom. The second I throw my guns out and step out through that door, I’m a dead man no matter what you promise me. Henry probably bought that damn Sharp’s rifle of his just so that he can stay out of my pistol range while he tries to shoot me. Hey Henry, did anyone ever tell you that I fucked your wife one time? If not, I’m mighty proud to tell you that I did it at three or four times. Your wife’s pussy reminded me of a virgin’s pussy because it was so damn tight and unused once I got my cock past the first inch. You must not get any of your wife’s sweet pussy on a regular basis, do you Henry? She told me that I was her first real man, Henry. Can you hear me, Henry?”

The man holding the rifle glanced back at the Sheriff, angry that the Sheriff had announced his presence and further angered by the Kid’s loudmouthed reckless banter. Wiping the sweat from his face with a dirty handkerchief, the red-faced man answered the challenge by yelling at the cabin.

“William Boney. This is Henry Storm talking. I know that you and I’ve crossed paths before and that we’ve exchanged some harsh words in the past. But you have my word that my men and I are here to support the Sheriff and we will give you an opportunity to peacefully surrender. I promised my boss that I would see you hang before the year’s end and I plan to keep that promise. So I’ll make sure that you get to jail safely and that you stay there until we put the noose around your neck. Just do as the Sheriff suggests and I give you my word also that you get to the jail safely. What’d you say?”

The ‘zinnnnggggg’ of a bullet whipping through the air preceded the sound of the gunfire from within the cabin. Stone chips from the boulder protecting Storm whizzed through the air as a bullet hit the boulder mere inches from Storm’s head. Everyone hiding further out in the bushes, ducked lower behind their respective protection as a loud maniacal laugh came from within the cabin, followed by a laughing challenge.

“Henry, do you think that I’m a fucking fool? I didn’t get twenty-one notches on my pistols by listening to lies coming from assholes like you. I know that you want to kill me. You want to become famous as the man who gunned down Billy the Kid. Then you can become the world’s most famous bounty hunter. Well asshole, I don’t believe your fucking lying promises and I ought to shoot you just for putting my good friend, the Sheriff, in a position where I might have to shoot Garrett too. Hey Pat, are you still out there?”

“Yeah Billy.”

“Stick your head up so I can see where you’re hiding. Then I won’t throw as many bullets that way when I see some movement out there. I owe you that much….you know, being that we were once pards.”

Knowing that he could trust the Kid’s word, Pat Garrett slowly raised his head up above the protection of the boulder that he was hiding behind. For several long seconds, he stared hard at the cabin trying to see inside its dark interior, knowing that the outlaw inside the cabin was the deadliest shot that he had ever seen. It was rumored that Billy the Kid had once challenged a man to quickly blink his eyes twice. Billy waited until the first blink, then drew his twin pistols, and easily put a bullet though each of the man’s eyes before the man could blink the second time……..from forty paces away.

Pat waited for the boom of the bullet and when he didn’t hear one coming his way, he holstered his pistol. Then he bravely stepped out from behind the protection of the rock and slowly moved until he was standing in front of it, offering a clear target to the nearby outlaw hidden within the dark shadows of the old cabin. Reaching up slowly to adjust his hat on his head so that he appeared to just relaxing, he calmly spoke in a confident voice as if he were asking nothing more important than to borrow a cigarette from the outlaw.

“Billy, why don’t you let me come in and talk to you? Maybe we can work something out. You got any whisky in there?”

“Pat, if I had know that you and the other boys were going to visit me today, I would’ve had some cold beer waiting on you. As it is, I’m all out of anything stronger than horse pee and I’m about to run out of patience also. Why don’t you get on your horse and ride away because I don’t think that you can talk me into giving up, Pat. If you continue on riding with those guys and acting like a damn fool, I’ll have to shoot you sooner or later.”

“Billy, I’m coming in. I want to talk to you. Just you and me, one last time.”

There was absolute silence from within the cabin. From behind the nearby boulder, Storm whispered just loud enough so that Garrett could barely hear the man’s whiny voice.

“Why don’t we just rush the cabin? There’s too many of us for him to get us all.”

Garrett stared at the man with a steely glint in his eyes. His hand moved down slowly toward his pistol as he backed up his hard-as-nails answer to the hired killer’s bossman knowing that sooner or later, he was going to have to show the asshole exactly who was in charge of the posse.

“Because I don’t intend to allow this poor excuse of a lynch mob that’s supposed to be my posse to turn this fucking mess into a slaughter……inside or outside the cabin.”

Billy’s voice sounded cheerful from within the cabin as he laughed at Pat’s words.

“Well, kiss my britches. That’s the Pat Garrett that I remember. A bold man who is willing to take chances and to do the right thing. I had begun to worry that kissing all those babies as you ran for Sheriff during that last election had permanently turned you into a sissy. Come on down to the cabin and we’ll talk for a couple of minutes. I promise you that I won’t draw against you first, Pat.”

The Sheriff walked slowly toward the cabin, making sure that he didn’t make any unexpected moves and that he kept his hand away from his holstered pistol. He paused for a second when he stepped through the partially opened door, giving himself a chance to let his eyes slightly adjust to the relative darkness of the cabin. William Boney, the young man better known throughout the entire Southwest territory as Billy the Kid, was calmly sitting on a chair that he was leaning against the cabin’s back wall. The chair was tilted back and leaning on the two back legs.

There was a warm smile on the Kid’s lips and a happy bright gleam in his wide-open eyes. That semi-happy silent greeting eased most of the nervous feeling tickling down the Sheriff’s sweaty backbone. Seeing that the Kid’s pistols were holstered only meant that the Kid thought that he was fast enough so that even in that awkward sitting position, he could outdraw the Sheriff if necessary.

Billy the Kid was the roguish youthful outlaw who had gunned down twenty-one people in fair gunfights by the time that he turned a mere twenty-one years old. Billy was a ‘good old boy’ who just happened to frequently be on the wrong side of some rancher disputes over land, cattle and power. As a young man with a quick temper and even quicker pistol draw, he quickly proved that no one could beat him in a fair gun battle and in a couple of cases, even in an unfair gun battle. And every time that he outdrew some would-be bad guy seeking a reputation, another challenger would step out in the street to try to become the guy who finally beat ‘The Kid’.

Pat observed an empty chair by the table and he spun it around, and then sat down on it backwards so that he was resting his elbows on the chair’s back as he faced his former friend. Pat wanted to keep his hands as far away from his pistol as possible to make sure that he didn’t push his former friend too far.

Keeping a big smile on his face, the Sheriff wasn’t sure what he was going to say but knew that he had do something to defuse the situation. He knew that his best bet was to try to pick up the devil-may-care joking friendship that the two used to share when they rode the range together.

“Well Billy, I haven’t seen you in town much lately. Looks like the Barber hasn’t seen you either. How long has it been since you’ve had a haircut?”

“Been awhile, Pat. I normally get a haircut every spring and fall then trim it once or twice myself between haircuts but I’ve been mighty busy this spring. As you know, Storm and his bunch of would-be gunmen have been keeping me busy. I didn’t want to come into town to get myself all spruced up and maybe have to shoot two or three of them while I was getting a simple haircut. After all, it is your town and me shooting a couple of assholes right on your main street might damage our friendship. But you’re right. I do need a haircut. Or else, I’ve got to get a bigger hat to stuff it into.”

Tilting his own cowboy hat back on his head, Pat began talking to his former friend in a friendly, sort of fatherly tone.

“Well Billy, it looks mighty bad for you today and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be in your boots. Those guys out there aren’t your typical farmers with a borrowed pistol who can’t hit the side of a barn at twenty paces. Most of them can give you a good challenge in a gun battle by themselves. Put them all together with Storm goading them after you, throw in the bounty on your head and it looks like you’re going to visit Boot Hill as soon as they get you out in the open. I know that you would rather go out in a blaze of gunfire, but I sure wish that I could convince you to turn your guns over to me. I promise you that I’ll do my best to make sure that you get back to town and get a fair tri…….SHIT! I can’t promise you a fair trial because you and I both know that the same men outside this cabin will also be on your jury. Oh, they’ll throw in some farmers and merchants to make your trial look more legit but they’ll all be on the payroll of Storm. What are we going to do, Billy? I hate to be the one that’s got to end your career but if I don’t do it, someone else will be coming right behind me. Sooner or later, you’re going to die.”

Garrett stared at the young man’s hairless face. The outlaw was twenty-one but looked like he was only fourteen with his small slender body, beardless face that had never seen a reason to come near a razor, large soft eyes, thick head of long hair and boyish good looks. He looked just as innocent and virginal as he did when he was twelve years old. Because of his delicate childlike appearance, most men underestimated him and a few made the deadly mistake of making fun of his too-soft looks. But those same fools only made fun of him once in their usually cut-short lifetime.

“I hear you Pat and know what you mean. They come after me all the time. Look what I had do just before you got here. I ain’t even had time to get rid of his body yet.”

The Kid pointed to a dark corner of the cabin without taking his eyes off his former friend. Pat stared at what he quickly recognized as a dead body laying on the floor. Showing his curiosity by arching his eyebrows, the Sheriff calmly asks “Friend of yours?”

Billy’s blue eyes twinkled as he answered in his soft normal voice. When he was around most people, he spoke in a gruff, deep voice to sound tougher but when he was relaxed and around friends, he switched back to his normal voice which was high pitched enough to sometimes be mistaken for a woman’s voice.

“Nah. Some young sidewinder that hitched his horse in a canyon about a mile from here and tried to sneak up on me while I was asleep. Sure hated shooting him, because I thought for a second it was my twin brother when he came bursting in here with his father’s stolen rifle about an hour ago. Never did see anyone that looked so much like me and would’ve liked to talk to him under other circumstances. But he was just a sixteen year old kid with a wild hair up his ass who got his fool head blown off when he tried to act like a man.”

Pat arched his eyebrows and lowered his voice as he continued trying to reason with his friend.

“Billy, I thought the last time that we talked, that you were going to finally hang up your guns and give up your outlaw life. That you were going to go somewhere they didn’t know you and where you could start over anew with a clean slate. Why did you stay here?”

The young man threw his head back and let a small snort escape his lips. For just a second, the wild bravado disappeared from his youthful looking face and he looked like a young man desperately trying to do nothing more dangerous than to convince his father to let him borrow the buckboard for a Sunday Church social. Clasping his hands, he whispered as he told the truth to the painful question.

“I tried. I honestly tried but they wouldn’t let me quit or give me the opportunity to leave peacefully. They keep coming at me, goading me, pushing me to draw, forcing me into one gunfight after another. They called me names……names such as ‘sissy’ or something just as dirty. One man promised me that before he killed me, he was going to fuck me…..that he was going to make me into his little girl-boy and put braids in my hair. My first shot blew his balls off then I killed the son-of-a-bitch. Pat, they came after me at first because of the way that I look so innocent and now they come after me mainly because of my reputation for being a quick draw. They think that just because I look young, soft and innocent that I’m an easy target. I wish that I was big…..strong, husky, and meaner looking then they would leave me alone. I can’t even grow a mustache with these two single hairs on my upper lip. I would love to hang up my guns and get away from here…..maybe get to go to Colorado and get out of this heat and dust. Maybe even get me a job up there as a lawman and start over like you started over. But those guys outside won’t leave me alone and they keep coming after me, pushing me. So I keep shooting them. After all, they also want to kill me.”

Pat slowly rose to his feet, resulting in Billy’s hand easing down toward his holstered pistol. Keeping his hands high and away from his holstered pistol, Pat stepped away from his chair and headed toward the dead body sprawled in the corner of the cabin. Nudging the body with his boot, he turned it over and stared at the dead boy’s partially blown away face. Staring at the dead body lying on the floor, he asked the question that he had to have truthfully answered.

“Billy, how serious are you about hanging up your guns?”

“I wouldn’t mind dying peacefully someday on a farm far away from here. But I sure as hell ain’t going to let those guys shoot me, so I’ll never make it to someplace where I can hang them up forever.”

Pat walked back to his chair and slowly reached inside his pocket, removing a pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers. For several seconds, he concentrated on rolling himself a cigarette and didn’t say anything as he focused upon making himself a smoke. Once the hand-rolled cigarette was lit and dangling from his mouth, he whispered conspiratorially as a plan began forming in his mind.

“I think I know how you can go to Colorado, but it’ll require some serious long-term play-acting on your part. You’ll have to pretend to die and then will have to permanently stay dead. Otherwise they’ll come gunning for me also. I’ll be putting my reputation on the line to do this and I’ll expect you to honor your word to me. If I can come up with a plan so that you can walk far away from here forever, you’ve got to promise me that no one will ever hear of Billy the Kid again. I promise you that I won’t screw you.”

A confused look appeared on the Kid’s youthful face. He ran a hand through his thick hair, thinking about the opportunity being offered him. After ten seconds of silence, a shy smile appeared on his face as he decided that maybe there was a way out of his current mess.

“Sounds like you’ve got a plan. Well, I’ve always trusted you and know that you’re a pard that I can rely upon when you give your word. You’ve got my word…..my personal word to you… that if you get me away from here, that I’ll hang up my guns and will let my gunslinger identity die. I’ll also leave the state and will never come back. Now how are you going to pull this off?”

Blowing a big cloud of cigarette smoke from the side of his mouth, the Sheriff’s answer was spoken very low so that no one outside the cabin could hear him.

“People come looking for you because they want to have the reputation of killing ‘the Kid’. What if I steal that reputation? What if something happens so that I’m known as the man who killed ‘Billy the Kid’? Then they will stop looking for you. I propose that we use that dead boy’s body to convince that posse that I shot you. We’ll dress him in your clothes and put your guns in his hands. We’ll rip up a couple of these floorboards and create an opening where you can crawl under the floor and hide. Then I’ll fire a couple of shots from my pistol and one of your pistols. I’ll put your smoking pistol in the dead boy’s hand. I’ll call the posse in, show them the dead body, claim that I shot you when you wouldn’t surrender, and collect the reward for your death. You stay here hiding in this cabin for the rest of the day and I’ll come back up to get you tomorrow. I have some friends that are passing through on a small wagon, going to Colorado and I’ll get you passage with them. You’ll have to wear a disguise for a while and do some serious role-playing until you get up there because too many people know what you look like, thanks to that fool reporter that plastered your picture all over the front of his dime novels last year. Yep, we’ll have to drastically change the way that you look so that no one recognizes you until you get far, far away. What do you say?”

The cabin was silent except for the buzzing of a large fly near the dead body. Billy was staring hard at Pat as if he could see if his former friend was lying about what he was promising to do for him. Twenty seconds later, Billy’s answer showed that he was thinking about the proposition.

“People will call you a dirty fink for shooting a friend, Pat. You can do that and let me escape too?”

“Hell yes. It will ensure that I can get a sheriff’s job wherever I want to go later. Might even help me get one of those cushy Marshall’s jobs someday. I’ll also claim the reward for your death and split it with you as you get out of here. That will give you a grubstake to get you started somewhere else. Can’t give it all to you because people will expect me to quickly spend the money but I think that each of us getting half will be mighty fair for both of us. Also can’t give you back your guns because it would probably be expected for me to hang them up in my office and use them to show off the power of my office.”

Billy tilted his head and looked at the ceiling, letting his eyes drift from Pat for the first time since he entered the cabin. After staring up at the ceiling for several long seconds, the young man slowly stood up and unbuckled his gun belt, laying it on the table in front of Pat as he answered the original question. When he was unarmed for the first time many years, he gave his word as he stood in front of the Sheriff.

“You’ve got a deal, Pat.”

Chapter 2 - He’s dead

“Storm, come on down. He’s dead.”

Six men rushed carefully toward the cabin, lining up along the wall, using the cabin’s wall as protection. Storm pointed at a man with a double-barrel shotgun and yelled as he signaled the man to go in front of him.

“Pat, we’re coming in. Don’t fire.”

The man with the shotgun kicked the half-open door all the way open and rushed into the dark cabin, immediately followed by two other men with drawn pistols, then Storm. Sheriff Pat Garrett was standing over a dead body as he held his pistol in his hand. There was a thin trail of smoke coming from the gun barrel that he was holding. Glancing down at the dead man’s partially blown-away face as he pointed his rifle at the dead man's chest, Storm impatiently began asking questions.

“We heard the shooting and came dab near close to barging in on you. What happened?”

Using the toe of his boot to nudge the still smoking pistol in the dead body’s right hand, Pat answered the man’s question as he kept a stern grimace on his face.

“I tried to get him to surrender but he wouldn’t do it. So then I challenged him to a gunfight to see which of us was really the fastest. He let me draw first which was his mistake; otherwise it would’ve been me lying there. Even though I hit him in the face with my first shot, he was able to wildly fire a couple of bullets before he went down. Billy the Kid died like he lived…..fast and deadly.”

Storm slapped the lawman on the back and exuberantly yelled through the open doorway to the armed men still outside the cabin.

“We’re going to have us a party tonight to celebrate the death of the world’s deadliest outlaw. Sheriff Pat Garrett has done killed Billy the Kid.”

Pat unbuckled the fancy gunbelt from around the waist of the dead boy as he started putting the posse to work.

“Why don’t you have some of your men dig a hole while I wrap him up in a blanket? Then we’ll get out of here after we have us a quick burial.”

******

The next day, the sound of the horse’s hoofs on the rock echoed through the canyon and could be clearly heard within the small clearing. Pat trotted his horse into the clearing and stepped down from the saddle. A cautious William Boney stepped out from behind a nearby tree, holding a rifle and smiling as he joked with his friend.

“I thought it was a great funeral, but I sure wished that you had been a little more witty in coming up with a last prayer for me, then simply saying ‘Take care of this poor soul Lord’. Don’t ever ask me to say a eulogy for you, Pat.”

“Why aren’t you back at the cabin?”

“Bout an hour after you and those gunslingers left, people started coming up to look at the cabin. I narrowly got away as they started tearing up the cabin looking for money that they thought I might have hidden.”

Pat reached into an inner pocket of his vest and pulled out a big wad of money, which he handed to Billy.

“There’s two thousand in there, half of the reward that I claimed for shooting you. I threw in another hundred from my share of the reward because I also claimed your horse, saddle and guns. Before I got the posse back to town, it was already being broadcast on the telegraph that you were dead, so the whole state knows about your death now. We’ve already got a reporter here from the county paper and he’s expecting some big-name reporters to come in on the stage from the state capitol to interview me in the next couple of days. So the word’s out that you’re dead. You just have to live up to your word to disguise yourself until you get so far out of the territory that no one has heard of you”

Billy sat down beside the small campfire and poured them both a cup of coffee.

“I’ll be glad to get out of here. I sure as hell was surprised that they fell for your little bit of playacting but you’re right. If anyone sees me leaving town or ever recognizes me where ever I go, then the manhunt and killing start again. I’m going to live up to my word to disappear forever. Now what did you work out to get me out of here?”

As the answer, Pat removed an old traveling bag from his horse’s saddle horn and dropped it on the ground beside the young man. Pointing at it, he sipped his coffee as he explained the details of his plan.

“Transportation with my friends is worked out. You’ll have to pay the two hundred dollars that they request out of your money but they’re willing to let you travel with them as they slowly head toward Colorado. You may not be happy with your disguise but it’s the best that I can do under the circumstances. Just keep telling yourself that it’s only temporary and necessary for your safety.”

Billy picked up the bag as he gleefully answered.

“I don’t care if I have to pretend that I’m the scum of the earth as long as it’ll help me get away far from here. I’m really grateful for you helping me with this, Pat.”

As Billy opened the bag, Pat softly continued describing his plan.

“I’m just glad that you aren’t wearing your pistols at this minute and hope that you feel just as grateful two minutes from now. I did the best that I could do under the circumstances, Billy.”

Billy’s hands were exploring the few items inside the bag but he had a funny look on his face. He pulled a long black robe out of the bag, holding up the robe as he cautiously asked.

“What the fuck is this shit? Am I going to pretend to be some Jesuit Priest?”

Clinching his coffee cup tightly, Pat answered in a gruff voice as he stared straight into Billy’s eyes.

“No, it’s a similar disguise, but you’re not going to be a priest because that wouldn’t disguise your recognizable face enough. Too many people know your well-known face, so it has to be a disguise where there’s no way that they can see anything that even looks like your old dead outlaw male self. That disguise and the acceptance of your fellow travelers as being one of them will prevent any suspicions that anyone else might have as to your real identity. My friends, the group that’s traveling to Colorado is a wagonload of four Nuns who have agreed to temporary take you in as one of them in return to your adherence to their rules and payment of two hundred dollars for your transportation. They know your secret but because it’s a religious order, they’ve forgiven you for your past sins and are prepared to accept you as a working member of their small group as long as you behave yourself. For the next three to four months until you get so far away from New Mexico that no one doesn’t know you, you’re going to pretend to be one of them. You’re going to have to wear that woman’s habit and pretend to be a Nun. You’re going to have to pretend that you’re a woman for a while, Billy. From this moment on until you’re a thousand miles from here, you’re going to have to pretend that you’re Sister Mary Jane O’Hara on a pilgrimage to save souls in Colorado.”

******

Billy’s hand suddenly moved toward where his pistol used to ride on his waist. His fingers tightened and clinched as his hand touched nothing but the side of his dirty jeans. His face reddened and his eyes wildly glared as he stared a deadly look at the Sheriff. Throwing the clothes bag at Garrett, he screamed at the man who he thought was his friend.

“FUCK YOU. I’ve been called a sissy almost all my life and now you want me to dress like one. NO FUCKING WAY WILL I EVER PRETEND TO BE A WOMAN. Come up with something better. Maybe they need a cattle drover.”

Taking a quick sip of his coffee, Pat started voicing the explanations that he developed while on his ride back to the cabin. Explanations that sounded good in his head earlier now sounded lousy when faced with the angry young man that was looking for a pistol.

“Billy. There are several thousand people between here and Colorado. Your pictures are plastered over a bunch of those dime store novels in every store and now your picture will also be on the front page of every newspaper in the territory. Sooner or later, you’re going to run into someone that recognizes you. You can’t grow a beard to hide your face so we have to do something else to change the way that you look. Just calm down and think about it for a moment. If you dress in that woman’s outfit and pretend for a few months that you’re only a Nun, you can hide out in the open because no one would think that a Nun could really be the dangerous Billy the Kid. Otherwise, you’re going to have to ride at night and hide during the daytime. You would have to avoid towns for most of your life until your face aged and people forgot about you. Dressed this way as a Nun, you can walk around in the open, enjoy fresh air, and smile at the same people who would definitely shoot you if they recognized you.”

“I can’t do it. I’m not a woman. I don’t want to be a woman. I don’t want to pretend to be a woman.”

“Nuns aren’t women. Well, they are, but they aren’t. We don’t look at them as being women because normally we don’t look at them in a sexual content sort of way. They don’t flirt with men, don’t dress in all them frilly clothes that normal women wear, and certainly don’t behave like a woman. They are more salesmen than women with their uniforms, their belief in their product and their general demeanor. So you won’t be a woman. You’ll just be a man pretending to be a Nun. Now that’s settled because that’s the only way that you’re going to get out of New Mexico without being recognized and you’re going to do it, because you gave me your word.”

“I didn’t know what you had in mind at the time or I would’ve selected the shootout, Pat. You’re lucky that I don’t have a pistol or I’d……pistol whip you for coming up with such a stupid scheme.”

******

“It’ll never work. There ain’t no fucking way that it’ll work.”

“It will work if you give it a chance. You were always called ‘The Kid’ because of your youthful looking face and your gun speed. If you hadn’t been a quick draw with the pistol, you might have been know as …….Well, just trust me when I say that you probably would’ve have had another nickname if you didn’t have such a temper and deadly aim.”

The person standing across from Sheriff Garrett, didn’t even remotely resemble the reported dead outlaw. The long, almost ground-dragging coarse dark Nun’s habit disguised the slender body’s sex and made it appear that the wearer was a flat- chested woman. The heavily starched dark hood rimmed with the white trimming that flowed down into a small white rounded tablecloth looking scarf across the chest of the habit explicitly defined the outfit as a Nun’s outfit. A small metal cross suspended around the neck by a plain necklace added to the illusion that the person was a member of a dedicated religious order. The almost all-covering hood hid the long stringy dark hair that was one of the Kid’s trademarks as well as kept his face in the shade of the hood so his recognizable face couldn’t easily be seen. His face was further disguised with an old pair of glasses that Sister Mary Jane O’Hara was supposed to wear whenever she was around other people.

Garrett picked up the trousers that the Kid had been wearing and started to throw them into the fire when Billy grabbed them from his hand.

“Wait. I ain’t wearing this fucking robe forever so you ain’t getting rid of my clothes.”

Garrett let Billy pack his old male clothes in the old traveling bag while he put out the campfire. After the camp was cleaned, the two men climbed on their horses and rode a couple of miles to where Garrett had left a hitched buckboard. Pointing at the buckboard, he instructed the kid to climb aboard it.

“You need to tie that farm boy’s old nag to the back of the buckboard and drive it to the outskirts of town. You’ll find a covered wagon down by the crick. Sister Bernadette is the Abbess and she’s expecting you. I’ll see you again before they pack up the wagon and head north. Good luck Billy.”

“Pat, I’m finding it very difficult to get off this horse. I’ve never run from a fight before and sitting here, wearing this woman’s costume, makes me feel like a coward. I’m only a inch away from ripping these damn women’s clothes off and trying to slip out of here at night.”

“Well Billy, you know that I put my professional reputation on the line when I claimed that I shot you and collected the reward for your death. So if the truth is ever found out, then those same damn bounty hunters will come looking for me to collect the reward on my scalp. If you break your word to me, then we’re both only an inch from death. My life and career are very dependent upon how good you can keep your word. I did what I was supposed to do and now it’s your turn to keep your word. Are you going to double-cross me?”

The Kid threw a leg over his horse’s neck and dropped lightly to the ground. He tied the old horse to the end of the buckboard as he declared in an unusually gruff voice.

“First man that touches me on the ass or asks for a kiss gets his head shot off.”

“You ought to kiss that man instead of hurting him because his patting you on the butt would be good proof that your disguise was working. Bye Billy, I’ll see you again before the Nun’s wagon heads north.”

Pat laughed as he eased his horse into a gallop away from the wagon.

Pulling the rifle from the sheath on the old farm horse, Billy hid the rifle under the buckboard’s seat so that he could get to it fast if he needed it. Climbing up into the buckboard’s hard wooden seat, he picked up the reins and declared out loud to the team of mares.

“Well girls, it looks like I’ve reached rock bottom. I’ve gone from being the baddiest motherfucker in the New Mexico territory to being a stupid looking bitch in a hot black gown. Why did I give my fucking word to Pat? I should’ve gone out with both pistols blazing away back at the cabin, damn it.”

*******

The old horses pulling the buckboard were slow so Billy had a lot of opportunity to think about what he was getting ready to do as he drove slowly toward town. Sitting out in the hot overhead sun wearing a solid black habit, Billy began to sweat as he came closer to town. Whether the sweat was from the heat or from his fear of being recognized in his hated disguise was difficult for him to determine.

Just as he topped the last ridge before town, he observed another family buckboard coming on the road toward him. It was too late to change course to miss them so he decided to try to bluff his way by the oncoming family. He easily recognized the driver as being Olaf Johnson who he had worked beside about two months earlier at a community barn raising. And the scrawny woman wearing the bonnet sitting beside him was Mrs. Johnson who had shared their chicken dinner with Billy that day as they all pitched in to help a neighbor build a new barn. Slipping the glasses back onto his face to disguise his appearance, he wiped one big drop of nervous sweat from the tip of his nose as he prepared himself mentally to face some people that knew his real persona.

The husband stopped his wagon in a wide spot in the road and signaled for ‘the Nun’ to bring her buckboard on through the narrow gap while he waited for her to pass. Keeping his hood pulled to throw shadows upon his face, Billy stared straight ahead as he guided his slow horses down the road. As Billy’s old horses plodded slowly by the Johnson’s stopped wagon, the woman greeted the disguised outlaw with a cheery greeting.

“Good day Sister. It’s a pleasure to see people doing the Lord’s work in this harsh land.”

“Thank…..”, replied Billy but as he said it, he recognized that he was using his too-masculine deep voice. Raising his voice timbre to a more feminine sound, he continued his response to her greeting. “….you. May the Lord watch over you and your family today.”

The slow team of old horses couldn’t pull the rickety dilapidated buckboard by the smiling couple fast enough for the sweating former outlaw. He stared straight ahead and mumbled under his breath to himself as he waited for some sign that they had seen through his disguise.

“Keep going Olaf. Don’t force me to shoot you for recognizing me.”

Behind him, he heard the slap of leather and the jangle of the harness as the farmer started his team moving back up the hill. Glancing back, he saw the farmer’s ramrod straight back looking straight ahead as the farmer’s buckboard headed away from him. Two people who knew him quite well hadn’t recognized him and had thought that he was a Nun so the disguise must be working.

Glancing down at the rifle laying at his feet, he felt good that he hadn’t had to use it on his friends. Maybe Pat was right about this disguise being the perfect way for him to get away.

Chapter 3 - Saint Francis

The covered wagon was parked under some large old cottonwood trees by the edge of the small steam that passed next to the small town. Two Nuns were cooking at the campfire while another Nun was grooming the horses and a fourth Nun was carrying water from the stream in a wooden bucket. Stopping his team of horses at the edge of the clearing, Billy dropped down from the buckboard as the older Nun that was grooming the other horses approached his wagon.

“Hello. I’m Sister Bernadette, and I’m the Abbess of the future Monastery of Saint Francis which we will eventually establish somewhere in the mountains of Colorado. The high altitude of the mountains will make us feel near our Savior. You must be the person that we will address only as Sister Mary and will consider you to be one of us. We’ve been expecting you since the Sheriff stopped by yesterday and explained to me that you are a lost soul who wants to travel north with us. When he explained the reason for your journey with us, I was a little worried about ………your expected overall appearance. But now that I see you in person, I’m very pleased with the way that your very natural diminutive beautiful appearance looks very real. I truly know now that your physical impersonation of a Lord’s female servant will work. You look more like a woman than I do. Come meet your fellow sisters.”

Standing on the ground, Billy had to silently admit to himself that she was correct about their comparison. Sister Bernadette was a tall, broad-shouldered woman in her middle fifties with a round ruddy face. Her Roman nose had obviously been broken sometime in her youth, giving her face a craggy, harsh look. She had the sort of overall appearance that was instantly associated with firmness, discipline, and servitude toward God.

Striding toward the campfire, the Sister clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention as she loudly proclaimed a greeting to the small group.

“Sisters, I want you to meet our newest traveler…whom we shall address only as Sister Mary Jane O’Hara. Our new Sister has some very unusual personal problems that she is trying to put behind her as she embarks on a new life, leaving her old life behind her. Before we told the Sheriff ‘yes’ when he approached us with this major decision about her traveling with us, we all discussed the reason for her joining our small community. We all made the decision that we will help Sister Mary with her journey. We will give her the chance to find herself, just as we give all of the Lord’s children a chance to correct the errors of their life. I’m pleased that she has decided to give the Lord’s way the opportunity to help her with her personal problems and know that her time with us is going to be beneficial to our flock. Sister Mary, the woman with the strong arms carrying the water is Sister Angela who has been with us for eight years. The cook stirring the broth is Sister Elizabeth who has been with us for two years. And Sister Melissa is our bread baker today. She’s been with us only a month but in that short time, we’ve all come to love her, just as we will also learn to love you. Sisters, come greet your new fellow disciple.”

Sister Angela was a short but stout-looking, heavy-set, middle thirties, black woman whose bright friendly smile was almost as broad as her wide hips. Her heavy weight made her naturally large chest look even larger so that she looked quite ‘motherly’.

Although Sister Elizabeth was smiling and trying to look friendly as she was introduced, she looked like a very sour looking woman with heavy thick eyebrows and a noticeable heavy facial growth of hair almost thick enough to be called a mustache. She had a youthful looking face but the small tuff of pure gray hair sticking out through the hood, made it difficult to tell if she was in her early thirties or late forties.

Sister Melissa stood out from the other women because of her pretty face and youthful looking body. A Nun’s habit was designed to minimize the prominent physical aspects of a woman’s body, but it was quite obvious from looking at her, that she had a healthy, lithe woman’s body that she could be very proud of having. Where the other women had thick eyebrows and their faces looked as if nothing more than soap had ever touched their faces, Sister Melissa’s thin eyebrows looked out of place with the Nun’s hood. The trimmed eyebrows made her look like one of those dance-hall girls.

All of the women rushed forward and gushed a personal greeting as they welcomed their new Sister to the flock. Sister Angela grabbed Billy’s hands and pumped vigorously as she repeatedly declared, “Praise the Lord” mixed in with other warm greetings. The friendly black woman continued to hold onto one of his hands while the other Sisters come forth and delivered their individual welcome to their new “Sister”.

Sister Elizabeth’s lips smiled at the new Sister but her eyes were cold and her words of greeting seemed forced. As soon as Sister Elizabeth delivered her quick perfunctory greeting, she returned to the stew that she was preparing for their dinner.

The most surprising greeting was when Sister Melissa hugged the new member of the religious group and gave the new Nun an unexpected quick kiss on the cheek. Staring into each other eyes, Billy saw a glimmer of friendly mischievousness in her dark eyes that he didn’t expect from anyone wearing the somberly looking Nun’s habits. Sister Angela was still pumping his hand vigorously and continuing her “Praise the Lord” chant, but it was Sister Melissa’s soft words that he heard repeating in his mind over and over “I know that we’re going to become the best of friends.”

“Girls, back to your chores, while I explain our lifestyle to our new member.” clapped Sister Bernadette. Apparently whenever she clapped her hands, it was a command that everyone must obey.

Sister Angela let go of his hand, and mashed him tightly against her soft chest in a big, warm, almost slobbery hug. With the introductions over, Sister Bernadette guided the slightly dazed new member over to a downed tree close to the small stream as everyone else went back to work. Glancing back at the nearby campsite to ensure that everyone was busily working and not paying attention to them, she got straight to the point as to why they were accepting him into their midst.

“I think the Sheriff said that you wished to make a sizeable donation to our cause. Two hundred dollars was the agreed amount but if you wish to donate more to us, it will all be accepted. We are a poor order and all money is put to work for the Lord’s purpose.”

“Uh, yeah. When are we getting out of here?”

“We’ll be breaking camp on Monday.”

“MONDAY! Shiiiittt……I mean, holy cow. That’s five days away. I can’t hang around here that long. Someone is bound to recognize me and then I’ll have to shoot my way out.”

“We have a commitment to the local church to support the service on Sunday. Leaving prior to then wouldn’t fulfill our mission here. As for recognizing you, I don’t think that you have anything to worry about. We are left alone by most of the townspeople and your physical disguise is good enough to fool even your real mother. No one is looking for you because everyone thinks that you’re dead and anyone that does see any resemblance won’t believe their eyes because of your disguise. Why would the famous outlaw dress as a Nun? Believe me, hiding out in the open as one of our order is the best way for you to escape.”

He fumbled in the pocket and pulled out the small wad of money that he had prepared for this moment. She hid the money in her pocket and waved a hand at the steam as she begins explaining her philosophy.

“I like sitting here and thinking that only the rejoicing birds are disturbing the silence and tranquility of the flowing water. Just like you, the rest of us also have a past that we are trying to forget. They know your story so it’s only fitting that you know their stories. Several drunken men raped Sister Elizabeth when she was just a young beautiful girl. She’s never been able to trust a man since, nor to really forget her hatred for men. Even though she’s going to treat you as her sister, she can’t forget that you’re really a man. After she gets to know you a little better, she’ll loosen up and will a little more friendly toward you. Sister Angela joined the church after she decided that her white lover wasn’t going to really leave his rich white wife for her. She becomes almost fanatical at times in her praying but aside from that, she’s got a heart of gold. Sister Melissa, like you, joined us purely because we offered a convenient quick way out of a small town that we were in a month ago about two hundred miles south of here. She was a saloon girl……for lack of better words to describe her profession at that time, who shot her lover….who just happened to be the son of the town’s mayor. I’m not sure how much longer she’ll stay with us although I’m pleased with the way that she’s adapted to our sparse lifestyle so far. As for myself, after my husband left me for another woman, I sought refuge in the church. I tell people that I was called by God to help my Sisters in Mexico. After I created a new life for myself in Austin, Texas where I was able to forget my past and to become very satisfied with my new life, I was given the ultimate goal of establishing my own sanctuary in Colorado. So you see, each of us has a past that we’re running from just as you are running from your past life.”

******

Each of the Sisters had chores to do around the camp and they rotated those chores on a monthly basis. Until the next rotation period, Sister Mary was given the chore of taking care of the horses, gathering firewood, and helping Sister Angela with the water. The majority of the rest of the day was spent with Sister Bernadette learning the basics of the order. The objective wasn’t to prepare the new Sister for a lifetime of serving God but rather to impart some of the day-to-day knowledge of the order that the new Sister would have to know in order to impersonate a female member of the order. Billy remembered a lot of the stuff that he had previously learned when he was a small child that was trained to be an acolyte in the small church. Carrying a cross as a young boy had instilled in him a respect for the wrath of God that hadn’t dissipated much with age, so he quickly picked up on the basics of being a member of the order. By the time sunset arrived, he knew enough about the Order so that even he felt confident about his ability to impersonate a Nun doing her religious duties. He also knew each of the Sisters quite well after having worked with each of them most of the day.

Sister Angela was the easiest one to become a friend with first, because of her enthusiastic jovial nature. She laughed at everything with an infectious laughter that made working easy. But she was also the most fervent spouter of bible verses. She had a verse memorized for every situation and bombarded the new Sister with almost constant religious training and appropriate verses.

Sister Elizabeth was the hardiest one to become a friend with, because of her strong hatred for men. Although she tried to be somewhat friendly with the new Sister during their few minutes of working together, it was obviously a forced friendliness.

Sister Bernadette also tried to be friendly but her strong leadership style established a quick wall between them. She was friendly but expected instant obedience and adherence to her commands. Billy thought once that she was going to grab him by the ear and forcibly guide him when he was a little slow in following her explicit instruction in how to knell and pray.

Sister Melissa was a paradox that he wanted to learn more about. The beautiful young Nun was friendly but quickly found something else to do every time that he came near her. And she kept a funny smile on her face, as if she was laughing at some joke.

By the time the sun dropped below the horizon, Billy felt slightly more comfortable that his disguise might be effective and felt pleased with his initial acceptance by the Sisters.

******

“Damn you horse! Come back here!”

The newest member of the future Monastery of Saint Francis, glared at the reluctant old horse that slipped away from the campsite. Beside him, Sister Angela chuckled as she gently chastised her new sister’s anger.

“Sister Mary Jane, don’t raise your voice in anger against one of god’s creatures. I thought that Sister Bernadette told you about our basic tenets earlier today. Let me tell you something about the history of your new order. Our order is very old. Clare of Assisi founded the Poor Clares of St. Francis back in the early 1200's. The man who later became known as St. Francis was so wrapped up in God, that he saw all creation as being something that God had given to us, and these animals are our brothers, and sisters on this earth. He wrote this gorgeous canticle of the creatures in which he praises God for brother sun and sister moon, and brother fire, and mother earth, and the water, and just all the living creatures, because he saw them all from the hand of God. And so, our spirituality is very much wrapped up in this type of feeling. So don’t curse at the horse because he’s only doing what his basic instinct is telling him to do.”

“Yeah, well I’ve some instinct myself and I’m feeling it in my foot right now. Once I catch up to that old nag, my foot kicking his ass is going to provide some guidance that he’s going to find difficult to ignore.”

“That’s because you’re trying to catch him the way that a dumb man would try to catch him. You’re trying to catch him with brute strength. Remember, you’re supposed to be a Sister instead of a dumb man. Why don’t you try to catch him by using your brains?”

Billy spun and stared at the woman whose face had a big grin that made her white teeth almost sparkle in the dim sunset gray darkness. Staring at her, he held back his anger as he tossed her a challenge.

“Oh yeah. Well, I’ve tried everything for the last twenty minutes except to shoot the damn thing. Suppose you show me how you would do it.”

Accepting his challenge, she made a movement as if she was pulling something out of a pocket within her robe. Holding her hand out toward the watching horse, she cheerfully asked the horse as if the animal could understand her.

“Want a carrot?”

The old horse snorted, pawed at the ground with one foot as if he clearly understood her question and rapidly walked toward the woman. The horse stopped a few inches from the woman’s hand and smelt the carrot in her hand. She let him take the carrot from her hand as she moved slowly to stand beside the horse and to stroke his neck. Turning back to smile at the dumbfounded new member of their order, the woman quietly stated a principal that she felt the new sister needed to understand.

“Most of the time, you can do more with a simple bribe than with challenging one of your fellow creatures with angry words or your fists. Remember my words, Sister Mary Jane O’Hara.”

******

After dinner was completed and the evening chores completed, everyone sat around the campfire as Sister Bernadette taught the evening lesson. Sister Elizabeth read a few chapters from the bible and Sister Angela quoted some verses. Neither Sister Melissa nor the new Sister Mary Jane participated in the evening services much beyond just pretending to be interested.

In the privacy of the small campfire, the women began to prepare for bed. Sister Elizabeth removed her hood and began brushing her long mane of silvery-white hair, while Sister Bernadette walked off into the bushes to do her private business. Sister Melissa pointed at the large wagon as she announced the sleeping arrangements.

“Sisters Angela and Bernadette get the interior of the wagon unless it’s pouring down rain. In that case, we all crowd into it and sleep however we can. In good weather, Elizabeth likes to sleep under the front of the wagon and I’ve been taking the ground under the back of the wagon so that I can have some distance between her extremely loud snoring and me. However, I’ve learned that she snores so loudly that you have to sleep over a mile away before you’re safe from her noise so any place around here and you’re going to hear her. You can take either the spot under the middle of the wagon between us or take my spot.”

“Uh, I think that I’d better sleep under the old buckboard.”

“Are you really him?”

She didn’t have to say his name but he knew whom she meant.

“I used to be. I’m now just someone who is trying to go somewhere else to start a new life.”

“Aren’t we all? Well, your secret is safe with me. I had to escape a lynch mob myself and luckily ran into the Sisters. I’m not going to stay with them forever because I intent to resume my life as a saloon girl as soon as we get far enough away from here so that I know that I’m safe. Until then, I’m going to treat you as one of us girls.”

There was an unspoken sexual challenge within her words that he clearly understood.

“And after you’re far enough away to be safe, how will you treat me?”

She just smiled that mysterious smile that women have always known how to smile and walked away from him without answering his question. Going to the back of the wagon, she pulled a bedroll out of the wagon and spread it under the back of the wagon. Then she sat down on the bedroll, pulled her hood back and began brushing her long dark hair.

Sitting down on the ground next to the burning campfire, he threw another chunk of wood onto the fire. Sister Bernadette sat down beside him as she held out a small hairbrush.

“This is an extra one that you may have. I suggest that you begin nightly brushing your hair and then rebrush it in the morning as well as putting some hairbows into your hair to hold it in place. That way, if anyone gets too inquisitive and looks at your face too closely, the hairbows and brushed hair will add to your disguise. Also, I suggest that you get rid of those men’s boots tomorrow morning. Not only can I see them under your habit but I can also hear them when you walk. I’ll give you some sandals in the morning.”

Chapter 4 - A new look

The morning wakeup call by Sister Angela started him awake. For the first several seconds, he felt confused as to where he was at but as he saw the Nuns moving around, he quickly recalled his new identity.

Rising to his feet, he followed the stream for a few hundred feet as he got away from the camp so that he could do his business. That’s when he heard the splashing sound of something in the stream. Peeping cautiously around a cottonwood tree, he saw Sister Melissa standing neck deep in the water. Seeing him looking at her from the shore, she pointed at a nearby rock.

“That’s a good place to get in the water. Water here is deep enough for both of us to have a little room and I’m almost finished with my morning bath. I noticed that you strongly smelled like a man yesterday. You’re going to have start bathing daily and washing your hair everyday or someone’s sensitive nose is going to discover your secret. You can use my soap. Smells like Lilac but it’ll help your disguise a whole lot if you smell as pretty as you look.”

As he pulled off his robe and boots, she lifted her arms and began washing her hair. It was obvious from her bare arms and shoulders that she was probably naked beneath the camouflaging cover of the water. When he was stripped down to only having on his long johns that he always wore, she laughed at him.

“Those dirty things have to go also. Someone see those red flannels underneath your habit and they’re going to get very suspicious about your real gender. I’ve got a petticoat that you can have. It will add to your disguise as well as add a little soft femininity to your clothing.”

As he eased into the water still wearing his long johns, she threw him the bar of soap and disappeared under the water as she swam slowly toward shore. There was just a momentary flash of white as her china-white butt almost came out of the water before she swam slightly deeper under the water. A moment later, she rose out of the water and it was very obvious that she was totally naked as she proudly walked up onto the shore. With her back turned to him, all he could see was her smooth china-white skin and the swaying back of her womanly shaped body. Her long dark wet hair flowed about half way down her back but not far enough to hide her shapely white cheeks and long lush legs. Stepping up on the shore, she picked up her robe and pulled it over her body before turning to face him again.

“Take those long johns off and give yourself a good bath. I’m going to smell you when you come back to camp and if you still smell like a stinky man, then I’m going to personally give you a bath right after breakfast. You don’t want me to do that because I won’t be gentle if I have to bath you. When you get finished bathing, come to the wagon and I’ll give you the rest of the clothes that you’re going to need. I suggest that we pad your chest to give it a little shape so that you’re not so flat chested. After you’ve dressed a little more appropriately, I’ll also help you with your hair. A woman’s hair always looks like it’s brushed frequently. Your messy hair yesterday looked like you’ve never done nothing but stuff it up under a sweaty hat. There are some minor things that you’re going to have to do to make your impersonation more effective. Getting rid of those boots and walking in sandals will take a lot of the swagger out of your walk and I’ll help you practice some feminine movements so that you look more natural and relaxed. I’ve had a lot of practice in trying to look like a lady so I think that I can show you what you need to know.”

Then she was gone.

******

He held the bar of soap that she had left for him and it smelled strongly of lilac. The soap that he always bathed with usually smelled strongly of lye and wasn’t the most pleasant stuff to use. Hence his previous baths were typically just a “jump in the water and splash around then get out” type of bath every three or four weeks during the summer. He also usually bathed while still wearing his long johns. Taking them off and actually rubbing the soap against his body would be a new experience for him. But he knew that she was right about everything that she had said and that he needed to do everything that he could to help his temporary disguise.

Standing waist deep in the water, he pulled off the flannelled long johns and threw the well-patched undergarment up on the shore where he would collect it later and put them away until he was ready to wear them again.

Five minutes later, he came out of the water and shook himself as dry as he could before he put the habit back on. As soon as he was almost dressed, the sound of rustling garments startled him and he spun to look at the source of the sound. Sister Melissa was returning carrying a hairbrush, a petticoat and some sandals. Holding out the petticoat, she explained the reason for her return.

“Normally the rest of us don’t wear a petticoat under our habits but Sister Bernadette agrees with me that you should be wearing as much finery as permitted by our rules so she is permitting you to wear one petticoat. The pleasant soft sound of the rustling material underneath your skirt will help with your disguise by adding to your femininity. I also brought a hairbrush back with me. Sit down and I’ll help you with your hair.”

By the time that she had finished brushing his hair and he had slipped into the feminine undergarments, it was time for breakfast. As he walked into the campsite, he noticed that Sister Bernadette had a faint smile on her face when she heard the sound of the thin petticoat rubbing against his bare legs under the habit’s skirt.

******

Shortly after noon, Sister Bernadette announced that they were all going into town to do some of the “Lord’s business”. Thanks to Sister Melissa spending all morning with him practicing on how to walk and how to act, the new Sister Mary Jane felt more confident in his disguise as a Nun and woman. Sister Melissa had sewn some padding into an old petticoat so that the new Sister Mary Jane had in addition to the noticeable silky ruffle sound under his robe, also had some small breast-like soft protrusions in the front of his robe. With the hood pulled up around his face, his hair neatly brushed back with a couple of hairbows in his hair and wearing the glasses, he didn’t recognize himself as he looked in the mirror.

However Sister Melissa continued looking at his face as if something about the way that his face looked bothered her. Turning to Sister Bernadette, she asked the senior sister’s opinion about what she considered to be a flaw in his womanly disguise.

“Sister, I know that the Lord doesn’t like for us to be vain and that we should be as natural as possible. However, our new Sister’s life depends upon him doing a successful impersonation of a woman. I think that we need to trim the front of his hair a little to make bangs. That would change the shape of our new Sister’s face as well as help to define the Sister’s supposed gender as being more feminine. Would you object if I brushed and shaped our new Sister’s hair so that .........”

Shaking his head to show that he wasn’t going to let that happen to him, he gave his answer.

“You’re not touching my hair.”

Sister Bernadette spun to look at his face carefully. For several seconds she didn’t say anything then she gave her decision.

“Sister Mary Jane, I told you most of our rules when you joined us and you agreed to abide by them and one of the rules was that I make the decisions for our group. Therefore I have to agree with Sister Melissa that her suggestion would make a drastic change in your appearance that would make it more difficult for anyone to recognize you. Normally I wouldn’t allow any woman within our order to be that vain with her personal appearance but I think that it needs to be done to your face because of your specific problems. Everything that you can do to add to your female impersonation will make it easier for you to get away with your temporary impersonation. I strongly suggest that you let Sister Melissa shape your bangs as she suggests. I promise you that hair will grow back eventually and it can easily be combed differently when not needed for your disguise.”

Ten minutes later after Sister Melissa worked her magic on his face, he had to agree with both of them that it did drastically change the way that he looked. The neatly trimmed bangs combined with the glasses had changed the shape of his face. With his big round eyes and new girlish appearance, there was nothing about his face that anyone would recognize as being mannish.

To further help with the disguise, Sister Melissa handed Sister Mary Jane a bible to carry while giving some last minute advice.

“Don’t worry about anyone recognizing you because you now look so much like a real woman that no one will think that you’re not really a woman. With the additional disguise of the Nun’s clothing, you’ll quickly discover that people don’t really look at us because they are afraid that we’re going to ask them for money. So if anyone glances at you twice, be bold, walk up to them, blink your eyes at them, smile a lot and ask them for money for our mission. They’ll move on so quickly that you won’t believe it.”

Ten minutes later, the buckboard containing the five Nuns pulled onto the main street of the small town. As they entered the town, Billy saw Henry Storm standing on the sidewalk talking to someone who was writing furiously on a small pad of paper. It was obviously one of those out-of-town reporters here to investigate and report on the death of the deadly Outlaw. He felt his teeth grinding as he fought the strong desire to grab the nearest gun and start blasting at his hated foe.

“....so the Outlaw knew that he didn’t have any chance against my posse. He was afraid to come out of that cabin and to face me like a man because he knew that I was a better shot than he was. That’s why Billy the Kid was so damn scared of me and wanted to try to work out a deal with the Sheriff. I certainly was ready for him and had a bullet with his name on it loaded in my rifle. He didn’t scare me. I knew that his reputation was all bluff and a couple of lucky shots. I was going to...”

As Sister Bernadette stopped the buckboard, Sheriff Pat Garrett walked out of his office. Seeing the Nuns arriving in town, he tipped his hat and greeted them.

“Morning Ladies. Welcome to town. Preacher Johnson and his wife are expecting you down at the church.”

Even though Pat did his best to keep from looking directly at Billy, there was a brief moment when their eyes locked. In that second, the Sheriff imperceptibly nodded his head as if offering congratulations on a successful masquerade so far.

******

Preacher Johnson’s wife was a fucking nosy bitch.

“Where are you from? Are you any kin to the O’Hara’s from Houston? Why did you decide to join the Order? A young pretty woman like you ought to find yourself a man and start raising some kids.”

Thankfully, the other Sisters kept guiding the big-nosed woman away from their new member as they did their work. And each of the other Sisters made sure that one of them was always around Sister Mary to take care of any awkward situations with Preacher Johnson’s busybody wife. After three hours of direct interaction with several townspeople who knew Billy the Kid quite well and with none of them noticing Sister Mary Jane’s resemblance to the dead gunfighter, the former outlaw was feeling very confident in the disguise. For the first time, he felt that the disguise would really work.

******

It was a long five days for Billy as he impatiently waited on them to leave town. He felt the strongest desires to hop on the nearest horse and to ride full speed toward the border. Having to hang around town and to pretend to be a Nun was the hardest thing that he had ever attempted.

If it hadn’t been for Sister Melissa, he might have bolted in the first couple of days. But every time that he would start feeling nervous, she would come and work with him upon practicing either his walk, his lady-like mannerisms or his feminine voice. Having her smiling presence close to him and hearing her cheerful laughter helped him to keep his youthful impatience under control.

On the fifth day when Sister Bernadette announced that they could begin packing, Billy was so happy that they were finally leaving town that he almost hugged the old woman.

As the wagon forded the stream, Sister Mary Jane was following closely in the buckboard. Sister Melissa was riding on the seat beside the new member and Sister Elizabeth was walking slowly behind the two cows that was part of their convoy. As the buckboard came up the slight hill away from the stream, Sister Melissa pointed toward a nearby hilltop. There was a solitary man mounted on horseback sitting on top of the hill.

“Looks like your friend came out to tell you a silent good-by.”

“I owe my life to him. I would be dead now if he hadn’t come up with this scheme to get me out of town.”

“In about six weeks, we’ll be in Colorado. I’m going to leave the girls at that time and resume my life.”

He looked at her as if there was something else that he was expecting her to say. After several seconds of silence, he knew that she wasn’t going to say anything more.

“We’ll miss you. Do they know that you’re leaving then?”

“No, Sister Mary Jane. You’re the only one that I’ve told so far.”

“Why me?”

“Because I want to give you time to decide if you want to come with me or to stay with them.”

Without saying anything further, she eased off of the buckboard and walked toward Sister Elizabeth with the cows leaving him alone to decide his future.

******

The next three days were even longer for Billy. Although he was out of the town now where everyone had known him and should have felt more relaxed, Sister Melissa’s statement had shaken him up. Every time that he worked toward her so that he could talk to her, she would move toward one of the other women so that he couldn’t talk about anything private.

At night when they camped, she was even more remote. He couldn’t even get five minutes alone with her in the bushes gathering firewood.

He knew what his answer was going to be. He was going to stay with the Sisters until he was far enough away to be safe then he was going to go with Melissa. He didn’t care where she was going only that he knew that he was going with her.

About the middle of the third day, he waited until Sister Angela came to relieve him of the cattle-tending chore. Going straight to the wagon that Sister Melissa was driving, he had her stop the wagon while he got a dipper full of refreshing water from the bucket on the wagon. After taking a deep drink, he put the top back on the water bucket as he softly announced his decision.

“If you’ll let me come, I reckon that my trail is going to be the same as your trail.”

She nodded her head as if she had been expecting that answer.

“Then when they turn on the trail to go west in Colorado, we’ll go north. Keep your pecker in your robe for the next six weeks and continue to pretend that you’re nothing more than just one of us girls. If you behave yourself, I’ll give you a big reward the first night that we’re all alone.”

Chapter 5 - Melissa

He was falling in love with her just from being around her all day long. And the worst thing was that she knew it and wouldn’t let him do anything about it. She would walk with him and talk with him just as they walked and talked with the others. But when they talked, it was the talk of lovers.

He wanted her to be his woman but she refused to cross over the line to be more than a “Sister” to him. Her explanation was simple.

“I owe it to Sister Bernadette to obey her rules while I’m a member of her group. Just as you owe it also to her to honor her rules while in her camp. You must treat me only as your Sister, just as I am treating you as a Sister also.”

So it was a rough six weeks. But by the end of the journey, Billy was so confident in living daily as his new identity of Sister Mary Jane that it felt very natural for him to be wearing the petticoat, sandals, and using the heavily scented Lilac soap to bath daily. It felt natural to go into strange towns and to walk up to men to smile at them as he asked them for money “for the church” knowing that they thought that he was really a woman. It felt natural to go to town meetings and to calmly sit with the other Sisters among the town’s women while they discussed topics such as babies, sewing, aggressive husbands, or baking cakes. It felt natural to have town's women talk to him woman- to-woman about topics that they never would have discussed in the presence of a man. Where he had once thought that he could never impersonate a woman, much less impersonate a num, he now felt very confident in his impersonation and enjoyed fooling everyone. Everywhere that they went during their travels, there were photographs of the "dead" outlaw and it pleased him to stand right next to the photographs and to know that he wasn't being recognized.

One evening, as they sat quietly on the outskirts of one town watching Sister Bernadette as she gave a church service to the small town, Melissa asked him a strange question.

“Every town that we’ve gone to since picking you up, there’s been newspapers everywhere with your photograph and description. I thought that it would have already died down a little with you being dead but it appears that those paperback book writers are keeping your legend alive. When I was in the store earlier getting some salt and bacon, I saw several photographs of you with your twin guns blazing. I don’t think that you’re ever going to be able to go so far away that no one doesn’t know about you or won’t recognize you when you’re wearing men’s clothes again. What are you going to do?”

“Guess that I’ll just keep going. Maybe on up to Wyoming or maybe even Canada. I can’t keep living as Sister Mary Jane, that’s for sure.”

******

As they approached the next good-sized town, Sister Bernadette announced that they would be camping outside town for about three days. That would give them the opportunity to participate in the town’s Sunday services.

As soon as the camp was set up and Sister Mary Jane was taking care of the horses, Sister Melissa came to him with a strange request.

“If you’re going to be going with me when it’s time to leave, then we’re both going to need some new clothes. I don’t have any money to buy clothes for myself and I left that hanging-town so fast that I left everything that I owned. I also gave all of my money to the Sister for their Order for taking care of me. Do you have any money?”

“A little.”

“Give me a hundred dollars and I’ll go buy us some new clothes. That way when we’re finally ready to pick up and leave, we won’t have to continue looking like poor Sisters of the Church.”

******

When she came back from town in the buckboard, there was a small trunk wedged tightly underneath the rig’s seat. He didn’t bother looking in it because he knew what was in it and he was trying his best to be good around her. When she was ready to leave the group of nuns, he was going to leave too and he sure as hell wanted to make sure that she was going to let him go with her. So he stayed out of the trunk and continued to try to live as if he was nothing more than “one of the girls”.

He did ask her if she spent all of the money, knowing that he had to keep track of how much money that he was going to have when they got to their destination. Her response was a simple “not yet” and she didn’t give him an accounting of what she had spent.

In each town that they would pass through, she would seek out the Asian women in the town if there were any Oriental families and would have a private discussion with them. After one such meeting with an Oriental woman, Sister Melissa came back to the camp with a box of dried herbs that she had purchased from the Oriental woman. After storing the box next to the trunk, she gave back sixty-four dollars to Sister Mary Jane that she hadn’t spent of his money. When he asked what was in the box, her simple answer didn’t tell him much.

“Something that we might need this winter.”

*******

It had been a long six weeks since he had made that fateful promise to Pat Garrett to “give up his life” and to walk away from the only place that he had ever known as home. But they were finally far enough within the state of Colorado and far enough away from his old stomping grounds so that Billy knew that it was now safe for him to leave the small group. If it hadn’t been for the pleasant smile of the beautiful Sister Melissa teasing him on an almost daily basis, he would probably have left them as soon as they were slightly more than a hundred miles away from Pat Garrett. But thanks to her daily encouragement, plus her initial promise to let him go with her, he had remained with the nuns and had constantly lived as if he were really Sister Mary Jane O’Hara.

In the six weeks of his new daily life where he pretended to be nothing more than a simple female Nun, he had quickly become accustomed to many things. Such as: Wearing the Nun’s habit and feeling the edge of the skirt and petticoats rubbing against his legs as he walked. Always keeping his voice modulated low so that his voice sounded like a woman’s voice when he talked. Wearing sandals instead of his boots. Crossing his legs like a proper lady when sitting. Brushing his long hair every evening and then brushing it again in the mornings before putting some frilly hair bows into his hair to hold it in place. Everyone treating him as if he were a woman and using the feminine pronouns when referring to Sister Mary Jane. Wearing the tight-fitting little garment around his chest that Sister Melissa had sewed some padding into to give his chest a more rounded feminine shape. Having men in the various towns tip their hats as a polite greeting or the men holding doors open for him to enter. Wearing the habit’s hood instead of his normal cowboy hat. Having churchwomen in the various communities talk to him as if he were just one of the girls and to talk with him frankly and very personal about their rough live as a frontier wife. And most of all, walking around without the two deadly pistols strapped around his hips.

He easily tolerated everything except for the missing pistols. Without the guns strapped around his waist, he seemed to always be slightly edgy. After all, his pistols had been the only thing that had kept him alive for the last half of his short life.

Then came the evening when he was gathering firewood for the evening’s campfire and she walked by him as she dragged some firewood back toward the camp.

“I suppose that I’m going to tell Sister Bernadette tonight that I’m leaving the group in the morning. What are you going to do?”

“I thought that it was agreed that I was going to leave with you and that we would travel together. You also promised me that if I behaved myself that we could..... you know.”

“I’ve given it a lot of thought since that day. I know that you’re chomping at the bridle to get out of your nun’s clothes and to dress normally again. I know that I sure am looking forward to looking like a real woman again instead of a religious artifact. But I don’t think that we’re far enough away yet for it to be safe for you to give up your disguise yet. There’s still too many pictures of Billy the Kid everywhere that we go and it’s going to take awhile for everyone to forget about you. If you go with me, you’re going to have to continue wearing your disguise and still pretending to be a woman until I think it’s safe for you to look like a man again. If you promise me to keep pretending that you’re a woman, then I’ll let you go with me. At night when we’re all alone in our bed, then you can be my man. The rest of the time, you have to still be Mary Jane O’Hara. I'll expect you to continue to dress and pretend that you're a woman. Is that a deal?”

If she had asked him to cut off his foot with an axe, he would have done it. He was going to do whatever she wanted him to do. If she wanted him to continue to dress and look like a woman, then he was going to be the prettiest woman that he could be.

Putting his hands on his hips to assume the most feminine position that he could, he gave his answer.

"You've got a deal, dearie."

******

That evening after the evening prayers when Sister Melissa announced her decision to leave the following morning, each of the Sisters turned to look at him as if it was his turn to also similarly announce something.

When he told the group that he would also be leaving in the morning to accompany Sister Melissa, Sister Bernadette nodded her head as if it were a decision that she had been expecting for a long time.

Without any objection, the Sister made him an offer.

“The Sheriff gave us the buckboard and horses that you rode into our camp. I have no use for them and will sell them to you for thirty dollars. Are you going to keep your habit? If so, that’s another five dollars.”

Sister Melissa’s calm answer showed that she was prepared for Sister Bernadette's offer.

“We’ll take the horses and buckboard but neither of us have any further use of the habits. I’ve got clothes for Mary Jane and myself in that trunk.”

******

The next morning, it was a very different looking Sister Melissa and Sister Mary Jane sitting on the seat of the buckboard as they gave the command for the horses to pull out of camp. Both of them were wearing faded gingham dresses that Melissa had previously bought and stored in the trunk. Her dress was a green and white gingham dress with a matching bonnet while Mary Jane’s yellow gingham dress had white lace and a matching yellow bonnet. Both of them were also wearing frilly petticoats underneath their dresses and Melissa had made sure that each of them had a brightly colored ribbon in their freshly brushed hair. They looked like two young women heading west to find husbands.

As they slowly rode away from the Sisters, the happy Mary Jane asked her new best friend “Which way?”

Looking up at the sun, Melissa announced their long term plans.

“We’ll head north for several days then find us an abandoned cabin where we’ll stay for the long winter. Before that, when we get near a town, we’ll have to stop and get us enough provisions to last us until springtime. Won’t need much, just some coffee, some salt, some fatback and some beans.”

As the horses slowly pulled the buckboard, Melissa did something very strange. She patted Mary Jane on the hand and said ""You look very pretty in your new dress. I think that sooner or later you're going to break some cowboy's heart."

Mary Jane blushed and shook her head. Although she knew that Melissa was right, there was still some roguish boy deep within her so that she felt embarrassed at the thought of some cowboy trying to flirt with her.

******

That night, Melissa lived up to her long-time promise to finally begin sharing her blanket with him at nighttime. Also that night, through a mixture of passionate sex, lover’s pillow talk and robust sexual teasing, she convinced the former outlaw that Billy the Kid should never be seen again. And because of what her mouth was doing to his manhood at the moment, he promised her that his former life was gone forever.

The next morning after they took a quick bath together in a cold mountain stream and dressed once again in their new dresses, Mary Jane appeared to be a very relaxed and happy young lady. Now that they had finally dropped the invisible but impregnable barrier between their separate sleeping beds so that they were lovers at night sleeping in each other’s loving arms, the new young lady didn’t have a care in the world. Mary Jane could be a woman during the day because she was a man during the night.

That morning as Melissa helped Mary Jane with brushing her hair, she added something new to her lover’s feminine appearance: Make-up. It wasn’t much make-up but just a little rouge to add some color to Mary Jane’s cheeks, some lipstick to add some gleam to her already shapely lips and some eye make- up to add mystery to the new young lady’s wide and delicate eyes. The Sister Mary Jane of the last six weeks wouldn’t have tolerated the ‘gook’ that Melissa was putting on both of their faces but now that they were lovers, this Mary Jane would play any game that Melissa wanted to play.

“When I get finished with you, even your own mama won’t recognize you.”

A few minutes later when the new woman looked at her new heavily feminized appearance in the mirror, she was amazed at the vast difference in her new appearance. The bland boyish face of Billy the Kid was gone and replaced with the beautiful face of a lovely young lass. The eye makeup had transformed his wide-open eyes into a woman’s seductive gleaming eyes that could steal the soul of any man. The lipstick had turned his sun burnt lips into soft kissable lips that demanded to be kissed. The rouge had turned his boyish face into a woman’s face. Looking at his new appearance, he didn’t even recognize himself so he knew that no one else would ever recognize him.

A change came over the former Billy the Kid that day. There was a new confidence in his walk, in his movements and in his personality. Wearing the long frilly dress with the petticoat and padded chest shaper, the colorful ribbons in his brushed hair, and the makeup on his face made him feel like someone totally different from his real self. He didn’t feel like a dangerous gunfighter any more who had to constantly watch his back. Instead he felt like a giddy girl who could relax because no one would ever suspect his secret. For the first time, he even began to think of himself in the feminine gender.

By the time that they came to the next town where they planned to buy provisions for the winter, Mary Jane was an expert in putting on her own makeup and had a new found confidence in her new appearance. She wasn’t able to recognize herself as Billy the Kid in the mirror anymore so why would anyone else ever recognize her? While the layers of various women’s clothes, major change in hair style, shaped eyebrows, softer voice and emphasized feminine mannerisms had made it difficult for anyone to recognize anything remotely similar to the former dangerous outlaw’s appearance, the makeup made it absolutely impossible to for anyone to assume that she wasn’t really a woman. The total change in appearance so pleased the new young lady that she joked about turning around to go back to Lincoln to parade around in front of Henry Storm just to flirt with him to see if even Henry could see through her new disguise.

Riding into town sitting on the wagon’s seat, Mary Jane had to admit that no one would ever recognize her as either Billy the Kid or as a man especially the way that she was dressed now. She was wearing one of the dresses that Melissa had bought for them to share. Melissa called her outfit a day dress and told Mary Jane that the outfit was worn by the average woman around the house or while she was out running errands. The calico striped dress had a closely fitted bodice, large puff sleeves, turndown collars and a very full skirt that she was wearing over a bustle. Across her shoulders, she was wearing a waist-length ladies’ cape with contrasting braid.

While they were in the store in town, they saw an old Wanted poster for Billy the Kid still hanging on the wall with an artist’s drawing of Billy’s youthful face. Asking the store proprietor if “Any dangerous outlaws were around here, like that Billy the Kid?” while she stood by the drawing to see if the store owner noticed any resemblance between her beautiful woman's face and the outlaw's boyish face, the old man truthfully answered the question.

“Outlaws? Everywhere, unfortunately. But we don’t have to worry about the Kid anymore. Sheriff Garrett plugged the nasty outlaw in a fierce shootout down in Lincoln a little over six weeks ago. The Kid is gone but there are always other outlaws just waiting to take over the top of the Most Wanted list.”

Chapter 6 - Winter then Spring

The first snow came barely a week after they found an abandoned cabin and old barn for the horses. It wasn’t a big cabin, just one large room with a wooden floor a few inches above the dirt floor and a small adjoining shed. The shed was good enough to store any food that they killed by hanging the meat from the rafters. They had known that it wouldn’t be long before the snow began falling so they had worked hard to gather firewood, to fix the cabin’s few leaks and to get it ready for a potential hard winter.

While Mary Jane had frequently suggested that she could do a lot more work fixing up the cabin if she was wearing jeans instead of a dress, Melissa still wouldn’t let her lover change out of the disguise, not even out in the wilderness where they planned to spend the winter. Because Melissa was letting Mary Jane be a man with her when they went to bed at night, the new woman didn’t fuss too much about being a woman the rest of the time. Mary Jane had quickly become used to lying between Melissa’s warm legs when they were in bed and the new young woman would happily do anything that Melissa wanted her to do. At night, Melissa lived up to her promise to let Mary Jane be her man and during the rest of the time; the new young woman lived up to her promise to be the demure Miss Mary Jane O’Hara.

The only time that Melissa allowed her young lover to discard her disguise was when they were in bed. Even then, Mary Jane had to wear a woman’s flannel nightgown to bed. The rest of the time had to be spent in character.

In addition to the day dress, Melissa also had an elegant fancy bustle dress that she loved to see Mary Jane wearing because it was so distinctively fashionable. It was a two-piece outfit, consisting of a bodice and skirt designed to be worn with a bustle to enhance a woman’s slender waist. The loose fitting bodice and peplum was accented by a belt tied over the bodice in a bow. The bodice buttoned up the back, which Mary Jane found awkward to do by herself. The sleeves were three-quarter length with a flounce and ball fringe on the sleeve. The dress was accented by a flounce and skirt hem with a belt made of a contrasting fabric. While Mary Jane considered it to be just another dress to aid in her disguise, Melissa was very enthused about them having “such a pretty dress” that was the latest style and that all women wished that they could have a dress as fine as the one that they were sharing.

As soon as they moved into the cabin, Melissa took the box of herbs that she had bought from the Oriental woman a few weeks earlier in one of the towns that they had passed through and began preparing the dried herbs and storing the mixture of herbs in different empty bottles. Some of the herbs, she repeatedly boiled until only a thick syrup was left. Some of the herbs, she ground between two flat rocks until only a powdery mixture was left. Other herbs were cut in small pieces and mixed together.

As soon as she had processed all the herbs, she introduced a new ritual into Mary Jane’s daily routine.

“Every morning after you’ve taken your bath, rub some of this potion onto your chest around your nipples. Then rub some of this lotion onto your face, neck, hands and arms. Then pour six to ten drops of this elixir into your morning coffee. Take some of this ground-up dust and sprinkle it on your food like it’s salt. And after breakfast, I want you to tuck one of these little sticks into your mouth and to suck on it all morning.”

“What is all this stuff, Melissa, and why am I doing it?”

“A couple of years ago when I was working as a dance hall girl, there was an Chinese girl who was the prettiest woman that I ever seen. She had smooth perfect skin, long flowing hair and creamy white nubbin-sized breasts. The men loved her and there were several men that tried to get into her bed but she wouldn’t let them. I later discovered why she didn’t take any man as her lover but I won’t tell you yet. Anyhow, because her room was just down the hall from my room, I knew a lot about her and knew that she took this same mixture of herbs. I think that these herbs will help you with your impersonation and will make it easier for Billy the Kid to permanently disappear.”

“Ok, I’ll take them. What are the names of the various herbs?”

“Black Cohosh, Licorice Root, an Asian herb called Dong Quai, Fenugreek, Kudzu Root, Vitex, Saw Palmetto, Gingko Biloba, Ginseng, Gotu Kola as well as some stuff that I don’t know the name of that is very rich in the special type of Vitamins that you need to help you with your disguise. I want you to take a lot of vitamins this winter.”

*******

During the daytime while they were snowed in, Melissa continued to work upon her young friend’s feminine personality, speech patterns and appearance. By the time that the snow started melting in the spring, it was a very different Mary Jane O’Hara that greeted the first signs of spring.

While Billy the Kid’s mangy unkempt hair had been almost shoulder-length long when he had originally adopted the Nun’s disguise the previous fall, the new young woman’s hair had grown much longer and fuller over the winter. Thanks to the new hairstyling skills taught to the new young woman by Melissa during the wintertime on how to use a curling iron heated in the fireplace to style her thick mane of luscious hair, Mary Jane’s bushy tresses of curly hair cascading four inches down the back of the dress created a strong image of total femininity that looked absolutely natural.

In addition to becoming an expert in brushing the long hair into different hairstyles, Mary Jane was also an expert in “prettying up her face” as Melissa called it. The long eyelashes looked longer because of the eye makeup and the face looked more feminine because of the skillful application of makeup on the red lips and cheeks.

Melissa had brought along four more sets of women’s clothes in the trunk and had taught Mary Jane to bathe every day and to change clothes on a daily basis. So every morning after breakfast, they would haul buckets of snow into the cabin and melt the snow by the fireplace before pouring the hot water into the small galvanized bathtub that Melissa had purchased in the town during their last visit. After both of them had their morning bath and Mary Jane had taken her dosage of morning herbs, they would dress in one of the six dresses that they shared between them and then washed their clothes from the previous day. While the wet clothes were drying, they would help each other with their hair and makeup. Melissa had been right when she said that it would make the winter pass faster if they were busy.

In addition to teaching Mary Jane how to dress, look, talk, and act like a woman, Melissa had been teaching Mary Jane other skills too. Although it had seemed difficult at first, learning to knit and sew proved an excellent way to pass the time for the new young woman. Not only did the knitting help her keep her hands flexible but it relaxed her as she sat in the rocking chair in front of the fire and knitted. Melissa taught her other skills that the average woman was expected to know also, such as cooking. While Billy had known how to cook from his few years of roughing it, the former outlaw didn’t know the finer touches of cooking to make the food taste palatable.

But the biggest difference in Mary Jane was in her almost constant smile and twinkle in her eyes. The twinkle was there because of her happiness at being marooned in a cabin with Melissa all winter. The smile was because of Melissa’s constant insistence on Mary Jane having a more friendly personality and because all winter long during the daylight hours they had pretended that they were just two girls having a good time together. The new softer feminine personality that Mary Jane had allowed herself to adopt felt so natural that even Mary Jane had been constantly referring to herself as “her”.

In addition to the more vibrant feminine personality and appropriate clothing to complement her new identity as a young woman, there were also other noticeable physical changes to her body. Her skin was noticeably softer and she had begun to grow breasts.

Granted the breasts weren’t the mouthful of sagging large monstrosities that Melissa had on her chest but were merely small pouty nubbins similar to the small breasts of a young teenage girl. The first indication of any change to her body came about three weeks after Mary Jane had started taking her initial daily dosage of herbs. Her nipples began hurting and felt like there was a small knotty lump under the skin. At first Melissa joked about it being nothing more than tenderness from where she had nightly sucked on the new woman’s flat chest just as Mary Jane sucked on her fully-filled out chest.

But a couple of weeks later, the area around the nipples was swollen slightly and there was the first visible indication that the area around the breasts was slightly growing larger and becoming more naturally padded. At that time, Melissa had confessed to her friend and lover that the herbs were causing the physical change in the chest as well as making Mary Jane’s complexion also feel softer and smoother. She had learned the secret mixture of herbs to take to slowly modify a man’s body into a woman-like body from the beautiful Oriental barmaid who had actually been born a man and had obliviously taken the herbs all of his life.

Surprised by her friend’s secret plan to change the shape of her body, Mary Jane had wanted to immediately quit taking her body-changing herbs but thanks to Melissa’s persuasive arguments and a couple of blowjobs, Mary Jane decided to continue letting the mysterious herbs slowly change her male body into looking more like a woman’s body. After all, once she stopped taking the herbs, the womanly chest would grow back to a more normal male-shape within six months if she stopped taking the herbs according to Melissa. And the small breasts on her chest would be big enough to convince most people that she really was a woman.

So she continued to take the herbs and enjoyed seeing her body shape change slightly each week over the long cold winter. By springtime, her facial complexion was almost as soft and smooth as Melissa’s face. By springtime, there were also two small breasts proudly sticking out from her chest that were about the size of a half peach each. They weren’t major breasts but the twin nubbins of youthful feminine perfection protruding from her chest were large enough to positively prove to anyone else that Mary Jane was certainly a woman; as long as that person didn’t look below the waistline at the rest of the young woman’s strange body.

With the small breasts filling out Mary Jane’s chest, there wasn’t any need to wear the padding anymore and she could now proudly wear one of the ladies dresses that had a low cleavage-revealing bodice. She liked the naturally shapely way that her changing body now looked and also liked the softer, more feminine way that she felt as a result of the herbs and her new lifestyle. She was definitely enjoying being Mary Jane instead of Billy the Kid. She was enjoying being a woman although below the waist, she was still all man. Melissa called the odd mixture of male and female body a she-male.

Then came that early spring day that the stranger rode up to the cabin.

******

There was still snow on the north side of the hills but the area around the women’s cabin was a muddy mess from the melted snow. Just a few days earlier, the girls had had a serious discussion as to how much longer they were going to remain in the cabin before moving on now that spring had finally arrived.

The unexpected loud sound of his horse walking across the cleared area surrounding the cabin startled both of them from their preparation of lunch. Although it had been many months of going without wearing pistols on her hips, Mary Jane’s first instinct was to let her hands drop to her side as if she were getting ready to draw a pistol. After that momentary pause and discovery that she wasn’t wearing pistols, she ran to the door and grabbed the loaded rifle that they kept beside the door. As they both peeked at their unexpected visitor through the crack in the door, they knew that they wanted him to move on as soon as possible.

He was a big burly man with a thick busy beard; an obvious mountaineer who had just spent the entire winter in another nearby cabin within the Colorado mountains. He was riding an old horse and it was difficult to tell if the fly’s buzzing around the man’s head were there because of the horse’s strong smell or his just-as-strong odor.

“Hello, the cabin. Got any spare food. I misjudged the winter and ran out of provisions about a week ago.”

The sight of the two women standing in the open doorway caused a smile to form in the man’s eyes. It probably also formed on his mouth but the thick bushy beard hid that portion of his face. Melissa answered his question.

“A little. We can give you enough food for two days which will be more than enough time to get into a town somewhere.”

Nodding his head in acceptance of their offer, he glanced over at the small shed where their buckboard was parked and the old horse was kept.

“My horse needs some food also. I’ll put it in your shed. Where be your husbands?”

Melissa’s answer slightly surprised Mary Jane but she understood why Melissa was lying to their guest.

“Out hunting. They should be back any time now. You’re welcome to feed your horse but I’m going to have to insist that you move on as soon as we’ve given you some of our spare food. My husband doesn’t take kindly to strangers being here when he comes home.”

“I see. Thank you, ma’am. I’ll feed my horse and stretch my legs a little while you get my food ready. I would appreciate as much coffee as you can spare.”

Shutting the door as they backed into the cabin, Melissa’s quick whisper showed that she felt uneasy because of the man’s presence.

“Keep him out of the cabin while I get the food. If he comes in here and doesn’t see any signs of any man ever being here with us, then we’ll have a hard time getting rid of him.”

Recognizing that she was right that someone needed to carefully watch him while the other one prepared the food, Mary Jane opened the door again so that she could watch the stranger and to do as Melissa suggested. She wasn’t surprised to discover that as soon as they had shut the door, that the man had walked immediately toward the cabin’s door and was about to push it open when she opened it.

The huge mountain man didn’t slow down and with one huge hand pushed Mary Jane aside as he barged into the cabin. In his other hand, he carried a heavy rifle.

“I don’t like people that lie to me. I’ve heard rumors late last fall just after the first snow that there were two women living up here by themselves. I don’t see any signs of any men’s clothes and it looks like just you two women are living here. Why did you lie to me? We could be good friends if you weren’t trying to fool me.”

The heavy stench of his unwashed body immediately filling the small area of the cabin almost made both of the women gag with disgust. For a brief second, Mary Jane was silently thankful that Melissa had been so insistent upon their daily bathing routine to keep them from smelling as raunchy as the big man smelled. Then she looked at the rifle leaning against the door.

He saw the rifle at the same time and they both rushed toward it. His larger, heavier, stronger body easily pushed her small body out of the way as he grabbed the rifle before she could get to it. With the rifle secured, he proceeded to make sure that there wasn’t any other gun lying around as he rushed through the small cabin pushing things aside as he looked for any other weapons. Satisfied that he controlled all the firepower within the cabin, he spun to face the two women. Melissa had also circled the interior of the small cabin and rushed to help Mary Jane stand up. Holding each other’s arms as they stared at their unwanted visitor, Mary Jane was the first to challenge the man.

“No man has ever pushed me around before and lived. I promise you that I’ll come after you.”

The mountain man didn’t notice that the angry young woman’s voice sounded more like a angry teenage boy’s voice as his gleaming “werewolf-like” eyes flickered back and forth as he hungrily looked at each woman’s bosom.

“Really, my dear? Well, I was thinking that you were going to cum with me.”

Chapter 7 - The Stranger

The cabin had seemed like the most wonderful place in the world all winter to both women because of their enjoyment of each other’s company and their games exploring each other’s sexuality. But now with the smelly male body of the invading huge mountain man occupying the center of the small cabin, the cabin seemed small and dangerous.

For the first hour that he was there, he was more occupied with filling his empty belly than in being a threat to either of them. After he had claimed through his actions that he was “King of the World” and demanded food, the women had worked together to put food on the table for him. While they were cooking, he was sitting on the bed in the corner of the cabin watching them with a wild gleam in his dark eyes. Then when they had placed the warm food on the table, he had ordered them to go sit on the bed where he “could watch you two” while he turned the table and chair so that the table was between him and the two women. While he ate, they sat on the bed and held each other’s hand to give support to each other.

Now that the excitement from his rush into the cabin and their capture was over, both women were relatively calm as they sat patiently watching their unexpected “guest” devour in one meal what would have been a week’s supply of food for them. Now that she was calm again, Mary Jane’s more appropriate softer feminine voice had returned but it was obvious from the irate glint in her eyes and the firm expression on her pretty face that she was angry at his uninvited presence. While Melissa’s firm expression also showed the same anger, her eyes displayed that she was scared.

Having been a woman all of her life, Melissa knew what the mountain man would want from the “two women” after his belly was full. Having been a woman only for the last few months with that entire time being a sheltered existence without any first-hand familiarity with men, Mary Jane didn’t have any experience of being a woman around a non-gentleman to know what to expect next.

When he was finished eating, he pushed the plate aside and stared at the two women patiently sitting across from him. Although he had just eaten a good-sized meal, there was a glimmer of hunger still in his eyes. Using the big hunting knife that he had used to cut his food, he trimmed a sliver of wood from the table to use as a toothpick. With one hard jab, he buried the point of the fourteen-inch long blade into the table so that it stood straight up. As he picked at his teeth with the wood sliver, he announced his intentions.

“Take your blouses off, girls. Let’s see what I’ve got to choose from.”

The quick glance by Mary Jane at Melissa’s face showed that they both now understood their real danger. Melissa felt Mary Jane’s body tense as if she were considering leaping from the bed and rushing toward the far corner of the cabin where the man had stacked all the guns. For a half second, Melissa considered trying to distract the mountain man while Mary Jane rushed toward the guns. Then staring at the gleaming steel of the sharp knife resting a few inches from his hand, she realized that the man wouldn’t hesitate using the knife to defend himself. Any battle between them after Mary Jane got to the guns would be resolved by Billy the Kid’s deadly aim. Any battle between them before she got to the guns would be resolved by the knife.

Shaking her head negatively as she held tightly to Mary Jane’s hand to keep her from taking any foolish actions, she chose the only path that was open to them now. It was a decision that she knew that she could live with and one that she would help Mary Jane to live with. After he was through with satisfying himself with their bodies, he would be easier to handle.

Unbuttoning her blouse with one hand while still tightly holding Mary Jane’s hand with her other hand, she began negotiating.

“If you want a fuck, then I’ll willingly be your woman. I’ll fuck you, suck you, let you do whatever you want to do to me, only leave her alone.”

Without any warning, Mary Jane jerked her hand free from Melissa’s grasp and jumped to her feet. She was halfway across the floor of the small cabin toward the corner where the rifles were stacked when the mountain man caught her with a staggering blow from his closed fist. As Mary Jane felt her legs collapsing and her head spinning from the force of his blow, she faintly heard Melissa’s scream. Then she passed out as she fell to the floor.

******

It was cold and dark when Mary Jane awakened. Feeling confused because her head was still hurting from the hard blow, it took her a few seconds to realize that she was in the shed attached to the cabin. Not only was her painful head still throbbing but the rest of her body was also hurting. Because it was some time in the middle of the night, it was pitch black within the shed but she could tell that she was in the shed because she felt the deer carcass hanging next to her. The mountain man had tied her hands tightly together and then thrown the rope over the beam so that she had been hanging suspended by the rope tied over the beam ever since he had clobbered her.

She was cold but thankfully someone had draped a blanket over her shoulders so that the upper part of her body was somewhat warm. Shaking her head to try to clear the fog clouding her mind, she heard the sound of someone snoring coming from within the adjacent cabin. Knowing from several months of sleeping in the same bed that Melissa didn’t snore, she knew that the sound had to be coming from their kidnapper. That meant that he was asleep and that probably Melissa was in bed with him; probably with her hands tied so that she couldn’t escape from the bed without awakening him.

Standing in a dark shed in one spot for hours with her tied hands raised toward the ceiling because of the ropes wrapped over the overhead beam and knowing that hanging from the same beam was the carcass of a recently killed deer gave Mary Jane something to think about as she waited for daylight. And as she also waited for her turn to share the bed with the mountain man.

Now that the immediate threat of danger was removed and she had time to think, she realized that she would never have made it across the room to the guns. He could have just as easily stopped her with the blade of his knife stuck into her back and she ought to consider herself to be lucky instead that it was his fist instead of the knife that he used on her.

She also realized that Melissa had used the right tactic. Remembering Sister Angela’s advice on how to control a horse with a carrot, she remembered the sister saying “Most of the time, you can do more with a simple bribe than with challenging one of your fellow creatures with angry words or your fists.”

Yes, she would have to give the man whatever he wanted until the correct time came and then she could make a break for it. She had acted impulsively and was now suffering from her mistake.

The only thing was that she couldn’t give him would be what he obviously wanted from both of the “women”. Although with the long curly hair, women’s clothes and makeup she looked like a woman, her soft voice sounded like a woman’s voice and she had some minor curves on her upper body that would pass as being a woman’s breasts, she still wasn’t really a woman. There was something hanging between Mary Jane’s legs that definitely wasn’t a woman’s pussy.

Yep, he might be fooled from the way that she looked but as soon as he placed his big hand between her creamy white thighs, he was going to know the truth. And she hoped that his knife remained in his sheath.

So she stood in the dark for hours, her arms hurting from the strain of being stretched over her head, her nostrils filled with the smell of the deer carcass hanging beside her and her mind whirling with thoughts about what she was going to have to do with the man when it was her turn to be in the cabin with him.

*****

The sound of the door opening jarred the young shemale awake. Somehow she had fell asleep and hadn’t hear any noise coming through the logs of the cabin as the inhabitants awakened. Blinking her eyes as the bright daylight coming through the door blinded her for a second; she caught a glimpse of something huge as he stood in front of the shed filling the small doorway with his huge body.

It didn’t look like he could get through the small doorway because the top of the door was the same level as his neck and his hips were almost the same width as the door. Bending his knees slightly, he bent from the waist and easily slipped through the small doorway, which should have stopped such a huge person. The enormous massiveness of his gigantic body seemed to fill the small shed completely. Mary Jane gazed up at the huge naked man as she felt a mixture of awe and terror because of her nightlong imprisonment and fear of the man’s huge size. She felt so small, so tiny and vulnerable beside such a dangerous giant.

As he stood in front of Mary Jane, she felt a fear and intimidation that Billy the Kid had never felt from any man. That fear might have been caused by the hours of standing with up-stretched arms in the shed in the dark and thinking about everything that could happen to her. The intimidation might have been caused by the huge size of the man as he stood only about two feet from the suspended woman staring at her with that lecherous grin on his bearded face. It might have been caused by the gleam coming from the sharp hunting knife that he was holding in his hand as if he intended to stab something. It might have been caused by the fact that he was totally naked and she saw fresh deep scratches gouged into his chest underneath the layer of bear-like chest hair that could have only come from Melissa’s fingernails the previous night. It could have been caused by the undeniable fact that his cock was hard and sticking straight up as he stared at her face with obvious hunger in his eyes.

There were many things that intimated the young woman. They were things that wouldn’t have bothered Billy the Kid with his pistols strapped to his waist and his hands free to defend himself. But it had been many months since he had touched a pistol or had been the Wild West’s most dangerous outlaw. The person that the mountain man was staring at, had given up thinking and acting like Billy the Kid many months earlier.

The mountain man bowed his head as he lowered his face, moving as if he intended to give the young woman a kiss. His big hands grasped the woman’s body, easily snatching her off of the ground like she was nothing more than a small child. Wrapping his huge arms around her waist, he hugged her against his massive body as though she was his longtime wife who he hadn’t seen in awhile. She groaned as his tremendous arms squeezed her so that her back popped and cracked from the force of his hug. The groan was a mixture of pain and fright as she immediately thought her ribs would break as he crushed her tightly against the barrel-like massiveness firmness of his hairy chest.

His mouth found her mouth, and the hard feel of his giant lips engulfed her lips as he passionately claimed her as his woman. His huge tongue forced its way into her mouth filling her mouth with his wiggling member as his scratchy beard smothered her face. Unable to resist his doing whatever he desired to do with because her arms were still tied above her head, she felt the unmistakable feeling of his rigid cock pressing tightly against her stomach through the slender material of her dress. One of his immense hands slid down her body to grasp her rear and to squeeze her butt as he continued deliberately rubbing his throbbing cock against her stomach.

Pulling his tongue out of her mouth and looking up at her up- stretched arms, he held her body tightly pressed against his body with one hand while he cut the rope with his other hand. A moment later, the rope was cut and her arms dropped. Grabbing the end of the rope still tied around her hands, he let go of her body and wiggled out through the narrow doorway, tugging on the rope and pulling her with him.

In the bright light of morning, she stared at his naked butt as he dragged her around the corner of the cabin into the cabin. Melissa was sitting on the floor next to the bed and her hands were also tied to the bed. Never had Mary Jane seen Melissa’s hair so messed nor had she ever seen such a serious look on her friend’s face.

With one jerk, the man pulled Mary Jane over to the bed and quickly tied her to the bed then untied Melissa. When she was free, he led Melissa outside so that he could lock the obviously already ravished woman in the shed for a few hours while he kept himself busy with his new “partner”.

Lying on the floor beside the bed, Mary Jane could smell the recognizable smell of recent sex still coming from the mattress. Knowing that she was next to be raped only increased the fear that she had never experienced before. As he came back into the cabin and came toward her holding the deadly knife in his hand, Mary Jane felt her heart pounding heavily from the terror that she was feeling.

Sitting on the bed beside her, he grabbed her hair, using her hair to force her to tilt her face to look at his face. Rubbing the dull edge of the cold blade of the knife against her throat to make sure that she understood that he was deadly serious, he issued his demands.

“I don’t want no trouble from you. You do as I say and you’ll live. Resist and I’ll still take what I want from you before I kill you. Understand?”

“Yes.”

The point of the sharp knife blade drifting down the front of her dress accented his next command.

“Get on your knees and undress.”

Kneeling in front of him and staring at the still rigid cock between his spread legs, she began unbuttoning her blouse. Over the past winter, the two girls had spent a lot of time playing with each other and learning how to undress in front of each other in a very seductive manner. Melissa had taught Mary Jane all of her saloon girl tricks to seduce a bed partner. However at that moment, Mary Jane didn’t feel like doing any of the seductive tricks that Melissa had taught her. In a little over a minute, she had the blouse removed and quickly followed it with the upper-body slip that she had been wearing under her blouse. Still dressed below the waist with her floor-length skirt and boots, she dreaded the moment when she would have to give up that scant protection to reveal her secret.

As the slip came off revealing her naked upper chest, she shuddered and began to perspire in horror as she felt the cool air blowing against her small round breasts. As he gazed with an obvious look of lust in his dark beady eyes, at her small woman-like mounds, she felt a mixture of terror, shame and felt dirty.

With a smooth flick of his wrist, he threw the point of the knife hard into the floor beside his foot so that she would have difficulty trying to pull it out if she was foolish enough to try to grab it. With his weapon out of the way, he snapped his fingers to signal her to stand. As she rose hesitantly to her feet, he wrapped his strong muscular arms around her waist and pulled her naked breasts toward his smiling face, as he remained sitting on the bed.

It was clear that he intended to suckle at one of her trembling nipples as he pulled her body closer to his bearded face. His lips touched the slightly bumpy plain around the erect tissue, before he compressed his lips to trap only the nipple between them. His tongue flashed at the small piece of flesh ramming hard against the tiny mound of flesh.

Almost immediately the man’s strong arms around her girlish waist tensed and she could feel his breath quicken as his surprisingly soft tongue expertly played with her nipple. His rough, wet tongue laved the surface of the nipple repeatedly, each stroke causing an undeniable emphatic reaction from the scared young woman.

The long winter months of daily following Melissa’s strange herbal routine had caused several noticeable changes in Mary Jane’s chest. The small round mounds of flesh surrounding the nipples had slowly filled out creating small breasts similar to a fourteen-year-old girl’s budding breasts. As the breasts had reshaped from flat pectorals into youthful soft conical mountain of flesh, the skin sensitivity had also increased so that the new breasts created a hypersensitive erogenous zone for the former outlaw. Over the months of the two women sleeping together, just as Mary Jane enjoyed sucking on Melissa’s breasts as they nightly made love to each other, the new shemale had also quickly learned to enjoy having Melissa sucking on her new breasts.

It was a confusing feeling. Her body was still paralyzed with fear yet there was a strange fire burning within the breast that the big man was kissing. Her body wanted to retreat from him but that hungry breast wanted to push harder against the man’s mouth and to demand more lavishing from his rough tongue. Her backbone was cold, frozen with fear but that breast was radiating a strong warm wave of passion as his tongue expertly began to spiral around the nipple and his sucking mouth engulfed the small aureole. With his mouth tightly pressed against the nipple, he was playing with the other breast with his course weather-beaten hand. Her mind was overwhelmed with a multitude of sensations; delight from the loving caress of his teasing tongue, a pleasurable mild pain from the sandpaper-like squeezing from his hand, tickling from his scratchy beard against her sensitive chest, the sense of utter smallness caused by his hulking huge body and the ever present terror from the knowledge that too soon he would discover that she wasn’t a real woman.

Letting go of her engorged nipple with his lips, he kept his mouth only a few inches from her breast. As he talked, the breath coming from his lips cooled the damp nipple creating a new sensation. Within the baggy panties that Mary Jane was wearing, there was a sensation of warmth and growth as the lower half of her androgynous body reacted to his teasing.

“Mmmm, I like your small breasts very much. Your friend has nice breasts also but I like your breasts the best.”

She didn’t realized that her silent response to his unexpected compliment was that she slowly raised her tied hands and gently placed them around his neck, guiding his face back to the breast that he had been teasing for more mouth lavishing. It wasn’t until she felt his warm soft lips once again hungrily touch her sensitive nipple that she realized that he was creating such a strong passion within her body.