I swung my axe and it bit into the beautiful yellow wood. I love chopping old oak trees, they have such a golden tone to their wood and inside that, a rosy core that makes your heart sing. As if the thought brought the thing, the next chop cleared a square chunk of wood and there it was, the core. I was nearly to the point where it would.
There was a cracking sound, slow, deep sounds on a level that it was like you weren't hearing it with your ears but with your entire body. And the tree wavered, so slowly, I watched it carefully, a tree had to fall the right way when you cut it down and...
At first I thought it was going to go to the right but at the last instance, the tree pivoted and turned to fall dead center on my forecut, the long clearing I'd made to accommodate the falling tree. Perfect.
I sat my axe head on the ground and straightened my back, feeling the pleasant ache that comes with exertion. I used the back of my free hand to wipe my forehead free of the sweat that had hung there in heavy beads while I chopped, and then I looked around at the other loggers working in this area. None of us worked very close to the others, after all, falling trees are falling trees, but we stayed in the same vicinity, working approximately in a line through this section of the forest.
And there were the trimmers, the men who cut the branches from the trees and the draggers, who pulled the tree logs down the hill toward the river. We used the river to transport the logs downstream to the mill where it would be cut into lengths of lumber and loaded on ships or wagons to travel to the various towns where they wanted to build new houses, new businesses, new lives. It was good, being a part of that.
"Liking the view, Galen?" came a rough voice. I looked around to see one of the other loggers nearby. I hadn't heard him come up.
"Just resting between trees, Zack." I said.
"Not used to hard work, are you?" he grinned meanly. It was easy with his rough brown beard and bushy eyebrows and cold blue eyes. This guy had to be about ten years older than me, which put him in the latter half of his thirties, and the winds and rains and snows and ice and heat had weathered the exposed parts of his hairy face to a consistency of hard leather. Hard leather, hardwood (oaks and hickories are hardwoods, pines and firs are softwoods), hard work and hard men, everything in this life was hard.
I could have explained that I'd grown up scarcely two hundred miles south of here and known the woods all my life and how to swing an axe for more than two-thirds of my life. It wouldn't have mattered to Zack, who was spoiling for a fight with me for no reason I could see. Maybe it was just that I was new to this job, maybe it was because I kept myself clean-shaven, an affectation in the Pacific northwest's logging regions. So I didn't bother. "I can handle anything you can." was what I settled for saying.
"You think you can take me, do you?" was his answer.
"I can damn well cut better'n you can." I said. This was simple fact, as of noon, I'd cut down six trees, he'd only cut four, and I'd done two more so far this afternoon. "And you won't catch up today if you don't get back to your work."
I turned away, to turn back in surprise when I heard what he said next. "You fucking son of a bitch, you can't talk to me like that!"
I held my temper. "Jacob don't like his men fighting on the job, you know that." Jacob, the foreman, a big solid man, the sort I strived to become, had told me the rules of the job with simple, clear words simply stated.
"So we'll take care of our little differences tonight, then!" Zack declared. I nodded, you can't live this life and be afraid to fight when you need to. Then he tilted his head back and called out, "Balaree, me n Galen, an hour after supper tonight!"
Another logger nearby took up the call. "Balaree, Zack and Galen, an hour after supper!" And the other loggers carried the call all over the worksite.
What the hell was "Balaree?" I wondered. But there wasn't anyone around to ask, and I figured it'd wait.
I was halfway through the undercut of my next tree when I heard another voice talking to me. "I hear you've been talking to Zack."
I turned at that voice, soft but masculine, and I turned. "He's been talking to me." I admitted to Jacob. God, with his broad shoulders, massive chest that jutted out over his narrow waist and hips, the work shirt rolled up to nearly his shoulders, and the massive rolls of material still couldn't match the huge biceps that adorned each arm. He, too, was clean-shaven, with wavy brown hair kept cut short, a noble square jaw and cleft chin, narrow nose and smoldering dark-brown eyes that bored into your soul. A leader among men and a man among men was Jacob.
"He called a Balaree." Jacob said. "I came to see if you know what a Balaree is."
"I haven't a clue." I admitted. "I know I have to fight him, though."
"A Balaree..." Jacob hesitated. "The men say it's an Indian word, it's been around here since my father's day." His father had passed away some half-dozen years ago, I knew, it was why Jacob, a man in his late twenties, was the owner of all this land. "When the men say it, it means a fight, yes, it's the bet laid on in those fights that is the actual Balaree."
"All right." I digested that. I'd agreed not only to a fight with Zack, but a bet on the outcome. "What is the Balaree."
"Balaree means the winner of the fight gets to fuck the loser." Jacob stated, a simple fact as though he were saying, "It's going to rain tonight." Unpleasant but unavoidable.
"Oh." I said to that.
"I can't do anything to stop the fight, not when Balaree is declared and accepted." Jacob went on. "But you might want to drop by the cook's shack and get your, uh, bottom part lubricated. Cook'll be there with some of his cooking grease, but Zack may not want to wait until he takes care of it. Thought you'd better know."
"Well," I hesitated. "Thanks, but I'll be all right. Thanks for the warning, though."
"Are you sure about that?" Jacob pressed me. "I mean, Zack's one mean mother."
"I can see that." I said. "But I know a thing or two about fighting myself."
I could feel him giving up. I wouldn't listen to him, had to learn the hard way, well, all right then. That kind of giving up. "Just thought you'd ought to know."
"And I appreciate that." I said. Jacob moved off and I resumed chopping on my tree.
Any hope I had that Zack had forgotten about the squabble vanished during supper. It's our biggest meal, and the hour respite after was sorely needed by all of us. But I spent that meal and that hour being regaled by Zack's past exploits and the dreaded hammer he was slinging between his legs. I was told that he made everyone squeal and most people bleed, and cook came by at least twice to offer to grease me up ahead of time like Jacob had suggested. The second time, I was getting pretty sore how everyone expected me to be the loser in this battle. "Go offer to grease up Zack! He's the one going to need it!" I snarled at the cook, a decent Joe, I apologized to him afterwards, when it was all over.
But the hour passed and it was time. It started slowly, a chant. "Balaree! Balaree! Balaree!"
Lower, a few guys, then more and more. They'd cleared the chairs in the central room of the lodge for us and that was where I was, and Zack, as I'd learned without asking that this was where the fight would be. Now the men in the middle cleared out and Zack stepped into the middle. "Come on, pretty boy! It's time for you to get a butt-whipping, and then an ass-whipping!" And everyone laughed at the dumb joke.
I just kept my cool and got out into the center where Zack was and raised my fists. Carefully putting them in not quite the right position. Oh, did I forget to mention that I had been raised by a father that owned a gym and had learned how to wrestle and box from the best? I had, not that I'd ever mentioned it to any of the guys at this lumbercamp.
So Zack and I began to fight and it was a foregone conclusion. Zack and I were both throwing punches, and since he was bigger, broader and more muscular than me, he assumed he'd win. But his punches were missing or landing wrong, and mine were striking dead on target. After about five minutes, it had gone to a one-way slugging on my side, and a handful of those, and he went the rest of the way down. I looked at him on the floor, moaning and considered kicking him, didn't. He was beaten.
I straightened up and looked around. "I believe this means I have won." I said simply.
"You damned sure have!" one of them bellowed and there was a general chorus of agreement.
"Time to give it to him!"
"Cook should have been offering the lube up to him!"
"Hey, cookie, we got you a customer here!"
"No, no!" Zack groaned. "I wasn't supposed to lose!"
"But you did. Now get your clothes off and your ass up in the air so's he can fuck it!"
"No, no!"
And the men, Zack's friends, grabbed. "Now come on, Zack, you done porked plenty of us over the years, now haven't you? About time someone took that cherry of your'n, and you joined the rest of us."
"No, God damn it, let me go, let me go!" Zack squirmed in their clutches, but these men were hard men, hard as they were, and they didn't give way one inch, as Zack was divested of shoes, socks and trousers and underclothes. Soon I was looked at him wearing only a shirt and the hair on his body...a lot of hair. Hair on his buttocks, on his legs, a thick thatch at his crotch that covered his testicles so that they couldn't be seen. Such a hairy man and him looking up at me with eyes filled with terror.
"You can make them let me go, can't you?" He begged me. You can tell them to let me go, that you don't want me?" A querulous tone, it wasn't a statement, it was a pleading suggestion.
"Better grease him up, Cookie." I said. "Better grease me up, too, if he's a virgin."
"No, oh, God, no!" Zack whined and writhed. But a burly man held both arms and neither one gave way. The hard laws of hard men are not to be bucked for reasons of mere friendship. Zack had invoked one of their customs, now he must follow-through, it was nothing else. Not that they weren't showing a certain amount of satisfaction here. Zack had challenged them in the past, defeated them, rammed their asses. Now they were about to see someone give him a taste of what it was like.
"Please, man, don't do it to me, please!" Zack whined as I undid my trousers and pushed them down to mid-thigh.
Cookie was snuffling like an eager dog as his hand, palm loaded with grease and he grabbed my tool and began slathering it over my dong, pumping it into rigidity as he worked it. "Whoo-ee, he's got himself a real log-splitter here, Zack!" he said as his hands stroked on my pud. "If'n I were you, I'd be saying my prayers that he felt like being kind to you."
I looked and saw Jacob at one side, watching the proceedings. I felt his strong eyes on me and my cock jerked and stirred under that gaze. He wanted to see me fuck Zack. All right, I'll give my boss man a show. "That's enough. Spread his legs, boys, I need to get between them."
Two men were quick to step in and grab Zack's legs, he howled as they lifted them up and held them wide, so that he was open and available to me. I waddled over with my hampered thighs limiting my steps, then awkwardly knelt between those legs, and now Zack was being lifted by those two brutes that held his legs upwards so his ass would align with my dong. All I had to do was shove it forward and that is what I did.
"Ahhh, ahhh, ahhhh!" Zack moaned as he felt my glans contact his sphincter. "You can't do this to me, you can't!"
I didn't argue, I just grabbed hold of his legs for my own leverage, and I shoved at his butt, hard. A virginal ass doesn't give way easily and I didn't want to be too gentle on this guy. My force and the greased that was slathered on my pud and coaxed into his anus combined to make harvesting his cherry smooth and simple. For me, at least.
Zack howled like a wolf at the harvest moon as I drove my dong into him. He howled and the men cheered, egging me on. "Come on, Galen, pluck that cherry butt!"
"Make him squeal, Galen!"
"Plug him harder, plug him harder!"
It was like Zack didn't have a friend in the group! But they were his friends...the hard friends that hard men make.
Zack moaned and I shoved again and buried my prod to the hilt. "Aw, man, you can't do this to me, you can't!"
"I didn't start this." I told him harshly. "But I'm ending it. Like this!" And I began to hunch at Zack's butt hard and fast. No attempt to make him enjoy it like I would have if this had been anything else. Just fuck his ass, make him hurt, make him yell.
He did yell, a lot, his screams must have scared the deer for miles around. But no amount of yelps from him did any good and soon his screams died down and he damped down into moans as I ram-fucked his butt.
"I think Zack's beginning to like being fucked." one man hooted at the look on Zack's face.
"Bet he's thinking about which one of us he wants to mount his butt next."
"Ooohh!" Zack moaned.
"Yeah, he's getting a woody and a half from having a cock up his ass."
"Oooh, oooh!"
"Oh, yeah, he's getting into it. Come on, Galen, finish him off and fill his butt full. He's your ass-slave now. Can't get enough of it."
I saw motion from one side and looked to see Jacob moving to get a better view of things. He was looking right at me. Again, the power in that gaze filled my senses and stirred my loins. And I felt my climax boiling up within me.
My world receded into only two things. The feel of my cock in Zack's ass and the feel of Jacob's eyes on me fucking Zack's ass. They surged to fill my brain, merged, and exploded in the only way such feelings can explode, in orgasm.
I groaned, drove my dong in deep and held it there, and ejaculated a heavy load into Zack's ass. Zack keened, rose upwards in the clutches of the four hard men that held him tight, and white spunk fountained up to splatter him and them indiscriminately.
A roar of laughter arose around us, the men were enjoying this show. I had made Zack come, the ultimate humiliation for this large, strong, hard man, to climax in the midst of being ass-fucked. Me, I writhed in the throes of ecstasy while hearing this masculine approval of highest order, and felt the king of the world, master of destiny, lord of eternity. I unloaded my spunk into his ass and with him wailing and bemoaning his traitor cock, his traitor body, his traitor friends and his lot in life, I pulled away and rested with my buttocks resting on the backs of my heels, catching my breath while Cookie gleefully wiped my dong clean for me. I stuffed Old Glory back into his berth in my pants and got to my feet. Zack was being ferried away by the other men, upstairs.
Cookie was the only one who remained. I looked at him and asked, "Are they going to gang-rape him?"
"Nah." he said to me, reassuringly. "They'll clean him up, bandage him if he needs it, and put him to bed. They'll rag on him for losing the next several days, though."
"That's good." I said.
"Boss wants to see you, up in his room." Cookie ended and took off for the kitchen and presumably his own bed. I made it to the boss' room, it was on the same floor in the front, after all. It was a combination living room and office, writing desk, table, chair and bed sharing the same generous sized room. He was sitting at his desk writing in a ledger and turned to look at me in silence before he finally spoke.
"You never told me you were a professional boxer."
"I grew up in a gym." I explained. "I learned a lot, being sparring partners for the others and such. I didn't mention it, because I came here to be a lumberjack, not a boxer."
"But they all know it now." Jacob went on. "Sven Olafson, now, he's a boxer, too. And several of the others have a high opinion about their abilities. Jack McPherson, and Daniel Isaacs both think they can beat anybody."
"So I'm going to have to do this all over again." I got to my feet, winced. Working hard all day and then fighting. Rough life. "How long will this go on?"
"Probably until you lose for the first time and get your ass fucked like Zack did. Got to happen to everyone sooner or later."
"It ever happen to you?"
"My father put me to work when I turned fifteen." Jacob said and didn't say more. I can imagine what a young lad among these wolves would have fared, boss' son or not. So I didn't push.
"So, any suggestions on what I should do?" I asked.
"I'd say you should pick a guy you like and lose to him." Jacob advised. "Once everyone knows you can be beat, they won't be so eager to take you on yourself."
"I see." I said. "So I should just pick my favorite guy and say Balaree,' then fall over when he throws a punch at me, huh?"
"That's about it." Jacob affirmed and turned back to his work.
I walked over to where he was perched on the high stool and cleared my throat. He turned to look at me, his smoldering eyes catching the fire of the lamplight. "Boss man?"
"Yeah?"
I leaned in closer. "Balaree."
His face didn't exchange expression as he rose to his feet in front of me, and one hand, closed into a fist, wended its way toward my face. Slow.
It struck me with all the force of a kitten's paw.
"Argh!" I said and staggered backwards. "You got me, boss man! I give up, you win, you win, don't hit me anymore!" I kept staggering back until I was able to collapse onto his bed.
He walked over to stand above me, his face still solemn and still. Then his mouth twitched, moved to a one-sided smile and his hands rose to his belt and began unfastening it. I threw over my self-imposed unconsciousness and began tearing off my own clothes.
Naked on his bed, I spread my legs and he clambered nude on the bed to hover over me, and I wrapped my legs around his strong waist. "You got any of that grease handy?" I asked him.
I'd been busy taking my own clothes off, his answer was to push his cock up against my asshole and it began to slide inside (he'd lubed it before getting in and I hadn't seen). Oh, damn, that felt so good!
I put my arms around him as well and he leaned down to rest his weight on his elbows and shoved his dong in me deeper. "Don't know if I can come again so fast, boss man." I warned him.
"We'll have to see what happens." he murmured as he began to fuck me.
God, it felt so good, my cock rose to the occasion and soon I was moaning right with him. His majestically masculine face was softened with passion and as he opened his mouth and closed his eyes, raised his head up and thrust into me deeper and harder, I felt my own climax rise once again. With a long, low groan, he arced his back and rose onto his hands and with his prong deep inside me, he blew his cream-load into me, long and slow and hard, it gushed into me and I squinched my eyes shut and my cock jetted a surprisingly energetic wad that splashed against his muscular stomach.
His chest blew hot gusts of breath into my face as he lowered himself once again and I pulled him down to rest his weight upon me, I wanted to feel his bare flesh fully against mine. "I guess that takes care of the problem, huh, boss man?"
"It would if anyone knew you and I had done it." he pointed out.
"Oh." I said. "Guess I'd better spend the night, then."
"That'd help."
"You'd probably better fuck me a few more times through the night, too." I added. "Just to make sure."
"I think you're right." Jacob said and we kissed.
"I'm glad you're watching out for me." I said when we stopped.
"You're a good man." Jacob explained. "And a good man is hard to find."
"Yeah." I said. "And a hard man is good to find, too."
"They sure are." Jacob grinned as he kissed me again.