"JD! What the hell you doin' hangin' around in here?" Vin threw the curry brush into a pile of hay in disgust."Gee, Vin, I didn't know ya felt so stronglike about your horse," JD giggled, emerging from the stall next to where Vin combed down his mount.
"Shaddup, JD. You don't know whatcher talkin' about." Vin grumbled.
"I'd sure like to know more about what you were talking about, though," JD grinned, hitching his belt buckle. "Sounded like you were working up a mighty strong persuasion for somebody special..."
"Show's what you know, dammit. I wasn't talkin' fer anybody's benefit ‘cept mine. You shouldn't go listenin' in on other folks' stuff. Didn't yer mama never tell you to mind yer own bizniss?" Vin spat his words out from between clenched teeth.
"Hey, I gotta as much right as anyone... Anyway, I was just returning that bridle I tried out," JD said innocently.
"Well, ya shouldn't go sneakin' around on folks. Ain't right." Vin said sourly, running his fingers through the hair on top his head.
JD chuckled at the sharpshooter's obvious discomfort at being caught practicing words of love. The young lawman knew Vin composed poems now and then, but what he'd just heard sounded like something you shouldn't go around reciting in gentle company. "Okay, Vin. Okay," JD held up his palms in capitulation. "But I wouldn't mind knowing who you thought you were gonna woo with stuff like that."
"Yer talkin' crazy, JD. I don't know what you thought you heard, but you just got a wild ‘magination ‘sall. Now, just stay out of it, okay?"
JD smiled real wide. "You got the hots for that new gal over at the hotel, Vin? She looks like someone a man could get real friendly with."
Vin glared at the younger man. "Aw, shit." He turned on his heel, stomping out of the stable.
************************
"I couldn't believe my ears!" the long-haired man exclaimed eagerly to his audience.
"Well now, JD, you ain't been out West all that long," Buck reminded his friend. "You been known to confuse things you ‘thought' you heard," Buck smirked, warming to his topic. "Like, how ‘bout the time you said Chris said fer everyone to get a bucket–"
"Stop it, Buck. I don't need reminding about when I was green out here. I'm saying that *today* I heard Vin, in the stable, talking some serious dirty stuff to his horse! Only he wasn't meaning it for the horse..."
"Well, young brother, you never know what a man might be thinking after a hard day in the saddle," Josiah said sagely, smothering the snicker that tried to sneak out with his words.
JD rolled his eyes at Josiah. "Fine. I won't tell ya what I heard. Anyways, not sure I could repeat some of it. That Vin's got a way with words, though..." he trailed off, shaking his head at his friends' loss.
"By all means, Mr. Dunne, enlighten us as to Mr. Tanner's fluency with the ways of Eros. We're all expectant with curiosity."
JD squinted suspiciously at Ezra, not entirely sure about his meaning, but getting it enough to know he'd been given the go-ahead to regale his friends with Vin's sexy poetry. "Well, the first part I heard had to do with ‘riding you at a full gallop–'"
"Sounds like he was talkin' ‘bout his horse after all," Nathan speculated. "‘–til your knees grow weak,'" JD finished quoting, raising an eyebrow in question at Nathan.
Four pairs of eyes fastened on JD, who continued. "There was stuff about ‘tasting all the parts of you...'"
"You, who?" Buck wanted to know. "Better not be that pretty new senorita over at the hotel bar," he declared proprietarily, slapping his palm on the table and sloshing drops of whiskey from their glasses.
"Patience, friend. Patience. Let's let JD tell us more," Josiah soothed, nodding at the storyteller to resume his job.
"He said something about ‘blowing warm breath across tight skin..."
"Mmmm-mmm! Still waters sure do run deep," Nathan commented admirably.
"...and then he said he'd," JD lowered his voice and whispered loudly, ‘suck' something I couldn't hear, ‘and explore your deep well...'" he finished up with a satisfied grin.
"My, my," Ezra exhaled. "Who knew...?"
"Well?! What's the rest?" Buck demanded.
"I didn't get any more," JD shrugged.
A chorus of groans arose from the listeners.
"He wasn't exactly hollerin' this stuff and you know how Vin can mumble sometimes, and the horses were making, well, horse noises..." JD squirmed uncomfortably in his chair, the glares from the other peace-keepers giving him shivers. "That's when he found me, anyway."
"He found you listenin' in on ‘im?!" Buck whooped with glee. "That musta been good. What the hell did he say?"
"I said to keep his snotty nose outta grown-ups' bizniss." Vin smacked the back of JD's head playfully and pulled up a chair, straddling it.
The other men, as a group, jumped guiltily. No one had noticed the tracker steal up on Indian-trained feet to stand behind the pillar at JD's back before making his presence known.
"What you been up to, Junior," Buck asked, regaining his composure. "Writin' some of that ‘poetry' for a certain someone?"
Vin smiled with one corner of his mouth, but didn't respond.
"And, of whom, pray tell, would you be conjuring such erotic visions?" the gambler prodded.
"What's ‘erotic'?" JD asked
"Who's having erotic visions?" Chris inquired joining the group.
"Ask yer pupil here," Nathan said to Chris, nodding in Vin's direction.
"Oh, I get it!" Buck jumped in. "You've been workin' with Vin on his letters. You readin' erotica to the boy, Chris?"
"What's ‘erotica'?" JD asked.
Chris eyed Vin then surveyed the crowd. "Ain't done any such thing. Have I, Vin?" he inquired, returning his inscrutable stare to the man in question.
"Nope, didn't learn no erotica from any book of yers."
"What's ‘erotica'?!"
"But ya got inspired somewhere, Vin. Who's the lucky gal that's got yer mind and whatever else in a twist?" Buck waggled his brows, suggestively.
"Can't a man just think poetically? Y'all can't think with nothin' but yer dicks." The tracker tsk'ed his disapproval. "Well," he slapped his knees, "I'm ready fer my next lesson, Chris. You set?"
Chris chomped on a toothpick and squinted around the table at the chastised bunch of men. "Sure, Vin," he drawled, unfolding his frame from the chair. "Let's head on out."
The two gunmen tipped their hats at their still-seated compatriots and ambled through the bat-wing doors of the saloon.
"Vin don't seem too upset by being caught airing his thoughts," Nathan commented.
"Maybe there ain't nobody afterall," Buck mused. "Hell, the onliest person he spends any time with these days is Chris and them books of his."
"I think it's safe to say that our introspective friend wasn't waxing poetic about the taciturn Mr. Larabee," Ezra observed, shuffling his deck of cards.
"Hah! That's a good one," Nathan hooted, slapping the table.
"Now, Ez, you coulda gone all day without creating that picture...." Josiah admonished, shaking his big head.
"Oooo-eee, now there's a strange idea." Buck shivered and grimmaced.
The talk around the table died down as each man weighed the possibilities....
"Naw," Buck waved his hand in the air as if to wash away the very thought. "Vin'd be more likely to be lovin' that horse of his."
The other men laughed and shifted in their chairs resuming their cardgame, happy to have the scales of their lives back in balance.
JD scooped up his cards, fanned them and turned his head to Ezra. "What's ‘erotica'?"
************************
"What the hell brought that conversation on?" Chris asked as he and Vin rode their horses side by side through a field.
"I didn't know JD was in the stable and he overheard me, uh, practicin'."
"Practicin'?" They reached a grove of trees and dismounted.
"Yeah," Vin shrugged. "I wanted to hear what the words sounded like out loud."
"Next time you feel like expressin' yerself–" Chris said seductively, pulling Vin forward until their hips pressed together, "–do it to me," he whispered into Vin's mouth before crushing it in a torrid kiss.
"Now a good time?" Vin whispered back, clasping his arms around Chris's back to bring his secret lover as close as he could.
"Yeah, let me have it, Cowboy."
The End