Page 1 of Runaway Hucow

CHAPTER 1

The Crooked Valley auction block was a crude and ugly affair, fashioned from disused railroad ties that reeked of creosote and sweat in the hot Colorado sun. It loomed above a dusty little patch of ground which the denizens of Crooked Valley referred to as the town square, though in reality it was more of a lopsided circle, surrounded by all the typical buildings one would expect to find in a moderately prosperous frontier town. There was a wireless telegraph office, a train station, and an airship dock, plus a few good-sized livery stables where travelers could keep their horses while they were in town. And of course there was a whole slew of saloons, gambling dens, and brothels where cowboys and firestone miners could rid themselves of their hard-earned money—and, if they weren’t careful, their lives.

But on this fine and sunny afternoon in the summer of 1890, the main attraction was the auction block.

It was the last place Tess Bradford wanted to be.

She was standing at the side of the stage, waiting for her turn to be called. She’d been waiting ever since the auction had started earlier that morning, and she would have been perfectly happy to keep right on waiting till Judgement Day. But one by one, all the other hucows had been auctioned off to the noisy crowd of ranchers and cowboys, until finally Tess was the only one left.

The final hucow.

Like the others, her only clothing was a simple sack of roughspun cotton that hung down past her knees. She was sweating profusely, as much from nerves as from the heat, and the dirty, dun-colored fabric clung uncomfortably to her moist skin. Her long hair was tied back in horsetails to keep her dark tresses from hanging down and hiding her “assets” when her time came to show them off.

“These men ain’t here to buy hucows,” the auctioneer had told them at the start of the day. “They’re here to buy your teats—the rest of you is just along for the ride.”

At the time, Tess had been infuriated by those words. She was more than just a pair of breasts. She was a woman, damn it. A hucow woman, yes—with small horns protruding from her forehead, and long bovine ears that twitched when she was nervous—but a woman nonetheless. She had a brain and a heart and feelings, just like anyone else, and when the auctioneer had told her otherwise, she would have liked to give the smarmy little bastard a good swift kick in the balls.

At least then he’d be forced to admit she had feet as well as “teats.”

Now, however, Tess was too scared to be angry. In another moment, she would be called forward to present herself to the crowd, and she knew all too well what that entailed. She’d watched it happen dozens of times already.

It was all she could do to keep from running away, but she knew it would be useless to even try. The men who worked for the auction had horses and fancy electric cattle prods manufactured by the Coppelius Corporation in New York City. If she tried to flee, they would catch her and torture her.

And then they would sell her just the same.

The situation was utterly hopeless. She had no choice but to go along with the show and accept her fate. She just hoped whichever rancher ended up buying her wouldn’t be overly cruel.

Tess looked at the auctioneer, who was standing in the middle of the stage haranguing the crowd. He was a small man, even shorter than Tess, but he had a big voice that boomed out across the town square and echoed off the wooden facades of the buildings on the far side. He was dressed in shirt sleeves and waistcoat, with a short-brimmed bowler hat perched atop his bald head and a little curly mustache sprouting from his upper lip. He dabbed his sweaty face with a handkerchief while he spoke.

“Goodness me, gentlemen, it surely has been a hot one… and that’s the auction I’m referring to now, not the weather!” A ripple of laughter passed through the crowd. “Yessiree, it’s been one hell of an auction, friends, pardon my language. Why, some of y’all have gotten such good deals today, I’ve half a mind to call upon the sheriff and report you all for highway robbery!”

This was met with a second, louder wave of amusement. Tess had a feeling there wasn’t any sheriff in Crooked Valley, and if there was, he probably took a hands-off approach to law and order. She knew how things operated in these frontier towns.

“But we ain’t quite finished yet!” the auctioneer went on. “Oh, no siree! We got one more hucow to auction off, and I’ll tell you what, friends, I’ve been saving the best for last—oh yes, I have! Let’s get ’er on out here so y’all can have a look at ’er!” He turned toward Tess and motioned for her to come forward.

She couldn’t. She was paralyzed with fear.

A sudden electric jolt got her moving. One of the men standing behind her had pressed a cattle prod against her backside and zapped her through the fabric of her shift. Tess gasped in pain and stumbled out onto the center of the stage. The sun-baked boards were hot against the soles of her bare feet.

The auctioneer came up beside her and hissed at her under his breath. “Don’t you go fucking this up, heifer. If you don’t sell, I’m gonna make you wish you’d never been born, understand?”

Tess nodded.

She would have preferred to punch the man in his ugly little face, but she knew if she did that, she’d be forced to taste the sting of the cattle prods again, this time with a higher voltage. No thanks.

“Good heifer,” the man whispered, and gave her a lecherous pat on the bottom, which still stung from the prod.

Tess turned away from him in disgust and looked out over the so-called town square. She was grateful to see that the crowd had dwindled. During the peak of the auction a few hours before, there had been hundreds of men standing in front of the stage calling out their bids. Now there were only a few dozen of them left. Half a hundred at most.

That was still far more than Tess was comfortable with.

She ran her eyes over the crowd, searching the faces, wondering which of those men would become her new owner. Most of them were working men, farmers in overalls and cowboys in rawhide chaps. Others looked more like businessmen in their tailored suits with golden watch chains hanging from the pockets. None of them seemed like particularly appealing prospects. They all had the same cold, greedy look in their eyes. They didn’t see Tess as a person. They didn’t even see her as an animal. To them she was nothing but a commodity, pure and simple.

Then her eyes stopped on a figure standing near the back…

…and her heart stopped with them.

The man was tall and broad of shoulder, a veritable giant compared to the other men. Although the day was hot, he was dressed in a cloak of wooly buffalo hides, and atop his head sat an Indian war bonnet fashioned from a buffalo’s head. Deadly black horns curved upward from the sides, adding to the man’s already imposing stature. His features were all but invisible beneath the shade of his unusual headwear, but Tess could see his dark eyes glinting like two pieces of volcanic glass. Those eyes seemed to strip her bare, not just of her thin, sweat-stained clothing, but of her flesh and blood as well. They seemed to look all the way into the deepest, darkest part of her soul.