Page 10 of Runaway Hucow

He lifted her off his shoulder and placed her atop the chestnut mare, that one being the smallest of the three horses. Even in her dirty shift of roughspun cotton, the little female looked majestic in the saddle. A hucow queen. Her ears twitched nervously as she looked into his eyes, which were level with her own. Her lips trembled, and he felt a dribble of precum run down his leg inside his britches.

“Are… are you going to take me back to Crooked Valley?” she asked.

“No ma’am. I said before, I’m not interested in collecting any bounty, and I meant it.”

“Then… where are we going?”

“We can talk about that later. For now, we just need to move. It’s not safe here, and I want to put as much distance between us and Crooked Valley as possible. I’m too big to ride, so I’ll lead one of the other horses, but I’ll need you to pony the third alongside you. Can you do that for me?”

The hucow nodded. Even that simple gesture made his heart throb and his cock ache. Everything about her drove him wild. She was the most incredible female he had ever seen.

He went around to get the reins of the sorrel, and as he did so, the hucow let out a startled gasp. He immediately turned and looked at her, and as soon as he saw the dark red stains on her fingertips, his heart climbed into his throat.

“You’re hurt!” he said.

“No,” said the hucow, shaking her head. “It’s not my blood.”

But if the blood wasn’t hers…

For the first time, he became aware of a stinging pain on the outside of his left arm, just above the elbow. He flung back the edge of his cloak, and sure enough, there was a gash seeping blood. Incredible. He’d been so focused on his little hucow, he hadn’t even felt that until now.

“You’ve been shot!” the hucow cried.

“It’s not bad, ma’am. It only grazed me.” It must have been from the leader of the three bounty hunters. His pistol had gone off as soon as the buckshot had taken him in the chest.

He opened up the saddlebags on the sorrel and fished around inside until he found a flannel shirt. He tore one of the sleeves off and tied it around his wounded arm, using his teeth to pull the knot tight. That would be good enough for now.

He took the reins of the sorrel so the little hucow could lead the horse alongside her as she rode the chestnut mare. Then he went around to the other side and took the reins of the third horse, the buckskin, so he could lead that one himself while he jogged along on foot. His legs were strong enough to keep pace with a horse any day.

“Alright,” he said, “Let’s go.”

“Wait!” the hucow said. “I… I still don’t know your name.”

“You can call me Spike, ma’am.”

“Spike,” she said softly, as if weighing the name on her tongue. “My name’s—”

“Tess. I know.”

My Tess, he thought. Mine and my brothers’.

CHAPTER 7

It was funny, Tess thought. Here she was, in a cave with a monster—a real monster—and for the first time in a long time, she actually felt safe.

They had spent most of the day traveling, Tess on horseback, the minotaur jogging along beside her. In spite of his incredible size, the bisonman had incredible stamina. He’d been able to keep pace with the loping horses all day long without ever seeming to tire.

He had been true to his word about not taking Tess back to Crooked Valley. Instead, they’d been traveling south and west, and Tess had made no complaint about that. That was the direction she wanted to go.

In the evening, just as the sun was starting to graze the peaks of distant mountains in the west, they came upon a strange up-fling of yellow stone rising out of a little grove of cottonwoods on the banks of a small river. It was here, the minotaur had declared, that they would spend their night. He obviously knew the place well, because he had immediately found the mouth of a good-sized cavern among the rocks. It would shelter them from the night wind and hide the light of their campfire if they made one, and there was plenty of room inside for all of them, including the three horses.

So, here Tess was, in a cave with a monster.

“Minotaur” was what most folks called them, though that name wasn’t technically correct. The mythological minotaur had been a grotesque beast with the body of a man with the head of a bull. The big, horned creatures who had come into existence in the years following the Occurrence were a little different from that. They didn’t have bulls’ heads exactly, but rather something that was a blend of bull and human. They were also the male counterparts of hucows like Tess.

But the creature sharing the cave with Tess was something else entirely. He was a bison minotaur. Tess hadn’t even known such a thing existed.

And his name was Spike.