About The Gaucho Code

by Julia Talbot
32 pages / 8400 words
Ebook zipped file contains - html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub

Pete is running from the law, all the way from Texas to Argentina, where the local cowboys are a sight different than the horse thieves Pete knew back home. When he meets Jorge, he’s on his very last leg, and he needs a friend. Jorge would love to be more, but he tries to be content with helping Pete out of the gutter. Can Jorge convince Pete that the gaucho code is worth living?

Previously published in Cowboy Up!

Sample

The Pampas of Argentina, 1881

Jorge got a miserly fire going, the wind whipping across his back like a lash. Most days he loved what he did. Some nights, though. Oh, some nights he thought he was loco for doing what amounted to rounding up other men's cattle and selling them back. He knew he was a good gaucho. He could have lived at one of the big haciendas, maybe even been a jefe.

The life he led suited him too well to do that, though. No one expected a gaucho to get married. They all had mujeres, yes, but only to have children to carry on their work. So no one questioned Jorge's lack of a wife, not like they had in the village where he was born, the village he had left in shame when he was fourteen years old, caught with his hand around his prick as he watched the other boys bathe.

The fire finally burned hot enough to heat his water, and Jorge carefully lifted his little pot to sit on the flame. A cramp in his hand made him wince, and he cursed the stubborn vaca that had dislocated his thumb. Stupid, that was what he had been, and now it threatened to come back to haunt him as he almost spilled what was left of his Yerba Mate into the fire.

The herb fell into the traditional gourd cup instead, and Jorge nodded to the wind. "Si, si. I need to go to town. I will leave tomorrow. I promise."

Too bad the wind never answered back.