The School Marm

The School Marm

by Lubrican

Livvy Tyler hummed to herself as she got the room ready for school. It wasn’t much of a school house, to her mind, but it was all she had. It was about halfway between the “towns” of Red Rock and Lone Elm, as neither town could afford its own school. That put the school about seven miles from each, which, in 1843 meant she had to get up in the dark, saddle her horse and ride hard to get there before her students did. All of them were from farm or ranching families, and they were used to getting up at four in the morning.

She wasn’t.

But, she didn’t have much choice. She’d been lucky enough to land a good husband after she finished college back east, and unlucky that he’d died within a month and a half of the fever. Now, a 22 year old widow, she had to teach school to live. It wasn’t really all that bad a life, she thought to herself. She loved the lonely plains around her, and had a nice house the mayor had said she could live in. It was built of sod, but tight and cozy.

She wished the school house had been built of sod too, but the two towns coughed up enough to build a frame building, twelve by twelve feet, with a window in the west wall and a door in the north one. Three homemade tables, three chairs and two nail kegs comprised the furniture, if you didn’t count the old pot bellied stove. She smiled at the horse blankets on the walls. That was the one bright spot. She’d been introduced to the local friendly Indians when she got there and had fallen in love with their weaving. She had collected, so far, eight blankets, four of which she’d brought to school to brighten the place up. It had taken the last of the few pieces of jewelry she’d owned to get them, but, then, she didn’t need the jewelry anyway. There wasn’t much market for a widow in these parts, except for the cowboys, and they didn’t have anything to offer.

Well, nothing she was interested in, anyway. Of course they were all interested in HER. But all they wanted was to climb in the saddle and ride a while. They weren’t interested in setting up house. Not to say she didn’t miss her “saddle time”. Before Jim had gotten sick she’d had three weeks of intense and extremely enjoyable sex with him. Then he wasted away and died and she was so devastated she had pushed all thoughts of pleasure out of her mind.

That was two years ago. She still thought about sex once in a while, but decided she didn’t miss it all that much.

Unfortunately, the times she had been thinking about it lately involved one of her students.

That would be Josh Wilson, she thought to herself. At 18 he was long past school age, but as one of nine children, and the eldest, his father had dreams of him going to college back east and becoming a lawyer who could then support the rest of the family. Or at least supplement the ranch. Anyway, he was a good looking boy, strong as a bull, with an even temperament who was unfailingly polite to her and helpful with the other children. He often helped her by explaining things to them in terms they were familiar with. He taught math by asking combinations of numbers of cattle in a herd, the gestation period for a heifer, the number of cows a bull could service in a day and things like that. The first time she’d heard him talking about such things she’d started to upbraid him for being crude, but the child he was talking to “got it” so quickly she held her tongue. Now she knew the value of his techniques.

This year she had four more students. There were Rusty Powers and his sister Jean. They were both approaching the normal marriage age in these parts quickly, though neither had yet reached sixteen years. There was Timmy Spencer, who had only recently received his very first pistol and could hardly lift it, and Donna Malone, who was the Banker’s daughter and held herself to be better than the others. She was somewhere around eleven or twelve.

Livvy put two more logs in the stove. It was bitterly cold, being January on the plains. About all they supplied to burn was Cottonwood logs, which burned fast, with little heat, but it was better than nothing. At least she had plenty stacked up on the north wall, just outside the door. She’d been given a buffalo coat by the store owner after she audited his books and found several discrepancies that made him some money, and now she was glad. Without that she’d have frozen in this country. She couldn’t get away with wearing men’s pants, which she’d learned to love during her short marriage, wearing them in the house, where no one could see her. They were easy to take off for her husband, which had been one of her favorite hobbies. Wearing proper dresses was OK in the summer, but in winter, when she had to ride in the cold and wind, it was a real problem. She’d taken to wearing a pair of her husband’s leather pants under her skirts to ride to school, which she then took off and hid in the wood pile so the children wouldn’t know about them. That left her naked under her skirts during school, but who would ever know?

The door to the school opened and Rusty Powers staggered in. The wind blew the door closed behind him.

“Wow, Miss Livvy, that north wind’s picking up something fierce,” he said as he shrugged off his quilted coat and huddled up to the stove. The door opened again and his sister jumped through. Her face was red and she had her hands stuck in each armpit, trying to warm them. “Rusty, we just GOT to talk Pa into letting us ride one of the horses to school. It’s too blamed cold to walk.” She too was wearing skirts and a thick quilted coat. She huddled up to the stove, elbowing her brother out of the way. A pushing match started and Livvy cut it short with a simple “Stop that, children.” They did so immediately, and without comment, a testament to how highly they held her in their opinion.

There was a sound outside and the door opened again. Josh came in with a huge load of wood in his arms. The wind blew the door closed as he dumped the load on the floor next to the stove.

“Starting to snow” he said. Livvy had noticed the large fluffy flakes through the open door. “Looks like it might be a bad one.” Josh went on. He too was dressed in a coat made from buffalo hide, and it made him look like a bear or something. At least from the knees up. “Must be near zero” he said. “Creek’s plumb froze over.”

That made Livvy think of the canteen tucked away in her saddle bags. She’d better go get it before it froze. She shrugged into her coat and started for the door. The wind hit her like a fist when she pushed the door open. Her horse was tied out back, where the wind wouldn’t hit it directly. There was already snow collecting where it was blowing up against the building. She got her canteen out of the saddle bags, along with the lunch she’d packed. She was about to go back in when the wolf howled. It was close. She looked at the horse. She should take it inside, since it would be helpless out here. She’d just untied it when the wolf howled again, closer now. The horse gave a snort and jerked it’s head, jerking the reins out of her hand. She lurched for them, but the horse backed away, wild eyed. The wolf called again and the horse bolted.

She stomped into the school in a foul mood. Josh was there and took the things from her hand. “I heard the horse bolt” he said. “You want me to go after it?”

“No, Josh. Thank you. It’ll come back. This is the only place in ten miles where there’re people. I’ve never heard a wolf that close, before.”

“It’s the cold” he said. “They get hungry in this kind of cold.”

She started in the lessons, even though the other children hadn’t shown up. In this weather it wasn’t surprising. They were talking about history today, and she spun them a story about the Kings of old, and the Middle Ages, serfdom and what life had been like. Rusty pointed out that some things were still done that way even today and they had a pretty good discussion about it. By the time any of them thought to look outside it was already too late.

The storm had hit with a vengeance, and it was a blizzard of immense proportions. In just the two hours they had been engaged there was already over a foot and a half on the ground. It took both her and Josh to push the door open due to the snow that had piled up against it. They brought more wood inside.

“Maybe you all should go on home.” Livvy said.

Rusty laughed. “My boots have holes in them. I ain’t walkin’ eight miles in snow that deep. My pa’ll bring a sleigh for us when he sees we don’t come home. Jean just lifted her skirts high enough to show bare calves and Livvy realized the snow would come way past her shoes. For that matter, Livvy wasn’t going anywhere without her horse. Her pants were already buried in the snow at the end of the wood pile, and they’d be frozen stiff anyway. She looked at Josh. He just shook his head. “I can’t leave you all here in this weather alone. We’ll just wait for the sleigh.”

But the snow didn’t stop, and when the light began to fail and they went out for wood, they almost couldn’t get the door closed again because of the snow clogging it. They had to shovel snow inside the school with a flat piece of firewood to get the door closed.

“Looks like we’re here for the night” said Josh, like it was no big deal.

It WAS a big deal for Livvy though. Something had told her to save her lunch, and Rusty had a whole bag of jerky, so they had something to eat. There was plenty of snow to melt for water. But there wasn’t enough wood to last the night. “We’ve got to get more wood,” she said.

She and Josh went out in it. They passed logs through the open door to Rusty and he passed them to his sister. By the time they had what Livvy thought was enough, she was frozen through and caked with snow. Josh was too. The snow had gotten under their coats. When they got back inside and it inevitably thawed, they were both wet. Livvy began to shiver almost immediately. Even standing next to the stove didn’t warm her, because that part of her that wasn’t facing the stove was cold and wet. Jean had been around the frontier long enough to know what needed to be done.

“Miss Livvy, you have to get out of those wet clothes. You’ll catch your death of pneumonia if you don’t get dry and warm.”

Livvy glared at her. “And just how on earth am I supposed to do that? I have no dry clothes to put on. Just build up the fire. I’ll be all right.”

Now Rusty chimed in. “Miss Livvy, my sister’s right. You’ll get pneumonia for sure if you stay wet. But we can’t build up the fire. For one thing the stove won’t hold a lot more, and for another we can’t afford to use up all the wood. We don’t know how long we’re gonna be stuck here. If we run out of wood we might ALL die.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Take my clothes off in front of you children? And then what? How will I ever get warm?” Her teeth were starting to chatter now.

“Miss Livvy” said Jean. “I know you came from back east, but this is the west. Out here you do what you have to, to survive, and if that means getting naked then that’s what you have to do. I expect there isn’t anyone here who hasn’t seen what someone of the opposite sex looks like without clothes. And then we’ll bundle you up anyway, so no one will see you for long.”

Livvy glanced at Josh, who had a decidedly blue tinge to his face. He too was grinding his teeth to keep them from clacking together. Looking at him convinced her they might be in real trouble.

“Turn around” she ordered them firmly.

While they faced away from her Livvy undid the buttons and hooks and clasps of her dress. `Oh my goodness, what if they see I’m not wearing any underwear?` she thought to herself in panic. “Don’t any of you turn around until I tell you to.” she ordered again. Rusty snickered, but she was too cold to scold him. At last she was naked. She felt exposed, even though no one was looking at her. She darted to the wall and tore down an Indian blanket. It only covered her from her knees to just above her breasts, but that was better than nothing. She scurried back to the stove, trying to get near it’s warmth.

Josh was in agony. He hadn’t been this cold since he fell through the ice on the fishing pond when he was 14. He hadn’t wanted to say anything, because he was a man and all. But he knew he had to do something soon or he might lose some fingers and toes, if not worse. He was distracted by movement on his left and, without thinking he glanced that way. It was Miss Livvy, getting a blanket off the wall.

He forgot the cold for just a few seconds. She was beautiful! Her skin was so pale it looked ghostly white. Her breasts looked like those of a twelve or thirteen year old girl, rounded, but not bulging. The only color on them were the pink of her nipples. Between her pale legs was a thatch of pure black hair that matched that on her head. It wasn’t thick and bushy, but seemed to be made up of short straight hairs that lay down against her skin as if they had been combed. She was slim and boyish in appearance, but at the same time all woman. He felt his penis twitch and forced his mind back to the cold. He couldn’t afford to lose any blood from his extremities.

Livvy was still cold, particularly on the bottom of her feet, but it wasn’t as bad as when she’d been wearing wet clothes. Maybe they were right. She thought about Josh, and how he had looked. “All right, now Josh, you must do the same thing. Off with those wet things and get yourself a blanket.

Josh didn’t wait another minute. He started stripping down. First his shirt came off, displaying his heavily muscled chest and shoulders. Then he dropped the homespun pants. He wasn’t wearing underwear.

Livvy had completely forgotten to ensure his modesty as she had demanded hers be honored. As a result, no one in the room turned away from Josh as he disrobed. Rusty didn’t think a thing as Josh’s adult cock sprang into view.

Not so with Livvy and Jean. Both stared openly at what made him male. Jean had seen plenty of horse and bull cocks, which is immediately what she thought of when his flopped free of his pants. For Livvy it was something more personal. The only penis she had ever seen was her husband’s. She’d assumed that they were all about the same size, since men were generally about the same size as each other in other ways. Her husband’s cock had fit comfortably in her hand, with a little sticking out when she grasped it. It had reached inside her and felt wonderful when he made love to her with it. It had brought her much pleasure, and she had adored it.

Now, seeing Josh’s, she wondered if she had married a boy after all.