Chapter 27: Margaret

The girl that sat on the pulled-down steps of the fancy carriage looked sad indeed, nearly despondent, head down and knees wide apart. She was drawing on the ground with a stick. She glanced up as I dismounted and gave me a wan smile. There was neither team nor driver in sight so the problem was obvious.

She stood and my cock stirred. She was a true stunner, dressed in the height of fashion and sporting a mop of dark red hair that cascaded over her shoulders and well down her straight back, a torrent of copper curls. I am, I know, a fool for redheads.

She put her hands on her hips and thus spread open her short jacket and displayed her bulging chest and trim waist. I smiled and knuckled my forehead, admiring her youth and beauty, wondering that I did not frighten her. Her luscious breasts were prime, true pippins, high and hard.

"Need some help?" I asked, hopefully.

"No," she said, lifting her chin and showing her teeth, "I enjoy sitting out here in the middle of nowhere. I'm learning to love nature. What kind of tree is that?" She pointed with her stick.

"Hickory," I said, stepping back toward my mare.

"Wait," she said. "Wait. You're the first person I've seen in more than an hour. Where in the world am I? Don't go."

"What happened?" I asked as she resumed her seat, and I squatted on my haunches near her, member swelling along my thigh. Her impressive bosom was nearly bare with her jacket open as it was and her trim waist only emphasized the roundness of her hips and size of the jutting boobs with their prominent nipples. She was lightly freckled, long-legged and, for a girl, wide-shouldered. She surely was a year or two short of twenty, still soft and fuzzy.

"Team ran off," she said absently. "Something broke, a bolt or some such thing, and the driver scurried off after them. Down that way." She nodded westward along the very narrow trail.

I waited, watching her hazel eyes and soft lips, wishing I could look at a young woman without picturing her naked and heaving beneath me but enjoying the idea nevertheless.

"You hungry?" I asked, hoping to get my mind off her body.

She nodded, tossing auburn curls, "Ravenous."

I fetched some sausage, cheese and dark bread from my saddlebag, presents from the women I had recently helped to widow. Since my canteen was about fifty-fifty white lightning and well water, I hesitated to share it. I used my bayonet to slice off some bread and made her a thick, one-sided sandwich, and then I squatted again and ate with her, enjoying her nearness and smell.

"Anything to drink?" she asked, chewing hard on the dry bread.

I uncorked my canteen and handed it to her. "Sip first," I said, "it's more than water."

She sipped and her eyes widened. She drank a bit more, swallowed and shivered. She handed me back the canteen and nodded her thanks. "Whew," she said. "What is that?"

"Corn whisky," I said after I downed a mouthful.

"How far is the next town?" she asked, chewing hard.

"No idea," I told her. "I'm just heading north, toward Richmond."

"Are you a soldier?" she asked, licking her fingers and then buttoning her tight-fitting jacket, hiding her luscious globes, as the sun started to sink.

"How did you guess?" I said, giving her my best smile.

"I saw the gun," she said, "and the size of your knife. And there's something about you." She cocked her head to the side and her eyes sparkled with mischieviousness. She took a deep breath and licked her lips. "My husband is a soldier, an officer," she said. "Captain."

"Virginia?" I asked.

"Loyal Legion," she said proudly, "cavalry and light artillery. Under Tarleton I believe."

I nodded, not surprised. Her clothes were likely worth more than most poor folks' houses and land. "No servants?" I said, lifting an eyebrow.

She shook her head. "My maid ran off, to the coast I suppose."

"Slave?"

She nodded. "A gift from my father." Then she wrinkled her forehead. "Could you take me somewhere, to the next town or an inn, someplace I could wait." She looked about and scrunched her lips together. "It's getting dark. I really don't want to spend the night out here."

"Wait for what?" I asked as we both stood. She might have been five-foot-five or so, maybe nine or ten stone, a very healthy young woman, probably built for endurance rather than speed. I was eager to mount her and find out, and I pulled at my waistband to adjust my britches a bit.

"Well," she said, looking worried, "I'm sure my husband or some of his men will come looking for me. We were supposed to meet at a crossroads hours ago."

"Dangerous to ride in the dark," I said as the cloudless sky turned various shades of purple.

She nodded. "You think I'm safe here; I mean to sleep here?"

I shook my head. "No ma'm, nobody pretty as you are is safe anywhere."

She lifted her chin and looked me in the eyes. "What a thing to say."

We heard the jingle of harness chains before the riders rounded the curve in the woods, four of them, single file and at a fast trot. I squinted and she waved.

"See," she said, "I knew it, my husband's men. See those hats?"

I saw them and quickly looked for escape routes, figuring my horse was a goner. The small group rode up in some dust and their leader, a sergeant by his stripes, doffed his hat as I backed away. "Mrs. Harrison, ma'am?"

"Yes, yes," she said happily as he dismounted, hitched up his britches and scratched at his groin, lips pursed. "I certainly am glad to see you." She nearly bounced with pleasure.

The man looked her up and down as one might size up a cow or horse at a county fair's stock auction. "Yes'm," he said, rubbing his hands together, "yer driver tole us you was here. An' who's this big feller?"

"Man that stopped to help me," she said. "Gave me some food."

'That so," he said, waving his other men off their horses and then looking at me, eyes narrowed. "Why don'chu git on yer way."

I stepped back toward my horse, and he smiled.

"Shank's mare's good enough for you, snotnose," he said. "All these damn farmers have horses," he said to his three leering men. They were looking at the woman with absolute hunger, all but salivating, elbowing each other and passing whispered comments. I knew that look since I was guilty of it enough times myself. "Git on," he said to me, jerking his thumb at the woods. "Yer cob's the King's horse now."

I hesitated and looked at the lovely young woman. Now she appeared rather fragile as well as very luscious and desirable.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, raking at her mop of hair.

"It's all right," I told her, backing up as the three men tied their horses to a scrubby tree and then removed their belts.

"Go on, shitkicker," the sergeant said, his hand on the hilt of his short sword as he leaned toward me, "this here piece is too good for you."

I scurried along the trail into the woods without further talk, shamed by the laughter behind me but fearing what was to come. I stopped at the first big tree and waited, leaning back and listening, fear mixing with anger. I wanted the woman, of course, but I also wanted my horse and my weapon, and four men were in my way of both goals.

"Mark," asked the sergeant as I came back though the forest, trying to figure out how to get at them without harming her, "wasn't you first las' time, on that there milkmaid yestidday, the fat one?"

I could not hear the answer.

"No, you fool," the girl shouted, "I'm Captain Harrison's wife!" Cloth tore. "No, please," she cried again, real fear in her plaintive voice.

"You're a prime piece a'ass, thas' what you is," the sergeant growled at her as I crept closer. "Strip! Yer turn Bob; whip it out an' git it ready."

"No," she yelled, and then there was a general laugh.

"Lookee there," the sergeant said happily, "she done fell down, stupid cow. Go on, Bobby, y'kin poke 'er right there. Jimmy, grab her arms."

I circled around as quietly as I could, hoping to get to my musket, but when the woman screeched, I stopped being patient, drew my bayonet and charged though the brush, some sort of scream in my throat. They seemed to freeze as I burst from the woods.

One man was kneeling between her kicking legs with his white cock in one hand and her thigh in the other while another soldier held her wrists high above her head with a boot on her shoulder. The other two were standing and watching, enjoying the show of bare legs and flailing feet.

I skewered the sergeant first, right in the kidneys, kicked him aside and swung at the other standing horseman, slicing open his arm and chest. Then I yanked the would-be rapist up by his hair and drove my big blade all the way through him, striking bone as he howled. It would not come out so I left the bayonet in him and went after the man who had been holding her arms. I kicked him in the face and then in the ear after he fell, stomped on his chest and got turned at the woman's warning cry just in time to see a bleeding soldier pull the pistol from his gasping sergeant's belt.

As he cocked it and held it up toward me with both hands, the woman rolled over and kicked him in the belly. The pistol fired almost straight up, and I was on him in a second, throttling him and then bashing at his skull with the pistol butt until it caved in.

I stood panting, hands on knees, looking around as the young woman got to her feet, brushed her clothes and came to stand beside me, her hand on my heaving back, holding her dress together at her bared breasts.

"I don't understand," she said. "They were my husband's men."

I put my foot on the chest of the one they had called Bob and drew my blade out of his limp body. I cut the throat of the man I had stomped since he was gasping for breath like a fish out of water. I heard the women moan and choke as I did that. I wiped my blade on his jacket, sheathed it and then faced her. "Like I told you," I said, my heart thumping. "You're just too damn pretty. These here were animals, not men."

She came into my arms, and I held her until she stopped shuddering.

"Now what?" she said, looking up at me.

"There's a ravine over yonder," I said, pointing, "passed it coming up the hill. I'll toss the bodies in there." I flipped her the sergeant's heavy purse, turned him over on his face and dragged him away by his feet. I enjoyed watching his body tumble down the hill and disappear in the brush. In short order, the other three went the same way, vanishing as if they had never been. When I scuffed away the trail of blood and got back to the carriage, it was almost fully dark but a sickle-shaped moon was rising. The girl sat on the step where I had first seen her, a bit more bedraggled but just as handsome and desireable, perhaps more so with her torn bodice hanging open and her double-mounded chest turning silver.

I squatted before her and put my hand on her leg and one knee on the ground. "Now we have four horses, but no way to hitch them up."

She nodded and gulped.

"Never saw anybody die before," she said quietly. "That was awful"

I handed her my canteen, and she took a good draught. So did I and then another before I corked it closed. The liquor burned its way down to my riled member.

"My husband will find me," she said, nodding to herself.

"Not tonight." I stood. "But we'd best make a small fire just in case anybody is out looking for you. Keeps the critters away."

"How could you do that?" she asked as she stood beside me and put her hand on my forearm. I knew what she meant.

"My job, missus," I said. "I'm a rebel."

She stood on tip-toe and kissed me, kissed me hard and quick, grinding her belly into my groin, hands linked behind my neck. "Never kissed a rebel before either," she said with a small chuckle. She tasted awful good, but I had managed to keep my hands off her for some reason.

I gathered some brush, my mind whirling, while she picked up an armful of sticks along the old road, and we made a conical fire. She went back to sitting on the carriage step.

"Would they have killed me?" she asked as I poked the fire and leaned bigger sticks into the flame.

"Likely," I said. "Then told your man you were gone when they found the carriage."

"And, and attacked me, raped me?" she asked quietly. "All of them?"

I did not answer. I knew she knew.

"Will you sleep with me?" she asked. "Hold me? Inside here," she held her stomach, "I'm shaking; my heart is pumping madly."

"That's too much to ask," I said, sorely tempted, "I've got a blanket roll. You sleep in there. I'll stay out here."

"It excited me," she said. "I must admit it, all that blood, the violence of it, the fear, that man holding my leg. I can still see the look on their faces, like you said, animals. And yours; you were wild."

"You kissed me," I said nobly, trying to ignore the swelling beneath my codpiece, the usual result of a brief and bloody fight and a lovely and willing woman. "That's enough reward." Her eyes pleaded, and she stood with her elbows back, making me a present of her lush body, the top of her tight-fitting dress hanging open, an invitation.

"Come," she said, pulling me up from the small fire. "Don't tell me nonsense. I'm no child." She kissed me again, and this time my hands had a field day, a town fair, a tented circus. Her buttocks were round and firm, her back smooth and muscular, her breasts soft and hard-pointed when I shucked her out of her jacket and popped open her remaining buttons. She gasped and gnawed at my mouth, writhing in my grip and working on my belt buckle with real fury as my hand slid down her stay-covered belly.

My bayonet fell to the dirt and I pried open my foreflap and released my rigid pike. It sprang out as if made of spring steel. She was shaking her head and making only small noises when I pushed her back to the side of her carriage, lifted her skirts, spread her legs with my knee, hefted her butt and impaled her, sinking all the way to the hairy hilt with one long thrust between her trembling lips. She was ready, ripe and dripping, but she uttered a moaning cry and rocked back, lifting her chin when I struck bone. I pulled up her legs one after the other, and she wrapped me in them and arched her back so only her head and shoulders touched her rig as I plunged repeatedly into her welcoming depths.

She gasped and cried out in pleasure while I simply grunted and gritted my teeth rocking the carriage relentlessly by pressing her against it, flexing from the knees. We came nearly together, me first, jolting us both, and then she climaxed with a wild howl and clawing fingers, bucking like a wild thing on my fully extended spear, her feet kicking my rump.

As she sobbed and her legs slid down, I lifted her hips and withdrew, dripping and still blood-hot and oak-hard. Wordlessly, we undressed to shirt and shift and adjourned to the interior of her carriage. I was not aware there were so many different possible permutations in such an enclosed space. The one I believe I liked best had her upon her back on one of the seats, her feet drumming on the roof of her carriage and my toes braced on the side while I banged my thick root into her.

We were serenaded by the carriage springs. We both panted out our joy in each others strength. Eventually, I was on the floor, my knees bent to fit the space, and she was atop me, riding like a mad cavalryman, intent on climbing the hill of pleasure one last time before we were both exhausted. She did not make it, but the attempt was well worthwhile, and she fell into my arms, her extended nipple in my sucking lips, mewling out, "God, god, god, god."

When she was curled on one seat and asleep, I covered her and went out to roll up in my blanket beneath the carriage after prodding our few cinders back to life. I tried to recall how many times we had done it as I fell into well-earned sleep but gave up and simply dropped into darkness.