Chapter 4

Hetty had been trying hard not to think about the hellfire abyss that she was on the path to pitching herself into. But Joe’s words cast the painful facts of the case into sharp relief, and she answered by reddening up a bright scarlet, arms clasped anxiously about her waist.

Then, unexpectedly, Tomosevesehe stepped in to soothe her discomfort, spreading oil on the troubled waters of her soul with his deep, sonorous baritone. “Be at peace, sister. It is no sin to show yourself to us. For what is there beneath your clothes, except what the Great Spirit Himself has made? Are you ashamed of His creation?”

Dapper George cocked an eye sidelong at the Indian warrior, curious why he’d bother spooning out syrupy words for the Yankee girl. Even if George did merit a special case, he knew in the wider scheme of things, Tomo harbored no more love for white folks than Yuma Joe did. Neither one of them felt they owed the generalized cracker, male or female, the slightest stob of consideration.

Where the two gunslingers diverged, George decided, was that while Yuma spoke and did whatever was on his mind, consequences be damned, Tomo found it comfortable inhabiting the archetype of the inscrutable red man. As such, he generally played his cards close to the vest, never let passion overrule self-interest, and favored an approach to revenge that was slow and subtle. In the current instance, he must have simply decided he’d draw more entertainment from taking the woman with honey rather than vinegar, so that’s what he was doing. The rest was window-dressing.

George renewed his determination never to cross the Cheyenne.

Anyhow, regardless of the man’s motivations, his speech appeared to have bucked up Hetty’s nerve to do what she must. Not because the logic of it held much water with her, presumably, but on account of the native’s reassuring tone, his air of calm compassion, and the contrast all that cut with Yuma’s jabs.

And thus fortified, she was able, with a final nervous gulp, to set her mouth ... heave a breath ... and pull the cotton slip awkwardly over her head.

In the flick of an eye, the woman was transformed—changed from a prim young missus into a modern-day Eve of the garden. Naked from head to blessed toe, and oozing with a guileless sort of temptation. George’s face lit up in a crafty smile. Christ, he was a genius. Getting to fuck an angel like this was going to be worth every goddamned penny.

Hell, merely seeing her bared in the brazen light of day was a rare treat in itself, and one that demanded to be savored. So savor the robbers did: jaws slack, mouths watering, stares glazed and unblinking. Before long, it began to seem as if they could spend the rest of the day this way, stationary as statues, while their eyeballs roved endlessly over the woman’s exposed form.

One time when he was flush, Dapper George had paid three bits to visit an art gallery in St. Louis. And although he appreciated the Old World nudes he took in there, reclining on their giant canvases or rendered in cold marble, he wasn’t really partial to the corpulence some of them demonstrated. The women’s heavy rolls of flesh marked them as ornaments of affluence and leisure, unfit for the hardscrabble world he inhabited.

Now, he gorged on the visual evidence that Hetty wasn’t like that at all. To be sure, she’d clearly been fed up proper, with nary a hint of scrawn. But at the same time, her figure was favored by a trimness and edge of muscle that told George she was active, industrious, and never indolent a moment in her life. At a deep-down intuitive level, this air of vitality rendered her enormously attractive as a mating partner.

Beyond that, her female charms were myriad. She boasted clear skin, shapely limbs, and a quality of dewy freshness. Even after being sprung of her corset, her torso maintained its alluring hourglass contours. Her teats were youthful and pert, yet lusciously curvaceous too, with wide, generous rose-hued nipples. And then, beneath a breathtakingly trim waist, her hips swelled out again in womanly fashion.

Every bit was ravishing, but most intoxicating of all was the prurient wedge of auburn-brown curls at her crotch. These might be imagined as gesturing towards modesty; yet in truth, they were nowhere near thick enough to hide the blushing pink of her pussy lips, or the inviting darkness of the slit that lay in-between. The resulting mix of bawdiness and faux-reserve demanded the men’s attention, and their dungarees tented eloquently in response.

The affair went along this way for a good while—the men simply drinking her in, and committing every last detail to memory. Hetty, meanwhile, spent the time fidgeting painfully, shifting weight from one leg to another, knitting and unknitting her fingers.

She hated to think of what was going to come next ... But then, as the minutes dragged by, she found herself wishing (against all logic and propriety) that they’d just go ahead and do the cursed thing. Waiting to have it done to her was pure murder.

Eventually, when the men had milked the scene of all the quavering expectancy they could, they looked at each other—as if asking by common accord: who’s first?

With serene self-assurance, Tomo rose in answer. The other two were of no mind to argue, but he shared his reasoning anyway. “I fear you vehoés know little of how to handle a woman. I will break her in for you.” Then, pulling off his moccasins, he undid his gun belt and slid down his buckskins, leaving him naked from the waist down.

Hetty gulped and let out a low whimper. She’d never glimpsed the penis of a human male before. Not only had Mr. Wilcox had the civility to keep his long nightshirt on when they coupled, she’d also squeezed her eyelids tight shut the whole time. Now though, perversely, she couldn’t force herself to look away—as if some mulish part of her was determined to register every sordid detail of the outrages being inflicted on her.

The Indian’s organ was stiff and erect and aimed straight her way. A more worldly woman would have recognized it as enticingly larger than average, but not terribly atypical. To Hetty’s shocked gaze, however, it hardly seemed like part of a human being at all—more like what she’d associate to a fairy-tale ogre, with its throbbing veins and velvety ballsac and twitching, predatory eagerness. And though heaven knows she had nothing to compare it to, the thing struck her as too large to fit in her passage. Dear God, surely it was going to ruin her!

Tomo approached slowly, obliquely, like creeping up on a small and skittish animal. “Do not fear,” he intoned. “You will enjoy it. Lie on your back.” And taking her arm, he guided her down onto the bedroll.

Resting beside her, he kissed her hair. “Spread your legs,” he murmured.

Hetty didn’t want to spread her legs. However, she’d agreed to let the brutes have her willingly. And the thing was, she believed that if she kept up her end, they’d hold true to their word as well. These men were lawbreakers, without a doubt. But here in the west, she was coming to understand that honor amounted to a higher kind of law—the kind of law that even thugs like this could respect, and would think long and hard before flouting. On the other hand, if she were to resist, then Hetty felt sure the story would proceed far differently. In that case, judging that she’d double-crossed them, the villains would likely feel free to plunder both her virtue and her money, despoiling her in every sense of the word. It would be unwise to provoke them.

So, with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and grudging muscles, she opened her thighs wide. Not as wide as her flexibility would have allowed, to be fair, but plenty wide enough. From where George sat, he had a front-row seat as her pussy lips sprang apart, revealing the lascivious ruddy-red of her gash and the lacy line of her inner folds. And there, nestled at the base, the barest hint of the entrance to Hetty’s cunt as well. Holy Maker—his heart skipped a jubilant beat—he could see straight down the pike!

Tomo’s appetites were pricked too, but he kept them tamped beneath his usual lid of composure. Pouring sweet half-truths in the woman’s ear, he told her that she was a goddess, a shining star, more comely than the fairest native princess. And then, running his mouth along the curve of her neck, the arc of her shoulder, the line of her collarbone, he came at last to the plump swell of her breast. There he caressed the areola firmly with tongue and lips, before sucking the nipple inside.

Flinching, Hetty closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, trying to deny the devilish impulses that the man sent coursing through her being. In agreeing to cede herself to the brigands, she’d told herself it would be a purely physical transaction, purely pragmatic. She certainly had no expectation of enjoying the intercourse herself—quite the contrary. Yet now, with these first shivering, tingling sensations that Tomo roused in her, Hetty grasped that the situation was far murkier than she’d guessed, far more unstable. It felt like the opening volley in a war for her moral character.

Oh, intellectually she still despised these men. It was heartrending to think that the only way to preserve her worldly station was to submit to being raped by them. Yet, humans are more than purely intellectual creatures. And at the level of animal reflex and raw stimulation, it was dawning on Hetty that her sinews had responses of their own. Responses she was finding it confoundingly hard to rein in—and which she feared might corrupt her more thoroughly, more profoundly, than mere physical violation ever could.