Chapter 6

"I don't believe it!" Link Morgan furiously raged. "You lousy little punks screwed up!"

"No! I swear it, Chief!" Leo Vincent pledged, his thin, pimply face drawn in fear of the barrel-chested man. "Honest, I wouldn't lie to you... !"

"You'd lie to your dying mother, you fink!" the police chief spat.

"Leo's telling you the truth, Chief!" Billy White, a runtish, long-haired boy put in. "We were going great when suddenly, there he was, coming right through her open window... !"

"And you're sure it was that Caesar bastard?" Link questioned.

"You're damn right," the good-looking, heavy-set Corky assured. "I saw him first... those crazy wild eyes... !"

"Like two chunks of fire!" Leo Vincent added. "And he had the medallion hanging from his throat!"

"We just harassed out of there as fast as we could!" Billy White added.

For a heavy moment there was silence. They sat m the police chief's little office staring at the big man who seemed to be meditating behind his scarred desk. A filtered glow of morning sunshine feebly attempted to penetrate the long-unwashed window above the lawman's head, lighting his flushed face and red-rimmed, tired eyes enough for them to note the first trace of his mean half-grin.

"You didn't sneak around to see what happened, did you?" he questioned, looking directly at Leo Vincent's acned face.

"Are you kidding, man... ? With that goddamned wild hound there?" the thin teenager retorted. "Like Corky says, we haul- assed... !"

"Then we tried to find you Chief," Billy said. "Once, we saw you but you were with the deputy. We figured we better let it ride 'till this morning."

"Well, for once you used your fucking heads, Link replied. "How far did you get with her?"

"We had her stripped and tied spread-eagle to the bed!" Leo Vincent told him, his young beady eyes lewdly narrowing as he remembered. "Fuck, what a sweet broad she is! Man, I've never seen anything like her, bare-assed and naked!"

"We'd even shed our own threads and were ready to swing!" Corky added. "Shit, I wanted a piece of her so bad..."

"You wore the masks like I said?" Link interrupted, wanting to be sure.

"Right," Leo answered. "Everything was going just like you planned it, Chief, until that friggin' dog appeared on the scene."

"Hmmmm..." the half-grinning lawman muttered. "I wonder what happened after you three hightailed it? I mean... after the way he raped my niece... I wonder?"

"You... you mean, maybe he fucked her, Chief?" Leo softly questioned.

"Well... ? What do you think wise-boy... did he?" Link Morgan asked, digging a cigar from his desk drawer, his twisted grin still prevalent. "It's going to be damned interesting to find out. And maybe... just maybe, we accomplished what we wanted after all."

"You mean, the deputy is going to go crazy-mad if that Caesar mutt really fucked his wife, eh Chief?" Leo Vincent blurted, moving forward to the edge of his chair.

"Exactly!" the big man replied, spitting the bitten tip of his cigar away and striking a lucifer match! "Exactly, boy... and that's all we wanted in the first place, wasn't it?"

"Right!" the thin teenager replied, proud of the way he had analyzed it all and reveling beneath the police chiefs grin. "But I still wish we could've pulled it off, I'll tell you. She was fingering herself in the dark when we moved in on her, that's why she didn't hear us!"

"She was what?"

"Finger fucking herself... no shit, chief, she was!" Leo, enthusiastically informed. "Ask these guys; they saw her too!"

"Honest injun, Chief, she was!" Corky corroborated. "Crap we'd 've had a ball if it hadn't been for that fucking Caesar!"

"I never even saw or heard him slip into the room!" Leo Vincent exclaimed. "There I stood with my cock in my hand, already to go, when Corky says, "Come on, Leo, it's the fucking pack-dog, and I... !"

"He said what?" Link snapped, jerking the cigar from his mouth and leaning forward with widening, infuriated eyes. "Well, what did he say?"

"He... he said... come on, Leo, it's the..."

The big man's opened hand slapped hard against the desk top. "You stupid bastards, I give you masks to wear so the bitch can't see your faces and what do you do? Call each other by name! You goddamned rattleheaded shits! How many Leo's do you think there are in Crescent Valley... or hadn't that occurred to you?"

The acne-faced boy turned his gaze slowly toward his teenaged cohorts, the realization of the big man's words suddenly dawning upon him. If everything went off all right, fine... if Caesar raped her, fine... or if she hadn't heard Corky call out his name, fine... but, supposing she had!

Link quickly gained his feet. "You three better plan to make yourselves scarce for awhile... and don't give me any goddamned back-lip! I don't care what you tell your folks, but you're getting out of town... !"

"Where... where'll we go, Chief?" Leo questioned, sensing a cold chill moving up his spine.

"I don't give a damn... just go... go up to the cave and rough it for a week or so... or until we put an end to this fucking pack situation. There's food there, everything you'll need, including a jar of pot... and don't go blowing your minds completely, you stupid jerks!"

Billy White broke into a wide grin. "Sounds crazy to me, man!"

"Me too," Corky agreed. "Anything to get away from mowing that goddamned lawn at home... !"

"Never mind the comments, just get moving!" Link ordered. "The sooner you three are out of town, the better I'm going to feel... !"

Alone, the big lawman sat irritably mulling over the fiasco of his carefully laid plans. He had pulled a half-emptied fifth of cheap bourbon from a desk drawer and was drinking it raw from the bottle. He needed something to give him a pick-up; he was dead-tired and not a frigging thing was going right. Those goddamned numbies, they'd probably have blown it anyway. Maybe it was just as wed the dog had shown up and chased them off... Christ, he couldn't help but wonder if the big bastard had socked it into her. They'd said she was tied spread-eagle on the bed and naked as a whorehouse bitch... Damn he'd liked to have seen that, himself! She was one luscious broad, all right... and fingering herself, they said... sonofabitch, he was getting a hard on just thinking about that...

Link took another pull at the bottle, thinking at the same time that he hadn't used his head by slapping Nell Carter around either. She was no Jean Blakely, but she'd been a good fuck and always ready... and now she was gone. Hell, he'd been drunk... couldn't even remember what the hell she'd said to irk him, and then, the next thing he knew he was cuffing hell out of her. Still, he hadn't realized that she'd packed her things and cleared out until yesterday morning when he'd walked into the kitchen and found Annie getting breakfast.

"What're you doing, taking up housekeeping?" he'd growled, his head throbbing and his guts churning with a hangover.

"Someone better, I think," his teenaged niece had replied. "Your housekeeper walked out two hours ago, bag and baggage."

"She what... ?"

"That's right, Uncle, she's flown the coop," the pretty young teenager had said without looking at him, moving around the kitchen in her nightie and wrapper with more efficiency than he'd ever dreamed she had. But then, why in hell not, she was sixteen, practically a grown woman, and a well-built one, at that. Fucked, too, he'd thought, standing there looking at her, even if it was by a goddamned dog. At least, she knew what it was all about.

"What for, did she say... ?"

"I don't think she could with her lips all swollen up," Annie had sharply replied, taking toast from the toaster and buttering it. "She was lucky to see where she was going with those two black eyes... must have ran into a door or something, eh... ?"

Link grinned to himself at the girl's quip, remembering. He tilted the bottle up once more and swallowed noisily several times. The little imp, she was something else. He knew she had no respect for Nell from the beginning, but she'd tolerated her. That goddamned fucking Caesar... taking her young cherry. He'd kill that sonofabitch yet... but he'd sure like to know what happened between the wild mutt and Jean Blakely. Imagine, that luscious piece fingering herself... Christ, he'd sure like to throw a fuck into her... must be Blakely wasn't doing a very good job of it, if she had to resort to playing with herself.

His long, thick cock had stretched into a heavy, weighted hardness at the conglomeration of his thoughts, straining inside his clothing, and he shifted and pulled at his crotch to ease the bind. He picked up his cigar from the ashtray lighting it again while his liquor-roused brain filled with patches of thought concerning Jean Blakely nakedly finger-fucking herself, and his dead sister's daughter moving around the kitchen in her nightie and wrapper. Sonofabitch, maybe both... but at least one of them had been fucked by that weird mutt...

The ring of the telephone interrupted his lewd reveries. He hesitated to answer it, wondering if he wanted to get involved in anything this morning before catching some sleep. Christ, he'd been up all night, making sure that Blakely didn't take a notion to go home... It rang several more times before he picked it up from its cradle...

"Police Department."

"Chief Morgan... ?" a husky feminine voice questioned.

"Yes... "

"Lydia Newell, Chief," the voice throatily informed, though he had already placed it. "Are you busy?"

"Not when a pretty little girl like you calls me this early in the morning," he answered, feeling debonair as hell with the effects of the bourbon, and his swollen cock throbbing in his pants.

"Wow, that's some come-on from the law enforcement office! I recommend you publish the idea in the police gazette, or whatever it is you people use," she said, her warm voice teasing. "Little old ladies might just flip... "

"That's my problem girl... little old ladies," Link said, grinning into the piece.

"Hmmm, I sense the bulling male coming to the forefront... but that isn't why I called you, Link," Lydia said. "Right now I'm in no mood to even waste words."

Link's smile faded. He sat up in his chair, dropping the cigar into the ashtray. This was the daughter of the most powerful man in the valley, and Aaron had made a point of letting him know she would call on him if she had problems while he, her father, was out of the country. He said: "What is it, Lydia?"

"Two nights in a row now, our herds have been raided. All together we've lost eight sheep and five dogs! Like I told Blakely, the sheep we can stand, but the dogs, no!"

"Has the deputy been out to the A & B?"

"Yesterday... and he did nothing. Suggested I make a government claim for our losses... but 1 don't know a damned thing about that, Link. Besides, what am I supposed to do, file papers every day? It's that goddamned Caesar and his pack... "

"Yeah, I know, Lydia. You heard about Annie?"

"Yes... what a horrible thing," the husky voice sympathized. "And there'd be more, I'm thinking, if something isn't done... which is why I'm caging you. Frankly, I think our deputy sheriff is getting too goddamned big for his britches!"

The big police chief licked at his lips, his mind racing to analyze her every word. He said: "There're those of us who'll readily agree with that. But... but I think you've got something in mind... right, girl?"

"Maybe," she huskily replied. "But... but I think you and I better get together and discuss it, Link... not over the telephone."

"I'm with you."

"I-l know you don't see eye-to-eye with Mr. Blakely, and right now... neither do I!"

"You... you sound like you might want his... " Link started, then cut himself short.

"His nuts! That's what I want, Link, and I'll tack them up on the wall of my bedroom!" she lewdly spat into his ear. "And I don't care what method I use in getting them... understand?"

Link couldn't control his grin. "I think so," he slowly answered, knowing the history of their affair and how Mark's sudden, unexpected marriage to Jean had destroyed it. He sensed the bitter jealousy in her tone, along with the vengeance. Shit, she was something else, too, and wild as a hawk! What a fuck she'd be... if she wasn't Aaron Newell's daughter... ! "How can I help you... Baby?"

He heard her light titter of laughter. "Boy, are you some lover this morning," she taunted. "What's wrong, has Nell taken to separate bedrooms?"

He didn't bother answering the direct question. "Just trying to be of public service, little girl," he said, pleased with the way he was toying words and suggestive endearments with her, his heavy cock pulsating in his pants.

"Okay, if I can trust you in the same room with me," Lydia's sensuous voice half-whispered. "Come out to the ranch as soon as you can. I've an idea that might prove profitable to both of us. It's a little lurid, but should it work, Darling, we both can get what we want."

Again, Link licked at his thick lips. Darling, she'd said. The young bitch... if she wasn't Aaron's daughter... ! "I'll be there in twenty minutes," he said. "And you know you can trust old Link..."

Jean Blakely awakened to a typical, sunny California morning, a warm sensation of pleasureful gratification mellowing her curvaceous young body. She sighed, stretching languorously beneath the thin covering of the satin sheet, finally aware of her nakedness. She seldom slept in the complete raw, she idly thought, especially when Mark wasn't beside her, and he had been on duty last night, hadn't he... ?

Abruptly, Jean sat upright in the bed, the thin sheet falling to her slender waist, exposing the lush twin mounds of her rounded white breasts. My God, had she dreamed it, or had it actually happened? The pleasant torpor she had momentarily enjoyed immediately dissolved into anxious alertness as her brain was flooded with a barrage of frightening mental reflections! Habitually, she tossed her head then brushed the disheveled tresses of her long blonde hair behind her naked shoulders. It had to have been a nightmare... all of it, she logically reasoned, swallowing at the tightness in her throat. But then, as she moved in the bed, she sensed the viscid wetness dampening the warm, smooth flesh of her vaginal lips and soft inner-thighs and quickly pressed the sheet back to investigate.