Chapter 67: Lily

Once more I was waylaid and my good intentions got me no closer to my struggling and retreating company. A light carriage lay leaning precariously into a ditch, both off-side wheels well buried, perhaps burst apart, the boxes that had been atop it broken open, clothes scattered. The horses were gone and a still body lay sprawled across the driver's seat, one bloody arm dangling. Inside the ruined rig I found a small young woman in velvet traveling clothes lying under a rather corpulent and very dead gentleman, his large wig still on his bald head. I heard her whimper, pulled the heavy body out of the carriage by its feet and then assisted her to the road, admiring her trim legs, mass of curly hair and tidy form as I did.

"Thank you," she sighed, looking up at me, trying to reassemble herself, brushing her fancy dress with both hands and nearly freeing her small breasts from her stays as she did so. "Is he dead?"

I nodded. The man had evidently been shot in the back of the head. Judging from his dress, he had been a very prosperous person whose shoes still carried silver buckles but whose purse was surely missing.

"What happened?" I asked the tiny girl as she pushed her hair back behind her ears and took a deep and entrancing breath that swelled her chest beyond the ability of her filly chemise's powers of concealment. She saw my gaze and buttoned her jacket about her, at least partly concealing her bulbous charms with their prominent peaks. I doubt that she was five feet tall and she certainly weighed no more than seven stone, but she was surely a woman despite her diminutive size.

"Road agents," she said. "Three of them. When the rig went into the ditch, I fell to the floor, curled up and pulled the rug over my head. They robbed him and then shot him. He fell atop me. I don't think they knew I was in there."

"Probably not," I said, sure they would not have ignored so tasty a morsel. "He your father?"

She shook her curly head and grinned at me. "No," she said, "he hired me to accompany him. He was in shipping, back in the city, China trade."

I smiled back at her and wondered what to do next. "Let's get away from here?" I said.

"Just leave them?" she asked, waving at the dead men.

I nodded and helped her up on my horse, shortening the stirrups while she adjusted her dress, tucking her shift beneath her and spreading her wide skirt behind on the horse's back. When we topped a hill and left the rougher part of the old road, I tossed her skirt to the side, mounted behind her, enjoyed the feel of her firm rump in my groin and her legs within my thighs, and gave my feet a rest and my prod a pleasant place to rise. We stopped at the first tavern we came to, a place where there was a small mill and a ford across the stream. By then I was sure she knew she roused me.

We had barely settled at a table, when the girl hissed to me, "It's them, over there; those three robbed us. I saw two of them when they stopped the carriage."

I looked where she nodded. Three rather rough characters sat at a table drinking rum and enjoying themselves. One had a stack of coins before him, and while we watched, divided with the other two. Then they finished their drinks and left. We ate, introduced ourselves to each other, and enjoyed idleness. She was Lily, she said, Lily Maguire and she was twenty. I believed the name but not the age. After all, her chin barely reached my chest.

"How long had you known him?" I asked, "the man you were with."

"A fortnight," she said. "He was really very nice, a gentleman, never rough. He bought me this." She pulled on the lapels of her embroidered jacket.

'Very pretty," I said. It was probably an hour or so before sunset, and I was tempted to leave her there, confident she could make her way in the world, but another part of my mind was eager to bed her and enjoy her since obviously some of her talents lay in that fleshy direction. My evil mind pictured her dancing on the end of my throbbing pole. "Where's your home?" I asked.

She exhaled. "New York, I suppose," she said. "Much as anywhere."

"No folks?"

She shook her head. "I came over indentured, five years ago."

"You don't sound English?" I said, remembering that very few women came that way in the last decade or so.

"Irish, I was," she said with a smile. "Now I'm American."

"You have friends in the city?"

"I do," she said, smiling. "Mostly men."

"Well," I allowed, "let's do a few more miles before dark." It seemed like a good suggestion at the time, and I looked forward to wrapping her in my blanket roll and having her entertain my hardening ram, but fate, a cruel fate, intervened.

"Lookee here," said the highwayman who appeared on the road just a mile or two beyond the fording place. "A shitkicker and his doxy," the man cackled, and that was the last thing I remembered for some time. When I awoke, I lay face down in the roadside ditch, my shoulder ached like fire and I had a large and sticky lump on the back of my skull. The first thing I heard was laughter and piteous cries for mercy.

I pulled myself out of the muck, surprised to find that my right arm was not working very well. I felt at my shoulder with my left hand and, after a bit of poking, found that my collar bone was broken or dislodged and that I had a bayonet wound that went all the way though me from back to front. My shirt was blood soaked. I tried to push my bone back where it belonged and almost fainted from the pain so I stuck my right hand inside my shirt front and put my mind on what I was hearing.

"Please don't, please, please," the girl screeched. "No more, no more. I can't." And then she was still.

"Suck it, you bitch," a guff male voice demanded. I crawled to the hillside, saw a small campfire and found myself a spectator at a crude rape. One of the men below was humping the naked girl from the back while another knelt before her, holding her head up by her hair and trying to feed his turgid cock into her mouth. The third man squatted by the fire, watching the other two and playing with his limp member. I felt at my waist and found my belt as well as my new pistol missing. I was useless, unarmed and left handed.

The man kneeling behind the small, bare woman shuddered, groaned and withdrew while the robber forcing her to suck his member pulled it from her mouth, laughed and pumped a gob of jism into her face and hair. She collapsed to all fours and then lay on the ground, rolled to her side and pulled up her knees. She looked like a small child.

I could see blood on her white thighs and trickling from her nose. She moaned steadily and sighed, "Please, please, please" over and over.

"Y'want another go, Jess?" one of the men said as he buttoned his waist. The man at the fire shook his head.

"Wan' me to kill 'er then?" the lean man who had been buggering her asked, drawing my big knife from my belt.

"Naw," the burly leader of the group said. "She's a good piece. Leave for the nex' man."

The man laughed at that, stood, picked up his musket, kicked out the fire, and then the three mounted up and left. I had no idea how long they had been at it, but the moon had risen so I knew it had been at least a couple of hours.

I crept down the hillside, being careful not to stumble and put strain on my injured shoulder. When I touched the girl's bare back, she cringed and cried, "Please, no, no more." I patted her and made soothing noises.

"It's me," I said quietly, stepping back to find her white shift in the glow of the fire's embers. I brought it to her and went looking for her skirt and shoes.

She sat up and held her shift to her round breasts with their small nipples. "You're dead," she said. "I saw them kill you."

I crouched beside her, put her skirt down and balanced myself with my left hand. "I'm hurt some," I said, looking at her teary face. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," she sniffed, standing and pulling her torn shift down on her well-formed body. Blood had dried on the inside of her thigh. She saw here I was looking. "They poked me with something," she said, "bayonet maybe, or a knife. I was too tight for them, clamping my legs together."

I got the fire started up again while she went searching for her shirt and jacket. She limped to where I sat, and I turned my back to the fire and peeled my shirt from my right shoulder. "Take a look at this," I asked, and then I felt her fingers at my wounds.