Chapter 88: What She Like to Do

"Chrissie laiks to fook." That was what the laughing girl told me when I met her for the first time. By then her English was a lot better but that line was the first thing some of our men had taught her to say, and now she knew it was both funny and provocative. Chrissie was a small blonde with very light-colored hair, nearly colorless, an upturned nose, a compact and exciting body with a tiny waist, heavy thighs and the nerves of a sapper. And she did like to fuck. Everybody said so.

Her father was one of the first foreign officers old Ben Franklin had talked into coming to help our cause. He was a nobleman of some sort, so he claimed, a military engineer or Hussar who had brought his daughter with him to America after his wife and other children had been killed in a ship wreck somewhere in Scandinavia. That was the story we heard. I doubt that Chrissie was twenty, but she served as her father's chief entertainer, was in charge of his small entourage which included a body servant and a cook, and when his back was turned, swived every young officer in sight according to the rumor-mongers.

They were practically lined up to dance with her on the rare occasions of a ball and fought each other for the privilege of accompanying her on her wild rides about the countryside or picnics on the hills. When her father was off inspecting entrenchments or designing forts, Chrissie was whooping with delight on some subaltern's fiery spear. That was the common story at least, and, so we were told, she was not interested in any man who was not an officer.

Eventually her father, busy as he was, got wind of what his young hostess was up to and what sort of reputation she was earning, on both her back and knees it had oft been said. So he decided to ship Chrissie off the Philadelphia where some sort of relative would look after her and where there were not so many pretty young officers with nice legs and rigid cocks.

"Christine," she said to me, fire in her eyes when I went to collect her. She had forgotten that we had met before and that she had laughingly told me she "laiked to fook." She had a half-dozen cases and trunks which we piled in the army wagon while a knot of sad-eyed ensigns and lieutenants looked on forlornly, waving kerchiefs. She wore a dark-blue, wide-skirted dress with a fitted top that showed the lacy trim of her undergarment and the swell of her plump, young breasts.

She had clamped her mouth as tight as her stays and decided to be angry so she pulled her arm away when I tried to help her up to the driver's seat and pretended to ignore her swarm of swains. I admired her shapely leg, trim ankle and short boots and then got myself up beside her and told her my name. She made a throat noise that sounded like a turkey choking, and we were off, headed for Pennsylvania and the stage south to the capital city, the largest in the whole country so everyone said, where black-suited Quakers waited to calm her down and teach her good manners. I had won the assignment by right of previous experience and the fact I was caught loafing when I should have been working.

Chrissie sat as far away from me as she could while I whistled and enjoyed the day, my feet up on the dash and a pipe in my mouth. The first thing she said to me, after perhaps an hour on the road, was, "Mus' you smoke that smelly ting?"

I took the stem from my mouth, spat over the wheel, knocked out the thick dottle and put the warm pipe in my shirt pocket. "No," I said, getting out my twist of nearly-black tobacco. "I can chew." I held it out. "Want some?"

She laughed, musical and loud, slapping her thigh in pleasure. "Manners zo gud," she cried, wiping a tear away. "I'ff nefer seen such."

"I always try to share," I said, watching her unbutton her tight jacket and shrug her shoulders, relaxing, and thrusting out her firm boobies. They were more pyramidal than globular it seemed.

'Tank you, no," she said, "but I vil be hungry soon, yes. Nothing dis morning I ate."

I offered her a pear after polishing it a bit on my leg. She took it, bit, licked her lips, said, "Gud," and ate the whole things, core, seeds, stem and all. It was not a very big pear.

Then she told me some about Sweden, and when she talked about her family she sniffed back a tear. I told her about Maryland, and said we had a lot of Germans there. It was pleasant to have such a pretty girl to myself with no obligations, the war forgotten. The idea of swiving her only crossed my mind a hundred or so times. We were, after all, nearly the same age, and we were both a bit homesick. We could, I hoped, comfort each other somewhere along the line of travel.

At a tavern we stopped to rest and water the horses and use the necessary, and I bought her a cold meat pie and got us a jug of cider to share. We were quickly back on the road, hoping to get to the river ferry before dark. We did not make it.

The shot came from the woods to my left, zinging past my nose, whirring. I could feel the fried air from it. Chrissie squealed, and I ducked and whipped at the horses. The second shot threw splinters over both of us as it glanced off the back of the seat. I pulled the girl down by my feet, got on my knees, ducked low and whipped hard. Another ball thunked into a trunk behind us, and a man stepped out beside the road with a musket leveled at me. He could not have missed, so I whoaed at the team, yanked the reins and pulled on the brake.

"Damn smart thing t'do," the man pointing the gun at me said, a nasty, gap-toothed smile on his deeply-pocked face.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Money," he said, "and whatever else you got that's worth anything."

Chrissie came up sputtering, and the man looked at her and licked his lips. I could not blame him. If Chrissie, indeed, enjoyed rogering, I suspected she was going to get her fill. I surrendered my purse, and the man took my musket. While he stood near the horses' heads, his friends pulled all the cases out of the wagon, broke them open, scattered the girl's clothes in all directions, and whooped when they found her small jewelry case and a purse heavy with gold coins.

My mind raced with thoughts of protecting the young woman from being ravished by the gang of cutthroats. I wondered if she could jam a cartridge of black powder up her slit and then I thought of my tobacco. "Turn toward me," I said to her, "like you're afraid, crying."

"I am afraid," she sniffed, looking into my eyes as I put my arm about her. "Vat are you doink?"

I slid my hand under her wide skirt, snaked the back of my paw up her soft thigh, found her tight-clamped cunny, hissed, "Spread your knees some," and wedged my soggy wad of chewed tobacco, about the size of a pullet egg, between her soft lips and into her narrow channel. I spread her a bit with my first two fingers and thumbed the chaw up into her. It popped in, but I kept pushing.

She gasped. "Don't," she moaned. "A virgin I am, please."

"Clamp down on that," I told her quietly, pulling my thumb free, my brain churning with that news. "Sit back, squeeze your thighs together." She did as she was told, hands shaking at her knees. I saw her upper teeth chew into her lower lip and tears come to her eyes.

"We got what we wanted," a rough-faced man said after a bit, stepping up on the wheel beside the shivering girl. "'Cept for this. We'll jus' take her along, horse 'er later."

"She's got the clap," I said clearly, hoping the whole gang would hear me. "They've run her out of the camp. Left ten or twelve men back there with bad fevers and big sores on their shriveled cocks."

"By damn," the man said, still holding Chrissie's arm. "Don' believe ya. Look at 'er."

"Show him, Christine," I said to her. "Don't be afraid."

"No," she squealed, pulling free. The highwayman tossed her skirt up on her lap, yanked her knees apart and gaped at the foul matter oozing from the girl's light-haired crotch. Her cunny was already red and swollen and the viscous goo flowing from it was a greenish-brown and had left stains on the inside of her white thighs. "Shit," he said, "that's enough to make a man puke."

"You'd do better poking a goat," I said, pulling the girl's skirt back in place and patting her gently. She covered her face with her hands.

"Let's go, boys," the leader said, "y'all don' want none of this piece."

They rode off, and I got down and started stuffing things back into the trunks and boxes that had been torn open. Soon the girl joined me, bewailing her damaged dresses and scattered linens.

"You get that stuff out of you?" I asked.

She nodded, "But it still burns."

"I'm sorry," I said, lifting the last box up on the wagon's bed and lashing it down.

"You safe me," she said, dusting her hands together, her eyes down. "Yes?"

"Well, your maidenhead, perhaps," I said.

She looked up and held my eyes. "Tease I am, yust a tease," she said and then she smiled at me and let me help her back up to the seat. "I still haf some coins," she told me, jingling a small purse as I settled down beside her.

And I still had my knife, but we had lost our musket and most of our valuables including my heavy purse. We stopped at the first tavern we came to. I drew her up a bucket of water after she used the outhouse and took her to the woodshed. "Take off your skirt, hike up your shift and wash yourself out as best you can," I suggested. She nodded and I stood guard. When she finished, she sniffed, said she felt better and we went in to eat.

Chrissie ate as if she had not had a meal that month. I finished, sat back, drank another beer and enjoyed watching her gorge herself. "How old are you?" I asked after a bit. With her mouth full, she looked about twelve.

"My business," she said, with a chunk of venison in her cheek. She wiped gravy from her lips with the tablecloth, and then she grinned at me.

"Damn," I said, looking over her shoulder as the two older bandits entered and went to the bar. Since Chrissie's blonde head shone like a beacon, I knew they would see her eventually. I waited to see of the three younger highwaymen were with them, and when they did not show up, I drew my blade, told the girl to sit still and walked up behind the men hoisting their liquor.