Chapter 91: Andrea

I was hard at work, plunging up and down into a hefty doxy who had been boarded several hundred times too many. When the stage arrived, she pushed me aside, pulled down her dirty dress and hurried to the stairs, leaving me half finished but not altogether unhappy since horsing her had bit a bit like dropping a bucket in a well. Ah hell, I thought, half a loaf. I slapped it down, got myself together and followed her to the common room. The stage had disgorged a motley load, mostly male, but sitting by herself in a dark corner was a fine looking woman, no girl, a woman and a bounteous beauty.

I felt my unshaved chin, pushed my spent member down my thigh and dropped into a chair beside her. "Going far?" I asked as I held her gray-blue eyes and saw them crinkle with her small smile.

"Andrea," she said, nodding to me. "Andrea J--. I'm heading home, back to my farm."

I told her my name and said I was looking for work. What I was looking for right then was a way to stay free of British artillery and musket fire. I was tired of the war.

"Can you handle a plow?" she asked as her supper arrived and I ordered a beer.

"Of course," I lied, "born with the handles in my paws. Can recognize every mule in town from the rear end," I held up my big, callused hands and she smiled at me. Plowing was one of the many chores I tried to avoid back in Fredericktown. Slaves did most of it on the bigger farms.

"Only pays three shillings a week and keep," she said, "but there's plenty of work. My hired hands ran off, avoiding the military I suppose or just lazy. You mounted?"

My mind roared past the trollop I had just mounted and found my tired cob in the stable. "Certainly," I said. "You a widow, ma'am?" I asked since she was dressed all in black.

"No, just like the color," she replied. "You're as curious as you are bold."

'Yes'm," I said, admiring her embroidered chest and firm chin. Her mouth was large and soft, her nose slim and straight and her eyes large and heavy-lashed. She was altogether a fine looking woman, about thirty I guessed, maybe thirty-five.

Since I had sex on my mind and my blood was still stirred, my thoughts were hardly gentlemanly, and I pictured her nude and writhing beneath me, begging for more on the end of my thick and thrusting spear. Her ear bobs and necklace were black, too. Onyx I supposed from their flashing facets. She was not poor.

"It's about twenty miles more. Someone will meet me at," she named the town but I'll not do so since her family is still about. So I gathered up my few belongings, patted the barmaid's thick rump, getting a snarl for my courtesy, and followed the stagecoach on its route. The sun was sinking by the time it stopped again, and sure enough, a light rig with an elderly, black driver was awaiting the woman and her trunk which had been lashed on top of the heavy vehicle. I helped with that, met Luke, the driver, and we were on our way in a few minutes, not even time for a quick drink.

The farm was large and rolling with heavy woods and a stream in one low corner. The house was wooden, clapboard but extra heavy ones, really thick planks, and had three chimneys. Andrea J-- was greeted by a white-haired woman who proved to be Luke's wife. There were not any other servants or workers on the place as I quickly learned. We had a light meal, and I was shown to a small outbulding with four cots in it. I slept well, and in the morning broke my fast with Luke and his wife, Martha, and then Andrea showed me about, Luke introduced me to the animals, and I went to work.

About noon, Luke met me out at the end of a long, uneven furrow.

"Plowing ain't your strength," he concluded, looking over the work I had done. "You got to hold the same depth, make them rows straight. Get your shoulders into it, dig in your toes and trust the critter." He unhitched the mule and took it back to the barn while I sat in the shade and ate. When Luke returned with a fresh animal, I got back to plowing, making a real effort to spot a landmark and aim toward it, ignoring the stones and rounding the rotting stumps. In an hour or so, my work had a better look, but my forearms and shoulders ached from the effort.

I finished a furrow aimed back at one of the farmhouse's shade trees as the sky turned red, lifted the plow from the black dirt and let it skid on home. The mule knew the way without coaxing. I cleaned my equipment, washed my face and hands and had some cider and ham on the kitchen steps. I was sitting there, enjoying the sunset, when Andrea appeared and stood before me.

"I've seen a fair amount of plowing," she said, hands on hips, unsmiling. "But that's pretty sorry looking. And most men can do ten acres a day, you know, unless it's been fallow a while."

"Bit out of practice," I said, feeling a blush rising.

"What have you been doing?"

"Killing people," I said.

She made a wry mouth, stepped past me and disappeared into the house. I had not been expecting an invite to her bed, but I had been hoping.

By the end of the first week on the farm, I was a much better plow jockey as my callused hands, knotted thighs and sore back would attest, and Luke set me to pulling stumps in a new field at some remove from the house. I was out there with a brace of mules, an ax and a stout chain when the raiders arrived, ten or twelve of them, claiming to be loyal militia and seeking horse flesh.

I had been so busy, I did not see them ride in. The shot got my attention, and I shaded my eyes and peered toward the barn that was several hundred yards away, past a small copse of willows. Then I heard a whoop as the wind shifted and smelled gunpowder.

I trotted back toward the house, running between fresh-plowed fields and trying the keep the barn's bulk between me and whatever was going on. Some men rode out as I got to the corner of the barn, and I saw they had three riderless horses with them, including my old nag.

Luke's body lay near the well with Martha bending over his bloody form. She looked up as I crossed the yard, pointed and cried, "They's in the house. Help her." She sobbed and fell on her man's corpse.

I charged through the back door and found two men sitting at the table where we usually ate with a stoneware bottle between them. One was leaning back, feet on the table and waist undone, while the other had the jug lifted to his mouth. I yanked the first to the floor with the chair atop him and smashed the heavy bottle into the other's face. Then I pulled my big bayonet and dispatched them both quickly if not neatly. That's was when I first heard the screams, the woman crying, "Stop, don't! Please!"

I ran to the front room, the parlor, bloody knife in my hand and kicked open the door. Two men were holding Andrea bent over a chair while a third, his britches at his knees, was sodomizing her, both his hands grasping her hips as he lunged into her arse. Blood ran down her legs.

I pulled him away from the woman and slashed at him without really aiming. Then I stuck the nearer man in the kidneys, stepped across the woman who had dropped to her knees, sobbing, and caught the third men as he scrambled toward the door. I drove my big blade through him, pulled it loose and watched him crumple in the doorway, crawling weakly from the room.

"Behind you!" Andrea yelled, and I spun to find the man with the fallen britches lifting a large pistol. I threw my knife at him and charged, ducking low. The gun went off almost in my face, burning my hair and nicking the top of my left ear. I smashed the man back and right through a window, hardly hearing the frame and glass shatter over the ringing in my ears from the gun's blast.

I held him tight and landed atop him in the bushes, feeling the breath knocked from both of us. I crushed his throat under my forearm and watched his eyes roll back. I got to my knees, heaving, felt at my ear, kicked him in the head to make sure and ran back into the house, a bit wobble legged.

The woman was standing by her sofa, my big knife in her hand, her eyes wild as the man I had stuck in the back neared her, arms spread wide. I yelled and he twisted toward me just as she lunged and drove the knife into the side of his belly, right to the hilt. A half-foot of bloody steel came out his back. She let go and stepped back. He fell on his side, trying to pull the broad blade loose. I kicked him a time or two, pulled my bayonet out of him and levered his body out the ruined window.

Then I looked at the woman, She was back to the wall beside her skinny settee, hands to her face, head bent, sobbing. I wiped my knife on my leg and sheathed it and then I took her into my arms and patted her bare back. She clawed at me and was wracked with crying, huge spasms that left her choking and bent, trembling. She was wearing only her shift and that was bloody and had been torn from one shoulder. I got her to sit, kept my arm about her shoulders and asked her if she was all right.

"No, damn it," she sobbed. "I've been raped, raped and buggered. Where the hell were you?"

I fetched her some water from the kitchen, stepping over the body in the doorway, and she gulped it down. Then she brushed her hair back and wiggled free of my arm.

"I heard a shot," she said, looking up at me, worried.

"Luke's dead," I told her.

"Damn," she said. "Damn, damn, damn."

I stood to leave, noting the full breast trying to free itself from the torn shift. She saw me looking and hitched the garment higher with a scowl.

"I knew those men," she said. "Some of them I knew."

"They were taking the horses," I told her at the door.

She nodded and I went out into the yard, dragging a body from the kitchen as I did so. I went back for the others, stripped all five of everything worth taking, loaded them in a big wheelbarrow and trundled them down into the woods, hoping the animals would take care of them before the buzzards noticed.