JAMES COLLIER, IN HIS BOOK. THE HYPOCRITICAL AMERICAN, WRITES: 'IN AMERICA, SEX IS sinful everywhere, and it rages everywhere. There is no other country in the world-and possibly in the entire history of the world-where sexual practice is so at odds with the sexual code. We pretend we are pure, and in our hearts we think we ought to be. We are nothing of the sort. America is a nation of sexual hypocrites." And Zoe, pure of heart as she was, found herself running away from illegal gambling, prostitution, all manner of sin-but still capable of flagrant adultery.
CHAPTER I
Icy terror soared around Zoe, swooping closer with every frightened tap of her feet. She felt her breath hot and hard, her wild heart pounding her. If she stopped, she'd be lost. But, God's sake, she had to stop, just for a second, just long enough for an extra gasp of air ... Surely she had time to-Then she heard that bedeviled, belabored puffing, down the hall-and she grabbed a half-breath and raced on. She would run until she died, if she had to, to escape that repulsive old man.
He had started chasing her around the red-and-gold gaming room called The Corral, when he'd found her down there alone. Skunk-drunk, he'd caught her and pounced on her-and she'd scooted out from under him when his hands let her go to open his pants. Horrified, she'd run the length of the sub-basement room and gained the carpeted steps.
One scared glance over her shoulder had shown him pounding after her in weaving, drunken hops.
The front of his pants was gaping, his fat old prick dangling out. God's sake, if she wanted any man shoving into her-which she didn't-she'd never choose a loathsome old gramps like him with a fleshy, flabby rod like his!
She reached the first basement and dashed on up to the ground floor. She stopped for breath, listening-and heard nothing. Then she caught the sound of a muffled tumble down a stairway-and she knew the old fool had tripped and fallen back to the Corral.
God's sake, she'd lost him at last. She hoped he stayed lost. Now if she could get to Clitey before the leering old sot picked himself up and started after her again, she would be safe-she thought ... she hoped ...
But she couldn't be sure of that. She wasn't sure of anything any more. She had been unnerved, unsettled-just plain God-awful scared!-ever since she had arrived at Clitey's house this afternoon.
There was something stand-offish about this Texas oil city, with its crumby cafes and dirty bars, and smelly gambling joints. There was no friendliness in the rows of drilling rigs which stretched into the western horizon, each one lighted by its slanting lines of yellow bulbs.
And there was something terrifying about this three-level house that had one story above ground and two below; that had strange men tossing money onto red-felt tables at odd hours-and other men showing off their wrinkled genitals as they chased girls they meant to throw down and rape.
Why hadn't Zoe stayed in Missouri?
In the softly lighted hallway, she ran her fingers over a closed bedroom door, seeking the knob. But before she could turn it, she drew back, repelled by the sounds coming from behind it. A man and a woman-were in there-and even a teenager from Missouri could tell what they were doing. Plainly, Clitey was in bed with a man. And, even more plainly, she liked what he was doing to her-as much as he did, maybe even more.
Suddenly there was a rush behind Zoe in the corridor-and a man's hands caught her, spinning her toward him. He was young, hardly older than her own sixteen years. His black hair and gray eyes gave him a handsome aura, in spite of his unsteady chin. His face was a boy's, atop a man's frame.
His voice was hoarse, throaty, "Aren't you Zora Shaw?"
She nodded.
"Then I guess you want to go to bed with me."
Zoe tensed even tighter. God's sake, no, she didn't want to go to bed with this pink-cheeked stripling. He'd be better than the old man with the dangling rod-but she'd never gone to bed with any male and she didn't intend to start tonight.
She shook her head vigorously.
The boy stared. "But you're Clitey's sister so, gad, you must be half-nympho. Sex is part of Clitey's bait, you know. Link says all the men who gamble here at Clitey's Corral on Friday nights, get a piece of Clitey first. Link's getting his now."
She wanted to say, You're wrong about Clitey. But that would be a little silly, with both of them hearing the sounds of sexual satisfaction in the bedroom behind them. She wanted to ask, Do I have to hold Open House on my privates, just because I'm related to the woman who runs this polluted place? But he'd already answered that question-and his answer had been yes.
He added, "The guys say Clitey puts out such a good piece that you don't mind her sky-high whiskey prices-or the whopping cut the house gets out of every game you ante into."
He waited, as if pausing to let Zoe break in. When she didn't, he went on, "Well, it looks like I got here too late for my bite of Clitey. It's almost nine o'clock-that's when the games start, you know, and Link won't pull out of Clitey until he has to. So I figured you must be taking on all the men she didn't have time to, meaning me. I'd as soon have a piece of you as Clitey."
She found her voice-at least part of it. She gasped, "Oh, no, I-Why, I never-No, you can't have a-piece of me!"
His mouth dropped open. "Gads and goldfish, don't try to tell me you're a tight-holed little virgin?"
Should she tell him the truth-or should she try to brazen it out and hope to shut him up by making him think she was too hardened a woman to be intrigued by the-likes of his boyish sexiness?
She decided on the last one and said coolly, "I know what's what, Jock."
She remembered that his name was Jock Tawnley. Clitey had introduced him, along with several other men, an hour or so ago. The man named Link, who was making love to Clitey, was a Tawnley too. They must be brothers-and regulars here. They seemed to know their way around this millionaire's mansion with the red-and-gold gaming room in its sub-basement.
But everybody was more at home here than Zoe-the skinny, auburn-haired, blue-eyed girl that Clitey had sent for after Mom's death two weeks ago; the naive kid who had expected to find her sister living on the rich leavings of two divorced husbands-before she learned that Clitey's castle and
Cadillac came from the men she chose so carefully and plied so well with her glamourous games, her lilting liquor, and her beautiful body.
Now, as Jock kept silent, Zoe added icily, "And I don't think you could show me a thing, youngster."
Instantly his head shot up, his face afire. "By gad, I'm as good a man as Link-or any of the other older guys. If I wanted to, I could show you plenty of peter. I could cut you as good as they could!"
She let a patronizing smile flit across her face, hoping it would hide her inner trembling. She was almost as afraid of this kid as she had been of the old duffer. If he decided to haul out that thing that was bulging his pants and shove it into her, she couldn't stop him. He was twice her size-and he wasn't drunk. If he pushed himself on top of her, the way the old man had done, she wouldn't be able to wiggle loose.
She tried to bluff, "Save your imagine cut for your next turn with Clitey. Or hold it for some sweet young thing like yourself."
That dig at his virility ought to make him mad enough to turn his back on her-and go huffing down the two flights of stairs to the craps and the dominoes and the poker.
Counting on her tone to disguise her shaking shoulders, she tossed her burnished head and started to whip past him.
But, like a roaring tornado in her ears, the boy exploded into savage fury. His hands clamped onto her shoulders, eating into the flesh like searing strips of red-hot iron. His arms bound her tight against him, so tight that she felt the outline of his genitals: hard and young and frightfully over-sized, throbbing against his clothes, pushing at her through the thin barrier between them.
She choked, "Please, Jock, I-I'm sorry I said what I-did. I know you're a-a man. You don't have to-to prove it to me ... So let me-go ... Please, Jock, let me go!"
But his throaty voice was raging, ravishing her already, "By God, I'll let you go when I'm danged good and ready to! And that'll be when I've cut you better than any other man ever did! No baby-blue-eyed little whore can call me a 'youngster' without me showing her how big a man I am!"
"Please, Jock, I-I don't want to find out how-how big you are."
She could already feel how big he was-and she knew that that bigness, that hardness, would be more than her "tight-holed" virginity could take without pain. She had always hoped to be deflowered by a man with a little one-and a man who loved her too much to want to hurt her. Was she, instead, to be torn apart by this wild-eyed boy who was bent on pushing everything he had into her whether she had room for it or not?
Yes, she guessed she was. The boy had picked her up in his powerful arms, clamping one hand over her mouth to stifle her sere s-and was marching down the hall. Her struggle meant nothing to him-nor did the constant kicking she made against his legs. What could she do to break his hold on her-what could she do?
Nothing ... Nothing at all ... As terror mounted within her, she felt herself carried into one of the guest rooms, thrown onto abed, and pawed by clumsy hands that tore her clothes from her in great chunks: ripping her dress and slip into shreds, tearing her bra and panties off, and exposing her white body to his greedy eyes as it had never been shown to a male before.
Frantic now, she slapped his face. If she could hit him hard enough, maybe rake her fingernails down his cheeks, draw the blood in great gashes-
But he was ahead of her. He yelled, "Oh, no, you don't, you scratching little bitch!"
And, before she realized what was happening, he was tearing a sheet from the bed and ripping it into strips, all the while sitting on her so she couldn't escape him. The next moment he had fashioned a rope from the cloth and swung her flailing arms above her head, tying them there.
He pulled off his shirt and undershirt, then kicked off his shoes, all without moving from her. Next, he flipped off his pants and shorts in one sweeping pull, raising his hips from her stomach for only an instant.
In the next motion, he was flopping over-and thudding down upon her.
Suddenly she sobbed, "Jock, nobody ever-touched me before I Don't make me take your-your thing, please don't! Let me go before you-"
"Shut up, you lying little slut! Nobody in this gambling hole could be a danged virgin!"
Seizing another strip of the torn sheet, he shoved it into her mouth. Then he began to vent his lust upon her.
"Get your legs apart and push that thing up to me, you little bitch! God, you're tight ... you can't really have kept the men out of your hairy little hole all these years ... You've got the tightest stuff I ever tried to poke my pecker into ...
"Oh, Lord, quit slobbering all over me! It's not gonna do you any good, you know. I'm gonna cut you good, in spite of-hell ... I never cut a virgin. If you really are one-which, I don't think you are-it'll be something. I didn't know there were any virgins any more, not after girls got to be six or seven ... The little bitches I grew up with were holding open their flaps for my prick as soon as we started school ...
"I'm cutting you now, I'm finally breaking into you ... Lie still and take it, you wiggly little worm. I don't care how loud you grunt and groan, I'm gonna bust into you as far as this pecker will go. And you'll never have a bigger pecker stuck into you than mine!
"Okay, okay, I'm in. How is it? Am I still a 'youngster' who can't show you anything?
"Oh, my gad, you're soaking us! You're a danged mess! Lord above, you are a virgin ... When will you quit bleeding? And how'll we clean up this danged place?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't have spoken if she'd wanted to, because of the gag-but she didn't have the strength any more. She only lay helpless under the body that pounded hers, up and down, in and out, not stopping its seige even when her blood washed them both. On and on he forced himself into her, more excited with every new push that seemed to slice completely through her. Then, panting wildly, he let himself go-and she felt him throb within her, felt the flow of his semen through all the tortured tenderness of her cunt. And at last came his shrinking prick, dropping from her, spent, too limp to push any more. He pulled the gag from her mouth, untied her hands, and moved away from her on the bed.
For a few moments they lay there together, too exhausted to speak or move again. Then, awkwardly, he said, very low, "Zoe, I-well, I wouldn't have screwed you so hard if I'd known."
She wasn't crying any more. She was too numb to cry now. She could feel the torn tissue that must be adding blood to her broken hymen, the private parts of her that-would be swollen and sore for days to come.
But she said, "I know it, Jock. I know you had to-to prove your manhood. I-drove you to it."
He rolled close to her and kissed her lips quietly, quickly. "Link won't have any women around our place. My mother died years ago and we've had only men there since. Link says they'd muddy up his business activities ... But I've always told him I was going to get married some day. And he's always said, sure, I could run right out and get married if I ever found a virgin-which he was damned sure I never would ... Well, now, I have. I've cut you all to hell-and I'm the first man who ever did ... God, Zoe, that makes me your-well, I don't know what to call it. But it's my pecker that broke you in. Any other pecker you ever feel, you'll remember how big, and how good, mine was. You'll compare mine with all the others that stick you from now on I"
Her voice was a low moan, "I hope I never have any other-other pecker to-to compare yours with! I hope I never-"
He interrupted excitedly, "Baby, I don't like to think about any other guy screwing you, now that I've broke you in. I think I'd kind of like to go on sticking you all by myself-anyway, for a while. This is the only time you'll bleed all over us like this. And next time you won't be hurt so bad. You're all stretched open now-and I'll break into you real easy next time."
"Oh, no, you won't! I'll never let you-"
"Zoe, baby, do you want to marry me?"
Startled, and still stunned from his brutal rape, she sat up with a jerk. Then, groaning from the pain that shot through her crotch, she fell back on her elbows, staring at him in amazement.
Unable to speak aloud in her surprise, she whispered, "Marry you? God's sake, no-no! I'd never marry a man who-who tore me open like you did, without caring how much it hurt me!"
"But, baby, I didn't know you were a danged virgin-you know I didn't! You acted like a seasoned old whore-and that was what I was sure you were. I figured that if I didn't screw you the way a man would, you'd tell Clitey that I was a washout when I tried to stab a girl. And then I knew she'd tell Link-and I'd never live it down. He wants me to get so tired of popping my nuts that I'll go home and settle down with him and the foreman and the birds, without needing any women."
One of his words snagged her sickened mind. "What do you mean, 'settle down with the birds?"
"Just what I said, baby. Haven't you heard of the Tawnley Feather Farm? We raise fighting cocks, the fanciest in the whole country. Ship'em to Mexico and other places that hold cock fights, even to some places in this country where they fight birds illegally. Link sends 'em out by the thousand-well, anyway, by the hundred at a time. He's worked up a hell of a business, him and his hired hands and his foreman, Mendez. It's a real pretty place to live, and-"
"Who is Link? I mean, what relation is he to you?"
"Relation? Why, baby, I thought you knew. He's my dad."
CHAPTER 2
SATED NOW, JOCK USED ZOE'S SHOWER, GOT into his clothes, and left her room.
At the door, he turned and smiled back at her. It was a smile without guile, without apology. Apparently, in his opinion, what he had done to her was no crime, no insult, not even an action to be dwelt upon by either of them. Copulation was life: no more, no less. When a male spotted a female he wanted to screw, his stripping and raping her was expectable-and the female was expendable. Jock had boasted of pushing into dozens of girls.-likely, he had no notion of their names or faces. Tomorrow he might not remember Zoe's.
Yet she knew she was more to him than the other women he had emptied his sexual spasms into. She had been a virgin until an hour ago-and he had never deflowered a virgin before. He had lilted it, blood and all.
Now his great gray eyes dwelt upon her warmly, almost tenderly, as he paused there in the bedroom door. "Look, baby, if you change your mind about marrying me, just let me know."
She didn't answer. She had already told him how she felt about him. And even his mistaking her for a whore when she was a virgin-well, it didn't change her feeling. She hoped she never saw any part of him again, especially that too big, too hard thing that had torn her crotch so ruthlessly.
He tarried a moment longer, as if waiting for her to speak, but when she didn't, he turned and strode down the hall. The bedroom door swung shut, leaving Zoe alone in her hurt and heartbreak. She had never been so miserable, so furious, and so frustrated in her life.
Clitey-her sister Clitey, had got her into this mess. What kind of woman had Clitey become in the ten years since she left Missouri? But Zoe knew she didn't need to answer that question, not even to herself. Clitey was a slut. A beautiful, well-groomed, party-giving slut. But a slut nonetheless. A nympho, Jock had called her-and he was probably right. Taking on all those men, every Friday night before her gambling games started-why, no ordinary woman could stand it. Surely only a nympho could keep her private parts moist enough, oily enough-either artificially or naturally-to have all those peckers pushing in and out of her the same night.
Zoe got out of bed and stood on her feet, slowly, carefully. More than-likely she would carry the scars of this night's rape for days, maybe weeks. When she could take time to look at herself, to dab medicine on the torn places, she would probably find terrible wounds that would take months to heal.
But suddenly she realized that she didn't feel sick at all-not weak either. She was uncomfortable, a little sore in the middle. But otherwise she was fine. Not dead, not even badly wounded.
Jock Tawnley's rod had stabbed her unmercifully-but nature had made her ready, all her life, for just such a stabbing. A woman's legs were made to part at the top, to force open the place for a man's prick to stick her. Zoe was not deeply hurt because she was not supposed to be. If, sometime, another man took her down and shoved his pecker into her,, she might not be hurt at all. In time there would be' nothing to it. Maybe that was why prostitutes were able to carry on, even to learn to relish their profession.
Well, Zoe was through with sex for now, and she hoped, forever until she married-if she ever did. After tonight, she would have to think about it a long time before she'd tie herself to going to bed regularly with any man, even legally. Let women who loved peckers, get themselves pecked all they wanted to. Women like Clitey. Zoe could stand it if no man ever pecked her again.
She pulled the soiled linen off the bed and heaped it into the waste basket. Even Clitey's wash-woman shouldn't be asked to clean it up. Then she went into the bathroom and soaked in the tub until she felt warmed through-and well.
Inspecting her hurts, she saw that all she needed was a little salve here and there. It must have been the breaking of her hymen and the stretching of her vaginal tissues that had made her think Jock was killing her when he forced himself into her maiden crotch. She was all right now. Beaten about, certainly de-prided as well as deflowered-but not really injured. Not at all.
All right then. She'd pick up what was left of her self-respect and go on with what she could make of her life.
The first plan she must make, in the light of what had happened to her-and of what she had learned about Clitey tonight-must be to leave this house and this town, as soon as she could. She had no money of her own as yet-and no possible place to go. She might have to stay here a little while, get along with Clitey until she could find a job and earn a few dollars to buy a bus or train ticket out of Texas. But the minute she had the fare, and maybe fifty cents or so for a bite to eat on the way, she would take out for Missouri; and she'd never leave its sheltered conservatism again. There, in the little town where she grew up, she would find old friends who would offer her a job, a home, a friendship-and decency. She would be through with Clitey and her men, the sounds of males stripping and stabbing every crotch they could catch in this evil house.
She went to the clothes closet that had so delighted her when Clitey had shown it to her this afternoon. In their first telephone talk after Mom's death-Clitey hadn't come back to Missouri for the funeral and only distant cousins had walked to the grave with Zoe-Clitey had asked for Zoe's dress and shoe sizes. In this closet, in the room that she had given to Zoe, there were at least two dozen lovely, expensive dresses, each one with matching shoes, plus slacks, shorts, under things, costume jewelry, and every other accessory that a young girl could want and need.
In her first glimpse of this fabulous wardrobe, Zoe had hugged Clitey joyously, sure that her sister meant to dress her for the teenage crowd she would meet in her new home. But now, eyeing the clothes distrustfully, she wondered if perhaps Clitey hadn't intended the imagine duds to attract men and to bring them to the gaming establishment that earned her such a big-figure income. It was more than-likely that Clitey planned to make her sister into the same high class prostitute that she so enjoyed being.
Well, that would never happen. Zoe would tell Clitey so, the first chance she got. But for tonight she might as well dress in something that cost a fortune-and go down to the Corral to watch the excitement, if any, that was there.
She selected gold things-a gold sheath that gave shine to her red-brown hair and reflected itself in her blue-blue eyes, gold pumps, a gold necklace, and gold earrings that dangled half way to her shoulders. She had never looked like this before. She wasn't sure she liked her mirrored prettiness but she ought to look grown-up, and hard, now. She was not a maiden any more. Her maidenhood and her maidenhead-were gone forever.
All at once her eyes found the front of her gold dress-she felt her face flaming in quick annoyance. Why, this dress was cut to the waist! Right down between the breasts the opening went, almost to her navel. Half of each breast showed plainly. Only the nipples were out of sight-and they seemed about to burst into view at the least movement. Why, a man could put his hand on a bare breast without taking a single garment off her. It was a wonder that Clitey hadn't cut a hole in the front of the skirt to reveal the crotch, pushed out and begging for a man's pecker! But of course she knew that this miniskirt could be flipped up for that purpose without the least effort. Either Clitey liked ultra-extreme styles or else she was paving a primrose lane for little Zora.
Zoe found a tiny gold handkerchief that almost matched the dress-and pinned it into the deep crevice. There was a line of nude stomach below the fill-in-but the half breasts were covered now. No man would be feasting his eyes, or his hands, on her bare bosom again tonight if she could help it.
She took a last glance into the mirror and decided that she looked like the kind of woman who would be helping her sister fleece men in a glittering gambling joint. She stepped into the hallway and closed her bedroom door quietly.
She had not taken more than a dozen steps toward the stairway when she heard soft laughter behind her-and spun about to face Clitey and a man. They were coming out of Clitey's bedroom and she looked as radiant as a bride who had just shared sexual climax with her husband. Of course, in Clitey's case, the climax had most certainly been enjoyed probably two or three climaxes, if the man's vitality had been up to it-only not legally.
Zoe's eyes swept her sister's beautiful face and figure, so like their mother's-yet so evilly different. Clitey Shaw Duncan Kerney Shaw-she had reassumed her maiden name after her last divorce-was duchess-tall, queen-beautiful, princess-desirable. Her eyes, so large that they appealed, so startlingly inured that they rebuffed, were as blue-green as a spruce corsage. The flawless cheeks, only slightly rouged, blended into rose-toned lips whose heart shape was enhanced by a sharp chin-line that held the suggestion of a dimple at its tip. And the wealth of dyed-gold hair was a sunlit setting for the dazzling beauty that was Clitey. In her fake-diamond ear drops, her shimmering-silver gown that was cut to the waist to show both breasts almost fully, and the jeweled slippers that glistened in the soft lights of the hallway, the woman was unbelievably lovely.
Something about Clitey was unbelievable, Zoe thought as she stared at her sister. What was it? The make-up, the clothes, the slimness of the seductive body? No, they were all as Zoe remembered them.
It was Clitey's hair that was different! She used to be a stringy-haired kid, like Mom. She hadn't inherited Pop's thick thatch, the way Zoe had. As a child, Clitey's hair had hardly covered her head; bald spots had shown through when she had come back from Texas to visit-and in the pictures she had sent home.
What kind of vitamins had Clitey fed her hair, these years, to produce this gorgeous halo about her come-hither face? The hair didn't look like a wig; it was Clitey's own, because there was no line of juncture between the real and the false, which wigs never really hid ... Well, maybe Clitey had found a hair-growing process. If anybody could uncover anything to improve a woman's sexual invitation, Clitey could.
Then Zoe's eyes moved from her sister to the man beside Clitey, and she stepped back a little, frozen into amazed disbelief at her own reaction to this magnificent male.
Clitey murmured, "Well, well, here's my sweet Little Sis ... Zoe, darling, this is Lincoln Tawnley 'Link' to me and I'm sure to you too."
"Hi, Little Sis." The tall man's eyes went the length of Zoe just once, impersonally, almost disinterestedly. Then, his hand on Clitey's elbow, he moved past the younger girl. His fingers touched a panel in the wall beside them, revealing the entrance to an elevator that Zoe had not known was there. They stepped into it, the panel closed into a flawless wall again, and they were gone.
But Zoe's reaction to Link Tawnley was not gone. She had never been so electrified at first sight of any human being before. And the feeling was not instant love, not attraction nor desire, not even a wish to face the man again. It was pure animal magnetism, the heady self-destruction that a moth must feel as it rushed to singe its wings and die in a flaming candle.
Link looked as young as Jock-and yet three times as old. His hair was as black, his eyes as gray, his body as lean and straight as his son's. But the sun-baked olive face was slightly lined, the shoulders were set in a man's assurance, and the eyes were so steely that they held no hint of softness nor tolerance.
It was those eyes that had made Zoe shiver, that made her tremble still; the piercing depth of the gaze, even in its one swift sweep over her. And the lips-lips that were a straight slash across a handsome, leathery, outdoor face-why, those lips were cruel, bitter, almost vicious. They belonged to the kind of man who would train birds to kill each other and sell them into their deaths; a man who would instruct his son to "get so tired of popping his nuts that he'd settle down without women." Yes, Link Tawnley looked all of that and more. He was the most magnetic-and the most menacing-male that Zoe had ever met. She hoped she would never cross himor do anything to cause him to cross her.
Clitey had looked up at him as if she adored him. Of course she probably put out the gaiety of What-a-man-you-are to every male who took her to bed-so he would take her again, and spend his money in her Corral ... Yet, in her look of virgin-Joy, a moment ago, Clitey had seemed completely in love with Link.
And it-would be possible for her to be. A female slut could love a male slut. And only two houses would be corrupted if they attached themselves to each other permanently.
What would Link be like in bed? Zoe wondered, shivering harder at the thought. Evidently he was able to please, to satisfy, to over joy a woman to whom men must be no more than commonplace. If Jock's pecker could cut a girl as deeply, as savagely as it did, what must his father's prick be able to do to a woman? Would it slice her wide open, tear her crotch apart-or-would it so magnetize her that she would hold herself open for it, thrill to the glorious pain of its ruthless stabbing, cling to its presence in her crotch until the last drop of his climax was drained from him?
What a woman it-would take to interest, and to do it physically, but Link's eyes had not echoed her plea for a shared love, and he didn't look like the kind of man who would marry a slut.
Jock had said that his father wanted no women, good or bad, living at the Tawnley Feather Farm. Zoe would bet any amount of money, if she had any to bet, that Jock's mother had been chaste when Link married her-and had stayed true to him as long as she lived. The Tawnley men appeared to be the kind who laid women whenever they felt the urge to do so-but let no pushover gain their name. Jock had said, "I've cut a virgin all to hell ... I don't want any other guys sticking you, now that I've broke you in ... Do you want to marry me, Zoe, baby?"
So Clitey's relationship with Link was-likely to be that of physical contact, of infrequent nights of impersonal copulation; nothing more.
Zoe might as well go on down to the Corral and watch Clitey watch Link-and the other men who would be there by now. Zoe might gamble a little herself, if Clitey offered to stake her to some cash to join the boys. She might drink her first liquor too, get woozy enough to forget how big Jock Tawnley's pecker had looked, how fiercely it had cut her. She might even be able to force herself to pretend that she was having a good time at Clitey's gaming tables.
She started down the two flights of stairs to the sub-basement, her spike heels making no sound on the thickly carpeted steps.
Why would anybody's residence have two basements? Well,-likely for the same reason that this residence had a secret elevator-and doubtless other get-aways and hide-outs. The better to escape detection, arrest, and jail, of course. Clitey was selling booze in a dry country, tossing dice in a non-gambling state, and putting out sex that society frowned upon. She had bad need of all her elaborate precautions, Zoe was sure.
Half way down the last flight of stairs, she came to a landing and met the appraising, glassy smile of a man she had met earlier, a fellow of whom Clitey had said, "Little Sis, this is Reem-my friend and partner, like all my employees."
And now Zoe could see what Reem's job was here. He had the sharpest, beadiest eyes that a man. could possess-and his red formal jacket with its gold trim, showed a definite bulge that had to be a gun. He was obviously Clitey's look-out guard, stationed where he could spy all who came to or went from the Corral God's sake, would Clitey kill to keep her illegal business in operation? Yes, apparently she would.
The man named Reem said, "Okay, Miss Shaw. I know you. Go on down." And she walked past him. As she lifted a hand to locate the device that opened the door of the Corral, she caught a guttural chuckle somewhere down this half-dark corridor. Paused with her hand in the air, she listened without meaning to-without wanting to.
A low-toned Mexican voice, plainly a man's, was boasting, "Me, I could go een there eef I wanted to. I have been at Clitey's tables. I could fuck Clitey eenstead of you, you peeg of a Tutie Bear. I have fucked Clitey more than once. You know thees, Tutie Bear?"
A woman's voice, almost as low as the man's, spoke derisively, "You're screwin' me now, not Clitey, you pig of a dog! You want to screw, then screw-or I spit on youi"
The man hedged, "Wait. I shut thee door first."
But his would-be sex partner guffawed, "Who the hell cares about doors? Not you, Mendez. And not me. Newa me, by Gawd. Evvabody screws in the kitchen, screws on the living room rug, screws wherever they damn well want to, whether anybody's watchin' or not, here at Clitey's. So for Christ's sake get on me and start screwin'-or out you go!"
There was the sound of one bare body squishing onto another. The man's voice jibed, "So you want I pee or get off the pot, huh? So I do thees, you fat bitch. I pee in you goo. And I make a new hole in you while I pee."
Zoe's eyes were seeing through the shadows now and she made out the lines of several doors on the north side of the long hallway. All were unlighted, including the open one from which the voices had erupted.
The woman had called the man "Mendez", so he must be Link Tawnley's foreman; Jock had mentioned that name. As for the "peeg, Tutie Bear," Zoe felt no need, nor wish to know, who the woman was. And she certainly didn't care what either of them looked, like; she hoped she would never encounter them in person.
The south half of the corridor was one long hall, showing no door or other opening, obviously pretending to be the end of this second basement. Zoe stuck a bobbie pin in the exact crack between strips of paneling that Clitey had indicated to her this afternoon-an invisible dot that only a small point like a pin or a ballpoint pen could locate. The panel swung wide, throwing light and laughter into Zoe's face.
She had been here earlier, just before she ran from the fat old man so she was ready for the gaudy glamour, the brittle brilliance of the Corral. Texas-big, its reds and golds screamed at her. It was windowless, and the red walls and carpets were reflected in the gold light fixtures, in the chairs and the bar, in the gold tables with their red tops.
There was only one woman in the room-Clitey, the hostess, the owner, the recipient of every pecker and every penny within reach. There were a dozen men, Zoe guessed, without counting them. The Tawnley men were there, along with three others whom Zoe remembered meeting when she arrived this afternoon; the remainder were strangers to her. Well, the fat old man wasn't exactly a stranger; any male who had chased you with his prick hanging out was a known-and-recognized enemy, whether you knew his name or not.
All the attendants were in gold and red, like the armed guard on the stairs; all seemed gay, at ease, bent only on the good time of the masculine guests. Making them partners in this enterprise was real damn sharp of Clitey, Zoe mused. They couldn't turn her in without implicating themselves and they weren't-likely to do it anyway, not as long as they were sharing in the earnings of this plainly profitable place. And, on top of everything else, they appeared to enjoy the fringe benefit of unrestricted, unqualified sex, from Clitey down to that awful-sounding Tutie Bear, who must be some kind of employee hereabouts. God's sake, as Daddy used to say, what a damned-awful racket to live by!
Zoe dropped down at a corner table that was away from the gaming groups. A red-coated waiter was at her elbow at once. "Yes, Miss Shaw?" Golly, did everybody here know everybody else? Heck, yes, of course they did. It was part of Clitey's togetherness.
She wanted to say, "Bring me a coke." But she saw Clitey's eyes on her, along with the curious stares of several men. She'd be damned if she'd order a sweet-child drink. She cleared her throat and stammered, "Bring me some kind of-of whiskey."
Clitey left the dice table and crossed to Zoe's corner, catching the waiter before he was gone from the little table. "Bring her a jigger of vodka in a glass of ginger ale," she instructed.
She sat down across from her sister. "I want you to learn to drink-and drink heavy-as soon as you can, Little Sis. But it had better be gradual. I don't want you getting sick and chickening out on booze before you learn to hold it."
She laid a cool hand on Zoe's steamy fist. "Well, well, did you have a big experience with the Tawnley youngster, Little Sis?'
Zoe felt her face reddening, burning like a thousand prairie fires. "I don't know what you mean by 'a big experience.' But that-that monster ... Why, he-he-"
"He destroyed your virginity?"
Zoe stared across the small space between them. But Clitey didn't look upset by her question-or its obvious answer. She seemed to know what it would be-and to approve it.
Zoe snapped, "Yes, he did! Clitey, how could you bring me to this-this awful place where men throw girls into bed and-and attack them, without anybody trying to stop them? How could you?
"Now, now, Little Sis, don't get all lathered up about it." Clitey was smiling-and there was no hostility, no defensiveness in the smile. "I'm sorry you got screwed tonight, sweetie. I didn't intend to let the men get to you until I'd got you started on pills, so you'd be sure not to get caught. But you're not-likely to be knocked up after just one pricking, however good the kid was. And you'll be glad, as soon as you get used to the idea of it, that you got that foolishness over. You're a pretty girl, lots prettier than I ever was, and I want you to help me here in the Corral. With your looks and my know-how, we'll haul in twice as many men as before and make twice as much money. I'll make you my partner, and you'll get rich along with me."
Zoe could hardly credit her ears. Was Clitey taking it for granted that "Little Sis" was going to enroll in prostitution and gambling and drinking, without so much as a wince or a protest? If she was, it was time to straighten her out.
Zoe said, "Honest, Clitey, I can't ever do what you do. Not even if I wanted to-and I damn well don't want to. I couldn't go to bed with one man after another, the whole afternoon before these games, letting every leering lout take his turn at stuffing his big fat prick into me! Why, the very thought of it makes me want to throw up!"
Clitey laughed softly, seductively. "Sure, sure, Little Sis. I used to think indiscriminate sex was vulgar, and that any sex at all was distasteful. But I got over that stupid notion, and I'm glad I did. When I married that goddamned Jim Duncan, he raped me vary night for months-through flu, menstruation, everything. I had to get used to that dick of his, whether I wanted to or not, so I made myself learn to like his screwing as much as he did. When he left me for a goddamned little virgin he picked up somewhere, I married Dan Kerney, and he couldn't get stiff once a week. I had to masturbate a hundred times to his screwing me once, so I walked out on him. I've made my own living since then, and you can see, it's a goddamn good living, Little Sis. I'd rather be screwed than eat-especially when the divine ox, Link, is around. I open up to all these guys on Friday nights-and to whatever other guys I take a shine to, other nights."
She paused, dropping her tone to a level of coaxing. "Give my kind of life a chance, Little Sis. You'll find you like it, I'm sure. Screwing's a hell of a lot of fun. And gambling's a goddamned good money-maker. You'll be as happy with both of them as I am."
"You'd better not ... not count on that." Zoe wished she could batter down these beautiful red walls and fly so far that she'd never come back. "I don't want to ... to do what you do, Clitey."
"You will when you've had time to think it over. You'll realize how easy, and how profitable, this kind of thing is." The older girl smiled again, her face relaxed and assured. "Right now you're a little upset because that Tawnley boy got to you. But you'll feel all right about it in the morning." She leaned closer. "That screwing was a good thing for both of you kids, Little Sis. Link said Jock had never been into a girl before, and I knew that you were a virgin. You broke each other in. Isn't that sweet?"
Zoe half rose from her seat, feeling dizzy and shaken. "I-I don't believe you? Why, that-that monster told me he had ... had shoved his ... his pecker into girls all his life, ever since he was in kindergarten! He said he knew as much about screwing as any older man did. And he ... he acted like he did, too. He was-awful, Clitey! He didn't kiss me or ... or anything. He just pulled off my clothes and then his and ... and started shoving his prick into me. It was so big it scared me. And he was awful pushy. He hurt me so bad I thought I couldn't stand it. And all the time he was doing it to me, he was bragging about all the girls he'd put it to!"
"Maybe you'd called him a kid, Little Sis; made him think that you thought he wasn't old enough to shave or get a hard on. Nothing makes a young man madder than that, you know-or you ought to know. Call a kid sexually immature, and he'll rape you if it's the last thing he does ... Had you told him he wouldn't know how to open up a girl, Little Sis?"
"Well, I-Well, yes, I had. But I didn't know it would affect him that way."
"You know it now. And you know too, from Link's telling me and me telling you, that Jock was just as much a virgin as you were, no matter how many wild lies he gave you about bedding down with a hundred girls. Unless he had affairs that his dad didn't know about-and I doubt that, because Link knows everything about everybody close to him-then that green youngster hadn't used his dick for anything except to pee through, until he used it on you tonight."
She rose and patted Zoe's shoulder. "Well, well, you even covered up your breasts, Little Sis. God, what for?" She leaned down and unpinned the gold handkerchief, lifting it from the crevice, exposing Zoe's ripe, round bosom. Both breasts popped out like grapefruit from a sack. The nipples held back, teetering on the edge of the cloth, their brown points barely visible.
Zoe rushed both hands to her breasts, trying to cover the full white mounds of flesh.
Clitey laughed, "You might as well get used to showing off what you've got, Little Sis. You'll be nude more often than dressed, around here. And I go topless at the games a lot of the time. The men love it. Pinching a nipple makes them forget how much cash they're losing, if they're low man at dice or black-jack or poker. And you've got to keep them sexed up, sweetie. Don't ever let any man anywhere forget that you're a woman. Rub your breasts on them whenever you get close enough. And you can rub better if you don't have them covered up."
She leaned closer and flipped Zoe's nipples into full sight. "There you are, Little Sis. You've got a neat pair of breasts, big beauties. And as soon as you get used to showing them, you'll be proud of how big, how firm they are. You'll oil them every day and then massage them like hell, to make them even bigger and firmer. You'll like to have the boys feeling them during the games. It'll give you a tingle, help you work up and let you go off when you get the guy into bed. So don't be so bashful, sweetie. Let all the men here tonight get a load of your big, bouncy breasts. I wish mine were as big as yours."
She released a string or zipper somewhere in her clothes, and dropped the whole front of her dress along with whatever was under it if anything, to her waist. Her breasts stood out nude, pointed like a young girl's. The nipples were gilded a bright gold, and each breast was made up in rosy pink. Giving Zoe one last reassuring smile, Clitey glided smoothly away, dropping to the table where Link Tawnley sat, pushing one bared breast under his arm.
The man did not jump at her touch, did not even register any notice of the breast. The man on the other side of Clitey reached out and thumped the gold nipple closest to him, making some snide comment that caused the whole table to snort with delight. But Link ignored that too. He was frowning, studying the board, placing his bet.
Apparently Link was exactly what his son had said he was-immune to women. He could empty his sex urge into a girl, and then put her aside without a lingering thought. He was inhuman. He was a male but not a man, Zoe thought a little bitterly.
He was heartless enough to be glad that his virgin son had raped Clitey's virgin sister. Probably they had laughed about it together, wondering if the novices knew where the pecker was supposed to go, if the un-stabbed crotch was hard to open up ... All right, let them laugh. Damn them both, Clitey and Link. Damn the whole lot of people in this miserable room tonight ...
Well, maybe not damn them all. Maybe not damn the red-faced boy who was coming toward her now. Maybe not damn Jock Tawnley.
CHAPTER 3
JOCK FELL INTO A CHAIR BESIDE ZOE AND demanded gruffly, "What's the idea of pulling out your tits for every horny guy here to suck on?"
She seized the gold handkerchief and thrust it into the crevice between her big round breasts, smoothing it out to cover as much of the great fullness as possible. She said, "I didn't-pull them out, Jock. Clitey did."
His lips set grimly. "Yeah, she'd do that. She paints her own tits gold and dangles them into every guy's hands and mouth. If a woman ever raped her men, your sister Clitey does."
"I know."
"Are you going to paint your tits gold and tease all the men with them?"
"God's sake, no! I'm not like Clitey, Jock. Honest, I'm not. You know you're the only man who ever ... took me to bed. You-forced me."
"Sure I know that, baby. And when I know you better, I'll tell you the truth about me. When I do, you won't think I'm quite as much of a heel as I'm damned sure you do now."
"Jock, I-I already know it."
His face colored a little. "You couldn't know what I'm talking about. Nobody knows it but me."
"Link knows. He told Clitey and she told me. They laughed about us both being ... virgins. She said they thought it was 'sweet' that we broke each other in."
The boy's face grew redder and redder, until his neck and even his ears seemed ready to burst. "You mean they had the nerve to--? "
"They certainly did. And maybe it was natural, or anyway understandable, that they would. I'm Clitey's 'Little Sis', and Link-likely thinks of you as his baby boy."
"Yeah, I suppose he does ... Well, if they could have seen us going for it, they'd have known we were plenty old enough to work off a hard one, wouldn't they?"
She protested, "J didn't go for it-you did! I thought you were ... killing me!"
He grinned delightedly. "Yeah, I sure took you down and screwed you good, didn't I? And I've got a pecker to be proud of, haven't I? I've seen it beside other guys' petes, in men's rooms and other places, and I've never spotted one any bigger than mine-lots of them not near as big. Hey, baby, I hope I didn't really hurt you bad. Did I?"
She shook her head indifferently. "No. After I'd had a bath and soaked my ... middle real good, I found out it wasn't cut up as bad as I'd thought it would be. I guess it just hurt to be broken into for the first time."
"Yeah, and by such a big hard one, baby. Look, Zoe, don't you think you'd like to have it all the time?"
She went tense. "No I Don't you ever even suggest screwing me again! Why, God's sake, I wouldn't let you-"
"Baby, it's not rape when you're married. And, like I told you afterward, I sure wish you'd marry me." His voice dropped to a plaintive note, and she. suddenly realized how young he was; how defensive, how eager to be a man who could be desired and loved by a woman.
He begged, "I'll be good to you if you'll marry me and go home with me, baby. I'll screw you easy, let you learn to want it before I jump on you again like I did the first time. And I'll be good to you in other ways. We'll have a hell of a good time, up in the plains and breaks of the Panhandle, taking care of the birds."
Zoe didn't answer him for a minute. Her mind was running too fast for words, the thoughts crowding in on her fears and emotions.
She didn't love Jock Tawnley; she didn't believe she ever could. He simply was not the type of man she had always been sure she could warm up to, could thrill to the touch of, could welcome the prick of. He was too boyish, too uncertain, and too boastful.
Yet, if she married him and they made a serious effort to love each other, and if he would be as good to her as he was saying he would, courting her as a wife instead of a sweetheart, well, then who could tell what would happen between them?
And the Tawnley Feather Farm sounded like paradise. Certainly it would be freedom from this lousy house, from Clitey and the strings of men she took to bed, from the baring of Zoe's breasts and the ravishing of her crotch, and from the permanent role of professional prostitute that Clitey seemed to intend to make her into.
Being married to this clear-eyed boy, even though she might have to open up to his over-sized pecker every night, might not be so bad. A girl could learn to put up with a pecker, to like it, finally to want it and grab onto It. and pull it into her crotch. And whether she was ever able to achieve that happy state or not-well, God's sake-it would be a damn lot better than taking on the hundreds of peckers that Clitey would shove at her if she stayed here.
There was only one thing that scared her, more than she'd ever been scared in all her life before ...
She asked quickly, breathlessly, "Jock, what about Link? Is he at home a lot?"
"No, he's gone more than half the time. Why?"
"I'm ... afraid of him, Jock. His eyes-they terrify me! I can't explain it, but I-"
"You don't need to explain it to me, baby. I've lived with him as long as I've lived anywhere, and I know what he's like. He's tough as hell, and all the people who work for him are scared of him well, anyway, everybody except Mendez. That damned Mex wouldn't be scared of God and the devil rolled into one. But Link doesn't bug me-probably because he's never been mean to me. I'm his only kid, and that makes me a privileged character around the place. You'll be privileged too, if you're my wife."
"But you said that Link doesn't like women, that he doesn't want any women living there."
"That's right, but he'll let you stay there. He'll have to, because he said I could marry a virgin if I. could find one. And Clitey told him you'd never been screwed till I got you. He won't go back on his word. If Link says something, he sticks by it."
"What do you do on your feather farm?"
"Well, I've just done odd jobs up to now, whatever chores Link handed out to me. I just graduated from high school last June. Link wants me to go to the university, but I've told him a dozen times that I don't give a damn about any more education. And when I've got a wife, and maybe kids-why, I'll want to make a living for them."
"Will you work at the farm? Do you want to stay there?"
"Sure, why not? It's the prettiest place in the world. And Link said, a while back, that if I decided against college for sure, then I could take my pick of jobs at home. I've always typed letters and stuff for Link, so I could be his secretary. I've done a lot of his ordering, so I could be head of his supply department. There are a lot of other possibilities. He'd shuffle his other help around to give me whatever work I wanted."
"It must be a big operation."
"Hell, it sure is. Wait till you see it ... And you will see it, won't you, Zoe, baby? You will marry me and go there to live?"
She still hesitated. One tumble in the sack didn't make for affection-especially when the tumble was by two virgins, with one of them raping the other.
She said, "You know something, Jock? You've never even kissed me. You've been my lover and you say you want to be my husband. But you've never kissed me."
His face was afire. "I know, love. And I'm sorry as hell about it. I was so sure you were a whore. And nobody kisses whores. But now that I know you were my very own little virgin, I'll kiss you as much as you want me to." He leaned toward her, his arms closing with her inside them.
She tried to push him away. "Not here, Jock!"
"Hell, why not here? Nobody is paying any attention to us. We could get right down here on the floor and screw for dear life, and they'd never even see us. They're all too busy playing with Clitey's tits, and trying to gamble a thousand dollars into fifty thousand."
"Okay then. Kiss me. If I like it-"
"You'll like it, baby, I kiss good. And this will be the best kissing I ever did."
She didn't know whether it was his best, but it certainly outdid any kiss she'd ever had before. His mouth almost literally consumed hers, and his tongue seemed to reach halfway down her throat. One of his hands crept under her dress and inside her panties, touching her crotch, welling warmth and moisture into it, and his other hand pressed against her back so tightly that her breasts were crushed on his chest. She could feel the racing of his heart, and her own answering beat. She knew it was pure animal passion, not a woman's lifetime affection, but it was with her nonetheless, letting her respond to his kiss. She gave herself to it then, answering with her own tongue, her own heat, her own hand against the front of his pants where his pecker was pressing the cloth, almost hard enough to burst through it, The kiss went on and on, until she was dizzy, and until the boy was shaking feverishly. He let her go quickly then, moaning, "If we don't stop, we'll be on the floor I And I don't reckon you could stand it for me to put it to you again this soon, could you?"
"Oh, no Jock I-I just couldn't. Give me a few days ... let me wait till we're married."
His face lighted. "Our kiss was okay then? You'll marry me?"
She touched his lips with her forefinger and then carried the dampness of it to her own mouth. "It was the best, and the biggest, kiss I ever had, Jock, It made me want to take a chance on marrying you. Maybe we can learn to love each other after we're married, if we try hard enough and long enough."
"Sure we can, Zoe, love." He put his hand on hers gently, tenderly. "Gads, I think I love you already, baby. If I don't, I'm damn close to it."
Suddenly his touch tightened. "Hey, baby, we could fly to Nevada tonight, get married without waiting, and be back here in the morning. Nobody'd even notice we were gone. Let's do it!"
"Can we leave without telling Clitey and Link? Won't they have to give their permission before we can get married? I'm only sixteen. And you can't be much older."
"I'm eighteen. But we'll say I'm twenty-one and you're eighteen. Nobody out there will give a damn whether we're lying or not. They'll marry us okay."
"Wait a minute, Jock, I have to know this ... Will you-will you really leave me alone-until I have time to ... to get over the way you raped me? I'm not hurt real bad, but I'm so sore I just couldn't let you do it to me again right away."
"Okay, okay, love. We won't screw until we get to the farm, not unless you want to. I won't touch your crotch unless you ask me to-till I get you in my own bed, the bed that'll be ours ... Come on, love. Let's head for Reno or Las Vegas, whichever has the first flight out!"
They slipped out the one door to the Corral and up the half-flight to Reem's post. The guard waved them past, grinning slyly. Jock hugged Zoe happily. "That guy thinks we're going upstairs for some more illegal sex. He doesn't know that we're going to get ours legally from now on."
At the airport they found a plane leaving for Vegas in fifteen minutes and took it. Jock said he wished they could fly their own ship, but he and Link and Mendez were in one of Link's cargo planes. They'd delivered a load of fighting cocks to Juarez and were on their way home when they stopped off for a night at Clitey's. Usually Mendez made the delivery of birds to Mexico alone, but this time Link had decided to come along at the last minute, and had brought Jock with him.
As Zoe and jock settled into their plane seats for the trip to Vegas, he told her, "I've never had buddies, or ever close friends. Link didn't want me bringing kids home, and I couldn't go to their houses without having them back. I never minded too much though, because I knew the kids wouldn't have any fun at our place."
"Why not? You said it was beautiful there. And big. And rich. So what?"
"Well, Link-likes us to keep to ourselves, you know. He treats unexpected company real lousy-usually he orders them to get out. Unless a visitor is there to buy birds or conduct some other business, Link doesn't want him around. And Mendez-well, that Gole Mendez is the meanest son-of-a-bitch on earth. He'd as soon kill a guy as to light a cigarette. Everybody in Wayside Corners-that's the little town we're closest to-hates his guts. And they don't like Link much better, because he's never been friendly to anybody in town."
Zoe felt a faintness, a sickness inside. "You ... you frighten me, Jock! I don't want to live in a place where the boss hates women and the foreman hates everybody. I don't want to-"
"Now, now, love, it's like I told you. Link won't let anything hurt me-or you either. I'm all he's got, and he won't let us get into trouble." He pulled her face to his and kissed her deeply. "I'm just telling you all this to show you how alone I've been all my life. Link never says he gives a damn about me. Nobody has said they loved me since my mother died when I was six. You'll be the first person to love me and let me love you. It'll be ... well, it'll be damn near heaven to me, love."
He kissed her again, and she returned his kiss. But she could not help thinking, What kind of place is the Feather Farm, really? Why should Link hate visitors? What is going on with that horrible Mendez man that was screwing some woman named Tutie Bear? Are he and Link mixed up in some crime that they can't afford to let anybody off the farm find out about?
What will happen to me if I go there to live? But, what will happen to me if I stay here with Clitey?. . . So what damn choice have I got?
CHAPTER 4
THEY WERE MARRIED SOMETIME BETWEEN midnight and morning, in a little "Marriage Bower" on the edge of Vegas. The place offered all the trimmings, for a fine fat fee: white dress, flowers, rings, the works. Jock hauled out bill after bill from his wallet, buying the whole array for Zoe, insisting that she have everything possible for as imagine a wedding as this hurry-up ceremony would allow.
The woman attendant basted a few tucks into the lovely satin dress-which fit Zoe perfectly. The flowers were real mums and roses, all white, and the rings were diamond-studded. The little jewelry counter in the front office offered a selection of rings-cheap, medium, and expensive-and Jock picked out a showy set, smacking down five hundred dollars for it. Zoe felt a little dizzy with the glamour, the wealth, and the swiftness of it all.
Then, in only a few minutes, they were discarding everything but the flowers and rings, rushing to the airport again, and flying back to south Texas to the border city where they had left Clitey and Link and the gambling games.
Zoe asked, "Don't you think they will have missed us by now?"
But Jock insisted, "No, love. Link's probably got Clitey in bed again, maybe two or three times more. When they got done gambling, they probably started screwing again, and kept at it the rest of the night. She's the best lay he ever had, so he told me, and, if you ask me, I think Clitey's plumb in love with him."
"I think so too. I saw her eyes when they came out of her room last night, and she looked like she was crazy about him. Will he break her heart, do you think?"
'
"I'm damn sure he'll never marry her, if that's what you mean. Gads, who would? She's been screwed by every guy that comes to her games, every Friday night, for years! No man in his right mind would take a gal like that for his wife ... But I don't think anybody'll ever break Clitey's heart. She hasn't got one, has she?"
Zoe remembered her sister's saying, "I'll make you my partner, and you'll get rich along with me." No normal woman would turn her own little sister into a paid prostitute. She said, "No, I guess she hasn't, Jock. No heart at all."
They got a cab at the Texas airport and went again to Clitey's. The house was only dimly lighted now, looking as if everybody in it was asleep at five o'clock in the morning. Zoe dug in her purse and found the key that Clitey had given her, then unlocked the back door. The two of them peered down the stairs toward the two basements, but saw only darkness there. Apparently the games were over and the gamblers gone. Where were Link and Clitey?
Where-would Zoe and Jock meet them for the trip to the Panhandle in the cargo plane?
Jock said, "Hell, I'll bet anything I know where Link is. He's in Clitey's room, laying her as hard as he can, one last time before he leaves. And Mendez is doing the same thing with some street woman he's picked up. Come on, we'll find Link."
They ran down the long corridor to the first-floor bedrooms, pausing outside Clitey's closed door. Sure enough, they heard her soft laughter, her cooing words, "Link, you beautiful big ox! I never knew a man who could get his prick so hard so often! We've gone off three times tonight, both of us. And now you want another one-a nightcap before you take off. Are you sure you can get that big wonderful prick of yours stiff again, sweetie?"
"Damn right I can. All I need is a few minutes' rest between screwings. I can get it hard any time I want to-and any time you rub your fuzz on it, girl."
"Then let me feel it now, sweetie ... God, what a big one, what a beautiful prick-the most beautiful one in the whole world, the only one that gives me a real buzz, sweetie ... Do you screw a lot of women, Link?"
His chuckle was short. "God, no-if it's any consolation to you. I don't have much time for screwing. Oh, I take a crotch to bed once in a while, on these trips, if the girl pushes it up to me and I'm in the mood. But most of the time I just save up for when I come here. You've got a crotch in a hundred, Clitey girl."
"I could keep It for you, Link. Nobody else would get into it if you didn't want them to. All you'd have to do is ask me."
"Now don't bring that up again! You know I'm not marrying anybody. I've told you so, plenty of times. A wife wouldn't mix with my business. But you're as close to me as any woman ever can be, Clitey. And you're the only one I keep coming back to. You can make me go off just by holding open your crotch for me."
"Okay, you beautiful big ox. I'm holding it open for you now, and it's twitching like hell for your prick. Come on, push into me and give me the biggest thrill of my life. Every time we do it, it's better than the last time, sweetie ... Oh, God, Link, it's go good-so goddamn good when it's with you."
Jock pulled Zoe on past the closed door. She felt his arm shaking as it held her. He choked, "Baby, don't let me listen to any more of their talk about screwing-or the sound of them doing it. I'll go nuts wanting some screwing myself!"
Zoe turned into his arms, pressing her lips to his. "I-I feel the same way, Jock. And we're husband and wife now. It would be the thing to do. You've got a right to ... to screw me now."
"But I promised not to till we got to the farm."
"That was because I thought I was hurt. But I feel almost healed up now, Jock. If I can get warm and wet inside, and I feel like I am, then maybe you won't hurt me any more."
His face on hers was steamy, his sweat dampening her face as well as his. "Do you mean it? Can we really screw, right now?"
"Sure, we can. I-I never thought I'd want it, Jock but I kind of do. At least I won't be mad at you when you do it to me this time."
They rushed on to her room. A maid had cleaned the place completely, making up the bed with fresh snowy linen. They dropped onto it as soon as they could shed their clothes, and Jock was into Zoe the moment he fell upon her. He pushed easy, all the time kissing her, murmuring that he loved her terribly, begging her to love him back, to want his pecker in her crotch as much as he wanted to put it there.
She was relieved and pleased that she was able to take him without being hurt, and without having to slow him down. There was no thrill in it, as she had hoped there would be, but, she told herself, that would come later, sometime when she had learned to love him. Surely sex was part of the whole joy of love, and a wife would want it as soon as she had learned to love her husband fully. Eventually she would work up to a climax, and feel the glorious explosion that would tell her she had been fulfilled at last ... That would come in time. For now, she was glad she could let her bridegroom take her as he would, in their first married union.
He asked, "Shall I wait for you, baby? Can you go off, do you think?"
"Oh, no, I don't think so. I-"
"I can hold off a little while longer if you want to keep trying, love. Maybe if I feel that little bump of yours some more, you'll be able to work up and-"
"No, no, I ... just don't feel like it. I can't do it tonight, Jock. Give me some ... some time to learn to ... to have a climax. I'm glad that it's as good as it is this time. Glad you're not hurting me, and that I'm able to make it easy for you."
"Gads, yes, you're swell, baby ... Okay, I'll go on ... It feels swell, love. Lots better than when you were crying and fighting me, when you didn't want me in you at all. I don't ever want to screw any other girl, baby. Just you and me, screwing each other as long as we live!"
When he had spent himself and gone limp, they got up and dressed. They came out of the bedroom together, their hands clasped in each other's, their faces happy.
Voices down the hallway told them that Clitey and Link were somewhere in the living room, probably saying their good-byes. As Jock and Zoe neared them, Link was saying, "Where in hell is that damned kid, Jock? Mendez says he's not in any motel or cafe in this town. And we've scoured the house. I'm flying home in thirty minutes, and if that damned young fool isn't here by then-"
"Link, sweetie, don't get all lathered up about it. You know Zoe is missing too. They're some place together, making love. He's probably thinking that she's as good at it as you say I am. And maybe he's getting a last piece before he takes out, the way you got your last chunk with me."
"Well, hell, they should be done with it by now. Women have no place in business-at least not in my business. Jock should have got all the screwing he wanted last night. He doesn't need to keep screwing your kid sister all day today too. I'm ready to get back to the farm and forget crotches and perfume and tits-until the next time I come down here."
"Do you forget all about those things, Link? Don't you ever think about how good it was to screw me, when you're up there on your farm doing your work?"
The man's voice was harsh, heartless, "Hell, no, I don't think about you, you damned little slut. All I want out of you is a good night's stabbing. Once it's over, so are you as far as I'm concerned. I never give you another thought till I see you again and want a piece of that crotch of yours."
His voice took on a note of annoyance, almost of anger, "And I'm raising Jock to be like me; to take over the farm when I let him. He's not going to be messed up by any woman who'd want to move off our place out in the-wilds. He'll make a fortune if he sticks with me, and I'm going to see that he does ... God, where is he?"
Zoe started into the room, but Jock pulled her back and guided her down the hallway. Fiercely he whispered, "Baby, I can't tell him we're married-not when he's in that kind of mood. He'd knock me down, the way he does when anybody at the farm makes him mad."
"But we are married, Jock! So you've got to tell him."
The boy pulled off his wedding ring and dropped it into his pocket. He motioned her to do the same thing, and she did it reluctantly. He argued, "I can't tell him baby. I haven't got the guts to do it ... Tell you what, love. I'll fly home with him. On the way I'll tell him about us. I'll catch him in a good mood somewhere on the way. I'll talk him into approving of our getting married, and saying we can live at the farm. I'll remind him of what he said about virgins, and that you were one before I got to you. By the time we get home, he'll give me his okay, I know ... Let me do it this way, baby. You've got to let me I"
There was genuine fear in his eyes, in his trembling hands, in the sudden paleness of his face. The boy was really terrified of his Dad. What kind of ogre was Link Tawnley, to hire a foreman who would as soon kill as smoke, to knock down his employees if they displeased him, and to plant such a fear in the heart of his only son that Jock dared not introduce his wife to his Father?
She sighed. "Well, if you have to, then I guess I have to let you. But how long will it be before you send for me T
"No time at all, baby. As soon as we get home, I'll write to you and send you the money to fly to Wayside Corners. I'll meet you there, and we'll never be separated again, I swear it, baby."
"Well, I-all right."
She let him kiss her, one last long caress that soaked her with its depth and passion. Then she led the way into the living room, and their confrontation with the two adults who paced the deep-piled carpet there.
Clitey flew to Zoe, smothering her with kisses. "God, you had us worried, Little Sis. Where have you been?"
But Link cut off Zoe's possible answer. "What in hell does it matter where she's been? She's got Jock back at last and we've got to get out of here. Come on boy. Mendez has the plane all ready."
Jock hesitated a couple of seconds, seeming to teeter on the edge of a plea or a revelation. "Link, Zoe and I are ... in love."
The older man's eyebrows went up in obvious contempt. "Oh, hell, boy, you'll be in love a hundred times, and get over all of them. And this girl will get over you, if she has any damn sense ... Come on, boy. It's time we took off."
And, before anyone in the room could say another word, Link had whisked his son out the door and into a waiting cab.
Clitey said, "Do you hate to see them go as much as I do, Little Sis?"
Zoe nodded desolately. She didn't love Jock completely, and perhaps she never would. But she loved what he represented. And she could not be sure, now that Link had snatched him away from her, that she would ever learn the reality of life on the Tawnley Feather Farm.
Should she tell Clitey that she was Jock's wife?
Would it keep Clitey from sending other men to Zoe's bed, from demanding that she open her crotch to one and all of them?
No, probably not. Zoe-was reasonably sure that it wouldn't affect Clitey's attitude toward her at all. She would-likely laugh about a marriage between teen-agers. Maybe she'd even annul it, which she could certainly do if she had a mind to. At any rate, she was pretty damn sure not to take it seriously, sex-wise. She would expect Zoe to be ready and willing to take all proffered peckers, come next Friday night.
Well, thank God, Zoe wouldn't be here then. Jock would have sent the money to her, and she would have left this house. She would be at the Tawnley Feather Farm, settled down in her new home as Jock Tawnley's wife-and Link Tawnley's daughter-in-law.
Maybe, then, she'd better keep her secret from Clitey, at least for this week. She could wait to tell Clitey when she caught the plane for Wayside Corners. She might even avoid it then. She could leave a note for Clitey. And once she was gone, there wouldn't be much that her sister could do. Before she could reach Zoe, Jock would have met her plane and rushed her off to the farm. And then Link would protect their marriage. Jock had promised that he would. And Zoe had to believe it, in spite of the way Link had acted and talked. She had to believe that when she was in his care, she would be free of Clitey's wayward ways-and that she'd stay free of them forever.
Now Clitey said, "God, I'm worn out. I always am when Link is here. Other game nights I don't work hard in bed. But with Link-God, he's a beautiful ox, Little Sis! He's got the biggest, the cuttingest cock I ever--But you don't care about Link's cock, do you?"
"No, I don't. I had plenty of his son's, and it wasn't bad."
"I'll bet it wasn't. I bet he screwed you all to hell. And you'll be glad he did, glad that first time is over. You'll like it fine from now on, Little Sisfrom him and all the other men who come here to gamble and screw. You'll be wonderful help to me, sweetie. I'm sure glad I brought you here. Well, let's get some sleep, shall we?" She started for her room. "I'll see you at dinner tonight-if I'm awake by then."
She popped into her room and slammed the door. Zoe went to her room and sat down to think. What would happen to her next-what would she do before this week was over, this month, this year?
The first thing to happen came four days later on the following Tuesday. Zoe was getting nervous by then, having waited eagerly, day after day, for word from Jock. But she had had none-no wire, no letter, no telephone call, no plane ticket, no money. The Tawnleys would have reached their home sometime on Saturday. If anything had happened to them, there would surely have been notice of it in the area papers, and there had been no mention of any such tragedy.
Had Jock failed to tell his father that he was married? Was he still stalling, still trying to get up his nerve to give out his news? Or had he told Link-and been refused his wife? Was Link perhaps annulling the marriage, parting his son from any girl who would dare to consider the Tawnley Feather Farm her home?
Why didn't she hear from Jock? Why?
Then, on Tuesday morning, Clitey knocked on her door, calling, "Get up and come with me, Little Sis. I've got to go to Tutie Bear's trial, and pay her fine if she gets one. It'll look better if two women go to court instead of one. I don't want that crotchety old Judge Mooreman to know I've got any connection with Tutie Bear Torrento, so you come along. If you've never been to court-and I'm damn sure you haven't-it'll be a new experience."
Zoe got up and dressed listlessly. But why not go with Clitey? It would be something to do-something to take her mind off what would happen to her if she didn't hear from Jock before Friday night.
On their way to the courthouse in Clitey's Cadillac, Zoe asked, "What is your connection with the Torrento woman?"
The older girl shrugged. "Hell, you ought to be able to figure that out, Little Sis. I staked her to a start in the gambling business, in the back room of her crumby little cafe on the south side of town--the Green Garter, she calls it. She does real well, and I get a fourth of all she makes."
"Clitey, do you have to get mixed up with a woman like her? I-I mean ... Well, I heard her and the Mendez fellow, downstairs Friday night, in one of the bedrooms across from the Corral. They were screwing. And they said awful things! Do you have to--? "
"Hell, yes, I have to. How in Christ's name do you think I got this car and the clothes you're wearing and the house we live in? By pulling every string I could get hold of, that's how! My house is the biggest string, sure-the games and the men I drag into them, the way I keep them happy by letting them lay me. But I've got a lot of other strings too, all bringing me in plenty, and Tutie Bear is one of them ... All right, here we are. Hop out."
They made their way up the stairs to the musty-smelling courtroom. The trial had not yet started, and they slipped into seats toward the back. Zoe whispered, "Is the fat woman up there Tutie Bear Torrento?"
Clitey nodded.
Zoe studied the woman who was on trial for gambling, and she decided that Tutie Bear was more than plain Mexican. She looked like a Cajun-Mex conglomerate. She was so fat and flabby that her butt hung over her chair on both sides, wobbling with her every movement. Her old skirt Was grease-spattered and her tennis shoes were as dirty as they were frayed. Her face wasn't over-clean either, and her double chin sagged heavily toward her un-corseted breasts that swayed in her low-cut plaid blouse. No wonder that even a louse like Mendez didn't want to lay this awful female!
When the judge had started things off, the district attorney outlined the case against Tutie Bear. He told the judge he would prove that Mrs. Torrento conducted nightly gambling games at the Green Garter-and that she sold liquor to all who joined her games. The D.A.-a flawlessly groomed man named Russell Ryder-was an excellent speaker. Zoe felt that Tutie Bear was licked before anybody at the defense table said a word.
Then Tutie Bear's lawyer, a hook-nosed hunk of lank called Jarvis Kane, promptly hopped up and stated that he would prove that Mrs. Torrento was a hard-working, law-abiding citizen, naturalized just five years ago and completely loyal to the llnited States and Texas, and all the regulations therein; that she would not give a moment's consideration to gambling or the dispensation of liquor, either for fun or profit.
The D.A. got the first chance to howl, and he howled extremely well, Zoe noted. A police officer testified to catching a gambling party in the back room of the Green Garter a week ago, with a fortune on the tables and a bottle of booze apiece for the gamblers. Neighbors of the cafe swore they saw people going into and coming out of Tutie Bear's place all hours of the night, mostly weaving drunkenly when they came out. When they happened to peek in the cafe windows-which it seemed they did regularly-they saw gambling and drinking and a few other things too sexy to mention. Furthermore, one man said, he'd listened through a sagging window and heard plenty. It was his belief that plenty of plots were hatched in Tutie Bear's back room: plans to smuggle, to steal, maybe to do dirt to somebody that Tutie Bear, or whoever was backing her in her lawless enterprises, wanted out of the way. The Torrento woman definitely ran a house of sin, witness after witness testified. And so, District Attorney Ryder told the judge, the unprincipled, undisciplined defendant deserved jail-a long-long spell of it.
Then Hook Nose got up to defend Tutie Bear. He called a few character witnesses, who said they knew nothing against the woman. Then he called Tutie Bear to the stand. After the amenities, he asked her, "Do you ever entertain friends at your place of business, Mrs. Torrento?"
The fat woman nodded on cue. "Shore do. Ewa night after I close up, I give a party. Ewabody-likes to come. Begs me for invites. Stays hours, sometimes all night, just havin' fun."
"What constitutes the fun, Mrs. Torrento?"
"How's that now?"
"How do you entertain your guests?"
"Oh. Well, ewabody drinks cokes and plays games. Evvabody enjoys theirselves that way."
"What games do they play?"
"Why, bridge and rummy and like that. Dominoes sometimes."
"Is there any betting on the games at any time?"
"Oh, no, newa. No bettin' at alL"
"The arresting officer, Mr. Harris, testified that there was a great deal of money on the tables when he raided the Green Garter. Do you corroborate his testimony?"
"Do I what?"
"Was there money on the tables that night?"
"Well, shore."-
"Where did it come from?"
"Why, I'd cashed the boy's payroll checks. I do it for 'em ewa week-them that don't get offa work in time to get to town before the banks is closed up. Ewabody in town knows I cash the payroll checks for the boys."
"Certainly, Mrs. Torrento. Now, about the drinks. You say you serve cokes to your guests. Do you ever serve anything stronger?"
"Not atall, newa. Cokes and coffee-and mabbe ice tea in summer. That's all."
"How about the so-called 'plots' that witnesses say have been hatched up in the Green Garter?"
"I ain't got no idee what they was talkin' about."
"You've never been a party to any sinister goings-on, then?"
"What in hell--Esscuse me, Mister Judge, Sir What you mean by 'sinister', Kane."
"Anything bad."
"Oh. Well, no, I ain't newa made no bad plans about nothin'. I ain't never planned no smugglin' er stealin' or nothin'. Newa nothin' like that."
Hook Nose turned her over to Ryder. The D.a. studied her with his lips curled almost too far to talk.
"Mrs. Torrento, if nobody was gambling when Officer Harris walked into the Green Garter that night, why did he see dice on the tables?"
"Why, that feller never saw no dice, Ryder."
"He said he saw them plainly, through the window."
"Yeah, so he said. But was they there when he busted in the door and hollered out for me to hold everything."
"Of course not. You had time to pop the dice out of sight."
"Well, ain't we talkin' about what evidence you got that that there Harris picked up and brought out of my place that night?"
It was a point for Tutie Bear, no doubt about it.
Ryder changed the subject, orating on: "Witnesses have accused you of related crimes, Mrs. Torrento. Can you prove you have never been a part of any smuggling of material or people across the border?"
She met his eyes without blinking. "Why, Inewa-"
Hook Nose was on his feet. "Objection, Your Honor! The defendant is on trial for gambling and the selling of liquor-not for the crime of smuggling."
Ryder roared, "You mentioned related 'sinister goings-on,' and made a point of having her deny it."
"That was to refute the psychological effect of the lies your witnesses had been putting out."
"Well, this is for psychological effect too!"
The judge cut in, "We will tolerate no more of this bickering, gentlemen. Mr. Ryder, is the matter of smuggling pertinent to this case against the defendant?"
Ryder was all smiles. "Yes sir, Your Honor, it certainly is. It was under cover of the drinking and gambling that the defendant plotted even greater crimes, as we shall prove."
"Very well. Objection overruled. Proceed."
The D.A. asked brightly, "Now, then, Mrs. Torrento, do you know a man named Gole Mendez, the foreman of a Panhandle ranch known as the Tawnley Feather Farm?"
She stared, open-mouthed. "Gawd, no, I-Esscuse me, Mr. Judge, Sir Lands, no, Ryder. I newa heard of nobody by that name."
Zoe felt Clitey go tense beside her, the older woman's hands clinching tight in her lap.
Zoe whispered, "Did you want her to admit that she knew Mendez?"
Clitey's answering whisper was a hiss, "God, no!"
"Then what-"
"I was hoping to God that Mendez wouldn't be brought up-or smuggling either."
"You-You mean she and Mendez are mixed up in a smuggling racket?"
"Never mind."
"Are you in on it too?"
"Shut up and listen."
"Is Link Tawnley part of it? And ... Jock."
"Shot up I"
Zoe shut up then and turned her face toward the witness chair again. Tutie Bear was saying, "Ain't newa been nothin' wrong at my place, Ryder. No drinkin', no gamblin', no stealin', no smugglin'. Anything more you want to know that I ain't got none of?"
The D.A.'s face was flushed with annoyance. "Yes, there is, Mrs. Torrento. Several witnesses have also testified that sex could be bought at the Green Garter. Did you ever dispense sex for a fee or work as a procurer for the men at your place, for a fee?"
She grinned widely, showing the gaps between the three front teeth that hadn't been knocked out. "Well, no, I ain't newa done it for a fee, Ryder. But there ain't no law agin bein' friendly, is there? Sol ain't sayin' that lain' the was spent no time in bed with a gent'man guest or two-without no pay."
She let her eyes rove through the courtroom, pausing here and there for a slow peer into some of the masculine faces. Then she added, "Lots of gent'-men come to my place to relax and play dominoes all night and drink cokes. And some of 'em meet their lady friends there, real imagine ladies that they don't want their ball-and-chains to know about. And if they wanta make a little love, who cares? I alius got some nice clean beds madeup." Her eyes came back to the D.A.'s face. "like enuff I could spot some of those imagine gent'men here today, Ryder. Want me to look the crowd over real good?"
The man's face was even redder than before. "That will not be necessary, Mrs. Torrento. The matter is not pertinent to this case."
She grinned. "Whatever you say, Ryder. Talkin' about sex was your idee, not mine. I was just tryin' to hep out. Are you sure you don't want me to point out-"
"I am quite sure, Mrs. Torrento ... Your Honor, this concludes the cross-examination of this witness."
Tutie Bear went back to the defense table and settled into a huddle with Hook Nose.
When the testimony was concluded, the judge deliberated a couple of hours, as the audience sat in the stuffy courtroom, waiting, coughing and sneezing, and cussing the weather.
When Judge Mooreman returned to the room, he announced, "It is the decision of this Court that the defendant, Tutie Bear Torrento, is guilty as charged: of conducting gambling games in her place of business known as the Green Garter, and of the sale of liquor there. It is the decision of this Court that she shall serve one year in jail and be assessed a fine of one "thousand dollars. Or, in lieu of the prison sentence, she may pay a fine of five thousand dollars, plus court costs'. Case dismissed."
Clitey leaped to her feet and rushed from the courtroom, with Zoe at her heels. Just outside the double doors, the older girl choked furiously. "Hell! Damn! Shit!"
Zoe asked, "Did you think she'd get off?"
"God, yes. She always has before. That goddamn Kane is slipping. I'll have to get a new Big-Mouth ... Why, if they're jailing crumbs like Tutie Bear, they'll be onto the games in the residential districts next. And some goddamn fool will tip them off about the Corral."
She paused to catch her breath and then fumed on, "Five grand! God, if that goddamn Mooreman knew how long it takes me to make five grand, he'd go easier on grabbing it away from me ... Okay, Little Sis, I'll, give Kane the money to pay her fine. If she never makes me another cent, I can't afford to have her sitting in jail, gabbing about her partner-ship with me."
When the fine had been paid, Tutie Bear had waddled away, and the Shaw girls were heading for home, Zoe said, "I couldn't stand living the way you do, Clitey-one jump ahead of jail all the time. Is it worth it to you?"
Clitey smiled, her spirits picking up. "Hell, yes, it's worth it to me, Little Sis. It will be to you too, before long. We're going to get so rich, one of these years, that we can buy off every policeman and lawyer and judge in the county. And that'll be one hell of a buy!"
Zoe slid down In her half of the spacious Cadillac seat. She wasn't sure of very many things any more. But there was one thing she knew for certain: She was not going to grow rich with Clitey-on dice and drink and her crotch!
CHAPTER 5
WHEN FRIDAY MORNING CAME, ZOE WAS beside herself. She was not going to take on half of Clitey's men, or a fourth or even one of them, tonight; not if she had to kill herself to get out of it. Clitey had been saying all week that the sex-and-games would be a breeze this time, since she had Zoe to help her. They would run the men through twice as fast in bed as Clitey had been able to do alone, and they'd have a happy, happy spree of games afterward. They'd bank a wad on Saturday morning, she told Zoe.
Zoe told Clitey, every time the subject came up-which it did in every conversation between them-that she did not want Clitey's men, and she did not intend to accommodate them. One rape had been all she could stand. It had worked out all right because she had married the boy the same night. But that could not happen again. So she wanted no more rapes. And that was what sex would be to her, until she went to Jock.
As for Jock, he had not yet sent any word to Zoe.
She was frantic for some kind of message from him, and she was beginning to be afraid that there would never be one. Had he gone through a marriage cere-mony, for the sake of a night's pleasure, without intending it to be real? Had he known that Link would annul the wedding and thus free him of any responsibility toward Zoe? Or had he honestly wanted to marry Zoe, felt a true love for her, really meant to live with her as his wife at the Feather Farm, and been prevented from carrying out his hopes, by Link? God, oh God, when would she hear? When?
Friday afternoon Clitey bustled about, checking everything for the big night of the week. A few men had come to the house during the week and spent an hour or so in Clitey's bedroom, no doubt paying her more than well for the joy of her crotch, but they had been singles, far apart. Friday was wholesale sex-and-games night.
At lunch Clitey said to Zoe, "Wear your red dress, Little Sis-the one with the goldish spangles on it. The top is only a strap down the middle of the front, and the miniskirt is so short that the men can flip it up real easy. Too, it unzips on the side and you can hop out of it real quick. Some of the fellows just can't wait, and they tear your clothes off if you don't undress in a minute. You'll tease them to death in that topless red outfit."
Zoe protested, "Clitey, I've tried to tell you that I don't want-"
"You can pick the men you want to take on, darling. You had a chance to look over my regulars last week, and you probably already have a preference among them. Since Link and Jock won't be here this time-Link just comes down every three or four months, sometimes not that often-I've invited four new men who were recommended to me by the regulars. You know I have to be careful that a cop doesn't slip in here, so I'm real choosy. You can be choosy too about the men you want to screw you. I'll always let you take your pick of the men-expect when Link comes again, of course. He's mine, always mine."
Zoe didn't answer. What was the use? She had argued all week, and made no progress with Clitey. This time she would keep still, and make her own private plans for avoiding tonight's men.
She changed the subject, asking, "Clitey, have you heard anything from the Tawnleys? Have you gotten any letter that you haven't told me about?"
Her sister shook her head. "God, no, Little Sis. You always pick up the mail, you know." She patted Zoe's hand. "I know how you feel about that divine handful, Jock. I feel the same way about Link. I'd marry that man and forget I'd ever known any other male anywhere, if he'd ask me. I'd go anywhere, do anything, even scrub his floors and his boots, if he'd give me the chance ... But, God, Little Sis, we haven't a damn prayer with the Tawnleys. They're woman-loose. Link's been that way for years and he's making Jock into his image, and they'll always be like that. We'd might as well enjoy them when they come here, and forget them between their visits."
Zoe wanted to say, But I've got a right to Jock. I'm his wife. Only she didn't dare to. Clitey might rush right out and annul the marriage-if Link hadn't already attended to that chore. And Clitey wouldn't want Zoe to leave this house; she'd certainly figure that if "Little Sis" didn't cooperate in the sex-and-games tonight, she would next week or the next or, later.
Clitey said, "Don't cry over Jock, darling. Put on your red dress and have yourself a big time with the men who are available. Remember that every time you go to bed with a man, you're getting him happy so he'll invest in our games-and those games are where we haul in our dough. So make yourself have fun tonight, whether you feel like it or not. Be-fore you know it, you'll be having the time of your life, every Friday night."
With that gay speech trailing behind her, Clitey rushed on to her duties. Zoe sat down in her room to make her plans.
This time she would play sick, she decided. She would lock her door too, of course. But when Clitey wanted in, she would say she was dreadfully ill-too sick to take part in any of the goings-on tonight. It ought to work at least once.
It did. When Zoe did not come out of her room for dinner, Clitey came running to her door. Finding it locked, she screamed, "Zoe, for Christ's sake, what do you think you're doing, locking this damn door? Open it this minute!"
But Zoe moaned from her bed, "Clitey, I-I can't! I'm sick, real bad sick. I can't hold up my head. Just leave me alone, won't you?"
Clitey's voice was unconvinced, but not unkind. "Well, okay, Little Sis. If you're really sick, I'll have to make your excuses. But, God, I've been telling the men, when they called, that I had a gorgeous sister, lots prettier than I was, and that they might get to screw her instead of me. I don't know how I'll get out of-"
"Well, you'll have to get out of it, Clitey. I'd--Why, I'd throw up all over them!"
"Oh, God, I don't want you doing that ... All right, get yourself well, so you'll be in good shape for next week."
That was how Zoe managed to stay alone that night. No man even knocked on her door. She got hungry before the evening was over. She had only a candy bar in her room and was afraid to sneak out to the kitchen; she knew she'd rather be hungry than raped. So she drank water to ease her empty stomach, and went to sleep undisturbed.
But the next Friday night things were different. Clitey harangued at the locked door when Zoe skipped dinner. Zoe told her that she was not entertaining m en, no matter how loudly Clitey shouted-or what she threatened. Zoe's crotch was her own, she said, and she intended to keep it that way.
Clitey vowed she would get men to break down the door, or she might smash the window; she'd get into Zoe's room somehow, before the night was done, she declared. And she'd bring the men with her. No high-and-mighty teenage prude was going to refuse to open up to the men who made the living for this house.
But, for reasons Zoe didn't know, Clitey did not carry out any of her threats. Probably it was because she wanted to give the impression of being charming, debonair, sophisticated-and she couldn't do that if she smashed doors and broke windows. And more than-likely Clitey expected to have the matter out with Zoe before another week went by.
Maybe Zoe had better leave Clitey's house before then! There wasn't much chance that she could avoid Clitey's demands, and her men in bed, a third time.
And it now seemed certain that Jock-either because of his own inclination or because of Link's pressure on him-did not intend to send for her at all. If her marriage had not already been annulled, it probably would be soon. There was no reason to think that the Tawnleys intended ever contacting her again.
And if Jock didn't want her, then, damn it, she didn't want him either! She didn't truly love him anyway; not the thrilling, enthralling way she had always hoped to love the man she married. His adoration, his claiming of her crotch after their marriage, the tender way he kissed her and forced himself into her a little at a time without hurting her-all those things had been sweet, heady, exciting. And she had been ready to go to him, to spend the rest of her life on the feather farm beside him.
But that dream was gone now. He had reneged on all his glowing promises; he had run out on her as surely as ever a man deserted a woman. She would forget his warm eyes-and Link's icy ones that had pounded such terror through her. The Tawnleys would be nonexistent to her from now on ...
And she tried to put them onto that kind of shelf, back in the dark places of her heart. She slipped out of bed while the games were going on, that second Friday night, taking only as much as she could cram into two tote bags and a purse that she carried under her arm. She had a little money that Clitey had given her as her share of the take on the night the Tawnleys were there. That money would tide her over until she could get a job, either in this town or some other place. She would find work of some kind, and she would take care of herself. There would be no illegal gambling in her livelihood, and no unwanted sex
She didn't want to squander money on plane fare, so she went to the bus station. There she bought a ticket to Dallas. It ought to be a big enough city that she could hide in it as long as she wanted to, she told herself ...
And she did exactly that. At the bus station in Dallas, she asked at the desk for the closest employment agency. She was thankful that jobs were plentiful, that help was needed almost everywhere. The agency sent her to a grocery store that had been asking for checkers and sackers. She qualified as a checker after the manager of the supermarket tested her, and she started working there the next day. It was a suburban store, one that Clitey wouldn't be-likely to find if she happened to look in Dallas for Zoe. And Zoe was reasonably sure that Clitey wouldn't bother to hunt for her, at least not long. She would probably say good riddance and forget her little sister.
That seemed to be what happened. As long as Zoe worked at the supermarket in Dallas, she heard no word from anyone in her past. She was lonely every moment of every day and night; desperately she wished for some friend, some relative, even some casual acquaintance who would exchange joys and sorrows with her, would let her believe that somebody somewhere cared what happened to her.
Yet she was afraid to let herself become a part of the camaraderie of the store. Girls asked her to lunch, men invited her on dates, customers commented on her beauty and asked her to their homes-but she refused them all. Lonesome as she was, she did not dare to become involved anywhere. Not until she had had time to recover from the hurt that Jock, and Clitey, and, yes, Link too-had forced upon her. She must be heart-whole, able to enter into the gaiety of life, when she sought new friends.
But she was never able to do that, because she was surprised by a new fear, a bitterness greater than any she had ever known before.
She was pregnant!
She tried not to believe it the first month. But she knew she had always been as regular as sunup, and that skipping this period meant something was wrong with her. She argued with her mind that one night with a man did not often result in pregnancy, and yet she knew that one night was enough if it was the right night for the woman.
When she skipped the second month, she knew she was in trouble. She hurried to a doctor, and learned the truth of her fears. She would bear Jock Tawnley's baby in seven months.
She was awake the whole night, after her visit to the doctor, trying to decide what she should do. Her child would be legitimate-at least as much so as the child of any unsanctioned teen-age marriage could be. She had a wife's right to her husband, his support, his provision of shelter and board for herself and the baby she carried.
The next morning she got up and called her boss at the supermarket, telling him she was leaving Dallas. She packed her tote bags and her purse, and went to the bus depot. She bought a ticket to the Panhandle town of Wayside Corners, the place that Jock had told her was closest to the Tawnley Feather Farm.
It was late afternoon when she got off the bus in a wind-blown town on the high plains of northwest Texas, in the square called the Panhandle. She stood watching the bus pull out, and studied the landscape, which was unlike anything she had ever seen before. She had never imagined that any country could be so endless and seemingly unpeopled, or that pastures could ever be so flat and treeless-nor that a settlement could be so lost in the boundlessness of the great open spaces as this one was. A sign at the edge of town, swaying in the brisk and chilling breeze read, Wayside Corners.
She went into the cubbyhole of a bus station and asked the only man there, "Can you tell me how to get out to the Tawnley Feather Farm?"
The man's eyes narrowed, and she saw his shoulders tighten as if in disapproval-or perhaps fear. He avoided her question, asking one of his own, "Are you a relative of someone there, miss?"
"Yes."
"Well, all right then. They don't let nobody in there that don't belong to their clan. Now then, lemme see. No bus goes that way, and twenty miles is too far to pay a cab to take you. Tell you what, miss. Ranchers take that road once in a while. If I can catch somebody going that way, I'll get you a ride.
The man's interest, and his kindness, lent warmth to the iciness that had settled over her since she had arrived here. Having made the trip, she was now wondering whether she should have-whether it might have been better if she had stayed away from Jock, bore her baby alone, gotten a divorce if Jock didn't and made herself a life that was completely separate from his.
In the next breath, the man added, "That is, if you're sure you want to go traipsin' off out there. I wouldn't if I was you, alone and all."
Zoe froze tight again. He was shaking his head so sadly that she asked, "Why wouldn't you go to the Tawnley place? What's wrong with the people there? Are they criminals of some kind?"
The man's bushy brows flew up and his eyes widened apologetically. "Now it ain't my business to talk too much about folks, miss. And if you're related to the Tawnleys, you-likely know more about what goes on out at their place than I do."
She swallowed hard, clearing her throat. "I-I've never been to the feather farm. And I'd like to know what to ... to expect."
The man leaned across the counter between them and dropped a plump hand on her trembling shoulder. "Will you take the first bus back to Dallas if you don't like what I tell you?'
She dropped her eyes, shaking her head in her growing misery. "No, I-can't. I'm ... Jock Tawnley's wife."
His eyes bulged. Then, just audibly, he gasped, "Oh, Lord help you, ma'am!" They stood in silence for a moment before he asked, "Did you marry the boy without knowin' anything about his father's activities?"
She nodded. There was no need to go into what she had known and what she hadn't. Certainly she had not known enough. She begged, "Tell me about Link Tawnley. Please tell me all you know!"
The man came away from the ticket booth and guided her to a chair by the window. He sat down beside her.
"It's an odd thing about the Tawnleys, ma'am. Can't nobody in Wayside put their finger on any crime they know for sure and can prove in a court of law, that the Tawnleys-Link, I mean, and his manager, Mendez-have done. But the things we think they're guilty of would fill a gully. Almost every kind of crime-but mostly smugglin' and maybe murder."
"My God! What do they smuggle?"
He frowned. "People. Wetbacks-or, rather, rich Mexes who don't want to wait their turn on the immigration lists to get into the ll.S. Mendez takes a load, of them high-falutin' fightin' cocks down to Juarez or Laredo or somewheres, and brings back a load of Mexes."
"Are you sure?"
"No. like I say, a feller can't prove nothin'. But folks here in Wayside have seen a powerful lot of new Mex faces in this part of the country for a few days after 'most every trip that Mendez makes. And if he's smuggling ain't Link Tawnley got to be helpin' him?"
Zoe nodded. "Sure he has," she said heavily. "For damn sure."
The man went on, "And that ain't all, ma'am. That Link Tawnley is so surly that you know he'd as soon knock you down as look at you."
"I ... know that."
"He's got guards to keep out anybody he don't want on his land, and he don't want many. The feather farm covers six sections of the wildest land anywheres around, the kind where you couldn't find a dead body in ten years of lookin' for it."
"You spoke of ... murder. Has ... anybody ... ever been ... "
"Well, I've known of several fellers that went pokin' around out there, and never came back. It don't look right to me." Then his manner changed, warming to kindness. "I'm powerful sorry to have upset you with all this talk, ma'am. But I felt you needed to know-and you said you wanted to. Now do you still think you got to go out to that place?"
"Y-yes."
"Then I'll see if I can catch you a ride."
He went out into the street and looked both ways. After a while he was back and told her, "Found you a rancher goin' out that way in an hour or so."
Sometime later she was heading north out of town with a couple by the name of Plummer. She sensed their curiosity, their veiled glances, but she skirted their queries about her connection with the Tawnleys. She didn't want to confide in anybody else; the bus man had been one too many. He had made her a thousand times more afraid of Link and his infamous ranch, than she had been before. God only knew what she was getting into, barging into Link's domain!
The Plummers let her out at a cattle-guard entrance, beneath a sign that read, Tawnley Feather Farm. They told her it was at least five miles to any building, maybe even ten miles; she said she was used to walking and would make it fine.
When they had driven on, she Wasn't so sure that she'd make it anywhere. The wind seemed to be rising, and it was getting so cold that she felt sure it must be growing into one of the dreaded "blue northers" that she had heard the Panhandle was famous for. Daddy used to visit a cousin here, years ago, and he'd said that you could walk less than a mile in a blue norther and freeze to death in your tracks. Any time from October to May, you could expect this kind of sudden wind, and you'd better keep out of its way. No native ever walked into the teeth of it.
Zoe buttoned her coat tightly about her, thankful that it was as heavy as it was, but still wishing it were a lot heavier. She dug her hands into her pockets, clutching a tote bag in each hand, and holding her packed purse under her arm. She wished desperately for a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup, anything to take the gnawing ache from her stomach. She hadn't thought of food when she was in the bus station, and now she was terribly hungry. She hadn't had any nausea from her pregnancy yet, but she knew she could expect it at any time, and a five-or-ten-mile hike in a Panhandle norther would be the worst possible place for her to develop a spell of that kind of sickness.
There was nothing for her to do now, but start plodding up the wide caliche road that wound toward the plains and canyons. She might die on the way; but she'd certainly die if she stayed here. Walking as long as she could would be better than lying down and freezing to death slowly.
Besides, now that she had come, she had to find Jock. Even if he had been intending to desert her, surely he'd change his mind when he found out about the baby. He would know that he had put that baby into her, and he'd feel responsible for it. Maybe Link would too, since it would be his grandchild.
She had to hope it would work out that way. She had to-God, it was cold, almost too bitter cold to stand it. She had ... to ... hope!
She had walked at least a mile-a dragging, chilling mile that seemed like twenty-when she saw a man with a gun on the top of a distant hill. He was there only an instant, and then he was gone, leaving only the memory of his silhouette. Zoe shivered as she stared at the place where he'd been. Then she plodded on, stumbling like a wooden woman, short of breath and shorter of courage.
All at once, as if out of nowhere, a pickup came swooshing up beside her. She hoped it would be Jock, but she saw that it wasn't. The man behind the wheel was steely eyed, straight-lipped, leathery-faced, Link Tawnley.
He said sternly, "You must be lost, girl. Hop in and I'll take you back to town."
He got out and helped her into the truck. She appraised him swiftly, taking in the olive-green western suit with the shirt of the same hue, and a bright green tie. Diamond links clasped his cuffs, and his tie pin was the biggest diamond she had ever seen. The boots were plainly expensive, and his initials were sewed into them; they gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. If Zoe hadn't known him to be a scoundrel, she would have thought he was the most romantic man she had ever laid eyes on. The magnetism of him was as strong, and disconcerting, to her as it had been in their other meetings.
She looked away from him to still her hands and her voice as she said, "I'm on my way to your house, Link."
He braked the car to a stop and turned her face to his with a snap. "My God, you're Clitey's 'Little Sis!'"
"Y-yes ... I mean yes, sir." Zoe squirmed under his amazed scrutiny. Would he kill her-or at least throw her off his land?
His jaw set even more tautly than before, and his voice was a bass growl, "Nobody goes to my house without an invitation, Little Sis. And I don't recall having invited you."
She felt slapped. But she braved the blow and persisted, "No, you didn't. But Jock did. He knows I'm coming, and he'll be glad to see me, if you'll take me to him."
He took his gleaming boot toe off the brake and started the car down the trail toward Wayside Corners. "I don't know who sent you here, girl-but nobody wants you here. Not me or Jock, or anybody else. I'll take you back to town at once."
She put a hand on his whipcord sleeve. "Link, I have a right to go to your house. I'm your ... your daughter-in-law, I'm Jock's wife!"
This time Link literally jumped in the seat, rising as if she'd shot him. Then he slammed down the brake, writhing the car as it screeched to a halt again. His big brown hands clamped onto her shoulders and shook her so savagely that she almost fell apart. "You're a damned liar! Jock wouldn't marry anybody I didn't know about!"
God, hadn't Jock told him?
She tried not to look as terrified as she felt. She reached into her purse and pulled out her wedding certificate, holding her left hand on top of it, let-ting her wedding ring show plainly. "If Jock hasn't let you know about us, the way he said he would, then it's time I told you. Here's my proof."
Link let go of her and grabbed the paper from her hands. She saw the red streaks that shot from under the roots of his black hair and disappeared into his shirt collar. She knew he was furious enough to tear her apart. But he didn't touch her. He just sat there beside her clinching and unclinching his weather-bronzed fists, gritting his perfect white teeth until his jaw seemed made of stone.
At least he demanded, "What's your name, Little Sis?"
"Zora ... Zoe."
"When did you marry Jock, Zoe?"
"The night that you and he were at Clitey's. We flew to Las Vegas and back."
"Good God, what you damned kids won't do to get what you want!" Then his eyes flashed brightly for a second. "But you couldn't have made Jock marry you before you let him have intercourse with you. You two kids were in bed together before Clitey's games started."
"That's right. It was because we liked the ... the intercourse that we decided we ... we were in love. We left the games, while you-all were playing, and got back while you were looking for us, the next morning."
Link raised a hand as if to strike her, but then pulled it back quickly and dropped it into his lap, making a bone-white fist. "God, you damned young nitwits! One roll in bed, and you think you're in love, just because you gave each other your virginity! How little goddamn sense can you have? "
Suddenly Zoe gathered all the courage she possessed and met his eyes without flinching? I have plenty of sense, Link, and I know my rights as a wife. How much sense have you got about your son's duty as a husband?"
"Why, you goddamned saucy little tart!" The man's hands were on her shoulders again, not shaking her this time but clamping into her flesh until she longed to scream from the pain of it. She was flinching now, cringing from his wild fury, terrified for her life. He raged on, "You and Clitey planned for you to get your first screwing from my young greenhorn, Jock, didn't you? You figured if he made you a woman, you could make him your husband. Well, damn it all to hell, you little slut, Jock doesn't give the snap of his fingers for you! If he did, he'd have told me about you, and said he wanted to bring you here as his wife. And, hell, he hasn't said a word about it."
Zoe felt anger welling up in her, such deep resentment that it gave her the strength to shout at him. "Of course he hasn't! You've got him so scared of you that he wouldn't dare ask you for the time of day I Just take me to him and give him the chance to tell us whether he loves me or not, whether he wants to be my husband. I-I dare you to let me see him!"
Link dropped her and sat back, his steel-gray eyes holding the faintest grain of respect-but not one whit more liking for her, than before. "You're goddamn sure of yourself, girl. All right, damn it all to hell, I'll drive you to the house and let you talk to Jock. I know what he'll say. I know my son a hell of a lot better, after eighteen years of living with him, than you can possibly know him after a few hours of sampling his cock!"
He turned the pickup around and headed toward the breaks again, toward the mystery-shrouded hideout that all of Wayside Corners feared-the "six sections of the wildest land anywheres around, the kind where you couldn't find a dead body in ten years of lookin' for it."
CHAPTER 6
ZOE'S FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE TAWNLEY Feather Farm almost took her breath away. The pickup suddenly cut away from the traveled ruts, heading across the pastures and then through two hills-and there it was.
All at once she was out of the wind-blown plains and into a marvelously beautiful canyon; the loveliest place she had ever seen. A gray, stone mansion, with red trim, was built against the rocky ledge behind it, so perfectly that it seemed part of the awesome cliff. It was surrounded by wheel-shaped beds of multi-colored gravel, set with lines of silvered spruces all of the same precise size.
Less than a mile away, a lesser house loomed up, its exterior done in a wild blue that glistened in the fading sunlight. Beyond it, there were so many small houses that Zoe could not count them, in varied and gaudy colors, all set into the cliffs and the valley floor. Away to the right of the big house, there were great sprawling buildings that looked like factories of some kind-and the activity inside them indicated that that was what they were. There were at least a half dozen of them, stretching toward the horizon.
But the thing that fascinated Zoe more than anything else, was the brilliant array of birds, their tail feathers a sea of waving color. Everywhere you looked-on both sides of the great house, around the second house, among the little ones, and far into the endless nooks of this unbelievable valley-there were pens of gorgeous fighting cocks. There must have been two or three hundred different pens, perhaps more, each of them holding several hundred birds. Chut-chutting loudly, calling attention to their spectacular feathers in green and blue and red and black, they strutted proudly about their premises, for all the world as if they owned every inch of the land that their sharpened spurs threatened.
Zoe gasped as she surveyed it all, hardly noticing Link's stopping of the car, his helping her out onto the marble steps that led to the mansion veranda ... God, marble steps yet!
She breathed, "It's--Why, Link, it's the most beautiful place I ever saw in my life! Jock told me it was pretty, but I never dreamed it could be like this!"
His tight face didn't change, and his only answer to her was a deep grunt. She had no idea whether he meant it as appreciation or as a sneer. She followed him up the marble steps and across the spacious porch. He held open the front door with its silver knocker and knob, and walked into Link Tawnley's home ahead of him.
The living room was so vast that she felt lost in it, and the lostness was enhanced by the furnishings that only a man could have chosen. It was done in tan leather, with window coverings of bamboo and carpeting of a hard weave in deep red. There was no frill, no froth, no woman's touch anywhere. The room seemed to shout that its owner did not intend any but male hands to touch it or any but male eyes to view it.
Link said crisply, "Sit down, Zoe. I'll call Jock." He went to the foot of a circular staircase and raised his bass voice to a shout. "Jock! Come down here, boy. You have company."
There was the soft thud of boots on thick carpeting, a floor above them. Then the thudding came down the stairs and into the living room where Zoe sat. She stood up, waiting, hoping-and scared to death. What would Link do with her, now that she had seen his hideaway, if Jock refused to claim her?
The younger man squinted a little in the half darkness of the room, eyeing his father, then frowning-at last peering about. Link snapped on a pole lamp and directed one of its beams toward Zoe. Jock whirled toward her, and his face went as gray as death.
Then, with a great groan of joy, he sprang to her and gathered her in to his arms. His words were a low moan, "Zoe! Oh, God, God ... Zoe, Zoe, it's you!" And he was kissing her wildly, wetly, his tears a flood down both their faces. Long, long he held her there, kissing and crying, his whole body shaking violently, his face mingling his sweat and tears.
When he released her at last, they stood apart with their arms still about each other, and faced Link. The older man had not changed his position since Jock came into the room. He was still standing so stiffly erect that he seemed twice his six-foot height; his hands were fisted and his bronze face was grim.
He waited a few seconds as if expecting them to speak. When they didn't, he said tersely, "Your reunion is touching, children, but if it is as real as it appears to be, why haven't you told me about your wife, Jock?'
The boy hesitated, coughed, and finally stammered, "Well, I--Well, Link, I've been trying to find the ... the right time for it. But you've been gone so much and been so upset by other things when you were home ... that I ... well, I-"
"Never mind." Link's tone was still harsh and unyielding. "You knew I'd refuse to recognize any such goddamn foolishness, and you wanted to postpone a scene as long as you could."
Jock nodded, pulling Zoe tighter against himself.
Link's voice took on an icier note, an edge that was plainly meant to cut deep-and did, straight through Zoe's whole being. "All right, damn it all to hell, I don't disappoint you. You'll get exactly what you expected. I'll annul this silly marriage tomorrow. I don't want any woman here, and I damn well won't have any whorish sister of that slut Clitey hanging around!"
Jock dropped Zoe from his arms and stepped forward, apparently stung into unheard-of defiance by his quick fury. "Now wait a minute, Link! Nobody-not even my father-can call my wife a whore!"
Link's steel-cold eyes blinked in amazement. But he stood his grim ground, leaning forward ever so little toward Jock. "Not even if it's the truth, son?"
"But it's not the truth!" Jock took a step toward the older man. "Oh, I know what Clitey is, damn it. But Zoe isn't. She got to Clitey's the same day we did, fresh from straight-laced Missouri. Nobody had ever touched her before I did. We broke each other in-and fell in love!"
"I know all that. Clitey and I were amused at the thought of your cock and her crotch, both unused, getting together that night. But don't let her inexperience throw you. Any sister of Clitey's will turn into a slut if she's not one already. And how do you know she hasn't become one since you last saw her? She could have screwed a hundred men-and probably has."
"She hasn't, I know. She's not that kind of girl."
"Oh, hell, boy. You don't know a goddamn thing about women-who's good and who's bad among them. But I do, and I know there are damn few who are worth shooting ... Now hear me, both of you. I won't have this girl living her, and that's final. She'll go back to Clitey's, where she belongs, tomorrow, and your marriage will be annulled."
Jock shouted, "I won't give her up! I'll go with her. You're not going to separate us just because you don't want women here!"
His father shouted back, "I can keep you from marrying her until you're twenty-one-and that's three years, son. It would be a longtime to live with a shit, and that's what she'd be if she spent three years in your bed; a one-man slut!"
Zoe heard Jock groan, "Oh, God, God!" as he fell back the step he had taken.
She stepped forward now, closer to Link than Jock had ventured, feeling sudden strength because she was going to do battle for more than her marriage, more than herself.
"Listen to me, both of you men. I'd never have come here, knowing how Link was sure to feel about me, if I hadn't had to ... I didn't want to bear my baby without its father beside me ... Yes, you heard me right! Go on, look dumfounded-and I'm glad you are. Jock got me pregnant the night he married me, planting his baby in me either before or after the ceremony. No other man has been into me since-and I'll let any doctor check me that you want to call, to trace my pregnancy to that night!"
She paused to shake off Jock's arms that had closed around her, to free her cheek of his eager kiss. "I'm carrying your grandchild, Link. You're going to accept it and support it-either here or somewhere else. You're going to let me live with my husband, the man who put this child inside me. I don't care whether you like me or hate me. I'll fight you and anybody else you want me to, for the sake of the baby that's coming out of my body seven months from now!"
There was a deathly silence in the room-a stillness that grew heavier with every breath-that went on and on until Zoe felt suffocated by it. Jock was holding her hand, but standing perfectly still with it in his grasp, his face dazedly aglow. Link's face was ablaze under its tan, his shoulders thrown back, his feet wide apart in a stance of pent-up rage. But neither of them said a word. Nor did Zoe. She had already said all the words she needed to say, or wanted to.
Finally, when the silence seemed to be choking them all, Link turned on his heel and stomped across the room toward the front hall. At the door he swung about and gritted: "Stay then, girl. Even a devil like me can't throw out his grandchild-at least not if its mother will behave herself ... Take her up to the house in the hills behind the factories, Jock. It will have more privacy than any of the others. And it's furnished-if Mendez hasn't moved the stuff somewhere else. You can live there with her, at least until she has this baby that she's making such a goddamn fuss about. But keep her out of my way, boy. If she ever sasses me again, I'll throw her off this place, grandchild or no grandchild!"
Then he was gone. But, to Zoe, he was still there, and she had the feeling that he would always be with them. The magnificence of his bearing, his personality, his strength-all of them were a wholeness that she had never known before, had never even glimpsed in any other man. She was desperately sorry for any woman who had ever loved Link Tawnley or ever would; she was sorry for Clitey, who would "scrub his floors and his boots," if he'd let her. And she hoped, more than any other hope in her heart, that Jock would some day develop a little of Link's magnificence-without any of his meanness.
Jock said, "Gads, you were terrific, baby! I never heard anybody talk up to Link the way you did."
She sighed. "Somebody had to."
His face fell. "I know. I was a washout."
She kissed him. "I didn't mean that. You did all you could-today. But you should have told him a long time ago."
"Sure, I should. I'm sorry as hell that I didn't."
He took her hand, his face losing its apologetic bitterness, gaining relief and joy, and eager anticipation. "Oh, baby, baby, we're going to be the happiest couple in Texas-or anywhere else! I'm going to take the best care of you that I can. You're going to be loved like nobody was ever loved before!"
His voice dropped to a near-whisper. "Zoe, do we have to-to wait till you've had the baby before we can screw again?"
She took his face in her hands and kissed his cheek, his chin, and at last, his lips. "Of course not, Jock, honey. You can screw me as hard, and as often, as you want to, for a long time yet. I've heard women say that a couple can have intercourse up to the last two or three months, And that will give us weeks and weeks of-"
"Of the best damn screwing that any man ever gave his wife."
"Sure, Jock."
She wished, suddenly, that he were a little older, perhaps even a little less boyish in his fervor. All his elation was for her, for himself, for the sexual intercourse he couldn't wait to enjoy. The future seemed unimportant to him, the baby second-best. He wanted to get Zoe undressed and into bed as fast as he could, get his hard on, stab her to his body's content. Nothing else seemed to matter to him at all. Would it, ever?
He pulled her toward the circled steps that led upstairs. "Come help me pack a few things. I'll get the rest of my junk tomorrow. All I need now is a change of clothes and a toothbrush. Well, maybe my pajamas if I ever quit screwing you tonight. Oh, baby, baby, I'm getting it hard already! Shall we get a piece in my room here, before we go over to the house that Link gave us?"
She froze in his arms. "No! For God's sake, no, Jock! We don't want Link coming back to this house and finding us still here.. We have to get out of here as soon as we can. And I'm never coming back unless he asks me to-which we both know he never will!"
Jock paused on a stair step. "Don't feel that way about him, honey. He's mad at us now, but he'll get over it. And, sweet as you are, you'll win him over in no time. The three of us will be having big times together before long." He took her hand and rubbed it against the front of his pants. "Feel of that great big thing, baby. I figured my prick was wasting away, not being used since the night you broke it in. But nothing's happened to it, see? It's the same big prick that I stuck into you on our wedding night. And it's throbbing like hell to stick you again. Come on!"
She ran up the stairs to his room, still holding his hand. Together they caught up socks and underwear, a clean shirt, his toothbrush and electric razor, towels and soap and other sundries. Then they ran back down to the first floor and out into the twilight.
Jock pointed to a house near the narrow horizon, so far away that she had not noticed it when she arrived here. She could only make out its outline in the dusk. He said, "You'll like the house, honey. It's the best Link's got, except his own. He has several guest houses he keeps for special buyers who come to see the birds, and this one is the fanciest of them all. I almost dropped my teeth when he said we could have it."
Zoe was beginning to be achingly tired. She wondered whether she could stand having this boy's hard dauber in her crotch all night, and she could see that he had every intention of keeping it there for hours and hours. She asked, "Do we have to walk to the house?"
He laughed. "God, no, baby." He led the way to the six-car garage and helped her into a fabulous red convertible of some foreign make; she had never seen its equal. As he backed it out Into the driveway, he said, "Fancy, isn't it, baby? Link gave it to me for my last birthday. Paid ten thousand dollars for it ... That's what I was telling you about Link. He's tough as hell-and he's mad as a bull when he doesn't get his way-but if you belong to him, he'll give you the world on a silver feather. And you belong to him now, because I do. He'll give you anything you want, the way he does me, as soon as he realizes that you're part of our family."
Zoe didn't answer. She didn't want to argue, nor to dim the joyous ardor of this gay boy who was her husband. She had a home, a place for her baby to be born-with a name and a father-a wealthy setting that could provide all a child could possibly need. It was more than she had dared hope for when she came here. It was so much that she told herself she must be completely happy about it, completely ready to keep Jock contented-and Link too, if she could.
Tired or not, she knew that she would submit herself to Jock's great urge for sex. There was a warmth within her at the thought of his entrance into her crotch. She could not hope for a climax tonight; she was far too fatigued to work up to that. It must wait until another night, a time when she was rested, when she could try to learn how a woman achieved that acme of pleasure from the sex act. Tonight she would only provide the place for Jock to spend himself, and she would do it without a cry or a complaint.
They found the house furnished, and lovely beyond all Zoe's expectations. Groomed for rich visitors, it had every possible accommodation. She knew she would love looking it over in the morning-when Jock was not pulling her into the closest bedroom; when his prick was not sticking straight out in front of him.
He asked to undress her, and she let him. He caressed every part of her body separately as he uncovered it. He rested his fingers on her abdomen when he saw it, pressing the flesh tenderly, only a little. "You don't show that there's a baby in you, honey. When will you begin to get big?"
"Not for another couple of months, I think."
"God, I'm glad. I don't want to give you up to a baby, not even my own. I don't want to think of you as anybody's but mine, for as long as we live." His fingers found her crotch. "Oh, God, God, baby, I'll go off before I get into you if we don't hurry." He ripped off his own clothes and fell onto the satin cover, pulling her body to his as he went down. "Do you want me to finger you a while, baby? I think I can hold off a few minutes if you want to try. Think you can Work up?"
She sighed. "No, darling, I just know I can't. I'm so ... so tired from the trip and the fuss with Link. You do it however you want to, this time. Take me any way you please. And do it as long as you can hold out, if you want to. I'll try to ... to work up later, maybe in a night or so."
"Do you feel like you're all tight and dry?"
"God, no I'm all wet and warm. I feel sure I'll open up when you put it in. I'll help you every way except to go off with you. I know I will." Then she added, suddenly fearful, "Just don't jump too hard on me, Jock. We don't want anything to happen to our ... our baby."
He pulled out of her and reached for the pillows at the head of the bed. Doubling them both, he shoved them under her. "Here, baby, get your butt up on this. It'll shove your crotch at my prick so I can really stab it ... God, yes, that's just right ... Lord, Lord, I never knew anything in heaven or hell could feel so damn good! I'm going off, baby ... God, I'm going and going, like I'd never stop! Oh ... ooohhh! Lord, I wish I never had to stop going. I wish I had a lot more to drain into you ... Don't move yet, honey. Just leave it in a while and let it soak. It's limp but it still feels good. It's home, and it's going to live right here, right in its own little crotch of a home, for as long as we live!"
She stirred uncomfortably. "Jock, I-I'm getting soaked. You ... you've gone off all over us. Let me go to the bathroom and wash off this mess-"
"Sure, baby. But it's a beautiful mess, isn't it? A mess of our love, the kind of love we're going to make again as soon as we rest a few minutes; the kind we're going to make every night until you have to stop ... Oh, Zoe, Zoe, baby, I love you so much--so awful goddamn much!"
She paused on her way across the room, heedless of her stickiness and discomfort, mindful only of the words she had so longed to hear. She held out her arms, and he sprang to them, clasping their nude bodies so tightly that they were not two, but one;
She whispered, "Thank you, Jock, my darling. Thank you for saying you love me. I was so afraid that all you wanted was my-my sex. And a wife wants more than a bed. She wants the rest of her husband; his heart and his life too."
"You'll have every part of me, baby. You'll share every plan, every thought of mine from now on." He picked her up and carried her on into the bathroom. "Wash up fast, honey, I feel like I can get another hard on in just a minute. We've got an awful lot of screwing to catch up on; to make up for all the time we've lost."
She washed and went back to the bed, hoisting her buttocks onto the doubled pillows, spreading her thighs for the male organ that awaited her crotchso hard, so big, that it seemed not to have been affected at all by its first expulsion inside her ...
When his second climax was done, they rested for an hour or so before their next intercourse. They held each other happily, exploring their own bodies and one another's, marveling at the beauty of man and woman: the perfection of the way they fit together sexually, the masculine organ so exactly shaped to pierce the feminine one and seek out its rightful home.
Jock kissed her great breasts again and again, mouthing the oversized nipples, saying over and over that he was the luckiest man in the world to have such beautiful tits on his wife: the biggest tits, the best tits, the most, gorgeous tits that any man ever sucked on. And Zoe was glad for her big, bouncy breasts, glad that they gave this much pleasure to her husband. Some day there would be milk in her big breasts, and Jock's son, or daughter, would be sucking on them, drawing food from her nipples into it tiny body. And it would be the baby that the two of them had created-had started the night Jock had first forced her to his will.
There was a genuine happiness in this boy's love for her I If she could never love him back, measure for measure-and she could not fully believe that she could ever match his overwhelming delight in their love-then at least she could keep him from knowing it. She could make him the happiest young husband anywhere. She could feed his sex appetite, and tend his other wants as well. She could be all the things that he needed her to be. She could give herself, all the warp and woof of her being, to this man, and to the child that was growing from the seed that he had planted in the depths of her.
She would do that. She would be Mrs. Jock Tawnley in every good way, every kind way, every affectionate way, that she knew how. She had to hope that that would be enough.
CHAPTER 7
THE NEXT MORNING THEY SLEPT LATE, GET-ting up just before noon. Zoe was afraid that Jock would demand another sex orgy the minute he woke up, but he seemed sated for the time being. He perched on a bright stool and watched her as she cooked bacon and eggs, biscuits, and perked coffee.
While they were eating, she asked, "Would it be all right for me to hike around the place a little? I need to take walks-get exercise because of the baby, you know."
Jock reached across the table and patted her stomach. "How big is he by now, do you think? Does he grow a little every day?"
"Of course he does. When I eat, so does he." She repeated her question. "Do I have to stay in the house all the time, Jock?"
He stared at her. "Heavens no. Why should you? Go any place you want to. You're a Tawnley now. You can do as you please on Tawnley land."
"Darling, you know that's not true." She felt again the singeing heat of Link's anger, the menacing magnetism of him. "Your dad said I was to stay out of his way. And I mean to mind him."
"Okay." The boy waved a careless hand. "You can do that and have all the freedom you want too. Link's gone an awful lot You can take it easy when he's home, and then go wherever you take a notion to, even into the big house, while he's away."
She asked cautiously, "Jock, do you ... do you love me enough to let me tell you what a man in Wayside Corners said about this place?"
His eyes narrowed. But he said steadily, "Sure baby. Why not?"
"I feel like I've got to know if ... if any of the things he. said are true. It won't make any difference about my staying here-or my being glad that you love me and want me here with you. But it will let me know how to ... to feel about everything. Whether to feel lawful or ... or lawless."
The boy sat back in his chair, his forehead wrinkled in a troubled frown. "The guy cussed us out, did he?"
She nodded. And she told him all that the man in the bus station bad said about the Tawnleys and the feather farm.
When she had finished, he sat for a time without speaking. Then he said slowly, "Okay, you've told me and got it out of your system, baby. Now you can forget it, because not a goddamn bit of it is true. The guys in town don't like Link because he doesn't buddy with them. And they think Mendez is some kind of a crook because he's such a creep. But I know them both, as wall as a kid can know the men he lives with, and I'm as sure as hell that there's nothing illegal going on here."
She felt her heart suddenly singing. "Oh, God, Jock, I-I hope there isn't. But at Tutie Bear's trial, they talked about her helping Mendez in a smuggling racket."
"But they didn't do anything about it, did they? Hell, no-I Because they were just guessing that it existed. If there were any underhanded deals made by the guys on this ranch, the law would have caught up with them years ago, wouldn't it?"
"Well, yes, I suppose it would have."
He took one of her white hands and smoothed it between both of his brown ones. "Let me tell you about Link, baby. He and my mother weren't ever ... friends. Oh, I'm sure they must have been in love when they got married. And they must have screwed at least once; they had to, to get me. But something happened-I never knew what-when I was too little to understand man/woman feelings. And they were never congenial after I knew them. I can't remember their ever sleeping together-or ever even kissing each other. She lived in the north half of the house, and Link lived in the south half."
"How old were you when your mother died?"
"I was seven. And, the way I recall it now, Link never shed a tear, either here or at the church-or in the cemetery where she was buried. He never spoke her name again. If I hadn't read it on my birth certificate that I found in the attic one day, I'd never have remembered that it was Inez."
Zoe felt quick pain for the woman who would have been her mother-in-law, quick sympathy for the man who had fathered Jock. She said, "Link must have let their disagreements, whatever they were-and her death-sour his whole life. Does he ever let down his guard?"
"Oh, sure, lots of times-with me. And he will with you some day, after he learns to trust you. He thinks every woman is out to make every man unhappy, and it may take him quite a while to believe that you're as good as I know you are."
"Where does he go on all his trips V "To our retail outlets all over this country and down in Mexico. We've got a big string of businesses here, baby."
"I saw the buildings. What kind of businesses are they?"
"Well, the birds first and foremost, They bring in a fortune, shipped to shows and fights and for breeding. Then we've got a factory where the men make gift things out of feathers: imagine bouquets to put in vases, expensive stoles, trimming for dresses, feather ornaments, things like that. Quite a few birds aren't fit to sell, maybe because their beaks or spurs aren't right, maybe because they got crippled some way but aren't unhealthy at all, and we cook and can them for sale, down in the cannery. And there's a hatchery too, where we ship our eggs or chicks, whichever a buyer orders."
"None of that sounds illegal."
"Hell, no, it isn't."
"Then why does Link keep people out of here? Why does he hide out on this farm, like a ... a ... "
"He's not hiding, baby. He's staying away from people because he wants to protect his birds."
"Protect them?"
"Sure. Our breed of fighting cocks isn't like any other breed in the world. Link has spent his whole life developing it. It's called the Fury, and he's got pedigrees and patents on his high-priced roosters. He never sells his best breeders either. He works them as long as they can hop on the hens, and then he kills them. He's been offered terrific prices for his best ones, but he wouldn't take a million. And that's-why he runs visitors off."
"Because he's afraid they'll steal his prize roosters?"
"Sure, baby. Plenty of people would do it, he says. So he knows who every person is that sets foot on Tawnley land, and what business brought that person here ... But there's not a goddamn thing wrong with that, is there?"
Zoe felt the last vestige of her weariness, her fear, dropping away. "God, no ... Oh, Jock, Jock, I'm so ... so glad! It's wonderful to be free of the worry that you and Link were-"
"Well, we're not, baby. We're just guys who mind our own business and expect other guys to mind theirs."
She persisted. "What about the men who work here? Aren't they unhappy because they can't have their wives with them?"
"Hell, no. They haven't got wives, not any of them. They're soured, like Link, or divorced, or maybe widowed. They like it here. And if they don't, they can leave any time they want to. Link pays better wages than anybody else in this part of the country, and that holds the men. They respect Link too. They don't like Mendez, but they put up with his cussing, and his cussedness, because of the money they drag down. It works out fine."
She shivered a little, remembering the night she had heard Mendez and Tutie Bear in the bedroom across from Clitey's Corral. "I-I'm almost afraid to meet this Mendez. I've heard such terrible things about him. Why does Link keep him here?"
"Because he runs the place like a clock-the damnedest best clock in the Panhandle. Every order Link hands out, Mendez does it to the letter, even if it kills him and every guy on the farm. He's been
Link's right-hand man ever since I've known either of them."
He paused and grinned ruefully. "I'm not saying I like Mendez. I despise the louse. I feel like he'd stab anybody in the back if it would better him. He'd even stab me, or Link; I know he would. I've told Link so a hundred times. But Link says Mendez is the exact guy he needs for this job. So that's that."
Zoe shivered again. "Well, I'll keep out of his way even more than I do out of Link's, if that's possible. I'm scared to death of both of them."
Jock got up and came around the table toward her; lifting her to her feet, unzipping her dress and pulling out her great breasts, fondling them, crushing the nipples in his fingers. "I'm scared of those guys too, baby," he told her. "But they won't bother us. Nothing will. I'll work hard for Link, do whatever he tells me to. He'll pay me good for the hours I put in, and he'll leave us alone other times, I'm sure. We'll live our own life. And we'll make our own love ... How about a nice chunk of that little fur cap of yours right now, baby? These gorgeous boobies of yours are getting my hard up. And nothing can make it soft again but your pussy. Come on, baby, let me push this big prick into you a few good licks, just enough to explode it once. Then I'll go see what job Link's got lined out for me."
She didn't answer because she was sure he didn't expect her to. He probably wouldn't have heard her words if she'd said any. His mind was mounting her body already, living their intercourse ahead of its reality. God, how could he get so many hards, so fast? Was she going to have to take his pecker day and night, for years on end?
Well, if she did have to, perhaps it would work for her the way Clitey said it did for her. Clitey's first husband had screwed her half to death, even during her menstruations, and she had learned to love screwing-forced herself to love it so she wouldn't hate it. She had become a nympho-maniac after she divorced Duncan, and she'd been screwing men wholesale ever since. Zoe was completely sure that she could never relish any and every prick, the way Clitey did. All she wanted was to learn to want this one man's prick, her husband's-to warm up to his frantic motions in her crotch, to respond to them, to experience a climax of her own when he let his go off in her. She wanted desperately to fall in love with this man she was married to, so that her happiness would be real, not forced. She wanted her baby born into a house where the love would be genuine.
She was well rested now, this late in the day, so she gave herself without reservation to the frenzy of Jock's coition. She let him strip her and carry her to their bed, ease himself into her as he would. She moved when he moved, weaving her hips from side to side and from front to back, trying hard, terribly hard, to coax up a need within herself, a desire to do more than just accommodate his rod. If she could go off, the way a sex-adjusted wife was supposed to do in intercourse, then she would know that she loved Jock, that she would always love him ...
But it was not to be-at least not yet. When Jock could hold himself no longer, she told him to go off without her, that she just couldn't make it this time. She loved it anyway, she assured him, and she would have a climax ... well, sometime, she hoped.
He laughed gaily. "Sure you will, baby. Some night we'll screw till you do go off. I want you to, as much as you want to. It's the only way that a man and a woman know they're giving each other everything they've got, and getting completely satisfied in their screwing ... Okay, baby, here I go ... God, it's good. I could lay you forever, baby ... Oh! ... I'm coming.. ! Ooohhh ... ! "
He shot off, jerking his hips forward spasmodically, his whole body trembling.
He was limp in a moment, and he lay gasping from the joyous exhaustion of his climax Then, getting his breath, he got up and went to the shower. "I could screw you all day, baby," he called above the rush of water. "And sometime we'll do it, all we want to-like last night. But right now I'd better go see Link. He'll-likely tell me to do my screwing at night, and work for him in the daytime. He doesn't know how goddamn good it is when you're in love like we are."
When he had bathed and dressed, he came to her and kissed her as tenderly, as sweetly as ever a man kissed a woman. "I love you, baby," he said.
She touched his lips with a finger and pressed the dampness to her own mouth. "I love you too, darling."
And when he was gone, she knew that she meant it. She did love Jock Tawnley. Not yet like a wife, perhaps; not yet with the same need to rush to bed every whip stitch, to match cock to crotch as often as their bodily strength would let them. But that would develop as their friendship grew, as the baby within her grew toward its time to tear her open and come out of her. Long before her womb gave up Jock's matured seed, she would be loving her husband as he loved her. Surely she would. And that would be everything that life could ever hope to be.
She dressed, putting on her loosest bra, letting her big breasts move easily. Jock would reach for them when he came in the door tonight, more than-likely. The looser they were, the easier he could get them into his hands and his mouth. She might as well go topless at their meals-if she didn't expose her nipples, he would. And, as she thought about it, she was glad she could provide him the tingle, the thrill of great breasts, of "boobies" to kiss and to suck on. Just looking at her breasts or her pussy gave him a hard-on. Someday seeing his prick would do the same for her-she hoped.
CHAPTER 8
WHEN SHE HAD STACKED THEIR FEW DISHES in the dishwasher after breakfast, made the bed, and enjoyed a moment in every one of the seven rooms in this delightful house with its Spanish decor, Zoe started her walk.
From the driveway that was now hers and Jock's, she surveyed the unbelievable scene, taking more time for it than she had when she got here last night. There was more to see in the glowing sunlight: more buildings, more activity, more elegant birds with their haughty struts than she had seen before. It was a ranch of wealth, of accomplishment, and of possible happiness.
There had been very little real happiness on these lovely acres up to now, she was sure. Perhaps she could help to develop a little of it for Link, as well as for Jock. Link was a good man-a great man-according to his son. He had carved this place out of rocks and crags with his bare hands, so to speak. And he had a heart, hidden away where he hoped nobody would ever glimpse it. It had shown up, in spite of his gruff exterior, when she had pleaded for her baby. "Even a devil like me can't throw out his own grandchild," he had said. But, God, he was no devil. He was a lonely, disillusioned man. She would help Jock be kind to him, let him know that she wanted to understand him and make his life more bearable.
Also, for herself, she wanted to learn to be less afraid of him-and less drawn toward touching him, toward wanting him to touch her. No woman should ever feel this kind of terror, or this kind of desire, for her father-in-law.
She walked down the wide white walks toward the mammoth pens. Beside the first one, she paused, admiring the roosters that were plainly what their name implied--The Fury, etched into brass plates in the exact center of every post on each side of each fence. God, Link was neat! There didn't seem to be a thing on the feather farm that was not precise, measured to the Nth inch, and set in its proper place. She had the feeling that every one of these proud birds knew his name and serial number, plus the count and weight and value of every feather he flaunted.
She made her way among the pens, loving the waving tail feathers, smiling at the way the birds eyed her as they cocked their haughty heads, blinked their piercing eyes, and strutted toward her defiantly. She was glad there was a fence between them and her as they scolded loudly, "Chut-chut-chut!" with every movement. When they began to poke their perfect beaks through the fence at her, her eyes traveled down their bodies to the spurs on their sturdy legs-spurs so sharp, by nature, breeding, and honing, that they could well deal death wherever they struck. Zoe felt chilly and cringy as she stared at the needle-like points that swelled into swords on the legs. She hoped she never had to watch a cock fight. She wanted no part of the flying feathers, the bleeding necks, the torn flesh, the dying bodies that had known such pride. Daddy had seen a cock fight once, and he'd told her about it. The description had haunted her for days. Now she was to have part of her income from such contests of life and death among birds. Fate played strange tricks as you lived it out.
Behind the pens, she found the buildings where the birds spent their nights-"chicken coop" would be an inadequate term to apply to these bird palaces. Made of the same gray stone as every structure on this place, the trim in bright red and blue, they looked clean enough for people to walk into and settle down for life.
Zoe opened a side door of one of the chicken houses and went inside. The floor was cement, white and shining and spotless. Weren't high-powered fighting cocks allowed to pee and grunt-or were they trained to make their messes in a special bird-toilet? Or-and she knew this was the most likely-did some hireling follow them about with a dust pan and a mop?
At the back of the building, she saw lines of built-ins, and doors that must lead to closets. She peeked into one of. them and saw a fair-sized room with a bunk that was neatly made up. There was a chair, a high desk, and a wall full of nude pin-ups. Staring at the lewd figures, she suddenly froze. There were no views of women; they were all of naked men! Why would a man, in a man's world, want to look at the sex organs of other males? Why indeed! God, she was stupid! Of course there would be homos among such fellows as the ones who worked here. Probably most of them were normal, and certainly Link screwed only women when he chose to screw; she'd stake her life on that. As for Jock, he had begun his sex life with her, and he had no time for anyone else ... So what the men who worked for Link did-well, it was none of her business.
All at once, she heard voices outside the building, coming closer, about to enter the chicken house. She had no business being here, and she wished she weren't. Maybe she could hide somewhere until these men left.-likely they'd do some cleaning or put out some feed or something ... She dropped quickly into a far corner, behind a neat stack of boxes and extra roosts that looked as if they wouldn't be disturbed right now.
She heard two pairs of feet on the concrete, two men's voices. They clomped across the whole area and into the bedroom at the back. But they didn't shut the door. God, Oh God, were they going to--?
Yes, they were, she could tell. She heard their clothes hitting the cement floor as they stripped, heard them kissing each other feverishly. God, why had she stayed here, to be humiliated by having to listen to two homos screw each other?
Why hadn't she let them see her, and just told them casually that she was looking over the birds, which was the truth? Now she would have to stay in her hiding place until they had spent themselves-until they had gloried in an abnormal sex act that was-likely their way of life in this womanless place.
They were loud about it, gloating over the one man's quickness in getting hard, the other's readiness to accept the stiffened prick. They fondled each other at great length, before one of them finally invited, "Okay, I'm on my stomach. Shove it into my blow-hole this time, honey." Then the squishing, in and out, echoed through the building, the sex partners gasping and groaning.
Zoe's watch read thirty minutes later when the men dressed and left ... She felt cramped from her long squatting in the same position, but she waited another ten munutes, wanting the men to be too far away to know that she had been here when they did their screwing. She wanted nobody to know it-nobody I She would not even tell Jock. And she would never come to any of the chicken houses again.
She stepped into the sunlight and started back between two of the pens. Suddenly she heard a sound behind her, and she whirled to face it-alarmed, without knowing why. A man stood there, looking at her with contempt and triumph in his black eyes, and a sneering familiarity on his brown Mexican face that came close to a look of possession.
She knew at once that he must be Mendez, and at first glance there seemed nothing sinister about him. He was dressed in an expensive whipcord suit, much like the ones Link and Jock wore here on the ranch, and his boots had the same gleam as theirs. His red silk shirt gave his dark face a handsome air; the trim mustache lent him a neatness, a preciseness that seemed exactly right for the foreman of Link Tawnley's Feather Farm.
But, under the smooth exterior of the man, there were other qualities that began to come through to her as she looked at him-lurking undercurrents that made her shrink back. His eyes mocked her, his lips curled, and the set of his shoulders was a swagger, a boast. She didn't like this kind of man, not at all. And she had the memory of his carrying on with Tutie Bear. She hated him on sight.
He spoke first, in the same insulting drawl that she had heard from the bedroom at Clitey's. "So here ees the Senora-Tawnley. The Senora Zoe, getting acquainted weeth the ranch. Senor Leenk, he tell me that you have come to leeve here. You like what you see in the bird house, Senora?"
She tossed back her head, trying to look nonchalant. "It's a very nice bird house."
"Ees so, Senora. The best. Senor Leenk he build always the best. But you come out here to see a show bigger than birds. Yes, senora? The two men, they come here every day to screw. I watch them often. So I know that you stay to watch them theese morning. Ees hell of good show, yes, senora?"
She felt her face burning, her body steaming. She didn't have to excuse herself to this ... this louse of a foreman. She didn't have to say a word. But she did anyway, offering the lame excuse, "I just came out here to look around. I was scared when the men came in and so I ... I hid. I thought they'd leave right away."
"But eet was good that they stay a while, yes? They geeve you good thrill to watch."
She flared, "Of course they didn't give me a thrill! If I need any sex education, I'll get it in my own bed, with my own husband."
"Oh, but yes-yes, certainly, senora. For sure you weel. And I envy Senor Jock. Eef you screw like Clitey, you screw damn good. I have layed Clitey, nights when I bet in her games. She ees real damn good. The best of any woman I ever had."
She snapped, "You stay away from me, Mendez. If you ever touch me, I'll-I'll kill you if Jock doesn't."
"Senor Jock ees not my boss, Senora Zoe."
"Well, Link won't let you threaten me either. I'm carrying his grandchild, and that's important to him.
That's why he's letting me stay here. He won't let you, or anybody else, harm my baby."
"Ees so, senora? You are sure that eet ees so?" The man's face was smug, leering. "Eef I tell you what I theenk, eet ees that Senor Leenk needs me more than anybody else on thees place. I theenk he weel not let me go for notheeng. I theenk eef he have to keel me or you, he weel keel you."
God, he was sure of himself! And he was probably right, damn it. Link would-likely let her go, and Jock and the baby with her, before he would fire Mendez.
The man added, "You know Senor Leenk hates women anyway, senora. like me, he wants no woman here. He would be glad for see you leave."
She said, very low, "Just stay away from me, Mendez. Stay clear away, all the time."
He bowed, clicking his heels, rattling the rocks under his shining boots. "But, yes, senora. Eef you do not weesh to give me good screw like Clitey, then I have no weesh to bother you. And love for you I have not, too. Eef you was not boss's son's wife, I would spit on you."
As she stared at him, open-mouthed in her welling, swelling anger, he went on coolly, "You stay a-way from me, senora. Theese bird house, they are my business. Weeth the birds you have no business at all. You stay your place, I stay mine."
She spun from him and walked on past the pens, as fast as she could. She hoped she never saw that hateful man again ...
That night at dinner she told Jock about her conversation with Mendez. He sighed, agreeing that all her loathing was understandable. But he repeated what Link had told him so many times, and his own conclusion was that Mendez' position with Link was secure, probably the most secure of any on the Tawnley Feather Farm.
Jock was elated over the new job that Link had assigned to him. He was to have charge of the gift factory, oversee the work, supervise the boxing of orders, and sometimes make trips when items were being introduced into new stores or towns. Link was doubling his salary, which had been more than adequate before, and Jock would be able to buy almost anything that Zoe wanted to ask for.
When he had worn himself out in her that night, making two climaxes with scarcely a rest between them, he held their bodies tightly together, pressing the limpness of him against the softness of her. He wanted to sleep raw tonight, he said. Maybe they would like the feeling of each other's nakedness in the bed together, and if they did, they'd sleep that way all the time. He wanted to feel of her boobies, touch her crotch, even in his sleep. And he wanted to wake up with her breasts in his mouth, with the whole glory of her body exposed to him.
He said, "I don't like to think about your getting all swollen up with the baby, honey. I'm going to resent that little scamp growing inside you, pooching you all out the way he will."
She kissed him. "Oh, you'll love watching him make me big, darling, even when he stretches me all out of shape. You'll be happy about it, because it will be your very own child, the one you planted in me that night at Clitey's."
"I know." His face brightened. "And maybe it will be a thrill to us. We'll feel him when he moves in your stomach, won't we?"
"Yes, darling, of course you will. You'll be able to put your hand on me and feel him kick."
"God, it kind of excites me just to think about it, honey." He felt her stomach, searching for a lump in the still flatness. "I'll stay right beside you when he's born, if they'll let me. I don't want us to have any more kids, because I don't want you to swell up again and get hurt when you have babies. So, I want to see this one come out of you. I never could under-stand how a woman could open up enough to give birth to a child. It seems like it would turn her inside-out, the baby pushing itself out of her."
Zoe sighed. What a child he was! But perhaps when he was a father, he would mature a little. His new job might help him too. He might grow up, one of these days. And he would be the man that she wanted him to be. She had to keep telling herself that he would.
CHAPTER 9
FROM THEN ON, ZOE SAW LITTLE OF EITHER Link or Mendez. If both men were intentionally avoiding her, they were succeeding. And she was glad they were. She wanted nothing to do with the foreman, ever. And she had decided that it might be best to let her baby break the ice for her with Link. A grandpa would be more-likely to mellow toward his son's wife when he held his grandchild in his arms.
Jock got so absorbed in his work that he sometimes went two nights without love. But, when he did, he always made up for it on the third night, spending hours at it, making love to her again and again. He quit asking her whether she wanted him to wait for her to try for a climax, because they had both given up on her ever being able to know that joy. She told him that she was sure many women never went off-but that that didn't stop their enjoying the sex act and providing every pleasure in it that their husbands could possibly ask for. There was even an advantage in their way of screwing, she told him; he didn't have to wait for her at all, and that let him work up and go off whatever way he wanted to. He laughed delightedly and said she was real goddamn right. And maybe some day she would surprise them and pop too, he said. He hoped so. So did she. She wanted the pleasure of a sexual explosion more than anything else in her sex life. But she wondered whether she would ever experience it.
The weeks passed, each one much the same as the last one, until Link sent Jock on a trip to the Northwest coast. Stores in Oregon and Washington had written to inquire about the feather products; Link wanted them presented well, and by a Tawnley. He said Jock might as well learn the techniques of selling before he got any older. He had been trained for it all his life.
Zoe hoped Link would say she could go along, but he didn't. When Jock asked to take her, Link refused curtly, saying this was to be a business trip, not a honeymoon. So Jock left without her, promising to cut the jaunt as short as he could.
Zoe was in her fourth month now, and showing more than she had thought a woman did at this stage. She dreaded being alone in the house, lovely as it was, while Jock was away. She wished there were other women, at least one other woman, here on the ranch. If she got sick, there would be nobody to tend to her these next few days. And she was too far from town to drive there by herself, in search of a doctor or a hospital. Oh, Jock had taken her into Wayside every two weeks since she came here, to let Doctor Gorham check her thoroughly. But now she had no doctor, no woman, no husband, nobody-for almost a week at the very least. What if she should miscarry? What if she should have some kind of fright, from Mendez or another of the rough-looking men who moved among the birds and the buildings? God, she dreaded the nights-the long-long nights most of all ...
Jock had been gone three days when she heard a knock at her door one night. Her heart began to pound so hard that it shook her all over. Who could be wanting into her house? Who could possibly--?
She gathered all her strength and called out, "Who is it?'
"It's Link."
And it was his bass voice. She would know it anywhere. She was so relieved that she flung, the door wide and tumbled into his arms.
"Oh, Link, I've been so-so scared! I was never so alone in my life before and I ... I ... Well, it's all so new here, and I-"
"There, there, cry if you want to." The man held her close against his broad chest, wiping her tear-wet eyes with his monogrammed handkerchief. "I've felt like a heel, knowing you were 'way out here alone. Jesus, I should have sent you with Jock. Next time I will."
He sat down, taking her with him to the divan. His arm was still about her shoulders, and somehow it seemed right for it to be there. She turned her face into his shoulder and smelled the special man-smell of him, so clean and outdoorsy-and terribly, terribly male. She felt herself beginning to tremble. She must move away from him, until their hips no longer touched, until the warmth of his breath did not stir the sweat on her face.
But she couldn't move, or else she didn't really want to. It didn't matter which. All that mattered was that she had never felt so female in her life.
She raised her face and said softly, "Link, I wish--Oh, Link, I know it's bad, but I wish we could-"
"So do I, Little One." His face was upon hers, and the next moment their mouths were pressed together, their tongues seeking each other's, their hands reaching, probing, needing, demanding.
With her head resting in his lap, he took off her dress and slip, unfastened the bra so that it dropped away, and lifted off her panties. His eyes went over her swollen body, and his hands touched the swelling gently. "You've got my flesh and blood in there, Zoe." His voice was tender. "It's almost as if I put it there."
"I-I know. And, oh, Link, I ... wish you had."
"You've wanted me since the moment we first looked at each other, haven't you, Little One?"
"Oh, God, yes, Link, you know I have. At first I thought it was fear. But now I know that it was love all the time. I want you so bad that I don't think I can stand it."
"I've wanted you the same way, my precious. That was why I didn't want you to stay here. I knew I'd come to you sooner or later, and that we'd feel the urge to give ourselves to each other ... Jesus, I haven't wanted, a woman since-well, hell, since too long to remember. My nights with Clitey, and with the other whores, were just-sex activity. They meant nothing. But if I could sharpen up this knife that's swelling up on the front of me and cut that frosted cake of yours ... Oh, Jesus, I could want you, Little One. I could want you more than a man ever wanted a woman before."
She was too thrilled, too excited, too worked up to push him away or want to. She let him kiss her stomach, her thigh, the hair that covered her crotch. She whispered, "We have to go ahead and do it:, Link. We can't stop now. Oh, God, I have to feel you in me, my dearest. I have to have your prick!"
His face was gray. "I want to put it into you, my precious, more than I ever wanted anything else before. But what about your baby? Will intercourse hurt it? I know it's alive in you, moving sometimes. I've seen it stir since I undressed you. And I want it to be born alive and well."
"It will be, sweet. And I can have sex relations for a little while longer. Doctor Gorham said I could for three weeks yet. It will be all right for us to ... to do it ... if you really want me."
"Want you? Oh, Jesus, I never wanted any woman the way I want you!"
He carried her to a bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. In a trice he was nude beside her, and she thrilled anew to his hard body, so mature, so firm, so all man. This was the male she had dreamed of, had yearned for, had prayed to belong to. This could be heaven forever.
He said, "I'll be good to you, precious. I won't hurt you." His hands petted her great breasts and he bent his head to kiss them. "Lord, I thought these bosoms .couldn't be real, love. I figured you were wearing falsies of some kind. But it's all you, Little One. They're the sweetest breasts, the most beautiful nipples, that ever grew on any woman anywhere."
He didn't suck on them; he only touched them, held them against his face, kissed them slowly and reverently. That was the difference between a boy and a man, Zoe mused; Jock sucked on her breasts like a baby, but Link fondled them in a man's sexual desire. Link was a man in all the ways that his son was not; he was the man she had been living for, as long as she could remember.
He touched her crotch, kissing her all the while.
"You're ready for me, Little One. You're warm and ready."
"Oh, God, yes, Link. I'm so ready I don't think I can wait!"
He eased himself on top of her. She said, "Don't go slow unless you want to, sweet. You won't hurt me. Just give it to me, my dearest-give me all the hard you've got!"
And she felt her crotch opening to receive the warm force of his great maleness. She had never felt such pain, or such joy, before. Jock's countless screwings, night after night, seemed another life, another world. It-was as if she had never had a real man inside her until now. She crushed him to her, holding tightly, moaning, crying, moving as he moved, knowing she was rising to the same climax that he soared toward.
Their mouths fused, they swayed together, their bodies straining for fulfillment-and finding it in all its glory and sweetness and magnificence ...
When he pulled his body out of hers, he asked, "Is that the best you ever-went off, precious?"
She was still shaky from the thrill of it. "Oh, Link, Link, it's the first time for me, the very first! I've tried and tried, with Jock, but I never could. It took a man to put himself in me and make me go, my dearest. It took your prick, your powerful prick, to give me my first climax."
He held her a long time, there in the bed, kissing her face, her throat, her great breasts. For treasured, titillating moments he buried his face between the round mounds of flesh with their pink nipples edged in brown. And he said, more softly than she had ever heard him say anything, "What a woman you are, little Zoe! What marvelous breasts these are, and what a perfect crotch you've got! Jesus, Little
One, a man could be happy forever if he came home to these big bouncers every night, and could stab that lovely little pussy sometimes."
She drew his mouth to hers, forced his kiss to match hers and go beyond it; to blend their lips, their tongues, their very souls, until they were almost as much a part of each other as they had been when they were clasped in sexual Intercourse.
As their mouths drew apart at last, she said, "Don't we have to do this again, my dearest? Don't we love each other so much that we can't help making love all the time? I feel like I'd die if you didn't take me again and again. I never dreamed that love could ever be so ... so perfect!"
His lips were on her breasts again, and his bands held them tightly, pushing them together, forcing the nipples to stand out in pink points. "Jesus, Zoe, neither did II Oh, God, neither did I!"
"You never loved like this before? Not even with Inez?"
He shook his head. "I was only a boy when I married her. She was a cute trick, and we thought we were in love. But she never learned to enjoy sex, and she never learned to like this ranch. It was a dinky little farm then, of course; but she wouldn't give it, or me, a chance. She griped from the day I brought her here until the day she divorced me. I don't think Jock ever knew we were divorcedbut we were, when he was two years old. She came back here sometimes, always staying in her half of the house we had-then, but never sleeping with me. When she died, I couldn't cry over her because I hadn't loved her since our honeymoon. And I hadn't touched her crotch since before Jock was born."
"And there haven't been any other women you could really love ... until me."
Jesus, that's true, my precious-it's too goddamn true! Oh, damn it all to hell, how could this happen to us, Zoe? How could two people wait as long as we have to find complete fulfillment, only to have to give it up?"
She pressed her face against his bare shoulder, feeling the beat of his heart beneath her cheek. "Darling, darling, we can't give it up! You're the only man I ever wanted to give myself to. I can't go back to Jock after you. He's a boy, a youngster who knows nothing of the kind of love you've given me tonight. He doesn't know how to work me up, how to hold me, how to kiss my breasts, where to touch my crotch to arouse me. And his prick isn't as powerful as yours, my dearest. Yours is the very one I have to have, the only one I ever want in me again. I can't stand thinking of our giving each other up, now that we know we can-"
"Zoe, my precious, don't go on hurting us both." The man's deep voice was sad. "Tonight is all we will ever have. We must enjoy it now, and treasure the memory of it afterward. We will never make love again.".
"But why, Link? Why won't we make love again, when we love each other so desperately."
"Because you are my son's wife."
"Can't I divorce him?"
"No, precious.. I wouldn't do that to Jock. He loves you, and he has a right to you and the child he fathered. Besides, he and I are partners on this ranch, and nothing must disrupt the harmony that we have here."
"Can't we even meet, maybe once in a long time?" "No, precious. No looks or words must pass between us that will even hint at what we've done tonight, We will go back to our separate worlds, here on the same land. We will speak to each other only impersonally, or perhaps like father and daughter. There will be no repetition of our .great love." He gave her breasts a last caress, one at a time, letting his lips linger long on each of the twin mounds. Then he moved from her and stepped out of the bed. "I'm going now, Zoe."
She strained toward him. "Is it this easy for you to leave me? Can you force yourself to forget?'
"Certainly I can. I have lived on grit and will power for longer than I can remember. My life, my feelings, even my thoughts are under absolute control, almost all the time. Tonight is the first time I ever let myself go, since-I can't recall when."
He began to dress. "I didn't intend to touch you when I came here, Zoe. I meant only to ask if you were all right. I'd been feeling guilty about making you stay at home when Jock left ... But when you opened the door and fell into my arms, I went to pieces. I'd wanted you so long, so goddamned long ... " Then he squared his shoulders and set his bronzed face in a mask. "It's over now, Zoe. It was as close to heaven as a man ever dares to go. But not many men are privileged to dwell in heaven while they are in this life. The great majority have to keep their feet on solid earth their whole lives. And that's where mine will be from now on."
He smiled at her-a controlled, contrived smile that held no feeling at all, and then he was gone.
She dropped back on her pillow. She had not cried since her mother's funeral, but now she sobbed until she was too weak to weep more. She knew that Link would never swerve from the straight path that he had plotted for himself, and for her. She would never again hear-words of love from him, never know his kiss on her breasts, never again feel his hardness in her softness, giving her the climax that only real love could draw from her.
CHAPTER 10
WHEN JOCK GOT HOME, HE WAS SO WONDERFULLY glad to be with Zoe again that she would not have dampened his ardor if she had wanted to. And she knew that there was no use in telling him she loved his father instead of him. There would never be any use in it. Her one night with Link was a closed door that would never open again. Link had said so. What Link said, he meant-and he stuck to it.
When she was six months along, Zoe relayed the doctor's warning to Jock; he advised them to stop sexual intercourse until the baby was born. Jock did a lot of pouting about it, almost every night, but he always talked himself into cheerful acceptance, especially when Zoe promised him-as she always did-that as soon as she was well from the baby's birth, he could spend the rest of. his life in her crotch. She already had the doctor's best pills to use as preventatives, ready to use as soon as they could begin having intercourse again' until they decided to have more babies. If they ever did, she would fake the pills and stay safe. Jock would be able to use her all he wanted to, as much and as often as his young strength demanded.
Of course she couldn't tell him how relieved she was to have him leave her alone. It had been meaningless to open up to Jock after her night with Link. Poor, boastful Jock was so pleased with his maleness, so proud of his big prick, so delighted that he could stir up a hard at sight of her breasts. But, to her, he was a child learning to read, when she craved a scholar.
She had been unable to achieve a climax with him-as completely unable as she had been before his trip. She had told herself that perhaps, now since she had known a climax with Link, she could have one after another of them with Jock. If she could, she knew it would help to ease the aching in her body when she gave it to Jock, the pull of sorrow in her heart every moment of every day ... But she had not been able to work up enough to go off, no matter how hard she tried-and she had given it up.
She and Jock took long drives in the red convertible, with him showing her the vast Panhandle country, its ranches and oil fields, its wheat and cattle, its caves and canyons. And they walked together every evening. She knew she needed the exercise, and Jock went with her. Hand in hand, they trekked through the valley and on into the canyons, savoring the beauty of the rocks and the streams and the wild things that scurried from their approach. Deep in the breaks, there were deer and elk and wild turkeys and countless small animals-plus the coyotes that howled in the distance. Zoe loved the big outdoors. There was a cleanness, a freshness to these plains and woods that she had never known before, not even in Missouri.
When Jock had to leave on another sales trip, in Zoe's seventh month, Link sent word that she could go along if her doctor okayed it. But Doctor Gorham said no. She was doing fine, but he didn't want her taking long trips this late in her pregnancy. Jock-was going to Minneapolis and Chicago, perhaps beyond them, and that was too far, the doctor insisted.
So she stayed alone when Jock left. She-wondered whether Link would give in to his feelings, and hers, and come to her. In spite of her telling herself that she must not love him, she could not make herself forget him. She couldn't help longing for him with every part of her heart, every movement of her love-starved body. Remembering how it had felt to draw him into her crotch, to hold him there until they had made their climax together; it warmed her through, dampening her body, soaking her panties. She knew that if he came to her, she would disregard the doctor's instructions. She would take a chance on intercourse, just once; she would not be able to refuse it, not to Link. She wanted him terribly, entirely, all the time.
But Link didn't come near her. He had spoken to her only a few times since their night of love. Each time had been when Jock was with them, when they had eaten at the big house with him, or he had shared their dinner at their home. And. no word of his had held any feeling other than fatherly interest in her and in his grandchild in her womb ... Apparently he intended that attitude to continue. He did not knock on her door these nights.
Now that her time for delivery was getting close, she was unable to sleep, more nights than not. Sometimes she lay awake all night, feeling the child within her kick and turn, feeling her body an almost unbearable burden, wishing the day would hasten when her-womb-would split open and she would bring forth the child that so weighed her down.
She took to leaving the house in the dead of night, and walking in the moonlight; walking and walking until she was exhausted, far into the canyons and back, so far that she slept from sheer fatigue when she got home.
One night she walked a lot farther than usual. And, before she started the long trek back, she sat down on an old tree stump to rest. The child within her was especially restless, and she felt much more tired than usual. She knew she should not have come this far.
All at once, in the deathly stillness of the night, she heard voices. She recognized them at once. There were three of them-Mendez and the two homos she had seen in the chicken house when she first came to the farm. She remembered hearing a plane land, a couple of hours ago, and she knew that that meant Mendez had come back from his most recent trip to Mexico with a load of birds. And now she saw that her vantage point was within spotting distance of the private airport that was two hills past all the houses. She got up and moved toward the voices, cautiously, fascinated by the things the men were saying.
Mendez was telling the other two, "Theese plane, she ees clean enough now. The cigar butts and ashes, she is all wiped out. No damn fool but us know that I have companee on treep home."
One of the men said, "Don't you think you oughta give us a bigger cut, Mendez? We could turn you both over to the law, you know."
The foreman chuckled softly, smugly. "Sure. And I tell Senor Leenk that you screw each other on hees time. You lose good job, and good cut I geeve you now. You like that?"
The second worker said quickly, "He was only kiddin', Mendez. You treat us fine. We don't want tc quit you."
"So okay. Ees good."
The voices stopped, and Zoe thought all three men had left together, heading for the houses that huddled far away in the moonlight. She heard feet go crushing through the underbrush in that direction.
When she could no longer hear them, she began her slow walk home. She was so full of fury that she was shaking all over. That damned Mendez, cheating Link and Jock, making himself a fortune, and breaking the law-all at once. She would tell Link the whole story tomorrow. It would be the end of Mendez' little play party.
She had just started across the last clearing toward her house when she heard steps behind her, coming from the direction of the plane; crunching closer, gaining faster and faster, threatening to overtake her if she didn't run for her life!
But she couldn't run. She was too clumsy, too heavily burdened by her unborn child. She knew she would stumble if she tried to run, perhaps trip over something and fall headlong, injuring her baby, maybe risking its life ...
She dropped into a heap on the ground, a swollen bundle in the moonlight. Let her pursuer catch her if he would. Let him curse her, sneer at her, shout at her. Let him do anything-except harm her child. If she could sit here in a huddle and protect the baby, it wouldn't matter what happened to her own life.
In the next breath she felt calloused hands on her flesh, jerking her to her feet. She smelled expensive whiskey mingled with two kinds of loud perfume. And she heard Mendez' raging demand, "Senora, you peeg-you spy on plane! You spy on-me! How dare you spy, you peeg?"
She pulled free of his grasp. "Don't you call me a pig, you-you smuggler!"
His eyes shot fire in the moonlight "You heard theese talk about the smuggling, Senora Zoe?"
"Doggone right I heard it, and Link will hear about it in the morning. I'll tell him everything I heard and saw. I'll-"
"Hold the horse, senora. I theenk you weel tell Senor Leenk notheeng. Een first place, he know it weethout you tell him. He ees partner weeth me een the smuggling. And een second place, eef he find out you know, he weel keel you, yes?"
"Why, he would not! I'm his daughter-in-law, and he'd never harm me!"
Yet, even while she was screaming words at Mendez, she was recalling Link's controlled, almost deadly vow, "Nothing must disrupt the harmoney we have here." Was Mendez right about how far Link would go to protect his fat profit in crime? Would he do away with her, and with his own grandchild, If he thought they threatened his life outside the law?
Mendez taunted her, "Go on and tell Senor Leenk, Senora Zoe. Tell heem-and see how long you are here after you tell!"
She didn't answer. She turned from the man's hateful face and started moving as fast as she could toward her house. If he ran after her, knocked her down, even killed her-well, that was the risk she would have to take. She couldn't stay here, listening to his insults and his continued gloating over the fact that Link was his partner in crime.
And somehow she didn't believe that Mendez would harm her. She was sure that he would leave her destruction to Link, if it came to that. And of course it wouldn't. She would never speak of this night to Link. She would tell Jock; she must tell him. They would have to unite in their course of action, decide what they would do after their baby was born, now that she knew the full evil of this ranch. Maybe they could find a new home somewhere far away. Jock was a good boy, and he would want to leave his father's criminal set-up when he learned of it. Surely he would ...
The first night he was home, she told him. He sat very still, his face tight, his eyes deeply hurt. She said, "I didn't want to tell you, But I ... Well, I had to, didn't IT
"Sure you did, baby. Sure you did." He sighed heavily. "God, to think that Dad and that lousy Mendez have been smuggling all this time I Every time they've taken birds to Mexico, they've brought back wetbacks. Do you suppose they-" He didn't finish his sentence; he didn't seem able to. He didn't cry before Zoe; but she had the feeling that if ha left to walk in the night alone, he would shed his full share of tears.
He left the house in a few minutes. She heard the car start, purr, and drive away. Where was he going? Would he confront Mendez and lay him out? Would he do the same to Link? And when he came home, would he gather Zoe and their belongings and take off, never to return to this beautiful-but-evil place?
But Zoe never knew where Jock went that night, nor what speeches he made to whom. She could only guess ...
She was getting breakfast the next morning, sure that he would be coming home to eat before he went to work. Suddenly there was a banging on her door, a wild pounding that went past knocking, past reason, past sanity, She saw a tall, straight figure on the porch, and she knew it was Link. What was he doing here, and why wasn't Jock with him? Had they quarreled? And had Link--?
She flung the door open and faced Link's bloodshot eyes, his drawn cheeks, his bands that clenched and unclenched.
She cried, "Link, what is it? What's happened?"
His voice was hoarse. "It's Jock! Oh, God in heaven, Zoe, I wish I didn't have to tell you ... He drove his convertible off the cliff above the airport valley. The car's smashed, down there, and he's ... Oh, Jesus, he's dead!"
She dropped to the floor, feeling faint, wishing she could black out and never come to again. But Link lifted her in his arms, carried her to the divan, and laid her gently there. Then he sat down across the room from her, not touching her any more.
Her mind was whirling, beating her to death for what she had told Jock last night. Maybe he had not been able to accept the truth, to endure it and live with it. Maybe he had ... But, no, Jock wasn't the suicide type. She wouldn't believe that he killed himself.
Then who ... Why, Mendez, of course! If Jock went to Mendez last night and shouted that he would turn the foreman over to the law, even though it meant turning Link in too ... If he did that, then Mendez wouldn't have waited for Link to deal with the situation. He would have dealt with it himself. He would have killed Jock without a qualm.
Zoe began to cry then, sobbing for the love that Jock had had for her, for the kindnesses he had shown her, for the genuine friendship she had felt for him. And she sensed a great bitterness in her sorrow-resentment against the crime that was rampant in these infested acres, against the manor perhaps the two men, since it was Link's crime too-who had caused Jock's death ...
Unable to hold back her fury, she sobbed, "He didn't have an accident, Link-you know he didn't I He was too good a driver. He was murdered! And then he was pushed over that cliff!"
Link leaped across the room and stood over her. "What are you saying, Zoe?"
"You know what I'm saying-or you ought to. Jock and Mendez hated each other!"
"Yes, I know. Jock was always wanting me to fire Mendez. But surely there was nothing between them that could cause a life-or-death struggle. Surely-"
"Surely there was. I found out what the men were doing, Mendez and those two others. I told Jock. And then he left the house. If he accused Mendez-"
Link's face changed color twice-to grayish white and then back to deep red.
She wouldn't accuse him with Mendez, but she didn't care if he knew that she knew the truth. Since Jock was dead and Link was a criminal, what did anything matter?
But Link said quickly, "Damn it all to hell, Zoe-Jock didn't give a goddamn what Mendez did. He knew all about the activities here on the farm."
"I suppose you're going to tell me that-that Jock helped them!"
"Well, I guess he did, in his way. At least he didn't try to stop them." He sighed. Then his voice changed, taking on a note of sad resignation. "I called town for the mortuary ambulance. I don't think you ought to go with them, but you may if you want to."
She shook her head. "Not now. I couldn't stand seeing Jock the ... the way he must look now." She wanted to add, I can't even stand thinking about his death yet, not after what you just told me. I wouldn't have believed that my husband and my father-in-law were partners in a smuggling racket-if you hadn't told me so yourself ... Well, now Jock is dead for his crimes. And you can go straight to hell, Link Tawnley. I loved you once-and I could love you still, if you were honest and decent. But you're crooked and rotten. Maybe you were in cahoots with Mendez in the killing of Jock, the murder of your own son ... Oh, God, Link could you do that? Could you?
CHAPTER ll
LINK TURNED AND LEFT HER ALONE, THE next moment. And she told herself she wouldn't care if she never saw him again.
She was sure he would never investigate Jock's death. And she wouldn't dare to if he didn't. With both Link and Mendez against her, she would be dead before she opened her mouth-as dead as poor Jock. Link must be rotten all the way through. How could she ever have imagined she was in love with him? Why did she imagine it still? Was she as sick over Link's degradation as she was over Jock's murder? And, God oh God, why had she ever got mixed up with the Tawnleys in the first place? Why hadn't she borne her baby without a father, rather than coming here to this pus-packed place?
Two days later, she went to the funeral with Link, and neither of them said a word that wasn't absolutely necessary. They rode to Wayside together, and they sat in the little mortuary chapel, with Mendez and all the other Tawnley employees behind them. They buried Jock beside his mother, in the cemetery that was on a hill above the town. Then they drove back to the feather farm, speaking as little as before.
Link walked Zoe to her door, but he didn't touch her nor offer to. He said unemotionally, "If you're afraid of being so far from town, now that it's almost time for the baby, I'll take you into Wayside to stay. You may live at the hospital-or board at some nice place till your time comes."
He leaned down and took her face in one of his hands, turning it toward his. "I'll take care of you, Little One. I'll try to be as good to you as Jock would have been. And sometime, when the hurt of losing him has left us, maybe we can think about a future together."
Stung by his calmness, by his maddening audacity, she sprang to her feet, feeling her baby drag her toward the floor. "How can you even suggest such a ... a vile thing, Link? Do you think I'd ever be a partner to what goes on here? "
Link's chin set grimly. "No, I'm sure you wouldn't, Zoe. You loved Jock all the time, didn't you? In spite of our night together, you loved him-not me."
"Certainly I love him!"
"Our love was only an interlude."
"God, yes. What else could it be?"
"Nothing else, Zoe. Nothing else at all."
Link turned and walked out of her driveway. She hoped he was also walking out of her life.
She called after him, "Don't worry about me. I'll call a taxi if I have to go to the hospital. I don't want you helping me. Not now-and not ever!"
So the days passed, three weeks of them. Zoe never exchanged words with Link during that time, nor with any other living soul. She took her walks as before, but she went around and around her house, never into the canyons. She locked her house every night, doors and windows. She meant to stay here only until the baby came. Then she would take her child and leave Link Tawnley's house, and his smuggling activities-along with his rotten, mi-resistible love-forever ...
Then came the afternoon when she heard the noise of a different plane overhead, a sound that was new to her on the ranch. It wasn't Link's Bonanza, nor any of the cargo planes either. This was a small craft, a private one; someone must be coming to visit Link. Nobody had done that since Zoe had been here. Who could it be?
Then she shrugged. It was none of her business who the visitors were at the big stone house. Link was his own man, and she was her own woman. There could never be any rapport between them again, not even the father-daughter kind.
She climbed the steps to her porch and went inside. The late afternoon was growing bitter cold, plainly blowing into a blue norther. As icy as the air was already, this one would be a doozy. She was glad she didn't have to be out in it for long. It would freeze her where she stood if it couldand the baby inside her too. She would be glad-so damned glad!-when she could leave this place and all its heartaches, and never come back.
But she had scarcely settled into her chair beside the TV when she heard a car stop outside her house. A knock came on her door and a voice called out, "Miz Tawnley, Miz Tawnley! Mister Link says for me to bring you to his house. He says you've got company over there."
She opened her door and stared at the man, one of the nameless workers she had seen about the place. She asked tonelessly, "Who is the-the company?"
"I donno, Miz Tawnley. It's women, the two women that come in on that plane a while ago; just the pair of 'em and the pilot that flew 'em here. Reckon it's somebody that knows you." He frowned as she didn't move. "Better come on. Mister Link don't like to be kept waitin'. If you're not scared of him gettin' mad, I am."
Zoe lumbered to her feet. She might as well see who these visitors were. What women, anywhere on earth, would care enough about her to come flying here to see her?
She let the man help her into his car, and out of it when they reached the great stone mansion. She clung to his arm as she made her way up the marble steps and across the veranda to the front door. Then she nodded to him, and opened the door without knocking. She might as well go barging in as if she belonged here. For the time being, she did.
She stood in the half light, squinting, seeing only the big room and the three figures who rose to their feet when she came in. The tallest of the three, Link, turned on a light somewhere. The brightness fell on the two female figures.
They were Clitey Shaw and Tutie Bear Torrento.
Clitey ran to Zoe and rained kisses on her sister's face. Zoe couldn't respond, but she didn't wince away. You couldn't refuse to let your own sister touch you, no matter what she was.
Clitey chattered, "I've been hunting you ever since you left me, Little Sis! And I just found out you were here, from Mendez, when he stopped to see Tutie Bear last week. He told me about the baby, and about Jock's accident. I knew I had to find out how you were and whether you needed me." She stood away and surveyed Zoe. "God, you're pooched out, Little Sis. Is your baby due tomorrow?"
Link answered before Zoe could, "It won't be here until next month, and she doesn't need you. She has a hundred men at her command, including me. So you two might as well crawl into that plane and fly back where you came from."
Clitey laughed delightedly. "Always your gruff old self, aren't you, sweetie? Always pretending you despise me, when God knows you're the first man in the sack with me whenever you're close enough." She left Zoe and went to Link, running a hand through his arm, planting a kiss on his cheek. "Tutie Bear came to visit Mendez ... Tutie Bear, dear, don't you want to run out and look for him now T
The Mexican woman nodded and left the house. Zoe's eyes went over her, noting the clean clothes, the combed hair. Tutie Bear was still fat, still uncouth, but cleanliness had done wonders for her. Had she really slicked up for Mendez? Or-which was more-likely-had Clitey made her clean up for the trip? And had she come to Mendez, not only for a good screwing, but also to make plans for their next smuggling spree?
When the three of them were alone, Clitey said, "You know you have to let us stay here tonight, Link, sweetie. And you know you wouldn't have me on your farm without enjoying me. The pilot can stay with some of your men. Mendez and Tutie Bear will be at his place, I'm sure, so they can screw as much as they want to. And you and I will do the same here at your house, won't we?"
Link's eyes were hostile. He snapped, "Damn it, Clitey-no! You're not going to settle down herewith me. No woman is going to move into my bedroom, you understand? I've told you a hundred times that
I had no intention of letting any female-"
"Oh, God, sweetie, knock it off. Nobody's trying to marry you. I'm just offering you a night's screwing. But if you don't want it, I won't beg you. I'm sure there are plenty of men here who could lay me tonight-and who'd jump at the chance."
She started toward the door. Link's eyes went to Zoe. Then his face set like stone, and he said tightly, "Come on back, Clitey. Nobody else around here has ever had hot pants for me. I might as well give you all you came for. You know you'll get it, and more, if you strip for me."
She already had her dress half off. "Little Sis, you run on home if you don't want to watch the best damn piece of ass any man ever got. I've had dozens of men since my last night with Link, but nobody like him." She turned to the man, and there was adulation in her eyes. "God, I'm crazy about you, you great big woman-flamer, you. So get out your red-hot poker and burn right through the middle of me, you hear?"
Link didn't stir toward the older girl; his eyes didn't brighten at the sight of her. small pointed breasts, nor at the rest of her beautiful body that she was revealing as fast as she could. Zoe's eyes went to the front of his pants, expecting to see the zipper bulging, the way it had bulged for her on their night together. But the cloth had not risen at all; the zipper was straight and smooth. It couldn't matter to Zoe now, or ever; she wanted no part of an international smuggler. Yet, for pride's sake, it was a satisfaction to know that she could make Link's cock stand straight when she uncovered her breasts, and that Clitey could not.
Link's eyes followed hers, and he glared her down. His voice was a snarl as he told Clitey, "You know goddamn well I'll cut your middle smack in two, you horny little hussy I I'll slice your meat till you yell for me to stop."
-Clitey laughed shakily. "All right, all right, lover-come on and start doing it. And I'll never yell for you to stop, you hear? I'll stay right here and let you screw me for the rest of my life!"
Zoe left them, shoving the great door shut as she went out. Over her shoulder she caught a glimpse of Link as he shoved Clitey ahead of him up the stairs. He didn't offer to carry her, as he had carried Zoe. His face wasn't happy as it had been in Zoe's house. And his cock wasn't pressing against his pants yet.
Oh, he would cut Clitey, of course. He would give her all the damned diddling she wanted, which would be a lot, and it would be the world's best. He would have as many climaxes as she did. But Zoe had the feeling that he would not really enjoy their love-making.
Perhaps he had not truly loved his night with Zoe either. Maybe he was the kind of man who could not love any woman completely.
Yet Zoe doubted if such a man ever lived.
CHAPTER 12
BACK AT HER OWN HOUSE, ZOE LOCKED HER doors and windows, went to bed, and tried to sleep. But her eyes would not stay closed; nor would her mind. She kept seeing Jock's dead face, seeing Clitey as she undressed for Link, seeing Link's set face as he pushed the woman up the stairs toward his bedroom, and hearing him vow, "I'll slice your meat till you yell for me to stop." Was he doing that now? Was he in bed with Clitey, on top of her, forcing himself between her willing legs, filling her crotch with his great prick? Of course he was. He was-likely finished with one climax, and working on another. He would have a field day with Clitey. They were two of a kind as far as sex was concerned. And perhaps they were alike in other ways as well; in every way that mattered at all. Zoe was well rid of them both. And she hoped that, when she left here, she would never set eyes on either of them again, as long as she lived ...
She fell into a restless nap at last. But it was far too short. Before she seemed to have lost consciousness completely, she heard a smashing blow on the Window pane of her bedroom-and saw the pieces of glass that flew past her, landing on the bed, the floor, and the dresser. Then a gloved hand reached through the opening in the glass, unlocked the latch, and shoved the sash up.
Zoe shrank under the sheet that covered her, too terrified to scream.. She felt her throat drying out, forming a terrified shriek, but making no sound at all. She had never been so horror-stricken-nor so terribly defenseless. If this intruder aimed to attack her, or kill her, she could do nothing to stop him. She would try-God, yes, she would try to her last breath-but her baby would keep her too clumsy to wage any real war against this man, whoever he was.
She saw him then. He was tall and willowy, the shadow behind him making him appear to be gigantic. His face was masked, and his dark coveralls hid the rest of him so thoroughly that she had no idea who he could be.
He was dropping through the opened window now, starting for her bed ... What could she do to keep him off?
Nothing! There was no way that she could fight his strength, his height, his apparent determination to harm her. She tried to squirm away as his gloved hands caught her wrists and forced them behind her. She tried to lash out with her feet, to kick him from her, but he sat down on her legs, so hard that she could no longer stir her toes. She felt herself weakening in her growing terror, shaking too hard to struggle. She sensed the rope that was binding her hands together, behind her, and then another rope pinning her feet together. She felt cloth shoved into her mouth, gagging her gasps and possible screams.
Then the man dragged her down the porch steps and toward a car with its motor running, parked in the driveway. Brutal hands tugged at her, forcing her to the car and into the back seat of it. There she lay, like a swollen animal about to be slaughtered. And perhaps that was what she was, she thought, shivering at the specter, cringing from it.
Somebody wanted her dead, and out of his way. But who-who?
This could be anybody. In the dark of night, and in the cumbersome clothes that the man wore, he could be any one of the hundred males on the feather farm. He could be Mendez, who despised her. He could be Link, who hated all women. He could be the hireling of either or both of them ... God, what did it matter? It was what he was going to do with her that was important. What was he going to do?
In a chilling flash of memory, she heard the man at the bus station telling her, a lifetime ago, "The feather farm covers six sections of the wildest land anywheres around, the kind where you couldn't find a dead body in ten years of lookin' for it." Would her body be lost for ten years or forever, killed by this fiend and buried beyond all recovery?
She knew, by the smoothness of the ride at first, that the car was on Link's paved highway. But, after a time, she felt the vehicle swerve and take down one of the rocky lanes that led to the distant canyons. Bound though she was, Zoe could glimpse the moonlit sky through the car window, and catch scattered peeks at the trip ahead of her. Straining against her ropes, she pulled herself up a few inches and peered out. She saw a craggy cliff far away, a black hulk swept clean by the icy gale that howled across the plains ... God, oh God, did this madman mean to send her over the cliff in this car, as Jock's convertible had been sent, and kill her the way Jock had died?
On and on they went, veering recklessly from side to side, hitting great rocks as the car left all paths and tore through the underbrush, slamming her trussed body all over the back seat as the car braked against trees and other obstacles. How far was this monster taking her?
Then, at last, she felt the vehicle screech to a stop. Hands grabbed open the door, jerked her from the seat, and threw her onto the hard ground.
Her eyes were used to the half darkness, and she looked around and above her, mostly above.
Great jagged cliffs rose over her, as far as she could see in the silvered moonlight. Bleak and barren they stood, forbidding, posed to smash down upon her. Closer and closer they seemed to come to her as she stared at them; leering, drooling, dripping their slime and grime upon her steaming face, her writhing body.
Lord, oh Lord, this was a canyon she had never seen before. It must be farther than she had ever ventured, even in her longest walks.
Jock had never brought her here. It must be a place that he had not know, or else had not liked enough to show to her.
Maybe Jock had feared this canyon, as she feared it now. Maybe every living thing that saw it, feared it.
Maybe it was a place of death. Her death. Suddenly she stopped shaking. She froze into a sheet of ice, unmoving, unfeeling. Shock had stopped her tremor and was checking her feeling, almost her breath.
Her captor had yanked a shovel from the trunk of the car and was banging it against the mass of rocks on the canyon floor, smacking the parched ground, sending sprays of sand and soil through the air, raining dust on Zoe's face.
Why was he digging a hole in these rocks?
And why, a moment later, was he stopping his digging?
Why was he tearing at the boulders, tugging them from their nests?
Why was he working so fiercely, so frantically, to make a hole big enough for ... big enough for-
God, oh God, was he going to ... to bury her alive?
The next second, she knew that that was exactly what he was going to do!
She grabbed a stunned, stabbing breath that pierced her numbness, that prodded her whole being into re-flame, re-sweat, re-terror.
She had to escape ... She had to! But how?
The hole in the rocks was big enough to hold her now. God, she hoped this maniac would kill her before he threw her into it!
As she cringed from him, he bent over her and began tearing off her clothes. First came her dress, then her shoes. The man straightened with them in his hands. Had he changed his mind? Was he not going to denude her? Was he, maybe, going to leave her ... above ground?
But, in her next breath, she knew that he wasn't.
He tied the dress into knots and flung it into the distant darkness. Then he threw the shoes after it, one behind the other, so hard that the sounds of their landing were hollow thuds, seemingly miles away.
Then the hulking figure of the man loomed above her again. In a maddened, maddening swoop, he was dragging, jerking, kicking her toward the excavation that he plainly intended for her grave. She knew now why he had ripped off her dress and shoes. If she didn't die of suffocation, he meant her to freeze to death in this norther! He was taking no chances on her ever leaving this canyon alive.
She rolled into a ball in the opening among the stones, hoping to protect her face, and her abdomen with its tender burden. She felt the rocks rolling upon her, and she steeled her shoulders against the avalanche of them.
For half a moment she held them back. If she could keep this feverish hold on herself, if she could stave off the blows, maybe she could save a foot, an inch, an Nth, for breath.
But she couldn't keep it. She was losing her hold, falling, sinking to the bottom of the hole, plunking against the rocks there.
The stones fell faster. Bigger, Louder.
She could see no moonlight any more. There was no darkness either. There was nothing.
And there seemed no foot of air. No inch. No Nth.
Then she realized that she was still breathing easily. There must be plenty of air here, at least for now. There must be crevices among the stones, enough to let in the air she had to have to exist.
She thought, I'm thankful that that ogre buried me in rocks, not dirt-so damned glad ... But why should I be happy about it? I'd be dead anyway in a few hours, no matter how I figure it. Even if I can dig myself out of this grave, which I don't see how I can. I'll never be able to get out of this canyon, not in this chilling, killing wind. I'll freeze to death before I can climb to the top of that towering cliff!
She was sure she had no chance of digging out, but she knew she had to try. She had to hold onto life as long as she could, had to make herself work at it until she died trying to live.
She kept telling herself, . 'People do superhuman things when they know it's life-or-death. They carry beds out of burning houses and walk away from their wheel chairs. If I live through this, it will be because I got some strength I never had before, a power born of terror and hatred and the will to live a few minutes longer than Whoever-He-Was intended to let me.
She rubbed her ropes against the stones closest to her, until she freed her hands. Then she started shoving on the stones with her fingers and elbows and shoulders.
When her feet were loosened, she pulled the rope from them and began to kick at the rocks. She felt her skin rubbing off, the flesh scraping away in chunks. But she hardly felt the bruises. Every time a rock moved an inch, it was a new heartbeat for her, a fresh hope of escape. She knew, as soon as she heard the first rock go tumbling further into the canyon, that she would get out of her grave if her strength held out. She'd never give up as long as there was breath in her body.
She kept tugging and shoving and prying, with only her knees and shoulders as levers, and rested a few seconds when she was too exhausted to keep at the labor any longer. At last she heard another stone loosen and crash off her makeshift tombstone, then another and another, until she felt a. rush of cold air.
She heard the whining of the wind on the ledge above her. She knew she was going to be free!
She shoved off the last stone that held her down, and crawled into the moonlight. She was raw and bleeding and aching in every muscle. But she was alive.
But, God, what good was it going to do her, being alive?
She had no dress, no coat, no shoes, no protection to keep her from freezing. And even if this blizzard wind should die down and the air should get warmer, toward morning-well, she was sure she would never be allowed to get to the highway. That madman was probably watching this canyon, ready to shoot or strangle her if she walked out of it.
She sank onto a great boulder, her skinned chin in her bleeding hands. One thing was for sure: She had never sat down and let things happen to her. She could not do it now. She had to plan an escape, if there was any possible way of doing it.
Suddenly she realized that she was not as cold as she had expected to be. There was warmth and shelter in this rocky canyon that-likely wouldn't be on the cliffs above it nor the plains around it. Maybe a person could stay alive a while here, at least as long as all night, if he made himself a cover of the wild grasses and boughs from the scrub pines that grew among the rocks. Perhaps she could make enough, protection to get by until morning. And maybe the norther would be gone by then, leaving endurable warmth in its place. She might be able to study the sun by daylight, and figure out directions by it; try to decide which one led to town. Maybe, maybe, maybe ...
She tore the grasses up by their roots, until she had a mat of them big enough to carpet a room. She pulled herself onto part of them and tugged the rest over her. She took heart in the warmth they made. She fashioned a pillow of pine branches, ripping them into small bits. Then, worn past endurance, she fell asleep ...
Bright daylight was streaming into the canyon when she awoke. She stretched an arm, and fell back at once, wincing, crying out at the pain of the movement. Then she remembered. And she stared at her skinned body, the dried blood upon it, the black-and-blue splotches that marked the vicious stoning she had lived through. God, she had no right to be alive. But she was. Thank the Lord, she was!
And her baby was still with her. She felt it weighing her down. She couldn't feel it moving, but it had never moved constantly. Maybe it was as tired as she was, as weary of being beaten to near-death, as needful of rest and care and kindness as she was.
The air was warm. The norther was gone.
She wouldn't freeze to death now. She might die of starvation, or claustrophobia, before she found her way out of this rock-bound prison. But she was no longer bitter cold, even though only her slip covered her burdened body.
She made her way to the top of the cliff," pausing often, panting for every labored breath. She could see across the plains now, but there was only a vast expanse of short grass among tall rocks, on and on into forever. The sun seemed to be straight above her, bent neither toward the right nor the left. It gave her no east nor west, no north nor south.
She started stumbling forward, one slow, clumsy step at a time. It led her nowhere, except away from the canyon where she had been buried.
She shut her eyes against the glinting sun on the bright rocks, and shuffled on. Every push of every foot was sheer agony, sheer living death to her. But she had to shove on, if she could possibly muster the strength. She had to!
All at once she heard the sound of a motor!
It was roaring through the breaks, nearing this plain.
She couldn't see it yet, and perhaps she would never see it. But it was coming closer and closer ... Oh, God, let it get near enough for the driver to see her, unless he was the man who had left her for dead last night ...
She threw back her head and screamed, "Help me! Help me! Here I am, don't pass me by! For God's sake, help me!"
And then she felt her mind clouding, her body dropping away from it. She saw a sky, a swirl, a silence. She saw nothing more ...
When she came to, it was with a sense of flesh on her flesh, of water being sprinkled upon her face and washed over it. She looked up into Link's eyes, and she knew it was his arms that were about her, his hands that were bathing her swollen wrists and cheeks and shoulders.
She thought she saw a tear on his cheek, but she couldn't be sure. It might be only a splash from the water he had dashed on her to wake her up. Surely Link Tawnley wouldn't cry over anything or anybody, least of all her.
He said nothing. Nor did she.
All through the long trip into Wayside, they made no words. Her heart was crying out, and she felt that his was answering it. But there was only silence between them.
When they reached the emergency entrance of the Wayside hospital, he lifted her gently in his arms and carried her to the stretcher that two orderlies rushed toward them. She sank into the softness and felt the world swirling above her again, fading away, blacking out once more ...
When she opened her eyes, her gaze found the little white calendar on the dresser across the room. It was two days later than it had been when she fainted on the stretcher. How many things could happen to a girl in two days? She moved cautiously, uneasily, stretching one foot and then the other. Next her fingers flew down her body, fearfully, frantically. What about? What about?
God, oh God, her baby was gone!
Had it been born alive while she slept or was drugged past pain, and was it alive and well?
Or had it ... Oh, God, she couldn't stand thinking that it might have ... Oh, God, I'm praying to you, more than I ever prayed before. Let my child live. Let me hold it in my arms!
Her trembling fingers found the bell beside her bed and pressed it hard, again and again. She would soon know about her baby, about herself, about all the things she needed to know.
All the things except-why she was here. Why a madman had kidnapped her. Why he had buried her. Why he had left her to die.
Who could have done it, she asked herself for the thousandth time. Who could it have been?
And her weary heart answered, as before, that it could have been any one of many.
It could have been Link. Evilly magnificent Link, burying her and then losing his nerve to kill her, and rushing back by daylight to take her to safety.
Or Mendez. That lousy Mexican foreman had despised her from the moment she stepped onto the feather farm.
Or the two homos. Or any of the other men on the place, men who wanted no woman among them.
Or even Tutie Bear-that muscled fatty, a female plenty big enough to rain rocks upon a pregnant girl half her size. Tutie Bear must have learned, from Mendez, that Zoe knew about their smuggling operations. And she would dare. God, yes, Tutie Bear would dare anything she needed to dare ...
There were so many of them, so bafflingly many. Which one of them could it have been? Who in seventeen hells could have tried to kill her?
The door of her room opened slowly and a nurse's cap poked through the crack. Then it bobbed out of sight again.
Another head appeared, taller, much taller. Link Tawnley came into the room. For a moment he stood looking down at Zoe, his hands clenching and unclenching. Then he dropped into a chair and hitched it up to the bed. His face was just above Zoe's.
Their eyes found each other, and clung.
She asked, "The baby?"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Little One. Sorry as hell. But the doctors couldn't help it. You lost your baby."
He leaned down and took her into his arms as she sobbed, letting her ease her sorrow, wiping her tears when she had cried them all.
At last, too weakened to speak aloud, she whispered, "You didn't bury me. If you had, you wouldn't be here now."
His face went white. "You were buried alive?"
She nodded.
Red streaks touched the whiteness of his cheeks. "Jesus, you know I'd never do that. I'd never hurt you at all. You know I wouldn't."
She lay silently a moment. Then she asked slowly, "Is Mendez in jail?"
He nodded. "Goddamn right. I got suspicious of Tutie Bear's flying up here on the pretense of visiting him, when they couldn't have had anything more than a sack interest in each other. He didn't even like to screw her-he told me so, a dozen times. He just did it when she cornered him and he couldn't get out of it."
'Did you get him to talk?"
"No. But she talked. I caught her alone the next morning, and threatened her with arrest. She yelled that nothing she had done was her fault, and implicated Mendez right away. I kept heckling her, needling all I could, and pretty soon she told me the whole story, all the goddamned mess of their smuggling racket." His eyes seemed to shoot sparks of flinted steel. "Lord God, when I think how those two no-goods used my planes to pick up wetbacks in Mexico and at Tutie Bear's hangout, and then charge them six prices to be turned loose in this country ... Well, it's over now. He'll be tried for smuggling-and for Jock's murder. I'm sure he's guilty of both."
Zoe felt her eyes widening, her breath coming in sharp blasts that shook her through. She whispered, "You-you didn't know about the smuggling until two days ago?"
His fists went bone-white. "Damn it, of course I didn't know it! Jesus, do you think I'd have kept that rat on my payroll-or my land-a goddamn minute after I knew he was a smuggler T
She shook her head. "But when Jock died, you said you knew about the activities on the farm. And that he helped by overlooking it. Remember?
Link looked at her. "Oh, honey, did you think I was referring to smuggling?"
She nodded her head.
He looked at her amazed. "No wonder you were so bitter! No, Zoe, I was talking about the homosexuals here."
She didn't say anything. She was too relieved to put the happiness of it into words.
Link continued, "I knew that a few of the men were homos, and that sometimes some of them stole a little from me. Jock knew about it too. But he kept them anyway, because men were hard to get and those offenses were comparatively minor."
"But smuggling was big?'
"Goddamn right. It was a major crime. I couldn't shut my eyes to it."
He took one of Zoe's hands in his and smoothed it. His voice was very low. "Clitey is in jail too. If you don't want to prefer charges against her, I will."
Zoe sat up in bed, staring at him. "Charges against Clitey?"
"Goddamn right. She tried to kill you, you know."
"No, I-I didn't know. I had no idea who it was." She felt her voice coming back, just a little, and she asked hoarsely, "Why would Clitey want to-to-"
"Because she wanted me, she said. When I took her to bed, the night she got to the ranch, she knew I wasn't responding to her the way I had before. She sensed that I was in love with somebody, and when she kept asking me who it was, I told her it was you. She tore out of the house, mad as hell."
He paused, and Zoe didn't break in. She couldn't.
At last he went on. "I didn't know, until Tutie Bear told me the next morning, what Clitey had done to you. Tutie Bear had seen Clitey driving away in the night, in Mendez' car-with you along. And then she'd seen Clitey come back alone ... Oh, God, Little One, I wanted to die myself when I thought you were dead!"
Zoe let her eyes adore him. Then she raised her lips to let their love continue in their kiss. "Let's not talk any more about death, my darling. Let's talk about the life that's ahead of us-together!"
