"I'll show ya how to make it back to Calder real quick," Buck said as they walked out of the clearing and stood on the dirt road that circled from the woods beyond the shack.
They walked up the road until they had gotten to an open rise that gave a good view of the complex of buildings and the small valley below. There was the shack, the stone house and the second growth timber like a hedge behind. She could see the road ribboning out into clumps of hills, and she breathed deep, knowing she needed all her strength to make the long trek to town.
"I appreciate what you're doing," she said, smoothing her long long golden-blonde hair back from her face.
"Yeah, well just so's ya don't mention this here corn-likker business to no-one," he said, his grin turning to a serious frown. "Ain't no reason to do it anyway."
She smiled nervously and turned from him, facing down the road. Suddenly the sound of a car engine broke the silence. It had come from the direction of town, and she turned terror stricken as Buck spun about. He gripped her hand and pulled her off the road, and at the same moment a truck wheeled around the bend sending up a spiraling cloak of dust as it squealed to a halt in front of them.
"Go!" Buck screamed, slapping the girl on the back, and Jane lunged into the thick scraggly brush for the second time that afternoon. But it was useless. Silas leapt out of the truck and with a few long easy strides was upon her. She pulled down from him and rolled struggling on the ground to escape the idiot's long grappling hands that toyed with her like a sadistic child molesting a small helpless animal. One clenching hand finally got a grip on her face and she sunk her teeth into its callused flesh, drawing blood. Enraged, he threw his rail-like body on top of her, spraying out her legs and fisting his hands over her breasts. She bit into Silas' neck and attempted to knee him in the groin, and he thrust more brutally on top of her, ignoring the wound she had opened up beneath his face.
God, where was Buck, why wasn't he helping her?
Silas had her pinned down firmly now and his breath deepened as he arched over her – that breath changing and his look of outrage transforming into a leer of obvious lust. She kicked and wiggled her feet, buffeting her torso against his chest. The lush fullness of her brassiere clad breasts popped out from her torn dress and Silas, still pinning her down with her arms to her sides, gazed with bulging eyes at her breasts' soft firmness, and began gyrating his buttocks over the squirming half-naked vee of her crotch. Her dress had hiked up over her loins, and she arched her pinned buttocks to pull it down, but this provocative movement only sent him into a more impassioned fury of lust. God! She could feel it! – the long rough pressage of his monumental cock beneath his trousers lunged against her softly clinging panties like an enormous buttress – and she shuddered outwardly, slinging her small fists into his face as he reached down and began undoing the zipper to his pants.
"Silas, you idiot bastard, get off her!" she heard from a short distance. Then she felt Silas' grip on her arm loosen and watched in lingering chills of horror as he lifted his body off her and faced Josh.
"Sh-she was trying to get away, Josh," Silas said, a sheepish grin on his face. "Gawd, I did good, didn't I?"
In a few moments she was seated in the truck next to Buck. The same man who had promised her freedom had done nothing to preserve it when the moment had come for him to stand up for her, but in some ways she understood it and did not hold it against him. She knew that he must protect himself against Josh if he wanted to keep his job – and if he wanted to preserve his own life.
"Get into that back room and start fixin' us up some grub," Josh commanded as they entered the shack again.
She looked up at the imposing man standing by the door, then clutched the torn material of the front of her dress and trailed obediently behind Silas to the rear of the cabin.
"And don't get no ideas about runnin' away again," she heard Josh roar out from the front room. "Next time ya try it ya'll end up with a load of buckshot in your snooty little ass."
Silas set a bag of groceries on the counter, shoving rows of dirty bottles awkwardly out of the way, and one of them tipped over and crashed on the floor. Jane jumped back, then looked up to find Silas gazing at her with a sly leering expression.
"Now look what you gone and done," he muttered with twinkling eyes.
"You dropped the bottle," Jane stepped back in confusion, wondering for a moment if he were more intelligent than she had estimated and what kind of game he was playing with her.
"Well… that's right," he agreed slowly. Then the lewd look in his eyes reappeared and he gazed back at her with gloating assurance as though he had recalled his original idea. "But you still gotta pick it up. You's the woman."
"Oh, what a bother," Jane hissed to herself under her breath and, reaching irritably for two scraps of yellowed newspaper, bent down to shovel up the broken pieces, conscious of Silas' idiotic gaze following her every move. She bent forward and felt his eyes tracing a hot path of lust down through the creamily lush cleavage of her gently sloping breasts; then she shifted abruptly to the side and felt him slither down the counter, his eyes riveted like a dead man's on the delicately angling curves of her bent legs. Overwhelmed suddenly by righteous indignation, she stood with the half-covered paper and kicked the remaining slivers of golden glass across the floor. For a moment she felt almost justified. Even if she had succumbed to Buck's use of her body, at least, she hadn't sunk to the depths of putting on displays for the likes of Silas, who stepped back in confusion at her angry look.
"T-t-tonight is gonna be real good," he stammered as though in an attempt to compliment her. "I gots so I can't wait." Then he shuffled awkwardly out the back door.
Jane leaned against the counter and held on with trembling hands as his words sunk in. Now she was reminded of the night ahead and what certainly lay in store for her. She looked out the window and saw the tall gangly-armed man turn and bolt the door behind him. Then he crossed the back yard and entered the shack near the woods. She realized that the outbuilding must have been where they distilled the liquor before shipment to town, and the thought came to her that if she could reach that shack she would find a gun – there just had to be one somewhere about, and her certainty of the existence of a weapon in the stone shack was increased by the fact that there was no evidence of a gun in the cabin.
She opened the bag of groceries and set a large ham and some raw vegetables onto the counter. She could hear Buck and Josh arguing about something in the next room, but she couldn't quite follow what they were saying. She hoped Josh hadn't noticed that Buck was aiding her escape out on the road, knowing that as long as Buck wasn't suspect she still might have a chance to make her escape. But the possibility was growing dimmer and dimmer. The ominous fear that her husband might arrive unprotected crossed her mind, and she tried to force the thought away, occupying herself with cutting up the ham and placing it in a skillet on the stove. But there was no way she could push the dreadful idea from her head; she had been gone for three days, and by now a search party must be out in the mountains.
"Where the hell's the food," she heard Josh shout out from the front room. "Hurry up and get with it."
She turned toward the door and saw Buck standing on the threshold, a wan smile passing across his lips. She faced away from him, feeling a sense of humiliation at him seeing her now in this position and knowing that he still held the image of her warmly responding body in his mind. Yes, that was nothing she could take away from him and she couldn't deny that she had finally given herself willingly, but he had to understand why she had done it and that it was all over between them.
"Ya need any help," Buck said softly, moving a few steps into the room. "Josh's getting hungry. He ain't no man to reckon with when he's like that."
He stood slowly scratching the stubble on his face, then leaned back against the wall staring impassively at her. "I thought I'd tell ya that we's waiting on the man from Calder. He'll be coming out for another shipment sometime tomorrow."
Jane still didn't answer. She stared from the stove with a dazed uncomprehending look. The small amount of trust that she had built up for him earlier had been dashed by the arrival of Josh and Silas on the dirt road, and now she was unwilling to rekindle her hopes.
"What in the Lord's name is keepin' ya," Josh's hoarse voice roared out again.
Jane set the food on plates and brought the dinner into the front room, setting the plates onto the table. She was still terribly hungry but she hadn't dared ask for food for fear of calling attention to herself; and now she watched the three men dig into the meal, dispensing with the forks and knives she had placed on their plates and picking up the ham in their fingers.
"What'sa matter, girl," Josh said. "Ya don't like us countryfolks' table manners?"
"It ain't that, Josh," Buck answered for her. "Cain't ya see she's hungry too?"
Josh laughed and shoved another large slick of ham into his mouth. "Ya gave her some vittles this morning, didn't ya Buck? Now, don't go lookin' at me like ya didn't cause I know ya did. That should tide the little 'un over for awhiles, whaddya think, Silas?"
The thin slow-faced man looked up from his food for a moment, then gazed across at Jane who was standing in the doorway to the backroom. "I think – I wanna fuck'er Josh," he grinned, and then lowered his eyes pensively to his food again.
Josh slapped his thighs, and leaned down in a long obscene belly-burst of laughter. "Did ya hear that, Buck? Silas wants t'fuck this little city gal."
Buck set his plate down on the table and folded his hands imperviously in front of him.
"What ya lookin so shy about, Buck," Josh grimaced across the table. "What was ya doin' out behind the shack with 'er this afternoon, pickin' flowers?"
Jane moved to the table, gathering up the empty plates in an effort to appear occupied while Josh continued his accusations against Buck. She knew that this was only a prelude to what would happen after dinner when the men began drinking again, and she thought she might divert Josh, at least temporarily, by bringing them more food.
"Now ya see that," Josh said, and pointed to Jane as she moved into the back with the dishes. "I done showed her her place and she's actin' right proper."
She breathed a deep sigh as she entered the kitchen and set the dishes onto the counter, filling them with remaining ham and vegetables left on the stove. Then she sliced a piece of the ham for herself and devoured it ravenously. The small amount of food she was able to scavenge would at least keep her alert for the evening's ordeal, she thought, then she turned towards the front room.
"Buck's been telling us all about ya whilst ya was bringin' in more chow," Josh said as she entered the front of the shack again.
Jane lowered her eyes and set the plates in front of the four men, feeling a rush of shame and self-pity as the heavy set red-haired man ran his eyes salaciously across the ripped front of her dress that barely hid her large full rounded breasts. She couldn't stand the way the huge man was practically undressing her with his lewd stare, and she moved back and sat down on the bed, twisting her tanned legs away from the table as much as was possible. She knew that Buck hadn't said anything about what they had done that afternoon, and she wanted to assure him that she understood and knew what Josh was up to, but she couldn't. It was clear that Josh was using Buck and trying to humiliate him in order to break the young man down to the point where he had no choice but to support Josh in whatever he wanted to do to her naked body later; it was now a matter of time until Buck gave in, but she still held out an irrational flicker of hope that he wouldn't.
"Lord-a-mighty girl," Josh slammed down his fist on the table. "D'ya hear what I'm sayin? Buck says y'all gave him a little of that pussy this afternoon."
"Goddamit Josh," Buck shouted, standing up from behind the table.
Josh slumped down in his chair and looked slyly across at Buck. "Now don't tell me ya got t'likin' her a little bit? That wouldn't be it, would it?"
Buck adjusted his weight. "It ain't that. I just don't like this kinda talk amongst women-folk."
Josh guffawed loudly and reached behind Silas sitting to the right of him toward the door and pulled down a full bottle of liquor from the ledge on the wall. "Yeah, you're right, my friend," he slurred in a sarcastic tone. "Let's keep the talk clean and drink some of this here corn-likker in appreciation of the fe-male company."
Jane shrank back on the bed as Josh turned and faced her again. Silas stretched out next to him tensely, and looked across the table past the bottle, running his eyes from her shapely curving legs to the full swell of her young thighs pressed against the light tightly covering sheerness of her summer dress. God, he was repulsive, Jane thought, feeling more afraid of Silas after his attempted rape this afternoon than she was of Josh, who was certainly more dangerous in his position of gang leader. She remembered the lewd press of the idiot's enormous hotly swelling cock against her barely clothed groin and a shiver of cold repugnance raced down the length of her spine. She could understand and despite herself even delight in the memory of Buck skewering with warm passionate strokes into her, but the thought of the animal-like Silas even touching her was almost too much to bear.
"Ya look like something bit ya," Josh snorted, raising the bottle from the table and sucking on it. "Don't get scared a' Silas here, he's just a backwoods kid and he don't know what he's doin'. Here, have a bit a' this likker. It'll loose ya up."
Jane's eyes shot over to the bottle of whisky wavering in Josh's hand. She was struck immediately by the amount he had already consumed, without her even noticing it, in the short space of about five minutes since he had lifted the first bottle from the shelf. A good third of the clear liquid had disappeared and she remembered Buck's earlier statement about Josh being a big drinker. That certainly was no exaggeration! Her stomach knotted uneasily as he tilted the bottle once again and leveled the liquid to the half-way mark. Yes, he was really putting it down, even for a man of his enormous size, and she recalled anxiously how Buck said it put Josh in a fighting mood. But he didn't look angry now; on the contrary, his usual gruff demeanor had given way to one of joviality.
"She don't want none a' that," Buck answered for her. "It'll tear up her insides."
Jane flicked her eyes from Buck, repressing an inward smile at his show of puritanical concern following the afternoon that he had spent plying her with liquor. God, one thing her empty stomach didn't need was more of that! She still felt lightheaded and flushed from the half-bottle she had already consumed. Yes, even though it was hours later, she recognized that she was still affected by the whisky and the mere thought of drinking one drop more made her stomach turn over in nausea.
"What ya worried about her for?" Josh responded good-naturedly, and, chuckling evilly, pulled himself up from the table with surprising grace for the amount he had drunk. "We's finally got some company! We's got a lady and I'm gonna get the little lady a glass."
Jane's eyes widened as he walked laughing to the shelf and reached for the second bottle. God! The man was a living sponge!
"You're gettin' boiled again," Buck's bitter comment interrupted her thoughts. "Else-whiles you'd knowed we ain't got no glass."
"I know's enuf to count bottles and I knows there's one missin'," Josh retorted angrily, but when he spun around with the bottle he seemed as good-natured as before. For the first time, he staggered as he walked across the room. "I know somebody drank my bottle this afternoon and it weren't Silas. I bet this young lady's already tipped a few."
"She ain't had nothing," Buck lied. "And she ain't gonna drink none of that white mule cause it's too strong for her."
Jane cringed when Josh dragged a straight-backed chair from the table and, carrying the bottle in his other hand, set it down directly across from her in front of the cot. Then he swung one leg over the seat and plopped down on the chair so that he sat less than two feet in front of her. At such close distance she could see the effect the moonshine had taken on him: the features on his face had swollen and his narrowing eyes had a bleary look. He looked coarse and gross and she shuddered in repugnance at the strong smell of his breath, then backed abruptly down the couch when one of his huge warm lumbering hands settled on her knee. The response had come instantly and instinctively and right away she wished she hadn't done it, but he grinned at her as though he hadn't noticed.
"Buck here's tryin' to ruin our little party. He don't want us to have no fun. You ask me, he's a little taken with ya, y'know?" he said and winked at her before raising the bottle to his lips again.
Buck snorted in indignation from the other side of the room and Jane's discomfort increased as she sensed herself becoming a source of conflict between the two men. She watched Buck get up and take down a bottle for himself, then sit back down at the table drawing heavily on it. "You're drunk and you're talking drunken nonsense," he muttered, "I ain't taken with no gal, but I don't enjoy seein' anyone drunk as an owl, and especially you."
Josh slid his buttocks against the chair, causing it to sway slightly, as though in pleased anticipation of a good fight. His eyes swept over to Silas who grinned back to him in dumb encouragement at him sitting in front of the girl. In an attempt to show off his powers in front of Silas, Josh spread his palm over Jane's knees and moved it slowly up her thighs until it rested just below the hem of her dress, his fingers hooked firmly in the tanned warm flesh as though he were testing a piece of meat. "One little swig ain't going to hurt her," he chuckled and looked brazenly in the direction of the covered vee between her long smoothly curving legs. "Less she's been swillin' it all afternoon."
"She ain't been drinkin' nothin'," Buck protested.
"I really can't drink it," Jane spoke for the first time, restraining the almost overwhelming repugnance that made her want to pull away from Josh's hand and at the same time looking at him with a pleading expression that wouldn't offend him. The upsetting scene was making her terribly nervous, and in a way, she was dying for another drink to take off that edge, but she sensed the wisdom inherent in Buck's protests. He wouldn't have put himself up against Josh like this if he wasn't sure that more of the strong moonshine would push her beyond her limits. "Alcohol has always made me sick," she begged softly.
"I think I'm getting a little fed up," Josh said suddenly, his former exuberance evaporating in a single instant and a horrible violent fury crossing his face. "I don't know what took ya this afternoon and I don't understand what's goin' on now. All I know is I wanta have some fun and I ain't lettin' no love-sick farm boy mess up my party. We's gonna drink now and I pose the first toast to Buck's bein' in love."
Jane swayed back and almost fell off the couch from the suddenness of Josh's huge roar of laughter at his own remark sweeping through the room. The whole shack seemed to reverberate with his scorn and Silas' delight in Buck's embarrassed look. Buck lifted his bottle and for a moment Jane thought he would hurl it across the room, but instead he slowly lifted it to his mouth, gulping frequently and deeply, and when he set the bottle back on the table his face was masked with stony indifference. "It don't make no difference to me what you do with the dumb little bitch. You want a slab of stinko female flesh beneath you, go ahead."
"Now that's more like it," Josh beamed as his good mood returned. "That's what I like to hear. That's my boy, Buck, actin' like a man. C'mon over here, Buck, and pull up a chair."
Jane watched like a doomed creature as her former ally grinned and stood up, dragging his seat across the chair to the couch. Then Silas hurried over to the edge of the couch and her stomach sank with dread as she found herself surrounded by the three men, cornered like a trapped animal. The men began passing the bottle between them and it moved through their hands for several rounds until she hoped that in their desire for the strong white moonshine they had forgotten about making her drunk. But still Josh's hands continued to fondle and pinch at her legs that she forced to lie limp at the edge of the bed. For a moment she thought he had almost lost interest in her, but the increasing pressure and more frequent touches of his hands on her defenseless flesh told her otherwise.
"Would ya care t'imbibe," asked Josh, and raised the bottle in his fist that went entirely around it up to her face. "Buck reminded me we ain't got no glasses. But a lady like you ain't above indulgin' like the rest of us."
She felt Josh's hand increasing its grip on her thigh and she tried edging her leg that was beginning to hurt away from him but he wouldn't let it budge. "I-I don't drink. I told you, I can't stand the taste of alcohol," she protested, looking toward Buck for some sign that he might protect her. But his hard-chiseled features gave no indication of his inner feelings, and she sensed that she could do nothing but attempt to ward off Josh herself.
"Look," he commanded, the red hairs of his heavy mustache bristling. "Ya take and ya drink it nice, or we get Silas here to do some persuading."
A long shrill whine erupted from Silas' throat, and the idiot leaned forward, running his hands rhythmically up and down his knees and staring at Jane with the same obscene slow-witted arrogance she had witnessed in him that afternoon. At the same time Josh's hand dug more insistently into her leg sending tiny pulses of pain down her softly trembling thigh. There was nothing she could do now – all her resources had been exhausted with Buck's surrender to Josh's vicious jibes and prodding – and she bowed her head in limp assent, suppressing the flow of tears brimming her eyes.
"I-I g-guess I have no choice," she murmured and held out her hands to receive the bottle.
Evening came with a slow kindling of sunset pastels and a burst of deep orange on the jagged horizon. Buck had made a fire in the fireplace, and the three men and the girl continued drinking. Each gulp Josh made Jane take pushed her farther and farther from her iron resolve to remain clear-headed and sober, and she found herself slipping into a dizzy glazed-eyed state that she tried to fight off by concentrating on her need to escape; but it was of no use. As time went on she almost forgot Josh's hands that roamed without her protest over the most intimate parts of her young body. Josh remained on a level plateau of intoxication. He drank and yet he seemed to get no drunker although the salacious glances that lit on her creamily tanned close-set breasts and her barely covered thighs became increasingly lewd as the evening progressed.
The second bottle of moonshine finished, Josh sent Silas outside to the stone building for another.
"You been keeping up with us men-folks real well," Josh said, and lumbered up from his chair, his full height astounding Jane as his head almost touched the ceiling. "Now you seen what ol' Peggy done last night. She's a good'n, but not half as pretty as you," he squeezed her thigh as though they were intimate lovers. "Well – I was wonderin' if ya'd go for puttin' on a similar performance?"
Buck hitched up his belt unconsciously in anger. Then he turned, his face flashing, and moved across the room and sat down at the table.
"I-I didn't see anything last night, I've told you," Jane whispered, looking desperately across the room at Buck, hoping that he might change his mind and come to her defense. "I came here because I was lost – I-I was hungry."
"Lord girl, I heard enough a' your fibs to last til hell freezes over," Josh reddened, releasing his grip from her aching thigh for a moment. "Ya been here for a day, and ya gotta earn your keep. First I wants ya to unbutton that dress, slow-like so's me n' Buck can enjoy them big titties of yours poppin' out."
"No!" she screamed, a sudden willfulness returning to her consciousness through the haze of whisky. "I've had enough. Just let me out of here!"
Josh leered down at her with a cruel hardened expression that exuded a fierce criminality and a perversity she had seen in newspaper photographs of rapists and desperate killers. "If ya want it that way," he said and pulled down hard on the flanges of his mustache. "I'll have t'oblige Silas to do the job for ya."
The image of the obscene drooling idiot running his hands across her body once again was too much to bear, but Jane fought within herself for an interminable moment against giving in to the brutally licentious blackmail. Then, slowly, as though she were being directed through an unconscious impulse not of her own choosing, she stood up, weaving slightly from the alcohol, in front of Josh and Buck and ran her hands across the smooth flatness of her fearfully quivering belly. Her long blonde hair spilled over the tips of her upturned breasts and she brushed it aside carelessly and began unbuttoning the torn front of her dress.