by Norah Hess
"Oh, no," Mike answered, looking over his shoulder and giving the woman a curious look. She dropped her eyes, but not before he saw the shame and dread in them. Nervously she played with the hem of her dress. And while Mike wondered at her attitude, the man spoke again.
"Naw. She's my niece."
A cruel, sly grin spread over his oily face, and he casually reached a hand down the front of Sarie's dress. He fumbled around for a moment then pulled free a large white breast. Leering, he passed a dirty hand across its roundness, tweaking at the nipple. When she winced at the pain and hid her face in her hands, Jake brayed with laughter.
He leaned upon his elbows and said, "Yeah, good old Sarie, she comes every winter and keeps house for me." Then snickering he added, "And keeps my bed warm in between. He shifted about on the bed and began to fondle himself as he continued. "I help my sister out that way. Every fall I give her twenty dollars, and Sarie comes back with me until spring." He slid a hand up Sarie's dress and leered, "You like to help out your Ma, don't you, Sarie?"
Sarie didn't answer immediately, and Jake reached up and pinched her breast sharply. Involuntarily she shrank away from him and anger flashed over his face. He dug his fingers into a soft breast, and a film of pain came over Sarie's eyes.
Tightening his grip, he insisted, "You like it, don't you?"
Sarie dumbly nodded her head.
"That's better," he growled and jerked her down until the breast hung just over his loose lips. "Put that tit in my mouth, slut," he ordered.
Sarie hurried to guide the nipple into his mouth, and once it was in, he spitefully bit it. Sarie jerked and cried out. But she nevertheless continued to lean over him, submitting passively as he sucked with loud smacking noises.
Mike saw Jake's organ swell to a tremendous size and figured he knew what would happen next. But when it came, it wasn't as he had thought.
Jake released the swollen nipple and without a word, pushed Sarie's face down on his hardness. Holding her head firmly, he climaxed.
Mike turned back to the fire in disgust. He wondered silently what made some men flaunt their debasements. He, too, used women in a rough way and sometimes shamefully, but it was always done in private and never talked about later.
His lust sated for the moment, Jake gave Sarie a shove and snarled, "Get your ass over there and make some breakfast."
Averting her face as she walked past Mike, Sarie moved to a corner and squatted beside a large leather pouch. Rummaging around, she brought out a piece of salt pork. Half-heartedly she brushed at the dirt that clung with the salt. Then through the tears that brimmed in her eyes, she clumsily cleared a corner of the table and began to slice the meat on its dirty surface. Mike watched her and decided that he would pass up the meal if it were offered to him.
Jake raised up on an elbow. "What's your handle, stranger?"
"Mike Delaney. I'm from Crawler's Creek. I'm on my way to meet up with some long-hunter friends of mine."
Jake studied him awhile and then said, "I'm Jake Monroe."
Mike nodded his head, acknowledging the introduction.
With a faint sarcasm in his voice, Jake observed out loud, "So you're one of them fellers, are you?"
As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to recall them. Steely black eyes bored into his, and he looked away. He did not want to tangle with a hunter. They were as tough as the rawhide that laced their shoes.
Sarie mumbled that breakfast was ready and moved away to sit on a pile of rags in a corner. Jake came shuffling to the table, scratching his hairy chest. "Pull up your chair and eat, Delaney," he invited.
Mike hesitated, glancing down at the dog. Si was sniffing the air and beating a tattoo on the floor with his tail. The hound won't care if it's dirty or not, he thought.
"I've ate already," he lied. "But the dog could stand a bite."
Jake tossed some strips of the greasy, undercooked meat at the hound's feet. Si gulped them down and watched eagerly for more.
The fat man wolfed his own meal down in much the same way the animal had. After belching loudly a couple of times, he drew his sleeve across his mouth and turned to Mike. "There's plenty of wild life around here. Why don't you string your traps in this neck of the woods and bunk in with Sarie and me?"
A prompt refusal sprang to Mike's lips. He opened his mouth to speak and happened to look at Sarie, who had come to the table for her breakfast now that Jake had finished. He caught the hopeful gleam that flared in her pale eyes and he wavered. He wondered why she wanted him to stay. Didn't she realize that she would only have one more man to service?
As if Jake sensed what he was thinking, he leaned forward and urged, "Why don't you? I'll share Sarie with you. She can take care of both of us, easy."
Mike glanced around the room, once more taking in the squalor. He shook his head. There was no way he could live in such conditions until spring. If it was a little cleaner and if Sarie . . . he might take Jake up on his offer. Not caring whether he hurt feelings or not, he made his answer. "I wouldn't mind staying, Jake, if Sarie got some hot water and soap after this place and herself. I just can't abide filth and stink."
Jake swung a foot under the table, striking Sarie hard in the thigh. As she cringed away, he snarled, "You big-titted slut, get this pigsty cleaned up."
The needless cruelty to the woman sparked fire in Mike, and he started to rise. Then he checked himself midway and, frustrated, sat back down. The law of the hills did not allow interference between a man and his woman.
Not daring to eat more, Sarie staggered to her feet. Jake cuffed her on the side of the head and shoved her toward the bed. "Before you get started, get your ass over there on the bed for a minute."
Sarie's shoulders sagged, and she moved to the bed and crawled in it. Jake was right behind her.
Mike turned his back to the thumping and grunting.
Later, Jake joined him at the fire. He had donned a pair of homespuns, slick with dirt and grime. His horny feet were still bare however. They spent the rest of the day talking of war and trapping.
Sarie worked tirelessly and eagerly, and Mike suspected that the place was dirty simply because Jake had kept her busy in the bed most of the time.
At dusk, when she called them to supper, the table had been scoured down to its natural grain. The tin plates and eating tools on it were shining clean. And being freed of Jake's demands all day, she had found the time to roast a chunk of venison over the fire. As Mike exclaimed over it, she smiled proudly.
When the men sat down and began to fork thick slices of the meat onto their plates, she hurried to the fire and from beneath glowing coals pulled out several deeply crusted potatoes. She put them on the table along with a pan of corn pone.
Mike ate as heartily as Jake and the dog.
That night after Sarie had spent her time with Jake, Mike watched her from his bed roll as she stepped into a tub of warmed water and bathed. Later, when she joined him, there was no stink of the fat man about her.
And so the winter months moved on. Mike ran his traps by day and took his turn with Sarie at night.
Cold day followed cold day, and there was never a letup in his memory of Darcey. If anything, she grew more vivid in his mind with each passing day. In his mind it was never Sarie that lay next to him at night, but the slim, warm Darcey Stevens.
Sometimes he had twinges of guilt when he put Darcey in Sarie's place. Sarie tried hard in every way to please him. And what was more, he was beginning to deeply resent Jake's callous treatment of her. An anger was beginning to grow in him like a canker sore. In his opinion, Jake was the lowest of despicable creatures.
One day as he and Sarie sat at the table having a cup of coffee, he turned to her and asked, "Why do you stay on here, Sarie? It's plain you don't like the mean bastard."
"I stay because the money helps Maw. They's six youngin's, and she don't get no help from Paw. He drinks up every penny he can get his hands on. Since I was fourteen, Jake's been comin'
down to the valley and fetching me up here for the winter."
Mike shook his head, wondering what kind of woman would allow (or, maybe in this case, force) a daughter to be caught in such a position.
"How come you never got married so you could get away from him?" he asked.
Sarie hung her head. "He spread the word around what I do to him, and now none of the decent men will marry me."
Mike swore angrily. "That's one son-of-a-bitch who should have been shot when he was born."
Sarie laid her hand on his. "It's been better since you come. Your talkin' to him has kept his mind off me . . . at least in the daytime."
Then suddenly, dejectedly, her head was on the table and she was sobbing brokenly. "Sometimes I think that I can't stand it another moment."
A rare feeling ran through Mike. A feeling that he usually reserved for mistreated animals. Always before he had believed that man brought his own misfortune down around his head. But here was a clear case of a simple soul being made a victim of her mother's greed and her father's shiftlessness.
He patted her heaving shoulders awkwardly. "Don't cry, Sarie. That never helped anything that I know of. Let me think about your problem and see if I can come up with something. Anyhow, it'll soon be spring, and you'll be goin' home to your Maw."
She raised her head and wiped her eyes on the back of her hands. "I never enjoy my summers for dreading what I'm in for in the winters."
A look of hopeless resignation had settled over Sarie's face. Once again Mike was reminded of the hound he had once owned. For a flickering moment an urge came over him to leave the hapless woman and leave her to her troubles. But he remembered that he had always been half-ashamed of rejecting the dog's love and knew beyond a doubt that if he turned his back on Sarie, guilt would follow him to the grave.
He sighed a sigh of a man who had reluctantly agreed to join the human race. "This fall will be different, Sarie," he spoke quietly. "Jake won't come after you this fall, or any other."
A glimmer of hope struggled through Sarie's eyes. "You mean it, Mike?"
"I mean it, Sarie."
"Does that mean . . . that . . . that maybe you care for me?" The question was barely audible.
Mike took a deep breath. Two things registered in his mind. First, he had given Sarie false hopes about himself. Now he must take them away from her as kindly as possible. He lay a hand on her twisting fingers. "I like you a lot, Sarie. You're a fine person. But there's another little girl, and I'm afraid that she has all the love that's in me."
The pain and disappointment that moved across Sarie's face made her look tired and weary. She swallowed a couple of times and managed a crooked smile. "Her name is Darcey, ain't it?"
Mike looked at her, surprise in his eyes. "I guess I've been talking in my sleep."
Sarie nodded. "You call that name every night." She pulled her hands free and murmured, "She's the luckiest girl in the world."
Mike gazed back at her out of pain-shadowed eyes. "She don't think so, Sarie. She hates my guts."
Having spoken his thoughts out loud only served to strengthen his conviction, and a dark brooding gloom settled over him. He felt the sudden need to go into the wilderness and battle his pain as though it were an enemy. He knocked over the rickety chair in his rush to leave.
He stayed away for three days, and on his return no one questioned him. But Sarie noted the new leanness of his body and the haunted look in his eyes. Angrily and silently, she raged to herself, "That Darcey woman is a damn fool. I would travel through the fires of hell on my knees for a man like Mike."
CHAPTER 9
Darcey stood at the small window looking out across the river. For the third time she sighed. The days were plodding along so wearily. There had been snow and then more snow. The winter was beginning to feel like a permanent condition. It was the dark, gray days that were the hardest to get through—for her and Cindy at any rate.
With Simon it was different. He was able to pass each day in a productive manner. He had the animals to tend and the wood box to keep filled. And once a week he made a trip down river to the grain mill.
By now the settlers had accepted his quiet and easy ways and included him in their weekly get-togethers. He looked forward to that day of friendly gossip with a group of men, and the fiercest of snow storms could not keep him away.
Darcey felt most sorry for Cindy. There was little to break up the monotony of her day. Once the cabin was set in order, the only break in her routine was the washing on Monday and the ironing on Tuesday. Darcey had invited her several times to accompany her to Clara's. Clara was an entertaining woman, and they had spent many pleasant hours together. But Cindy had always refused, claiming, "I'll catch the grippe in that cold air."
A smile crinkled her lips. She must not forget her other weekly entertainment. At Cindy's urging, she had called on the other neighbor women. When the ladies returned her visit, they had been enchanted with her fancy work that was displayed around the room. Seeing their interest she had offered to teach them the different stitches, and they had accepted eagerly. In a short time the first club in the hills was formed. They called it "Darcey's Sewing Circle."
The club had been a blessing for the society-starved hill women. Grouped around a cheerful burning fire at a member's home, they would awkwardly ply their needles as their glib tongues slid smoothly over the latest gossip of the settlement. It had taken but a short time for Darcey to learn the different weaknesses and vices of the citizens in the settlement. She knew which of the men beat their wives and which ones drank too much. Of the women, she learned who used tobacco and snuff and who cheated on their husbands.
She and Cindy had had many laughs over the stories she brought home. But even though she laughed at the simple things that filled the hill women's lives, she was fast becoming one of them. Only yesterday she had caught herself gossiping with Clara about a club member, and surprisingly she had enjoyed the little frailty immensely.
Behind her, she heard Cindy poking at the fire and mumbling to herself. Turning from the window, she asked, "What's the matter, Cindy?"
"Oh, I'm just fussin' 'cause there ain't no wool to use on the spinnin' wheel. I could kill a lot of time if I had the doin'." She complained at least once a day about the lack of wool and equally as often about the lack of room to set up the loom.
"You'll have the loom next year," Simon had pacified her. "I'm gonna add on to the cabin when the weather permits." He had made a laborious trip through the snow to a neighbor and brought home six ewes and a ram. "So you'll know I mean it," he had told Cindy as he ushered the bleating animals into the overcrowded shed.
The sun broke from behind a cloud. For a moment Darcey's spirits sparkled also. Then its glow was hiding again, and just as quickly she was back in her old mood.
The sun had shone so little these past months, and the two small windows shed little light into the room. At first Cindy had kept candles burning on the cloudy days, but their supply was running short, and to replace them would be next to impossible. There would be none at the post. The blockade hadn't been run for weeks now. Anyhow, paper money these days was hardly worth the paper it was written on, and even if there was a good supply, she would be unable to buy many. Another year like the past one and she would be as impoverished as her neighbors.
But things could be worse, she thought. At least she had no loved ones fighting in the war. That in itself was something to be grateful for. With the exception of the supply shortages and the dwindling value of money, here in the remote part of the hills it was hard to believe that a war was going on.
That Cornwallis was running wild in the south and Washington almost beaten in New York meant little to the settlers. Their way of life would change little regardless of who ruled them. Their plows would bite just as deep into the rich soil, and their axes would fell the same amount of trees.
A small number of hill men caught up in the first excitement of the Revolution could testify to that. They
had bravely left their homes, telling each other that they would have the Red Coats licked and running back to England in a few weeks. But the hit-and-run battles had gone on and on with much time wasted in between. And while they had waited, they fretted over the crops that weren't being planted. Almost too late, they remembered that their families had to be fed and cared for. Tiring of the whole business, they had left the fighting to the career soldiers and returned home. When they saw cleared land grown back to brush, they were sorry they had ever left.
Everyone, like Darcey, wanted the war to end one way or the other. It was becoming a long, drawn-out nuisance. Even the most common of supplies was hard to come by. They had long since run out of soap and were reduced to using a mixture of wood ashes and deer fat. A friendly squaw had taught Clara several years ago how to make the Indian soap. She in turn had shown Cindy.
But its lack of rich, soapy suds on washday was just another gripe for Cindy. Mondays were bad in the Stevens's household.
Their sugar supply was running low also, and it would be some time before the maples began to run their sap. Fortunately, Jim Delaney had discovered a wild bee's hive in an old hollow tree. They had spent an entire Sunday afternoon smoking out the bees and gathering the honey. Clara's Charlie, eager to sample the sweetness, had brought along a spoon. From his hurried dipping, he collected a bee on the utensil's underside and was promptly stung on the tongue. For the rest of the day they missed his high-pitched, changing voice.
Outside, Yeller gave a warning bark. Darcey crossed to the window and peered out. A look of annoyance crossed her face as she recognized Jarvis approaching the cabin.
"What's he doing here this time of the day?" she asked crossly. "I saw enough of him last night."
Cindy came and stood at her shoulder. "Maybe last night wasn't enough for him," she remarked dryly.
Darcey's reply was a short, "Huh."
A month ago she had given in to Jarvis's insistent advances. The month before that, it hadn't always been easy to hold out against him. He was a man whom most women would love easily and generously. But she had already been burned by a man like Jarvis, and she was hesitant to become involved again.
