Chapter 5

"Bart, I want to talk to you."

Maureen had thought the matter over carefully and decided at length that something would have to be said to her husband-not enough to alarm him, hopefully, but enough to make him have a word or two with Junior.

He glanced up from the stockman's magazine he was reading and asked irritably, "What is it?"

"It's about Junior. He's been ... embarrassing Cathy."

Bart's weather-beaten countenance tightened. His blue eyes turned sharp below his bushy brows. "What do you mean, embarrassing her?"

Maureen averted her eyes nervously. "Well, he's been making remarks-and kind of feeling her up.

You know. It's all in fun, I believe, but still-she's virgin, and ..."

"Yeah. She's a virgin. That's the damned trouble!" He slammed down his magazine and stood up. He paced the bedroom.

Maureen, wearing a robe, sat down at her vanity mirror and tried to busy herself by removing her makeup.

"Did she complain to you about Junior?" Bart asked as he stopped behind his wife and stared at her in the glass.

"No. It's just that I've-well, noticed things. It's nothing to get all excited about, but I wish you'd have a word with him. That will solve it, I'm sure."

Bart got up and went out into the night after listening to Maureen. He had some thinking to do, and a woman's presence only rattled a man when he had to sort matters out in his mind.

It was then, as he stood alone in the darkness and gazed at those lights, that Bart got the idea that was eventually to change his life and the lives of all the residents of Halverson Ranch.

Andy left the breakfast table and stepped out onto the porch. He took a deep breath of the crisp morning air and told himself he was lucky to be alive and to live on the ranch.

A little while ago, as he'd watched Cathy across the table, his mind had started to wander. She was a marrying type of girl-not like the other young women he knew-and he imagined for a moment what it would be like if he were married to her.

She would be his, all his. She'd keep his house and have his babies. There would be satisfactions. But he'd have to live in a town and hold down some humdrum job-he'd be shackled by responsibilities.

Cathy had watched Andy, too. She wanted to talk to him, but then his father came up.

As she watched him walk beside his father, she let her mind go on an expedition which was not unlike the one his had taken a little while ago. She thought of being married to a boy like Andy. It would be pretty fine, she decided, except for one thing: She was afraid she would enjoy the sexual part of it too much.

For a few moments, she allowed her imagination to run free, and she visualized herself in bed with Andy. She didn't visualize it really, because she thought of the lights being out, and one couldn't visualize a scene in the dark. What she did was to feel it.

She felt Andy's strong arms around her, and she dared to feel the thrust of his rampant cock, as she'd felt Junior's on the two occasions when he'd tried to make her. This time she welcomed the hardness and what it portended.

She felt Andy roll on top of her and settle between her eagerly parted thighs. She imagined the thrust of his penis against the seal of her virginity, she imagined that seal breaking, not painfully but sort of dissolving away, then she seemed to feel Andy's long, lean hardness gliding way up inside her-throbbing in her belly-turning her to molten fire ...

No! Oh God, NO! I mustn't think such things! They're wicked and evil! Even when a girl's married, she shouldn't ENJOY sex. Not like that.

With her cheeks burning, Cathy stepped off the porch and strolled over toward the old well.

One thing's for sure, she told herself. If I wanted to enjoy sex-if I wanted to be THAT KIND of a girl-I'd be that way with Andy instead of Junior.

But she wasn't "that kind" of girl, she promptly reassured herself. She wasn't like Maureen, for instance, who could have fun with an old man like Uncle Bart and with his young son, also! I'm not like that, Cathy thought defiantly.

She tried to put the entire subject of sex out of her mind, but it wasn't easy. There was something about the elemental atmosphere of the ranch-the closeness to nature and the presence of strong, handsome men around her that seemed to keep the subject active in her consciousness. Though against her will, she kept re-living her two experiences with Junior which had brought her perilously close to a sinful surrender.