Chapter 15
The sun had gone down, and there was a death-like stillness beyond the deserted, ramshackle cabin in which the four desperate escaped convicts and their captives had taken refuge. The escapees had eaten heartily, though grumbling over the lack of liquor, but Ranee Martin had been thoughtful enough to buy a carton of cigarettes.
Ben Salters, as leader of the convicts, saw to it that Ranee and his son Kenny, as well as Dorothy and her mother Eleanor, received their fair share of food. As he grinningly explained, "We gotta keep you fattened up and healthy, Mr. Martin, because we might just need you for a while."
"All I ask is that you let us go, and you have my word that we'll not turn you in," the mature Chicago jeweler had told him. But Ranee Martin was not naive enough to hope that these brutal, unscrupulous men, who undoubtedly had not had sexual relations in many a year, would be considerate enough to spare his wife and daughter, and desperately he put his mind to work trying to think of ways to escape. But his wrists, as well as Kenny's, were bound far too tightly, and even while the four convicts dozed in their turn, there was always one of them standing guard with his hand in his pocket to simulate a gun. George Budrow was sent out about nine that evening to get the lay of the land, and came back to report that there was no traffic on the distant highway, and that there seemed to be no helicopters or search lights or any other kind of police activity.
"That's good. They probably figure we've gone on to Topeka or maybe are hiding out in Abilene, or even across the State line by now," Ben Salters declared. He lit a cigarette and glanced over at the old couch on which Eleanor and her daughter Dorothy still sat, each with her wrist bound to the other's, as well as an ankle. Both beauties had been frightfully embarrassed a few hours ago when each had experienced the communal need to go to the bathroom, and Mack Bolton had grinningly untied the ankle cord, but left the one fixing their wrists together, and had himself escorted them to the bathroom, and then, with a smirk of mock gallantry, closed the door.
"Oh my God, Mother, what are we going to do?" Dorothy whispered as she slipped down her play-shorts and whisked down her pantie briefs to mid-thigh and seated herself on the old wooden toilet seat. "This is just dreadful! This place hasn't been used in years, and of course there isn't any water or anything. I-I feel like an animal in captivity."
"I know, baby," Eleanor Martin turned away to give her daughter as much privacy as possible, but the situation was ludicrous in the extreme: as Dorothy seated herself, she drew on her mother's fettered wrist and Eleanor had to bend a little while turning away. Nor was there, alas, any such comfort as toilet paper, and Dorothy blushed as she stammeringly asked her mother for a bit of Kleenex. Fortunately for the proprieties, Eleanor Martin had a packet of tissues in the pocket of her blue cotton dress. The dress descended to mid-calf, but was very thin and light, and one could almost see the outline of her pantie-girdle and shoulder strap bra, as well as the narrow, binding bandeau which made a horizontal line against her sculptured back.
Then it was Eleanor's turn to seat herself, hoist up skirt and slip with one hand, and Dorothy's turn to look away while her mother relieved the urgencies of nature and then cleansed herself as best she could.
There wasn't any lock to the bathroom door, either, and Dorothy shiveringly whispered, "Oh, Mother, I'm scared of those awful men! That one man who's almost bald and with the scar on his cheek, he's been staring at me in the most horrible way."
"I know he has been, baby. I'm scared, too," her mother confided with a shaky little laugh. "All we can do is pray and hope. I'm sure that if they escaped from prison, the police must be out looking for them. Well, we'd better go back before they take a notion to open the door and come in after us. I wouldn't put it past horrible brutes like that."
It was she who opened the door, and found Mack Bolton standing outside, his arms folded across his chest. He grinned lecherously. "Feel better, ladies?" he leered.
Neither Eleanor nor Dorothy Martin answered, but both were blushing furiously as they made their way back to the couch. Kenneth and Lance Martin sat there, pale and perspiring, as each had tried stealthily to yank the wrist cords loose, but without any success.
The return of the women from the bathroom stirred the other convicts from their hastily taken naps, and, yawning, rubbing their eyes, they now gathered in the living room, standing round the couch, staring with growing interest at their captives.
"Too bad we ca't show you home movies or something," Pete Pullman chuckled, showing badly stained, decaying teeth in a crooked smile. "But maybe you could furnish a little entertainment yourselves. What do you say?" He bent down and ran his hand over Dorothy's bare ivory forearm. Her pullover Tee shirt had very short sleeves, and yet the lovely naked skin was as white as the shirt. Delicate pale blue veins formed their exquisite tracery at her slim wrists. With a stifled little cry, she shrank away from the convict's touch, glancing at him with frightened, widened eyes.
"D-don't!" she gasped, her cheeks reddening.
"Please let my wife and daughter be," Ranee Martin said gravely, staring at Ben Salters, whose leadership he recognized. "I promised we wouldn't give you any trouble, and we've been very cooperative. Now won't you hold your friends in check so far as my family is concerned?"
"I don't know about that, Mr. Martin," Ben Salters grinned, glancing back at the couch where the two frightened women huddled. "After all, we haven't had much pussy in a helluva long time, and we're only human, after all, even if you don't think so. You just try getting yourself locked up in stir for a while and not having your ashes regularly hauled. Isn't that right, Mack?"
"Right as rain," Mack Bolton lewdly sniggered. "Seems like a damn shame, with two gorgeous broads like that, and us four horny guys needing it so bad. What do you say, Eleanor, baby, to a quickie? You and I could go into one of those bedrooms back there and be all nice and friendly."
"Ohh, Ranee!" Eleanor Martin tearfully exclaimed, "don't let him touch me! Please!"
"Please!" Ranee Martin hoarsely implored, staring in appeal at Ben Salters, "can't you do something about him?"
"Not very well, he's bigger than I am, Mr. Martin. Now let's be sensible about this. You know damn well there are four of us, and you two aren't likely to start any trouble. We could just as well gag you and tie you up even better than you are now, and then have a go at your wife and daughter, but the boys and myself would like it a lot better if they'd be nice-you know," Ben Salters winked. "In fact, if they don't put up any fight, we'll treat 'em right. After all, what difference does a little shagging make between friends?"
"My God, you can't mean that!" Ranee Martin ejaculated, his eyes wide with horror.
"I'm afraid I do, Mr. Martin," was the inexorable answer. "In fact, I'm randy as hell myself, just looking at that wife and daughter of yours. I can tell you this much, you don't have to worry about their getting a dose of clap. We're horny as hell, but we're clean. We're just pussy-starved, that's all. So you've got your choice. We might have to manhandle the girls a little if they put up a fuss, and I don't think you'd like that and they wouldn't either. So why don't you put it up to them and see if they won't come across and be obliging in a nice friendly spirit, eh?"
Ranee Martin desperately tugged at his bound wrists, but Ben Salters laughed. "Don't take it so hard, Mr. Martin. It isn't as if we were going to rape them, you know. There's one thing to forcing a broad, and another to going into a bedroom with a guy on her own. And that's the choice we're going to give them. I think it's damn right of us, don't you?"
"Oh, Mother, Mother, oh my God, I don't want to," Dorothy wailed. With her free hand, Eleanor Martin leaned over and stroked her daughter's hair, trembling violently as she looked back at her husband.
"Oh, Ranee, please don't let them hurt Dorothy.
I-I'll offer myself in her place-I will, I mean it. She-she's never had a man."
"Say, now," Mack Bolton leered, "I'd take her up on that, if I was you, Ben boy. That broad's got style and she's got shape to match. I'd just as soon shag her as that Dorothy there."
"Oh my God," Ranee Martin groaned, bowing his head and closing his eyes. Kenny Martin couldn't speak; he just stared across at the couch where his mother and sister sat, and yet in the midst of his frantic worries about them, there came a gnawing, lascivious desire! He had seen his sister frigging herself on the bed that Saturday afternoon. Maybe he would get to see her being fucked! And his mother, too, stripped down naked and made to spread her legs for one of these men. To his own consternation he felt his cock begin to stiffen at the thought.
"Wei, how about it," Ben Salters pursued, "you going to look at it the sensible way, or do you want us guys to go to work and really give the broads a hard time-and I mean a hard time, take it from me!"
At this, the other three men burst into jeering laughter, and Ranee Martin ground his teeth together, his face pale and drawn. He stared agonizedly over at Eleanor, who, her cheeks scarlet, her eyes closed, sat very straight, though she was trembling.
"Oh, God," he choked, "is this the way you're going to repay the kindness we showed you?"
"Don't be so Goddamn dramatic, Mr. Martin," Ben Salters chuckled. "After all, what's a little shagging for fun, anyway? It's not like it's the end of the world. Why, the broads will probably like it, just for the sake of variety. Isn't that right, Ellie baby? How'd you like to try some other guy for size in bed?"
"Oh, M-Mother," Dorothy groaned, staring at her beautiful, blushing mother, as the tears ran down her cheeks.
"I guess I can't stop you," said Ranee Martin slowly, his voice breaking with emotion, "but if you harm my wife and daughter, I swear to God I'll find some way to kill you, and you've got my word for it."
"Well, that's putting your cards on the table all right," Ben Salters acknowledged with a nod, "Mack, take some more of those ropes and tie him up good to that chair. And get the kid tied up, too. Sit him on the floor next to his old man, so you can fix the ropes onto the chair for extra strength, get me?"
"Way ahead of you," Mack Bolton sniggered as he hurried to the kitchen and came back with more lengths of cord. He bound a rope around Ranee Martin's waist, and then made his legs secure to those of the heavy, broken-down armchair, and then another looping around Ranee Martin's chest and to the back of the chair, which he finished off by binding around Kenny's right arm just past the armpit. Another two or three cords to the son, and both Martin males were pinioned and helpless.
"All right, Elbe," Ben Salters said as he came over to stare down at the shuddering mature beauty. "We're going to take you up on that little offer you made a while ago. If we don't touch your little girl, you're willing to shag with us, all four of us in turn?"
Eleanor Martin nodded, biting her lips and keeping her eyes tightly shut.
"Well, we'll start on that basis, anyhow. Mack, untie their wrists, but you can tie Dorothy's behind her back, but you can tie her ankles so she can't get away. We'll make this sort of private-like, to start with, anyhow," he decreed.