Chapter 9

Troy was reminded of his business at hand when Claire prodded him in the ribs. It was hard to bring his mind back from conjecture about the strange interruption, but he discarded his speculation when Claire spoke.

"What's the matter, Troy? Just because someone had to go weewee in the bushes doesn't mean that it's all over, does it?"

He forced a little laugh and rolled to his side to catch her in a playful embrace. "No, but I can't concentrate on two things at the same time. I guess I lost the keen edge of urge there for a minute. Maybe it's better that it happened this way. We were going along too fast."

He found her lips, softly parted and waiting. Her kiss was proficient and exciting, and she exerted a gentle suction that was intensely enticing. Her tongue probed at him, simulating the motions of intercourse. His wandering hand closed on a breast, and he tantalized the nipple into rigidity. The long kiss lasted through his several minutes of breast play, and she drew away from his mouth only when his palm slid down past her tucked-in navel to halt on her mound.

Her thighs were closed again, and he caressed the velvety symmetry of her slender legs with a prying insistence that eventually caused her to relax. He started at her dimpled knee and stroked the warm skin upward until stopped by the tight cleavage. She would let up a bit, and on the next stroke, he would find his exploration had extended a little bit further. It took him a few minutes of stroking before his fingers touched a triangle of silky down.

He did not immediately seek to investigate the opening there but continued to caress her in even longer sweeps of his palm. He noticed that she was moving now with each caress, and her eager crotch was curling to meet his fingers at the top of each stroke. He hesitated after one long, slow journey to her groin, and she brought her buttocks up far enough so that his fingers found the beginnings of the crease of her buttocks.

Her fingernails dug at the small of his back, and he sensed that she was ready. He rolled her from her back to her side, and her upper leg rose and circled around his waist. A touch of his fingers found her opening pulled agape, and he hunched on the blanket to make contact. He was in no hurry, but a quick urgency in her hastened things along when she began to shake with fatigue from holding her muscles so tightly. Each tremor enveloped a little more of his member until her copious lubrication allowed slippage instead of straining force.

He leaned closer to her as her dangling heel jabbed at his buttocks, and the union was complete.

Then she became aware of the huge thing inside her, and she whispered shakily. "How in the world did you ever get so big, dearest? I can feel you clear up inside me. Oh, how I can feel! Maybe that's what the trouble was before. I could never feel the others like this."

Troy was warming to his work, and her attempt to dissect her sex problem was distracting him. "Shut up for a while and let me concentrate on what I'm doing. We'll have a question-and-answer session later, if you like."

She signaled her agreement by bending the leg that hung over him until her knee covered his shoulder. He didn't know until she told him later that the odd position of her leg brought her a chain of orgasms that ceased only when she straightened it out again.

He felt passion gather, and then he thrust at her with full strokes as he came. He was much too engrossed in his own pleasure at that moment to know or care if she had come along with him. She had, and she let him know it by a long, panting kiss. They rolled apart by mutual consent, and she let him feel every inch of body skin as a token that she would accommodate him again if he was in the mood.

He turned down her invitation with regret and grinned to himself that he would ever be so physically tired that he would rather sleep than screw. His responsibilities and lack of sleep the night before were telling on his stamina. She left him for a few minutes, and when she returned he was deep in sleep. She smiled at the night, and the smile had a tinge of possessiveness in it.

She curled up beside him, and her hand carefully clasped his manhood in wonder and gratitude. She drifted off to sleep that way and never knew that her light touch and his dreaming brought him an erection that lasted until dawn.

Troy awoke with an ache for sex and discovered her hand still closed on him. He grinned that she would do that only under the assumption that he wouldn't know of her intimacy. He loosened her fingers gently and left her to finish out her sleep.

The place he had chosen during the night for his tryst with Claire had not been as private as he had thought. He was sure that everyone in the camp knew of their coupling, and he was glad that the night had been moonless and dark.

He wanted to find Angela and explain that he had had a sexual interlude with Claire only because she had asked for it. Of course, that was no good excuse ... But he had no ties to Angela. He laughed at the idea of having to apologize and explain his sex life.

There was the fresh scent of coffee in the morning air, and that brought him back to the business of the day. He would have to check on the fire and then worry about feeding his people again. It didn't seem fair that he should have to carry the whole load, but justice made him admit that he was reaping the rewards for the load he carried. He had free rein among the women, and he supposed that it was the price he had to pay for all of the sex he was enjoying.

Janey Daybird gave him a scanty breakfast of cornmeal and two tiny sardines. She explained that the few cans of sardines had been divided, and she assured him that she had saved him the lion's share. She had made up a small bundle to take along on the fishing jaunt, and they waited while Jay gulped,(down hot coffee and his plate of food. Troy delegated the running of the camp to Angela, and he made it known that he trusted her good judgment.

He saw her swell with pride under his esteem. She promised to send someone to check on the fire's advance, and he outlined the procedure should it present peril.

Janey Daybird knew what she was talking about when she spoke of knowing how to track, and Troy realized how adept she was when she unhesitatingly set out on the trail the lesbians laid the day before. He would have been at a loss in many places where the girls had meandered off a straight course. He was second in line on the trek, and he couldn't help showing his enthusiasm and interest in her bouncing fanny.

She took them to a tiny stream that stemmed from a small spring, and they followed it down to the pool. The lesbians had been right about the trout. The pool was overcrowded with sizable fish, and the reason for the overstocking was the multitude of insect life in the secluded area. Troy guessed that the fall season would have brought starvation to thin out the pool's population, but now the fish were fat and lazy.

The pool was shallow and wide, and Troy guessed that catching the fish would entail a lot of exercise. Janey showed him the easy way. She took off her shoes and rolled her short skirt up inside-out and tucked the hem into the waistband of her panties. She waded into the water and laughed at the icy chill that made her lovely, honey-colored skin tingle.

"Okay, fellows, start breaking off dead branches and throw them to me. The best ones are the ones with a lot of twigs attached."

Troy and Jay did as they were bidden, and they watched her construct a sort of crude trap by pushing the branches into the soft pool bottom. She motioned them to join her.

"We start along the sides and drive the fish into the wings. From there they have to go into the trap. It's that simple."

It was simple. In scarcely five minutes almost every fish in the pool was contained in Janey's trap. She plugged up the entrance with a few more brush strands, and the thing was done. She and Jay caught the fish one by one and handed them up to Troy, who gutted them with the small pocket knife.

She made them leave a good ten percent of the fish there. She destroyed the trap and made the men cover up the small pile of fish entrails.

"Always leave some behind. That's Indian law, and it makes good sense." She pointed to the pile of gutted fish. "That's more than we can eat before they spoil unless we do something about drying them. When we get back to camp we can set up a smoker."

She unpacked her small parcel, and Troy found that she had prepared for everything. She served them a crude lunch and would have built a fire to broil them some fish if Troy had not worried so much about getting back to camp. She had brought three blankets and a couple of old newspapers that had been found on the bus seats. They wrapped the fish in the newspaper and then put three separate piles on the three blankets. Each took up a load, and they started back along the way they had come.

About halfway down, Troy sensed that they were being spied upon. Janey verified his suspicion. "Don't look back, Troy, but we've been followed for about five minutes or so. My guess is that it's that rape character. Do you want to drop out of line and catch him?"

"Not particularly. What do we do with him when we get him? We'll let him alone as long as he minds his own business."

She agreed with his decision, but Jay wanted to run him down. Jay left off the argument when Troy told him that he would be totally responsible for Bart Coldridge until they returned to civilization. Jay finally saw the common sense behind Troy's decision, and they pushed on. They got to within a few rods of the camp before Jay accidentally bumped against Janey and made her lose her balance. She fell, and there was a strained expression on her face when she tried to rise again.

She had twisted her ankle severely, and even as they watched, the trim joint lost its slimness and began to swell. Troy sent Jay ahead for help, and he stayed with the girl to do what he could for her. He took off his undershirt and tore it into long shreds, which he bound tightly around her foot. It helped, and she could stand on it without too much pain, but she still couldn't walk without support.

"Damn, Troy, I'm sorry about this. I was getting to enjoy our survival game, and I could have been a lot of help to you. Now I'll be laid up for a week or so. I've had one like this before."

"It wasn't your fault, Janey."

"You know, Troy, I was hoping you wouldn't ask anyone else to go along with us today. I had big plans until you spoiled them by making three a crowd. Well, that's my luck."

Troy had enjoyed her company and resourcefulness. He had also appreciated the flirt of her hips, the eager fun of her, and a picture remained in his memory of her wading in the pond with a lot of lean thigh showing. "There'll be another time, Janey."

Jay came back with two of the girls to carry the fish, and he and Troy made a sling of clasped wrists to carry Janey back to the camp. It was a good homecoming, in that the passengers left behind hailed their success.

The inevitable cornbread was much tastier with fresh broiled trout to top it off. Angela reported on the fire, and Troy knew that their position was becoming untenable. He had hoped that they would be discovered by now, and he was sure that everything possible was being done to locate them. He knew that the rangers and search crews wouldn't give up. Virgin's Breast Mountain was large and no one would think of looking for them near the "nipple."

He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening circling the mountain and looking for a way out. He hated to abandon the bus, since it remained transportation if they could find a road. Besides, the search planes would have to have something to look for. It would have been so simple to build a large signal fire, but who would look for a single pillar of smoke where pillars of smoke were the order of the day? The rugged terrain afforded them no possibility of plunging down the mountainside in the bus in a mad dash to run through the fire line.

The problem resolved itself into more waiting and praying for some sort of break. He was not used to waiting, and it had been a long time since he had been to church. He remembered once thinking that it would make a nice vacation to bring some girl up here on the mountain for a week of camping and exploring. Hell, his wishful thinking had been mighty small. He was here with twelve women, and the situation might continue for a lot longer than a week.

He went back to camp as the sun hit the rim of the blurry horizon, and he found that the evening meal had been dispensed with without him. Angela had saved him some baked fish, but the cold stuff was without flavor, and his dinner was not pleasant.

He posted his changes of guard for the night and ran into some opposition. His people still couldn't see their danger, and they thought it very stupid to shiver out a few hours a night in a futile watch. He had to explain it all over again, and then he had the feeling that he had not yet convinced them.

He noticed that Angela avoided him as much as possible and he had trouble trying to reconcile that with the thoughtfulness with which she had saved his meal. He stopped beside Janey's bedroll to check on her condition.

"Hell, Troy, I'm all right. I napped all afternoon, and now I'm not a damned bit sleepy. Stay up and talk to me for a while?"

He felt that he owed her that. She began talking in a monotone so that the others could not eavesdrop, and he heard her through her early childhood on the Indian reservation. He dozed off somewhere when she was about to go to some mission college, and she smiled when his head dropped in sleep.

She made room for him beside her, and she shared her two blankets with him to keep him warm through the night. She had plans for the early-morning hours.