Chapter 10

Sheriff Ted Hawkins could hardly keep from bursting with the news he had learned from the frightened "tourist" who had told him things he had wanted to know and a good deal more about Jennifer Danton and her school. There wasn't any rush, she wasn't likely to run away. Besides, what he had in mind involved a little planning. He was going to call a meeting of the "Night Riders," a kind of vigilante committee responsible for making sure that Kentley was a clean town and that loose women and sluts and whores weren't allowed to sully its fair name.

He decided to pay a little visit to Pete Helmerton, a good friend of his who had put him wise in the past to quite a few good deals as well as tipping him off at least four times the past several years about strange females who had traipsed into town and didn't seem to have any visible means of support or any friends or relatives in Kentley. To pay Pete back, he had even allowed the heavily set, gray-haired saloonkeeper to share the last girl with him. What a night they had had! He could still remember how she had bitten and scratched and kicked, and how they had tied her wrists high on the bars of the cell, ripped off her clothes and, while he was thrashing her ass with his spanker, old Pete was slipping in between her and the bars, crouching down and grabbing hold of her tits and poking it into her tight twat. He had got so riled up that he'd thrown away the spanker, grabbed onto the cheeks of her bottom and stuck himself in her brownie so that they were both giving it to her at the same time. After that, she had really given up the struggle and they had kept her busy practically all night long. She'd been about nineteen, as he remembered, tall with a sort of snotty and sullen look on her face, a mite peaked in the legs and face, maybe, but big bubs and a juicy butt that could really take punishment.

Well, there would be plenty of pussy for old Pete to enjoy without having to share any of the bimbos, and there would be plenty for him too. He didn't want the whole group in on the deal, just about four or five fellows who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut and who knew just how to dish it out to whores.

He had lit a fresh cigar and gone into the saloon, and Pete was in the men's room, he'd had had a beer and waited. When Pete came out, he called to him, "Hey old buddy, sit down, I've got something I want to tell you." Pete had chuckled and nodded, drawn himself a beer from the tap, and sat down heavily, opening his collar and scratching his hairy chest. "What's on your mind, Ted?"

"Pussy, old buddy."

"Ain't it always? Haw, haw, haw-but I'm listening, jist in case there's some of that sweet stuff coming my way-is there?"

"Plenty. Now you listen good while I tip you off on a real interestin' sitcheeashun," Ted Hawkins drawled, then took a swig from his stein.

"Seems to me you're acting mighty mysterious right now, Ted. What's this about pussy?"

"Suppose I was to tell you, Pete, we got ourselves a whorehouse right here in Kentley."

The gray-haired saloonkeeper gasped his disbelief: "Go on, you're pulling my leg!"

"Naw, I sure am not, old buddy. Look, I got me a guy locked up in my jail, and I just sweated out of him a real funny yarn. Seems like he comes here to visit Miss Jennifer."

"Ain't nothing wrong with that."

"Naw, not with that. But what he was coming to do was to screw some of the cute older gals she's got there, that's what, Pete old buddy. Not only that, he's already dished out a wad of dough jist to have some nice sweet pussy all to himself. Too damn bad he ain't gonna git a chance to get it."

"Say now! What you're telling me is that Miss Jennifer runs a house-that it?"

"Yup." Sheriff Ted Hawkins finished the rest of his beer, belched, patted his belly, and grinned. "Seems like to me this is a job for the Night Riders."

"Well now," Pete Helmerton glanced warily around, "You might jist be right about that, Ted."

"Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna wait me another day, see? Then I'm gonna let this pussy-hungry sap go on over to Miss Jennifer's. In the evening, mind you. He's going there to git the pussy he paid for, you follow me?"

"Every step of the way," the saloonkeeper grinned, showing snaggly discolored and decaying teeth.

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"Right. Now we're gonna wait till round about near midnight, see? By then I figger those sweet li'l gals who are putting out are gonna be real busy. We're gonna catch them right in the act with their pants off, you might say. When I get the proof, I'm gonna have me Miss Jennifer-you know Goddamn well I've been after that stuckup twat a long time now."

"You sure have, Sheriff."

"I figger we ought to have you and maybe Lem Sayers and Jed Murtree and maybe Abner Borchard along. That'll make five of us. I think we oughta be able to handle those fillies real good. Maybe we could take along Grover Johnson and Cyrus Deerfield, just to be on the safe side."

"That would make it better. If we wear the white robes, it'll look like a big crowd with seven of us," the saloonkeeper suggested, licking his lips and leaning forward with undisguised lust in his beady eyes.

"Yup, guess you're right, Pete. So you get word to the boys. Me, I gotta go back and coddle my prisoner 'n git set in how he's gonna act and what he's gonna say tomorrow night. S'pose you lemme hear from you round about tomorrow noon."

"Right, Sheriff."

Sheriff Ted Hawkins grunted, nodded, took a last puff of his cigar, got up and left the saloon. He was grinning, and he was thinking. And what he was seeing in his mind's eye would have filled Jennifer Danton with horror and revulsion and fear....

That same night, at Jennifer Danton's order, Candy and Susan were taken from their rooms and led down the stairs to the basement in spite of Candy's frantic protests. She was tied once again on the sawhorse. Jennifer blindfolded her niece, as Susan willingly undressed herself down to complete nudity. Delia and Lucille then led Susan to the triangle, raised her arms above her head and locked both wrists into the single metal cuff at the peak of the device. Then they corded her ankles to the base of the legs of the triangle, spreadeagling her. Then, at a sign from the dominatress, they left the cellar....

But an unexpected visitor to Kentley was getting off the bus this same night, a twenty-year-old gangling towheaded youth with thick sideburns and an even thicker Southern twang. He had a dusty satchel, and he looked around for some conveyance once the bus had disappeared and left him alone on the main street at ten o'clock on this muggy night, with the distant rumbling of thunder heralding a storm. Seeing no cab or car or anyone there to welcome him, he shrugged philosophically and began to trudge westward towards the house of the Sheriff Ted Hawkins. Half an hour iater, he was ringing the bell and waiting impatiently. He was in luck, for the door was opened by the lawman himself, in dirty nightshirt, a scowl on his fat face which at once vanished when he saw his visitor: "Fer cryeye, come on in, Phil! Why the hell didn't you write me or wire or something you was comin'?"

"Just got the idea to come visit my favorite uncle, that's all," the youth grinned as he entered the comfortable furnished living room, seating himself with a sigh of content on the heavy couch.

"How's my brother doing back there in Fayette, and your mom, how's she?"

"Great. I come up here hopin' you might have a job for me, Uncle Ted."

"Now that's a plumb loco idea, boy. Want some beer?"

"Sure."

"I need one myself. Gonna be a hot night tomorrow."

"It's hot enough right now."

"Yeah, but you don't know the half of it tomorrow," the lawman winked obscenely. A few moments later he was back with two cans of beer, handing one to his nephew. "Here's mud in your eye, boy. Now what's this business about a job?"

"Well, y'see, Uncle Ted, Dad 'n Mom, they're gonna move to Little Rock."

"The hell you say!"

"Yeah, sure 'nuff. Anyway, we sort of had a fracas, I didn't want to go on to school none, I wanna come down here and do you some good, Uncle Ted."

"Lessee now, boy." Ted Hawkins scratched his head reflectively and scowled again. "You could maybe be my deputy. Yah, that's a helluva idea, that is! Fact is, I can putcha to work tomorra night in style."

"What's all this tomorrow night stuff, Uncle Ted?" Sheriff Ted Hawkins grinned, sat down beside his nephew, and began to talk. The youth's faded blue eyes glistened with lubricity and he licked his lips, nodded.