The Family Tradition

By Seamus

BOOK THREE: Those Who Were Lost, Now They Are Found

Author's Remarks:

This is the third book in what is becoming a really big saga about a pioneer family moving west in the years after the Civil War ended, and how their lives progressed in the Western United States afterward. With such a huge scope, there's no way I could possibly fill out each character again and again with every succeeding chapter. That's my way of saying you really should read the series in order. Sorry, I'm just can't face editing this, and the other volumes inserting character development in a myriad of places—and … doing that would add to an already large text. Chapter headings, you may note, are carried on in strict series through all the volumes.

Many of the comments regarding clearly historical events referenced in this story are quite factual. For instance, one of my characters in this Book makes an observation as to how high an extent the South actually was decimated by the Civil War. What he says is fact. Yes, I did do a lot of research. In fact, some estimates of the loss of Southern men in 18 to 40 age group go as high as 25 to 30 percent death. Then, if you add in all the limbs lost plus the horribly disfiguring wounds inflicted by the infamous Minié ball … a lot of Southern men in that generation were lost.

Other than such things as that, this is a complete work of fiction. I don't recommend or condone intergenerational sex; real life just doesn't happen this way. Also, please do not try leaping out windows in tall office buildings under any circumstances. Even if you own a pretty red and blue costume, you can not fly!

I hope you enjoy this story. If you wish to comment, contact information is included at the end of this story.

- Seamus

* * * * *

The Family Tradition, Book III

-Those Who Were Lost, Now Are Found

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The summer after we brought both my Uncle Curtis' children and also the Mormon sisters into the fold ... that would be right at two years after we first arrived in our mountain retreat ... we took a trip back east to the southeastern-most corner of East Tennessee, where my Pa's sisters lived, just to visit for a while. By 'we', I mean my Pa an' me—my sister, Rachel—an' Uncle Curtis' daughter Camilla. At the last minute, my little brother Ellis was added to the group traveling back home to Tennessee, probably so he wouldn't be gettin' into trouble whilst his Pa was away.

Howsomever … I really only knew why one a' the group was chosen to accompany Pa … and that was me. I was going because I was pretty much at loose ends an’ didn’t much know what to do with myself. I wasn't but sixteen ... sixteen and a half really ... but I was already married in everything but name to my beautiful Lakota maiden, Wasté Thózi Ishtá, Pretty Green Eyes. Only ... she was fixed on becoming a full-fledged doctor of medicine in the white-man's world, to compliment the knowledge she had as the Lakota medicine woman she already was.

Caleb Struthers … the old mountain man, experienced healer of all kinds of hurts, and all around wise man … had taught her all he knew; now she was down in Denver studying with a practicing doctor there. Plans were that she would be down there, a learnin' what she could an' then she an' Pa, an' me, would look at the issue again and make a decision on where she was with gettin' to her goal and what there was left to do.

I missed her badly and it was going to be a long year for me. I guess Pa didn't want me moping around and possibly getting myself into trouble, so I was going to go with Pa back to his sisters' home town—which had also been his home … way back when. I was told that, if nothing else, I could carry bags, tote boxes and put 'em down over yonder and such as that. I was a tad underwhelmed, you might say.

Anyway ... whatever Pa's reasons for picking those of us that he did ... we all caught the train back east from where the old trail crossed the railroad tracks—where we usually did our shopping an’ other business—and we rode trains all the way back across the wide plains we'd come over to start our carnally-inclined little settlement. I think our family's patronage at the stores in The Crossing was a major reason The Crossing continued to flourish. They sure weren’t much else anywhere around save us, and two or three small, new ranches off to the south yonder.

We found connections almost all the way to the eastern Tennessee town we were aiming for, though we did have to take two short stage coach rides along the way. I had to stay behind with Ellis at depots twice in that journey whilst we waited for the next stage headed in the proper direction. There just wasn't enough room for all of us and the regular passengers too in one coach.

What with all the delays and waiting for trains headed the direction we wanted, it took us eight days, all told—where the trip west by wagon had taken months. Didn't seem right, somehow— moving that fast—but we got used to it. It was a lot easier on the body riding the cushions on a comfortable railroad coach than it is riding the hard wooden seat of a Conestoga-built wagon … I can bear witness to that.

* * *

I won't lie to ya. Part of our 'visit' back to Tennessee was because my cousin, Camilla, allowed as how one time she'd seen her Pa, Curtis Richardson (my Pa's younger brother), and two of her aunties nekkid in bed together an' doing naughty things to each other and having a grand ol' time a doin’ it. That was the year before my Uncle Curtis contracted the lung disease and brought his family west, hunting for his brother, Frank, my Pa. He'd passed right after I found the small family out on the prairie and brought them to their new home in our Hidden Valley.

Knowing about what at least two of his sisters were willing to do with one of their brothers made Pa wonder what could a' been between him and his sisters if only he'd known ... and he wondered why they hadn't done it with him! It seemed to me Pa was feeling a bit slighted. All right—it kinda got his goat. He was a wonderin' why for he got left out.

I kept my surmisin' to myself, but I was certain sure Pa had resolved to go back home to find out exactly why he hadn't been included in the goings on, and he took two of his sons and a daughter along to keep him company. Camilla was with us because she was the only witness to Aunt Phoebe and Aunt Rebecca supposedly abed with Uncle Curtis. I don't know why Pa had the mindset that he'd have to prove what'd happened—his two sisters already knew what they done—but there it was. She was goin' and that's all there was to it.

I pretty much kept all questions to myself. Pa was a mite prickly about it.

* * *

I was missing my woman something terrible, of course. I always did whenever we were apart for more than a few days. Pretty Green Eyes and I were living as man and wife, despite our youth … and had been for a while … so she normally would have been with me—with us—on the journey back East. But she dreamed of being a doctor, no gettin' past that. What she wanted to do was combine the arts of the white man with the medicine woman ways her mother had taught her, and that's what she was doing this summer. Learning the craft, so to speak.

Doctoring was a kind of relaxed thing back then. What a person mostly did, if they wanted to become a doctor, was work under an established doctor and learn all they could about doctorin', an' surgery an' medicines and such stuff as that, 'til he or she felt qualified.

When they reached that point, the new doctor would announce his or her new status about town, hang out a shingle outside their office, and commence to doctoring. If the new doctor was any good at the craft, nobody shot 'em for being a bad one ... and they could continue to build their practice. There was some that didn't get to build anythin' at all, of course....

Pretty Green Eyes was working with a feller down to Denver who had a fine reputation all around for being able to heal folks and treat even the nastiest injuries that miners, cattlemen, and farmers could suffer. I wasn't there with her 'cause I would be a real bad distraction for her. I didn't like to admit that was true, but me not likin' it didn't keep it from being so. The plan was for her to be done with about the first year of learnin' down in Denver right about the time Pa and us got back from Tennessee. I sure hoped so.

Pa and I both missed her. Me 'cause she was my woman ... and Pa because Pretty Green Eyes had asked him if she could take the name of 'Naomi' to be hers. It was a thing many Indians did, taking a white man's name in addition to the names the tribe gave them. Naomi was Pa's baby girl who died in childbirth more'n twenty years ago—she'd never taken a single breath and Pa had never known her.

Pa didn't actually cry right when Pretty Green Eyes had asked his permission for the name, but he did find an excuse to walk outside the cabin real quick. When he addressed her as 'Naomi' that evenin', me and my Naomi knew everything was going to be fine. My woman was the baby daughter Pa had never held in his arms, but now he'd love this Naomi just as fiercely as he did his other three daughters.

* * *

We sent word we were coming, so both my aunts and all of their kids met us at the train station. It was quite a crowd, believe you me! Aunt Rebecca had four children and Aunt Phoebe had five, even though she was the younger of the two by better'n three years. With us five from the West, that made for a lot of seats at the supper table.

Pa waited a couple of days for things to settle down after we got there. Then, when Aunt Rebecca's kids offered to show us kids around a little, Ellis went along to represent us, but Camilla, Rachel, and me begged off so we could stay with Pa and his sisters in Aunt Rebecca's big, rambling, two-story house. It was gonna be a confrontation of sorts….

* * *

We were in the parlor, my sister Rachel and I were on a comfortable settee, facin' across the room to a long sofa where Pa sat with Camilla. My aunts, Rebecca and Phoebe were in individual chairs on either side of the sofa. With everything arranged to his satisfaction, Pa gave Camilla a tiny finger gesture to begin.

When Camilla braced her two aunts about what she'd seen, my two aunts were totally flummoxed. They turned about three shades of red, their breathing changed to gasps, and neither one of them knew what to do with their hands. Their fingers twined about one another fretfully as they tried to find a way to deflect Camilla's accusations. As time crawled on, Pa's sisters slowly turned pale as could be 'cause it was real clear to everyone there that they didn't really have a defense and our faces made it plain to those two sisters that the jig was up.

After a bit, they stopped trying to figure a way out of it, and they just burst into tears. I'm pretty sure they were certain their lives were over and they were going to be cast into the deepest, darkest dungeon—or at least ostracized from the family until the end of their days—somethin' like that..

They didn't see the twinkle in Pa's eyes. "…And it pains me to realize my very own sisters would ignore me, their loving older brother, and yet offer themselves to their younger brother...," Pa told his sisters after a bit.

That struck a chord with both sisters.

Aunt Rebecca stopped crying, dabbed at her eyes and stared intently at my Pa. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously when she saw he wasn't scandalized, nor vengeful, nor nothin' like that. Rachel an' I were smilin' actually. Aunt Rebecca saw that right off.

"What's going on here?" Aunt Rebecca asked slowly, looking from Pa, then Camilla, an' then at me an' Rachel. It was the first time Aunt Rebecca had met her niece's eyes for the longest while because Aunt Rebecca was thinking she was being shamed in front of the younger girl.

Camilla, though, was clearly not incensed in the least. In fact, her expression was just way too smug for words. For his part, my Pa was sitting at his ease atop the comfortable sofa, his left arm stretched across the back cushion and his hand kinda strokin' Camilla's right shoulder.

Aunt Phoebe stopped crying long enough to look at Rebecca in surprise. She took in the same things that her sister had seen and a calculating expression came over her face.

Pa waved a hand at where my sister Rachel was now sitting on my lap, and he grinned like a cat caught lapping up a saucer of cream.

Neither of my aunts saw anything at first, but then Rachel lifted the hem of her skirt off her legs to show them how far my hand was up her thighs ... actually inside her quim ... because my fingers were quite busy in her twelve and a half year old cunt. I grinned at my aunts' consternation and nodded pleasantly at them like there wasn't nothing in the whole world so natural as this for a brother and sister to be engaged in.

Well, sir ... my Aunt Rebecca, she was four years younger than my Pa, was on her feet in a flash and when Pa rose to meet her, she cold-cocked him with a hard right. She got some good speed on the punch, put her shoulder into it, and caught Pa unprepared. Pa's knees buckled and he sat back down a whole lot quicker'n he'd stood up.

"You sorry bastard!!" Aunt Rebecca spat viciously. "You near stopped my heart a' beatin'," she told him. "You ever do that again, and I'll put a knife in your ribs."

I knew right then that here wasn't nothing shy and retiring about any of the Richardson clan. I chuckled out loud, which I could tell irritated my Pa some, but I didn't pay him no never mind. It was funny! I never stopped stroking my fingers in and out of Rachel's pretty pussy lips. My little sister was likely to get irritated if I did that, an' I didn't want her to do me like Aunt Rebecca had just done Pa.

It took Pa a moment or two, but he was finally able to say, "It was payback for leaving me out, way back then," he whispered. He eyed his two angry sisters. "But I'm willing to call it evens, if it's all the same to y'all," he added respectfully ... and more than a little hopefully.

"YOU WAREN'T AROUND, YA DANGED IDJIT!!" Aunt Rebecca screamed at him in frustration. "How could we do it with you…?"

Which was true enough. He'd been out West with all a' us. Also, should Aunt Rebecca be talkin' about all the years a'fore that, I knew of Pa's travels and travails through the years, being an officer in the Union Army and taking all of us West and stuff like that. So he wouldn' a' been around way back then neither. Of course, Pa already knew that. He was just trying not to get walloped ag'in.

He got up and folded his hands in front of him. "Can ya please forgive your dear ol' brother?" he asked earnestly. "…An' not hit me any more?" he added.

Well, they did forgive him all of a sudden, and then they were suddenly awful contrite, ya might say. They didn't want their only remaining brother mad at 'em forever—not that he was. He just didn't want to get belted again.

Wilson, Pa's older brother, had been killed in the war and last year, his younger brother, Curtis, had died out west right after I found him and his kids. Heck, Pa was all the brothers they had left. Aunt Rebecca got over her mad real quick and her sister even faster.

Pa played his new-found status to the hilt, of course. He was touching here and there about his sisters' bodies too ... just checking to see if they'd changed their minds about doing naughty things with one of their brothers. It'd been a while Curtis had left home with his kids a few years to search for us. I guess Pa thought they might have decided to change their ways in the meantime.

Looked to me like they hadn't. They let Pa feel all he wanted to, and they touched him right back. So, the next step was...?

Well … I didn’t know how, or if, we were going to get to fornicatin’ and such … like they done with Curtis. I had in mind that what Aunt Phoebe and Aunt Rebecca had done had been with a brother … and what we'uns out west were doin' was a big step up the ladder from just brother an' sister sex. Heck, we had fathers doin' sex with their daughters, moms being with sons, and big ol' nekkid sex parties with ever'body invited were happenin' out in our hidden valley. I was a mite concerned the next step was goin' to be too much for my aunts.

Both sisters were widows and had been without their husbands for a very long time. That wasn't that uncommon in them years, particularly right after the 'War of Northern Aggression' (as they talked about it in this part of the country). Life was hard enough and there were a thousand ways a man could get himself killed even without whole armies and even less disciplined guerillas roaming about the countryside.

Nigh onto three hundred thousand young men in the southern states died on scores of battlefields and somethin' like a couple hundred thousand more were sorely wounded. Some of them came home minus limbs, or were too injured to work, and sometimes grotesquely scarred. A whole generation of southern men of military age—of marriageable age—was doubly decimated. Fact is, there were some who said more'n twenty-five percent of a' the south’s men in the prime a' life died durin’ the war. Aunt Rebecca and Aunt Phoebe didn't stand out much from all the other man-less women. My aunts were certainly comely enough, but so were lots of young Southern women.

Now ... to be factual, Aunt Rebecca's husband died of a fall from a horse that had nothing to do with the war. He wasn't actually in either Army at the time, but that didn't make him any less dead. Aunt Phoebe's husband drowned when a storm broke out at sea, right over a Union Navy transport he was on. His regiment was in route to reinforce General Sherman's army after Sherman's bummers took Savannah. The impact on the families of the regiment's dead, though, was the same as if both their loved ones had fallen in battle at Gettysburg or Chattanooga.

We sat around talking quietly while everyone got used to the idea of maybe doin’ some naughty, perverted things to adult brothers and sisters ... and between grown up sisters and their nephew—meaning me—too ... and between young brothers and sisters too. They could see my hands were still between Rachel's thighs and both my aunts were watching us closely.

Then my girl cousin, Camilla, kinda upped the ante, you might say. Brazen as all get out, Camilla climbed up on Pa's lap and his fingers were soon working at her cunt lips too ... so Pa's sisters could plainly see Pa, and at least one niece, heartily approved of sex between Uncles and young nieces too. It wasn't too much of a leap from there to assume Pa was doin' lots a' stuff the good parson down at the church wouldn't approve of—with Rachel, for one, an' prob'ly with all his daughters who hadn't come along on this trip.

So there were a lot of things for the sisters to take in right now, an’ some a' it was goin’ on right in front of them. Aunt Rebecca and Aunt Phoebe didn't know where to look next. Their faces were flushed—their eyes sparkled with suppressed excitement. Their hands fluttered around the tight collars of their blouses, then stroked their skirt-covered thighs, and ever'where in between. Neither of them could sit still.

After a while they loosened up a mite and we learned a little more about them. I think they were more willing to talk right then, mainly as a way of stalling ... to delay the moment when they'd be expected (?) to participate in the going's on right in front of them.

That was OK. Like that feller said a long time ago, a journey starts with only one little footstep. Things were clear to me—we'd all arrive where Pa was taking us sooner or later.

Some right interesting things came out during the family conversation we were in. For instance, after some hemming and hawing, we found out that some time back, Aunt Rebecca had turned to her oldest son, Theodore, for comfort and affection. She was lonely, and he was growin' up into a strong young man. With so many casualties in the South from the war, there were a plenty of lonely women in her predicament.

But when she recovered from the depths of her misery, she and Theodore kept on doing what they were doin' ... 'cause they thought it was danged good fun! Theodore had taken what he learned and taught his sister Frances ... and Frances saw that their little sister, Alice, and younger brother, Mitchell, were schooled in the lewd arts in their turn.

Then Aunt Rebecca's horny kids surprised their mother one mornin', and let her know her secret liaisons with Theodore were now going to be whole family party events, so to speak—they had taken a vote and they'd won, unanimously. It turned out, Aunt Rebecca's family had been doing this for nigh on to three years now, which got my respect. Pa's family, and our friends on the wagon train, had only been at it for right around two years. Too bad Pa hadn't made a pilgrimage home before we'd started West. I wondered what would have happened if he had.

Anyhow, nowadays Aunt Rebecca's and her kids were all sleeping together, everyone nekkid and ready for whoever and whatever. She told us all this in a voice that faltered from time to time, but she got through it. It was clear she wanted to know how it was I was fingering my sister and how that was OK with our Pa, but she just didn't quite manage to ask it. At the end though, I noticed her fingers were laying still in her lap. I didn't know if that meant her confession had given her some peace or not, but that seemed likely to me. There's a peace that comes to a body after getting something out that had been hidden for a long time—an' in the knowledge ya hadn't been havin' to hide it all along.

Aunt Phoebe listened carefully to her sister explaining all of this to Pa without saying a word. Her jaw dropped in shock early on and she swallowed hard a bunch of times, but she didn't say nary a word. Sometimes her hands twisted and worked against each other in her lap, and she quit watching what Pa and me were doing to the girls. I was afraid that meant there was going to be trouble.

"My God ... I thought I was the onliest one," Phoebe whispered when Rebecca stopped talking for a moment. Aunt Phoebe's hand clutching her blouse at the throat protectively and she wouldn't face anyone directly. When her words fell into the silence and no one said anything, she turned a bright crimson and started looking a little panicky.

"Oh?" I ventured softly, not wanting to push her away, but seeing a need for the hush to end. "Aunt Phoebe, looks to me like your sister Rebecca, and your brothers Frank and Curtis too, were all going down the same path, sounds like ... though none of them knew the others were doing the same thing at all. Is that how it seems to you?"

Aunt Phoebe hadn't cut and run yet, which many a prim and proper women would of done at the first words of Aunt Rebecca's confession, much less the admission Aunt Phoebe seemed to want to deliver herself, but hadn't quite begun yet.

Now, of course, we all knew Aunt Phoebe had fornicated with Curtis and her sister that one time ... at least that one time. It came to me that I didn't know for a fact that it was just the one time—and Camilla had chanced to see just that one time—or whether there'd been more that no one ever saw. Could a' been years an' years of sech things a happenin' here that Pa hadn't known nothin' about.

I figgered we'd kind of reached a major turning point in Aunt Phoebe's life. She'd fucked one brother, and she hadn't said yet about how she wisht she hadn't 'cause it was a bad thing to do.... An', then too, she hadn't leaped to her feet in horror at Aunt Rebecca's admissions neither. So....

"Have you been walking down the same path the rest of us have been travelin', Aunt Phoebe?" I asked gently. "It would have been a true Godsend if all of you brothers and sisters had been able to hold hands whilst you trod the same road, wouldn't it?" I was keeping my voice light and I think, very smooth. I didn't want to spook her.

Aunt Phoebe looked at me, and what Rachel and me were doin', and nerved herself to say what I could tell she needed to get it out in the open. She'd feel better when she did; I knew that.

"My boy Hugh and me," she said faintly. "He come to my bed two years ago ... and we—"

I didn't clap my hands in glee—would a' been real disrespectful—but she'd just said everything we really needed to hear. The rest was just filling in the gaps.

"Ahhhhhhh," Aunt Rebecca interjected softly, nodding her head. What her sister had said confirmed something that'd been in her mind.

"I was wondering about that," she said, almost cheerfully. "Sometimes, young Hugh acts like he's building fences around you, sister dear." She giggled happily. "He's so cute, working hard as he can to keep ever' unspoken-for man in town from comin’ to court you," Aunt Rebecca said saucily. "Now I know why!"

She chuckled, then frowned in thought. "But what about Nathan ... and the girls?"

Aunt Phoebe shook her head. "They don't know," she replied firmly.

Aunt Rebecca looked skeptical. "You mean Hugh hasn't been sniffing after that hot, little flirt of a girl, Lily, dear sister a' mine? Nor Irene, neither? What about young Nathan—has he…?" Aunt Rebecca looked out the window and tapped a fingernail on her front teeth, deep in thought. "That doesn't sound like a thing two healthy young boys would be passing up to me ... they share danged near everything else—"

"And, my boy Theodore already tol' me he'd love to get into twelve-year-old Lily's little cunt," she mused, "an he'd be all over Irene too, if he got the chance, by golly." She laughed.

"TARNATION, woman, by the time you was eleven, like Irene is now, you durn sure knew what parts on a boy you wanted to fit in to your girl parts." She was smiling broadly at Phoebe. "What makes you think your boys ain't been at your gals, eh? Boys ain't changed a heck of a lot since we was kids, you reckon?" She laughed again.

Aunt Phoebe looked like she wanted to run out of the house to get away from her older sister.

"HAH!!" Rachel snorted. "I bet Nathan ... heck, I bet all a' them know a whole heck of a lot more than you think they do," she said spiritedly to Aunt Phoebe. "Maybe even Lydia, too!"

"But Lydia's only nine!" Aunt Phoebe choked out. "She's only nine!"

"And just as cute as she can be," I said, breaking in, "…favors you a lot and that's a fact!" Aunt Phoebe didn't seem to know whether to be scandalized or flattered 'cause little Lydia really was cute as she could be and everyone knew she got her looks from her mother. I paused for a moment.

"There's a lot of you in her, I reckon, maybe more than you know. Aunt Rebecca says you knew about boys at eleven. Bet you started finding out a lot earlier, didn't you?"

Aunt Phoebe looked down at her lap, her face a bright red.

"So what if Nathan ... or Hugh ... has been doing some ... teachin' ... or somethin'?" I continued. "Or maybe Theodore been a goin' over an' visiting maybe…?"

"You want to know what I think? Aunt Rebecca interrupted. "I think Theodore would only do some teachin’ if ... HA! ... only if he got the chance by golly—an' I'll just bet he's grabbed that chance!" Aunt Rebecca said mischievously. She grinned evilly at her disbelieving sister.

There was a silence in the house. I looked at Pa speculatively, wondering how he was going to move Aunt Phoebe past this sticking point.

"HECK!! This is silly. I know how we can find out for a fact!" Rachel exclaimed loudly. She stood up and commenced undoing the petticoats she didn't like to wear anyway. She unbuttoned her blouse fast as I ever seen buttons undone, shrugged it off, and then worked what she wore in place of a chemise down her slender legs and off.

In a minute or two, she had her blouse back on, along with the plain grey skirt she wore and her Balmoral high heel boots. Now there was only a lot of creamy smooth girl-flesh beneath her outer clothing—no underclothing a tall. She didn't button back up the top couple of buttons on her blouse neither, so the upper slopes of her young breasts weren't that well concealed neither. All that was calculated to make her boy cousins loose some of their concentration and maybe tell young Rachel some things they wouldn't tell adults even if the adults threatened to take a strap to 'em.

Cousin Camilla beat my sister getting all her under clothes off by a couple of seconds—prob'ly because Rachel was slowed down by talkin'.

Rachel walked confidently to the door with her girl-cousin and paused a second. "Where's all them cousins a' mine likely to be, this time of day, Aunt Phoebe?" she demanded. "I bet everyone knows ... just stands to reason they do … and you just been a' thinking they was innocent lil lambs!" she said again, quite firmly this time. "But if they really are innocent like that, I still 'spect we can convince your boys and girls that they'd LOVE to join us heathens and come to a nekkid party with their cousins, uncles, and mothers too ... just like they was nasty, wicked, preverts like US!" she asserted.

She was grinning broadly. My sis was having fun.

Aunt Phoebe gave Rachel some ideas on where they might be by now. Her voice was slow and hesitatin', but she did not decline to say where they were. I thought that was a good thing—promisin' even!

Camilla and Rachel left—hurrying down the road like the wicked perverts Rachel'd confessed to being. They were eager to find Aunt Phoebe's kids ... and Aunt Rebecca's too ... so we could have a fine family fornicating party. No one really considered that they might not be inclined toward such things. I don't think even their mothers thought they wouldn't want to have a party like that. It just needed confirming.

Aunt Rebecca went to the pile of clothes Rachel left behind and picked up one of Rachel's undergarments. She held it up, thoroughly confused.

"That's a 'strophium’,” I told her, grinnin' broadly.

Pa's friend, Hiram, our general engineering expert in our settlement had studied the Roman civilization in great detail, beginning with their engineering accomplishments ... but he’d developed a fascination about all things Roman. So when his wife complained one day that her boobs were going to start sagging some day, he fixed her one of these things he fixed up from readin' about the Romans.

"It's to hold a woman's breasts so they don't start to droop," I told Aunt Rebecca. "It helps support them, kind of like a man's hands would hold them, ya know...? Soft ... an' ... gentle...."

Aunt Rebecca looked from the soft fabric contrivance to my face and back again. She held the thing up in front of her eyes to inspect it more closely. Then she lowered it to breast level, fitted it to herself and experimented with it. "Land's sake!" she murmured admiringly.

"They have to be made special for each woman," I offered, "since women have different sized boobs ... I think you'd have to have Hiram's wife make you a giant-sized one, Aunt Rebecca," I said respectfully.

"Who's Hiram?" Aunt Rebecca asked, distractedly, her thoughts still with the cloth device in her hands. "I want one of these!" she said firmly, practically fondling the strophium-like garment. "I want lots of them," she said enthusiastically.

"Hiram is a friend of Pa's back in our settlement, and his wife lives with him," I said, none too helpfully. But I'd had a sneaky thought it would be a good thing to get my aunts to be thinking about our new society in our settlement out West. This was a starting point.

My Pa wanted to move things along a different path so he changed the subject. He caught my eyes and nodded his head toward his sister, Rebecca.

"Jeremiah," he said with mock solemnity, "I think your Aunt Rebecca has something she'd like to give you."

I took Pa's suggestion, walking toward my aunt without even a trace of hesitation. "Can that be true, Aunt Rebecca?" I asked with a smile. "Is there a gift you might have for me?"

Her eyes widened. A flush started up her neck and turned her ears scarlet before it was done. She swallowed hard and darted a glance at Pa.

Pa had drawn Phoebe up from her chair and tight against him. He was nuzzling her neck, nipping at her earlobes, and working his way in to a good solid first kiss from her. It wasn't too hard to figger out what he was getting ready to do.

"You ... you can't mean...?" Aunt Rebecca (I was gonna start callin' her Aunt Becky here directly) stared at me—don't know why she was lookin' at me, but maybe it helped her kinda ignore what Pa was doing with her body.

“...Right here? ... Right now? The kids will be back soon...." Aunt Becky moaned.

"An' your kids have seen you nekkid before, haven't they?" I asked quietly, letting my eyebrows rise. I smiled too.

I did not say her kids had seen her fucking before too ... and had fucked her, in fact. Heck, she'd just admitted they had to us. She got the message though. She threw Pa another look. He had Phoebe's chin tilted up for a kiss.

"We're just going to get a head start a'fore they get back," I said with a smile. "OK?"

She didn't refuse. She saw Pa and Phoebe discussing something. Phoebe was still hesitating.

My belly was touching Aunt Rebecca and the nipples of her big, soft breasts were boring a hole in my chest—I put my big hand on Aunt Rebecca's cheek. My fingers urged her forward for her first nephew kiss.

She was tentative at first but then parted her lips. In a minute, she was sucking at my tongue and darting her own tongue back at me.

"You have a lot of nephews, Aunt Rebecca, who would be wishing they were me right now, if they only knew," I told her. "My brothers out West will be jealous they didn't come with us to see y'all," I murmured. Step two in getting her to think about the opportunities out West.

She stared into my eyes to see if I was jokin'. When she saw I wasn't, she turned a little flirty on me. "Maybe ... maybe me ‘an Phoebe will just have to come visiting some day," she said coquettishly, looking up at me from beneath her long eyelashes.

"They would love that!" I said emphatically.

She hesitated. "But what about their wives? Didn’t your Pa say a while ago your older brothers're married?"

I chuckled. "Aunt Rebecca, I promise … I'll keep their wives busy so you can spend some ... naked time ... with your nephews, an' your nieces, too, OK?"

"I'll ... I'll look forward to it," she responded, albeit a trifle faintly. I admit it. This 'twas a lot to take in all to once. We stopped talking for a spell, kissing and touching each other. "Shouldn't you stop calling me 'Aunt Rebecca'," she remarked, "considering you're in the midst of seducing me...?"

I laughed. "Auntie," I said to her in a confiding tone, "Am I seducing you? Or are we just expanding our horizons a mite ... hmmmmmmm?"

I kissed her again and she strained against me which is a bunch better than being pushed away. "Besides," I murmured, "calling you 'Aunt Rebecca' makes it just that much more deliciously wicked ... an’ nasty ... perverted...."

She considered it for a moment while our tongues dueled. "Call me Becky ... Aunt Becky," she said thickly. That was a real meetin' of the minds, so to speak.

I busied my fingers unfastening her blouse buttons one at a time and then undid her chemise to bare her breasts. I turned her around and slid my hands around the smooth flesh over her ribs. "The strophium would hold your breasts like...." Instead of explaining again, I cupped her big breasts in my hands and massaged them gently.

"Beautiful...," I murmured to her and turned her back around so I could lean in and suckle at her boobs for a moment. Her nipples sprang up even harder and grew about as thick as the end of my forefinger, dark red and just beggin’ for attention. I twirled them between my thumbs and fingers, coaxing them to even greater erection.

"Ungh! Ungh! Ungh! Ungh! Ungh! Ungh!" Playing with her privates made my Aunt Becky pant like a steam engine. I grinned to myself; clearly aunts heated up just like other women did.

I chuckled happily. "Aunt Becky?" I asked in a sly tone. "You're my first … my very first Aunt that I've ever, ever done this with!" I assured her. She grinned, just as slyly, right back at me.

I unbuttoned Aunt Becky's skirt, reaching around her body to find the fastenings, while she undid my belt and trouser buttons. Once a certain point was reached—an' we'd mostly already gone past that place—she was more than ready to engage in sex. She'd just needed a little convincin' beforehand. When her hand grasped my cock, I was sure she was on the right path.

Her skirt gone, I eased Aunt Becky down on the sofa and relieved her of her smallclothes and then her boots and stockings. For this first time, I wanted her naked as she could be. Evidently Aunt Becky wanted me the same way, 'cause she took the time to slip to her knees and take my pants and boots off for me.

I waited, wonderin'....

She looked up in my eyes, not sure if she should or not.

"I took a bath just this mornin'," I told her with a smile. That was enough to get past the hesitation.

"So did I," she retorted with a smile. Rising on her haunches, Aunt Becky took my johnson in hand and fed it between her lips for a nice long 'get acquainted' suck.

"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!" I sighed. "Aunt Becky ... you can keep doing that for the rest of the month if ya want to, but I had something else in mind...."

She chortled around the thickness of my shaft, and had to come up for air when laughing caused her to choke. She gave the very tip of my prick a quick peck an', still holding on, she walked backward to the sofa and sat down.

She scooted her butt right up to the edge of the bottom cushion, and in another moment, she was holding me by the back of my head while I plastered my mouth against her pussy lips. I set to work a sucking at her clitoris and lapping up and down her cunt.

"Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Oh my God, Jeremiah!!" she sighed. "Soooooooooooo goooooood!!"

Which pleasured me no end. I sure wanted to make Aunt Becky's first time with someone in the family outside her own children something really nice for her. So I redoubled my efforts.

"OOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" she moaned loud enough to draw her sister and brother's attention from the love seat across the room. Pa chuckled and even Aunt Phoebe let a crystalline little titter escape her lips.

"Jeremiah," Aunt Becky said in a strangled voice. Holding my head back away from her cunt lips, she swallowed hard and tried to say somethin’.

"Jere!" I told her. "Jeremiah's too danged long."

"Jere, then ... sugar ... didn't you say you had something else in mind...?" she asked desperately.

"I do!" I assured her. "But are you sure...?"

"Oh, I'm certain sure...," she said with as much composure as she could manage. She cleared her throat nonchalantly ... but it didn't fool no one.

I could hear Pa chuckling again behind me. I turned around with a grin to see he'd advanced his enticement of my Aunt Phoebe into more family sex. His bare cock was laying in her hand and she was stroking it back and forth. There was no distress in her expression, but she seemed to be holding off getting to the next stage.

"Aunt Phoebe?" I said. "Will you toss me that throw pillow right there ... yeah, that one ... thanks ... I want to fuck your sister's cunt and the sofa seat is just a trifle too high!!"

A shocked expression crossed her face, but it faded quickly. She grinned as she tossed the pillow at me, but didn't say anything.

I put the pillow under my knees, and in a bit, my cockhead was pushing past Aunt Becky's outer labia and smoothly in deeper. It felt deliciously hot, wicked, and nasty for me to be fucking my auntie in this way ... right in front of her brother, who she hadn’t fucked yet, and her little sister who was in the process of working herself up to the fine fucking I knew Pa could throw on 'er.

Aunt Becky was a full-grown woman, for all that she was five or so inches shorter'n me. So I didn't have to hold myself back none. Her cunt could take me easily and I plunged deep inside her.

She'd been slouching on the sofa seat, the back a' her head propped up on the back cushion, but when I thrust smoothly all the way inside, she grabbed on to whatever fabric she could get to on the sofa seat's cushion and just did what she could to hold on.

"ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGG!!"

I pulled my hips back and drove back in, holding Aunt Becky by her buttcheeks. Her flesh was smooth as silk and hot to the touch. I reached up and tweaked a nipple.

She jerked, then mashed my hand against her breast. "Jeremiah-Jere—baby," she babbled, "you're killing me ... nephew. You're ... Oh my God ... Jere...."

Seemed to me like Aunt Becky'd been holding something inside or for her to get this heated up so quick-like. Maybe she'd been keyed up since Camilla had first started bearing witness against her? Well, anyways, I didn't hold off ramming my cock in her faster and faster into her slippery vagina.

"ANGH! ANGH! ANGH! ANGH! ANGH! ANGH! ANGH! ANGH! ANGH!" she grunted, in time to me slamming my cock into her again and again.

I shot a look back at Pa and Aunt Phoebe. He had his hand under her skirts while she watched us intently. The grin on my face broadened. I was sure it was as wide as my face was.

"Yeeeeeee-haaaaaaaaaaaa!!" I crowed, just to show how much fun this all was.

In another minute, Aunt Becky had her hands clamped to the points of my hips, doing her best to drag me in deeper while her heels drummed and kicked at my backside to get me movin' faster and harder.

"UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!! UNGHH!" Aunt Becky bleated, her face all red and scrunched up in a mask of concentration that almost looked like she was in pain. "AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" she squealed. "JERE!!!! BABY!!! NEPHEW!!!! FUCKKKKKKKKK MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"

Well, I gave her what she wanted. I rammed my prick in her again and again, just as deep and fast as I could. This was for Aunt Becky, so I didn't even try to come myself.

In seconds, her head was throwed back and her eyes tight shut. The intense look on her face grew more strained ... and then she gave up. Her hands dropped away from my hips and she stopped squirming around on the sofa.

"Annnnnnhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…," she sighed loudly, settling back on the sofa cushions. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, God ... Jere!!!!"

I chuckled, pleased with myself at how I'm made her come so hard.

She moaned a quick little cry as a late tremor knifed through her and took her attention back again. She had to work hard to get her throat working again.

"Don't you laugh at me, you ... you young scalawag!" she whispered, swatting at my forearms. She giggled at herself. "Oh God, honey, that was good," she whimpered.

It was several moments before her body was ready for me to move again but eventually I withdrew from her sheath and sat down beside her on the sofa, trying to keep from dribbling any of our juices off my cock onto the seat cushion.

"So," I asked Aunt Becky, "what do ya think of nephew-fuckin', eh?"

She looked at me from under those long lashes of hers. "I think I'm going to need a lot more of it," she said in a voice just steaming with hot promise and invitation. “Lots more...," she drawled, smiling at no one in particular.

* * *

Me'n Aunt Becky were laying on the sofa lengthwise with me behind her. I was propped up on my left elbow and my prick was probing though her firm, creamy-smooth thighs. I was thinking she might be about ready for her second go-round with Nephew Jere.

Pa had finally coaxed Aunt Phoebe into letting her guard down and they were fuckin’ happily on the settee across the room. I think it had really been something that was going to happen anyway, 'cause Aunt Phoebe had been too willing to smile at me while I was fucking Aunt Becky ... and she never once asked Pa to back off. She just wanted to take it real slow, and maybe have my Aunt Becky out ahead of her. Who knows?

Anyway, Aunt Phoebe was finally nekkid as the day she was born and if I was her, I'd stay nekkid all day long, ever' day of the week. She was a hot, very fine looking woman with nice breasts—not as big as Aunt Becky's—but round, firm, and a wonderful handful for Pa. Aunt Phoebe had her hands braced on the arm of the love seat, bent over so her back was near horizontal, and Pa was taking her in a doggie style fuck. Ever' time his groin smacked into her backside, it set Aunt Phoebe's boobies to bouncing and sloshing around somethin' fierce.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggg!!!!" Aunt Phoebe had been keening a high-pitched little whine for a while now. Her doubts about all this had been left behind about the time Pa twisted her nipples gently between his thumbs and forefingers. She was getting less bashful all the time too. She was humping back at Pa, pushing his cock back in her before much of it appeared outside her pussy lips. When they started, Aunt Phoebe kept trying to edge her body around so as to conceal as much as she could from Aunt Becky and me. She was having a fine ol' time now, though, and she wasn't even tryin' to pretend she wasn't sure she wanted to do this.

My cock bumped into Aunt Becky's ass a couple of times and I wasn't sure how to read her reaction. She didn't pull away ... but neither did she seem to encourage the contact.

So I took my prick in my right hand and deliberately pushed it in her nether hole just a mite. She couldn't misread that!

She didn't pull away. In fact, she squirmed her ass back at me slowly, sensuously.

I cleared my throat. "You know, we could—for our second time—do a little ass fuckin', Aunt Becky, my love ... lots a' women like to feel a man back there...."

She slapped my right thigh. "Teach your grandmother to suck eggs!" she retorted. "I been doing butt-fucking since afore you was born," she told me.

"I'd sure like to hear about your first time at butt-fuckin', Aunt Becky," I said respectfully. "Actually, we'd all like to hear about your first ... heck, your first at just about ever'thin'," I told her interestedly.

She flopped over on her back and looked me in the eyes to see if I was funning her, but she quickly saw I was completely serious.

"Well ... we'll see," Aunt Becky. "Sometime ... not now ... hmmmmmmmmmmm ... I want to go clean myself up so you can...."

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!"

She squealed 'cause I had my hands behind her ass an’ I was liftin’ her up and pushin’ her off the sofa quicker than she'd intended to move. Her lovely, rounded ass thumped down on the rug and she turned around, ready to be cross about it.

I met her lips with a long kiss and somewhere in the middle of it, she forgot she was vexed with me. "OK, ahhhhh ... go clean myself," she said, reminding herself about what was pending.

She looked at me closely for a moment. "I surely do wish your father and us had stayed in closer touch while you were growing up, Jeremiah Richardson," she commented. "I guarantee you … you would have had a swift introduction into the mysteries of the carnal arts," she said with a thoroughly lascivious glint in her eyes.

I smiled. "Aunt Becky, had we been closer ... 'stead a living half-way 'cross the state ... I'd a never gotten mixed up with young Agnes Porter 'cause I'd a been a sight better off learning with you and Aunt Phoebe." I paused. "An' I durn sure wouldn't a been messing with her mother!"

Aunt Becky cocked her head to one side and her tongue flicked out to lick at her ruby red lips. " Who is…? Ah … Jeremiah Richardson—" she began.

"You tell us some of your 'first times' and I'll tell some of mine!" I told her.

She thought about it for almost a whole second, her eyes dancing naughtily.

"Deal!" she said, holding out her hand for a quick shake. I pulled on her hand and gathered her in my arms for a nice long kiss. The feel of her big breasts flattening out against my chest was a wonderful thing.

Then I let her up, pretending to push her away. "Now be gone, wench!" I said sternly. "Cleanse thyself as thy wouldst"—I'd read somethin' like them words in a book back a' fore we went West—"and hurry, wench! So we couldst press on with the fucking of yon fine ass," I finished.

"Does he always talk like that?" I heard Aunt Phoebe ask Pa.

"Almost never," Pa replied gravely, "for which we give thanks ever' Sunday," he added.

I laughed happily, 'cause all this was great fun. I was nekkid; I'd just give a fine fucking to a lusty, sensuous woman, and I was looking forward to a great ass-fuck in a few minutes.... My goodness—what sixteen-year-old boy wouldn't positively know he was in heaven? Aunt Becky beat a hasty retreat before I revived more of my of my pitifully small store of old English.

I got up on my feet and stretched a little, and I saw Aunt Phoebe watching ever' move I made. I grinned at her and walked over to watch Pa fucking her from close at hand. Then I bent over, tilted her face upward and kissed her on the lips.

"I really do wish I could a' learned the arts of bawdiness and licentiousness from you and Aunt Becky," I told her sincerely. "Where would a feller find any finer teachers than his lovely, considerate ... and wanton … aunts?"

I laughed ... and she laughed with me.

Balancing herself on just her right hand while Pa pounded her from behind, she took my cock in her left hand, and fed my prick right into her mouth. I looked Pa in the eyes and grinned. Aunt Phoebe was coming around just fine!

An' that's the ‘xact moment the door came flying open and Aunt Phoebe's oldest son, Hugh, came busting in the door with Rachel close behind him. The sight of his naked mother bent over an arm of the sofa by her brother and being fucked hard while she sucked her nephew's prick was astonishin', I know. Phoebe's tits were swinging and bouncing wildly in time to the slamming she was getting from behind and the wild look in her eyes was even more unnerving to young Hugh. She was clearly loving what was happening to her … BUT she wasn't doin' it with him!

The thoroughly astounded look on Hugh's face quickly changed into wounded jealousy. Cousin Hugh was fixing to cloud up and rain all over this parade.

"Hey!" he protested. "What...?"

"Cousin Hugh, honey, looks to me like they're doing pretty much just what you just told me you been doing to your sister Lily, doesn't it?" Rachel asked sweetly, interrupting the first stage of Hugh's gathering anger. She'd just slipped around him as he stood, shocked to the core, in the doorway. "Didn't you just this minute tell me things you’ve been doin’ with her, honey?" she pointed out. Her eyebrows were arched high.

It took Hugh aback, made him reconsider his little spell of mad, and that instant of rational thought derailed him ... and right when he was ready to work himself up to a righteous rage too.

"What? Well ... I ... yeah ... well...." He searched for some words to express himself ... but he didn’t know what to say. "Well ... they might a' waited...," he said finally, resentment loud in his tone.

"HORSE SHIT!" Rachel snorted. It shocked Hugh into silence.

Rachel had come in with Hugh but she'd put her time to better use than staring at my Pa slamming his cock into Aunt Phoebe's cunt and her servicing me with her mouth. In fact, Rachel was all but nekkid already, having dropped her skirt and blouse to the floor and was standing there in her Balmorals and about three acres of creamy smooth teenage girl flesh. She marched up to Hugh 'til her bare, apple-sized breasts pressed against his chest. She took Hugh's hands and put them on her titties.

"Wait?" Rachel continued. She sounded outraged. "WAIT?? Let me get this straight. Hugh ... you mean ‘wait’ like you and me are going to 'wait' for your brother to get here ... and all of your cousins right behin' them?" she asked scornfully. "Is that really what you want to do, cousin Hugh?" she said scornfully. "Or would you like to stick that thing of yours in a nice ... hot ... steamy cunt ... right now?"

"I...." Hugh didn't know what to say. But the fact that he had his hands on a gorgeous, naked, and thoroughly willing young woman was making an impression on his sensibilities.

"Yeah ... I didn't think so!" Rachel said sardonically. She'd read his evaporating resentment and knew she had him now.

She dragged young Hugh to the sofa where Aunt Becky and I had copulated so very recently and pulled the young man down on top of her. A minute later, my cousin Hugh didn't know his mother was even in the same room with him, much less was he put out because of what she was doin'. He was that intent on what Rachel was doing to his cock with her tight young pussy.

Turned out, Aunt Phoebe's kids hadn't been that far away from where Aunt Becky's were. Rachel had organized them all into an extended family meeting where all manner of information got passed bluntly around—and in very short time. Turned out, neither group of cousins had had any idea the other group was sexually involved with their mothers, sisters, and brothers. It didn't dismay anyone; it was just that each group of cousins was surprised the other was that adventuresome—they hadn't thought the other group of cousins were up to it.

Rachel had been right, of course. Phoebe's kids were going at it just like Aunt Becky's.

Hugh had been in a heat to get back to his mother and Rachel had run right along with him, taking a shortcut the others apparently didn't know. Maybe Rachel had seen something in Hugh's demeanor, or maybe she just wanted first crack at him ... I never asked. The important thing was that she saved all of us from what could of been a nasty scene ... though I'm sure it would have all worked out in the end anyway.

Everyone else was a few minutes behind Hugh and Rachel ... but in a few minutes, Camilla and Ellis came running with a passel of excited, bright-eyed kids. Another minute and all them cousins and sisters and brothers were nekkid and pairing up someone else for some hot, nasty, and thoroughly taboo family-style fornicatin'.

Hugh's attitude quickly changed to a more mellow acceptance of his mother's sexuality by the time the sun was goin’ down and the next few days went very, very well. He was more than pleased to find his Aunt Becky, in particular, was wickedly wanton and randy as a rabbit.

After being introduced to the idea of enemas, lubrication, and butt fucking, Hugh actually wound up fucking his mother's ass one afternoon while his brother, Nathan, took her cunt and Aunt Becky's nine-year-old son fucked Aunt Phoebe's mouth. From the look of things, all parties were well satisfied.

It lit a fire under my other aunt too. After seeing Phoebe get taken in all three holes, Rebecca had to get the same treatment. Both aunts extolled the virtues of butt fucking to their daughters … at length.

An' so it went. I recollect we didn't leave the house for four solid days.

CHAPTER TWENTY

My Aunts' families took a vote about whether they should move West with us. Well, actually they just looked at each other for nigh on to half a second when the question was put to them ... and then they broke out gigglin'.

None of them had any doubt about wanting to come back with us out into the wild frontier. That night, all of my cousins, aunts, and us westerners lay around the living room, talking about who all was in our settlement out by the far mountains, how old they was, and how much they liked to fuck, who they liked to fuck ... and all sorts of equally vital information.

There was a lot of land and possessions my Aunts had to dispose of, though, and it took longer than anybody figgered it would. Danged lawyers would rather spend all day talking about whether a period or a comma should go where, and what was that question mark doing there, two paragraphs later ... such fool stuff as that.

In the process, Pa discovered his sisters had been lookin’ after some land that was rightly his, and a house too, up in what was now West Virginia that Pa hadn't even known about. It had been bequeathed to my Pa by his father, but he hadn't been around. The sisters had took care of it in Pa's name, but now he was here….

Pa had to go up there, get a clean title, and then see to selling it, 'cause he had no intention of ever coming back to this side a' the Mississippi. He walked out of the lawyer’s office up there with the title in his pocket, went to get a quiet shot of whisky and fell in with a man who knew that property ... and wanted it somethin' terrible. Pa came back to his sisters' homes with considerably more funds than he'd started out with.

For some jointly owned property down in the Carolinas, Pa and both his sisters went down to Columbia to see if a deed they needed had survived the fire in the courthouse from when Gen'l Sherman's Army come through. It took Pa and our aunts a solid week down there—or at least they said it did. Personally, I think the three spent those days making up for lost brother-sister fucking time.

* * *

Come one Sunday afternoon while they were gone, all of us cousins seemed to have a different idea of what to do for entertainment. The first flush of fucking whenever and whoever they wanted—that’d died down a mite, and my aunts' kids were in a mood to start saying goodbye to friends they'd known all their lives.

One group of us took off down to the town and two other groups of cousins went off in other directions. Me and my sister Rachel, and our cousin Camilla, along with Becky's oldest boy, Theodore, wandered into town to see what we could see and get some supplies from the store too. We stopped to get the vittles first. With a sack full of a big haunch of beef from the butcher shop, some salt, a few cans of peaches from the general store, and a few other things, we found ourselves walking down the rough-planked sidewalk of the old southern town.

What we were a doin' this afternoon was really strange to me. I'd never actually paid hard money before for many of any of the things we had in that sack. My family had always shot their own meat ... and salt was a thing you got from natural outcrops and chipped off what you needed. Peaches, now—them canned ones in that heavy, sweet syrup—they was about the only thing we couldn't get enough of out West. I was looking forward to opening a can or two of them when we got back to the house.

It was a nice afternoon and the town folks were strolling the sidewalks in their best Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, and we were dressed nice too. Me and Theodore—he really wanted to be called Ted, so we did—were watching all the town girls and women promenading past us and Camilla and Rachel were enjoying the sight of new and as yet, untasted men coming by.

Ted and me had the best of it though. With nigh on to one man in four a casualty of the late war 'tween the states, this town had more women strolling along—unescorted—than there were men, which was just fine with me!

And as we sauntered along, we watched all of those prim and proper ladies—and some who weren't quiet so prim, nor proper—and the few gents and smiled at those we met coming toward us on the boarded walk, and those across the street who caught our eye. It was a little exciting; 'cause we were wondering who of those stuffy strolling people could be talked into some wild fornicatin'. We were so wicked. But it was really fun.

"There sure are a lot of little kids here," Rachel said, standing on her tiptoes and whispering in my ear. "Where do they all come from?"

"If you don't that by now...," I shot back. She slapped my arm for my impertinence ... hard!

I stuck out my tongue at her. "From wives who fucked their man good and hard and made him come in their cunts, and then they got to be mothers," I said softly, inclining my head close to hers. After glancing around to see if anyone was near enough to hear, I continued. "And those mothers over there...." I pointed a some women with more than one child “...got fucked again and again an'...."

She slapped at me again, but I was too quick for her this time. I corralled both her hands and held them for a moment. I grinned in her face. "Lots and lots of mothers," I said. "All fucking their men ... or their brothers ... or their Daddies ... or maybe they're like Aunt Becky and Aunt Phoebe...." I was almost working myself into a lather now. "How many, you reckon, of those mothers over 'cross the street would fuck their sons if the opportunity presented itself?" I asked, lowering my voice to almost a growl. "Or their nephews or brothers? OR, are they already doin' it?"

"Don't know," Rachel murmured interestedly. "How could we tell?"

"Don't know, neither," I admitted. I looked back across the street. I motioned at the four full-grown women in a cluster in front of a store directly opposite us, "but over yonder there's a bunch of mothers that I'd like to fuck right here and now!"

"Just be sure to bring home a brother—or father—or-son—or nephew or whatever ... for sister," she retorted tartly.

I had to admit that was only fair. If brother got to fuck, sister should too. We grinned at each other.

There was a woman walking our way with a baby in her arms. She was with another girl who favored the young mother a lot, but she was probably too old to be a daughter. There was one really ugly older man with 'em. As they passed, I smiled into the woman's eyes and she smiled right back ... and so did the girl walking beside her. I was encouraged by the heat of their glances. So....

I took a look at the man with them and I saw his eyes were locked on the Richardson girls' Balmoral-clad feet and ankles, to say nothing of their shorter-than-average skirts.

Them Balmorals ... laced up high-heeled boots ... were popular as a way of hiding a woman's ankles, which weren't supposed to be seen in them days. But I'm thinking the shape of those well-made, kind of slinky, black boots actually drawed attention to that region rather than discouraged it. They sure got his attention.

And so we walked past each other, Ted and me smiled at the two females while they smiled at us and I saw Rachel catch the man's eyes and hold them. She swished her skirts at him and grinned mischievously. Clearly, I wasn't the only one wondering if this just might be the way folks wanting a fornicating good time found each other.

I was sure this was an opportunity ... but they passed by without speaking a word ... and so did we. Somebody should do somethin'....

When I turned on my heel, I saw the older man hustling the womenfolk away, throwing a nasty look over his shoulder at us. I suspected this feller was too jealous of what he had to even think of sharing an evening with us.

So I doffed my brand new 'Boss of the Plains" hat from Mr. Stetson's Philadelphia factory that I'd only bought three days a'fore, raised it in a mock greeting high above my head and smiled at him.

Oh, alright ... I smirked right in his face. Both the girls and Ted snickered 'cause they'd seen the same light in those two female's eyes I had and we were all young enough to enjoy being impertinent to a crusty, scowling older man.

I planted my left foot and started to turn back around to walk with Rachel and the others, but when I turned, there was a young girl right in front of me, only a couple of feet away. If I'd a stepped off, I'd of smacked right into her so I stopped and spun back the other way, grabbed on to a post and used it as an anchor to fling myself around the post, twisting my body off the boardwalk and right out over the street. I managed not to stumble or hurt myself none.

Once I landed back on the boarded walkway, the young girl was again right in front of me. She'd been understandably startled by my abrupt maneuver and had turned in place to see what I was up to. My hat was still in my right hand so I swept my forearm across my belly, put a foot forward and made the only bow I'd ever done that felt natural—prob'ly 'cause I didn't have time to think about it. When I came up I was looking into the shocked features of a small girl who'd clapped a hand across her mouth in surprise.

"I am so sorry, Mademoiselle," I said respectfully. "Can you ever forgive me?"

Big green eyes in a lightly freckled face watched me for an instant ... then she dropped her hand and giggled. "You're funny!" she quipped.

I assumed a wounded expression.

"You ought to see him when he's shavin'" Rachel commented from the side. The little girl's gaze flicked up to Rachel's face and then back to me.

"My sister is so cruel to me," I commented, just to explain who Rachel was to me; don't know why, but it seemed to be the right thing to do. "I'm Jeremiah Richardson," I said, eyeing this young lady plus the other two girls with her, and four boys in their group too. All the girls were better'n average cute and I could tell from Rachel and Camilla's faces that the boys were too.

I had to rely on their observations and reactions in such things. I actually had no idea. What made a man attractive to a woman was a complete mystery to me, but the two girls Ted and I had come to town with us seemed to approve of these boys.

"I'm Rhonda," the little girl said spiritedly, pulling my attention back to her. She was smiling broadly. Her round little face was framed by a proper little bonnet, but I could see strands of auburn hair that sneaked out the bottom on the sides. Her lips were as full and soft-looking as many a girl much older, though I reckoned she stood not much over four an' a half feet tall.

She curtsied prettily. "I forgive you," she said gravely, but her eyes were dancin'. She was pleased with the attention she was getting and happy to engage someone in conversation.

Well, sir, we Westerners got to talking with them, standing right there on the walk and my intentions changed from wanting to fuck some of the more matronly women I'd been watching all around. I was now intent on just enjoying being around some young girl folk.

Ever'body got introduced all aroun'. They were headed in the opposite direction we were, but we turned right around and went with them, walking slowly down the boarded walk toward the far edge of town. Somewhere along the way, Rachel, or maybe it was Camilla, wheedled an invitation from one of the boys to accompany them to a 'nice place' a few miles out of town.

I played like I didn't see the youngest boy in their group give a dirty look to the one who'd made the offer. I wondered why he was unhappy, but his face soon cleared. Presently, we sauntered out of the town and into some low hills. This part of Tennessee seemed to me to be all up one side of one hill or another, and then down the other side. There were danged few level spots. Anyways, the settled area around the town was soon lost to view. It was quieter out here too; the hills cut off what little noise there was coming from the Sunday afternoon village streets.

They led us through a good sized forest, an' up and down a few hills, 'til we come up on a little valley with a wide, grassy meadow next to an old mill pond. They said nobody ever came up that way anymore, and the cautioned us—very serious they was—not to tell anyone about it. I could understand why ... I'd a' tried to keep that lush, green pasture a secret my own self.

There were some mighty tall pecan trees dotting the landscape and the biggest of them stood right beside the old mill itself. It was clear why the mill was no longer a working concern; the water flowing in the stream was nowhere near enough to move the big wheel. In fact, the creek itself was no more than a few yards wide and probably not over a couple feet deep now. The current was slow, just moving enough to keep the water in the old mill pond reasonably clean 'stead of it turning everything into a soggy marsh.

There was a low stone wall on the other side of the building that hinted a good road had been there at one time, but it didn't look like it had been used in many a year. A short distance away, there was even an old unkempt apple orchard and it looked to me like there were apples ready for a still-growing young feller like me to pick.

It was a thoroughly pleasant place. No wonder the one boy had given his pal a nasty look before. It was a place worthy of being kept secret.

They'd been here before ... plenty of times, apparently. The boys went right to the old mill house and came back with a couple stacks of old blankets and commenced to spreading them around under the tallest pecan tree for everyone to sit or lay on. Real good thinking, I figgered. Made me wonder a bit, but the idea that was growin' in my mind slipped right out of my head before I could examine it closely.

My sister, Rachel, and my cousin Camilla put their heads together with the older two of the other girls and they all came to a decision. Right where they stood, they all sat and took off their boots, and then their stockin's too, so they could walk around barefooted.

I'm sure those lace-up Balmorals (what with the heels being as high as they were) made it a chore walking around in the thick grass and uneven ground. 'Sides, my sisters all liked being bare of foot. It sure didn't bother me none.

Since my sister and Camilla had skirts on that were a mite shorter than the usual (them Balmorals would normally cover up their feet, ankles and some of their calves), the Richardson girls were showing those boys a little more skin than they normally got to see on girls. I didn't notice any of the boys particularly scandalized—an' they shore didn't object none.

Turned out the four boys and three girls were from an orphanage. I knew there was such a place, out a ways on this side of town, but I'd never ventured out far enough to have seen it before. Camilla allowed as how she was an orphan too, but that my Pa had taken her and her siblings in. I could see that made Camilla one of them in their eyes. Since me, Ted, and Rachel were Camilla's cousins, we were OK too.

While everyone was talking and lazing around, I got up on my hind legs and started wandering around. The other kids said no one ever come up this way, but I thought I'd kind of scout around to see if I could find some tracks that would tell me yes or no. I made a circle around the mill house, looking up at the big water wheel and all around just to see what I could see.

The old mill building itself was impressive in its own right. It was built of native stone set together with a fine precision one didn't always see. 'Massive' and 'solid' were the two notions that came to me standing there a looking at it. Built to withstand weather an' the ground a movin' even … and built to be there a long time too. Whoever had owned this mill had planned to expand someday too. There were some piles of slate rock off by one corner ready for whatever construction was to come.

I liked it ... I liked it a lot. I was glad we'd come up here with the kids. Right then and there, I resolved that I would build with stone when I built the home I had planned for me and my woman.

I found some strange sign over by the side of the old stone house that I couldn't quite figger out at first. Just some hand prints and stuff ... nothing of any concern. All the tracks were several weeks old ... the edges were crumbling and getting kind of blurred, but they'd been made soon enough after a rain—otherwise the ground would a' been too hard to take an impression that would have lasted this long. The traces were decaying, but had been stamped deeply into the soil. I wondered how long it'd been since the last storms come through.

I wandered on while I puzzled over what I'd seen. Making a big circle around the meadow, I couldn't find any hint that any grown men or women had ever come around. There were no hobnailed boot tracks or nothin', which reassured me somewhat. Didn't look to me like we'd be surprised by any reprobates sneaking around.

There were plenty of footprints though, bare feet—small bare feet. I looked at the group of kids under the big pecan tree and grinned. Going barefoot wasn't nothing new to them. Looked like they always got out of their boots and shoes just about as quick as they could once they got here. I went back to the trail we'd followed coming up here.

"Whatcha doin'?"

I turned to find young Rhonda standing there, smiling brightly up at me. She'd taken off the confining bonnet along with her shoes and let her hair down too; I could see it fell down to nigh the middle of her back. The overall effect was to make her look more mature than the nine-and-a-half years she had said was her actual age. From what I could see of her lower legs, she had nicely curved calves that smoothed down to delicate little ankles ... a very pretty little girl....

"Looking for sign," I told her, taking all that in with a fast glance; I was trying not to be obvious.

She was confused. She looked all around. "You mean like that?" she asked pointing at the long side of the mill house. The long-gone proprietor had painted his business' name there and though faded from the years, it could still be read.

I grinned. "Nah ... looking for footprints and such, to see who comes around here," I told her. I pointed down at her bare feet. "Like you're making right now."

She blinked and stooped over to look at the ground. She wiggled her toes in the soft dirt—we were standing on what had been a wagon road at one time. She stepped to the side and looked at the marks her feet had left.

I knelt beside her. "Put your feet right there," I told her, pointing to a patch of clear ground, "an' then walk around and come around up behind me."

She did, and bent her body over my back as she leaned in to watch my fingers point out things about the outline of her foot in the soft dirt. It felt nice, having a young girl against me, all comfortable like that. I didn't have a really young sister any more to show and explain things. They'd gotten busy growing up and they weren't little no more.

I showed young Rhonda how the size of her footprint, how her toes were aligned, how wide her foot was and everything that made her tracks distinctive; told her having seen them now, I'd know them anywhere from now on. She was impressed.

We wandered on, coming back around to the trail we'd come up, and I knelt again. "Now ... this is Theresa's shoe right here," I told her pointing to the trace of a left shoe. "I saw when she stepped over a root on the way up here that she had a little cut on the outside of her heel, and there it is again, right there—prob'ly from … oh … a couple weeks ago."

Rhonda knew about the cut and nodded wisely and smiled most pleasingly up at me.

We wandered back to the group under the pecan tree. I felt good about not having found any threatening sign and I took the light coat off that I'd worn to town. I didn't have it on for warmth; it was mainly there to conceal the short-barreled revolver I carried behind my belt in the small of my back. I hung the coat on the projecting end of a broken branch and set the revolver down where that branch split off from a larger one—they were sturdy enough to hold the weight easily. Turning around, I found I was the center of attention.

"What?" I said, taking in the big eyes and shocked looks. I didn't connect anything I'd done to their expressions for a minute. When I did figger it out, I still didn't see any reason why it should have surprised them so; many a man carried a gun out of sight that way ... out in the West and back here too. But....

"Oh ... sorry, didn't mean to give ya a start," I told them. "We pretty much carry a gun all the time out where we live," I added.

It took a while, but the boys recovered quickly ... and they had questions they wanted to ask.

"You ever shoot anyone with that?" Matthew asked. Matthew was Rhonda and Theresa's big brother. He was fifteen, coming up on sixteen—same as me—an' was prone to being vocal and forceful. Maybe the fact I carried a gun and didn't think nothing of it was a threat to his standing in the group.

"Nope, never had to," I replied easily, hoping that would end the discussion.

For some reason my answer didn't satisfy young Matthew. He looked around. "HEY, RACHEL!!" he called to my sister. "JERE EVER SHOOT ANYONE WITH HIS SIX-GUN?"

My sister was out in the meadow, of picking flowers and adding them to a pretty bouquet. She looked up and shaded her eyes with her off hand.

"NAH!!!" she called back. She bent over, then straightened back up. "JERE USES A RIFLE WHEN HE HAS TO FETCH SOMEONE," she yelled. “...OR A SHOTGUN THAT ONE TIME ... BUT HE ONLY KILT JUST ONE WITH THE SHOTGUN," she explained. She went back to picking flowers.

If their eyes had been round and startled before, all the orphanage kids' eyes were big as saucers now.

"Different world out West, you know," I said kind of defensively. "Can't just yell for a police man when ruffians or scalawags come to bother your sister or family ... or friends."

They digested that for a while. The conversation was muted for a time, but it gathered strength again after a while. They were taken aback all over again when it came up that I was still some shy of being seventeen.

Rachel came back to the group laying back on the old blankets around the tree.

"You can put yours up there by mine," I said, gesturing at my pistol on the tree branch. I was still a sensitive about how they'd all looked at me when I put my gun up on the tree branch ... and a little nettled that Rachel had so blithely spoke of things we didn't much discuss amongst our own selves.

All the girls gathered round Rachel to look at the flowers in her hands and divide them up in some pattern that only they could decipher. Rachel looked at me, confused for a minute. I motioned to her purse that was sitting a few feet from me.

"And it would a' hurt you to put it up there?" she asked disgustedly. She gathered up her purse and set it on the tree limb beside my coat and gun. Everyone heard the solid sound her smaller revolver inside her purse made when it thunked against the wood.

She turned around. "What?" she said, seeing all the attention she suddenly had from everyone ... and then she was in the same predicament she'd put me in. Didn't make me feel much better, but maybe she'd guard her tongue in the future.

Well, the moment passed. The orphans slowly got used to the idea that men and women out West carried weapons. Now ... I didn't say nothin', but my sister Emily had been the youngest on the firing line when them renegades had attacked us back in Nebraska that time. She'd been the youngest, but was not the worst shot by any means. I'd taken her deer hunting before our journey West, and many times since then, so I knew Emily could take care of business. I'd never asked, but I'd always thought she put a couple a' rounds into one of those riders. I wondered what the orphanage kids would think if they knew that one of my sisters, only two years older'n Rachel here, had killed one or more....

Well ... anyway ... we began talking of how life was out there in the far-off mountains, how we worked the land ... and got the land to work for us. They were fascinated at hearing about the way we heated our homes the old Roman way by piping boiling-hot water from the hot spring down to the bench on the mountainside where we lived.

We talked of the enormous vistas everywhere and how one could be just about anything one wanted to be. and we talked of how we ambushed them renegades that come looking for women and our wealth in the early days of our trip. But by then, the orphanage kids were a little more at ease with the suggestion of violence and killing and such. They were indignant that such people as the raiders were allowed to roam around to attack peaceable folks like the Richardson wagon train.

* * *

After a while, the talk moved on to other things and Rhonda come and sat down beside me. Apparently the shock at what they saw as our inclination toward violence had worn off. I was a good person again. The sun was beginning to slide down the western sky.

"I'm hungry!" Rhonda announced. She looked around with disappointment in her eyes. Nobody had thought to bring anything to eat ... except that we Westerners had—okay, it was by accident, but still….

"I am too!" I exclaimed.

I was. I'd been feeling it for a while now and just hadn't decided what I could do about it. Then I knew.

"We got the fixin's for a meal," I told the group, "a good frontier kind of supper ... how 'bout it?"

I made it a challenge, and they liked the idea. I stood and looked around the grassy meadow, taking in the old building, the mill pond, and the surrounding woods. Everything we needed was right here in one place.

"Rachel?" I said, "how 'bout you get some of that beef out of what we were taking up to the house and cut a bunch of steaks off it, OK?" My sister, Rachel, was a fine cook over an open campfire and had proved it many a time.

She nodded and reached for the knife she carried in a sheath on her inner thigh. The boys from the orphanage got big eyes all over again—from seeing a big-bladed huntin’ knife in the hands of a sweet young girl AND from getting a view of some girl flesh they maybe didn't get to see very often. Rachel smiled sweetly.

"I'll start a fire for us, right about ... there!" I said. I tossed the flint and steel in the pouch I always carried in my pocket to a spot under the big pecan by the old mill. Any rising smoke would be dispersed by the branches overhead an' ... well, that probably wasn't that important back here, but habits are hard to break.

"Rhonda, honey? Can you grab you a couple of those boys by the hands yonder and take them out to the trees and get us some dry wood for the fire, OK?"

"Dry?" the nine-year-old asked, her face blank. She looked around and touched a branch with a bare foot. "It's all dry, ain't it?" The boys were all listening intently too. They weren't about to admit ignorance, but they wanted to know the answer themselves.

"I mean old, dried up branches and limbs," I explained. "It'll burn hotter and not make much smoke ... and no one'll see it." All of them got that last part. This secret place could be kept secret if one took precautions. I didn't tell 'em about the tree branches here under this ol' pecan tree dispersing rising smoke. All in good time.

Young Rhonda scrambled up and took the two youngest boys by the hands and made for the tree line.

"Camilla? Can you, Betsy, and Theresa check up by the house and out around? I seen some wild onions here and there ... be real tasty, I wager."

The girls were on their way before I finished talkin'.

I looked around. "Ted?" I said to my cousin. He had the husky Richardson build ... and I had a feeling he'd like to show Miss Betsy, the oldest of the orphan girls, how strong he was. "Can you get some of those slate rocks out from beside the old house up there and bring 'em over to where I'll be making the fire?

"If you could put a couple down to make the fire on and set up a kinda box frame with some longer stones on top so it's kinda like a stove? Two sides ... and a top set on top of them? We'll cook some a' the beef steaks on it." He nodded.

That left me, Matthew and one other boy from the orphanage. I crooked my finger at them, smiling, and led them down to the old mill pond. Ten minutes later, I'd shown them how to split cattail stalks pulled out a' the pond and then how to draw out the succulent white hearts. Both tried a sample and their grins showed they approved. Moments later, they were enthusiastically wading out, cutting stems and bringing them back to shore. They'd had no idea something that good tasting could come of a plant growing in slow moving water.

Lookin’ back on it, I don't recollect anyone being upset that I kind of took charge like that. Even though I wasn't even seventeen years of age yet, it seemed organizing events, and folks, was one of the things God had decided upon for me to do in my life. and even with my young years, I'd already learnt how to ask folks to help me out by doing something rather than being nasty 'bout it.

Anyhow, in no time, some well-cured beef was roasting on forked sticks set around the fire or sizzling in its own juices on sand-scoured flat slate rocks over the fire. There was a growing mound of cattail hearts accumulating on a blanket that seemed cleaner than the rest, and wild onions were piled nearby.

For dessert, 'stead of opening up the peaches we had, Teddy and fourteen-year-old Betsy ventured into the remains of the orchard and come away with some fine-looking apples. I could see Ted had taken a shine to the cute young lady. It looked to me like my cousin, Ted, would have followed that gal just about anywhere, much less an old apple orchard where there might still be somethin’ to eat.

While the meat cooked, us Westerners showed the rest how to shape a bit of green bark into a serviceable plate to hold the hot steak without burning fingers. Everyone was proud at contributing to the effort ... a little excited, and thrilled too.

It may have been hunger making up for other stuff we didn't have, but that quick supper meal we fixed for ourselves was darned good. Everyone got their fill and when it was over, we were a pretty close group of young folks, having cooperated together to fix it all up and done it quick too.

* * *

When twilight came, some of the girls started running around trying to catch fireflies and imploring the boys to help them, laughing and waving their arms around and such. Ever'body was having a fine ol' time.

I was laying on one of the blankets with my head pillowed on one of the thicker chunks of firewood we hadn't needed and watching those girls chase around. Now, ya got to know that where those pretty girls were ... all the boys made a point of being too ... 'cepting me.

I was laying there on my back, the back of my head resting on my rolled up coat over that fallen tree limb, and enjoying being with young Rhonda and her sister Theresa. Rhonda was nine, and Theresa had just turned eleven. No ... that's not right. Rhonda was nine and a half and she wanted everyone to keep that extra half a year fixed firmly in their mind.

I found myself totally entranced all over again by the youngster. She was a curious mixture of bright-eyed innocence and a maturity far beyond her years. Kids age fast when times are hard and especially in a war, or just afterward, and I guess orphan kids have to grow up just that much faster. Whatever the cause, I could have laid there and listened to Miss Rhonda for hours expound on anything and everything that came into her mind. I was smiling on the inside, and having a great time.

She'd wheedled the information out of me—who made my leather belt. She was absolutely awe-struck when she found out it was Ehawee, 'Laughing Maiden', who was a real, live Indian! She was astounded when I told her there were many other Lakota also included in our settlement.

I had to explain how 'Sioux' wasn't really a nice way to refer to them—she grasped the idea quickly. I told her of the Lakota brother and sister who were part of my father's household now ... and how I was just about married to my Pretty Green Eyes' and how she had taken a white man's name of Naomi and all that. The two young girls were astounded when I told them Naomi was already a medicine woman among her people and how she wanted to be a white-man's kind of doctor also and to know all the ways whites healed their sick and hurt.

Then we talked of the buffalo, deer, and elk I hunted and how hunting was pretty much my job in our settlement. and how I wanted to buy a ranch some day ... for horses, but maybe not cattle ... and that fascinated them. But eventually, even Rhonda wound down a tad. She looked around, but couldn't see what she wanted. The moon was out and shining brightly, but here in the shelter of the big pecan tree, it was a muted glow.

"Is there any thing left over?" she asked me, straining to see on the other side of me toward the cold remains of our cook fire. She was hungry again. Here I was, wondering if I'd be hungry this time two days from now ... but she was like a bottomless pit.

"There is!" I told her. I sat up and rummaged around on a cooling piece of slate and produced a bit of steak for her. "For the prettiest nine-year-old girl in the whole state!" I said, putting it on a scrap of bark we'd been using for plates.

"Nine and a half!" she retorted pertly. "Can't you remember that?"

Well, yes I could. But if I had, I wouldn't have had an excuse to wrap my left arm around her and pull her into my lap. I tickled her ribs for a moment, just to hear her shriek, and then handed her the steak. She stayed on my lap, apparently quite comfortable there. When she asked for more cattail, I leaned over and got that for her too.

When Theresa sniffed derisively, I reached out, took hold of an arm and hauled her eleven-year-old frame closer and tickled her just like I done to her sister. She might have thought she was a mite too old for that, but I didn't let that dissuade me. After a bit, the girls were setting on either side of me while I was stretched out on my back and pillowing my head on that branch again.

With Rhonda's mouth full, and Theresa accepting a bite of cattail now an' again also, there was nobody talking for a moment. I used the silence to look around. In the gathering murkiness, the massive, solid nature of the old stone building loomed over us with a presence that seemed comfortable and familiar to me.

In the dim light, it could of been one of them stone monuments like I heard about them pagans over in England built in the olden days, when the Romans was there and everything.

There was one place I remember Hiram Conklin telling us about that first winter we spent in the mountains ... I disremember what it was called ... it was a place in England where some folks had dragged huge blocks of stone from a quarry somewhars and set them rocks standing up in a wide circle. No one knew what them pagans did there, but not too far away there were remains of some ancient Druid settlements ... and as Hiram told it, they were a folk who liked to party kind of like our little group in our hidden valley liked to do.

"Ya know," I said tentatively, "one of my Pa's friends says that back in the old country, on warm summer nights like this when the moon was out, a bunch a' folks called 'Druids' would come to a place like this and throw a big ol' party all night long." I deliberately let my voice get kind of deep and soft at the same time.

"Oh, we know that," Rhonda said carelessly, one of her hands flipping up in a dismissive gesture. "Miss Kennedy already done told us about them. They waited for the full moon, in October Miz Kennedy said, or the middle of summer and came out to ... ahhh … to have a party...." she added.

She kind of faded out right there at the last. Theresa had shifted restlessly on my other side and Rhonda had picked up on it.

An' suddenly I solved a puzzle I guess my mind had been worrying at ever since we arrived.

"Well … way I heard it, them get-togethers was big ol' nekkid parties an' they lasted three whole days and nights," I commented. Neither girl offered to contradict my evaluation. "…Believe it was called somethin' like 'Sow Inn'," I continued, doing the best I could with what had been explained to me as an old Celtic word, 'Samhuinn'....

I let that just lay there for a bit. Neither of the girls said a word.

"Y'all must come here for picnics a lot of the time," I suggested.

I knew they thought I was changing the subject.

"…seeing as how you brought so many blankets … like you got cached out here in the millhouse an' stuff...."

"Nah," Theresa said quickly. "The orphanage was just going to throw them out and we thought it'd be nice to have something to sit on up here."

I nodded. "An' who is this Miss Kennedy who told y'all about the Druids and their parties?" I asked.

"Our teacher," Rhonda ventured. "One a' our teachers," she corrected.

I wet my lips. "She tell y'all 'bout how them Druids getting kind of naughty an'...?"

"Yeah...," Theresa said cautiously. "She said they would take their clothes off an' ... everything."

I chuckled low. She was fibbin'. In them days, kids didn't hear about people taking their clothes off, nor any such stuff like that—not in school, they didn't.

I shifted around so I was facin' them 'stead a' them laying beside me. I got on my belly and lay between the two young girls as they sat crosslegged in the pool of darkness under the tree.

"I'll tell you something naughty," I offered, "if you want," I added. "An' then you can tell me somethin', OK?" I finished. I was talking soft and quiet so no one else could hear. Even these two girls would have to move closer to hear me.

I waited for one of them to object, but neither said, or did, a thing. So I set in to tell them about how me and Grace had fucked on the back of ol' Hinto ... my roan horse ... walking around the herd in the moonlight that time back on the Oregon trail. Don't know why I chose that tale, but it was a good choice. Both sisters unconsciously moved closer and leaned into me; their shoulders touched mine and their faces were scant inches from my own as they listened.

"In the middle of the night??" Theresa said breathlessly, suddenly excited. "On your horse? … and you were riding him around all them oxes and mules and stuff?"

Her voice was strangled, as if some strong emotion had her in its grip. Something in the story had touched the youngster and she was clearly excited on a level that was a lot more grown-up than eleven-year-olds were supposed to be ... 'cept I'd heard similar excitement in the voices of even younger girls in our settlement out West.

"Now you tell me something naughty," I suggested. I waited for an instant.

They hesitated, not quite convinced they could say anything to me. I wasn't exactly an adult, but still....

"How long has it been since y'all were up here?" I prompted. I couldn't see them blink in surprise, it was too dark, but I was already familiar enough with them to know they did. I kinda felt their eyelids move in the dimness.

"Uh ... couple-three weeks," Theresa said. She clearly thought this would be safe to answer.

"An' it rained a day or two before that?" I said.

"I think so," she answered, clearly confused.

"Uh-huh," Rhonda contributed.

I had them talkin'. "So why don't y'all tell me 'bout who all of the girls was over there by the mill ... on their hands and knees ... and with boys on their knees behind them doin' ... naughty-nice things to the girls," I said.

Their faces turned blank and they didn’t say a word.

"I saw the tracks," I said quietly, doing my best to not seem threatening. "Ain't been any rain since that night to wash the tracks out and they was still there," I explained.

Rhonda had absorbed enough of what I'd told her in the afternoon about tracking and stuff to be a believer now. As far as the nine-year-old was concerned, all this was new and kind of magic like.

She let a breath out exasperatedly. "He knows! That was where you were with Matt, Miss Smarty Pants Theresa!" she said disgustedly. "An' Betsy with Paul, and Lydia too," she added.

Theresa wasn't as sure they'd been found out as her sister was. It was still supposed to be a secret. "RHONDA!!" she hissed, scandalized at her sister's betrayal. I was pretty sure no one was supposed to even wonder out loud about those evenings out here, much less should you tell strangers about them.

"An' you can tell me who was standing just off to the side, watchin'," I said, "like … maybe waiting for her turn?" I'd told Rhonda before that I'd know her footprint anywhere ... and now I was telling parts of the events that night that hadn't been revealed yet.

The nine ... nine-and-a-half-year-old gasped. "He knows everything!" she moaned.

I could hear Theresa gulp.

“But," I said emphatically. "I'm not telling a single, solitary soul!"

"Nobody at the orphanage or in town—or anywhere else—is going to hear a word about it," I added quietly. I didn't want the girls to run screaming into the brush or anything like that. I thought they needed to be reassured they could trust me.

"First time I fucked my sister, Rachel's, cunt...," I said, confidingly, “...we were in a wagon riding along the trail West. "Right after I fucked one of my other sisters. Her name is Emily."

Theresa had begun a move to stand and maybe find a way to wander off somehow to tell the others their secret was out, but she settled right back down. She cleared her throat.

"Your sister—that Rachel? In a wagon ... and you was moving ?" she asked breathlessly.

"Sure as I'm standin' ... layin' ... here," I declared.

"Who was drivin'? she asked suspiciously.

It took me a minute. I couldn't recall at first. I cocked my head to one side while I thought. "Oh! I remember … it was Clay Roberson," I said, remembering. "He was ten-years-old back then," I added. "My step-sister Grace was sucking his cock while he guided the oxen down the trail," I told them. "All of the adults were on ahead and we had fallen back just a bit."

It took them a minute to absorb that. They both moved in, their heads barely an inch from mine in the darkness.

"And up on a big ol’ horse too!! What else?" young Rhonda asked excitedly.

I didn’t answer—instead, I bent slowly toward her face and kissed her soft, little-girl lips.

She rolled full on her back as quick as a striking snake. Her small arms were suddenly around my neck and she pulled my body down atop hers for another kiss ... a longer one than I'd offered ... and I could feel her tongue searching for mine. A heck of a kiss from a nine ... okay … a nine-and-a-half-year-old girl—very, very exciting.

I turned to Theresa and gave her a peck on the lips, but she stayed upright for now instead of following her sister down to the quilt. But her fingers were fluttering up and down my arms and hands, stroking restlessly. Her fright at having revealed a dark secret to a stranger had completely disappeared.

"Well, there's lots of things," I said, finally answering little Rhonda's question, "but first, you got to tell me something 'bout what y'all do up here, OK?"

"It is your turn…," I added. I waited.

Rhonda started it off. Swallowing hard and clearing her throat, she said softly, "Me and Matthew ... my brother Matthew ... out there—she motioned out into the moonlight—we ... do it ... whenever we can," she said faintly.

"You too, Theresa?" I asked. I could feel her nod slowly.

Then she stopped. "You mean me and her or Matthew and me?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied, grinning in the darkness—I think they sensed, more than saw my smile. I chuckled low in my chest.

"Uh-huh—both!" she confirmed with a girlish chuckle.

"An' you and your brother did some fucking the last time you were out here being 'pagans' in the moonlight, eh?"

"Uh-huh," Theresa affirmed quietly, giving in to the inevitable. Abruptly, she shifted around and then I had two young girls laying on their backs and wanting kisses, and giving kisses right back at me too.

"An' I waited my turn and then we did it too," Rhonda told me after a bit. Her voice was still keyed up ... animated, but relaxed too. She wasn't afraid any longer.

"An' Patrick Jefferson too, later," Theresa said mischievously. "You remember, right? ... you sure squealed when he got you off," she added.

"I did, didn't I?" Rhonda said musingly, her voice smiling as she marveled at what she'd done that night weeks ago.

"So...," I said at length. "You reckon we should wander out there and tell everyone that the nekkid dancing and the naughty fun can now commence? All those boys that come with you all know about the naughty fun ... brothers and sisters and stuff like that, right?"

They giggled and nodded. I felt it more than saw their heads moving. It was danged dark under that big ol' pecan.

"You want to do something naughty and wicked?" Rhonda asked breathlessly.

I could tell she wanted to shock someone, or several someones, like she'd just been shocked.

"Yep!" I answered. I was ready for just about anything they could come up with. "Let's do!" I replied.

Rhonda giggled softly and stood with all the suddenness she'd shown flopping on her back earlier. "Take my dress off!" she commanded in a soft, but happy little girl's voice.

So I did, taking my time and doing it right. I was beginning to get a taste for undressing women and girls. There was a certain ... thing ... about it, making them nekkid when they were clothed, preparing them for naughty, taboo games that no one else could play.

When I got her dress unbuttoned all down the back and slid it down over her hips, I let my hands drift over her body. Rhonda was quiet, standing right in front of me and seeming to enjoy what I was doin'. I was amazed to find the little girl had some breasts already—well, buds anyway. They weren't huge, maybe 'bout the size of walnut half-shells and standing just about that high above her chest. They had tiny, hard little points too. I tweaked them gently, stroking her immature breasts for a moment.

She sucked in some quick breaths. She liked what I was doing.

I was also amazed to feel a definite curvature to her body, a distinct flare of hips from a slender waist that flowed down to slim thighs and wonderfully molded calves and ankles. All this I determined by touch alone; it was far too dark under the tree to see the little girl I was fondling.

Rhonda squirmed gently under my hands, holding her breath from time to time, enjoying everything I was doing to her and wanting more. I turned her to face me and spread her feet wide. Then I slipped my right hand, palm up between her thighs and gently stroked the outer lips of her quim. She grunted softly as my forefingers traced her outer lips. I could feel a sticky/slick moisture already. Nine-and-a-half she might be, but she could already respond in a most womanly fashion.

And then I began to perform the same services for eleven-year-old Theresa … while Rhonda fidgeted impatiently. Theresa was a slightly older version of her sister, with a better defined waist and bigger breasts but the same wonderfully sturdy legs that were a pure delight. When I touched her outer labia, Theresa whimpered—surprising even herself. She cleared her throat softly.

"I like to make young girls moan and groan," I said quietly. "An' then I like to make them do it more ... and more ... and more!"

They knew exactly what I meant. They wriggled in anticipation.

"Now you take my clothes off," I whispered.

They set to work stripping me naked. Rhonda giggled happily when my pants dropped and she could wrap her fingers around my penis. The wanton little rascal kissed the end of it, pressed the foreskin back a little and sucked for a moment on the exposed glans. Theresa fondled my scrotum, massaging my balls for a long moment, cupping them in one small hand and then the other.

They had me kneel on both knees so they could take my shirt off. When it was gone, Rhonda pressed her naked body tight against me and wound her arms around my neck. Then she astonished me with a kiss that seemed to go on longer than her earlier kisses.

"I like to kiss," she told me.

"I can tell!" I said, taking care not to seem amused. "Me too!" I assured her.

Theresa and Rhonda were alike in that. Both liked having their skin tight against other naked skin and twining their tongues around mine. and they were danged good at kissing. Clearly they'd had some practice.

"Shall we go let the others know?" I asked finally, standing up.

"Yeah...," Theresa answered with a giggle. "Let's go show 'em," she said. Both girls put their hands in mine.

An' so we did show them, marching out of the murkiness under that big pecan into the soft glow of moonlight. It seemed almost like midday out there, compared to under the tree. The others ignored us—didn't see us at all.

"HEY, RACHEL?!!" I bawled as loud as I could. We were so far back in the sticks that no one 'cept the folks I wanted to hear me possible could. I saw a figure in skirts turn around to face me and I assumed that was my sister out there. She wasn't too far away, but I couldn't really see all that well.

"WHAT?" she yelled. It was her all right.

"Guess what?" I called to her. "I found out from young Rhonda and sister Theresa that what they come out here for is to do some ... 'ticklin' ... like Laura and Melinda used to do up in that barn a' theirs—‘member?” Rachel was smart as a whip ... and she might could even see that her brother and the little girls he was walking with didn't have a stitch on in the brightening moonlight, and she made the connection right off. "You mean like up in the hay loft?" she asked, dancing closer. She'd caught on to the code words our Mormon sisters had used a year back when writing to their brothers.

"Yep!" I affirmed. Rachel and I were only a couple of yards apart now. "Seems like they come up here when there's a moon out to dance around nekkid and catch fireflies ... and then they fuck like ... just like us!" I told her.

There wasn't a sound in that meadow made by any human bein' and only a few by night birds and insects. Little Rhonda, unconcerned, took the opportunity to lean over in front a' me and capture my cock between her lips. I settled in to jest enjoy the moment, ya might say.

Then....

"RHONNN … DA!!" a shocked voice said from close by. Apparently Betsy had come up and seen what was happening.

"He already knows," Rhonda said placidly into the darkness in Betsy's direction. I liked the sound of the youngster's voice, but to talk, she had had to leave off sucking my johnson—didn’t care for that too awful much….

"He saw where some girls," Rhonda continued, letting my penis slip from her lips. "...I won't say who … got fucked last time we was here, up by the mill house," she added. "An' I didn't tell him who likes getting fucked from behind better'n any other way in the world, neither … Miss Smarty Pants Betsy!" she remarked.

There was silence from over where Betsy stood.

Laughing at Betsy’s evident discomfiture, Rachel took charge. She turned, found the four boys from the orphanage close behind her, and marched right up to the biggest one. Camilla wasn't even a step behind.

"You come up here to fuck girls ... even your sisters?" she demanded of Matthew. She prodded him in the chest. "DO YOU?" she insisted.

I think Rhonda and Theresa's brother gave answered a choked 'yeah' more in self-defense than anything else. Certainly, his posture said he'd retreat if he could, but the other boys were too closely packed in behind him.

"Mmmmmmmmmmmm," Rachel said. Her voice had turned seductive and sensuous. "I like that," she told the boy. She wound her fingers in the fabric of his shirt and pulled him tight against her body. "I fuck my brothers too," she said, "all four of them."

I could hear the gasp amongst the boys all the way over to where I was. I chuckled.

"But I want to fuck you tonight," Rachel continued. Her fingers were already working the buttons out through their holes in Matthew's shirt. Then she stopped and stepped back. "Can you boys help us girls get nekkid?" she asked coquettishly.

The boys were too shocked to reply; they couldn't even move. "Like … now!!??" Rachel added, exasperatedly. "We want to FUCK!"

One boy moved jerkily, separating himself from the other three—the only thing I was sure about was that it wasn't Matthew but I couldn't tell who it actually was—an' about a second later, he was undoing her blouse and she was working on his pants. In another heartbeat, all four boys were helping the girls get out of their clothing.

Rachel glanced around in the moonlight. In spontaneous lil' naked parties like this, the numbers just never evened out ... but that was OK. Rachel knew how to remedy things.

She took Matthew and the boy who had started taking her clothes off by the hand, drew them close and stood on her tiptoes to kiss each of them in turn. "I want you to fuck me in the pussy, sugar. I want to be on my hands and knees for you to take me from behind, OK?" she told Matthew. She turned to the other boy. "An' I want your cock in my mouth, OK?" She grinned at him. "Have you ever fucked a girl in the mouth, honey?"

Camilla was already leading her two boys off to the side, so it looked to me like my sister and cousin were having things their way.

My cousin Ted was hastily helpin' Betsy out of her skirt and it didn't seem like they needed my help neither. That left Theresa and Rhonda standing there with me, which suited me just fine.

The three of us strolled back into the shadow cast by the big pecan tree but it was only to get a couple of blankets and bring them out into the open where the moonlight would help us see each other. "You two girls are beautiful," I said by way of explanation, "an' I want to be able to see you." That was fine with them.

Rhonda demanded to have my cock first, so when I laid down, she straddled my hips and Theresa squatted over my face. I wouldn't have believed a nine-and-a half-year-old girl could take me inside her as easily as she did, but she durn well could ... and with a minimum of fuss too.

As she slowly let gravity pull her down on my cock, her hot cunt squeezed me tighter than I'd ever felt before. I didn't know where she'd become a woman-child, but she'd surely practiced the art of fuckin' a guy's cock a number of times since her first.

Backing out and then coming back in, in short movements, little Rhonda took my cock inside her confidently and firmly ... not all of me, mind you, but enough for both our purposes. When she came, she had a shudderin', gaspin', and very adult kind of orgasm.

Her rocking and moaning set her sister off too. Theresa mashed her pussy against my mouth, gasping and grunting deep in her throat when I sucked her clitoris out of its little hood of sensitive flesh. Then they switched around, and we did it all over.

After a while, Theresa invited me to take her from behind while she licked her little sister's well-spermed quim and we did that ... then switched around so Rhonda was gettin' fucked while she licked her sister in return. The two young girls were more vocal than any pair of youngsters I'd ever known before.

Though they'd hidden their lusty natures from us Richardson clan members at first, they delighted in coaxing me into doing more and more, talking nasty and making everything a thoroughly joyful experience. When they came, they chortled elatedly between gasps for air. When Rhonda giggled about something, Theresa joined in whether she knew what Rhonda was giggling about or not. More so than usual, it was just plain fun having sex with them two.

We lay around in that grassy meadow for most of the night, resting between bouts of fast, happy sex. An' then we danced naked in the moonlight just like them ol' Druids from a long time ago. We had to build up the fire again an' cook some more a' the beef, 'cause ever'one got hungry again 'long about midnight. It was a heck of a great time.

My mind was full of plans to get at least these two ... these three, counting their brother ... out West to join our community. I never considered not gettin' them out to our Hidden Valley.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A few days later, Betsy, along with a somewhat stocky-appearing young woman I didn't know, and a young boy about ten who I didn't know either, marched right up to my Aunt Becky's front door and asked for me and Rachel. With them were two of the cutest little girls I ever saw. They looked to be about six-years-old ... an' they was clearly twins.

Their calling on us was a pleasant surprise, because I'd been wondering if the night in the moonlight was a one-time thing or not. There I was, getting ahead of myself, like I always did. Anyway, at first sight of them, I went to hoping they were there to issue an invite for another evening of frolicking around the meadow.

I wanted to bring some of them to our home out in the American West, an’ Pa had only just said yes 'bout an hour ago. There hadn't been no time to organize things and see what could be done.

On the front porch, Betsy introduced me to the grown-up woman, naming her as Mistress Pamela Kennedy. I recognized her name right off. She was the teacher who'd told the kids about the Druids and their moonlight orgies. I'd learned later that first night, Miss Pamela Kennedy had actually had more than a little influence in getting the orphan children's nocturnal parties organized. A very naughty teacher, indeed!

And now here she was. I was right happy to meet her. Pamela Kennedy was a striking young woman, not beautiful in the New England, patrician sense, but quite attractive. She looked, perhaps a little plump in her full-length dress with the fancy bustle and all. I assumed it was OK to look her over a couple of times, considering what I already knew about her.

An’ when I did take some time to really look at her, I was agreeably surprised to see she actually had a nice, slender waist and the appearance of excess weight seemed to be caused by two nice, big ... and very round ... breasts with succulent nipples that were already erect and threatening to punch a hole right through the material of her dress. Looked to me like our Miss Pamela wasn't wearing any small clothes under her dress. I heartily approved, and appreciated that in a woman's afternoon dress.

Her hips moved lithely as she negotiated the steps up onto Aunt Becky's stoop. That was real entertainin' too. I reckoned if any a' my teachers back in the Tennessee hills had been as cute –let's face it … downright sexy—as Mistress Kennedy was, I'd a stayed in school a lot longer than I had.

"I'm sorry," I told Miss Kennedy and Betsy regretfully, "Rachel and just about everyone is over to my Aunt Phoebe's house helping her pack up for their move out West with us."

A tightness came to all their features. They all looked a trifle desperate. I wondered what had happened that would cause this tension and how it would affect things I wanted to start plannin' for.

"Won't you come into my Aunt Becky's drawing room?" I suggested politely. Whatever it was, I had a feeling we shouldn't be discussing it out of doors where just anyone passing by could see and possibly hear.

The young girls stayed out on the porch playing with the dolls they'd brought with them. From the parlor, the two small girls could be seen outside the windows, so it wasn't like we were deserting them in the wilderness.

When we went inside, the teacher and her young charges were taken aback to see my Pa there, sitting casually and talking quietly with Aunt Becky. Pa stood courteously, smilin' gently. He didn't say anything at first, glancing at me and then back to them. He was lettin' me take the lead—kind a' surprised me.

"Pa, this is Betsy; I told you about her, if you recall … and this is Miss Pamela Kennedy, their teacher at the orphanage. And this young man is Timothy." I'd just been introduced to him myself, so I couldn't tell Pa anything about him.

"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mistress Kennedy," Pa said formally, smiling broadly. He stepped forward to politely take her hand for a moment. "Very pleased indeed. I hear we have similar interests in ancient pagan rituals," Pa remarked in an easy, relaxed tone.

Miss Kennedy smiled uncertainly, probably wondering just what all he knew about her. She flicked a glance at me, then Betsy.

Pa turned his attention to Betsy also. "My, dear ... you're just as lovely and desirable as my son, and my nephew, Theodore, described you," he said sincerely.

Betsy blushed, the pink rising up her neck 'til her ears were red as could be. That my father's flattery was genuinely admiring was evident … and what woman doesn't like a gallant compliment?

"Young Matthew isn't here?" Pa asked Betsy. "My daughter and niece had extremely complimentary things to say about Matthew when my sisters and I returned from West Virginia yesterday."

Betsy was shocked to the core by Pa's statement. She was not comfortable chatting about such things, right out in the open like that. "Uh ... no, sir. He had to do some chores back at the home," she told him.

I realized the problem. At no time the other night had I ever told Betsy that all the adults in our little community out West were in on the fun and games too. I'd only told that to Teresa and Rhonda.

I had already been chastised this day by Pa for letting as much information out as I had, and I'd had to agree that it was dangerous. So we'd started to form some guidelines about what could be said and what couldn't, even to kids our own age and others. But layin' out all the rules was a process we hadn't finished yet.

On the other hand, these orphanage kids had already proved they were on the same path our family was, and they had experience at keeping their own group's activities a tight secret. So Pa and I agreed amongst the two a' us that the danger had been minimal ... though by accident more than design.

"Miss Kennedy, Betsy…," I said quietly. "My Pa is the leader of our little ... we call it our 'society' ... out West. There's nothing Rachel or I did the other night that he doesn't already know about, OK?" I told them. "An' … he already knows about all the other times my sisters and I got naked and had sex too—he was there for most a' them." I added.

The three of them were astonished. They looked from me to my Pa, not knowing what to say.

"Know about ... and participate in … when the opportunity presents," my Pa agreed congenially. He was smiling broadly and looking the girls up and down, pleased with what he saw.

Now that really shocked them when they figgered out what he meant. Sometimes I think Pa should just use little words what ever'one understands an' save the longer words for when he's doin' business with bankers and the like. Well, anyway….

"Please," I said, "sit down, won't you?" I thought it would be better for them to sit down, before Betsy or Miss Kennedy fainted dead away. They dropped gratefully onto the settee.

"So," Mistress Pamela asked, searching for the right words, "your ... society ... includes adults and children ... and ... all of you ... ahhhh...?"

"Fuck like rabbits?" Pa suggested with a perfectly straight face. "Yep! We do."

Great! Pa was usin' little words now; both Miss Kennedy and Betsy were understanding him a lot quicker. "And before you ask," Pa continued, "yes ... I particularly enjoy the times I spend with my daughters," he told the trio.

Pamela's hand flew to her throat in shock, her face reddened, and she swallowed hard. "Oh my...," she almost whispered.

"For real?" Betsy asked interestedly, glancing at the doorway leading into the interior of the house. "Uhhhhh ... does, ah ... does Teddy, uh...?"

"Absolutely!" Aunt Becky answered the young girl’s question. Unnoticed, she’d slipped back into the parlor with a silver tray holding tall glasses filled to the brim with fresh lemonade. "Something cool to drink?" she asked the group at large.

She was grinning and totally at ease for a woman who'd just had her most tightly held secret exposed to her brother's family just a couple of weeks ago. On the other hand, she and Aunt Phoebe had loosened up considerably since then.

"Did my son not tell you, Miss Betsy? Theodore and I have been fucking for several years now," Aunt Becky remarked easily.

I saw Betsy's hand tremble when she took a glass. Aunt Becky locked eyes with her and was smiling mischievously at the young girl.

"I think my Teddy's prick is just the loveliest thing in the world, don't you?" Aunt Becky asked the fourteen-year-old girl.

Betsy nodded automatically, thoroughly stunned. Then I saw her mind begin working again. She blinked, gave my aunt a calculating look, and then smiled. She looked my buxom aunt over, clearly considering the possibilities. "Yes, it is … perfectly scrumptious," she replied, taking the leap.

Aunt Becky beamed. She patted Betsy's hand companionably.

I grinned, pretty pleased with purty much everything in the world, myself included.

Well, turned out Pamela, and Betsy weren't there to issue an invitation for another carnal moonlight party. They were there to tell us they wanted to go with us when we went back out west....

In a rush, they told us the orphanage was overcrowded and there wasn't enough staff to take care of anything but the most basic of needs. Records on what kids came to the orphanage, who was adopted out, and stuff like that … they simply weren't being kept. No one had the time, or the patience, or, I gathered even the urge.

The way it worked, kids came in to the orphanage escorted there by sheriffs or city employees, sometimes distant relatives or whatnot ... and the kids who didn't want to stay ... simply walked away, never to be seen again. Some never even ate a single meal there.

"Please," Betsy implored, "we want to come with you." She looked me in the eye, then turned to Pa. "Please ... we'll do anything," she said. "We're like you ... we want to be with you folks more'n anything!"

"We'll show you," Pamela said, contributing to the conversation. She got down on her knees in front of me ... then remembered.

"BELINDA! ISABELLA!" she yelled. It took me a minute to figger out she was calling the twins inside.

When they came running in, they stood beside Pamela. "This is Belinda," Pamela said, touching the top of the girl's head on her right, “...and this is Isabella," she said, patting the girl's hair on her left. "…The Sandoval twin pretties," she explained. She grinned down at the girls and they smiled back, perfectly comfortable with their teacher, even in the midst of strangers.

Miss Kennedy whispered in their ears and they glanced around at me and Pa. They faced us, threw each other a mischievous look ... and yanked the hems of their skirts above their heads.

All of us in the Richardson clan laughed and clapped our hands and cheered. The twins dropped their skirts, looked at us uncertainly, wanting to make sure we weren't being mean. Reassured, they grinned lewd little-girl grins at us and pulled the bottoms of their skirts right back up.

"We'll do everything y'all do with each other—we want to be just like you," Pamela said, dead serious. "We want so bad to join up with you," she added. "Please ... we just HAVE to!!"

"OK," Pa said easily. He leaned forward to tickle one of the girl's—I think it was the one called Isabella—on her bare tummy. She giggled.

"We'll prove it," Pamela said, almost desperately. "Anything you want, we'll—"

She was down on her knees again beside the little girls and fondling their little groins almost frantically, hoping to show us they were of a kind with us. From her expression, she was more than half desperate.

Her face blanked. "WHAT did you say?" she asked confusedly.

"I said 'OK' ... we agree ... we'd love to have you come with us," Pa explained.

"Really?" Betsy asked uncertainly.

"Sure," Pa answered. "The more folks who live life as we do, the better off we all are." That he thought so was news to me.... Seemed like he was always telling me that I should be careful and not approach others like that….

Pamela and Betsy sat back on the horsehair couch and looked at each other dazedly. The looked a question at me. I leered at them and nodded with a smug expression on my features. Pa most definitely had meant exactly what he said.

"Oh!" Pamela whispered. She didn't quite know what to do.

She didn't know we’d already discussed it, us Richardsons. We’d decided, just this morning, that we'd figger out some way to adopt at least the four of them: Betsy, Rhonda, Theresa and Matthew ... and the other three boys too, if they wanted to come. Adding the three new children here with us this afternoon—the twins and the young boy Timothy—wouldn't be that much of a problem. Pamela, of course, was an adult. She was free to come with us no matter what happened to anyone else.

"Ahhhhh, Belinda and Isabella want to come with us?" I asked, just to make sure. I was asking Pamela, but the twins dropped their skirts and grinned at me, nodding vigorously.

"OK," I said happily.

Pamela hesitated. "Uh ... and ... the others too," she said diffidently.

Pa's eyebrows started to raise themselves high on his forehead. This was news to him—me too. "How many ... others?" Pa asked.

Miss Kennedy wet her lips with a very pretty, pink tongue. "Thirty-nine of us all together," she said.

"Thirty-nine??" Pa said in a choked voice.

We'd talked about the four kids or maybe seven from the other night ... and then expanded our ideas to include three more here today ... but thirty nine??!!"

Pa and I looked at each other. I’m sure we both had the same thought in mind. Thirty-nine was a bunch, but ... how could we leave anyone behind, condemned to live in a place where there was no one who wanted the things you wanted? We'd feel horrible leaving them behind and they'd feel horrible being left. But how in the world could we...?

"We'll just have to set up the railroad again!" remarked Aunt Becky merrily. Pa and me looked at each other and then at Aunt Becky. We all three grinned happily.

That was the answer, of course. Aunt Becky had operated a way station on the Underground Railroad before and during the war between the states. The techniques, if not the exact stations on the 'railroad', could surely be used to solve this problem. If folks could smuggle escaping slaves up north from southern plantations, folks could smuggle a few children no one would probably be looking for anyway.

Pa nodded as the idea took hold. "And we can use actual railroads this time too," he remarked.

I could see that. If we could get the kids away from the orphanage, it would be not much more than a transportation problem. Everyone would have to be careful not to excite any interest from the authorities, but it wasn't near as difficult transporting kids as it had been hiding and moving escaped Negro slaves around before and during the war.

So ... problem solved. Well, there were some things to work out. Pamela and Betsy hadn't said a thing about where the money for this move was to come from but, actually, it didn't really need to be addressed. Pa had resources enough to take care of that. It wouldn't take near as much hard cash as our initial trip West a couple of years ago, for instance ... and not nearly as much foresight and preparation.

Right about the time everyone's face was clearing up, Aunt Rebecca's youngest son, Mitchell, walked in from his bedroom. He'd decided to take a nap after Aunt Phoebe kept him up all night licking and fucking her pussy and he was just now waking up.

"Just in time for the party, Mitchell," Aunt Becky observed. Everyone looked at her. "You mean we aren't going to celebrate solving this problem?" she asked innocently, and turned away, clearly not expectin' an answer. She pulled Mitch to her and turned him to face the room.

She threw a quick look out the window. "Betsy, dear, would you mind closing the curtains for us?" she asked.

Betsy jumped to her feet and did as she was bid. When she turned back, Pa captured her with an arm around her waist and drew her down on his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him enthusiastically.

Mitch wasn't wearing a shirt, not having known we had company, but that just made things easier now. Aunt Becky looked slyly at Pamela and undid a surprised Mitchell's denims, dropping them to the floor to pool around his bare feet. Her hands roamed around Mitch's chest from behind, caressing and stroking ... then dropped to his groin.

The fingers of her right hand touched his nine-year-old cock and then cupped his smooth ball sack. With thumb and forefinger, she jacked his young penis back and forth. It hardened quickly, while Mitch looked all around kind of dazedly. He wasn't really sure just what was going on here. I was sure, from his standpoint, it might all be a continuation of the last dream he'd had before waking up.

So I introduced young Mitchell all around and told him a short version of what was going to happen in the near future. He looked at Betsy sitting on his grandpa's lap, the two young twins standing in front of me, and Pamela ... and her nice big breasts. He smiled right into Miss Kennedy's face.

"I don't think you should be playing with my dickie," Mitch told his mother.

"Why ever not, son?" Aunt Becky asked.

"'Cause she wants to play with it," Mitch said emphatically, pointing.

"Is that right, Pamela?" Aunt Becky asked with a broad grin.

Mitch took things into his own hands by stepping out of his denim trousers and walking over to Pamela straightaway. "You do, don't ya?" he asked.

All she could do was nod. So Mitch dove headfirst under her bulky skirt and began to do things that made Miss Pamela's eyes snap open really wide and caused her thighs to simply fly wide apart.

"She ain't wearing smallclothes," Mitch reported in a muffled voice. "An' she's shaved herself real nice and smooth," he reported right after. "Ummmmmm ... she tastes real good too," he said.

In less time than it takes to tell, Pamela Kennedy was squirming around on that sofa like a bug on a hot rock.

"It wouldn't be untoward if you were to get naked, Pamela," Pa observed, his hands busy under a wriggling Betsy's dress. He was working on removing the fourteen-year-old's clothing but still had time to look around. Pa always could do a number of things all at once.

Pamela shrugged out of her half-jacket, her blouse, and her expressions said she was trying to figure out a way to get her skirt and boots off without detaching Mitchell from her pussy lips. But finally, she had to push him back for a moment, peel off her remaining clothing; then she yanked the young boy back between her thighs.

My Aunt Becky was on her knees in front of young Timothy. His pants were pooled around his ankles and he was tearing at his shirt. Aunt Becky was doing a fine job of sucking his cock and disrobing at the same time, so I was left to take care of the two young twin girls.

I grinned at them and motioned them over to me. "You want to play too?" I asked, gesturing at the others in the room.

They nodded in unison and danced around excitedly. Their smiles couldn't have been wider. So I started unbuttoning things, after which I pulled their dresses up over their heads and off, helped them untie their shoes and take them off. They did the same for me. It appeared to me they'd had some practice at doing that, even at their tender age.

A moment later, I was sitting on the couch with one nekkid, and very, very, cute little girl straddling each thigh and facing me with expectation shining in their eyes. They were twins were alike as two peas in a pod ... yet different.

Though both of them had the chubbiness of the very young, Belinda had a cheerful, rounded face that descended to a tapered chin, while Isabella's face was a little more slender. Both had generous mouths with already full, soft pink lips that begged to be kissed. Mischief danced in Belinda's eyes, and Isabella's calmer ones held a deeper promise of … perhaps an even deeper sensuality?

The were clearly of Mexican origin, that is to say, Indian. But I doubt they or their parents, whoever they may have been, knew what tribe they owed their allegiance.

They'd been introduced as Belinda and Isabella Sandoval which brought to mind a thing I'd heard about. I knew one of Hernando Cortez' captains when he'd come to the Americas was a man named Sandoval and it surely was a fact that one of the first things them Spaniards had begun doing when they arrived was working hard at getting Indian women with child. Cortez sired at least one child and maybe others. His lieutenants had availed themselves of the offers of women slaves from the tribes they allied themselves with too. So, it was possible these girls were actually descended from that Sandoval. Caleb Struthers had once told me that many Indians of central Mexico these days were tall, handsomely built men and women and that the presence of Spanish blood in their ancestry was highly valued.

Certainly these two girls had some European blood. The very light caramel shade of their flesh testified to that. Both had jet black hair, parted right down the middle, and the thick manes hung down past their shoulders. I thought I could see some red glints in the blackness, proof some long-dead Celtic ancestor had contributed some hot baby seed to a woman in these girls' lineage…. I knew the Vikings had raided the Spanish coast as often as they pillaged old England on their way to the Mediterranean, so it was more than possible.

Whatever and however the girls had come to their looks, they were a pair of very lovely little girls ... who were getting impatient with me. They kept glancing at the others in the room, distressed that everyone else was getting ahead of them. They were rubbing back and forth on my bare thigh, making a friction between their pussies and my leg that was most delightful for them.

Caleb had told me he'd spent some time down Santa Fe way, south into Mexico, and out in California too. He'd said that, in his experience, Mexican girls' bodies just seemed to mature earlier than most others. If that's so, Belinda and Isabella must of begun budding at about two years of age, 'cause their tender young boobies were already nice little mounds on their proud chests. Take a small brown egg, cut it carefully in half ... and that's about the size these two six-year-old's breasts were already. Fair made me drool, just a' looking at them.

I wet my forefingers in my mouth and put one on each girl's soft aureole, my right to Belinda's left boob, my left to Isabella's right one, and rubbed gently around in a circle. Both girls nearly folded in the middle and they gasped, smiling all the way through their bodies' reactions. and they came back for more.

"Do it again!" Isabella demanded, thrusting her chest at me. Belinda nodded in agreement ... so I did, alternating between their breasts and gently tweaking the nipples into small peaks. The next time I needed my fingers moistened, I reversed my hand and put them to the tops of their tight slits. Sliding my fingers down their clefts into their pussies surprised the children, but they quickly divined my purpose. Leaning back, supporting themselves with their hands on my knees and the sofa cushion, they pooched their pussies up higher to give me more access.

I played with their pussy lips for a moment. Belinda and Isabella closed their eyes and their faces took on a smiling concentration. When I shifted back to their breasts, lubricating their aureoles with their own pussy honey, they glanced at each other, their eyes wild with excitement.

But it was time to move this along. In another moment, after some deft shifting of the two girls from my thigh to the sofa, I was on my back with Belinda grinding her private parts all over my face while her sister, Isabella, energetically sucked my cock. She couldn't get much of my length into her mouth, but she took what she could ... and licked my prick like a stick of hard candy, stopping only briefly when she had to rest her jaws.

I licked Belinda's young slit, darted my tongue as deep as I could between her labia and sucked at the top of her pussy to tease her immature little clitoris out in the open. She showed how much she liked it by shrieking at the top of her lungs and wriggling the lower part of her body about like one possessed. After some time of taking my licking of her young cunt lips and delving as deep inside as I could, she froze in place, uttered a final whimper and relaxed down over me and then slid down onto the carpet. I followed her down and planted kisses all over her still-undulating groin.

Then I pulled Isabella to me, laid her beside her sister, and proceeded to do the same to her. After Isabella was treated to her first come from me, the two of them grinned wickedly in my face, slid down my body and worked as a team to bring me off. I spattered both their little faces with my milky white goo, which seemed to delight them no end. I promised I'd do it any time they wanted me to.

A naked Betsy was busy with my Pa, straddling his lap facing away from him and sliding up and down on Pa's cock with her eyes closed. She was moaning something fierce. We could all see Pa's member disappearing then reappearing out of her quim as she levered her body up and down.

Aunt Becky had maneuvered young Timothy over to the love seat and gotten the both of them unclothed, though I'd been to busy to see how she managed it. She was standing in front of the love seat on her right foot and kneeling down the length of the love seat, with the young boy behind her, energetically thrusting his small cock into her asshole like a little pile driver. Aunt Becky's big breasts were bouncing around and her eyes were just wild with lust and glee. In only a few moments, her face took on that blank look we were becoming accustomed to seeing on her on such occasions ... and she started to come.

After a while, any number of whimpers, and many sighs of contentment, we were all laying back and relaxin'. Belinda and Isabella had gone to Aunt Becky's washroom to wash up and they were already back, ready for more fun.

"Well ... that was fun!" Pamela remarked happily. "What's next?"

We laughed with her ... but it was a good question.

Young Mitchell sidled up beside the twin girls where they lay resting on the carpeted floor and knelt for an examination of their pretty outer lips. Rising to his knees, he asked Isabella, "you think my cock will go in your pussy?"

Isabella and Belinda glanced at each other ... rose to a sitting position and examined themselves closely ... and then their eyes rose to look at his little fingerling of a prick. They nodded brightly, and that was all Mitch needed. Timothy joined him, working on Belinda while Mitch attended to Isabella.

They both started working on getting them hot and ready for sex by using their tongues and fingers. It was kind of fun watching the children fucking right there in front of us and all. and they sure enjoyed it too. Timothy and Belinda were on a throw rug and I think it traveled all over the parlor, such was the energy of Timothy's thrusts and Belinda's wigglin' around under him.

"Miss Pamela?" I asked. "What do you know of anal sex betwixt naughty, perverted, boy-fucking teachers and fine young Western gentlemen?" I smirked at her suggestively and made my eyebrows bounce up and down dramatically.

She grinned, rose and put her knees on the edge of the sofa and pooched out her butt at me. "I teach about enemas and lubrication and butt fucking and such," she said emphatically. "How 'bout you show me what you know about slamming it to me, Mr. Westerner...."

I had Aunt Becky's stash of olive oil out of the drawer in the china cabinet in another second and quickly applied a generous measure to her winking butthole. Turned out, Miss Pamela Kennedy knew 'xactly how a good butt fucking should be done.

And so it went for the rest of the afternoon. It was a lot more fun than helping Aunt Phoebe pack.

* * *

After an early supper, Pamela and Betsy started making noises about how they needed to get back to the orphanage, spread the word on what was happenin', and stuff like that. There was a lot of work to be done, preparing the orphans for the trip.

"When do you think the first children can begin making their way along our 'Freedom Train', do you think?" Aunt Becky inquired of Pamela.

I looked down at the twins sleeping where they'd nodded off from sheer exhaustion following the afternoon's grand little orgy. Their long lashes flickered ever' now and then as they dreamed; their pretty lips murmured soft, undecipherable words from time to time. Their chests rose and fell easily. Each of them slept holding a couple of my fingers, 'cause they'd wanted me to lie down and sleep with them, and it had felt as natural as anything for me to do just that.

"Don't you understand, Aunt Becky?" I asked her. "It's already begun...."

"Everything they own is on their backs or in their purses ... and the dolls, of course," Pamela affirmed. "They have nothing to go back to at the orphanage, and nothing to leave behind."

And so it was the twins spent their first night away from the orphanage with me, their heads pillowed on my shoulders while they slept the sleep of the truly innocent.

* * *

Three days later, after we saw that even something as obvious as the absence of twin girls went unnoticed among the multitude of orphans there, we gathered all of the children and the adults together at the abandoned millhouse so we could all be introduced and so we could make some plans based on ages and appearances, how many boys, how many girls, and so on.

We had two more weeks until Pa expected a deal on a piece of land to close, so whatever we were going to do had to be set in motion by then. No ... it needed to already be in motion. What happened in two weeks had to be the ending phase of the plan, not the beginning.

So who showed up but four adults ... three women, counting Pamela ... and one man ... Pamela's lover ... plus twenty-three girls and seventeen boys, to add to the number made up of the twins, Betsy and Miss Pamela. We hadn't counted on any adults other than Pamela ... hadn't even thought of there being any ... but when we thought about it, the additional grown-ups actually made life easier for all of us—more adults to work with the kids.

At the millhouse, Pa took a headcount and kept arriving at a greater number than he should. The number of thirty-nine was quickly discarded. Eventually we found out several children at the orphanage had found out about the coming adventure and had been invited to come along by those already in on it.

We divided them up by sex (so we'd be able to buy the right kind of traveling clothes) and then made them all stand still, not an insignificant difficulty to overcome, so we could count them, and that's when the story about the new additions surfaced. All told, we had more people coming West with us from the orphanage than had been part of the Richardson wagon train when we arrived in our hidden valley out there.

Nora and Virginia were the other two grownup women. Nora had turned thirty just last week and was a teacher too, working as Pamela's supervisor. Pamela had gotten Nora interested in having sex with young boys after seeing Nora watching some boys very intently. Virginia was twenty-four, a member of the orphanage staff who'd been there for about a year.

Laurence was Pamela's 'official' lover. Aunt Becky and Aunt Phoebe actually knew him already—he worked as a part-time lawman for the town. When we found out his profession, we were skeptical about him ... but he convinced us he was a constable because he couldn't find any other work when he needed a job. After reflecting a bit, Pa told him he should keep his constable tools with him 'cause we didn't yet have a constable in our valley out west. It was true we hadn't come across any real need for a marshal or sheriff yet, but it might be advantageous to have someone in that position in the future….

It turned out, Nora and Virginia were roommates in a boarding house across town and they had a concern they hadn't been discrete enough after bringing some young guys to their room from time to time. They thought it was time to move on and figured what was about to transpire with the move out west an' all was a godsend.

That Nora and Pamela were experienced teachers very definitely endeared them to my father. He asked them for guidance on what children should have for textbooks, took notes, and sent a telegram ordering everything they'd suggested from several publishing houses before we even left Tennessee. It was high time our settlement had a formal school to educate all the children already there, and those that were coming too.

Aunt Becky's idea of using the same methods which had transported thousands of Negroes north to Canada and south to Mexico, was a good basis for what we needed to do. Like the Negroes, the children could simply walk away ... disappear ... and meet up with an escort who would guide them West. Unlike the old Underground Railway, we wouldn't need to be particularly clandestine. In fact, being just the opposite would probably be beneficial and, since we weren't hiding anything, we might actually attract less attention from the authorities that way. Folks only pay passing attention to a man or woman, holding the hands of some children they are shepherding along.

The first group of children (not countin' the twin girls and Timothy, who were already with us) strolled casually away from the orphanage three days after the millhouse meeting. Just like the kids told us, there was no hue and cry—not even a faint one.

Those four girls and two boys hid out in the old millhouse with me and the twins for two more days, just to make sure no one had noticed, and then we hiked casually cross-country over the hills to a small town where we caught a coach going north.

Nora quit her job as teacher a few days later, packed her meager belongings in a carpetbag and met my group near an old actual way station on the now defunct underground railroad. Nora hid out with the kids one additional day and night, while I came back to Aunt Becky's. Then Nora took her group of kids east over the hills into Danville, in Virginia, where they caught a train to Washington, D.C. They stayed overnight there. The next day, they boarded a train west and wound up in Omaha, Nebraska where Pa was waiting.

When they boarded the trains, the kids were in new-bought clothes—hand me downs from the top shelf in a variety of stores (by necessity as well as design)—but all a' the children were neat and clean ... and smiling, and well-behaved so as not to irritate others. Had they been fractious, they'd a' drawn interest and attention upon themselves. The other adults and us older kids did similar things, along different routes, and on different dates, but we all wound up in Omaha two and a half weeks after the first child walked away from the orphanage.

Pa had left first, to go to Omaha and arrange for three railroad cars to carry the whole group West to the mountains. It was expensive—the railroad was experiencing something of a boom because so many miners were heading west to the goldfields—an' farmers to the open prairies—but Pa managed it easily.

Using the proceeds from the sale of his land in West Virginia, he simply bribed a minor functionary in the Union Pacific headquarters there to put three additional railroad cars on a train headed West. He paid with small, untraceable gold bars from gold mined out in Colorado. Hard money like that, if one wished it to be so, was totally anonymous—and those who spent it could be just as untraceable.

Eventually, everyone was on hand in Omaha, eager and excited for the long ride across the prairie. The train cars were there when and where they were supposed to be for once. Two of the cars had seats for forty-four, and the third could hold thirty-six ... which was a lot more than we actually needed, but Pa foresaw a need to carry supplies and water, so the back quarter of each car had seats filled with water and food that could be eaten cold. Kids, and me too, got hungry and thirsty.

It surprised all of us, I think, but we realized the night before we were to leave Omaha that durn near everything had gone according to plan. Pa said that 'most never happens.

The next morning, we were all ready to go.

We went.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

My little brother Ellis was eleven now, and growing like a weed. It looked likely he'd grow up to be as tall and rawboned as the rest of us Richardson boys. Like all us boys in the family, he was towheaded as can be, courtesy of our mother, I guess. I been told Scandinavians like our Ma actually did run to blond-headed boys and girls. But, curiously, all the girls in the Richardson family had dark hair, like Pa. I didn't have no idea why that was so, but there it is….

Anyway, me an' Ellis were so bored that we tried to entertain ourselves by walking the platform of the railway station from one end to t'other, testing the boards to see which ones would squeak the loudest. Clearly, we were desperate to distract ourselves.

Problem was, with everyone all together, and all the young ones on their best behavior, there wasn't as much to do now. That hadn't been the case when Ellis and I escorted three girls and two boys (plus the twin Sandoval girls who rarely left my side anymore), all of them less than eight years old, over a devious route through to the Omaha rendezvous.

It had been a long, long walk at times, and it'd been kind a' like herdin' a whole house full a' cats along a set route. Eight-year-olds, bein' kind a' short, don't have that long a stride, ya know? But when one or several a' them took it into their heads to investigate somethin' off to the side a' the trail, it was hard to get them back on the path. Ellis and me kind a' appreciated this break from havin’ to watch over so many young children but, at the same time, we missed the challenge, ya know?

We'd just gotten to the far eastern edge of the platform an' turned around to go back, when the door to the station house abruptly opened and a tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark, uniform strode out looking around like he owned the place. Our guess about his importance wasn't really that far off. When he turned, we saw his odd little cap had a badge of sorts on the crown. It said he was a conductor. I guessed he was that official who would be on the passenger train that was making up right in front of us and he would be in charge of everything that happened aboard. He was kind of grim faced; his eyes were darting around as if to find enemies and his lips were tightened down into a thin line. It was as if the man was daring the world to irritate him any more than he already was.

Of considerably more interest to Ellis and me were the two girls who followed that feller out the door. The three walked toward us, not rushing, but not dawdling either. Their bonnets hid the girls from every direction save the direction they were facing ... and that happened to be toward us. From my and Ellis' point of view, things were looking up. Those girls were some kind a' cute, I’m here to tell ya!

"What're you doing down here?" the man growled, his voice coming from deep down in his barrel chest. He'd stopped right in our path to accost me and Ellis.

Put me on the prod, he did. There was no call to talk to us like that.

“Purty much whatever we damned well please!” I said, jumping right back at him. "Someone piss in your coffee this mornin' or somethin', Mister? I'll warrant it wasn't me nor my brother. We weren't there!"

Well, sir, Omaha was a pretty tough place at that time—and all points west a' there—for durned sure were rough and tumble to the nth degree. So I was already openly carrying my Yellowboy Winchester rifle. I had my hand right in its center of gravity, right over the receiver and loading gate—which made the trigger right close to my forefinger. I had a revolver in a holster designed for a cross-draw on my belt if I needed it, too.

Though I was still a mite short a' seventeen years of age, I was beginning to form what became a lifelong opinion that if one showed a readiness to resist thieves, cutthroats, and whatnot, they were a lot less likely to come around looking for trouble. I also knew exactly how to use both weapons ... and maybe it showed. I don't know. Anyhow, I wasn't cowed by this big ol' tall galoot—not even a little bit—and I didn't like being pushed by him, no matter who he was. I just stared at him. With my left hand, I used my left arm to press my brother further behind me and to my left to get him out of the line of fire.

The big man looked me in the eyes for a moment and his brow rose a little as his frown eased. His expression said he was interested in backing off just a mite. He might of been carrying too—he prob'ly was—but it wasn't out in the open and he couldn't even get to a hideout gun before I got one of my weapons into action.

"I'm conductor for that train," he said by way of explanation, pointin'. "Too many cars here, no messenger car, and no one to tell me why nor how come. An' ... we're a bit of a rush to get away on time," he said more softly than his first question had been. It was as near an apology as we were going to get, but that was OK. It was a way to back off from what could of been a bad moment for us both.

"Proud to know ya," I replied. "We're with the group of folks who bought tickets enough to fill up them last three cars in the train," I told him, motioning with the muzzle of the Yellowboy. I figgered there was no harm in letting him know we were paying passengers ... and maybe hint that it would be best not to irritate folks who'd already paid a goodly sum of money into the coffers of the railroad owners. Keeping the Winchester in his line of sight didn't seem like that bad an idea either.

The remains of his scowl didn't clear much, but he didn't growl anymore neither. "We'll be rolling in fifteen minutes," he announced, having hauled a big, wind-up time piece out a' his vest pocket. "You fellers need to stay with your cars. Don't be messing around back here at the caboose, ya hear? Stay up front!"

"Why ... I can't imagine wanting to stray from them comfortable seats with all them cushions and all," I said. "Thank you kindly for your advice, Mr. Conductor."

I was a tad sarcastic; I surely was.

His jaws tightened some but he didn't reply—just maneuvered on around us, and I automatically began to tip my hat to the girls. Just being respectful, ya know?

Well, sir, I barely had my fingers on the brim when my eyes locked with the younger of the two girls beginning to follow the bearded man and I was plumb startled—so much so that I danged near froze right in place.

Now, ya understand, those two girls were dressed mighty chaste and proper. They had on long, full dresses, with God knows how many petticoats underneath, that brushed the toes of their shoes. That getup was topped by full-length coats of the same shade as their dresses. The material concealed much that I would have liked to look at, and they had bonnets on to protect them from the harsh sun and lustful glances of unwashed peasantry ... such as me and Ellis.

On the other hand ... the look this girl gave me was anything but demure. My, oh, my! I could just feel the lust in her eyes as she walked slowly by. Last time I'd seen a look that steamily sensuous and promising, it'd been Grace wanting me to do something naughty to her, way back on the wagon train. It was always somethin' we probably shouldn't do because it was too dangerous, but we’d almost always done it anyway … and as often as we could arrange it.

This young girl licked her lips with the tip of a pretty little tongue just before she lowered her gaze so that when the grim-faced man looked around, he wouldn't see her wandering eye. Startled, I looked at the other girl and be danged if she wasn't looking at Ellis the same durned way. She had time to shoot me a hot glance too, before the man's head came around to look an' make sure nothing was going on. When his head first moved, the girls' bonneted heads snapped down, like they was concentrating on moving right along behind the train official.

The dour conductor and his charges walked a short distance on, and went into another door down at the far end of the train station. The door closed firmly behind them.

Me and Ellis were left to look at each other ... and grin madly

"Wow!" Ellis said quietly.

I nodded my agreement. "Wow, indeed."

Well, we did as we'd been told … sort of. We went back down the loading platform and over by the station agent's window to talk with him for a spell.

"So why is there a caboose on this here train?" I asked. "There wasn't one on the train we rode coming east ... what's the difference?" I didn't know much about trains and such, but I knew cabooses were usually only hooked on to the tail end of freight trains, but not passenger trains. It was a curiosity.

The agent wasn't very forthcoming. "Don't you boys be worrying about that!" he said in a no-nonsense tone. "You just stay away from it, hear?" and then he found some business inside that required him to shut this outside window and walk away.

Well, sir, me an Ellis just looked at each other, with our faces pretty much blank. I raised an eyebrow, got both of them to bouncing up and down, then rolled my eyes expressively. Ellis laughed.

If there was a thing that would make any good ol' American boy do somethin', it was to forbid him from doing it … with no good reason why not. Yep, we would absolutely stay away from the caboose ... right up to the instant an opportunity presented itself to investigate. Grinning, I winked at my little brother and he winked back. Ain't it really fine when one a' your brothers knows 'xactly what you're thinking about without havin' to explain stuff?

* * *

Them steam locomotives could easily pull a train the size of our'n at thirty or thirty-five miles to the hour, but mostly they didn't. The tracks had been laid so fast in a rush to set up the transcontinental railroad that the quality of the work often wasn't what it should a' been. When they had the option, the men driving them trains generally didn't push things beyond what their experience told them a given stretch of rail could take.

There were frequent stops along the way too, for wood and water to keep the steam flowin', and those stops ate into what seemed at first blush to be the unnaturally high rates of speed trains could travel. A body would think we could of gone clear across Nebraska and maybe two-three other states too in a day 'er two, but when you figgered in all the stopping for water and firewood, plus time spent waiting on side tracks for through traffic, which had priority, it comes out to be a lot longer journey.

After we got out of the Omaha train yards and the valley carved out by the big Missouri river, we climbed some low rises that weren't distinct enough to call hills ... and then stopped for water and wood before it seemed we'd gotten properly started. That set the pattern for the rest of that day, and for the days that followed.

My first chance to investigate that caboose came the second day, when we were way out onto the Nebraska prairie. Stockpiles of wood, and water towers were spaced out along the route of the tracks according to where the engineers who designed and set up the railroad figgered fuel and water would be necessary. Sometimes, them stops were right out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Occasionally there was someone keeping watch over the supplies and maybe manning a telegraph station, too, but other times, there wasn't a soul around.

A little before noon on our second day of traveling, we come to one of those unattended places and I took the opportunity to get down from the train to stretch my legs. Now ... we'd been warned against doin’ that by the lead brakeman, who seemed a cheerful enough Irishman. He told us it didn't happen all the time, but it wasn't unheard of for a passenger, or even a small group of passengers, to get left behind at such stops when they wandered off. Howsomever, I had no intention of being left behind. I had a clear purpose to balance against the risk I was runnin' an' just a doin' that thing was goin' ta' keep me from getting' left.

After walking around aimlessly for a bit, making sure no one was watching me on that side of the train, I just naturally squatted down behind a stack of railroad ties on the north side of the rails. I put my back against the stack, made myself comfortable, and I waited.

When I heard the whistle blowing and the jarring racket of the train starting to move again, I come around the end of that stack of wooden ties, took a couple of runnin' steps and casually climbed aboard the tail end of the caboose. They had a set a' steps there, so it wasn't a difficult thing to do. For the trip home, I'd already switched from heavy boots back to moccasins, so I wasn't making any noise a body could hear. I climbed right on up a ladder that was built right into the structure a' the caboose all the way on top an’ then I laid down behind the copula, thinkin' it would be best if someone at the front end of the train couldn't see me back here.

This caboose was hooked on the train so that the copula was a little back of center. There was a short, round chimney for the stove right behind the copula, so I dropped my body down on the caboose roof, squirmed up close to the chimney, making sure it didn't have any heat coming up it, and right there I stayed 'til the train was well on its way. I was purty much hidden from anyone looking back from anywhere else on the train, mainly by the bulk of the copula. I was sure I hadn't been seen climbing on and I didn't think there was any way I was being watched now from anybody on the train neither.

Curiously, I found that all the windows in the copula were covered with heavy shades. Don't know why that surprised me, but it did. When I saw that, it occurred to me someone didn't want anyone peeking in, but that kept 'em from seeing out too, which I didn't rightly understand.

I 'bout had a heart attack after we'd left that station behind by just a few minutes. With no warnin' at all, a small, slender hand suddenly appeared behind the glass and pushed through the thick curtains to feel around for a latch. A moment later, the back window was pushed to one side as far as it would go. Then the hand disappeared back inside without anyone's face ever coming into view. Shocked to the core, though I really shouldn't a' been, I wriggled backward and got flatter than flat on my belly behind the smokestack. I pretended I was just a knot of wood in the planks on the top of the caboose for a few minutes.

Well, no one commenced to yelling at me or anything … so, after a few moments, I crawled on my belly up close to the base of the copula and steadied myself against the rolling of the wheels over the track. I reached in the open part a' the window, moved the shade just a tick to the side and peeked in to see what I could.

From what I could see, the caboose had bunks on either side of the car down there—they were a good ten 'r twelve feet below me. Behind the bunks, and on the right side of the caboose toward the rear, there was a stove and some other things I didn't take note of right off. That's 'cause my attention was on the bunk down there on my left. It was occupied by a big man, an' the big man was atop a young girl and they were fucking up a storm! Slim, girlish legs were clamped tight around the man's waist and I could see his butt muscles clinching and relaxing as he plowed his cock inside the girl's cunt time, after time, after time.

I couldn't see much what she looked like 'cause his head and upper body hid her, but even from the back I could see the man was our officious-minded conductor from back at the station yesterday. So I just naturally figgered the female was prob'ly one of them he'd been squiring around back in Omaha. My first thought was that the train crew had brought aboard some young whores to while away the long hours of the trip West.

My idea about possible whores on board were swept away in an instant ... because the right-hand bunk was occupied too, by the young girl who'd given me that intensely sensual look back on the train platform. and she was as nekkid as the two fornicators across the narrow aisle from her. She was young too. Too young to be a prostitute? I didn’t know.

Right about then, the curtains must a' shifted or I made a movement that didn't look right with the motion of the train or somethin', 'cause that young girl down there snapped her head around an' looked right up at me! It was a good ways down to that bunk, but we were suddenly looking each other—eye to eye, so to speak.

The little temptress shot a quick glance at the fucking pair to her right and saw the conductor hadn't noticed my discovery of his little fuck house on wheels. She looked back at me and grinned a slow, seductive smile up at me and put her finger to her lips, cautioning me to be quiet.

I nodded. I had absolutely no desire to be discovered, 'cause there was one other thing I'd noticed … there was a rack with a couple of sawed-off shotguns and three rifles close to the bunks and I was an easy target for either.

Then the little minx smiling at me pulled her knees up, put her left leg up agin' the outside wall and let her right foot dangle of the bunk, completely opening up her body for me to see. Her hands drifted down to her open cunt lips and caressed them gently. She got both feet under her again, arched her back to raise her groin up a few inches and pumped her sweet groin up in the air and back down for a moment. I'm pretty sure my face showed how affected I was 'cause she grinned manically, well pleased with herself.

An' then I got another shock. I'd slid a scant few inches forward to see better, and now I could see another girl ... also nekkid ... sitting on a seat almost on my level and directly opposite me in the copula and watching me just as close as the one in the right-hand bunk. I'd never seen this girl before. In fact, I'd had it in my mind that there would only be two young girls in there 'cause I'd seen two girls with the conductor back down the line, but here was a third and I hadn't even considered the possibility.

I swallowed hard. I was well and truly caught if either girl wanted me to be. If there was just one little shriek of surprise or somebody made a move that attracted the conductor's attention, young Jeremiah Richardson was just about as old as he ever would be—either one a' those shotguns or one a' the rifles would a' made that a certainty.

This new girl grinned wickedly at me too; I think she sensed my consternation and she liked having me at a disadvantage ... not unlike most all the women I knew, come to think of it. The new girl slouched a bit on her seat, propped her heels on the cupola seat just below me, and let her thighs spread wide as wide could be. Two fingers on her right hand disappeared inside her pussy and I swallowed hard again ... but for different reasons this time.

Above the rush of the wind and train noises, I heard the man bellowing and the girl screeching as they got off just about together. The two other girls and I watched as the young girl's heels beat a quick tattoo over the grown man's kidneys. She crossed her heels to lock him in position and continued to wail and scream her release. I was impressed. Clearly the grim-faced man had enough skill to bring the young woman-child off like a stick a' dynamite exploding.

But now the conductor was beginning to stir. Before he lifted his body off the girl, the young vixen in the cupola across from me made a pushing motion with her hands, clearly wanting me to back away from the window. She smiled to show she wasn't upset, but her fluttering fingers became ever more urgent as Mr. Train Conductor recovered. Seemed like a good idea for me to back up out a' the window, and I did.

A moment later, the slender hand that had opened that window a while ago now appeared again, waved briefly at me, and then disappeared. The window closed. Mister Conductor's attention wasn't going to be attracted to the noise comin' from an open window.

I moved back behind the too-narrow smokestack—I hadn't noticed how thin it was before now. I set in to pretendin' I wasn't laying precariously on top of a moving train caboose ... most 'specially not one with three nekkid girls and one fornicatin' conductor who prob'ly wouldn't like folks knowing he'd just fucked a little girl.

I lay there for a spell pondering my next move. Didn't seem much I could do 'til the train stopped when I might could get back down the ladder and work my way back to the last train car, which I was beginning to think of fondly as a place of warmth and refuge.

Suddenly the back window slid open again, the inside shade was thrust rudely aside and three heads filled the opening. The girl who'd been on the bunk under the man was revealed to be the one I thought she was ... the older of the two young ladies who'd been with the conductor at the train station. The three of them were smiling broadly ... and they were still nekkid.

I crawled forward again, until I was only inches from the window frame.

"Hi," I said. I couldn't think of anything more intelligent to say.

"Hi!" they chorused.

"You can't come in," the one who'd been sitting up in copula said quickly. There was some regret clear in her voice. "My Pa's going to be coming back here in a little while," she explained with some regret in her voice. She brightened. "But you can watch us fuck if you want to," she suggested.

"Our Pa won't be coming back for a while," the exhibitionist from the right-hand bunk remarked. "Our Pa's the conductor," the freshly fucked girl said breathlessly. "You don't dare let him catch you up here a watching us, hear?"

Sounded like a really good idea to me; gettin' caught was never a good thing. I lay there for a second, thinkin'. This was a problem ... but it wasn't one that couldn't be solved.

I smiled into their faces and looked at the copula girl's fresh face. "I'd love to watch you fuck your Pa too," I told her. "But I'd really love to be doing the fuckin'," I said.

All three looked pleased. They glanced sideways at each other. They were completely at ease bein' without clothes, they hadn't been shy about showing me their cunts, and the one wasn't even put off at havin' been caught havin' sex with a man … a man who was her father. Things were gettin' real interesting.

I crawled closer. Between train noises and the rush of the wind and such, it wasn't easy to talk. It put me right up in their faces and right-hand bunk girl, who was in the middle of the three of them, leaned closer and kissed me right on the lips. She drew back and wrinkled her nose at me while the other two giggled.

"Maybe ... somehow ... later," the recently-fucked girl began hesitantly. "Maybe if our Pa and Abigail's Pa get busy with the train or somethin'...."

"Honey," I said, "I can't hang on out here forever a waiting for them to get tied up with railroad business or somethin' ... we need to find a way—"

The train whistle shrieked, and it was apparently a warning to the girls.

"Our Pa is going to be commin’ back here real soon," Abigail told me, speaking quickly. "You got to go," she said unhappily.

"I'll figger out a way," I promised. I didn't know what that would be, but I really wanted to be in that caboose with them three eager, nekkid young girls. There had to be a way.

A few miles up the line, the train slowed an' then stopped while a herd of buffalo crossed the tracks ahead of us. There weren't that many, so it didn't take too very long for them to pass, but it was a fortuitous halt to our race across the prairie for me. I took the only opportunity I was likely to have for a long while, climbed down the ladder, and dropped to the ground beside the tracks.

I did what I could to make sure a returning conductor or his buddy wouldn't catch sight a' me from a window in the caboose or one a' the passenger cars neither. A cautious few seconds walk—and I was mounting the steps at the front of the last passenger car. I didn't want to be discovered climbing back inside by the conductor exiting the caboose. He might wonder.

I refastened the chain across the steps and stayed there a moment, thinking and doing a little recovering from the stress of the last little while … and plannin'—lots a' plannin'.

* * *

So, what's a feller to do when he needs a big ol' conductor and a brakeman distracted from what's happing back in their little house on wheels at the rear-end of the train? Especially if that conductor and brakeman are keeping a healthy, and horny, young feller from getting some good fuckin’?

Why ... he goes to his girl cousin and his sister for help, by golly! What else?

"You know the conductor? He's been coming and going 'tween the cars all the time, right?" I asked Rachel quietly. We were sitting together in a seat in the second car of our three cars.

"Yeah … he's handsome," Rachel said immediately, "and strong looking too ... niiiiiiice!" she drawled while her eyes lost focus for a moment. She shifted her weight on the cushions and she parted her legs slightly. We knew the conductor was somewhere up in the other cars and the brakeman wasn't close by, so Rachel didn't have any qualms about rubbing her groin through her skirt.

She glanced sideways at me. "It's been a while," she grumbled.

It certainly had been. We had all been on our best behavior since leaving eastern Tennessee ... and that meant none of us had been having sex—or at least I had not, and I guessed Rachel hadn't neither. We already knew the more sex we had, the more we wanted. So, things were growing a tad tense in the three Richardson families, and the orphans too, right about now from the wantin'.

"Some of us girls are wondering if it'll grow together and we'll have to be relieved of our virginity all over again," Rachel teased.

Well, I was a mite distracted by that comment. I was suddenly thinking about large numbers of so-very tight young pussies needing to be reopened. I think my eyes lost focus there for a second.

"I don't think that's how it works," I said hastily when I saw her looking at me grumpily. I patted her forearm reassuringly. She grabbed my wrist and pushed my hand under her skirt. I was most agreeably distracted again, but not for ... well, not for too long, anyway.

After I retrieved my hand from between my protesting sister's thighs, I explained what I'd found in the caboose and what all the conductor and brakeman were doin'. It caught her interest immediately. Not too much shock in that, considering where her thoughts had been, even before I started talkin' to her.

"So you want us to go back there with you and join in?" she asked, cutting me off. "OK, I'm for it," she said with a slow smile.

Joining in? I hadn't thought of that exactly. What my fevered brain had been thinking was that she might could divert the conductor's or brakeman's attention by talking to 'em or something like that for long enough for me to slide back to the caboose and then….

Actually, it didn't take me long to realize joining in was a lot better idea than the one I'd been toying with. "Yes, join in," I said, grinning happily. I was warming to my sister's idea right smartly.

She looked thoughtful for a moment. She wasn't near as calm as she appeared. I could see the vein in her throat pulsing strongly the way it always did when she got to concentratin' on sex things.

"How old are the girls?" she asked.

"Ahhhhhhhhh...." I had no idea at all. All were old enough to have breasts, though one of them had had kind of little ones. I didn't know why it mattered. I had to shrug my ignorance back at her.

Rachel looked at me scornfully when I admitted I didn't know how old the wanton young girls were. She thought for a moment. "I'd say their fathers are pretty set on keeping everything secrete, wouldn't you say?" she asked.

"Yes'm … I 'spect that's a true fact, yes, ma'am," I said dryly.

My sister ignored the dryness.

"So it's going to quite a shock for them when some other nekkid girl show up in their caboose," she mused. "We shouldn't make it too shocking by letting 'em see too young a couple of girls, right? Isabella and Belinda just can't do it; might put the men off, not understanding how our girls feel about doing naughties with guys, huh?" she explained.

I nodded. It made sense to me. So the twins weren't going to be in on this party. I knew I wouldn't have been put off by a naked toddler, but I didn't know Mr. Conductor or Mr. Brakeman at all. And I had an idea where my sister was headed.

"Girls, you said? Ah ... girls around your age?" I asked. I looked around. "You an'...?"

"Me and Camilla," Rachel replied shortly.

Suited me just fine.

Right then, the brakeman for the train opened the rear door and began making his way toward the front of the train. For a brief moment, I could see the front of the caboose through the open door. Mister Brakeman looked relaxed and highly satisfied with life in general. I didn't have to wonder why.

Rachel stopped him and engaged him in conversation for a long moment, smiling brightly up at him and reaching out to stroke a strong forearm ever' now and then. I don't know how or when she'd unbuttoned the top two buttons on her blouse but she had.

Mr. Brakeman didn't care how nor when them buttons came adrift. Apparently he also took a liking for Rachel, 'cause he didn't look away from her one single time. He didn't keep his eyes on her eyes all the time, mind you, but he really didn't know I was there.

When he finally went on forward, Rachel went up the aisle to Camilla's seat and whispered in her ear for a moment. The two of them came walking back down the aisle, their bodies swaying with the motion of the train.

When they reached me, I followed them out the rear door and onto the platform. We stood talking for a moment, making sure we were really going to do this. Then I reached out and knocked on the door.

Abruptly, I saw a face at the window in caboose's forward door. It was the copula-girl looking out at us. I waved, then I handed Rachel and Camilla across the coupling and right up to the caboose door. We were all three smiling as widely as we could.

The face disappeared for a couple of minutes ... and then the door opened to reveal the girl I'd seen fuck Mr. Conductor. She was clothed, but her blouse and skirt showed signs of having been hastily thrown on. She was barefoot.

"Hi, I'm Jeremiah Richardson, and this is my sister, Rachel, and my cousin, Camilla," I said, all in a rush before the girl might get an idea to shut the door as fast as she'd opened it.

"I'm Mandy Evers," she said hesitantly. She paused, confused by the presence of my sister and girl cousin. "My Pa's the conductor of this train," she offered.

"Oohhhhhh," Rachel gushed. "He's good-looking and strong too...."

Mandy Evers nodded uncertainly.

"And Jere told us how your daddy fucks you really good," Rachel added without a pause. It hadn't been Mandy the conductor had been fucking when I saw them … but no one seemed to care. "An' Jere told me how he was shoving hard to push his cock really deep inside you and everything," she said brightly. She put her hand over my crotch. "Jere likes to shove it deep in me too," she added.

She took in Mandy's wide eyes and shocked expression. "I fuck my Pa too," Rachel said quickly. "Don't you just LOVE it when they put their things in you? It makes me all squirmy inside and I feel SO wicked and naughty, naughty, naughty…! Don't you? It's so ... delicious!!" She grinned insolently at the young Mandy.

Mandy nodded. She was dazed, but had enough presence of mind to look at the back end of the passenger car behind me to make sure her Pa was nowhere near.

"May we come in?" Rachel asked politely. "We really need to talk about fucking and who's going to fuck who, and things like that...."

Mandy squeezed her eyes shut for an instant, then opened her right one ... just to see if the three of us were going to disappear in a puff of magic smoke or somethin'. When we didn't, she nodded and backed away to allow us inside.

* * *

So it was that when Conductor Luke Evers opened the forward door to the caboose less'n an hour later, he was presented with three nekkid young girls standing waiting for him—they just weren't the three nekkid girls he'd expected to see. His eyes grew round as Sunday china saucers.

"Hi, Daddy," Mandy said brightly to her father, he of the stunned expression.

"These are my our friends Rachel and Camilla ... they want to fuck you ... is that OK?"

That was Rachel and Camilla's cue to step forward and take the conductor by his hands and lead him over to a bunk. Rachel pulled his head down to her lips for a nice, long kiss and placed his nervous hands on her breasts while Camilla fondled his cock. He evidently never considered not having anything to do with the two Richardson girls. Both Rachel and Camilla started in to relieve him of his clothing while Mandy climbed up to the cupola seats overhead.

The idea was to not give him a chance to think ... and it worked fine. He'd come in eager to plumb the depths of a young girl's cunt with his hard cock and … well … my sister and cousin never let him lose that focus. In a lot less time than I would have thought possible, Evers was on top of Rachel and slamming his cock deep inside her hot, and thoroughly drenched, cunt.

It was a quick coupling and it wasn't long before Camilla was claiming him for her first fuck of the afternoon.

"You go and get on your back, OK?" Camilla said, her hands already urging him to put his back flat on the bunk. Before he was really set, she climbed on top of him and inserted his still-hard johnson through her puffy outer labia and fed it in 'til he was firmly seated inside her.

Then he caught sight 'a me sitting up in the cupola with his two daughters and his best friend's daughter too. None of us had a stitch on.

"YOU!" he hollered.

"And YOU TOO!" I bellowed right back at him. I grinned. "Here we'uns are—the two of us here with all these nekkid girls—your daughters are here...." I remarked to remind him of the circumstances he found himself in.

I was just sixteen, still a mite shy of seventeen, so folks around would expect me to be doing everything I could think of getting my cock inside his daughters' pussies. A sixteen-year-old boy would probably get a good whuppin' for anything he done like that ... but the trainman was a full-grown man. For what he'd just done, the least that would happen was the loss of his job; for doing what he'd done with his daughters, he'd surely be punished severely by the authorities ... for years and years and years....

"Don't you go making him soft inside me, Jere!" Camilla warned. She bent down to brush his lips with her own. "You're going to fuck me real good like you did Rachel, right, Mr. Conductor man?" She began rotating her hips around and rocking back and forth.

Evers couldn't help but respond, but his face was troubled. Unbidden, his hips began to rise to meet Camilla's downthrusts.

"I've been fucking my sister for a couple of years now, and my cousin there on top of you, for about a year now," I told him as quietly as I could and still be heard above the rumbling of the wheels on the uneven tracks. "We like doing it, we don't intend to stop, and we're just pleased as punch to find some others like you and your daughters ... and Mr. Macalister and his daughter too," I explained. "The more people fucking and having wicked, dirty, wanton fun, the better," I finished.

I'd had time to refine my little speech, having said much the same to the three daughters of the conductor and brakeman earlier. I thought it sounded fine.

"Any questions, Daddy?" Mandy asked brightly of her father. The twelve-year-old (she'd be thirteen in three months) slid down from the cupola to stand nekkid in a bold pose in front of her father with her fists on her hips. She was daring him to react unpleasantly.

"Mr. Evers?" I said, letting my eyebrows rise when he didn't answer immediately. His eyes left his defiant daughter and came back up to me.

"Is there anything any of us should change about what we're doin', sir?" I asked respectfully. I was learning it was always best to leave an adult with a way out of a situation and this was the best I could do in this one.

Almost reluctantly, he shook his head. Then he noticed how strongly his treacherous body was fucking into Camilla's young body when she held still for a moment. He blushed and looked all around as if he was wondering just how all this had come about.

I sympathized. Must be something like my feeling events were carrying me along with them when I recovered from the bear attack and found out there were a LOT more people involved in doing stuff like this.

Before that, it'd just been me an' my stepsister Grace, an' I was happy as could be. Then my best friend, and his sister joined in—they butted in, truth be known. It wasn’t too long before all other kids were doin’ what me ‘n Grace were doing. I hadn't quite known what to do about it for a while.

"Daddy?" Mandy said to get her father's attention.

He looked at her.

"Yes, honey?" he said ... which was good news. It was the first words he'd spoken for a long while, 'cept to yell at me.

Mandy wet her lips. "Daddy, Jere watched you fuck his sister," she paused for the dramatic effect. “...and now, you get to watch him fuck Dolores!" she said.

"Ta daaaa!" Mandy was fair dancing with excitement.

Dolores was eleven. She was the one who'd given me a hot-blooded look back in Omaha ... she was ready and eager to follow through with the promise that'd been in the look too.

I climbed down from the cupola and stretched out on my back on the bunk across from her father. Dolores followed me down, moving fluidly and a little faster than me 'cause she'd climbed down from that perch lots a' times before, and I was brand new to the task.

My back no more than touched the blanket than young Dolores straddled my hips and fitted the head of my cock between her plump pussy lips. She was burbling little noises, no words that I could make out, but she was obviously out-of-her-head excited. She hoisted herself up on her knees, adjusted the angle of my cock and then let herself down slowly, impaling herself on my penis as she dropped.

Her father rolled up on one elbow, his eyes wide. He swallowed hard. When he began shifting his weight and rolling forward on that elbow in Dolores' and my direction, I was a mite concerned.

"HEY! Did I tell you to stop movin'?" Camilla demanded, smacking his bare chest.

The conductor whipped his attention back to her with a thoroughly shocked expression on his features.

"DID I?"

Luke flattened back out hastily and mumbled an automatic apology before he caught himself. He reddened again ... and then relaxed. He threw me a rueful look and managed to shrug his shoulders.

"Sir, they're ALWAYS in charge," I said. "You know that!" I chuckled.

A second or two later, he joined in the chuckling. The moment passed and I didn't worry any more. Our conductor had turned the corner on accepting his daughters' sensual personalities and the fact that said daughters weren't his and the brakeman's private harem any longer.

"That's a gooooood Daddy!" Mandy quipped. She stepped closer to her father. "Would you put a couple of fingers in my pussy, please, Daddy?" she asked brightly.

"He can as long as he doesn't quit moving again!" Camilla interjected, thoroughly nettled. "Hey, Mister! You got your prick in the hottest fourteen-year-old pussy in the West ... and you're not fucking that thing any deeper than that into me??!!"

She giggled. Luke's expression—as he redoubled his efforts to buck up into her clutching cunt—was priceless. Camilla was most assuredly in charge; he was expected to comply with her wishes—which were expressed loudly, and uninhibitedly. He didn't exactly know what to do ... or if he should do anything at all … about the other things goin' on in the caboose.

After the briefest pause, he hesitantly reached out and cautiously inserted a fore and middle finger through Mandy's puffy outer labia, being very careful he didn't inadvertently slow his efforts with Camilla. His eyes never left my cousin's face so he wouldn't miss the beginning of even the slightest displeasure.

He did fine. In a few minutes, Luke had his oldest daughter writhing on his fingers and the girl he'd just met dancing on his cock.

"Abigail?" I heard Rachel say to the brakeman's twelve-year-old daughter. "Have you ever sucked Mr. Evers' white gooey stuff out of a hot cunt?"

"Yep!" Abigail responded cheerfully. Her eyes gleamed. "You think it would taste any different coming out of your pussy?"

"Well ... we can find out," my sister returned with a grin.

She was sitting up in the copula, facing Luke and me. So when Abigail got down on her knees on the narrow support extending from the side of the copula and thrust her tongue as deep as she could through Rachel's labia, we could see every lick, lap, slurp and ... swallow.

"It tastes pretty danged good," Abigail reported, smacking her lips and grinnin'. "And you taste really, really good, too!" She went back to tonguing my sister's quim while we watched.

I looked over at Luke. He had a beatific smile on his face while he watched. I'm pretty sure Luke was convinced he'd just found heaven on earth. Fucking one hot young girl, finger-fucking another, and watching two more engaged in lewd sex that would get them both banned in every city in the country....

With the thorny issues resolved, I concentrated on giving young Dolores the fuck she deserved. After all, had she not looked at me so boldly on the platform, what was going on here … wouldn't be happening.

Instead of her riding me like I was her favorite stallion, I pulled her down on top of me and turned us both sideways in the narrow bunk. Before she could complain, I was out of her, had her turned on her right side with me behind her and my prick reinserted in her cunt. I picked up her left leg and dropped it behind my buttocks so she was wide open for everyone to see her get fucked.

"Show your Daddy how your pussy takes me inside a' you," I murmured in her ear. Then she understood, and began working with me. In this position, I could reach around her slender frame and fondle her miniature breasts and tease each little nipple into a ruby red erection, so I did.

Reaching down the front of her body, I moistened my fingertips in the juices escaping from her pussy. I captured her right nipple between my thumb and forefinger and pinched the delicate little thing gently, twirled it and rubbed her own cunt honey around and around her aureole.

"Ulp!!" She was some startled at the first touch, but she adjusted quickly.

After only a few seconds of play, her right nipple was just as hard as a tiny pebble—and more sensitive than one would think possible. I shifted to her left breast and did it all over again.

"Annnnggggghhhhhhh," she breathe.

Stroking my cock into her young furnace of a cunt was one of the finest sensations I've ever felt. I had to move inward slowly because her young vagina could only stretch so much, and just so fast. Her cunt fastened so tight around my prick! It was heaven. I could feel every fraction of an inch of passage as I squeezed my cock in deeper and deeper.

Soon, I touched bottom. She felt it too and whimpered a little. I began to withdraw and she clamped down on me, reluctant for me to pull out. I did, though the friction between tight cunt and burgeoning prick was incredible. My breathing began to be some labored. Hers too. I held my breath as long as I could before letting it out, hoping to delay the point when I would be gasping for air just to be able to keep goin'.

I pushed back in slowly, relishing every inch. It was like shoving it in the hot water spring back home in the settlement, she was THAT hot inside.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...," she moaned softly. "More...!" she whimpered. She'd reached around her butt, found my prick and wrapped her fingers around the base of my cock. She squeezed it, held it tight and tried to push more of it inside her. She quit whispering ‘more’, only when she realized there wasn't any part of her sheath that wasn't filled with my cock.

Gradually, I moved faster. Her juices were flowing strong now. Each outstroke brought with it a tiny flood of little-girl honey. The heady aroma of her musk mixed with that of Rachel and Camilla's. No one who came in the caboose until it was thoroughly aired out could possibly mistake what had happened inside here. I loved it. I breathed deep, filling my lungs with the odor of excited female, young though they might be.

"Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh, Annnh!!!" my small lover grunted with each quickening stroke. "Annh Annh Annh Annh Annh Annh Annh Annh." Her little cries grew higher in pitch and volume as we moved more rapidly together.

I put my forefinger just over her slit where I could rub against her clitoris while my cock fucked her. She groaned, arching her back. Her left hand clamped over my right, holding it in place over the sensitive nubbin.

"Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh! Anh!" She was panting hard and I was right there with her. My lungs were fair starving for air as I pounded into her steamy cunt.

"ANH!! ANH!! ANH!! ANH!!!!" she squealed. "HARDER!!" she implored. Her right hand was on my butt now, trying to get my groin moving faster. Her fingers gripped my right buttcheek, squeezing hard.

And then I could feel the sap rising in my body. "HERE IT COMES!" I yelled. "HERE IT—"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" Dolores shrieked as my pearly-white cream sprayed inside her and splashed against the walls of her cunt. She arched her back against me even more sharply than before. Only the back of her head and her butt touched my body. Her right leg kicked out, then drew back, only to kick again.

"ONNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!" I groaned. I pushed my cock into the small girl's pussy again ... then again, feeling squirts surge out with each thrust, until there was no more to give her. I lay back, exhausted beside the equally worn out little girl. We both lay there panting for a long while.

I was only vaguely aware throughout my first fuck with young Dolores that there were cries and entreaties, whimpering and squealing going on around us too. When I caught my breath, I saw Camilla laying flat on Luke's chest, both of them breathing just as heavy as Dolores and I were.

Overhead in the cupola, Abigail and Rachel had changed places and Abigail had apparently come hard with Rachel's tongue buried in her pussy. Some drops of her juices were dripping down on us.

Even Mandy looked to have gotten some satisfaction from her father's fingers delving into her pussy. She was sitting beside her dad and Camilla, smiling weakly at nothing in particular.

"Wow!" I breathed softly.

"Amen!" Luke said in his deep voice.

The girls tittered. There was a short silence whilst we recovered.

"Pa?" Dolores asked languidly. "I just love fucking!" she said emphatically. "I'm so glad we started doing it!"

Luke laughed. "Just like your mother!" He paused momentarily. "Only she didn't like fucking with me...." No one missed the trace of bitterness in his voice.

"WELL, I'M SURE I DON'T KNOW WHY!!" Camilla exclaimed. She lifted off Luke's cock for a brief moment to look down between their bodies to check on his hardness. Satisfied, she wiggled her hips and dropped back down until he was firmly inside her again. "You have a great cock," she said into her lover's chest. "It's big enough for any girl and you don't get too rough or anything ... and I 'preciate that, kind sir."

"Well ... thank you very much," Luke said after a brief pause. It wasn't any part of a conversation he'd ever had before. There was no doubting his sincerity in thanking her though. There was a period of silence.

"So...," Rachel said briskly, "when does Mr. Macalister get back here?"

* * *

Well, we got the place aired out—it was a simple thing to do, what with open windows in a caboose on a moving train and ever'thing. Then we straightened up, and got ourselves cleaned up enough so that when Sean Macalister walked through the door in the middle of the afternoon, things were neat and unsoiled.

Luke had told Sean that there was a nice surprise waiting for him—but he hadn't told him any of the details. So when he walked into the caboose, the brakeman was ready and most willing to fuck one, or more, of the two men's daughters. He was surprised when he walked in, but shrugged off the shock quickly—quicker to recover than the conductor had been, in fact.

He fucked Rachel first, then Camilla, coming in both the girls before he fucked Mandy. I took care of his daughter, Abigail while he watched, and he got through that traumatic event well enough. Actually, Abigail was licking Dolores' pussy while I fucked Abigail from behind, so it was a double shock for him 'cause the girls hadn't yet let their fathers know they were doing any girl-on-girl stuff.

Luke Evers came back inside the caboose after an hour or so. He waved a startled Sean back down. Us Richardsons already knew that, usually, one relieved the other on train duties ... and made sure no one wandered back toward the caboose while the other got with the girls. Luke wanted to talk right now, and Sean had to be a part of that conversation.

The girls stripped Luke plumb nekkid when he walked in, like it was part of a well-established routine. Then Mandy and Dolores took turns sucking his cock and giggling at their father's facial expressions while they worked on him. Rachel was sitting on my cock, squirming around and wriggling up a storm. Camilla and Abigail were soon cuddling with Sean in a bunk, but that resulted in Sean developing a hard cock, and that cock quickly interfered with just cuddlin'. After a bit, they took care of the interference to everyone's satisfaction.

Afterward, we all sat around eating some of the conductor's good food, for none of us had bothered with lunch. Everyone was starved. We began to talk companionably, all of us nekkid as the day we were born.

"Never knew kids like you were around," Luke commented, looking at me, Rachel and Emily. "Awful glad to meet you, ya know? People like y'all are few and far between." He sighed expressively. "How far'r you goin'? All the way to California? You can do that nowadays, you know?" His voice and visage were vastly modified from the first time he'd said anything to me.

"Well, we're going all the way to where we get off at ... a place I don't think even has a name. We just call it The Crossing," I said. "An' when we get there, we're going to get off ... with all of our family," I said.

Sean got it first. He shot a glance at the blind-covered forward door. He couldn't see through to the next railroad car, but his mind was already ranging through the aisle in there. "You don't MEAN…!" he exclaimed.

"Absolutely," Rachel said, getting up from where she'd sat on the edge of one of the bunks. "Ever last one of us," she added, grinnin' naughtily. She stood for a moment, making a very pretty little pose, kissed Sean on the lips and then perched herself on his lap.

Luke was looking from one of us to the other. He understood what was happenin', but he was taking a while longer to run through all the implications.

Dolores stared through the closed door much as Sean had done before. "All those sweet boys...?" she whispered. I hadn't known that she'd watched the passengers loading up into the three railroad cars, but clearly she'd noticed some of our party anyway. Her fingers made their way between her thighs—I don't think she was even aware of it.

"An' all those sweet, sweet girls," I murmured. I grinned at the two men.

"So...," my sister Rachel said softly, "my big brother has decided y'all would be a fine addition to our ... town out there," she told them. "And I agree," she added, kissing Sean again.

I looked around the caboose. It was cramped in here with all of us. There was no way we could continue to party, and add more participants, which was clearly what all of us here wanted to do. "So is there a way we could ... block off the rail car ahead of us and kind of make it into a ‘play’ car ... or somethin'?" I asked. "We could make the front passenger car a ... uh ... resting place and take turns coming back to the 'play' cars ... or somethin'? We got plenty of room for all of us in the just two cars," I said, building on my own idea as I spoke.

"Well...," Sean mused, "there just might ... OR, by golly, we could make all three cars 'play' cars. Hmmmmmmm ... 'course Luke and me would have to quit the railroad after this trip."

Luke shrugged. "Ain't like we’re getting rich on what they pay us," he said dryly. He frowned. "Whatcha got in mind?"

As Sean explained, Luke's forehead cleared and he actually began smilin'. "Yep, we'd have to quit all right ... danged good thing day before yesterday was pay day, huh?" He grinned.

* * *

"Where ya been son?" Pa asked when I plopped down into the seat beside him. "I was beginning to think you got left off somewhere back there."

"I been ... recruitin' ... you might say—back in the caboose a' this here train," I told him happily. "Five new folks already following the 'special' life like we do. The conductor and the lead brakeman ... and their daughters."

"Indeed?" Pa answered sharply. "What'll they do in our ... community?" Pa was getting increasingly worried that everyone in our community wouldn't have gainful employment. He couldn't abide freeloaders and knew they were a cancer in the heart of any community.

I cocked my head and smiled. "Got it covered, Pa! You been hunting good teamsters so you can expand your freight business," I said. "Both of them men grew up driving mules and oxen and they'd love to get back to it."

Pa was nodding before I got the last words out. "Excellent," he said, the grouchiness growing fainter in his voice. So, you and who else was back ... in the caboose? ... ahhhh ... recruitin?"

"Me and Rachel and Camilla," I said.

"Not much room back there, eh?"

"I'm glad you brought that up," I said enthusiastically. "But first...." I'd felt the expected touch on my shoulder. I didn't even have to look back to see who it was. I’d asked her to wait five minutes after I left the caboose and come up to the passenger car. “...first, I'd like you to meet Miss Dolores Evers, our conductor's youngest daughter," I said, drawing the young girl around so Pa could see her.

She was dressed demurely again, in the jacket and skirt I'd first seen her in. But the hot lust in her eyes was unchanged from an hour ago when she was naked and fucking hard. I was pretty sure the girl could seduce a stone statue … an’ Pa sure wasn’t no rock, 'cept for what was makin' his pants bulge in the crotch.

Pa caught his breath when he saw the look in her eyes. When Dolores swept by me, squeezing between my knees and the seat ahead to sit on Pa's lap, he was thoroughly entranced. He looked like he’d been sandbagged or something.

"I'm most happy to meet you, Mr. Richardson," Dolores murmured politely, like any young youngster would a man old enough to be her grandfather. Then she ruined that impression by hauling off an’ kissin’ Pa's lips, “...really, really happy," she added. "Do you like to fuck little girls as much as your son does?" she whispered just loud enough for Pa and me to hear. Her fingers were touching his shirt buttons, one after the other, as if she was ready to start unbuttoning them right then and there.

Pa swallowed hard. Then he relaxed and chuckled. "More!" he assured her. "I just hope you like to fuck grown-up men as much as they'll like fucking you," he said quietly.

"Oh, I DO!" she said, her eyes dancin'. “I promise … I do!” She kissed Pa again, even more warmly than last time. "I've been fucking my father for two whole years," she whispered proudly, "and Mr. Macalister for almost as long," she added. She patted his shoulders with her soft little hands. "I just know I'll love fucking you too," she said, not quite whispering this time.

Pa growled deep in his chest. You could just see some ol' bull of the woods a' rearing his head and plowing up the sod in some meadow.

Without me even havin’ to try real hard, Pa was more than convinced the new 'recruits' would work out just fine.

I grinned and sat back in my seat. It was then I saw we had a lot of people watching and trying to listen to our words. I'm sure my smile was all over my face.

"The conductor's coming," a voice whispered in my ear. My fourteen-year-old cousin, Frances ... Aunt Becky's oldest girl ... thought we should be warned.

"That's the conductor's daughter," I whispered back, pointing at Dolores. "Her father's been fucking her for two years now ... and they're joining us out West."

Frances stood, snapped a look down the aisle at the conductor, then back up toward the front of the train ... and promptly sat down in my lap and kicked her legs up in the air to show off her legs. She twined her arms around my neck and kissed me as deep as Dolores was doing my Pa. "Does this mean you and me are finally going to get to fuck?" she asked mischievously.

"It does ... and not too long from now, neither!" I assured her. When a shadow fell over us, I glanced up. The train's conductor had arrived.

"Hi, Luke!" I said loudly. "This here's my Pa, Frank Richardson, sir ... this is my cousin Frances ... and I think you know that hot-blooded little slut on my father's lap?"

"I do," he said heartily. "I'm glad to meet you again, Mr. Richardson," he said to my Pa, offerin' his hand. I already knew they'd had a couple of casual conversations as Luke patrolled the aisles of the passenger cars … an’ they picked right up like they’d been discussing how to make it safe for everyone in these train cars to have a fuckin’ good trip across the prairie.

"So ... here's what we can do...," Luke said, completely ignoring his daughter's attempts to distract my father from talkin' with the conductor.

Pa was only partly successful at being able to ignore what she was doin'.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The sun hadn't set yet, but it was getting purty close to the far western horizon when the train stopped at a little way station way out in the middle of nowhere. Seemed like the station's only purpose for existence was to service passengers coming through on the railroad ... and I guess maybe some farmers and ranchers in the area.

There was a nice, large building set up to feed folks a short distance from the tracks where hungry travelers could get a bite to eat, a saloon (which we didn't patronize), a small store, and a livery stable with a corral full of mustangs out back ... along with the obligatory water tower and tall stacks of wood for the steam engine, of course.

While the passengers ate, the train crew added two flat cars, a messenger car, and a brightly colored freight car to the train. What Mr. Evers did, was use his authority as the train conductor, to have the new rail cars inserted right in front of my Pa's three passenger cars. The flatbeds and the messenger car went in front of the freight car and the freight car itself was in front of our three passenger cars, effectively blocking access from the other cars in the train back to our three passenger cars. That took some backin' and movin' forward again up an' down the tracks from the siding.

What it did was give us a darned good barrier between us and the plain vanilla folks up front so they couldn't spy on what we were doing at the back of the train, no matter what. Actually, they couldn't even see past the freight car from directly ahead of the first 'Richardson' passenger car. It was unorthodox and not in compliance with the railroad's policies, but Luke and Sean were resigning before any company official could censure them.

That's how it happened that in the gathering twilight, we had three railroad passenger cars and one caboose available for a bacchanal on wheels, courtesy of the two members of the train crew who were joining our society. We closed all the shades down tight and made the most of the opportunity.

* * *

Somehow, in all the weeks since Aunt Becky and Aunt Phoebe had confessed they were into family sex, I'd never been able to find my fourteen-year-old cousin, Frances when she wasn't with someone else. and it always seemed I was already with someone else when she come a lookin' for me. It had gotten to be frustrating and I was determined to put the situation to rights, here and now.

On board the third passenger car, I was working my way up the train, looking for Frances. Pa had just been here, explaining to one and all that we now had the privacy we needed in order to have some fun while the train carried us West. As I walked up the aisle, children and adults were doffing their clothing, folding everything up neatly and setting it aside for when they'd need clothes again.

I passed Pamela's man, Laurence, stowing his clothes into a small case and getting ready to shove it under his seat. My sister, Rachel, was 'helping' him by sucking on his cock and pushing at Laurence's luggage to get it out of her way. I grinned and started to pass by when a thought struck me.

"Wait! ... Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait!" I exclaimed, trying to get his attention before he had the valise under the seat. Laurence kind of flinched, being a little preoccupied with what Rachel was doing to his cockhead, and not having noticed me coming up the aisle 'til now.

Rachel looked around at me. Her head was lowered and she was looking up at me from under her eyebrows. That was to let me know she was ready and quite willing to get annoyed with me at interrupting her fun. I ignored her. She was all bark and no bite ... well, mostly anyway.

"Laurence, old buddy," I said, "would you lend me one of those handcuff sets of yourn for a little while, please? I'll get 'em back to ya soon's I'm done playing a trick on a girl…." Laurence retrieved them in a trice and I strode on with a brand new pair of Mr. John Tower's finest chain restraints and a key to fit the lock mechanism in my pocket.

I found Frances in the first of our party cars, stripped nekkid and sitting firmly in her seat, fending off offers from boys and the head brakeman, Sean Macalister, too. I appreciated that. We'd agreed we were going to find each other this time, come hell or high water.

"THERE YOU ARE, WENCH!" I bellowed from about two aisle seats behind her. She jumped, along with most of the other folks in the railroad car. "STAND UP, YOU TROLLOP!" I roared. "YOU'LL NOT ESCAPE ME THIS TIME!!"

Frances stood in the aisle and smiled prettily, thinking I was about to embrace her and we'd go to town right then and there. Everyone in the car thought that too.

But I had a little spice to add to this long-awaited coupling. I brandished the handcuffs.

"Turn around, you lewd, lascivious wanton!" I growled. "I'll not have you running away from me THIS TIME!!"

Frances' eyes widened and a flush of excitement made her upper chest and neck glow a faint pink. She grinned. "Oh, please, sir," she piped. "I won't run. Please don't bind me and ... and force me to do your evil bidding!!"

"Nonsense, you wench!" I retorted. "Turn around and accept your fate!"

She did, feigning trepidation and put her hands behind her back. In a few seconds, I had the handcuffs loosely attached. I led her down the aisle toward the caboose. She could a' slipped her hands outin' the cuffs, but she didn't.

When we got to my seat in the second car, I made her stop and bend over in the middle a' the aisle an’ brace her hands on one of the arms of the seat while I got my clothes off. With her bare ass pooched out by her pose, Frances presented an awfully fetching sight. Camilla, sitting across the aisle, added to our little show by taking a dildo right out of her own pussy and inserting it in Frances' from behind.

Frances arched her back like a cat in heat and began to moan and push her ass back at Camilla, wanting the contact to continue. I was nekkid now and I pushed my cock at Frances' face. She took me between her lips and sucked contentedly for a moment while Camilla dildo-fucked her.

It was great fun. Most everyone in the car was watching and offering suggestions about how best to proceed. But this wasn't exactly what I had in mind. So, waving a thanks to Camilla and everyone else, I dragged Frances around bodily and put a hand on her back, seeming to push her on down the aisle and on through the third of our cars to the caboose.

She was actually goin’ along quite willingly, with her boobs thrust out by the posture forced on her by her hands being restrained behind her back. She strolled along proudly, happy to show off her breasts and body to anyone and everyone.

We went on through the caboose and out onto the rear platform. We had traveled all the way into twilight and night was nearly upon us, but there was a moon out and some stars were already peekin' out. The train's motion set up a fair breeze, but we were mostly sheltered back here at the tail end a' the train. It felt good on our nekkid flesh in the hot summer dimness.

Uncuffing one hand, I had her keep facing back down the tracks and looped the steel links of the handcuff set through the horizontal bar atop the railing and refastened everything, apparently securing her quite effectively—she still could a' slipped out a' the irons had she wanted to. Instead, she fixed her hands on the railing and bent over until her upper body was just about level. Her hips couldn't stay still. They wriggled around invitingly.

"Oh God, Jere, hurry…!" she moaned. "Fuck me, Cousin! Fuck me now!" She spread her feet wide apart and waited impatiently for me to plunge my prick deep in her fourteen-year-old cunt.

She didn't wait long. A short moment later, I was behind her, stroking beneath her along her dripping pussy lips with one hand, and holding my cock in my other hand.

"AAAAUUUUUUNNNNNNNNGGGGGG!!!!" she groaned. "God, Jere!! Fuck me!"

Fitting myself into her, I pushed forward inside my cousin's slick love tunnel in one determined thrust. I didn't stop 'til I felt my cockhead bottom out inside Frances' vagina. Holding there a minute, I bent over her back and palmed her dangling breasts, molding them in my hands and massaging them together. The hot skin of her backside felt wonderfully sensual against my front.

There, in the lurid red glow of the warning lantern affixed to the rear of the caboose, we began to writhe together in a lewd dance. When I rammed deep inside her, she went up on her toes and tried to hold me there with her slippery cunt muscles. When I withdrew, she shoved her rounded little ass back at me, trying to hold the contact as long as possible.

My hands were in constant motion. I couldn't keep them off Frances' firm body. Teasing her nipples into even sharper erection in one moment, I was cupping her breasts in my hands the next and rubbing the flesh of one against the other. Then I pulled my hands back and sent them stroking down her upper back and out to her hips and down her flanks. I reached around our humping bodies and kneaded the upper reaches of her pussy lips, teasing her clitoris and driving her half mad with lust.

We'd waited for this moment for a long while and the anticipation had whetted our hunger for each other. That, and our parading through the railway cars had us at a fever pitch that couldn't last much longer....

It didn't. With me stroking her clitoris and her bucking her butt back into me, we came in just a few minutes of fucking.

"OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!" she groaned to the stars shining above. "HARDER, JERE, HARDER!!"

I could feel the sap rising in me, bubbling up like lava in one of them volcanoes … whether I willed it or not. I could feel my cock lengthening and swelling with my approaching completion.

"SHOVE IT IN MEEEEEEE!!!!" Frances pleaded. "FUCK ME! JERE! FUCK ME!!!!"

"FUCKMEFUCKMEFUCKMEFUCKMEFUCKMEFUCKMEFUCKMEFUCKME!!!!" she howled.

I did my best to oblige, slamming my cock into her and pulling back as quick as I could. But we were losing our rhythm though. We were straining so hard, we couldn't get our motions together … and then it didn't matter.

"OH GOD!!" Frances whined, sounding surprised. She whipped her ass back into me frantically.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" she wailed across the prairie, her scream pitched as high as the locomotive's whistle.

"UNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!" I felt my come spewing out of the end of my cock and into my cousin's vagina. There was another spurt, and then one more. I bucked my groin into her velvet-smooth ass, doing everything I could to push my cockhead a tiny bit deeper into her. I shot a final squirt into Frances' belly.

"TAKE IT, FRANCES! TAKE IT!! TAKE IT!! TAKE IT!!!" I raved, nailing her body to the railing and holding her there with my cock buried deep inside her.

"AAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" Frances groaned. She slumped back against me, her knees seeming to give way. We sank together to the metal flooring, my cock slipping out a her on the way down. It cooled in the night's fresh air. We leaned there against the back railing, sucking wind into our straining lungs.

Her hands were still cuffed to the horizontal rail, so I summoned enough energy to uncuff her so she'd be more comfortable. Then I sat back down and stayed there, leaning against one another 'til our strength began to come back to us.

"God, Jere!" Frances said in a soft voice I could barely hear over the rumbling wheels. "That was SOOOOOOOO good, honey," she told me, patting my forearm affectionately. "How come we didn't do it before?"

"If I'd a' known how hot that pussy of yours was," I told her, "I'd a' done everything I could to fuck you a lot earlier."

She patted my arm again. "Me too," she assured me, beginning to stir around.

The hard steel of the platform there was beginning to dig into our backs, so we shifted around, sitting against the wooden back of the caboose and watching the countryside disappear behind us. We talked idly for a while, until we both recovered our breath and strength again.

Frances held the handcuffs up in front of her face and examined them closely. "You are one perverted man," she said wonderingly. She giggled. "It's one of the things I love about you!" She got to her haunches and leaned in to kiss me on the lips.

I laughed. "Did they work?"

She nodded emphatically. "Don't know as I'd like a sheriff to lock 'em on me for real, but it was fun to play your prisoner," she said. She rose to her bare feet. "Jere," she said, almost hesitatingly, "would it be OK if I went and ... ah ... used these on ... someone...?"

"Surest thing in the world!" I assured her. I could see a dribble of our mixed juices down the inside of her thighs. I reached out and scooped up a measure of it and carried it to my nose. "But you better wash up first." She nodded.

"Who'd you have in mind?" I asked interestedly.

"Uh ... that Matthew boy from the orphanage?" she said slowly.

I nodded. Matthew was the fifteen-year-old brother of two girls I'd spent a wonderful few hours the night of our pagan festival at the old millhouse. "Just make sure he knows it's a game," I advised. I reached inside the open caboose door and came up with the key to the handcuffs. "An' don't lose this," I added with a grin.

Frances bent over to kiss me again. "You're the best cousin in the whole world," she whispered excitedly.

But her excitement was for someone else now and in another second she was gone and I was alone on the rear end of a moving train.

* * *

I roused myself and went inside to wash up with some good soap and warm water heated on the caboose's stove. Afterward, I took the pan back out to the rear platform and tossed the used water off the back to splash on the rails and ties we were rapidly leaving behind. I chuckled. The roadbed would be dusty dry before we were even out of sight.

I liked the faint breeze off the back of the caboose more than I liked the heated interior of the caboose, so I tossed the pan back inside onto one of the bunks and stayed outside. I was still nekkid, and I liked the feelin'.

After a while, my nekkid sister, Rachel came through the caboose and out the back end, looking for me. "THERE you are!" she said. She squatted down on the other side of the doorway from me and leaned against the wooden wall. "This where you're hiding out, eh?"

"I'm not hiding...," I replied mildly. I gestured to the shiny rails pointing back into the darkness. "Just a setting and enjoying watching the miles go past without me having to do any night herding or guarding or anything."

"Or getting attacked by bears," Rachel contributed.

"Or getting attacked by bears," I agreed. " 'SPECIALLY not getting attacked by bears!!"

"You have fun with Laurence's handcuffs?" she asked. I think she knew the answer already.

"Darn sure did!" I replied. I think she could see how big a grain I had on my face, 'cause she giggled.

"Frances said you did!" she quipped. "You know she went after that Matthew guy from the orphanage?"

"Umm humm," I drawled. "…Said she was going looking for him."

Rachel laughed. "Well, she found 'im. You should of seen it. She had him handcuffed, with the cuffs around a peg up on the wall at the back end of the car so he was kind of like, hanging there? and then she started sucking his cock and everything ... and then she stood up and backed herself up onto his cock and fucked him ... and when he came, she come off with ‘im and just lay there on the floor while he splashed his come all OVER her!"

"He have any complaints?" I laughed.

"Not so's you could tell!" she retorted, and laughed.

She stood, straddled my legs and sank down on my thighs. She kissed me thoroughly for a moment. "Would you like for me to suck your cock?" she inquired. "I have a hankering for some of my brother's good come," she said smilingly.

"I've never had my cock sucked on the back end of a train, by golly!" I admitted. "Sounds like a thing I need to do before I get too old to enjoy it, huh?"

So, with me standing there facing forward and holding on with my hands over my head to a rung on the ladder I'd used earlier in the day to climb to the top of the caboose, Rachel knelt in front of me and took my member deep into her mouth. The garish red glow from the lantern bathed us in its wicked light as she enthusiastically performed her perverted, taboo service.

* * *

"LOOK, MOM!! HE'S FUCKING HER IN THE MOUTH!!!!" There was a pause. "CAN WE GO ON A TRAIN RIDE, MOMMY? I WANT TO DO THAT!!!!"

The shrill exclamations, a young girl's excited squealing, came right out of the darkness, surprising my sister and me no end. Rachel spit my cock out and was standing beside me before all the words the girl had said registered on our minds.

Rachel and I hadn't noticed the train slowing to no more than a slow walk as it climbed a long grade. Neither had we seen the trail that intersected the railroad tracks at a shallow angle. As the train crawled along, a buckboard with two dark figures in it was gradually revealed ... or would of been if we'd been watchin'.

The horse had been standing patiently there, no more than ten feet from the tracks, waiting for the train to pass by so he could continue hauling the light wagon on down the trail.

"You're a ... a soiled dove!!" the little girl said accusingly. It got Rachel's goat.

"I am NOT!!" she snapped back. "I'm his sister!"

It was quiet for a moment. "Did ya hear her, Mom? Did ya HEAR her??!!" the little girl squealed in a strangled voice.

"I heard Julia," a calm voice responded. "I'm not deaf ... yet. You need to lower your voice, young lady."

"He's her BROTHER!!" the girl wailed breathlessly. "An' he was fucking her MOUTH!!"

I had to chuckle softly, taking the older woman's suggestion to speak in a low voice to heart. "An' you want to do that, did you say?" I remarked. I had a … a feelin' comin' over me, you might say.

There was no answer. I wondered....

"I can't see you if you're noddin'," I said quietly. "You have to speak up."

"Yes!" the little girl's voice said emphatically. "Mom never let me do that with Wade!" she said resentfully. "An' now I never will!"

So now both parties had revealed something they'd couldn't admit in 'polite' society.

The horse, sociable animal that it was, had turned alongside the railroad tracks and was walking with the train, just to the outside of the ties. In a few seconds, the buckboard was equal with the platform steps. Rachel and I could see an attractive woman and her daughter in the red glow, and they'd already said they could see us.

"Oh, that's too bad," I said sympathetically.

"We had to leave," the girl explained regretfully.

Well, with the horse walking amiably alongside the train, Rachel and I talked with the woman and her outspoken little girl. The train was still laboring up the slope—there didn't seem to be any end to this danged hill.

Turned out the woman, an unwed mother to begin with, had been carrying on with 'Wade' who was a banker in a town off to the south of the tracks. and Bridget, the mother, had allowed Wade access to her precocious young daughter too. "Couldn't keep her away from him," Bridget told us matter-of-factly. Her daughter … Julia was her name … giggled.

The three fornicators hadn't been careful enough; some townspeople chanced upon one of their trysts and they ran Bridget and Julia out of town with only a few minutes to pack their belongings ... and not all of them.

"An' this 'Wade' didn't want to come along?" I asked.

"Well ... I think it was more that his wife wouldn't let him," Bridget said wryly.

Rachel clucked sympathetically. "Isn't that just the way...?" she asked.

By now, my sister and I were sitting side-by-side on the steps, comfortably rubbing nekkid hips together. It felt a little odd, talking so casually with the woman and her little girl there in the night, but it was fun too.

Bridget laughed. "Yeah, but Wade was a very generous man. I doubt his shrew of a wife will ever know how generous." She reached back into the buckboard's rear and hoisted a carpetbag. It clanked metallically when she dropped it back down. "Me and Julia won't be hurting none," she remarked.

Well … except that we were beginning to see lightning flashes off to the west when the train rolled around a bend an' we could see up ahead. It was going to rain purty soon, and they were in a buggy with only a flimsy sun shade for a roof. The woman and her child were going to get soaked in a little while, or worse.

"You're going to get rained on," I pointed out.

The woman studied the western sky for a moment. "Yeah," she said dispiritedly, "we better get goin' ... there's an old sod house back off that way. If we hurry, we can make it."

"Or you can come with us!" Rachel remarked.

No one said anything for a bit.

"Can we, Mom?" little Julia asked, the excitement building in her voice. "CAN we?"

"I ... Julia, that isn't something you can just up and DO," her mother explained. "We can't just—"

"Why NOT?" Julia demanded. "We have to go somewhere, anyway, right? We could ride with them ... and I could let him fuck MY mouth," she finished petulantly.

I laughed at her eagerness. I liked her brand of forthright lustiness. I liked everything about her!

"Actually," I said in a deliberate tone, "my sister was inviting you to join our community ... where all of us brothers and sisters ... and fathers... and mothers and sons and daughters are free to do as they want to."

Having said it, the idea kind of lay there beside the railroad tracks for a moment while the two considered what I'd said.

Bridget cleared her throat. "I ... never fucked my father," she said diffidently.

"Want to watch me fuck mine?" Rachel asked challengingly.

"I do!" Julia shot back. "Please, Mommy?" she said imploringly. "Please??!!"

The train was slowly picking up speed. Evidently we were close to the crest and maybe the engine had already gone over. Time was short.

"PLEEEEEEZEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZ, Mommy!!"

"Give the horse her head and she'll find her way home," I suggested. I don't know why, but it looked like a horse from a livery stable to me.

Bridget threw a glance at the storm building ahead of us, looked back down the tracks to where the trail had crossed over and chewed on her lower lip for a second. "Well, why the hell not?" she spat out.

She clambered over the back of the seat. "HERE!" she called out to me just before she threw a carpet bag at me ... and she followed that up with two more. 'Twas lucky I had quick hands or I'd a' been smacked in the face by the first one, if not the others. The horse was moving at a faster walk, bringing the buckboard seat back level with the train steps again, and I just reached out and took Julia in my arms and hauled her aboard. The little girl wrapped her arms around my neck and seemed perfectly comfortable ... 'cept for some squirming and hard breathing.

Her mamma jumped off the wagon, raced around to the horse's head and took the bit out of his mouth, then slapped the bay on its backside. "GO HOME, LIZZY," she yelled. "GO HOME!"

The horse turned right around and ambled off to the south. She gave every sign of doing just what she’d been told. Bridget trotted after the caboose and climbing aboard with Rachel helping her up.

"Whew!" Bridget wheezed, a little out of breath. "Last time I did something without thinking about it for a spell, I got pregnant!" she remarked.

I laughed. "Well, I know a Lakota medicine woman who has some herbs that'll help keep that sort of thing from happenin' ... 'til you want to get with child," I told her. I didn't say the medicine woman was my own Pretty Green Eyes.

"Really?" Bridget said, very interestedly. "I want to meet her," she added.

"You will," I promised.

"I just want to fuck!" Julia announced, speaking directly into my ear.

"I think we can make sure that happens too!" I assured her. I led the way inside the caboose. It didn't seem so hot anymore, what with a lot of the heat having escaped out the open back door and the coolness of the approaching rain.

I put Julia down on the right hand bunk and turned back to help with their luggage.

"I want to fuck!" Julia said again. She began stripping off her clothes fast as she could. "I want to fuck!" she said again. "I want to fuck YOU!" she said emphatically, pointing a finger right at me. "I want you to fuck me NOW!"

Bridget sighed loudly. "She's kind of like ... that storm out there. It's going to break over us, it's going to be a lot of wind and rain 'an thunder ... and after a while, it'll be peaceful again. But try to stop it? Ain't going to happen!"

"Well, I was with my sister when all this started," I objected. "We didn't get to finish...."

Rachel laughed merrily. "Brother," she said, "I think you better fuck this young lady ... and right now too ... before she explodes or something!"

So young Julia parked her hands up on the side wall, set her knees on the edge of the bunk and angled her ass up so I could push my cock up her hot-as-fire little pussy. She was already slippery with her sticky/slick cunt honey so I was able to stab my prick inside her easily enough.

I took my time, loving the tight confines of her young cunt but in a moment, she was a grunting and a groanin', wailing like a banshee sometimes, and squirming all over that bunk. It was a chore just keeping up with her ... but an awful lot of fun ramming my manhood deep as she could take it, then whipping it back out and hearing her yelp. In no time at all, she clamped down on my cock and stayed on all fours, unable to move much. She was rocked with a number of tremors for a long moment.

When she came back to us from whatever faraway place her ecstasy had taken her, I had a surprise for her.

"You wanted for me to mouth-fuck you?" I asked her.

Her tired little face perked right back up and she nodded, her eyes glittering. All of a sudden, her labored breathing settled down, but I gave her a few more minutes, just to make sure.

But before long, young Julia was sitting on the edge of the bunk with me standing in front of her. My cock was sliding in and out of her sweet lips while she fingered her pussy. Looked to me like she was having fun.

"Well ... I don't know WHY Mr. Wade wouldn't let me do this to him!!" Julia said fussily after a few minutes. "It's FUN!! How come he wouldn't let me, Mom?"

"Some men are just that way, honey," Bridget replied noncommittally.

"Well, that's just STUPID!" was Julio's final judgment. As it happens, I completely agreed with her.

It was incredible watching my come splash on her tongue, and then on her freckled cheekbones. Surprised by the first jet of pearly-white goo, she'd jerked back to look at my cockhead to see where it was coming from and got sprayed in the face by my second eruption. Gigglin', she lapped up ever' drop, spooned a bunch of fingerfuls off her features, and then sucked her fingers clean.

We got her cleaned up after she stopped sucking her fingers, but when we were done, she collapsed on the bunk and rolled over for a long nap.

"Don't let her go to sleep," I heard Bridget say. "If she does, and it's still this early, she'll wake up in the wee small hours of the morning and be horny all over again," she added.

Well, sir ... I wasn't so sure that was a bad thing but Bridget was the little girl's mother.

I turned to ask a question but I never got it out. The young woman had stripped off all her clothes while I was busy with her daughter and was standing there eying me with anticipation clear on her face. I knew right off where Julia got her naughty, unashamedly carnal, impulses.

Bridget had gathered her hair in both hands behind her head, so her conical-shaped breasts, tipped with ruby-red nipples hard as pebbles already poked out at the inoffensive air even more sharply than they would normally. They weren't the biggest breasts I'd ever seen, but they weren't the smallest neither. and breasts are breasts—they're all of them great fun to play with, to fondle and heft, hold in your hand, kiss, suck—you know … just anything that comes to mind. They were beautiful.

What she was doing with her hair caught my attention. Holding her long hair at a place close to her scalp, Bridget deftly tied a short ribbon around the bulk of the hair and let her locks fall behind her back. It looked for all the world like a horse’s tail swinging there and it was most fetching. With her hair out of away from her face like that, Bridget didn't look anywhere near old enough to have as old a daughter as Julia ... not that she'd looked old to begin with.

"I like that," I told her, reaching out a hand to touch her hair. Women just didn't much do anything like this, from what I knew. During the daytime, womenfolk wore their hair in tight buns at the back of the head, or in tight braids for the younger set. I'd seen a picture once of some men in England with their short, powdered hair like this, but never a woman.

"I do too!" Rachel remarked. She scrambled to find her dress and yanked a length of red ribbon out of a skirt pocket. "Help me?" she asked Bridget. It took only a moment. The twosome then attended to young Julia.

I was suddenly in the presence of three young, quite nekkid, girls who looked admirably fresh and youthful ... and ready! Even Julia was looking at me expectantly again. Three girls and only one of me. I was in paradise and I knew it!

I thought I knew a way to set everything in motion and not leave anyone out. "Ahhhh ... Bridget? Have you ever ... uh ... had anything to do with girls ... ah ... you know...?" I was urging her body around to face away from me and face the bunk on the left side of the train.

She didn't reply, but she didn't resist neither.

"Rachel ... you could lay on the bunk and stretch out ... yeah, like that," I said. "An', Bridget ... if you would ... uh ... you know? Uh...."

"You want me to suck your sister's cunt like a hog rooting around in there?" Bridget asked disbelievingly. I thought I'd made a real bad mistake but she was only funnin'.

"Yes, please," Rachel said sweetly. "I'd be ever so grateful."

"OK," Bridget answered serenely. She bent over at the waist and took an exploratory lap at my sister's pussy lips while pooching out her behind at me. With no more directing that needed doing, I shrugged and shuffled up close behind the young woman and readied my cock to ram up inside her.

"Come here, honey," Rachel said, gesturing to little Julia. Rachel lay down flat on the bunk. "See...? If you put your knees on the mattress beside my ears ... I can do for you like your mother is doing for me ... OK?"

It was fine with the young girl and in only a few seconds, all four of us were giving or receiving, or both, there in the cramped caboose. The only sounds were the rumble of the wheels clicking over the rails, the remote wail of the engine's whistle every so often ... and the wet, slurpy noises as tongues probed or my cock plunged inward or I pulled it out. After a while, we switched around so all three of them got fucked good and hard. I'd never thought of heaven before as being something that rumbled down the train tracks while three girls and me sucked and fucked ourselves to a frazzle, but boy, it was a fine time we had!

* * *

"Pa?" I said, sitting down beside him. " 'Member that long ol' hill back yonder?" I asked hesitantly.

Pa nodded, and then he took notice of my tone. A wary look came over his face.

"Well, sir ... a funny thing happened on the way to the top of the hill," I told him. "Ahhhhh, Rachel and me was on the back of the caboose and ... uh ... you'll never guess who we found beside the tracks on that back there...."

Pa stared at me in amazement for the longest time. He shook his head disbelievingly.

"Son," he said slowly, "I think we may have to keep you locked up in a pen somewhere, or you'll have half the durned country beating a path into our valley 'for it's all over." His lips tightened. "Jeremiah," he said forcefully, "we could all get in a bunch of trouble if you seduced the wrong girl ... or boy ... or family, or whatever. and where would all of us be then, eh?"

Well, I knew he had a point ... and we'd talked about it before. Seemed to Pa that whenever I got to roaming around, I come back with someone who wanted to join our little society, and it seemed to him like I was awful casual about it, and didn't take good care of our secret. I understood that. If regular folks found out what we were doin', they surely skin us alive.

But I really hadn't been as careless as all that. Things happened and I just went with the flow of the river current, so to speak. But it was a caution to me that me an' Rachel had got caught out like we was ... and it could have been me doing my cousin earlier too. It'd just been twilight when I fucked my cousin ... could a' been that many more folks were able to see us an' we just didn't know about it. I wondered if anyone had.... Well, no way to know. But then, it'd been almost full dark when Rachel and me were outside doing nasty things. Unless someone had been right beside the train tracks, no one could have seen us. On the other hand, someone had been right beside the tracks … and someone could have been downright hostile, 'stead a willing to join in with us.

Rachel had followed me up the length of the train car from the caboose and she weighed in now, bless her lil' heart. "That's a fact, Jere," she commented carelessly. Heck, it wasn't her ass that Pa was chewin' on. "I mean, what if you went up in front of the boxcar and started talking to those cute little blond girls in that Pennsylvania Dutch family you saw getting on board back in that last town...?"

Now, I never had any such a thing in mind ... I hadn't even considered it ... but I did remember the large family with the bearded farmer and the comely woman beside him, along with sturdy, blue-eyed boys and those three bosomy girls with hair the color of wheat. The girls, I'd noticed, had nice smiles and impish looks in their eyes....

I think my eyes may have glazed over or something in the scant second or two I contemplated my sister's suggestion, 'cause Pa's mouth twisted and his expression turned real frosty. Rachel, of course was grinning like a danged fox. And then, she rescued me.

"Pa," Rachel said suddenly, "this is Bridget and her daughter, Julia." Our two newest additions to our town had followed Rachel and me up the aisle and now moved into Pa's vision. They were, of course, nekkid as the day they'd been born—washed clean and looking awfully cute … and hot.

"Mister Richardson," Bridget said smoothly, taking Pa's hand in hers, letting her hair—still in that pony's tail setup—swing over her shoulder and down in front of her when she bent over. "I never got to do ... naughty things with my Pa ... and I'm real jealous of what you and Rachel have." She pouted like she was only her daughter's age. I had to admit, the pout looked real good on her.

Pa looked at her with a startled look on his face ... he hadn't even suspected she was there so close to him before Rachel spoke up. However, his eyes were busy taking in all the details of her nekkid body, and her daughter's too.

"Would you mind if I played like you was my pa, sometimes?" Bridget asked coyly, bringing Pa's hand up to her left breast and pressing the hand tight against some creamy smooth bit of woman flesh.

Pa cleared his throat. "I ... uh ... I think that would be a fine thing, yes," Pa said huskily. A broad, welcoming smile broke out on his face.

"Good!" young Julia said as she clambered up into Pa's lap, all elbows and knees. " 'Cause I didn't never get to do it with my Grandpa neither, and I want to," she added.

I eased away from my Pa and found me a seat. I'm not sure he even knew I left.

* * *

He didn't forget about me, though. Dang it!

Soon's he got Bridget and Julia taken care of, he remembered his irritation with me and let me know in no uncertain terms that I wasn't to leave his sight for the rest of the trip. He used words of only one syllable so there wouldn't be no mistakes. and right then, Pa started watching me like a hungry red-tailed hawk watches a prairie dog mound. I swear....

Blaming me for all of our 'recruits' seemed totally unfair to me. Part of what I was unhappy with was that I was almost seventeen now ... and I'd been off on my own a bunch of times, and I would be again. I was still a tad sensitive, you might say, about being young but shouldering a man's load like I'd been doing for so long. The men I killed when I had to surely wouldn't call me a child.

An' here Pa was lecturing me like I was a snot-nosed kid! It really got my goat, ya know? I'm sure we should of talked it out and then things would of been OK, but we didn't right then.

An' I didn't help things. One time I saw him dozing in his seat, and I got up and moved away from where he'd last seen me. When he woke up, he looked around wildly for a moment, before finding me in the seat right behind his. I'm pretty sure the baleful look I threw at him didn't improve matters. He glared at me in return and then sat back down.

* * *

Well, we did set down and talk it out the next day whilst we gnawed on some beef jerky and swallared a couple glasses of buttermilk the next day. I really didn't like buttermilk—still don't—but if it was going to ease the way into a conversation with my Pa, I was durned sure I was going to pour it down my gullet.

An' I had to admit, from Pa's point of view, he had a right to be concerned. I mean ... look at it from his point of view.

There was that one day, when young Jeremiah Richardson wandered out into the woods one afternoon and came back with a small tribe of Hunkpapa Lakota who just by chance who were doing what we were doin', but they'd started doing it before we did. Then me an' my sister Mary come home with a pair of big breasted young Mormon girls after a meeting in town that came about under strange circumstances, and we brung word of a woman and her uncle who were wishing to become a part of our little group at the same time. Then more Mormons come to join us. 'Bout a year after that, the family that worked the little cafe in that town came to us ... using my name and my sister's name to establish their bona fides, no less ... all from the same trip to town Mary and I had gone on.

Now, Pa reluctantly agreed ... after I talked at him for quiet a spell ... that the Mormon sisters had been more Mary's doin' than mine, and the thing with Isaac and Elizabeth Tillman was more an accident than anything else, and it was Sophie's fault if there had to be any blame. She was supposed to have aired out that danged back bedroom afore the Tillmans got home. Given just the tiniest clue of the odor of people fucking had led Elizabeth Tillman to figure out what we'uns had been doing while guesting in their house ... and she'd wanted to push the issue, when she could just as easily have ignored it and gone about her business.

I did understand that if I hadn't spoke so boldly with young Natalie at the restaurant and lead her to believe she could join into the things me and Mary were doing ... then Natalie, and her family, wouldn't of come into our hidden valley at all. But I was fourteen that year, close to fifteen, but not there yet. And don't forget, it had been a troubling kind of day what with me having to kill that man and all—so maybe I could have been given a little slack for that one....

I understood how it looked, though. It was kind of the same with my Uncle Curtis' kids and all. Pa hadn't even known his brother was in the territory and there I come a ridin' in with all of Curtis' kids wearing red-fringed moccasins just like all of us other wicked folks. It was like Pa hadn't even had time to be introduced to his nieces and nephew as kids before the girls were fondling his penis and asking him to give them a nice fuck. On the other hand, I recollected he hadn't made any protests about giving the girls what they wanted, neither.

Pa had the good grace to look a tad embarrassed when I mentioned that.

Going back east with his niece Camilla to confront his sisters had been Pa's idea, sure enough. So all of his kin coming back West with us could all be laid at Pa's door. But that chance meeting with all of the orphans ... and some of their teachers and such ... well ... that had been me again, charging right into the thick of it and not being extra careful about thinking things through first. When a body looked at how it had all come about, the only 'planned' additions to our community had been the relatives of those two Mormon girls. We'd been real careful to make sure all the sisters' brothers and their families were of a like mind with us before we suggested they should join us. They'd been the only ones though.

But ... it'd all worked out, and this thing with Bridget and Julia driving up that trail and just happening to see my sister Rachel and me doing naked, naughty things off the back end of the caboose…? Well, that was working out too.

Pa could see that—he admitted as much right to my face. He just wished I'd take things a little slower and make sure I had a good idea where things were headed afore I took a girl's clothes off and babbled on 'bout how our whole family was doing each other all the time.

I had to admit Pa had a real good concern about ever thing and everyone in our valley. If regular folks found out what was going on in the hidden valley, they'd tar and feather the lot a' us and ride us out of town on a rail ... those of us they didn't hang, that is. So I resolved to myself and to Pa that I was going to be a lot more careful in the future.

* * *

Belinda and Isabella were each straddling one of my thighs, facing me and brushing my hair slowly and awfully, awfully carefully. I admit, my hair was a trifle long. I didn't usually wear my hair that way, but I really only trusted my wife to give me a good cut, and we'd been a long time away from the valley. So it was long ... they liked brushing things ... it kept them quiet and occupied ... so I let them do it. This was the last day of the train ride, and all the fussing with my hair would soon be over with. I just hoped it would be soon enough.

"Jere?" Belinda asked carefully, brushing hair on the right side of my head from front to back.

"What, honey?"

"What's going to happen to me and Isabella when we get where you live?" she asked.

"Oh! We'll get off the train and get on some wagons and ride on them the rest of the way," I answered.

Isabella tapped me on my left temple, lightly enough, but it still got my attention. "She means, what happens to my sister and me," she explained.

Which was a thing to be considered. We had no orphanage in Hidden Valley. Best me and Pa and the others had come up with, all of the families and adults in Hidden Valley would take some of the kids in with what they already had for families, bringing them into their homes and ... like that. It wasn't as if we'd made any deep plans or anything like that ... hadn't examined how it would all work. But....

"Well," I answered slowly, holding on to both brushes so I didn't get hit again, "I was kind of thinking that you two girls might ... live with me and my Pretty Green Eyes ... Naomi." I paused, uncertain of what to add to that. "So ... what would you girls think about that?"

They were quiet for the longest time. They sat staring into my eyes, clearly wondering if it could be real.

"You mean ... like we were your kids?" Bonita ventured.

I nodded.

"And not with lots of kids ... other kids all living there?" Isabella asked.

"Well ... Naomi and I have a little girl living with us right now," I said. "She's a little older than you two and she's Naomi's cousin ... but other than her, yeah, it would be just us."

It took a little while for it to sink in, but I'm pretty sure it was what they wanted to hear. Their happy faces kind of gave it away.

"Is it all right if we call you 'Daddy' ?" Bonita asked sweetly.

Which took me aback for a second. I hadn't thought about that side of things.

"I think so, yes," I replied. Oh heck ... who needs to think about such things? Of course I thought it was all right.

"But only if you want to," I added quickly. "If it doesn't feel right, you can still call me 'Jere'."

They shook their heads in unison. "Daddy!" they said. "Papi!" Which was the Spanish version.

They laid their heads on my shoulders and patted my chest for the longest while. They didn't hit my head with their brushes again, neither.

* * *

After a while, it occurred to me that my wife-to-be, Wasté Thózi Ishtá—Pretty Green Eyes—who'd taken the name, Naomi, should actually have been consulted before I made that commitment, though we trusted each other well enough that the additions I was making to our family wouldn't concern her. We'd actually talked about such things a few times, a couple of the young Lakota children still hadn't found permanent homes and it was a concern of ours.

So, at the next stop for water and firewood for the engine, and some grub for those riding the train, I walked down to the telegraph office and sent my lady a short telegram.

It read:

"Arriving on the 5:30 from the east

STOP

Reference our talk of adopting

STOP

Have a surprise for you, times two

STOP

Love you

STOP

Jere

END"

I sent it to the telegraph office at The Crossing. A week ago, a telegram from her had caught up with me to the effect that she would be there to meet our train because she'd learned all she could from the doctor in Denver ... and she missed me—which made me feel real good inside.

Me and the twins went to grab a plate and shovel it down our throats, and then it was time to re-board the train for the last couple hours of our train ride.

"MR. RICHARDSON!!"

I turned to see the telegrapher trotting down the board platform at us. "Don't you want your reply?" he asked, shoving a limp piece of paper into my hand. I blinked. It hadn't occurred there would even be a reply, much less one that came so quickly. Apparently, Naomi had been at the telegraph office there at the crossing.

"Ah ... thanks pardner," I replied, taking the paper and stepping on to the train at the same time. I tossed him a nickel and I guess that was the right thing to do. He seemed OK with it.

"Will be here to meet you and your surprises

STOP

Ditto, times three, with me

STOP

Love you too

STOP

Naomi

END"

I stopped dead in my tracks as the girls and I were making our way up the aisle toward our seats. The twins made me read the telegram to them.

By now, my Pretty Green Eyes spoke, read, and wrote excellent English. In fact, she was draggin' me along with her in learnin' the language, and my speech was slowly improving. One of the words she'd come across whilst she was learning English was the word, 'ditto'.

She was fascinated by the word and, lately, used it whenever she could work it into the conversation. She seemed to love agreeing completely with something someone else said with just a short, 'Ditto!'

"What does that mean ... I mean, what does that mean, Papi?" Belinda asked curiously.

I thought about it for a moment. "Well ... I think it means I'm going to be building a lot bigger cabin than what we have now," I replied.

* * *

Turned out my Naomi had found two freckle-faced, tow-headed young boys and their equally blond little sister standing forlornly on the board sidewalk near one of Denver's saloons. Their mother and her latest man had left them there three days earlier and never came back. The man, much kinder than their mother, had slipped the oldest boy a few dollars, but it had run out by the time Naomi came across them. Their mother was a dance hall girl, not a prostitute ... not usually, anyway ... and she'd evidently grown tired of the kids always being around. Ruined her style, so to speak.

My Naomi had taken them in, and had listened in the darkness of a hotel bedroom as one of the boys had taken his sister during the night and then had watched the other boy have sex in the dimness with the young girl too. I'd seen it afore. My Lakota medicine woman had a genuine knack about her ... all kids loved her and trusted her unreservedly from the moment she met them. Naomi had proved her lack of concern about them doing each other by having sex with both the boys the next evening ... and the girl too.

So when the long train ride was over ... I found myself walking behind five youngsters and my woman ... and they weren't waiting on little ol' me. My dear Naomi had instantly charmed the twins into walking with her, and apparently, I was pretty easy to forget. I struggled with the luggage for a while, making some noise about it and scuffing my feet on the wooden sidewalk just 'cause I thought I should.

When Naomi noticed, she bent and whispered in the ear of young girl she'd brought up from Denver and they both looked in my direction. The girl looked me up and down, then scampered back to where I was hauling the luggage and jumped up to wind her arms around my neck. She hauled me down to her level.

She proved herself a thoroughly wanton little nymph with her first words to me. "Do you really like to fuck little girls like me ... Daddy?" she whispered mischievously in my ear, her eyes dancing with salacious delight.

Well, right then I knew everything was going to be just fine.

I grinned at the little vixen and straightened up. "HEY!" I yelled at the front group of kids with my wife. "YOU BOYS COME HELP ME WITH CARRYING THIS STUFF!!" Them two boys had plenty of heft to 'em ... the oldest one in particular was thick in the chest and looked able to carry durn near all of these bags by his own self, and if I was going to be 'Daddy' to Naomi's 'Mother', I should get used to getting things organized, shouldn't I?

I was mulling over things that needed doing to make a home for all of us and I'd pretty much already figgered out where could find tall, straight trees to make logs and sheets of shale for the bigger cabin we were going to need. Them two boys were going to get an education in woodsmanship, plus logging, hauling rock an’ a course in how to build a snug, roomy stone and log cabin … starting just as soon as we got home.

I grinned and caught up the young girl's hand in mine, and with only one bag in my other hand, we strode happily along to our wagon.

THE END

Thank you for reading The Family Tradition, Book Three. There are just under 48,000 words in this Book, so I appreciate the time you've taken to read it. I hope you enjoyed the story. If you would like to comment, my email address is:

caleboflannery@yahoo.com

I can't promise to answer immediately, but I do read all comments and reply when a return email address is included.

This is the third Book in a planned four-book saga (that's what I'm going to refer to it, anyway). It's beginning to seem like a Fifth Book may be necessary to get all the words out of my head that I want to get out. I'm aware … I just don't know when to shut up. Anyway, the Fourth book is almost finished and will be published here on ASSTR … as soon as I can.

-Seamus