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 When the record was over, Harvey put on another. Johanna sat down on the armchair and beckoned to Harvey to come sit on her lap. When he did, Johanna began to kiss and pet him just as though he were a girl and she a male.

 She kissed Harvey’s neck, caressed his breasts, blew in his ear. She reached under his dress and stroked the silken length of his legs. She crushed his mouth with hers and when the kiss was over Harvey moaned softly.

 Johanna led him to the bed. She took off the man’s jacket she was wearing. Her shoulders were surprisingly broad. She lay down beside him. Harvey pulled her face to his bosom and Johanna nuzzled the cleavage there. After a moment she pushed down the top of his dress, slipped the bra straps from his shoulders and began sucking at the top of one of his breasts. Harvey whimpered and his body began to writhe slowly with pleasure.

 Johanna reached under the bottom of his skirt, pushed it all the way up and pulled off his black panties. Harvey twisted and turned on the bed so that his plump buttocks flashed into view. He arched his hips so that his pelvis, framed by the garter bell; thrust ceiling-ward. His legs clenched tightly to conceal his stiff, forced-down penis his belly was round and firm from waist to groin. Johanna quickly slipped off her pants and the man’s shorts she was wearing.

 “What’s that?” Rafe wondered.

 “A dildo,” Wilma told him.

 Harvey turned over on his belly, crouched and thrust his haunches in the air. Johanna quickly put the hard rubber device held by the straps around her hips into action. She plunged it into his yawning behind.

 A moment later they changed position so that they were facing the window directly. “Don’t stop, Harvey moaned, Johanna straddled him and renewed her efforts. It was at this point that the blinding light of the flashbulb went off in their faces.

 Wilma had taken the flash camera from the handbag she’d insisted on. carrying and snapped the photo of the Henshaws. Once it was done, Rafe, frightened, scampered down the tree. Wilma followed close behind.

 Both Harvey and Johanna were at the window now, startled, frightened, trying to comprehend what had happened. They strained their eyes to see who the intruders might be. But it was too dark and Wilma and Rafe moved too fast for them to tell. On the ground now, they raced into the shadows of the house and from there into the woods. Rafe ran down the path as though he was afraid the Henshaws might be chasing them, and he left Wilma to follow as best she could.

 “Hey!” she called finally, out of breath. “You trying to lose me?”

 “Reckon we lost them?” he asked, panting.

 “They aren’t even following us,” she told him

 “You sure?’ He slowed down.

 “Yes. I’m sure. “

 He stopped and listened a moment. “I guess they ain’t,” he admitted. “You know, Wilma, you hadn’t oughta taken that pitcher. You never told me you was plannin’ nothin’ like that. I never woulda chanced it. Whatcha wanna do a thing like that fer, anyway?”

 “I have my reasons.”

 He peered at her in the darkness and his eyes narrowed. “What you gettin’ me into, Wilma?” he wanted to know.

 “You’ll find out—later.”

 “Why can’t you tell me now?”

 “Because now”-- she put her arms around his neck and pressed her body insinuatingly against his—“we’ve got other fish to fry.”

 In the excitement of the deep kiss she gave him, Rafe’s curiosity took a back seat to desire. He pushed her to the ground quickly and fumbled at the buttons on his pants. His erection sprang free, purple and thick and blunt. He pushed up her skirt and fell on top of her. He took her quickly then, shoving it in hard and grinding down on her tender flesh, wasting no time on preliminaries or refinements. He took her like an animal in a hurry to finish his pleasure and get on with the day’s hunting.

 Writhing beneath him, automatically simulating the passion she didn’t feel, Wilma’s mind was racing. Let Rafe play the stud bull, she thought. Let him have his quick taste. He’s served his purpose for now, but there ’s no telling when I may want to use him again. Then her mind turned to the Henshaws and she almost chuckled aloud at the very moment that Rafe was grunting his satisfaction at the explosive release of his passion. They must be going berserk trying to figure out what’s happened, she thought Well, they’ll find out soon enough. I’ll be seeing the Henshaws again—real soon. She felt the sudden, hot flood of the finale of Rafe’s lovemaking. Yes, real soon—she ignored it.

 And it was real soon. For even as Wilma was making her plans, the town of Glenville was exploding with a fury which would insure quick action on her part. Even as Rafe delivered one last, brutal thrust of his spurting organ into her tender hole, a different kind of violence was descending on Wilma’s father. Even as she accepted Rafe’s handkerchief to wipe away the traces of their lovemaking, blood was spurting from the wounds of the only man in the world that Wilma really loved!

CHAPTER SIX

 An unexpected twist of the wrist and the knife flicked open. Its razor-sharp blade gleamed menacingly in the half-lit barroom. Ben Malden looked at its slowly advancing point unbelievingly. Then he looked at the face of the man holding it. The hatred he saw there made him recoil in a way that the threat of the knife hadn’t.

 Was this really Luke Partridge looking at him like this? Was this really Luke coming at him with murder flashing in his hand? Was it really happening?

 Ben Malden had known Luke Partridge all his life. When they were boys they’d gone swimming and hunting and fishing together. They’d grown apart when they got older. Ben had the farm to worry about. Luke had eked out a living sharecropping until the factory had come to town. Then he’d gone to work there, and for the first time it was possible for him to take off his shirt without revealing the protruding bones of a man who is always hungry. With the coming of the factory, for the first time Luke and his family had known what it meant to eat a square meal and eat it regularly.

 Meeting Luke every once in a while when he came to town, Ben had remarked on the fleshiness of his boyhood friend. Casually, he’d been glad that things were going better for Luke. They’d gone their different ways, but he still greeted Luke as a friend.

 And now this “friend” was coming at him with a knife. Everything was very quiet in the barroom as Luke advanced toward Ben. The hoarse breathing of the man with the knife was the only audible sound in the half-filled pub. Then the silence was shattered by the loud smash of a bottle against the edge of a table.

 Ben held the jagged neck of the bottle in his hand. “Stand off, Luke,” he said. “I don’ wanna be hurtin’ you.” Luke stopped in his tracks and hesitated a moment. There was a rumble of disappointment from the men bunched at the bar behind him. A voice cracked out. “Get him, Luke! Don’ be chicken!” Other voices echoed it. Luke started for Ben again.

 So be it! Ben hefted the bottleneck, prepared to strike as Luke closed the distance between them. He began to move, not away from Luke, but in a sort of half-circle which kept him on Luke’s left side, away from the knife. And then the two of them were circling each other, looking for an opening.

 Luke thought he saw one first and lunged. Ben sidestepped the blade and brought the bottle up with a short thrust that ripped through Luke’s shirt sleeve into the flesh of the arm holding the knife. The knife clattered to the floor and blood oozed from the wound. Before Luke could dive for the knife, Ben smashed his fist into the heavier man’s jaw and Luke thudded to the floor, cracking his head against a table leg and lying where he’d fallen.

 “The fink bastard’s killed Partridge!” A series of curses from the crowd followed the shout. And then they were on Ben, ripping the bottle from his hands, clawing at each other in their eagerness to rain punches and kicks on his body. Ben went down slowly, fighting, but sick inside at the hatred being poured on him from these men he’d always taken for granted as friends and neighbors.