The Novice Prey & the Daring Prey (28 page)

She laid down on the blankets and squirmed around a little until she was comfortable. It was dark out, but it still felt too early to go to sleep, so she rolled onto her back and looked up at the beams and planks overhead. She'd had a plan when she'd set out earlier today, and she'd actually managed to achieve most of what she'd intended to, but her narrow escape from the Andersons showed her that she'd have to reconsider things and come up with a new plan. She still intended to get to the next two little hamlets along the dirt road. Having Mike hovering close to her was an annoyance at times, but it didn't really worry her. She knew that she could outrun him over a short distance and outpace him over a longer one. It wasn't that he wasn't in shape. No, indeed, he was very, very fit, but too muscular to be a really good runner. The two Anderson brothers, on the other hand, were lean and quick, and had clearly marked her down for further attention. The bartender had been able to give her a little background on them. There were three of them in all, they'd been coming to Gordburg for years, and they advertised themselves as girl catchers. Apparently they came specifically to hunt females who came here to be hunted, and once they'd caught one they gave her a rigorous workout for several days, breaking, training and using her before taking her back to Gordburg for sale at the slave market. While they had a reputation for being rough, and sometimes brutal, they'd never broken any rules, and some of the females they'd put through the mill kept coming back, hoping for another round with them. While she'd hoped to experience something along those lines when she came here, Alexa didn't want to experience it too soon. First she wanted to make her mark. With Will's help, she'd been able to figure out how long she'd have to run free to break Elf-Girl's official record. That would leave her about a week to be kept and trained as a female slave, with two days left for her to relax and recover at the hotel before heading back to her home and her work. Two days might not be quite enough, but it would have to do.

She curled up on her side, trying to get more comfortable. She saw some men pass by her stall, not pausing but taking quick, sidelong glances at her. She wondered if any of them knew who she was or what she'd done earlier that day. Then she heard a high-pitched feminine whine of protest coming from the other end of the barn and concluded that whether they knew or not they had other things on their minds at the moment. There was a brief silence, and then the whining began again, though it sounded muffled now. It wasn't hard for Alexa to picture what was going on back there.

Two more men passed by her stall, giving her no more than a cursory glance before they went on to whatever female they were going to use and abuse for the night. A little while later, Alexa heard the sound of another female protesting wordlessly, though her voice didn't sound muffled. In her mind's eye, she could see the female on her hands and knees, still chained by the neck to a ringbolt set in the wall, while one of the men took her from behind. She realized that that might not actually be what was happening, but just picturing it was beginning to get her a little moist. She wished that the proctor had warned her about what was likely to happen, but it was possible that the proctor had thought Alexa already knew.

There was absolutely no chance of her getting to sleep this way. Alexa sat up, wondering if there was some kind of curfew on using your female slave in semi-public. She heard an angry, muffled squall from the first female at the same time she heard a deep, satisfied grunt from one of the men, and once again was pretty sure what had just happened. No, she couldn't stay here with all that going on and even hope to get to sleep. She stood up and quietly exited her stall, then went outside. The lone street was dimly lit by what were probably gas lamps. In contrast, the saloon practically glowed with electric lighting. Well, there wouldn't be anything wrong with having a drink or two while she was waiting for the activities in the barn to end. She went up the street and into the saloon. It wasn't crowded, but there were a fair number of people there, mostly men. Three giggly young women sat at one of the tables, all dressed in jeans and frilly blouses, all nursing beers, all enjoying the ardent attentions of about half a dozen men.

“Who are they?” Alexa asked the bartender after she'd ordered a beer of her own, indicating the women.

“Tourists,” the bartender shrugged. He wasn't the same one from earlier. He was a tall, thin, older man with surprisingly thick dark hair and a faint scar on one cheek. “They came in on the afternoon stage.”

“Are they staying here overnight?”

“Yeah. They made reservations,” the bartender replied. He drew a mug of Tecumseh and placed it on the bar in front of Alexa.

“Why did you call them tourists?”

“Well, they come through on the stage and spend some time just looking around. Every so often one of 'em gets a mind to jump in and play, but only for the night.”

“Play?” Alexa was curious.

“Yeah. You know, like a one-night stand.”

“Oh.” Alexa hadn't thought such things were possible here, but why shouldn't they be? She could imagine a woman getting turned on and horny from her surroundings and deciding to get her itch scratched without making a long-term commitment, 'long term' here being anything up to a week. But exactly how would that work? She waited until the bartender wandered near again and asked him.

“It's simple enough,” he said. “She and a guy reach an agreement, they call in a proctor and make the arrangements.” He nodded towards the women's table. “I think that cute little brunette is getting close to making a deal.”

“How can you tell?” Alexa asked after a brief glance over that way.

“I've worked here a while,” he replied with a careless shrug. “I can read the signs. She's squirming a little on her chair and smiling a lot at the two men trying to work her. Her two friends, well, one seems interested in the older gentleman talking with her, and the strawberry blonde just doesn't seem too into any of the men trying to get her attention. She may just be playing hard to get, though.”

“So what happens if a woman makes a deal? I mean, do they sign a contract or anything?” Alexa wanted to know.

“Nothing like that,” the bartender replied. “Usually she just tells the guy, or guys, what she won't do, and the proctor makes sure it's all clearly understood. Then they go off together and have some fun.”

“Is there some special place they go to do that?”

“Back to their room, off to the barn, it depends. Say, you want a refill on that?”

“Huh?” Alexa noticed that her mug was almost empty. “Well... what do you have in the way of harder stuff?”

“Pretty much anything you want.”

“Whiskey on the rocks?”

“Coming right up.”

Armed with her drink, which she could nurse for a long time, Alexa moved away from the bar in order to have a better look at the saloon. Some of the men at the tables called out to her and waved at her. She smiled at them but turned down their invitations to sit with them. They were all dressed like working-class types. That wasn't a deal-breaker with her, since she figured that pretty much everyone who came here dressed like that. You wouldn't wear an expensive suit in order to go traipsing through the woods in pursuit of female prey now, would you? For all she knew, the scruffy-looking older man with a few day's growth of beard might be an investment banker. The one thing she was sure of was that you needed a certain amount of money to be able to come here at all.

She looked over at a corner table and stopped. There was one man seated at the table, lean, dark-haired, goateed and watchful, with penetrating dark eyes. He wore a loose-fitting jacket and loose-fitting pants that looked as if they were made of deerskin. Under the jacket he wore a plain gray shirt. He was leaning back in his chair, taking occasional sips from a shotglass half-full of some dark amber liquid that he held in his gnarled right hand. It was what he gripped with his left hand that drew Alexa's attention, though. She was kneeling on the sawdust-strewn floor, naked, her arms bound behind her at the wrists and elbows with a white cloth gag covering the whole lower part of her face. She was small and slender and the man had a tight grip on her disheveled pale blonde hair as he held her not just in place but bent over so that her breasts were pressed hard against her knees. It didn't look like a comfortable position at all, but the female looked more pissed off than anything else. She had angry, pale blue eyes and a pert little nose that suited her pert little body. If she was allowed to stand up, Alexa guessed that she wouldn't quite reach five feet tall. The man noticed Alexa staring at him and his captive and caught her eye. He smiled at her and gestured for her to come over with his shotglass. Uncertain, Alexa made her way over to him and accepted the seat he offered with another gesture of his shotglass. Up close, she could see that his grip on the blonde's hair had to be painfully tight, which might explain why the female was keeping so carefully still.

“I saw you this morning,” the man said without any introduction. “That was a nice piece of broken-field running.”

“Uh... thanks,” Alexa said. Explaining that she'd been lucky would take too much time, so she let it go at that. “So you know who I am?”

“Yes, I do,” he nodded and took a sip of his drink. “Saw you last year, too, in that cage. You've got a fine body, Alexa Marx.”

“I keep in shape,” she said. “But who are you, and who is she?”

“Ah,” the man said. “Please excuse my manners. I'm Jacob Farmer. I'm a girl catcher, and this here is my latest catch.” He gave the blonde's head a little shake and she made a snarling noise behind the gag.

That was the second time today she'd heard the term 'girl catcher'. Will had never mentioned it to her, and she was beginning to wonder if he'd left out anything else. He probably had.

“And you're allowed to bring her in here like that?” she asked.

“It's part of her early training,” Jacob replied. “She's a feisty little thing, and she needs to get used to being kept naked in front of men. I cleared it with a proctor. Care to have a better look at her?”

“Uh... no, thanks,” Alexa replied after a moment. There were already plenty of naked females to look at around here.

“Have a look anyway,” Jacob offered. “Up, Anne.” He gave her hair a surprisingly gentle pull, and Anne slowly and gracefully got to her feet, still glaring. Once she was standing, Alexa couldn't help but look. The blonde had an exquisite little body, every bit as trim and toned as hers, but on a smaller scale. Her hips flared out in sweet curves below her waist. She had small, round breasts tipped with coral-colored nipples that looked like fleshy little knobs pointing ever so slightly upwards. Alexa had a sudden impulse to reach out and touch the female's body to see if that peaches and cream skin was as soft and warm as it looked. She managed to resist the urge.

“She was a gymnast,” Jacob said as he slowly pushed Anne back down into her previous pose. “Still keeps in practice.”

“What are you going to do with her?” Alexa asked him, thinking that this would be a very strange conversation almost anywhere else in the world.

“Find a good place to break her down a little, give her some training, then take her back to Gordburg and auction her off,” Jacob replied.

“And... you get paid for her?”

Jacob chuckled. “I get paid in Gordburg credits,” he answered. “And she gets half of whatever she brings credited to her account.. That's how some of us manage to afford coming back again and again.”

“I see,” Alexa nodded. Will had already informed her about how that worked. “But what do you do in real life?”

“Not really any of your business now, is it?”

“Sorry,” Alexa apologized. “This is only my second time here. I'm still learning the customs.” She looked down at Anne. The female was keeping perfectly still, her eyes closed.

“Care to tell me a little about your run-in with the Anderson boys?”

“What? Oh, yes. They kind of surprised me,” Alexa said. “I was pretty sure I could outrun them, but I almost didn't.”

“Different girl catchers have different styles,” Jacob commented. “The Andersons'll run a female into the ground before they move in and take her. She's usually too winded to put up a fight for a while, and by then it's too late. Me, I like to stalk 'em.” His eyes were fixed on Alexa's: Penetrating, intense, and unreadable as a professional gambler's.

“Are you thinking of stalking me, Mr. Farmer?” she asked.

“No,” the man replied. “No offense, but you just aren't my type.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you wear your hair way too short. Suits you, but it don't give a man anything to grab hold of.” Jacob gave Anne's head a small shake. Her eyes flew open and she made a snarling noise.

Alexa couldn't help smiling at that. She'd let her hair grow out before she'd gone to visit Will, and when he'd grabbed her by it she'd been so immediately and so intensely turned on that she'd simply frozen in place, waiting for him to do whatever he wanted. It had been such a powerful moment that she'd wanted to keep it special, which was why she'd had it cut again once she'd returned home. In the back of her mind the thought still lingered that any other man might provoke the same reaction in her simply by grabbing her hair, and she didn't want to find that out for sure. She wondered how Anne felt about it.

“Besides,” the girl hunter went on, “I like 'em smaller and blonder. Mind you, if you happened to come into my possession I wouldn't just turn you loose. I can see you've got a wild streak in you, and I like a challenge. But I got to warn you, the Andersons are probably gonna come after you.”

“Really?” Alexa felt a thrilling little chill at his words. “Why is that?”

“You got away from them,” Jacob replied. “You didn't just get away from them, you did it with lots of people watching. Hurts their reputation. And they like challenges same as me. They get hold of you, they'll put you through the wringer, sure as shit.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Alexa said. She finished off what was left of her whiskey with a quick gulp and felt it burning on its way down her throat. All of a sudden getting a good night's sleep in the barn sounded as unappealing as it did impossible. The Andersons already knew she was here, and it was entirely possible they were on their way here right now. She could stay safe from them simply by staying inside the safety zone until they got tired of waiting and gave up, but that wouldn't help her achieve her goal, and she didn't think they'd be all that easy to discourage anyway.