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Rated NC-17 for violence and sexual situations
Philip drew Beth close to him while they were riding. She had started shaking almost as soon as they began to retreat from the camp. He whispered soothing words of comfort to her but the shaking never wavered until they were far from the Indian camp.
Scout adjusted to the weight of two riders well and Philip was thankful for that at least. He didn't want to have to walk if it wasn't necessary. They needed to make the best use of the time they had. They had traveled about 10 miles so far he estimated. It would be nightfall soon anyway and he wanted to be as far away from the camp as he could be. He also wanted to get her back to her home as quickly as he could. He hadn't known he would encounter Beth in that Indian tent and he had been prepared to take the captive back into town with him, but that had been before he realized the captive was his ex wife. He make a quick decision to escort her back to Dodge City which if he remembered correctly, was over 300 miles away. IF they traveled 50 to 70 miles a day they could get there in 5 days or so. Could he stand to be so close to her for that long? What other choice did he have? There was no way that he could take her back to Texas, the place that had once been her home.
Part of him wanted to return to Texas and turn her over to someone else and let them be responsible for her safekeeping and to make sure she returned to Dodge City safely but he knew that he would see this through to the end and he would deposit her safely in her own town and then let her go yet again.
He knew the time spent returning her to Dodge City was going to be difficult for him. It would be very similar to riding against the wind since he still loved her but could never have her.
He briefly allowed the thought of taking her home with him to enter his mind again, but he squelched it as soon as it presented itself. There was no way that he could let her go again if he took her home with him and that would be calamitous for both of them. If he took her home with him, he would end up quitting the Rangers to make her happy and then he would grow to hate her. It was better to love her and not have her than to have her and grow to despise her for altering his life.
Not for the first time in the last few hours, he cursed the fates that allowed them to be brought together only to tear them apart. He would always love her but it would have to be in memory and only he knew how much that hurt.
Eventually Beth stopped her shaking and Philip released his hold on her. He pushed himself back into the saddle to allow a little distance between them. His body was remembering what it was like to be with Beth and he cursed himself for the reprobate he was for lusting after a woman who had been subjected to the horrors that she had.
Soon nightfall was upon them and Philip knew it would be too dangerous to travel anymore. He didn't want to put Scout in any more danger since she could easily step in a hole or trip on a rock in the dark and it would be disastrous.
He found a flat piece of land where they could make their camp for the night. There was a stream nearby and they would have an ample water supply and it was deep enough that Beth could even bathe if she felt so inclined.
He dismounted and helped Beth down making sure she got her settled firmly on the ground before he relinquished his hold he had on her. It appeared that she was coming out of her state of shock that she had been in since they had departed the Commanche campsite. He would start a fire, even though he would be taking the chance of being seen, just to make sure that she stayed warm enough and he wouldn't have to worry about her retreating into her previous state.
He reached into his saddlebag and got his bedroll that he was never without. He had known that he would have to return the captive back to his town and that there was no way he could make it back in one day so he had been prepared to set up camp with for the night with the woman that he would have rescued. He had done it many times before and there had never been any problems but tonight, oh tonight was going to be full of them.
He reminded himself that there was going to be more than just tonight. Several in fact. Could he do it? Could he be this close to Beth day and night and still have the strength to walk away? He prayed to the God of his mother that he could. He had to. There simply was no other way.
He shook out the bedroll and laid it down on the flattest part of the ground he could find. He kicked away several small rocks that would make her very uncomfortable if she laid down on them. Having finished that task, he went about starting the fire.
He motioned for Beth to sit down on the bedroll. She did so without offering a word. She had been practically silent the entire trip. He was somewhat thankful since he didn't want to deal with a lot of questions and chit chat. He needed to keep his ears open while they were traveling. He never knew what lay around each bend and if his guard was down, then their lives would be in danger.
Her catatonic trancelike state worried him however and on more than one occasion he had tried to draw her into a brief conversation but she barely put three words together the entire time that they had been thrown together.
She had seemed to come out of her state although she was still silent. He felt sure that she was just so relieved to be out of that camp that she was just too overcome with emotion to speak, at least that was what he chose to believe. He couldn't afford to let himself believe that there was any other reason for her silence.
After he had started the fire, he took Scout to the stream to let her get water. He filled his canteens while he was there and then left Scout to drink her fill. She would come back to camp when she was done drinking.
He fumbled around the tiny campsite trying to find as many things to do as possible so he didn't have to just sit there with her and say nothing. The situation was already so awkward that he was considering sleeping down by the stream and only concern for her safety kept him from doing so.
Finally when there was nothing left to pretend to do, he decided they might as well eat and then go to bed. They had a long journey ahead tomorrow and it would be best to get to bed and have an early rise in the morning. He just wished he didn't look forward to the night ahead as much as he dreaded it.
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Beth sat on the bedroll and stared at the fire that Philip had made for them. The popping and crackling of the wood as it was being licked by the flames was the only sound Beth heard even though she knew that Philip was making sounds as he finished making the preparations to bed down for the night.
She was brought out of her state of mesmerization that the dancing tongue -like flames had seduced her into by the sound of Philip's voice. They hadn't said very much to each other during their trip so far. He had merely asked if she was okay when he first put her on the horse at the Indian camp and then again when he asked if she was ready to stop and set up camp for the night when it had become too dark to travel anymore.
He had tried to pull her into conversation a couple of times but she was still in disbelief over what she had been through these last days.
She had tried to help him get the camp ready for the night but he had just shook his head no and she hadn't offered again. Clearly this was as uncomfortable for him as it was for her but she would be forever grateful for his coming to her rescue.
He began to talk to her again and her mind registered that he was offering her something to eat. Upon closer inspection she saw that it was some of the dried beef jerky that a Ranger was never without. Sometimes that was the only provisions that they could carry in their bags and it would have to do them for weeks at a time. She recalled all too well how long a Ranger could be gone at times. She also recalled making this very jerky for him on many occasions when he was going out on a recovery or a patrol mission.
She tore the jerky into pieces and began to eat. It was tougher and spicier than she used to make. Philip never could get his way around the kitchen very well so she wasn't too surprised that the jerky was not the best that she had ever eaten. She wouldn't complain though because it was sustenance and she was going to need it over the next few days.
Being so near Philip was killing her and she was trying so hard not to let it show. She had resigned herself to the fact that she would never see him again in this lifetime and she lived each day with that knowledge, but fate intervened and played a cruel joke on them both since he was not enjoying this any more than she was.
She had known what she was giving up when she left but she never blamed Philip for her failure as his wife. His job would take him away from the ranch for weeks and sometimes months at a time and she had been left alone with only the howling of the wind as it whipped over the prairie at night to keep her company. She had known of a few cases where Rangers were married and stayed married but those women were much stronger than she was. She took full responsibility for not being the kind of wife that Philip needed and she had done the only unselfish thing of her life the day she had walked away.
She had prayed so hard for a child while they had been married and had mistakenly thought that that would be the answer to their problems. If she had someone else there with her at the ranch to fuss over and take care of then she wouldn't be so lonely but it was not meant to be and she had left Philip an unfulfilled failure.
She knew he had a son now with another woman, but that was all the information she had managed to find out about him since their separation. Sometimes Alan would tire of singing his lonesome cowboy songs and just let his alcohol induced tongue wag for a bit and it was on one of those nights when Beth had found out the information that would crush what was left of her fragile spirit.
She had had to keep her tears in check that night that Alan had lamented his long lost son and the grandson that he had never got to see. She had just assumed that Philip had led as lonely a life as she did and had continued his work as a Ranger and that was that, but she was to find out differently that night.
The news had been devastating to her and she had done some things since that night that she was very ashamed of now but there was no going back. She had tried everything she could to fill the ache in her gut that she got when she thought of Philip and another woman having a child, the one that she had been denied giving to him, but nothing had worked.
She had been helping her mother run Towers but until that fateful night when she found out about Philip, she had merely been an entertainer and had never invited a man into her bed chamber. She had kept herself away from that part of the business but Alan's revelation that night changed everything for her and had sent her onto a journey into self degradation from which she would never return.
She had quickly become one of the most popular "girls" at the establishment and there had been no turning back. There she felt desired and there she didn't feel alone. She hated no other feeling in this world worse than the feeling of being alone.
Or so she had thought before she woke up one night and found herself bound and gagged and atop a horse and sold to Indians. No, being alone was much better than that.
Her memories of that night were foggy at best since she had, as usual, consumed too much alcohol. She had to have the alcohol as her crutch or courage to do the things that she was now getting paid handsomely to do. That night had been particularly rowdy and the whiskey had been flowing like water. She vaguely remembered taking two of the Cooper gang into her bed chambers but that was were her memory of that night stopped.
Had she been with two men that night? Dear Lord, what had she become? She hung her face in shame, glad that Philip had his back to her so he couldn't see her. Her guilt was written all over her and she wished at this moment that the Indians had gone ahead and killed her the way she had thought they were going to do.
She had thought they were going to kill her on several occasions. She had no idea of exactly how much time she had spent in their camp but she thought she recollected the sun rising twice which would mean she was there at least two days.
After the Indians had arrived in camp with her in tow, several of the Indians began showing an interest in her, and one in particular had made her skin crawl.
This Indian had pushed the others aside and came over to the horse and picked her up and put her around his shoulders and carried her into the camp where he plopped her unceremoniously onto a pile of blankets that some of the women had been sewing. He kneeled down besides her and began to lift up her skirts.
She remembered the stark terror the ran through her when he put his hand over her mouth and breathed his foul smelling breath onto her face. It was then that she realized that he intended to rape her.
Some other Indians lined up behind him and began speaking and soon the Indian had his breeches opened and then he was laying down on top of her, poking around trying to enter her.
She had closed her legs as tight as a vice and he had grunted his disapproval at not being allowed into her body.
His hand moved up to roughly caress her breast through her shirt and soon she was crying out in pain as he grabbed it and squeezed hard.
The Indian and the others, who had remained standing so they could watch the rape as it occurred, began to laugh at her pain. She knew that they were enjoying this and were waiting their turn at her.
One of the Indians then picked a long stick from the ground and placed it into the fire they had in the center of the camp. He let the end catch on fire and consume half of the stick before he blew out the flame.
He handed the stick, still glowing from it's recent encounter with the flames to the Indian who was still atop Beth trying to force her legs open with his knee, his erect member poking at her stomach and leaving a trail of slimy secretions on her skin.
Beth closed her eyes in horror as he brought the red-hot stick up to her face. She could still smell the burnt cinders on the end of the stick and she knew that this Indian was going to use that hot stick to ensure that she opened her legs and allowed him to rape her.
The tears fell from her closed eyes and it only served to amuse the Indian even more. She could feel the heat of the stick as it was being brought closer to her eyes and with no other choice but to allow this Indian access to her body, she parted her legs to allow him to push his swollen penis into her.
She felt the heat from the stick being removed from her face and soon he was at the entrance to her body ready to plunge inside. She braced herself for the rough screwing that she was in for. She kept her eyes closed and tried to tell herself that it was no different from the five minute slams that she got at Towers and that if she just went somewhere else in her mind, the Indian would finish his business and then this would be over.
She felt the first pressures of penetrations and she clenched her teeth to keep the bile from rising in her throat when she heard someone shout.
The Indian jumped off of her and she saw another Indian adorned in some sort of ceremonial headdress push the Indian off to the side and berate him in a tongue that she didn't understand. Whomever this Indian was, he had just saved her life.
She finished eating the jerky and then settled on top of the bedroll to go to sleep. Philip advised that it could get cold in the evenings and that she should sleep inside the bedroll which she did.
Soon, exhaustion overtook her and she was asleep with Philip watching her but he knew it would be a long time before he fell asleep, a long time indeed.
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