Copyright (c) 2018,   madvlad.  ALL Rights Reserved

Date of first publication in Mr Double's Palisade :
Thursday, April 19, 2018

This story may be downloaded by Palisade members uniquely for their private use, and 
may not be distributed for profit or posted to newsgroups or other websites.  Mr Double 
may be contacted by emailing mrdouble@mrdouble.com.

A Palisade Author story from MrDouble's archive, 
Filename: orphant4.txt
http://www.mrdouble.com

story_codes: M/g(8) Man/young girl, m/g(8) young boy/girl, M/gg(8,4) Man/young girls, g/g, light bondage, non-cons, cons

story_intro: Series Finale: Some unsettling news leaves Silas desperate which also means more abuse for Elizabeth. But a turn of events with them will also impact Sam and his little daughter Clara and what they do at night. Meanwhile, Nell explores her blossoming kinks with the help of her brother, Seb.


story_language: English





Orphan Train, part 4

Written by madvlad


	comments_readers: For those of you who are interested in the writing process: Parts 1 and 2 were originally supposed to be one stand-alone story. After I finished Part 2, I thought about continuing but was not satisfied with where I was taking the characters. Finally, I wrote what was to be the end of the series - the latter section of Part 4. Then I worked my way back and wrote Part 3 and the first half of Part 4.

---

	For once, Elizabeth was ordered to do nothing. Still, she cringed as Silas ran about, muttering worriedly as he packed papers and money and other important belongings into a leather satchel. In another sack, he packed beef jerky and hardtack and then slung a pair of old canteens over his shoulder. Then he grabbed Elizabeth by the hand and nearly dragged her outside. She had to jog to maintain pace and nearly slammed into him when he suddenly stopped and glowered at the thickly falling slow.

	"Can't travel in this," he spat. "We'll go to the hideaway until tomorrow's train if it can make it in."

	Trudging through the deepening snow, Silas led the girl to a stand of trees in perhaps a hundred yards from the house. His father had planted them there and if one knew where to slip between them, they would find themselves at the entrance of an underground cave. In his father's younger days, having a hideaway was boon for survival as native tribes still roamed this land freely and one never knew when they might attack. 

	Now, of course, the land was well-tamed by God-fearing white men (even if, in Silas' estimation, most of them were going to Hell). But Silas had never forgotten the place. 

	"GRY"

	That was all the telegram had said and that was all Silas needed. Any snooping eyes at the Western Union offices would make nothing of this. But Silas knew it as the abbreviation for Geary - as in Geary Street in San Francisco where he owned another house. Like the cave, it was meant to be a hideaway in case trouble forced them to flee. His sister's telegram obviously conveyed that and Silas' plan was to journey out there to meet her. 

	So now Mary and Elizabeth would be reunited sooner than expected. Mary's belly would be quite swollen, now, and it would give her little whore of a sister of glimpse of what awaited her when she was old enough. He had pulled Elizabeth through the trees and into the cave and was thinking of Mary and how he had used her the last few weeks before she was shipped to Chicago. Smacking his lips, he decided to do that very thing with Elizabeth although he usually waited until they were pregnant. 

	Setting the lantern down on the cave floor, he ordered the girl to undress and get on her hands and knees. She did so without complaint, shivering from more than just the cold. It took more spit this time - putting it on Silas' dick and in the pink ring of Elizabeth's sphincter.

	"A sinful beast should be taken like a beast," he preached while poking his erection between the little girl's ass cheeks. 

	Although she had witnessed Silas raping her pregnant sister on a regular basis, Elizabeth had not seen that Silas was using a different orifice. Now she understood as her asshole was violently breached. Her screams echoed in the distant cavern. With her hands and knees being scraped bloody against the stone floor, the little girl felt her anus expand and the grinding against it as Silas buried his prick into her with one cruel thrust after another. 

	Sodomy was a sin, Silas knew. But his father had taught him (with his sister as the example) that performing the act with an inherently evil female could purge the sin from a devout man and cast it into the woman or girl. Now pulling on Elizabeth's hips, he pushed forward at the same time to make the girl's anal channel a new receptacle for his sinful lust.

	With another part of her body enduring searing agony, Elizabeth stared into the darkness beyond the lantern light in search of any respite. The man's cock savaged the eight year-old's bottom, bruising the rectal sheath that softly wrapped his member in its heated grip. It was as if she was being opened up even deeper and Elizabeth feared there'd be nothing left inside of her when he was done. 

	The man's balls slapped at the little girl's bald cunny as he sodomized her virgin ass. With a muttered charge of pseudo-biblical cursing with every thrust, he mauled her innards and demonstrated yet another form of mastery over her. At last, he purged his sin from his body, soiling her with the clammy spew that polluted her much farther inside.

	Sated for the moment, Silas re-fastened his trousers while Elizabeth donned her pitiful excuse for a dress. He had her carry the lantern ahead of him to allow himself to plan any needed details of his longer escape to the west coast. Elizabeth limped slowly and her pace allowed her to see a crack in the rock floor just before she reached it and she stepped over.

	Lost in his thoughts, Silas did not see the hazard and only found it when his foot suddenly fell into the narrow fissure. With a wordless yell, he pitched forward and the momentum of his body resulted in a sickening snap of bones before he fell to the ground in agony. His leg was stuck in the floor almost to his knee and he could not move it. Trying to dislodge it with his hands was no better as it was well-jammed from his weight and the pain prevented him from moving the shattered limb. 

	With his good leg, he thrashed out, digging the heel of his shoe against the rock and tried to get some leverage to heave his mangled leg out if he could. After a few minutes of this, he was imagining himself ripping his upper leg free of the damage and somehow ending the throbbing fire below it. Coming to his senses, he saw Elizabeth staring.

	"Help me, you filthy little cunt!" he demanded, lashing at her with his free leg. 

	Elizabeth scuttled against the wall away from him until she was now between him and the faintly visible cave entrance. With Silas cursing behind her, she fled the place.

	It took several attempts for Elizabeth to convey what happened after she arrived at the only sanctuary she knew. Hattie was finally able to calm her down to understand that something had panicked Silas into making some kind of "escape" and now the damned fool was caught like a rabbit in a snare. While it was tempting to leave him to suffer, there was a chance he could get loose and then Elizabeth's new troubles would make her last few months seem like a light dream.

	While Hattie attended to the girl, Bertie went to the place that Elizabeth described. Bertie grunted in surprise - it certainly was well-hidden. Inside, Silas was still stuck and Bertie walked over to him to observe his predicament.

	"Don't just stand there you Heaven-forsaken heathen bitch!" Silas shouted. "Get me out of this."

	Unmoved by his cursing, Bertie eyed him carefully in the light from the lantern that Elizabeth had left behind. Despite the cold, his hair was matted with sweat and it dripped from his chin. There was also water nearby, trickling from a crack in the cave wall. The canteens could catch it as they were within Silas' reach as well as a sack that Elizabeth had described as carrying foodstuffs.

	"You just might get out if you keep using your good leg and foot enough to pry," she observed. "It's not a sure thing, but it is possible."

	"Do something!" Silas screeched.

	Bertie nodded and picked up a rock large enough for her to need both hands. Silas had paused and was sitting still, panting. Bertie brought the rock down on his free leg, shattering the shin bone and ending its use as a possible tool for freedom. While Silas bellowed and screamed, she picked up the lantern and walked out.

	"You jus' tell Miz Betty that Mister Silas done up and left and you don't know where," Hattie said. "She's a good woman and will take care of you."

	"But why can't I live with you and Bertie?" Elizabeth whined. 

	"We can't stay here with Mister Silas gone - someone else will take over the farm, I guess. Me and Bertie, we's gonna go west and live with her people. But you got a chance for a good life. And if I know Miz Betty, there will be lots o' pies getting' stuffed in you."

	Then Elizabeth was alone on the steps of the back door of Betty's boarding house as the thick snowfall masked Hattie's leaving. She could make out sounds of singing and cookware clattering as Betty was happily busy in her kitchen. After taking a breath, Elizabeth knocked on the door.

	It was too snowy to go anywhere but Nell didn't mind as Seb, although a bit confused, agreed to what she wanted to do. It wasn't just having sex, but Nell wanted to explore things as if she were on stage in a play. From Hi's collection of penny novels about cowboys and Indians, she had decided to play the part of a pioneer girl now trapped in the clutches of a "Wild Red Injun". The latter role was filled by Seb, who wore a band of cloth tied around his head with a few pigeon feathers stuck in it to signify that he was a chief. 

	Seb felt rather silly like this, but if that's how Nell wanted things to be while they were up in the hayloft, then so be it. He'd still get to do what he wanted. At the moment, Nell was naked and bent over a hay bale with her hands behind her back. Seb secured her wrists with twine but didn't do it too tightly for fear of hurting her. When he was done, Nell tried to move her arms and decreed that it was good.

	"Are you going to ravish me, Chief?" she asked in a remarkably frightened voice. 

	"Uh, yes, I am going to ravish you," Seb replied.

	In Hi's cheap books, there was the occasional reference of a white woman being "ravished" by a red-skinned savage. It didn't take long for Seb's and Nell's fertile minds to deduce that that word meant. Seb wished the stories went into detail about the ravishing but putting those kinds of things into print would probably never happen.

	Nell wriggled her bare butt on top of the bale and Seb was perfectly hard when he lowered his trousers. Getting behind her, he slid his dick between her legs and - not surprisingly - found her smooth cleft was already moist and ready. The thirteen year-old sank his meat into the little girl, sighing with satisfaction.

	But Nell found playing the role added to her arousal. At the teen meat's initial penetration of her narrow cunny, she bemoaned the fact that she was now being ravished. With Seb's cock sliding in an out of her clutching tube, the eight year-old decided that ravishing was best when done on top of a hay bale and wondered if Indians had such things when they did their ravishing.

	Seb's thrusting made Nell's body shift back and forth atop the hay and agitated her nipples to sore stiffness as the ends of the straws kept scraping. Her hairless pussy lips were spread wide around the prick sluicing in and out of her drenched passage and more hay scratched them and the miniscule button of her clit. She blinked her eyes rapidly, overcome by the multiple sources of her excitement. 

	When she tried to move her hands, they were stuck behind her back. It made her feel utterly helpless and unable to stop the grinding of her smooth body against the hay and the hard pounding of Seb's cock in her prepubescent twat. More quickly than she had done before, the little girl climaxed while her brother kept plowing in her snug quim. 

	Her orgasm had passed and other was building as the bound child was subjected to the ongoing contact of a teen prick in her drooling snatch. When Seb blasted her unripened innards with his jism, she told him to keep moving. He did so; his dick barely softening before it regained its turgid state. 

	His little sister same again while tied up, bent over, and impaled on his rutting cock. He did find this strangely exciting as Nell was certainly enjoying this like nothing they had done before.

	Nell's eyes were locked onto the boards of the barn wall as her brother ravished her gooey little snatch so perfectly. She kept squirming to enhance the friction both outside and inside her body. But instead of the bare wall, she now saw ladies and gentlemen seated in a grand theater as she performed her celebrated ravishment play. When she came for a third time, Seb met her with his second release. As the boy's cream shot into her little sex, she imagined the standing ovation from the audience.

	It had been a week and no trace of Silas had been found. Elizabeth suspected that the townspeople had not tried very hard. Today, a man had come to town on a train from Chicago. He was some sort of policeman although he didn't wear a uniform. She had been pointed out to him but he never spoke to her. It was only afterward that Mr. Preston, Betty's son, informed her that she would stay with him from now on, even if Silas was found. 

	Betty had been perfectly delighted at having another granddaughter. It was she who had discovered the belt marks on Elizabeth's back (but had mercifully not thought to check for any signs of abuse further down) and Betty had bent the ear of the town constable. Then it had been decided that Elizabeth should stay with Sam. Naturally, Sam learned of this after the fact.

	Sam was very kind to her although he was a bit more reserved than his effervescent mother. Clara was thrilled to have a live-in playmate and Elizabeth took great pleasure in being a big sister. The younger girl did find her new sister's name a mouthful and usually pronounced it "Lisbeth". It was only at night when she heard and investigated the noises that gave her some unsettling thoughts.

	She had seen them together. Clara was completely naked and looked so tiny and vulnerable in Sam's hands. Yet, there was no distress. Despite his overpowering size and strength - features that Silas had employed to brutal effect - this man was remarkably gentle as he pleasured the little girl. Having her own experience in Hattie and Bertie's bed, Elizabeth knew when Clara climaxed. And when Sam would finally ejaculate, Clara clapped her hands with glee at making her father as happy as he made her. 

	At first, Elizabeth had been unsettled by her discovery. But now she wanted to join in this - these acts that were more than merely physical. All she needed to do was to work up the nerve.

	It began with leaving her nightgown on her bed as she crept down the hall to observe her father and sister in the nude. Sam was on his back and Clara, looking so soft and cuddly, was straddling the man's member. The tot's sturdy little legs flexed as Sam slid her back and forth along the length of his hardness. Squirming happily in his grip, Clara had her hairless cunny massaged by her father's meat.

	The plump twat lips were spread apart which allowed Sam's prick to directly massage her more sensitive pink places inside. Even in the lamp light, Elizabeth could see how shiny her sister's tiny honeypot had made Sam's penis as it lubricated freely. Without thinking of it, Elizabeth began to finger her own cunny in a way the two women had taught her. When Clara's kittenish noises became sharper, the four year-old began to quake in her father's hands. Then the orgasm tore through the little girl, making her squeak and then go limp.

	"Oh, Papa!" Clara said when she regained her senses. "You didn't squirt yet. I can help."

	"No, let me. Please."

	Elizabeth was as surprised at her words as Sam and Clara were. When she approached the bed Sam's momentary panic eased into some kind of understanding while Clara was happy to have another girl included in this special time. Having learned about Silas' sister, who was still on the run, Sam wondered about Elizabeth's recent past in Silas' home. She looked needful - not just for contact but a deeper intimacy. He held out a hand to welcome her into bed.

	Clara scooted to one side and Elizabeth took the lead in what she wanted to do. She had never seen Sam even try to penetrate the smaller girl but she wanted to know the man's gentle touches in the place where Silas had abused her. Lying on her back, she pointed to the smooth mound between her legs.

	"Could you...?" she begged. "In...me?"

	Sam understood and carefully straddled her. Easing into the eight year-old's cunny, he found her wet and tight as she opened to accept him. Elizabeth had been holding her breath and now slowly exhaled as she felt a presence inside her but this time slow and careful. Her gradual penetration was accompanied by Clara's excited cries as she witnessed this coupling. The preschooler fondled her own bald cunny as she watched her father's cock slide slowly in and out of her sister.

	With her free hand, Clara reached out and touched Elizabeth's opened labia and Sam's member where they joined. Sam still slid in and out and the feathery touch of Clara's tiny, exploring fingers excited the other two. The hint of trepidation was gone now from Elizabeth's pale blue eyes and now she breathed deeply through her parted lips as she was tenderly filled and stroked between her legs. 

	There was no hint of any development on Elizabeth's chest at her age yet Sam found the rise and fall of her young chest to be erotic as he worked his cock in the preteen's snug, heated cunny. Drawing on his lessons in the brothels of the Far East, he maneuvered his tool to find what aroused the girl the most. With a small cry, Elizabeth finally came with her quim pleasantly and fully stuffed and her little sister's hand rubbing her in wonder. It was enough for Sam to cum and Elizabeth felt his heated flow injected into her but it held no sense of the defilement that she had felt with Silas.

	After Sam withdrew, Clara made announcement that broke the quiet spell.

	"When I'm a big girl like Lisbeth, Papa is going to squirt in my muffin, too."

	Sam laughed. Elizabeth joined him and peered at the glistening swell between Clara's legs. Her hairless slit was tiny and delicate but the dew gleaming there gave Elizabeth a feeling for how Hattie and Bertie had regarded her. 

	"But you don't have to be a big girl to do this," she said huskily as she guided Clara into a prone position. 

	Sam gaped. He had seen women and even girls barely or not quite in their teens performing together like this in Hong Kong and Shanghai, but now he watched as Elizabeth's head blocked his view of Clara's crotch. But the rocking movement of the older girl's head and the moist sliding sounds made it obvious as to what she was doing.

	Wide-eyed, Clara turned to Sam.

	"Papa, she's licking my muffin like you do!"

	Elizabeth kept at it, savoring the four year-old's light, feminine nectar as she orally coaxed her baby sister to another orgasm. Hattie had often remarked how tasty Elizabeth was in bed and now Elizabeth found Clara to be a delicious meal as well. 

	They finally settled in with Clara ensconced between her father and sister. Almost immediately, the tyke drifted off into the slumber of the innocent. It was sometime later before Elizabeth fell asleep. As she lay in the darkness, listening to the light breathing of Clara and the heavier sounds bordering on a snore from Sam, Elizabeth - for the first time in nearly forever - found herself looking forward to what the next day would bring.

	The snow had been melting until the previous night's steep drop in temperature made it crystalline on the surface. The delicate structure crunched under the tires of the Ford F150 pick-up truck painted Nebraska Cornhusker red. After switching off the engine, Dr. Jerome Feinberg, forensic anthropologist at the University of Nebraska secured the toboggan hat over his thinning hair before stepping out in to the sunny but frigid morning. 

	The building in front of him was a large farmhouse with a generous front porch that wrapped around from the front to along one side. In a tree not far away hung an almost-obligatory tire swing suspended quite low to complete the picturesque rural scene. But the house was barely on the outskirts of Tylerville, Iowa, a city comparable in size to Jerome's Lincoln, Nebraska. 

	He had originally been scheduled to meet with a fellow professor, Dr. Gwyneth Larson, in her office at the Tylerville branch of the University of Iowa but she had called the night before asking him to come to her house instead. She joked that it might be safer for him at her house or otherwise is truck would be covered with black and gold decorations of the Hawkeyes. In actuality, she had changed the location because of her children.

	"The twins have a bit of the sniffles and I'm keeping them home from daycare," Gwyneth had explained over the phone. "I don't want my little walking Petri dishes contaminating the other little germ sponges."

	Mercifully, Jerome's wait in the cold was brief as Gwyneth answered the door shortly after he rang the bell and welcomed him inside. She was young for a college professor (actually an associate professor but full tenure was rumored to be not far away) at age twenty-eight but was recognized for her brilliance in agricultural science. But it was not her field of expertise that brought Jerome here today.

	"So what brings a Husker deep into Hawkeye Country?" she asked after giving him a welcome mug of hot coffee.

	"Your family has an interesting history and I've heard you're very knowledgeable about it along with Tylerville's past as they are intertwined.

	Gwyneth paused from taking a sip of coffee to laugh. Her brown eyes danced and she shook her head. As she kept her long blonde hair in a ponytail, it swayed with the movement. She could have fit into a pair of jeans quite nicely but here at home she stuck with sweatpants and a bulky sweater. The appearance was incongruous with the woman who could match wits with anyone in anyone in a bio-science debate and Jerome approved - it was good to be able to relax. His own work fascinated him but he enjoyed time at home building wooden models of sailing ships (an odd choice in the middle of the land-locked Midwest).

	"You should talk to my husband, Mark," Gwyneth stated. "His family is a hoot - two bank robbers and one cattle rustler hung in the nineteenth century and even more of them that got away."

	"Oh, Lord! I hope he's not maintaining the family tradition," Jerome laughed.

	"No, he's a cell-tower engineer. Designs a lot of the repeaters and such for the networks but is not afraid to climb up and take a look at things on site."

	"In this weather?"

	"People use their cell phones in February, too, you know. He's such a geek about science - something we both share. Our first official date was attending a chemistry lecture."

	Jerome nodded and looked at some of the older black-and-white photos on the fireplace's mantel. They were mixed with newer color ones including one of Gwyneth and a burly man with a beard along with two very little girls with their mother's features. Judging from the white dusting their hats and coats, they must have been playing in the snow right before the photo was taken.

	"Well," Jerome continued. "It's actually you I wanted to see to get some background. I was called in last week to look at a find made during pre-excavation work on a construction site."

	"I had heard they had found something. They were taking geological surveys before work really started in the spring."

	"That's right. What I'd like to know is about the members of your family - the Preston family - around the early twentieth century. And I imagine you something about the Hensons, too, considering how the two families are somewhat intertwined. I imagine there were some marriages between the two as well."

	"Actually, no. There certainly had been flirting - I remember that well from my teens and some of the Henson boys.  But for some reason, there were never any serious courtships or marriages between the families. I guess no one wants to screw up a good friendship like that."

	"Ah, I see. So, it was your - let me get this right - great-great-great-great-grandmother, Betty Preston, who founded Betty's Bakery, right?"

	Betty's Bakery was renowned world-wide for their quality of goods. They might be a little higher in price, but the food was far better than the chemically-preserved products of their competitors.

	"Betty - I call her my quad-great-grandma to keep it simple - really didn't start the company. She had her recipes, yes, and they're still used today. But it was one of the Henson boys - the middle one, Sebastian - who came up with the idea of mass-producing the pies. Later, there was everything else you see now, but it was Betty's pies at the beginning. Seb, as they called him, had the idea of making it a national brand and since Tylerville had several railroad routes running through it, the pies could reach either coast in a few days. 

	Doing this with food was a very new concept but Uncle Seb was a businessman ahead of his time. He was only twenty when he and Betty started the company. And he always insisted on a fifty-fifty split between our families. Half for the product and half for the business model, I guess."

	"That must have been a challenge with the Industrial Age not really geared for mass production of food in this way."

	"Oh, there was still a lot of handwork, but here's where more family ties came in," Gwyneth explained. "My triple-great-grandpa, Sam, was an engineer."

	"Betty's son, right?" Jerome asked.

	"Right. He had been a naval engineer before coming back to Tylerville to be a postmaster. He was wounded during the Spanish American War and was a hero and all that but never made any big deal about it. Even with running the post office, he kept abreast of technology of the day; a passion he shared with Seb's younger brother, Will. It was Sam and Will who designed the production line bakery, if you will.

	Naturally, all of the baking needed plenty of flour and Seb and Will's father, Enos, and their oldest brother, Hiram, were successful farmers and were also able to secure additional farmland for fruit crops, dairy and eggs for the sole purpose of supplying Betty's Bakery."

	"Wow!" gushed Jerome. "That was some family. Three sons were a huge success - something their descendants carry on as well as Sam's. It's amazing to see it after all of these generations - usually their heirs wander away."

	Gwyneth smiled mischievously. 

	"Oh, but there was one more sibling - the only daughter - who might be considered the black sheep if her brothers hadn't been so fiercely devoted to her. Nell went off to California as the motion picture industry was taking off and made her mark in the movies."

	"Nell Henson," Jerome mused. "It doesn't ring a ball but I can't say I know of too many silent movie actors aside from Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton."

	"She changed her last name for show biz. She wanted something more exotic and French-sounding. Have you ever heard of Nell La Toulouse?"

	Jerome gaped. Nell La Toulouse was one of the few stars of the silent screen to transition successfully - even blossom more - to the "talkies"; the movies with sound. Even before spoken word, she could give a look with her eyes that would "set trousers in the theater a-smolder" as one Hollywood wag of that era had remarked. 

	When sound came with the film, her sultry voice added to the allure while some self-proclaimed protectors of virtue denounced her as the face of all sins that Southern California produced. She was a grand dame of Hollywood well into the 1970's. He recalled that she had never married or had children, famously stating that she had plenty of nieces and nephews to spoil without the burden of parental responsibility.

	"I never knew," he remarked. "I'm thinking of the photos I've seen of the original three Henson brothers and there's no resemblance, not that it means much."

	"That's because Nell was adopted. So were both of Sam's daughters, Elizabeth and Clara. Clara's my great-great grandmother and she was still around for most of my childhood. Not too many people can claim to have lived in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries but she could. 

	But she wasn't one to brag - she was very sweet and quiet but she had a memory like a steel trap. She could still remember her first train ride - coming to Tylerville when she was four years old. It was one of those orphan trains, do you know of those?"

	"Yes."

	"Well, all three girls came here on the same train - Clara, Elizabeth, and Nell."

	"Pretty remarkable," Jerome noted. "And...whoops, we have visitors."

	Gwyneth turned to see a blonde little girl entering the room with another trailing behind. Jerome recognized them from the photo although now both were completely naked.

	"Mommy," said the lead twin. "Anna has a booger in her nose."

	Unfazed, Gwyneth got a tissue and knelt in front of her other daughter and held it to the girl's nose. Anna blew as directed and Gwyneth wiped afterward.

	"And where did you learn that interesting word, Emma?" Gwyneth asked good-naturedly. "Booger, I mean."

	"Brett at preschool," Emma replied while the quieter Anna nodded in confirmation.

	"Ah, Brett with the four older brothers to teach him new vocabulary and Lord knows what else," Gwyneth sighed. "Okay. But now another question: You were both dressed an hour ago. Where are your clothes?"

	"On the floor," answered Emma with a tone that conveyed that it could be the only logical place to put discarded clothing.

	Neither girl seemed uncomfortable about their nudity in front of a stranger but at their young age, they lacked the notion that they should be modest. With Anna's nose now purged, they scampered back to wherever they had been, the round buns of their tiny rumps jiggling.

	"Three year-olds," Gwyneth laughed. "They're fine about wearing clothes in public and at daycare, but when they're alone together at home, I usually find them going au naturel. I have no idea what they could be up to."

	Now Jerome laughed. 

	"I remember my kids at that age. We have three and they're all in their teens now. But when our oldest was about two or three, I became convinced that toddlers came from another planet."

	He paused and peered thoughtfully at one of the old photos. It featured a seated man with two little girls standing on either side. While most photographic portraits of the age had their subjects staring stiffly at the lens, all three people were smiling. Gwyneth saw his interest and brought the photo over. 

	"That's Sam," she told him. "The older girl on the left is Elizabeth and the one on the right is Clara. They were about ten and five in that picture."

	"Your girls bear a strong resemblance to Clara. It's quite remarkable considering the number of additions to the family gene pool over the years."

	"Mm, I know. And other family members noticed, too. I think it's Clara's quiet little way of staying with the family although I'd imagine that she was better about keeping her clothes on around the house than my little nudists."

	"Did any of your ancestors have any dealings with a Silas Varney that you know of?"

	Gwyneth squinted for a moment and nodded before explaining.

	"Silas was actually Elizabeth's first adoptive father. He got Elizabeth and her older sister, Mary. Mary was sent to live with his sister about six months after they were adopted. There was some scandal about the sister running a bordello with very young girls - we wonder about what happened to Mary. Upton Sinclair, himself, did an expos about these places in Chicago and Silas' sister just vanished overnight with all of her girls. 

	Neither she nor Mary was heard from again. The rumor is that the woman and her henchmen took everyone to California and changed their names - easy to do back then. And that's about the time that Silas disappeared. Elizabeth showed up at Betty's boarding house - that's how Betty supported herself then - in the dead of night in winter. Betty took her in and Sam formally adopted her around six months later when Silas couldn't be found.

	There was no love lost when he vanished, either. He was rich but kept to himself except when he wanted to put other people down. Was one of those holier-than-thou types. Considering what happened with his sister, he may have been a hypocrite of the lowest order. Aside from Elizabeth, all that remained were some people who lived and worked on his property. They had no loyalty toward him - no wonder, there - and wandered off by springtime."

	"Well, we found Silas," Jerome said.

	"Where? Oh my God - you mean the excavation?"

	"Not quite. They were doing sonographic surveys as this area does have some underground caverns from ancient rivers. They found a small one - not very deep or long - on what used to be the Varney property. Along with various supplies and a lockbox that contained a nice stash of money - currency and gold twenty-dollar pieces - there was one set of skeletal remains. That's where I was called in.

	Between the location and the personal effects found by the skeleton, including an engraved watch with his name inside the cover, we've determined that this was Silas Varney. Both legs were broken in the tibia and fibula - those are the bones below the kneecap. 

	One is easy to see why - he must have missed a fissure in the rock and that foot went down and the leg with it halfway to the knee. It would have thrown him off-balance and that's what snapped the bones. From the position of his remains, he must have been stuck there. We found a desiccated leather shoe in that fissure. 

	The other leg is a mystery. The bone damage is indicative of a crushing blow. There are rocks scattered all over the place in there. But Silas wouldn't have done it to himself and, from what you said, he had plenty of people who didn't like him."

	"But to kill him," Gwyneth mused. Her eyes fixed on the photo she was still holding and she violently shook her head. "No, I can't see Elizabeth doing that. Even if Silas did the worst we can imagine to Mary, Elizabeth would have only been eight or nine then. She had a normal life later on - married, had kids, grandkids, and so on. I even roomed with one of my cousins - one of Elizabeth's so-many-great-granddaughters in college and we're still close. I just can't see..."

	"Who knows?" said Jerome. "It could have been some seedy types from Chicago looking to keep his mouth shut during all of this trouble. But there is one other thing."

	Gwyneth was looking at the photo, tracing a finger over the faces under the glass. When she looked up, Jerome continued.

	"Whoever did it to him didn't finish him off but they sure as hell didn't do him any favors. He...uh, are your girls nearby?"

	Gwyneth got up and checked the hall. It was empty and she thought she heard one of her daughters - Anna, according to her maternal sense of hearing - was making a peculiar kind of squeaking noises. It was something the woman had heard before and suspected that it was some kind of tickling game instigated by Emma. But Anna never sounded distressed so Gwyneth returned to the living room where Jerome finished his statement.

	"As I was saying, he didn't die easily. Judging from a canteen and some other items near his skeleton, Silas had some food - some sort of jerky, we think - and water with him and probably lasted a week or more, praying for someone to find him, probably. 

	There was other, smaller damage to his bones everywhere. Teeth marks from rodents. Now if he disappeared in February, a lot of varmints were probably living underground without much food over the winter. I'd say the rats got to him."

	"After he died, though. Right?" Gwyneth interjected.

	Jerome shrugged.

	"They got to most of him after he passed, yes. But the bone fragments around his injuries show gnaw marks that aren't as well defined. That means the bones had started to heal even after some of the meat had been stripped away. While he was trying to survive in a desperate hope for rescue, they were already eating away at him - at his leg caught in the rock - and there was not a damn thing he could do about it."



Copyright (c) 2018 madvlad

madvlad@mrdouble.com
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This story is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.


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