The Investigative Reporter 5: Escape Plan

(story continues from The Investigative Reporter 4: Observations)

Part 5: Escape Plan

If nothing else, Beth thought at least the evil wife was consistent. The team was once again in the fields, but this time pulling the heavy disc through some of the less desirable fields of Grandview's many holdings. It was hard work, and only reserved for the stronger teams, and by lunch time the girls were feeling the burn in their muscles.

The sadistic wife had brought out her husband's lunch in her wicker basket, and Beth could see that it was some wonderful looking fried chicken. Their driver ate, and ate, and ate some more as Beth watched covertly while eating her own simple sandwich and drinking her juice. With such a large meal in the man's belly he couldn't help but to get sleepy, as his wife no doubt intended. She had even brought a blanket to cover the man with so he could nap more soundly under his large straw hat in the shade of the trees.

The evil wife re-hitched the team to the plow on her own, with the other ladies in the team curious about the change in routine. Beth expected some kind of retribution with her earlier humiliation of the pretty wife at the conclusion of their race, but was at least somewhat confident that she could only receive so much of the whip without their driver noticing, even in his deep slumber. Beth was surprised that the woman wasn't especially rough with her as she drove the team to the top of the field, but instead of cutting rows in that field where their driver was napping, she instead flagged down the driver of the team the girls had beaten in their previous race.

"He ate too much of my fried chicken, and I left him to nap in the shade of the sycamore trees", she said in explanation for why she was driving the team instead of her husband. It was common practice for some of the wives to drive the teams occasionally after lunch to give their husbands some rest, and it was also common knowledge at Grandview that the sadistic wife was both comfortable around a team, and a whip. He could see she enjoyed the feeling of power one gets from driving a team of harnessed ladies, the look was impossible to conceal. He had seen that same look himself many times at Grandview in the mirror before work, and he thought once again that he loved his job. There was something else in her pretty eyes as well, he had seen that look often enough from his own wife, it was a kind of playful mischief that a man can recognize on instinct.

The man caught himself daydreaming while looking at the pretty wife's eyes, she wasn't his wife, but the look of desire was the same. Also focusing on her eyes prevented his own from roaming all over the rest of her magnificent body. She was a hansom woman without a doubt, and it was easy to forget at times like this that she had the personality of a pit viper. He and the other drivers had a favorite "fantasy" involving the pretty wife, only discussed when her husband wasn't about, and not likely to happen in the real world. It was after all a fantasy.

Their fantasy went like this: The pretty wife convicted of some minor crime, stripped and harnessed up like one of the other lead girls at the train station for their humiliating run through town. With a bit in her mouth, and not one ounce of mercy from the whip, she would be driven just as hard as she drove some of the other girls at Grandview.

The other drivers collectively thought that several weeks of living and being worked like a human stock animal would properly tame the pretty wife, at least from their point of view it was the only thing she was lacking to become the perfect wife. There were several variations of their collective fantasy with the pretty wife that each of the men kept to themselves, but they all shared those same key elements...

"I couldn't help but to notice that your field looks much tighter and less inviting than mine" the pretty wife observed with a smile as Beth and the other girls listened. Her tone was flirty with her husband's coworker, and Beth thought she heard a hint of invitation in her words.

The man was drawn out of his daydreams by her sudden observation, but he was certain that she had just delivered a lewd double entente worthy of a man, possibly even disparaging his very manhood by implying his own wife wasn't being properly cared for at home. The two wives only got along at best, but from his point of view all women were competitive with each other on some level. The men all talked about their wives, and he knew this one was purported to be less that adventurous at home, "beautiful but boring" was the way her husband had phrased it once in exasperation. Did she not know that her inaction's made the bad girls sentenced to Grandview all that much more tempting? Perhaps, the man thought, she did. Was that was the reason for her obvious focus on the team's present lead girl? She was after all petite and highly attractive, and one could tell she was special just by looking into her eyes.

"I wouldn't know as I haven't broken into yours...... yet!" he quipped with a broad smile of his own.

She still had a playful smile on her pretty face, and he knew then that there was no misunderstanding her earlier words.

"Would you like to plow my field good and deep while my husband naps?" the sadistic wife asked in a very sultry tone. "I bet it would be easier for you to break into than yours, and if you did so quietly we wouldn't disturb him."

The man couldn't believe what he just heard, was she offering herself, or just wanting to move "her" girls over to another field that was most certainly harder work? He tried to hide his excited manhood from her, embarrassed that just some well chosen words from her forked tongue had him responding like a puppet for her amusement. He decided there and then that if he ever got the chance to "plow her field", he would not only do so in such a way that she wouldn't be able to walk properly for the next few days, but that he would be sure to leave something behind that would grow.

The man thought there was only one way to find out what the pretty woman was really up to, and that was to accept her offer. "I would love to plow your field for you, if your serious."

"Have fun" she said playfully as she drove Beth and the girls toward his field, "I know I will!"

The man knew he had been played like a fool by the cunning wife, and he vowed to himself that if his "fantasy" ever came true, he would have more fun than she could possibly handle, and then possibly even share her with the others when he was through with her.

*****

Beth and her team were driven to a field left fallow the previous season, and it was full of roots and stalks that needed to be chopped up and turned so a second plow could properly turn the soil and it could be planted. The other team had only made three rows all morning, and Beth knew it would be hard work as those girls were more muscular than her team, and that was with a driver that didn't seem to mind using his whip when he felt the need.

Once in position the sadistic wife set the heavy disk to work with some effort, and she snapped the reins soundly as Beth's shoulders felt the sting of the leather straps. Beth felt the sting of the woman's whip as well, it was the reason she had chosen the rough field away from her sleeping husband in the first place. The whip had Beth and the other girls yelping, despite Beth's efforts to remain silent as not to give the evil woman the satisfaction of knowing the pain she was causing.

In her case the tail of the whip found it's way to places that should not have been possible with the two girls relative positions, but the evil woman was quite skilled in it's use. High inside her left thigh, followed by a surprising shot directly between her heaving breasts, only to be followed by another surprise shot at some other intimate place. Her only relief came when one of the other girls failed to pull to her potential, either in exhaustion, or to give Beth some relief from the woman and her whip by redirecting her aggression.

Beth's driver eventually woke from his slumber and found his team with the aid of his frustrated coworker, but by then Beth and the team had been at her hands for over two hours. The girls had completed most of the field with their brutal treatment, allowing the evil wife to prove a point of her own about properly motivating the girls to perform to their potential. The lesson wasn't lost on their driver, nor the other as he knew first hand how rough the field was.

This time Beth was marked up pretty well, and their driver took it very easy on the girls for the rest of the day because he was that kind of man, but there was no denying the level of production the evil wife had pried from his team either. The natural question was how much more could the teams really do, and for how much longer. Could there be a six month, or even a full year sentence in Grandview's future? If they could keep a team for a full year it would mean more production, and the teams could be used in the off season to plant winter wheat, or even clear the roads of the occasional snowfall the area was known for. Anything a tractor, or a team of horses could do, the girls could do as well with less food, and less upkeep.

The man could see in his mind, the pink skinned girls hitched to a sleigh and delivering packages to the various shops and houses once the roads were snow covered, working especially hard to keep warm in their near nudity with ten neat plumes of vaporous exhaled breaths following behind. Felling trees and delivering split wood, or even coal to the elderly members of the communities surrounding Grandview could help make the work farm more popular, and help the girls pay back the community for their transgressions. Would it get so cold that the girls would have to be clothed at some point, or possibly just covered with a blanket when at rest?

*****

The beating gave Beth fresh ideas of her own, and the following night after she had recovered she feinted sleep until the others drifted off in their bunk room. She was tired as well, but had trouble sleeping with the boiling rage she felt inside at how she had been used by the evil wife. She quietly put her "shoes" back on and snuck out their door into the moonless night, armed with the only "tool" she could find in the bunk room, and that had been quite accidentally.

Beth snuck away from the bunk houses and the cook shack where she anticipated the only guards were either sleeping, or playing cards. Once away from the others she ran hard, she had discovered she could run especially fast in her "shoes" quite by accident during their race, and she headed at full sprint for the train station with her new found discovery. Nobody was about, much as she had anticipated in the middle of the night during the work week. In the city it might have been different, but even that wasn't the case the night her and the other girls were lead to the train station like animals by their jailers, but possibly only because it was rainy that night.

The cool night air and the liberating feeling of freedom drove her on as if she could go on forever, but she really didn't have to, and before too long she could see the darkened train station. She knew she was most likely to be spotted, if at all, on the main roads near the train station. Beth had several escape plans in her mind, she had thought of nothing else in the proceeding day.

If seen by a man in an automobile, she decided she would run for the fields if she couldn't hide in time. If it was a mounted man her options were much more limited, and she had already decided if that happened she would offer herself up in exchange for her freedom if she couldn't escape him in some other way.

Fortunately for Beth the town was deserted, or so she thought, and she found the object of her desire hanging next to the train tracks where she expected it to be. For obvious reasons it was hanging twelve feet off of the ground where the train could more easily reach it. Beth had to shimmy up the rough pole to reach the mail bag as she had no mailman's pole of her own to retrieve it. She was reminded of the evil wife's whip as her abused skin came into contact with the rough pole, but at least going up her neither regions were protected from the pole's assault by her leather loincloth.

Beth dropped the bag, making far more noise than she intended in the still night air. Once on the ground she hunted through the unlocked bag looking for a stamped letter addressed in pencil. She had found a pencil in the corner of their bunk room her first week at Grandview, and she had hidden it from everybody else with the intention of using it to make notes for her expose if she ever found any paper. Both items were forbidden at Grandview, and if caught in possession of either could earn her ten lashes while suspended from her harness in front of the whole camp.

All of the letters in the mail bag were addressed to points north, at least confirming for Beth that she had chosen the correct train and mail bag. She had heard the trains often, but her desperate plan looked somewhat more practical from her point of view with the evidence before her.

Minutes later Beth put the letters back into their bag, including the special one she had selected for her purposes. It would eventually get to it's proper destination, but first it would take a little detour. Climbing the rough pole with the mail bag in her hands instead of grasping it proved to be near impossible, that was until she thought to attach the bag's latch to the ring on the rear of her harness. Once atop the pole it took incredible strength and flexibility to both hold the pole pinched between both thighs and one arm, and retrieve the bag from behind her with the other.

With her task complete she knew she had to get back to Grandview before somebody missed her. She was already exhausted, and knew she would be doubly so once back at the bunkhouse. Getting down the rough pole was tough on her a second time, and she was certain that she had left behind some of the hair around her neither regions that had grown back with her lack of proper maintenance. Her legs had become quite the mess as well, and she decided she would properly pamper herself once she was free and writing her expose.

Before she ran back to Grandview she decided to stab her stub of a pencil into the soft dirt near the train station's foundation, it's purpose already served from her point of view. Continued possession could only lead to consequences, and she also knew she had already placed herself in more that enough risk for one evening.

If Beth's spirited run away from Grandview was invigorating, the run back was anything but, and felt most unnatural from her point of view.

She was hardly a thousand feet away from the mail bag at full sprint when she briefly became aware of the pungent odor of a cigarette. Most of the men at Grandview smoked something to keep the bugs away, and it was a smell she associated with not only her driver, but the others as well. To be caught here by one of them would make getting caught by one of the town's men look pleasant in comparison, and could lead to a much longer sentence in a real prison. With no glowing embers in sight she could do little but adjust her course off of the deserted roads and onto the fields sooner than she anticipated doing, and other than that her run back to the bunkhouse was uneventful, save for the uneven terrain and slower pace.

She snuck back in and laid sweating atop of her bunk, and in what felt like no time at all she heard the train rumble through. That day everybody in her team could tell she was off, but they were inclined to cover for her as much as possible as they knew she had received far more of the evil wife's attention than they had. The condition of her bedding lead the other girls to come to the conclusion that she was sick, but they had no way of knowing she was so sick of Grandview that she put into motion a desperate plan...

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25.04.14

story continues in The Investigative Reporter 6: The Price Of Freedom, part 1

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