Ransom of Red Pussy

Disclaimer: This story is the result of a thread in the Author's Hangout titled "What if they wrote Porn?" The premise being, what would erotica from the classic authors like Hemingway, Poe, Chaucer, et al. would be like. I submitted a blurb rewritten from O Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief." I received several PM's asking (ok, demanding) that I finish the tale and submit it.

So without further ado (or threats of physical violence), and with my eternal gratitude to O Henry for giving me a brilliant story to start with and my sincere apologies for the same reason, I present to you,

*

IT LOOKED like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama -- Bill Dickdrill and myself -- when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; no doubt caused by six months without consensual, on his part, sex while in the hoosegow, but we didn't find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as an 8-year-old girl, and called Hilltop, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent burlesque theater scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Hilltop couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim, the daughter of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Corset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. She was a girl of late teens, with bas-relief freckles, breasts like halved cantaloupes and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you don't want to catch a drip from the red light floozies. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. It was the mesmerizing sway of her hips that convinced Bill, "I'd part with more than that just to watch her walk past in her pantaloons." Says he. But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Hilltop was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Corset's house. The girl was in the street, daring young farm hands to show her their fence posts. Most were sporting them.

"Hey, young lady!" says Bill, "would you like to have a big box of chocolates and a nice ride?"

The girl flashes Bill a peek of the lush foliage under her skirts. "You old farts wouldn't last a minute in there." Then she threw a rock the size of a ripe plum and hit Bill square in the left temple.

"That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says Bill, climbing over the wheel.

That girl put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got her down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took her up to the cave and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the banker's young daughter was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tail feathers stuck in her red hair. She points a stick at me when I come up, and says:

"Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Pussy, the wildest lay of the plains?

"She's all right now," says Bill, pulling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his wrists. "We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Pussy's captive, and I'm to be castrated at daybreak. By Geronimo! That girl can suck the brass off a Boson's pipe."

Yes, sir, that girl seemed to be having the time of her life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made her forget that she was a captive, herself. She immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when her braves returned from the warpath, I was to be impaled on the stake at the rising of the sun.

Then we had supper; and she filled her mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. She made a during-dinner speech something like this:

"I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a boy lick my pussy down by the millpond one night, and I was nineteen last birthday. I hate to go to church. Crabs ate up all of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's pussy hairs, I heard. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does bigger boobs moving make pecker harder? I had five orgasms one night. Not with the same guy o'course. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I fucked Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't do girls. You dassent catch clap from toilet seats. Does a pecker make any noise? Why are boobs round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got three balls. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make an orgy?"

Every few minutes she would remember that she was a pesky redskin, and pick up her stick spear and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then she would let out a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. That girl had Bill terrorized from the start. He ain't seen any pussy like that before.

"Red Pussy," says I to the girl, "would you like to go home?"

"Aw, what for?" says she. "I don't have any fun at home. I like to camp out and Old Hank the Trapper has a funny bend in his pecker that rubs me just the right way when he can keep it up. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you? I'll suck both your balls dry if you promise not to take me home."

She undid my fly and started sucking like one of them new fangled vacuum sweepers. I recon another minute or so and she'd suck my balls right through my pecker. I grabbed two hands full of that red hair and skull fucked her hard enough to knock the freckles off her tits. When I squirted my milt she swallowed every drop and licked her lips, then she looks up at me with those baleful green eyes and just waits.

Says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while."

"All right!" says she. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life."

We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Pussy between us. We weren't afraid she'd run away. She kept us awake for three hours, jumping from me to Bill and reaching for her broom handle whilst we recuperated. Even after Bill and I did her from both ends at the same time she was still rearin' to go. "Hist! pard," she'd whisper in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied rustle of a leaf revealed to her young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yalps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs -- they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Pussy was sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined on Bill's shriveled manhood. In the other she had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing, bacon; and she was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's balls, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.

I got the knife away from the girl and made her lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that girl was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Pussy had said I was to be impaled on the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.

"What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill.

"Me?" says I. "Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it."

"You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. Your ass was to be reamed at sunrise, and you was afraid she'd do it. And she would, too, if she could find a stake. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?"

"Sure," said I. "A bawdy gal like that is just the kind that fathers dote on. Now, you and Red get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre."

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Hilltop I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But, what I saw was a peaceful landscape, dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted father. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have home away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the girl rubbing his groin with her coconuts.

"She put a red-hot lip lock on my johnny," explained Bill, "and squeezed my balls until I shot my load. Only nothing came out, Sam. She's drained me, Sam, and still tryin' to get more. I can't take this, I'm getting' friction burns on my Johnny. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?

I pulled her off of Bill by her fiery tresses, "I'll fix you," says the girl to Bill. "No man ever yet twisted the Red Pussy's nipples but what he got paid for it. You better beware!"

After breakfast the minx takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of her pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.

"What's she up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't think she'll run away, do you, Sam?"

"No fear of it," says I. "She don't seem to be much of a home body. But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement around Hilltop on account of her disappearance; but maybe they haven't realized yet that she's gone. Her folks may think she's spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, she'll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to her father demanding the two thousand dollars for her return."

Just then we heard a kind Of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red had pulled out of her pocket, loaded with a pair of them oriental Ben-Wa marbles that old maids took solace with and she was whirling them around her head running full steam at the both of us.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. Those big marbles had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam, do you know who my favourite Biblical character is?"

"Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently."

"King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?"

I went out and caught that girl and ass-fucked her until her freckles rattled.

"If you don't behave," says I, "I'll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?"

"I was only funning," says she sullenly. "I didn't mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he Twist my nipples for? He aught to know that just makes 'em puffy and warm and that just gets me all randy and I need to have some man cream. I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-day."

"I don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once."

I made her and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Hilltop. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Corset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.

"You know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood -- in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a girl. She's got me going. You won't leave me long with her, will you, Sam?"

"I'll be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You must keep the girl amused and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the letter to old Corset."

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Pussy, with a blanket wrapped around her, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that hundred-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me."

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:

Ebenezer Corset, Esq.:

We have your daughter concealed in a place far from Hilltop. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find her. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have her restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for her return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply -- as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box. The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Hilltop.

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your freckled little girl again.

If you pay the money as demanded, she will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.

TWO DESPERATE MEN.

I addressed this letter to Corset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:

"Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone."

"Play it, of course," says I. "Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?"

"I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout."

"All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages."

"What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.

"You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?"

"You'd better keep her interested," said I, "till we get the scheme going. Loosen up."

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap.

"How far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky manner of voice.

"Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!"

The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs her heels in his side.

"For Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I'll get up and warm you good."

"I'm countin' on it, Hoss. When we get to the stockade you got to ride me." An evil grin curled on her lips.

I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post-office and store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says that he hears Hilltop is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Corset's girl having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Hilltop.

When I got back to the cave Bill and the girl were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response.

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the girl, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on her face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The girl stopped about eight feet behind him.

"Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The girl is gone. I have sent her home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit."

"What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him.

"I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to her why there was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes her by the neck of her clothes and drags her down the mountain. On the way she kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized.