Wild Rhoda

Chapter 1

The setting sun painted the surrounding hilltops a washed-out orange as the echo of three sudden gunshots penetrated the gloom to the valley floor.

Standing outside of the farmhouse, freckle-faced and buxom Flossie (Florence) MacFie, conspicuous with masses of fading red-hair, made four unsuccessful sweeps through binoculars of the rugged foothills of the Atlas Ranges without seeing any sign of the shooter, her youngest and virtually uncontrollable daughter Rhona.

Later, Flossie would learn that the 26-year-old, bearing unruly hair the colour of sun-dried thrashed wheat stalks, had shot at a pack of five marauding wild dogs, killing two and mortally wounding another.

The dogs were sheep killers.

They'd ripped open the throats of twenty-two of the MacFie's 37,753 sheep (at the last count completed three days earlier).

Discovering the slaughter next morning, with most of the victims killed as a blood sport rather than for food, Rhona had driven back to the farmhouse amid a collection of sheds, reporting the slaughter to her parents.

She'd frowned at her father's reaction, "Bloody stray dogs lost by deer and pig hunters."

Flossie guessed what was on her daughter's mind and went to the kitchen and prepared food and drink to last a sole hunter for up to three days.

"Don't go out there," said the craggy-face and solidly-built Cameron, when Rhona returned to the family room/kitchen, dressed in high country hunting clothing.

"Drop it dad. Fetch your Land Rover to the front door and set Mac loose as I'll need him to track those bastard killers for me. Deliver me to Higgin's Crossing."

"You're be wasting your time love. Those bastards will be loping and licking their chops thirty miles away by now,"

"Dad, those dogs would have gorged themselves and tired themselves out chasing terrified sheep. They would have retreated uphill to mountainous seclusion and assumed safety until they crap out their excesses."

"Rhoda, speak delicately!" chided her mother, valiantly pursuing her relentless attempt to convert her wild daughter into modifying her behaviour and adopt some of the airs of a lady.

Flossie's reprimand was ignored by daughter and husband.

"Yeah, that retreat strategy sounds reasonable," Cameron said grudgingly, having accrued a near lifetime experience with dogs. He retained fond memories of his first pup given to him when he was not quite three years of age. Bess died just after Cameron's 10th birthday when attacked by pig hunters' dogs. At the time, Cameron and Bess were out hunting for rabbits on the river flats.

Cameron smiled in pride when Rhoda returned to the family room dressed in thick clothing, a cap pulled low on her head, carrying a backpack in one hand and her Remington Model 700 Mountain Rifle with a scope in her other hand. She looked every inch a serious hunter.

Rhoda handed the backpack, already loaded with minimal camping gear, to her pale-faced mother who appeared ready to weep as she packed the food and drink provisions.

"Do you have sun block cream, skin moisturiser, lip cream..."

"Mum, yes in part. This is serious work connected to our farming income, not an outing for your dream prim Sunday School teacher."

Flossie sighed and asked, "How long will you be away?"

"Mother, how long is a piece of string? I figure no more than two nights."

Late afternoon two days later, Flossie was relieved to hear the shots ring out. The dogs would scatter, running into tomorrow and Rhona could be home next day by mid-morning.

Rhona with Mac, her favourite dog, a black and tan huntaway, were picked up at Higgin's Crossing by Cameron at 10.15, on schedule.

She'd radioed after the shooting to give her ETA, reporting that she and Mac were well and she'd stalked the pack of five dogs until they were on fairly flat and open terrain. She shot the lead dog through the back of the head with her first shot, sent the second dog off yelping and limping with its left front shoulder burst open with large wound. She killed the third dog with a long distant shot with a bullet through the spine when it slowed preparing to leap up on to a ledge with the obvious intent to disappear into scrub.

By then the other two dogs had vanished.

"So, you got two of the bastards," Cameron said, with satisfaction.

"Three I would think dad. With its shoulder ripped open, that wounded dog is unlikely to survive for long in this unforgiving terrain up here. The two survivors will be miles away by nightfall and are unlikely to ever return."

The brief call ended and Flossie said, "Omigod Cameron, that girl has turned out to be even tougher than her two older brothers."

"Yeah, funny that and despite all the soft talk you've plied her with over the years and those pink dresses you used to truss her up in. I reckon that over-mothering half-terrorised the poor little darling. She probably secretly thought you were preparing her for burial."

"Cameron MacFie, you do talk a load of shit at times. I think you both need your heads read by a frigging psychiatrist and then spend six months in a reform institution."

Cameron leant over and tugged the hem of her dress.

She frowned and mocked, "Oh no, you randy sod. You've got your mind on that again."

* * *

Rhona, tall with an athlete's body had, over more than 20 years, developed a tendency to sometimes act headstrongly and exhibit a toughness that had earned her the title of Wild Rhona.

Early in life she'd displayed the occasional tantrum - not unusual in any frustrated child - but a serious incident occurred when she was eight.

Two hours after her older brother Donald (then 12) beat her up, Rhona waylaid him and struck him viciously with a short metal pry bar, breaking the humerus bone of his right arm that he'd used to slap her repeatedly.

At primary school, Rhona gained a reputation - and made friends as a result of her action - for being a courageous battler, taking on male and female bullies who terrorized fellow students, and sometimes being beaten up herself in the process.

Before long, the word was out 'Tangle with that tough MacFie bitch and you'll regret it.'

Then at high school, Rhona was battered by three boys her but luckily for her, two older youths passing the scene jumped in and pulled her free.

Rhona was suspended from school for four weeks for biting one of her attacker's mouth, ripping it open. The three boys who claimed they were just having fun with Wild Rhona each received a week's suspension for fighting.

One of those boys suffered the consequences of tangling with Rhoda, facing a series of cosmetic operations on his mouth scarring.

Six weeks later, when that incident was virtually forgotten, one of the other boys was knocked unconscious on the lawn of his home when returning at nightfall from basketball practice.

He was found with his hands tied behind his back with barbwire and was otherwise unhurt but badly shaken. The Police failed to track down the offender or establish a motive for the random attack.

Two weeks later, Rhona's third attacker suffered.

He been walking on the riverbank with an older female when he was attacked by someone in a mask and belted with a length of reinforced hose. the Police arrived, acting on 'information from a near hysterical female who said she was the victim's aunt'. The constables began questioning aunt and nephew but they could add nothing to identify the attacker apart from saying he was wearing black and they had no idea of motif.

"It's probably just some fiend attacking the innocent," said the woman. "Just look at my nephew, those welts across his face will be unsightly for months and he believes he has at least two broken fingers. Just listen to the howling."

Rhona, was left apprehensive of possible further group attacks in reprisal because some fellow students were suspicious that she may have taken revenge on her recent attackers. Being in her final term in the lower 6th form at the age of seventeen, she won her parent's approval to leave school to work on the farm.

One of the regular farmhands eagerly accepted a $5000 offer to quit his job to make way for the boss's daughter.

* * *

At 6.00 on the morning after Rhona returned after her revenge dog-killing spree, her father entered the bedroom without knocking or calling out for permission to enter. She'd long thought it was Cameron's tactic to catch her masturbating, he obviously unaware she would have attended to that pleasure perhaps an hour earlier.

"Stay in bed, I'll call the boys over to help me with the rams."

"Leave the boys sleeping at Muddy Creek Hotel (the nickname of the near-derelict cabin 11 miles east of the farmhouse)," Rhona yawned.

She countered, "Dad, you know they'll be zonked working eight or nine hours a day in this summer heat on replacement fencing. Anyway, I returned to bed half an hour ago after bringing in those 24 young rams to give them time to empty themselves out in the holding pen before transportation later this morning to the sale yards."

"Christ, I don't know what I'd do without you girl."

He grinned when Rhoda said he'd be crapping himself, faced with looming bankruptcy.

Cameron was well aware she did the work of two farmhands and was probably the best stockman, err stockperson, within 50 miles for handling and caring for livestock and bringing them to prime condition at the appropriate time.

"I'll bring in your breakfast thirty minutes before we need to start loading," he said, rubbing her hair affectionately, knowing that to date he was the only person permitted to take such a liberty.

He left the room that was bereft of feminine decoration probably wondering when a Mr Lucky would find his 'fantastic daughter', an endearment he sometimes expressed to her privately but that accolade might be disputed by many people including his wife.

No one was aware that a guy of possible interest to Rhoda, had recently arrived in the Pembroke district.

* * *

Nico (Nicholas) Burton, wiry with short-cropped black hair, was the only child of widower Barry Burton, a retired property manager and property investor, who'd died a month ago, leaving his property holdings and a pile of debts to Nico.

Dressed in a suit like a city businessman, Nico created quite a stir when he arrived at the Pembroke District's 78th Annual Fair for young bulls and 2-tooth rams.

The handsome bachelor appeared rather drunk.

He was accompanied by over-weight and hooded-eyed Brent Nixon, manager of the centrepiece of Nico's inheritance - the high country 51,840-acre (or 81 square miles) Triple Peaks Station. The once premier farming property was reportedly still operating at a financial loss. It was widely believed locally that TP Station (station is used in New Zealand for exceptionally large farms) on the advice of mortgage-holders might soon be sold after subdivision into several smaller blocks.

Pembroke's livestock sale yards, the only such facility left in the region, continued to operate 'live' sales as opposed to on-farm and online auction sales.

A new rumour was circulating the district, alleging that Nico had decided to keep Triple Peaks and invest heavily to return it to profitability.

The property ran tens of thousands of sheep and cattle and also bred around 400 deer annually for export as meat and velvet, and replacement stock.

There were doubters, of course, that a city slicker could return to station to profitability but farmers offering their pedigree bulls and rams for sale took the pragmatic approach, that this was a dream opportunity to off-load their offerings to Nico and TP's manager Brent Nixon, known by some as Bent Nixon.

Although it was only 10.15 am, an illegal bar was already operating and Nico and Ben each were handed a complimentary beer and were surrounded by farmers offering stock for sale that day and their kin.

As the tirade of exaggerated claims about the quality of stock being offered for auction that day grew, Nico whispered to Morris Swanson, a farmer standing closest on his right, and pointed to a woman gracefully vaulting over a pen of sheep, her hair flying, "Who the fuck is she?"

"That's Cameron MacFie's tomboy, Wild Rhona."

"Wild?"

"Yeah, that's her nickname. She works and harder and could beat many of the men around here in anything athletically including a punch-up. But be warned Mr Burton, keep away from her," Morris grinned.

"Touch her, and she'll probably have your balls for breakfast. My wife is her cousin and proudly calls her Untouchable Rhona."

Nico looked again at the female and sucked in breath as she smoothed down the front of her work shirt and two nicely developed humps that momentarily became more evident.

"Mate, enough of that crap calling me Mr Burton. I'm Nico to everyone. Brent, get this guy MacFie and his wife on our table for lunch and get your wife to insist that Rhona joins her for lunch."

"Nico, I'm Morris Swanson. I don't think..."

"Morris, do you have stock for sale here today?"

"Yep, two yearling bulls, probably the best potential sires for a hundred miles..."

Nico cut in, "Enough of that crap Morris, you get that Brontë heroine to join us for lunch."

"Who the fuck is Brontë?" Brent asked, and he and Morris waited for enlightenment from the apparent literary-couth Nico.

* * *

Inside the slowly disintegrating so-called Muddy Creek Hotel, that had been built overlooking the creek more than a hundred years earlier as an outpost to host farmhands who'd spent more than one-day mustering cattle or sheep or working on really strenuous farm work, Donald MacFie, a younger look-alike of his father, jerked a nipple on one of Allie Andrews's semen-streaked breasts to wake her.

"I need a pee before having more sex," yawned the attractive raven-hair 22-year-old with green eyes, as she stretched and added, "Christ, we both smell like residents of a sewer."

Dougal goaded, "Stop your moaning and stop besmirching the good name of sex. Get breakfast before you wash and don't dress. My brother and I enjoy breakfast better when eyeing sexy nudes."

Allie (Allison) kicked Donald's younger brother Callum (28) in the bunk below awake and pulled a couple of hairs on the tuff of hair above her identical twin sister's pussy for a similar result.

"Good morning darling, you look well-fucked."

Erica stretched and smiled.

Allied said loudly, "Guys, hurry over breakfast as we need you out of here to work rapidly on fencing to meet the daily target set by your heartless father. That will allow you to get back here by 4.00 to begin our promised group orgy."

Everyone laughed when Erica smirked, "Mum will kill us if she finds out what we've been up to."

"Nah, Erica," her sister said. "Donald told me last night he came in from welding two pipe railing joints in our cattle yards for dad two weeks ago and went to say goodbye to mum. She wasn't in the kitchen and he followed the noise and found her and that hairy farmhand Cedric nude on a mattress on the back porch grinding away with in red-faced abandonment."

Callum said, "Donald slyly filmed then on his cell-phone for possible useful future use and a week ago, he filmed our dad and your girls' mum engaged in a beautiful and very revealing sixty-nine."

"Christ, people around here are real sluts," Erica giggled. "It's probably the most popular sport here in our isolated rural area. Guys, does your sister Rhoda engage in sex? We've never heard anyone claim to have seen her in action, not even engaging in sexy kissing."

Donald said, "We haven't caught her having sex and the opinion of guys we know is divided. There's one claim that Rhona is so great at having sex that her seducers never talk about banging her as they hope to get repeat encounters."

"Other guys insist that she's Pembroke's oldest virgin and aims to remain that way till she meets Mr Right. I hit on her only the once. She was too quick for me and had me in one of her judo holds and spat that if I ever tried that again she'd fry my balls and served them to me for breakfast. I almost vomited."

"I hope Rhona is never gang-raped as she's too nice for that sort of thing," Allie said. "If she is ever taken by force and I find out the identity of the bastard or bastards, I'll round up a group of girls to mash their balls with hammers."

Erica giggled but the brothers turned pale in the wake of Allie's vehemence, both nodding weakly to signify their approval of her comment.

Later Allie called, "Here's your healthy breakfast guys. The meat is definitely cold lamb and not sliced testicles. Now eat up and off to work and no masturbating as we girls want you back here fully charged,"

As the brother's drove off in one of the farm's four pick-ups, Callum said, "I think we should dump those girls. Already they are getting bossy as if we are already married,"

His brother raised a hand from the steering wheel and scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully.

"Not so fast Bro. I'm beginning to think I should move to get Allie beside me permanently."

"What, marry the young bitch?"

"Well, that's one way of tying her down and get her to birth a couple of boys to work beside me on the farm when I begin to slow down."

"But why? You could do better marrying Dot, Ursula, Tammy..."

"Allie fucks better than all of them."

Grinning, his younger brother asked, "Is that the Number One requirement in choosing a wife?"

Nodding, Donald replied of course.

"Are you sure about that Donald. We're into pretty serious conversation here."

"You'll find the answer to that yourself Bro when you push into Allie this afternoon when we unleash into group sex. I can tell you, at her your age Allie is almost as good as her mother, and that's saying something."

Callum's mouth fell open: "What you've reamed their mother?"

"Oh shit, me and my loose mouth. Yeah, eight to ten times."

"I don't believe you."

"Fifty bucks is the bet, you disbelieving asshole."

His brother accepted the offer of the bet and smirked, "Beryl is a clergyman's daughter and probably never lies and anyway why would she confess to adultery with you to win a bet if you tell her I don't believe you've screwed her several times?"

"Vanity could encourage her to spill her guts to you as we all know I'm regarded by many as the top bachelor for miles around here. But you have lost the bet. Last year when she was helping mum bottling fruit, Beryl called me to come to our house when as mum had driven off to fetch more sugar from the store."

"That's almost a 2-hour journey there and back."

"Yeah Cal and Beryl's a sharp thinker, eh? While she was in the bath to 'freshen up' for me, I set the camera of my phone on timer and had it lined up with my bed. Therein resides my evidence, I'll play that film clip for you on our tv set when we return home. I filmed it in HD quality and transferred it to a digital memory stick. You'll see her bucking like a mare on heat in one part and in another those great tits of hers wrapped around my dripping dick. Awesome."

"Awesome?"

"Yeah man, she could put most of those aged porn stars we watch on the internet to shame."

A minute later when they came to the ford at Muddy Creek, they realized they'd over-shot the turn to their work-site by at least a mile.

"Wow, can't sex often get you into trouble," Callum joked.

They laughed heartily.

Callum was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Do you think Beryl would take me to her bosom if I hit on her?"

"Only if you tell her you have an 8-inch dick."

"Aw, mine's only..."

"It doesn't matter. By the time she finds out it's not eight inches, you'll have her flopping tits in your hand and she'd be too wound up to tell you to fuck off."

"Ah, it worked when you lied to her."

"Actually, I think she would have had difficulty telling the difference between seven and eight inches by the time I unzipped to feed it into her mouth. She was already frigging herself frantically as I had her really wound up by then."