SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

They lay naked on the hard ground, bound hand and foot.

These four young men who fancied themselves as tough guys were just aching for my touches. They were eyeballing me for all they were worth, because I was naked, too. I walked around on the pine-needled ground, letting them study the way my breasts bobbled and the shapeliness of my legs that merged into gorgeously curved hips.

Their youthful bodies were telling me quite plainly how attractive they thought I was. Their compliments stood up fiercely, mute but honest. I smiled down at them, enjoying the sight of their helpless arousal with the warm California sun beating down through the spruce trees onto my suntanned hide.

“I’m going to rape you, you bastards,” I snarled.

I stepped toward the first of the four, a young man with long blond hair and a baby face look. His blue eyes ate at me, concentrating on my blond Venus boskage. I stepped over his face and squatted down. He moaned as I reached out and closed my fingers around his upstanding self.

My name is Eve Drum. I am a member of the League of Underground Spies and Terrorists. I am a spy lady and a trouble-shooter for that organization. Right now I was in California somewhere east of Monterey. Of late I have been assigned to the Science Division of L.U.S.T. Science Division had ordered me to the Golden Gate State to check out a story about polluted lake waters and learn what had happened to two of the team’s scientists who had managed to get themselves beaten up when they asked too many questions.

Two days before I’d been driving my rented Camaro along Seventeen Mile Drive, that lovely highway that twists its ribbony path between the Monterey pines. I was on my way to Soledad, a small industrial town in the heart of the lakes country, a part of which was a very lovely Lake Soledad. I had landed at Monterey Airport, rented the Camaro there, and come straight on for my destination.

The day was perfect, sunny and warm, with a faint breeze stirring the tops of the pines and cedars. The Camaro top was down, the wind whipped by blond tresses hither and yon, and pressed my hop-sack shirt close to my C-cupped breasts. I was headed north of Monterey along the coastal highway leaving that colorful peninsula and Big Sur behind. My route lay eastward through Salinas Country and along 152 and then 99 to Fresno. I was in no particular hurry, I was feeling groovy without any special desire to go to work.

And yet, work was calling. I felt its tug passing through Fresno and traveling east on 180. I hit Wonder Valley country and then there were big sequoia trees in view, with Sequoia National Park off to my right. North of that was Kings Canyon National Park. It was one of the most scenic spots in the whole country, and I enjoyed every second of it, but I also told myself I was here because this lovely land was being polluted.

Northwest of these two national parks is a fairyland of little lakes and rivers sandwiched in between them and Yosemite. It is a favorite spot for fishermen and tourists, or would be if industry had not reared its ugly head and begun polluting the sky-blue waters adjacent to it. Since those waters were linked by rivers, the authorities were afraid their national forest lakes would become polluted as well.

My objective was Lake Soledad on the fringe of the Sierra National Forest, and one of those lakes being polluted. Science Division hoped that I might succeed where those two scientists had not; I was accustomed to fighting international spies and their hired bullies, the scientists were not.

Then I was in Soledad land.

My first view of the lake was breathtaking; it lay like a blue mirror on the land between shores stuffed with hemlocks and spruces, pines and cedars. The air was fragrant with a perfume of growing things. My foot went to the brake, I slowed the Camaro and stared at that water in something like sheer ecstasy.

A green peace lay upon these woods. It gave off an aura I could feel, even with a hot, tired, dirty body inside my hop-sack shirt and belted skirt, all by Peppertree. It was in the sunbeams dancing on that cool blue water. It came into my mind and heart, gently and easily, like a land zephyr.

My body wanted in that water.

My mini bikini was in my luggage in the car trunk but this was a lonely spot along this lake road, there didn’t seem to be anybody within miles. I would go skinny dipping, I love the feel of water on my bare body, and this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I turned off the main road onto a dirt path just wide enough for the Camaro. The shock absorbers and springs took a beating but I finally wedged the car in under the low branches of a couple of spruce trees. I got out and breathed in the air. It was like wine. I stretched my arms high over my head and wriggled in my sense of anticipation.

I took off my hop-sack shirt. Then my fingers went to the hem of my belted plum skirt. Up came the Peppertree creation and off, to be placed neatly across the seat of the Camaro. This left me in my Olga brassiere and pantyhose. I slithered out of those and removed my David Evins oxfords. Naked, I began my walk over a floor of pine needles to the edge of the lake. I put my bare feet on a flat rock and got ready to dive.

That was when I saw the dead fish.

It was floating belly-up in the lake, and beyond it was another and then another. For the first time I could see a kind of slime on the lake and it dawned on me that this lovely body of water was polluted with a deadly poison. I felt like retching.

I had been looking forward to my swim. I knew a sense of frustration and then a flood of hot, red fury shook me. What kind of kooks were those who had poisoned this little bit of aquatic heaven? Didn’t they have any souls? What made them tick? A cash register for a heart? It touched my mind that I was here about this very thing, to catch somebody in the act of polluting these waters and bring them to justice under the California state anti-pollution laws.

I squatted down, studying the water.

It was slimy all right, filled with a lot of algae and scummy green stuff. Pollutants increase the algae in the water. Fish feed upon algae. But unfortunately for the fish, the algae also sops up the oxygen which the fish need to live. Not only that, but certain waste products dumped by some of these industrial concerns also make the water poisonous for human beings. And our government and concerned ecologists take a very dim view of such proceedings.

“Hey, hey,” said a voice behind me.

I turned my head.

Four youthful motorcyclists were standing with hands on hips and grinning at me. They wore tight chinos and black wool turtleneck jerseys, and over the jerseys were black leather motorcycle jackets. Behind them and to one side I could make out their bikes. Two Triumphs, a Honda and a Harley-Davidson. Their helmets were hanging on their handlebars.

“Get lost,” I snapped.

One of the four, a big blond boy with long hair and a baby face, grinned at me. His blue eyes roamed up and down my legs and hips. They ate at my breasts. His friends were just as eyeball eager. One was a short boy with curly brown hair and thick lips. Another was tall and lean, with a hard face hidden behind a scraggly beard. The fourth youth was blond, slightly older than the others.

“She’s got no shame,” leered the short boy.

“But she’s got a shape,” said the tall, lean one.

“Ain’t had no nookey in a long time,” mused the oldest.

“Nobody to see, nobody to hear,” said Baby Face.

I rose from my squatting position and turned to face them. Let them look all they wanted. To hell with modesty. I was searching out a good fighting ground, because I was damned determined they weren’t going to rape little old me.

“Look, fellows,” I cajoled, figuring I might try the honey bit, “fun’s fun and all that. You’ve had your look. Now go home before something happens to you.”

“I do believe she’s warning us.”

“Yeah, she’s probably got a couple of cops hidden in her car trunk. You think she’s got any cops hidden in her car trunk, Rog?” asked the older blond youth.

The tall lean boy laughed coldly. “I don’t think so, Pete. What do you say, Spike?”

The short dark boy edged closer. The lust was easy to see in his hot brown eyes, in his quivering lips. “I say we cut out the talk and get down to it. I’m just about burstin’, seein’ her like that.” His hands opened and closed.

I said, “Boys, behave yourselves. I tell you I don’t want to hurt you, but if you force me to I will.”

Rog let out a shrill wail of delight. “Man, she terrifies me. She honestly scares the living bejesus out of me. Now you be careful, Spike. Dont get too close to her.”

I am a wearer of the Sixth Dan red and white belt in judo. I am also more than somewhat familiar with karate and savate. I can break six wooden planks with the edge of my girlish hand. I could have killed all four of these brash youngsters if I’d wanted. I have killed with my bare hands and feet in many countries on the face of this Earth. I have faced and overcome secret agents who would have made all four of these cyclists look like infants.

As Spike reached for me, I caught his left arm and his right shoulder with my hands. At the same time I swung my left foot around in back of me. As he started to tumble sideways I went down on my left knee and yanked viciously to complete the hizi otoshi or the elbow drop.

Spike went through the air upside down. He came down in shallow water, across a couple of stones. He just lay there.

“Now go home, boys,” I smiled.

Rog and Pete and Baby Face looked at each other in stunned disbelief. They had visualized some fun, some four-way rape. I know men. I have made it my business to study them, and things like this hang sometimes on the effect of a word or even the way a girl may smile.

“She wants us to go home.”

“You think we oughta?”

“I think we should teach her good.”

They started walking toward me.

I guess they figured I’d turn tail, run into the lake or something equally kooky, but I didn’t. I ran right at them. They halted in shocked surprise, which was all the help I really needed.

The edge of my hand took Rog across his neck. He went down, choking and gagging while I kicked Pete in the side of his knee, making him bend over. I caught his right arm, banged down on it with my elbow and then brought my bare knee into his hip.

He fell down alongside Rog.

Baby Face was gawking at me, his hands going to the broad leather belt around his lean middle. I moved toward him, hands out.

“Go home, little boy,” I said softly.

“What are you, some kinda lady wrestler?”

He was talking to distract me, figuring that I wouldn’t see him slipping off his leather belt and doubling it up. I waited until he raised the belt to swing it at me, then hurled myself through the air at him, sideways. My legs caught his hips in a scissors grip and I kicked backward. He went down on his spine.

I was off and turning in a second.

My hand chopped down at his nose. Not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to hurt like hell. Tears of pain sprang into his eyes. I got off him and turned to see how the others might be doing.

Spike was still stretched out on the bottom stones in the lake. Rog was bent over, gagging, trying to get his wind back. Pete was rising to his feet. His face was twisted in ugly fashion and his right hand was fumbling inside his motorcycle boot. It came free with an ivory-handled hunting knife.

“I’m gonna carve you, lady,” he rasped.

I laughed at him, and he snarled, coming for me. I let him thrust with his knife arm, then I stepped sideways and kicked his right leg hard with the heel of my bare right foot. He winced in pain, swung around.

Me, I went off my feet.

My right foot went out, straight at his jaw. It landed so hard he went back as if somebody’d pulled at him. He went down and lay on his back staring sightlessly at the blue sky and the treetops high above him. He was out cold.

I stepped toward Baby Face, grabbed a hand full of his hair. “Get them undressed. Pronto!”

His big blue eyes goggled at me. I murmured sweetly, “If you don’t, I’m going to use you for some more judo practice. Or karate. Or savate. It’s up to you.”

He aimed a blow at me. I caught his out-flung arm, turned and dropped to one knee, swinging him into the seoi otoshi, the kneeling shoulder throw. He arched through the air and landed on the kneeling Rog. They both went down onto a rock.

All my attackers were unconscious.

I would have to undress them myself. This I did, after searching in their bike saddlebags and finding some good strong rope. I noticed as I yanked off their black leather jackets that their backs were emblazoned with the words VALLEY OUTLAWS and a picture of a domino mask. I tied their ankles together and their wrists and I dragged them under the branches to a little clearing.

I even spread Spike’s clothes out to dry.

They came to in a little while and began cursing. I smiled sweetly at them, sitting on a flat rock with my legs spread apart so they could see my con and react to it like males. They reacted pretty good, considering, and I took it as a compliment.

“You studs think you’re so great,” I mocked. “One little girl, I took you all. I thought you bike-riders were tough.”

Rog snarled, “We’re tough enough.”

I had me an idea in the back of my skull. The two scientists the League had sent here to check the polluted lake waters for Science Division had been beaten up pretty badly and scared off. I felt these Valley Outlaws might be the muscle behind those beatings.

“How tough? You beat up anybody, ever?”

Baby Face asked, “Why you want to know that?”

I thought he sounded scared. I spread my legs a little wider and beamed a flirtatious glance down at him. He stared where I wanted him to look, and he got a little fuzzy in his thinking. I shrugged, making my breasts bobble up and down.

“I don’t know. I’ve heard so much about you cyclists I figured you were all like hairy apes, you know.”

Pete muttered, “Don’t talk, Duke.”

“Is that your name, Duke?” I asked Baby Face. When he nodded, I said, “Come on, level with me. How many guys you fellows ever beat up? One? Two? Even older guys, maybe?”

“What are you, some kinda spy?” snapped Spike.

I got to my feet and walked toward the short dark boy. I stood over his face so he could look up between my legs and I said, “You aren’t much of a man, Spike. How come these other studs let you tag along with them?”

Spike swore softly and fluently.

“You couldn’t beat up an egg with a Mixmaster,” I told him, walking down his body with spraddled legs, giving him a good look. I walked away from him toward Rog and stood there staring down at him. He was aching, his merry go-up was a standing treat.

“I doubt you could beat up anything either,” I told him. He just lay there and his eyes ate at my nudity while the sweat stood out in big drops on his forehead.

The boys were not talking. Not nohow.

So I walked around naked for a little more, letting them strain their eyeballs. Then I said, “You four are cruds. Dirty cruds. I’m going to rape you, you bastards.”

And so. . . .

I squatted naked over Baby Face with my fingers tightening and loosening around his fiddle-bow. His hips began to quiver. I inched forward, still in that spraddle-legged strut, and halted right above his pointer. I still held onto his extended maleness, but I had to be careful while I was doing that.

I was wearing a very special kind of signet ring on my right hand. The signet was exceptionally large because inside it, cleverly hidden as a bevel, was a tiny, razor-sharp, crescent shaped steel blade. That steel was honed to an extraordinary sharpness, it was one of the secret weapons L.U.S.T. had devised for me in case of need.

I could slash with it, use it to gouge, drive it like a tiny dagger into anyone I hit with my fist while that blade was out. But I didn’t want to castrate Baby Face, which I might have done if the spring-bevel came unlocked. My hand held him, my fingers gripped, tightening and loosening, but I made sure the knife-ring stayed just a pretty little ornament.

I wondered how Baby Face might react if he knew what I could do to his duker. I almost asked him if that was how he got his name, a ‘duker’ being a rather impressive part of the male anatomy.

But enough of buffing the dog.

I inched forward on my bare feet, still hunkered over him. I duck-waddled a path down his body until I was poised above his excitement. Then I lowered myself slowly, my back to him in the approved method of Venus reversa, which Livia Drusilla adopted with the Emperor Caesar Augustus, and which was captured on a cameo by the great gem-cutter Apollonius.

Then I began to tease him, because I didn’t want him to have all this fun without a little suffering, considering what he’d been so eager to do to me.

“Aren’t you ashamed, little boy?” I asked. “The big man is being used by a little girl the way you wanted to use her. Shame on you!”

I posted up and down, enjoying myself no end. In the League of Underground Spies and Terrorists they have nicknamed me ‘Double Oh Sex Sex.’ I enjoy the buffeting game, I really dig a good flesh session. I was right in the groove and bouncing up and down.

Baby Face was enjoying himself, too. He’d have to be dead, not to; besides, my constrictor cunnae muscles were working overtime. I don’t know whether he’d ever had a nutcracker woman before, or a cassenoisette, as the French folks say. His hips were thumping away on the ground as he lent himself to our rantipole riding.

His buddies were staring with goggle eyes, enjoying what they saw with an enchanting show of martymachlian maleness, which means they got a big bang out of seeing me and Baby Face working together. I ogled them as I sawed away on my phallic partner. I saw that Rog had rolled over until he lay just beyond Baby Face’s bare feet.

His face was twisted in an amoral grimace. He was almost dying of honey-slot hunger. I giggled as a thought touched my mind. I leaned backward, propping myself with my hands and arms on either side of Baby Face’s chest. I drew my legs up until I was just sitting there letting my interior muscles work on him. Then I extended my feet.

My bare soles came together on Rog where he was straining to be a part of the action. There are foot worshipers in the jungle of kerkos kooks. That famed French writer, Restif de la Bretonne has said it all in his long-banned novel, The Perverted Peasant. Fetishists abound all over the world. Those who go for the feet and what they can do are known as podophilemiacs.

I didn’t know whether Rog was a podophilemiac, but I put my whole heart and both soles into my massage. He shook and quivered, he howled with his head thrown back and his eyes closed. He was on the point of performing what the ancient Chaldeans knew as zermiah when I drew my feet away.

Beneath me, Baby Face was doing some yelling himself. His body was strutted in the coital spasm, his voice was a wail of hunk happiness. I had to reciprocate, I planted my feet on the forest floor and did the yo-yo bit.

When I got off him, Baby Face was only half conscious.

I went to Rog, pushed him over on his back and mounted him. He was so excited that I no sooner went up and down than he was screaming out his own hymn to all the love goddesses. I sat there employing my inner strengths until he collapsed.

“Me next,” Pete was yelling.

“No, me,” shrieked Spike.

“You boys ought to be ashamed, letting a girl rape you.” I scolded, walking toward the pleading Pete. “You fellows are supposed to be he-men, and the saying has it that seduction is for sissies while he-men like their rape. Haven’t you ever heard about that?”

“Well, you’re raping us, ain’t you?”

“Yeah, lady—so let’s just do your thing, hey?”

I had to admit, they were very anxious. It does a girl good to see nice young men all bothered about her charms and desperately needing a bit of handicooting. I moved over Pete, started to sit down on his quivering self.

“Tell me, Pete,” I wheedled. “How many men have you boys beaten up? I won’t tell anyone.”

It was an exquisite torture for the poor guy. He could see me poised to pleasure him, only waiting for him to say the words I wanted to hear. I had a strong hunch these Valley Outlaws were the strong-arms behind the rough stuff which had frightened off a couple of scientists already from the Lake Soledad area, and this seemed as good a time as any to break one of their number down to a confession.

Of course, the confession wouldn’t hold up in a law court, I hadn’t explained their rights and privileges, and I certainly hadn’t offered to hire them a lawyer. But all I wanted was a hint, I would carry the ball from there and go get my own proof.

Pete shook his head back and forth. “I wish I could tell you yes, lady—because I’m just about dying there. But I can’t. Us Valley Outlaws ain’t never beaten up nobody.”

Despite his triple negative, I believed him.

I dropped downward. Pete went, “Ahhhhhhh!”

This was the formal St. George position I was in, sitting on the recumbent male and facing him. I could watch every nuance of expression on his face, studying the back-drawn lips, the crinkled eyes, the flaring nostrils. His hips were pounding dirt, he was doing all he could to make my ride enjoyable. Off to one side, little Spike was staring with popping eyes, mouth open.

It struck me suddenly that one or two of these boys might have been male virgins, despite their big talk. Baby Face looked mighty young, hardly more than sixteen or seventeen. Spike, too. Rog I took for about twenty-two, and Pete for maybe twenty. I had Rog tabbed as the tough one, the leader, although Baby Face was somewhat bigger and maybe even stronger. But Baby Face was young.

In certain primitive societies—and even in some not so primitive today—a man thinks it a very shameful thing to be flat on his back with a woman astride him during their coital congress. Somehow, these mistaken ones have the notion that this places the woman in a dominant position and such a thought offends male pride. And yet, because of the greater penetration involved, and the fact that the woman (whom the man is supposed to be pleasing) can move around with greater freedom and so adjust the saber strokes to please herself, this is one of the all-time great postures, in my book.

The Arabs, who look with suspicion on this position, nevertheless have several terms for it. There is the el loulabi, where the woman sits upright on and facing the man, resting on her arms and hand so as not to touch his body; there is also the kechef el astine, in which the woman sits astride the man with her back to his face, as I’d done short minutes ago with Baby Face. There are some others, but the idea is the same.

My hips circled and looped. Pete became my slave for life. I don’t think he even guessed at the pleasure a guy can have with a doll, if the doll knows her stuff. And as Double Oh Sex, I am tuned in and turned on to hep happy-hopping.

I took my time with him, it was still the middle of the afternoon and I was in no special hurry to get to town. It might be a long time since I had an opportunity to live up to my reputation like this; I meant to make the most of it.

However, my partner was a mite too eager.

He shook and shuddered and it was over.

“Me,” begged Spike.

I walked toward him. I said, “What will the rest of the Outlaws say when you tell them a little bitty girl did this to you big four strong guys?”

“Nobody’ll ever know,” he panted, studying my forested fork. “You don’t think we’ll tell anybody, do you. We ain’t crazy, lady.”

I filed the info away in the back of my head, telling myself it might come in handy sometime. I murmured, “I’m tired of riding rantipole.”

“Huh?”

“Get up, boy,” I ordered, and helped him to his feet “Hop over to that flat rock.”

I walked to the rock, bent over and put my hands palm down on the sun-warmed stone. My thighs opened. Spike just stood there, staring. I had to tell him what to do, to get behind me and just stand there. I reached between my legs, put him in place.

“Like the bunny rabbits,” I giggled.

“Ye-ye-yeah,” Spike panted.

In this coitus a tergo method, in which man imitates the animals in his search for pleasure, it is the female who places herself in the subservient position. A lot of females—especially those who classify themselves as the New Feminists—would never consent to it. To me, the name of the game is fun, and I get a bang out of variety.

But those New Feminists—

Well, they feel they have been put upon by men over the centuries, they have been made servants of the male, dominated by him. And in this rebellious age, they have banded together to do something about it. These militant females deplore the articles in the national magazines, they conduct sit-ins to get articles printed which they want to see. They consider themselves as liberators of their own sex.

All this is fine by me. If this is the way they play their game, great. But I feel I know better. I am a woman, I am made for sex fun with an eager male. I do not consider myself put upon when a male wants to bed down with me; I take it as a compliment. I know about NOW and WRAP and WITCH; I just don’t think they are for me, or for most women who are women and not hipped on ‘sexism’ as an insult to their femininity.

All this time Spike was performing valiantly, but there came a moment when his excitement just got too much for him. He gave a wild shout, huddled his loins against me and shed his gravy. I pushed hard with my fanny and he fell backward.

I walked away from him.

Maybe the New Feminists would approve of me after all, I thought. I’d had my fun with them, they hadn’t so much as laid a finger on me. I was the new woman, the liberated lady who took her joys where she found them, who compelled the men in her life to do what she wanted.

As a last gesture of my domination over these Valley Outlaws, I stopped at their motorbikes and unscrewed a spark-plug from each one. These spark-plugs I tossed out into the lake. Let the bully-boys see how they liked pushing their machines all the way to town.

I got dressed and marched to the Camaro.

I backed out of the woods, turned onto the dirt road and raised dust as I moved toward the highway. The fun-and-games time was over; it was time I put my thinking cap on and decided how I was going to handle the situation confronting me.

Somebody or something was polluting the waters of Lake Soledad. It was my job to find out who—and to stay un-beat-up at the same time. David Anderjanian, who is more or less my unofficial boy friend and also my contact man in the organization, was very clear and explicit about this.

“We suspect the Parker Chemical Company, to tell the truth. There are two chemical plants and two plastics factories in the Soledad area. One of them is the guilty party, mabe they all are. But nobody can learn anything.”

“You’d think some of the local people would know,” I pointed out.

“They do. Oh, they do, indeed. But their jobs are on the line, to say nothing of their lives. If anyone spilled his guts, he’d be dead by morning. We’ve already sent two pollution experts in, but somebody worked them over with brass knuckles and lead pipes. One of them may be paralyzed for life.

“It isn’t a nice thing to think about. My hunch is, the guilty party is working on a time schedule. He can’t hope to keep the authorities off forever. But if he can finish what he’s doing and collect his profit for the contracts he already had, he will risk prosecution under the California anti-pollution law.”

“So I go in and prove his guilt.”

David Anderjanian smiled as Nero might have smiled when he gave the signal hurling the Christian martyrs to the lions. I felt like bopping him.

Now I was ten miles from the town of Soledad and moving at fifty per hour along the highway. Lake Soledad was one of those bodies of water in and around the Sequoia National Park area, not part of it except as surrounding countryside. The town itself had a population of about five thousand, and practically every person worked for the chemical plants or the factories.

I knew I was in enemy land. There wouldn’t be a happy face anywhere I looked. My coming threatened their jobs. I could understand their reactions, but I had my own job to worry about. And when I remembered how much I wanted a swim in that blue lakewater and the dead fish and the scum and overgrown algae, I stuck out my jaw and mentally dared them to do their damnedest to stop me.

The Camaro purred along the highway. This is gorgeous country out here, wild and free the way it used to be a long time ago when only the Modocs roamed these wooded hills. Water and trees, trees and water, formed a great series of mountains and valleys and plains here between the San Joaquin valley and Nevada. It inspires awe, it renews confidence in this Earth of ours; here, there can be no question of a polluted planet.’Or so it seems.

Bur—

There was pollution, there was death for fish and man in the deadly waters of lovely Lake Soledad. And men wanted it that way! That was the incredible, the almost unbelievable fact. Man himself was destroying this primitive paradise. It was as if he were burning his own home down around his ears.

As I was slowing down, coming into the town limits, I heard the putt-putt of a motorcycle overtaking the Camaro. I put eyes to the rear-view mirror, wondering which of my four Valley Outlaws had got his bike working again.

This was a stranger coming up, he wore a white Buco International helmet and a Boar-skin riding jacket. There was a tinted face shield that hid his features attached to the helmet. He was astride a powerful Harley-Davidson Electra Glide, a chrome and green and white monster that ate up distance with frightening ease.

I was hitting sixty at this point. He went past me as if I were standing still. His big bike must have been nudging ninety, at least.

There was a gap of about a hundred yards between us when a boy on a bicycle came out of a side-street in a wide turn. He cut right in front of the fast-traveling Harley. The breath caught in my throat. Instinctively, I braked the Camaro.

The big motorcycle hit the bicycle and hurled it, a twisted, broken mass of shattered wheels and spokes and bars, fully fifty feet through the air. The boy was hurled about half that far. He landed with a sodden thud on the edge of the road and never moved.

The Harley-Davidson roared on until it was out of sight.

It did not occur to me until later, but at that moment of impact my eyes had seen a flash of metallic brilliance on the riding boot of the motorcyclist. I did not realize it at the time, it was only to come to me much later on, yet that wink of metal in sunlight was to be a very important part of my adventure here in Soledad.

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