Helene came for Anne at dawn the next day. She gave her a handful of feed and led her out to the yard where a rusty pickup truck waited, its tailgate down. In back was a large wire cage.
"Get in." Anne crawled inside and she fastened it shut.
Anne knelt in the low cage, her hands tied behind her. The wire floor was hard on her knees, but toward the cab a square of cardboard softened the ridges and she crawled forward. Helene started the engine and drove off down rutted dirt lanes that rocked the pickup sideways, tossing Anne against the walls of the cage.
Anne spread her knees as wide as she could to brace herself, all the way to both sides. This stabilized her on the bumpy road. And it opened her up pleasantly; she felt the cool morning air between her legs and looked forward to the day's adventure.
In time they came to a large shed where two men waited. Anne backed out of the truck - they seemed to enjoy the sight, she heard them talking - and Helene drove away leaving her with the pair.
The older man led her to an iron plow and harnessed her to it. She was to spend the day breaking the field before them into rows for winter crops. He would steer the plow and call out her instructions; the younger man - well-built, Anne liked the sight of him but lowered her eyes when he saw her looking - would hold the whip and keep her moving.
They entered the field and began. Rain made it a slippery gumbo; at once she fell and got her first taste of the whip on her thighs and a shout to get moving. They resumed the journey.
Anne could not go as fast as they liked in her harness without falling now and then; soon she was covered in thick mud. Each time she fell she rose under the boy's lash and continued.
She wished her hands were free, for balance and to brace herself when she fell. It would make her job so much easier. No, she needed grueling tasks and bitter punishments to overcome her self-willed nature, everyone knew that.
Thinking this, she tripped on a rock and felt the whip to her buttocks. She rose and proceeded humbly.
The field was already furrowed from last season's planting; her job was to straighten them. She could not help comparing them with her own and remembered Hector's "Deep enough for you?" comment to the hired man.
After a hot morning of work and falling on her face a dozen times, enduring the whip and getting up again to a volley of curses over her incompetence, they drove her like an ox back to the shed for lunch.
The younger man wiped her face with a bandana and stood before her with his pants opened. She knew what this meant and took him in her mouth at once.
He offered her to the older man who said not now, he was saving her for tonight. She thought her task was done; but no, a third one emerged from the shed. He bent her over a tractor tire, drew her cheeks apart and plunged into her from the rear.
She cried out more from surprise than shock; this seemed to stimulate him so she made little yips each time he drove deeper until he came. It was plain sailing now that Helene had opened her up. She lay still for a minute, enjoying the warmth of his seed until he pulled her up by her hair.
The men amused themselves by tossing scraps of food into the tall grass for her to find. Soon she was quite good at this. And motivated; she was very hungry after her morning's work.
The afternoon was like the morning, with Anne straining to pull the heavy plow through the wet earth. They made her go faster and she fell more often in the mud, but she was used to that now and almost enjoyed the strokes of the whip as she struggled to rise. They returned her to the shed an hour before sundown.
The pickup truck was nowhere in sight; but the mechanic had the tractor working again and offered them a ride back to the farm. They attached Anne's leash to a short chain in back, the two men climbed on the running boards, and they took off. Barefoot and afraid of falling, Anne followed them on her chain.
