My name is Kim, and I work in housing administration at a liberal arts college in South Florida. In my other stories, I have described how I became friends with Claudia, a real estate agent who was part of a group who participated in arranged combat, mostly catfighting but also wrestling and boxing. There was also Anna, a college student I had become close to since we met. We had visited a bar called Bad Sports, where she had an oil wrestling match with a Brazilian girl named Leila. After that, Anna, Claudia and I all shared some wine and a stimulating story from a woman named Dee. I had watched Dee have a catfight with a woman from Claudia’s group on the first night that I met them. Over the course of those few months, I felt myself becoming closer and closer to those women, and I also felt a growing sense of the power that I had over my own life. I was more in control of myself, and for the first time that I could remember I was full of energy. Competing with other women made the days something to be lived rather than endured. There was also Gemma, a blonde British woman I fought—and lost to—at a party. Soon enough I would have the chance to catch up with her.
For the month after that night I focused on my conditioning as well as on Gemma. At the gym I lifted free weights in a five minute circuit, and I went to a high school track and ran interval sprints until I could go for an hour at a time. I went to the same gym as Gemma. Before our catfight at the party we had had an intense conversation at the gym, when I had learned that Gemma had been badmouthing me. In the interval, we had literally bumped into each other a time or two. There was also a guy, a manager who ran the front desk in the evenings. Gemma had made eyes at him. I still had a boyfriend, Joel, who had decided to let his pretty sales clerk stay at our house until she found a new apartment. I would say that things were difficult between us, except that it was a difficulty that I welcomed with the evolving state of affairs in my life. I had also been spending time with Anna. We went to the movies, drank at bars near campus, and even went for a picnic for lunch one Sunday. There had been no repeat performance of our encounter after drinking and listening to Dee’s story at Claudia’s, but there was always the future to look forward to.
One Friday afternoon I was sitting at my desk, work done for the week and my web browser open to a random bullshit celebrity news site. Overweight and empty-headed paper pushers went up and down the hallway, and half an hour after I sent my last email of the day and I was ready to throw myself out the window, I got a text message from Anna. She said that I was to come to her apartment at 7, and that I should eat a good clean meal beforehand. I was also to bring a thong bikini and a white t-shirt. That got my blood flowing. I left the office and went to the mall and then to get a chicken salad, all the while thinking about what sort of surprises there could be. Anna was renting a bedroom in a condo; the other girl was the daughter of the owners. The roommate was a mousey girl who studied a lot and didn’t ask any questions. It was South Florida, after all. I hadn’t seen Anna studying or even going to class, but again, it was South Florida. Anna gave me a hug at the doorway, and then she grabbed a small duffel bag and we were out the door.
In the car, Anna told me to head to Bad Sports. She and Leila had been texting each other, and it went from sharing info and stories to Leila inviting Anna back for a rematch to a tag team event in the pool. Anna and I against Leila and another girl who worked at the bar, Diana. We’d be wrestling in mud. “Always have to go back to the classics, I suppose,” I said when she told me in the car. “Do they expect us to get perms?” Some of my earliest memories were of the messy wrestling fad in pop culture in the 1980s, but Anna just gave me a blank look. I turned my attention back to the road. I was parking in their lot before I knew what was happening. Anna touched my arm and said that she hoped that I really wanted to do this. “There’s no place that I’d rather be than here with you,” I replied, and then I kissed her. She smelled like springtime in the mountains and her lips were firm and soft and her thigh under my hand was ready.
The owner, Garrett, gave us both inappropriate hugs and showed us to the dressing room. It was the same room as before, but this time both of us were changing. We smiled and changed quickly, and as much as I wanted to grab hold of her—in one way or the other or perhaps both—we had a contest to prep for. Both of us had on white t-shirts that were about two sizes too small. I could feel the seams popping in the fabric across her chest. From the look on her face, she was thinking the same thing about mine. She was wearing a purple thong, and the one I bought that afternoon was hot pink. The two of us there in the room together before the mud match was as if a division between us and a bond at the same time, the conflict that was between us and with us against the two other women. They were the ones that we would be wrestling and no doubt then catfighting with but we two would be on the same team and so in some equally feminine competition as well. All the eyes of the audience, men and women, would be on the four of us in that ring as we competed physically and socially.
One of the girls came to tell us that we were up next. She offered to get us drinks but I told her that we were fine as we were. I gave Anna another hug, and then we were headed out onto the ramp. I had stood behind that red curtain next to Anna before. Then the blinders were drawn back and we were parading ourselves down the runway, hopping and sliding and swinging our hips in time to the music. The mud was cold and it slid out from under my bare feet and I brushed my hands over the top of the mud and then I came up behind Anna and left two handprints on her DD cup breasts. She squealed and pretended to pull my hair, and the audience was going nuts. Then the curtains opened again and Leila and Diana came out. They were both wearing black t-shirts that were as tight as ours and matching black thongs. Halfway down the ramp they looked at each other, turned away, and then bumped their asses together. Leila was a dark-eyed brunette with shoulder-length straight hair, a lean, tough build and nicely shaped B cup breasts, and she was as aggressively hot as ever. Her friend was a good match. Diana was a blonde with short curly hair cut in a bob below her ears. She was extremely pretty, and although she was a few years older than Anna and Leila, she was still younger than me and was holding on to her youth very well. She also had a very impressive rack, maybe a C cup that seemed to stand straight out from her chest. She had the figure of a nurse from World War II and those bullet-shaped bras, except she wasn’t wearing a bra.
They were in the pool with us. The muscles in my legs and arms were tingling, even more than when I was approaching Gemma for our catfight at the party. I wanted this. Leila took notice of the way that I was staring at Diana, and she took her up in her arms and pretended to kiss her and feel her up, and then she shook her finger at the two of us. The announcer started going over the rules, but you could barely hear him over the crowd. But as he was talking—and from the sound of it, there weren’t many rules—Leila started walking across the pool, swaying her hips and tossing her hair back. And when she stopped in the middle smirked at Anna, Anna pounced on her. She grabbed Leila by the hair and threw her against the side of the pool. Anna got on top of Leila and slapped her and then Leila bucked her off, and the two of them were grappling in the mud. Diana went to pull Anna off, but I grabbed her, and the two of us went down in the mud, too. We rolled over each other, pulling hair. I got on top of her and yanked up on her hair, cranking her neck, but she slapped my boob and then pulled me off by the hair. I got to my feet holding my breast, and I got a glimpse of Anna bending Leila over the side of the pool, pounding her in the stomach. I also saw the two bouncers in the back of the room with their arms crossed and huge smiles on their faces. No interruptions, then.
Diana tackled me from behind. I was close to the edge of the pool, and the two of us tipped over out onto the floor. Mud in our hair, on our shirts, and covering our thighs and asses. Both of which were properly shapely. We crashed into each other, arms clutching and grabbing at each other’s backs. She got her leg between mine and tripped me to the floor. They had put padding down for the girls, but I felt the shock through my body and then her weight and her breasts and pretty face and cute hair coming down on top of me. Controlling me as I writhed under her. She was throwing down open hands on the top of my head, my face, my chest, my stomach and sides. I was covering up as best I could. And then one hard blow got through to my face, a resounding smack that left me spinning. My arms flopped down, and she took the opportunity to rip my shirt open and then grab hold of my breasts. I shrieked, but the pain sharpened me and I bucked her off. The people in the front row scattered as the two of us whirled around on the floor. We tore at each other. After a minute, I could feel her tiring. I rolled her onto her back and sat on top of her and I tore open her shirt. The guy standing closest shouted a heartfelt “thatta’ girl!” and I snuck him a wink before I turned my attention to Diana’s wondrous C cups. I sunk my fingers in, and her screams felt good. She thrashed her feet and tried to pry my hands off of her boobs. I enjoyed squeezing them, kneading her feminine flesh and hurting her. Panic was coming into her eyes. But the mud had made us both so wet and we slid apart.
Diana and I both were panting hard. We tossed away our ruined shirts and circled each other. The mud had smeared all across our bodies like an indecent terrain map of our catfight. She lunged for me but I stepped to the side and seized hold of her arm and spun her over the plastic hump and back into the pool and then I jumped over and came after her. She landed in a heap face down in the mud, and I sat astride her and smashed her face in the mud. When she started flailing her arms, I yanked her head up out of the muck by the hair. She spluttered, and I leaned over and patted her on the cheek. I was going to say something catty in her ear, rub her face in it emotionally now that I’d put it in the mud literally, but when I did I saw that Anna was in trouble. Leila was sitting on her stomach. Both of them still had their shirts on, and Leila was working Anna’s breasts over, smacking them with rights and lefts, and when Anna covered her chest up Leila would give her one across the face. The crowd was cheering her on, and when she saw me watching her Leila smirked and then flexed her arms. I had to admit, she was quite a sight: her lean body covered in mud, beautiful South American face framed by her crazed black hair, poised atop Anna’s buxom body.
“Come on, bitch,” I said.
Still smiling, Leila stood up. Anna rolled over and leaned against the side of the pool, gasping for air. She had a bit of a shiner on her left cheek, and afterward I’d learn that Leila had smacked her so hard she had spun all the way around. I shook my breasts provocatively and pranced in a small circle. Leila rubbed her own small pert breasts, but when I shook mine again she took the hint and ripped open her shirt and tossed it aside. We were ready. She came forward slowly and threw a wild right that I dodged, and I hit her in the stomach as she slipped with the force of her slap. But as she went down, she grabbed hold of me and pulled me down too. We were into it. She was strong, stronger than she looked, and she got on top of me and yanked my head back and forth by the hair. Then she rolled off me and got me in a body scissors. The pain on my ribs was intense, and I was gasping for air. She pulled my head all the way back so that I was looking at the ceiling with its spotlights on us and grabbed my breast with the other hand, massaging and yanking on my nipple. I howled in pain and fury.
“Come on, cadela,” she whispered in my ear.
I elbowed her in the side, and that gave me a bit of space. I elbowed her again and again, and at last her arms and legs loosened their grip on my body. I rolled forward and crawled away, but as I was getting to my feet, she clubbed me across the back and then grabbed me by the hair and dragged me on my hands and knees to the side of the pool. She bent me over the plastic on my stomach so that my hair dangled down onto the floor on the outside. She hit me in the lower back with clubbing fists, but after two strikes they stopped. When I pulled myself up, Leila and Anna were facing off. Anna smacked her but Leila smacked her back harder. Anna stumbled, and as Diana grabbed her from behind, I did the same to Leila. I got her down in the mud and clung to her with all that I had. She was like a tempest under me, but I refused to give her anything and soon enough I was on top of her. Fire shone in her dark eyes as I looked down into her. I smacked her with a forehand and backhand, and again and again and then the fight started to leave her body but not her face. She still glared up at me with that wild spirit. I pulled her arms under my legs and she was trapped. I latched onto her small breasts, twisting her nipples like radio dials, and as I looked down on her her eyes took on panic as well as fire and it thrilled me. I slapped her across the face twice more and then got up. Hands on her knees and gasping for breath, Anna was standing over Diana, who was curled up in a ball.
The MC announced that we were the winners, but you could hardly hear him. The two of us looked like hellcats who had been thrown in a washing machine with a sack of dirt. The only breaks in the mud on our bodies were the handprints and streaks left by gripping fingers and the sweat. We hugged and strutted for the crowd, and then the bouncers ushered us out of the pool and backstage. I locked the door behind us; no post-match visit from Leila this time. Anna threw her arms around me, and I cupped her firm ass cheeks in both hands and pulled her in. Our voluptuous breasts ballooned out to the sides. So much pain for both of us from the breast attacks we had both endured but so much pleasure as well. I kissed her deeply and then I started to walk her over to the couch but she stopped me. “Let’s go back to my place,” she said, but I had a better idea.
My boyfriend Joel was surprised to see us. We had showered, but both of us still looked like shit. We were both wearing jeans and t-shirts and a lot of scratches and bruises. I told him that I had gone with my new girlfriend to a mud wrestling match and that we had won and I had decided that I was sick of his vapid conversations at dinner and his video games and his bimbo he was too incompetent to actually screw. At that point the bimbo, Dana, came out of her bedroom wearing a robe.
“Oh, look at the strumpet,” I said.
“You don’t have any right to talk to him like that,” she answered. “I’ve seen the way that you treat him. Joel is a nice guy, and he works really hard, and you never give him any support.”
“You don’t have to get involved in this,” Joel said, stepping between us.
“Oh come on baby. You have been complaining about her for months. Way before I moved in.”
“What the fuck did you say?”
“That’s right, honey. Joel and I talk with each other. And there are a lot of things that you don’t know about him because you don’t listen the way that a woman listens to her man. Although seeing the company you’re keeping now, that makes more sense,” she added with a glance at Anna.
“I am going to honey you right the fuck out of this house,” I said, moving toward her. Joel grabbed hold of Dana, and Anna of me. “Let go of me. I’m going to rip her tits off.”
“I’d like to see you come over and try it.”
Anna stepped in front of me and took over the conversation. “She isn’t fighting anyone tonight. But she’d be happy to meet you in a week, wherever you want.”
“I don’t want the two of you fighting over me,” Joel said.
“No one is fighting over you!” I shouted at him. “And shit like that is the reason that I’m done with you!”
“You’re too chicken to fight me, huh?” Dana said.
“Whenever you want, honey,” I answered her.
“You gonna whip my ass like you did that British chick?” She smirked as she said it, and I lunged for her, straining against Anna’s grip. “A month from now, you and me,” she said, no longer smiling. “There’s an abandoned house out in the country where some of us go to party. Just the two of us.”
“Agreed. Now both of you dumb bitches get out of my house,” I said.
“What?” she and Joel both said.
“It’s my name on the lease. Get out. And enjoy watching Joel waste his life.”
Joel got a new apartment for himself and Dana. Anna kept her place in the condo, but she was staying over, on the weekend at first and then a night or two during the week as the fight approached. I had never dated a woman before, and Anna only had a little more experience in this than I did. But when I was with her, I felt energized and more alive than I ever had with a man. There was never any rough stuff, but being with her I felt the same vibration throughout my body that I had in the mud pit at Bad Sports when I was fighting Diana. We made a sort of run at keeping house, too. We went out to dinner—far enough away that no one from work would see us, as my liberal arts employer wasn’t quite as liberal as they would have liked people to think—and sat on the couch watching football on Sunday. “A good little lesbo couple,” Anna called us one Sunday, stroking my hair. It was a good situation we had. The bruises and scratches we both had from Bad Sports had healed, and I had stepped up my conditioning work. I downloaded some workout information from some MMA websites, and soon enough I was doing free weight cycles, sprinting, and flipping tires. They were small tires and short sprints, but I felt the best I had in a long time. Physically and emotionally.
The month was over. Dana and I had agreed on sneakers, cutoff jeans and wife beaters, hair loose, and no jewelry or “extracurricular” material. We had also agreed to come alone, but I was not about to trust this woman. Anna drove me the 30 miles to the farm house. Rundown was right: collapsed porch, holes in the roof, no paint, and the barn was a metal husk sitting in the back. The air was thick with heat and water. The house was surrounded by oak trees with Spanish moss hanging off the limbs and weeds that could have been mistaken for trees. A wide stream cut through the property next to the house, and the beams thumped as we drove over the bridge. There was a Jeep parked next to the house and two women sitting on the hood. It was Gemma and Dana, both of them dressed to go.
Gemma was the British woman I had a catfight with a few months before this. She had been talking about me behind me back, running down my taste in clothes and wondering aloud if my breasts were real. And then when I went to the cardio class she taught, she confronted me in front of everyone and demanded that I leave. I had gotten fed up with it, and to be honest I was looking for a confrontation. So I went to a party that I knew she would be at, dressed to the nines and looking to be the hottest woman there. I succeeded in that, I felt, and it was easy enough to provoke Gemma into a fight in front of everyone. We had a hellacious brawl by the bar and it went back and forth but in the end she won. In the aftermath I felt humiliated, and I had this ache in my chest to fight her again. Knowing that she had bragged to the other pretty women at the health club about how much fun it had been to put me back in place stirred that fire. And here was my chance to enkindle it again.
Anna parked and flew out of the car. “You lying bitch! You wanted to get her here alone so you could double team her!”
“Oh knock that shit off,” Gemma replied. She eased herself off the hood. “When Dana got in contact with me, I knew that she’d bring a friend along. And I’ve been wanting to get another piece of this slut for a while now.”
I was out of the car now and feeling a lot more calm than Anna. “It’s okay,” I told her. “I want to do this.”
“Let’s just get them both,” Anna said.
“No,” Gemma and I both said at the same time.
“Come on, I want a piece of her ass too,” Dana whined. She didn’t sound particularly convincing, though. “She’s been just as much of a bitch to me as she has to you.”
“Just the two of us,” I ordered. I turned to Dana and added, “I’ll settle up with you later.”
Gemma and I moved off to the open yard. The other two women kept a respectable distance from each other and from us. Gemma and I had both picked white shirts that were far too tight, our cleavage oozing up out of bras. Both of us sporting D cups. Both of our cutoff jeans were skin tight across our hips and barely extended onto our sybaritic thighs. Underneath, I was wearing the black and yellow thong and bikini top that I had ordered before I went to Claudia’s the night I ended up with Anna in the back seat of my car. My light brown hair was loose and wavy and down around my shoulders, as was her red hair. It seemed that Gemma had been working out, too, and her shoulders were showing some good muscle tone.
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” Gemma said.
“Me too. I’ve been hoping to get a chance to revisit our last conversation.”
“I’m surprised you would want to do that. Looking for a fresh set of bruises?”
“I was referring to your lying and calling me names behind my back because you’re jealous. Jealous that I’m prettier than you are, I’m smarter, and I have a better rack.”
Her face went flush. “I’m going to send you home naked and bald.”
“Come and see,” I answered.
I slapped her across the face and she slapped me back with a right and a left. I felt stunned and I reached out to grab her hair, but she got me around the shoulders and tossed me over her leg to the ground. We rolled over each other yanking hair. The weeds and pebbles were rough against my skin. I got on top of her and punched her in the stomach twice and got some rewarding grunts in return. Then she tossed me off and got on top of me. She tried to mount me, but I got one leg up on the outside of her hips and locked my feet together and held her leg in place. She couldn’t get the dominant position that she wanted, but she was heavy on top of me. She returned the punches in my side, and I could feel her hand trying to get to my breast but I held onto her torso and kept her from getting the space she needed so that she could only dig her fingers into the side of my chest. Her perfume was in my nose, her hair dangling on my face, her enormous breasts pressing into mine. Her hips that had been poured into those cutoffs trying to control and dominate me. I wanted to be out from under her.
“I’m going to mess up that pretty face of yours,” she whispered in my ear. We were pressed cheek to cheek as we continued to rub and bump against each other’s bodies. “And there won’t be a thing that you or your lesbo friend over there will be able to do about it.”
In response I bit her ear. She screamed and leapt off of me. We rolled away from each other. Gemma checked her ear for blood, and Dana started shouting that I was a cheating bitch. “That’s how it’s going to be, huh, slag?” Gemma asked, her British accent getting noticeably thicker.
“You shouldn’t have run your mouth.”
“Stupid bitch. This time I’m going to make sure everyone knows about how I whipped you. I’m taking your clothes home as a trophy.”
She ran forward at me. I threw a punch that hit her in the side of the head but she still tackled me to the ground. Her momentum carried her past me, though, and she went tumbling over behind me. She landed sitting up with her back to me and with me lying on my side, and I kicked her in the small of the back. She groaned and arched her back, and I seized hold of her hair and yanked her head back to the ground. I got my legs locked around her head, squeezing her between my thighs. Her face turned red and her eyes bulged out, and she clawed at my legs. I smacked her in the face, and then I yanked her boob out of her bra and squeezed it. She stamped her feet on the ground, and then she rotated her body toward me and started punching me in the stomach and even tried throwing kicks at my face. I let go of her head, and she was lying on the ground coughing and holding her throat and upper chest.
I got to my feet and pulled her up the hair. Then I kneed her in the chest and sent her back down again. I went to pull her up again but she spun away and got up to her feet before I could get my hands on her. Her hair was a mess and her right breast was hanging out of her bra and her face was flush. I’m sure that my hair and face looked just the same. She threw a looping punch at me, but I saw it coming and I blocked it and slugged her in the side. When she bent low holding her side, wincing, I smacked her in the face and then backhanded her and she turned away from me, stumbling to her knees. Feeling that the fight was coming to an end, I got on my knees behind her. I threw my forearm around her throat, choking her again, and then I pulled her backward onto me and locked my strong legs around her torso. With my other hand I snagged her exposed breast and squeezed and twisted her enormous tit.
“You’ve got such a nice rack. I’m sure that all the boys were all over you. And I bet you enjoyed having all those other women be jealous of you. The way that you’d show them off, parade around with this present that they didn’t have.” She gasped and spluttered, and I smacked her tit and then started pinching her flesh. I was really enjoying hurting her, and the power that I felt as I made her realize that I was in control. But even more, I enjoyed the chance to make her realize that I was the more feminine. “But mine are firmer, and higher, and bigger than yours. And now I’ve kicked your ass and everyone’s going to know it.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” she hissed, and then threw a handful of sand and dirt in my face. I could not see, and in a panic I let go of her and used both of my hands to wipe my eyes clear. As I crawled on my hands and knees, half blind, she kicked me in the stomach. I flopped over on my back and all of the air whooshed out of my chest. When my wits returned I threw my hands over my face. Tears were streaming down my face, as much from the kick as from the sand in my face. I blinked madly and wiped my eyes, and all the time I expected a sneaker to stamp down into my stomach or my chest or my face. But Gemma was bent over at the waist, gingerly putting her breast back into her bra and gasping for air herself. Without taking an eye off of her I rolled over into a crouch and then stood as quickly as I could. We were both exhausted.
“Let’s finish this,” I said.
“Rip her hair out!” Dana shouted.
“Kick her ass!” Anna chimed in. “Remember all that shit she said about you!”
“Bring it on, honey,” Gemma said.
Both of us had dirt and grass stains on our white shirts and our exposed skin. Our shirts had holes torn in them and our bras had been stretched loose from the slaps and breast grabbing and our rolling around on the ground. Our hair was hanging wetly about our faces with sweat and the frenzy of our fight. I slapped her across the face and she slapped me back. Then she hit me in the stomach, and as I bent over she yanked me to the ground by my hair. But I got back to my feet and stumbled away. She yanked my head back by the hair and ran me face and tits first toward the side of the house, but at the last moment I managed to twist so that my side hit first. She pressed me hard into the wood against my back. The aged wooden slats dug into my flesh. And then she dug her hands into my breasts, mauling me through the shirt and bra. I tried to grab her breasts in return, but her hands were on the inside and I couldn’t get good leverage or a solid grip. Gemma kneaded my breasts and ground the flesh against my rib cage and then pressed them up toward my collar bone. The pain flashed through my body. Our hips and thighs flexed and jostled against each other as I tried to press myself off the wall and she tried to pin me there. I let go of her breasts and started pulling her hair, tugging her head back and forth. Then I whipped my elbow across her face and caught the bridge of her nose. That backed her off and she let go of my chest and I fell down onto my knees.
“Bitch,” she moaned. Blood was dripping out of her nose and onto her breasts. She came forward and grabbed my hair, but I slugged her in the stomach and knocked her back again. Using the wall of the house, I pushed myself up to my feet and I hit her in the face. But she spun back around and hit me in the face, making me see stars—yellow stars that filled up my entire vision. While I was helpless, she punched me my breasts and I slid down the wall and fell on my ass. I waved my hands over my head to protect myself.
“She’s done! That’s it!” I heard Anna yell.
“No I’m not,” I gasped, and I tried to get to my feet.
“Damn right,” Gemma said. She seized hold of my hair with one hand and the back of my jeans with the other and she dragged me across the yard. “Let’s see how pretty you are after some swamp water.” At the edge of the yard she shoved me down into the stream. I landed with a splat in the muddy water. The stars had cleared from my vision. I got to my feet as she slid down into the water with me. I slapped her in the face, and she stumbled. Then I hit her in the stomach and in the boobs a few times. But I couldn’t put enough force behind it to finish her off. She hit me back in the face, and I fell down into the water on my ass. I was sitting in the muddy water, braced on my hands. There was water all over my shirt and jeans and legs and hair. Gemma stood over me and took hold of the middle of my bra and slapped me with her other hand, forehands and backhands until I lost my senses. I was flailing my hands back and forth, but then she let go of me and I fell back into the water. Gemma held my head under the water, and then she pulled me back out after what felt like an eternity.
“I yield,” I sputtered and gasped as soon as I could.
“So I’ve whipped your ass twice now?” At that I started to tug at her hands, which were holding me up by my bra and shirt. “Say it or we can keep fighting.”
I couldn’t do any more. “You have. You’re the prettiest.”
Saying no more, Gemma ripped my shirt and my bikini top off. I was left sitting in the stream as she climbed up the bank, her trophies in hand, and I started crying in great hitching gasps.