On the Banks of the Bighorn Part Eleven – by Tracker

 

Afternoon in the Sun

 

The other cowboy turned and, as he turned, he caught sight of Lorna, Kathy, and me.

 

“Kathy?  What are you doing here, what have they done to you?”

 

The cowboy rushed over to Kathy, hanging naked from the great overhead beam, and pulled off his shirt.  He used his shirt to try to cover the woman’s shame from the crowd.  I couldn’t hear what he was saying then as a private jet, a passenger jet, passed low over our heads.  It looked to be coming in for a landing.  The cowboy had taken out his belt knife and was endeavouring to cut the rope holding up her braceleted hands.  The noise of the jet receded as it came in for a landing a few miles away.

 

“Thomas Autry Harris, just what do you think you are doing?”  The voice came clear and piercing, not raised, but cutting through all the noise and hubbub.  It was Granny Mowbray. All action ceased.  That voice commanded all.

 

“I’m cutting down my sister, someone put her up here by mistake.  She should not be shamed in this fashion.  She is a Free Woman of the Traditional People.”

 

“It was by my order.  It was not a mistake. Kathy, formerly Kathy Harris was found out on the prairie.”

 

“Alone”

 

“Without accompaniment by a brother or father.”

 

“Without permission.”

 

“At night.”

 

“With dishevelled clothing.”

 

“When examined, she had been opened for use”

 

“She had gone to meet a man.”

 

“She has needs”

 

Like drops of acid, Granny Mowbray listed the indictment that had landed Kathy naked and exposed on the stage of the Loose Women Lost and Found.  Each phrase hit Tommie Harris like a blow. He reeled back.

 

“She will remain there until the end of the day, exhibited in her shame.  At the end of the day, either her father, or you as his representative, may claim her, or she will be sold into the general population of kajirae. Now step away.”

 

Defeated, the cowboy did so. 

 

As the cowboy turned away, I felt a finger tracing the mark, Patrick’s mark, that he had placed on my hip two evenings ago. Made in indelible ink, it had not faded.  I looked down and saw one of the stage attendants, one of the boys who ran up the supporting tripods and out onto the great spar that supported the ropes that held us.

 

“How did he make this mark?  Was it acid?  Did it burn?”

 

“It was ink.”

 

“You say, it was ink, Master, or Young Master.”

 

I took a deep breath.  “It was ink, young Master.  Indelible ink. He made it with a calligraphy brush.”

 

“Indelible means it doesn’t wash off, does it?  Why a P?”

 

“P stands for Patrick, that is his name, the name of my boyfriend.”

 

“Your Master was Patrick? Your own boyfriend enslaved you?”  I was no longer going to deny on this ranch that I was a slave.  Those quirts hurt.

 

“Yes Patrick is my boyfriend.”

 

“Patrick stripped you?”

 

“Yes”

 

“And wove the collar around your neck?”

 

“Yes”

 

“And wove the leash that hangs down your body, to your knees?”

 

“Yes”

 

“And made an indelible mark on your hip?”

 

“Yes”

 

He smacked my bum.  “That’s, Yes, young Master.  If he did all that, he is no longer your boyfriend, he is your Master.  Did it burn when he etched that mark on your hip?”

 

“It felt warm, young Master.  It should not have, but it felt warm.”

 

“If he had used a hot iron, it would have burned, not felt warm.”

 

“Young Master, may I ask what is your name?”

 

“My name is Alex.” He smiled a happy grin. It reminded me a bit of Patrick’s.  “What is your name, slave girl?”

 

“Juliette.”  He looked at me.  “Juliette, young Master,” I corrected.

 

“Juliette is a fancy name for a slave girl.”

 

“It is what Patrick, er Master Patrick calls me.”

 

“Oh, all right then. I’m going back up on the cross pole. I like the view from there. I can see a long way; it is like I am flying on an eagle or a great war bird.  So exciting.”  He slapped my bum and rushed up the ladder and ran out on the pole, running back and forth with his friends. I was very afraid he might fall. How far had things come on this strange day, that being naked in front of that boy and all I thought of was worrying he might fall?

 

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From Smith’s secret Diary.

 

I had just arrived back at the corrals with some cattle I was bringing in, when my foreman, Randy Schlesinger hailed me. “A dignitary has just flown in from the Grand Duchy of Lutha.  He was not expected until tomorrow, but he wanted to see the round-up.  Get up to the Bunkhouse, showered and changed.  Put away your Glock, and draw a colt revolver, the old cowboy style.  They are not as efficient as our Glocks, but they work.  You will be a guard of honour of sorts for Mr Frick - Wilson Frick - not young Woodrow.  He needs a guard, just as an aide, because the Prime Minister will be having some aides with him, and we need to show that we are honouring him by giving Mr Frick aides too.  When you are changed, grab a string of horses from the remounts at the house stables and take them to the airstrip.  Got that?”

 

I nodded and headed up the bunkhouse, by the Big House.  As I got out of the shower, I saw Fred, the hand who was hired a little before me, skulking around the Big House.  I shouted but he headed off back to the corrals.  He shouldn’t have been there, but I couldn’t follow up just then.   I changed pistols, in the gunroom, so as to complete my western look at the cost of some efficiency.  One of the lads in the stables had the horses ready and I took off at a gentle speed to the airstrip.

 

When I got to the little hanger by the ranch’s private airstrip, the Prime Minister’s plane was being moved into the hanger.  I looked, but the plane that had brought in the harvest of Brainy Beauties from the Golden Venture had already taken off to wherever it had come from. I was introduced to the Prime Minister, Count Franz Rupert, a vigorous man of thirty-five and two aides, whose names I promptly forgot.  They were dressed in European riding costume.  They swung onto their horses with accustomed ease and we rode towards the round-up corrals.  They looked fine and capable, one aide, especially who looked like a hard man and was likely more guard and enforcer than aide.  Well that was my role too.

 

I couldn’t help but think though that Mr Wilson Frick looked the finer, more impressive figure.  He just has that aura of command, but the Count, Franz Rupert, was not that far behind.  In a showdown though, verbal or physical, I would back Mr Frick.  The two principals talked as we flunkies rode behind.  I wondered where Mr Woodrow Frick was, I would have expected him to be there as aide to his uncle.  We covered the ten miles from the airstrip to the corrals at an easy pace, taking it easy on the horses.  Just about a half mile from the corrals, Mr Woodrow Frick, rode up, not in company clothes, but in his working gear.  While I rode between the Fricks and the Luthans to give the Fricks some privacy, I caught a few word of the quick briefing Mr Woodrow Frick provided: “Firefight…. Survivalists…… we lost two…. took some prisoners….. burial party near the old buffalo wallow….”

 

When we rode up the avenue between the corrals towards the exhibition stage, we were cheered by the ranch families and the ranch hands.  Even the stern Granny Mowbray and her coven of cronies gave us a stiff nod. There were two trucks pulled up at the stage and some dazed prisoners were being unloaded.  Our people, mostly tough men from Woodrow Frick’s crew of redshirts, were throwing the tied and gagged prisoners from the trucks to the ground. The two men among the prisoners were dragged off by their tied ankles, dragged behind horses towards the Big House, while the women were hustled to the stage.  The stage attendants, were up on the big cross spar, passing down ropes, while others of our men took their handcuffed hands and secured them above their heads.  Excuse me, I meant braceleted hands, that’s what we call handcuffs on women here on the ranch.

 

The Grannies swarmed the stage like a murder of crows, cutting the camouflage clothes from the captured women survivalists with their scissors. Woodrow Frick muttered to me quietly, “each Granny will use a special signature knot to string up those women. It is a way they have. Like a personal brand.”

 

When the Survivalist Women were stripped, their gags were removed. They started spouting their nonsense, like they were sovereign free people and we had no right to keep them off our range, which they claimed as common property, yada, yada, yada.

 

Mr Wilson Frick silenced them with his commanding voice.  “It is our range, our cattle, our grazing rights. You are trespassers and thieves and will stand condemned.”  There is something commanding about a man on horseback. A truck is doubtless faster and can go longer with greater cargo, but a man on horseback still commands greater respect. Anyone can buy a truck, but a man on a horse commands the obedience of a powerful beast.  It is primitive power to which humans instinctively respond.  The women’s slogans and cries died away.  It is tough to be defiant when a woman is naked and tied.  The Count and his aide dismounted, as did the two Mr Fricks.  They sat on the haybales in front of the green marble stage and conferred, while the Luthan hard man and I both stood behind, in a posture of quiet guard.

 

The stage was crowded with twelve naked women now displayed.  Five had just come in as prisoners, one was the woman I found in the draw with the cow and calf this morning, and the others I did not know where they came from.

 

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Patrick Master’s Narrative.

 

I was still back at our camp, waiting for news that the river had gone down enough that the bridge over the Bighorn was to be opened so I could drive onto the ranch to rescue Juliette.  I really loved her.  Besides, for the next while she was my slave.  I had not really thought about owning someone, a woman, until my conversation with Jerry Reece just before we left San Francisco.  It was not legal, so I wouldn’t have contemplated it.  But his stories of brainy, beautiful women disappearing into slavery had started my mind down forbidden paths.  What if it was or became legal? Would I want one or even more then?  I decided that maybe I would.  The role playing with Juliette, commanding her to yield and to various positions had been exhilarating, even if it was only a game.  And the notion that slavery was legal in Lutha and so in the consulate on the ranch was interesting as well.  Laws are laws, but loopholes exist, and the fine print loopholes are as much a part of the law as the main sections.

 

I wondered what I would find when I drove onto the ranch.  If I was allowed on that is.

 

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Juliette Chen’s Narrative.

 

The sun was blazing hot. The breeze was drying out my skin.  It was afternoon and the sun was coming around to the west, and was starting to be in my eyes. There were now twelve of us on the stage of green marble which was hot under my feet. With twelve of us now displayed, we were all pretty close to each other.  It was smelling pretty ripe up there.  In addition, what with the manhandling, the touching, the pinching, the fondling, and the fingers pushed into inappropriate places, some of the girls were giving off odours that were indicative of arousal - heat of a very different kind. Lorna, the native American strung up to my left, between me and the Survivalist women, was almost enjoying her predicament, although she told me that she hoped her brother would come and rescue her soon. This is a little too much of a good thing, she told me, as a cowboy cupped her breast with his calloused hands.  On the other hand, Kathy, formerly Kathy Harris, was having a terrible time.  Her pale skin was now sunburned, and she endured, rather than enjoyed the enforced caresses. The survivalists still occasionally shouted their slogans but were more and more cowed by their vulnerable state and the occasional use of the quirt.

 

What I took to be some sort of official party sat and talked and watched us, while they were being served food and drink by a couple of women in the schoolmarm costumes.  Those women studiously ignored their sisters hanging naked on the stage, as if by ignoring us, they could ignore the possibility that they too might be condemned at some time.

 

I was constantly aware of my nudity in front of all these people. It was the environment of sun and wind, the hot stone beneath my feet that did it as much as the gaze and the touching.  I had been so modest and respectable, but now I was just one more naked woman, scorned by the good women of the ranch and available to any man who wanted me. There had been only one time in my life when I had felt like that.  It was when I was young, and my grandmother had told me about the fate of her great-aunt, or great-great-aunt or something, Ellen.  We Chens have been in San Francisco since almost the beginning, since the early 1850s.  We had been passengers on a ship blown off course. We had been headed for Hawaii to start a small store, but after a storm the ship ended up in San Francisco. The Gold Rush was still on, so my ancestors sold their merchandise at a profit and stayed to start market gardens to sell food to the miners and to those who supplied them goods or who preyed on them. By the 1870s we had several gardens in a city that had a lot of areas that were not respectable.  A lot of our customers were not respectable, or worse.  If you have heard of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast you will know what I mean. 

 

When I asked my Grandmother why we always strove to be respectable, she told me the terrible story of Great-Aunt Ellen.  In the 1870s she sometimes took barrows of vegetables down along parts of the Barbary Coast. She liked the excitement and she liked the prices her goods commanded there.  The high rollers paid high prices and did not worry too much about what things cost. One day Ellen did not come home. She had been kidnapped and taken aboard a ship.  No one heard of her again, though there were rumours of brothels in Singapore and later of being held by a planter on a rubber plantation in Malaya. There was even a drawing of her on a ship, just after her kidnapping, as she was whipped by the pirates.  It was in the San Francisco Chronicle, and my grandmother showed me a copy of the paper from March, 1873. Ever since, we have stayed out of situations where we might appear in the least less than respectable. One Great-Aunt Ellen in a family is enough.

 

I wonder if all young women have abduction fantasies growing up?  I was having a rebellious phase at being a respectable girl.  Once I after I heard Aunt Ellen’s story I looked it up in the old copy of the San Francisco Chronicle we had kept from those long ago days.  I read how one pirate had wrapped his belt around her wrists and another around her neck, and how she was led aboard the ship just before it left the harbour.  At the quay side she was stripped and her clothes were sold.  I was still a teen, living at home, and I waited until all the family were out of the house.  I snuck into my dad’s room and borrowed two of his belts.  Back in my own room, I quietly took off all my clothes and wrapped one belt around my neck like Ellen and wrapped another around my wrists.  I looked in my mirror.  A lovely captive looked back at me, the neck belt hanging between my breasts, as Patrick’s leash hangs now.  I was so afraid, I immediately closed my eyes. When I dared peek, the same lovely captive looked back. At once I turned away from the mirror, and dressed.  That captive was so lovely and vulnerable, any pirate would want her.  But I don’t want to be Aunt Ellen.  I want Patrick to rescue me.  He must come and rescue me, before these monsters make me  cum again.

 

Oh Patrick please hurry.