On the Banks of the Bighorn Part Nine – by Tracker

 

Juliette Displayed in the Sun

 

The two men who were to take me to the Loose Woman Lost and Found took each of my arms.  Two more men to see me naked in addition to all the men who had looked at me today.  Before this morning only four men had seen me naked: the four men I had done it with. Only four men, and all possible marriage material.  I was not a cheap slut, despite what Granny Mowbray said.  Casual passers-by at the stone hut where I had been so brutally examined could look at me.  

 

One of the men stopped our procession, and still holding me firmly by my left arm, stepped back to look at me.  He looked me carefully up and down. Before, with my boyfriends, their interest had always been intense and personal, but this was impersonal, like the assessment Granny had just completed.  It was demeaning.  

 

“Not bad, nice and tall, with long legs, she’ll make someone happy to have.”

 

The other fellow nodded and we moved on.  The only someone I wanted to make up was Patrick.  It came to me that this man, given what I had already learned about what happened on this ranch - this consulate of the Grand Duchy of Lutha - that he had probably seen hundreds of naked women.  At least hundreds.  It was ludicrous to me that at the instant I was being so degraded, dragged naked through the streets of the round-up that I was simultaneously annoyed that all he could say about me was that I was tall!  At 5 foot, nine and a half inches, my height was above average, but could he not find something else to comment on. My mind, so disoriented by so much that had happened to me already, was spinning wildly.  He had looked on hundreds, at least, of captive women, and all he could say of me that I was a bit tall!  And yet I didn’t want him to find me attractive either.  I wanted to be spurned, to be sent back to Patrick.

 

I was conducted the short walk to the stage where I was to be exhibited.  I walked along side my jailers, too stunned and beaten down to resist.  Defeat and the quirt did that to me. I think it would to any girl. When we were standing in front of the green stone stage, my jailers looked around.  

 

“Where are the stage attendants?”

 

“Likely in back, I will rout them out.”

 

I looked up onto the stage where I was to be displayed; where my shame would be made manifest.  The girls I had come in with in the back of the pick-up truck were gone, claimed, I supposed.  In their place hung my sisters in suffering from the hut: Lorna and Kathy Harris, hanging at widely spaced intervals. Like a store or a shop, I thought, put out for sale and then gone with new merchandise taking its place.  I knew I was to be the new merchandise and it was so deeply humiliating.

 

As the one man went in search of the stage attendants, the other told me to kneel beside him.  There I was again, kneeling, naked, at the feet of a man. This time I took it as a kindness, for I could not really have stood much longer. 

 

I think we forget how much clothes not only protect us from the elements and proclaim our status and how we feel, but they protect us from feeling the physical world around us.  The man with me was unconcerned by the movements of the air around him, each little breeze did not touch and caress each square inch of his skin, nor the sun warm each bit it touched.  But for me, kneeling naked at his feet, I was consciously aware of the physical world around me. I was not a detached individual going about my everyday business, but a physical being.

 

I looked at the girls on the stage; the girls condemned along with me by Granny Mowbray.  Kathy Harris was pasty white, likely from a north European background, untanned except for face and hands.  I guessed she normally dressed in those long dresses with long sleeves like the schoolmarm women who had aided the Granny.  Lorna, the native American, had bikini tan lines. It is a misconception that darker people don’t tan: usually they do.  Her bikini tan marked out her breasts and pelvis from a bathing suit that Granny would definitely think very immodest.  In her current state, secured with her hands above her head, they just marked out those areas it seems men value most in women. I couldn’t help noticing that Lorna was built more squatly than I, with wider hips; while Kathy was thinner and less filled out. In our condition, I was very aware of their bodies and my own.

 

I think that is one of the reasons men like women to be scantily clothed, or naked.  It makes us physically aware of our bodies. I had been coming to this thought since Patrick had first stripped me, two nights ago, and of course when he had paraded me around our hidden valley.  Swimming naked of course does that as well.  

The other man returned with a file of boys following him. 

 

“They were listening to the MLB scores on the radio.”

 

“Fine thing, no wonder this country is going to the dogs, boys caring more about baseball than doing their chores.”

 

“Especially, when their chores are herding women.”  The boys looked sheepish under this scolding.  

 

“We can display them better than that,” the second man declared.  “This one and those two up there will likely be the last to be claimed.  This one because her owner, if he comes, will be coming from off-ranch, and the Native girl’s people, if they come, will have to come from their reservation, and as for that one,” he pointed at Kathy Harris and spat, “Granny Mowbray has decreed that she hang there all day, to show the shame of a girl who shames her family and herself.  After that, her family can claim her if they want, otherwise….”  His voice trailed off.  I guessed everyone knew what the otherwise was.

 

He continued, “So put this one in the middle, she is the tallest and putting her in the centre will make the most pleasing presentation.”  He nodded to the tallest boy and went off with his companion.

 

Two of the boys raced up the tripods supporting the spar we girls were to be suspended from, while another went to the side of the stage to get handcuffs.  All the boys were between ten and thirteen I judged, and put to this work, until they could ride in the round-up.

 

“Hup, hup,” said the boy behind me when, touching me with his quirt.   I struggled to my feet as the other returned with the handcuffs.

 

“Let’s get these bracelets on you.”  Patrick had given me a platinum bracelet for my birthday a couple of months ago, but now I was to be adorned with handcuffs.  

 

They were quickly snapped on me. I thought of how tenderly Patrick had fastened the platinum bracelet on me in a little dark restaurant in my beloved San Francisco.

 

“She has nice conformation.  Nice long thighs,” remarked one.  

 

“Nice tight butt, comes down nicely to the back of the leg.”

 

Oh, lord, they were discussing me like a show animal in the ring.  Patrick and I had gone to the dog show, and we were thinking of getting a dog when we move in together, when we are married, because I am a respectable woman and won’t live with him until we are married.  I am not a slut like that Granny Mowbray said. 

Well I was anyway, now who knows what I am.

 

“Good calves and nice ankles too.  Do you think she would make a dancer?”

 

“Maybe, perhaps,” his companion sounded doubtful.  

 

Why was I getting indignant?  I didn’t want to be a slave, so why was I getting upset that I might not be good enough to dance for them?  Surely my mind was reeling under the huge change in my circumstances, although I was sure it would be temporary.  While this might be legal under Luthan law, and I am a law abiding person, my Patrick was a lawyer and would get me out of this.  Patrick was a lawyer and he always said that the loopholes were a part of the law, just as important as any other part.  I think the law is his guide to morality.  Things are either lawful or unlawful, and he doesn’t worry so much about right and wrong. The law is right, until it is changed, then there is a new right, he says.  When we played DnD with a group of friends last year, his characters were always Lawful Neutral. I was Lawful Good. I could not be a character who wasn’t Lawful.

 

The wind blowing some sand against my bare skin pulled my mind back to my present circumstances.

 

“Do you think her owner will come and pick her up?”

 

“He went to the trouble of marking her, so he must want to keep her. Look at the mark he made, a ‘P”. I remembered Patrick lovingly painting that mark on hip, so long ago, all of a whole day and half, a lifetime away.

 

“Is it a tattoo?  Some kind of ink?”  One of them wet his thumb and bent down to try and rub off the mark Patrick had placed on me. I was so ashamed to have him so close to my sex but he ignored that. He rubbed my thigh hard, grabbing my leg with his other hand.  Oh lord, please don’t make me respond to this.  He shook his head, “either a tattoo or some kind of indelible ink. It is not meant to come off.  So he will likely come to claim her.”

 

“He’ll likely come, just for this rope.  Feel how soft it is, brand new, good climbing rope.  Hand braided from two separate ropes, must have taken ten or fifteen minutes.”

 

I burst out, “His name is Patrick, it was four ropes and it took almost half an hour.”  I stopped as I felt the quirt brush against my thigh in warning.

 

“Be silent, kajira, and speak only when told to speak.  You do not have permission to talk.”

 

They talked to each other, ignoring me, as just a slave girl.

 

“Did you hear that Mr Wilson Frick has got the Commander, Mr Willard Frick, to lend us Tiffani the Dancer for the final night of the round-up?”

 

“He’s shipping her all the way from Pittsburgh?  No, I don’t believe it.”

 

“She’s already here.  Never mind, they’re ready for her.”

 

A shout from the stage attracted their attention, as the lad who had checked my mark pulled on my leash. A push in the back by a hand holding a quirt pushed me towards my fate, hanging in view of the whole round-up.  As I climbed the steps of the green stage to my fate, like a prisoner to the gallows, I looked down in wonderment.  The green was not paint, it was green marble.  Polished green marble.  I upped my estimate of the number of naked women my jailer had processed from hundreds to thousands.  People don’t build marble structures with varnished wooden superstructures, for a few instances.  They were building with decades, if not centuries, in view. Oh Patrick, get me out of this, I don’t care now how many people see me naked today, or how many comment, or deride me.  Just get me out of here.  Come by the end of the day.  Just make this day be the only day I am here.  That is all I ask now. I wondered how many girls had had that same thought? Hundreds, thousands.

 

I was placed between Lorna and Kathy.  Lorna was looking pretty grim, like it was not as easy to endure as she had thought, while Kathy seemed spaced out.  In comparison to my mind, which wouldn’t be quiet and was racing from topic to topic, Kathy seemed to have settled into a loop. She looked checked out.

Every few minutes she would mutter, “I am a Free Woman from a Traditional Family. I shouldn’t be here,” as if it were a mantra, the only thing she could hold on to.

 

A rope was lowered from the spar supported on the tripods at each end.  The rope was lowered to just above my head and my hand-cuffed hands secured to it.  And there we were, all three of us, displayed, unable to use our hands to cover ourselves.  We could move a bit to change position, we could even turn around and look the other way, to the east.  Kathy tried that, but was turned around by one of the stage attendants.  “Face your shame,” she was told.  “If someone wants to turn you around they will do so, or order it.”

 

We stood there, it seemed, like for hours.  People came and went, glanced at us, some came up on stage for a better look. The wind came from the Northeast.  I know, because I felt it, alive as I was to all the phenomena of the natural world.  I was so thirsty.

 

It is not easy to stand for hours with no support.  That is why soldiers on parade sometimes faint. The sun was hot as we just stood there, hands cuffed together, like animals on display.  People would come by and look at us, staring at our forms, exposed in the sun, exposed to wind and breeze. I didn’t know how long we had been there, I only knew it felt like hours when one of the stage attendants came by us with a water bottle with a built in straw for drinking.  He passed along our line offering a drink, starting with Lorna who drank eagerly.  I too drank, as the sun and breeze were so dehydrating on bare skin. When he held up the drinking straw to Kathy’s lips she turned her face away.

 

“I am a Free Woman, you can’t expect me to drink after a pair of slaves.”

 

“You are disgraced and degraded by order of Granny Mowbray. You will drink when ordered. But better to let you go thirsty. You will beg to drink before you get any water from now on.”

 

Suddenly Lorna burst out, “I have to pee.”

 

He looked at her.  “You can pee at the next water break, at eleven.  Hold it until then, and one of the attendants will take you to the backstage outhouse then.”

 

I spoke. “What time is it now please?”

 

He just looked at me.

 

“Master,” I said.  I was just so defeated now.  The word I spoke with love to Patrick, I now used to the boy placed in charge of me.

 

“It is just ten o’clock. You get water on the hour.  If you need to pee, you will be allowed to do that before you drink.”

 

“Thank you, Master.  I will need to pee at eleven as well.”

 

He turned to Kathy, “and you, I guess are too good to pee where the slaves pee?”

 

“My name is Kathy Harris, I am a Free Woman.”

 

As he walked away, another hour of exposure began.  I hadn’t had to pee, when Lorna spoke up, but now it was mentioned and I would be denied until Eleven, I suddenly had a fierce urge. I soon found crossing my legs brought a swift rebuke for covering myself.  The life of a slave girl is hard.

 

Sometime between Ten and Eleven we had a diversion. Donnie’s truck drove up and he got out in front of the stage. Of course he took a good long look at the three women displayed there.  I wondered which one of us he fancied.  It is terrible to be displayed and shamed, but it would be almost worse if someone didn’t bother to look at you when you were displayed. I stood up straighter. It was not just vanity, or wanting to be the most beautiful, but I told myself I did it for Patrick, that when he showed up he wouldn’t be pitied for having an ugly slave.

 

After all, wanting to be thought beautiful goes back to ancient times. Didn’t the Trojan war start with three goddesses each wanting to be judged the most lovely?

Donnie waved at me!  I know he could be waving at any of us, but I am sure he was waving at me, that he remembered me from when he brought me in. I did not want to be hauled naked in the back of a truck with four other women, but it would be worse if one was just anonymous cargo. Donnie went around his truck and unloaded two more tied up women, still dressed this time. One by one he took them over to the stone hut presided over by Grannie Mowbray and the door closed behind them. He then unloaded all of their camping gear.  They must have been caught camping on the lands of the ranchers.  If they were strictly applying the Luthan Laws of Trespass, those girls would become slaves. Then with another cheerful wave, he was off again.

 

Lorna spoke, “that Donnie is always such a nice cheerful guy, even in my state he gave me a wave.  Maybe he will come up to check me out later.” I was crushed and hurt.  I thought that Donnie had been waving at me. I didn’t want to be jealous of Lorna, who had endured with me in the hut and displayed on the stage, but I did feel a bit competitive. I am sure I was better looking than Lorna and that Donnie would remember me.

 

Midmorning brought the first visitors to the stage.  The men and older boys working the round-up seemed to be coming in with the cattle and other livestock they had rounded up and getting some coffee and some food before heading out again.  

 

I asked Lorna if that was right. “You bet, chain sister.  They will bring in stray cattle and runaways until about one in the afternoon, and then spend the afternoon sorting and branding.  That is when we will have lots of visitors.  They will use the excuse of ‘checking to see if we are their lost stock’ to grope us and assess us.  I have seen stray girls get off just on that when I visited in previous years.  Never thought I would be up here myself though.  I hope Ira, that’s my brother comes and claims me before it gets too intense.”

 

She talked around me to Kathy Harris, “Do you know if they are allowed to put us to use, or can they only touch us and assess us?”

 

Kathy had finally stopped moaning about being a Free Woman of the Traditional Peoples.  I was afraid this would set her off again.  She surprised me.  “No, I mean Yes, I mean, I don’t know.  I was sheltered from a lot of this.  I mean I saw some of the slaves and kajirae brought in, but I would never have been allowed to see the more scandalous goings on.  I was Free, I mean, I am Free.”

 

Now she was talking, Lorna tried to get her to talk more, “How was it that you were able to get out on the prairie alone, anyway?  Didn’t you have a Granny.”

 

Kathy shook her head. “If we had, I maybe wouldn’t be here.  Our old Granny died about nine months ago.  Our ranch is remote, and the Granny from a neighbour’s would supervise us.  But she died, and there was only an Auntie to replace here.  She was easy to get around,” Kathy said scornfully, “she was too young for the job.”

 

Now she was talking, Kathy proved impossible to shut up.  “I fell in love with a cowboy, not a rancher, but a hired hand.  We were going to be companioned as soon as his position was more secure and he was assigned his own cabin instead of staying in the bunkhouse. Because we were going to companioned next year, it was really okay to be together as long as we were careful.  It wasn’t a case of me having ‘needs’. I don’t really.”

 

Poor naïve girl, I thought.  That is the oldest one in the book.

 

“You don’t really mean those camper girls will be made slaves, do you?  I mean it is just something to scare off trespassers, right?”

 

“Oh no, it is real.  We have justification under the laws of the Grand Duchy of Lutha.”  The girl, about four years younger than me, was explaining as if to a child.  As if it was something that everyone knew - they just casually kept women as slaves here on the ranch lands of Montana! “Just the consulate lands themselves really, the round-up area, and the kajira compound up by the Big House, but we extend it a bit.”

 

Kajira, there was that word again. Where had I heard it before?

 

“What’s a Kajira, I asked. I was afraid that I knew the answer.

 

It was Lorna, the native American who answered. “A collared and branded slave girl, of course.  They are branded where your owner marked you, right on the left hip. Of course the collars are usually hard steel, not nice soft braided ones like you have.  Your master must treasure you very much.”

 

“Of course Patrick loves me,” I began, but then stopped.  I wasn’t going to give too much away.

 

“This must be the only place in America where it is legal to keep slaves,” I said.  “The consulate of the Grand Duchy of Lutha. You don’t keep slaves on your reservation, I hope?”

 

“Oh, no, that is just the ranchers, the people of the Cornerstone.  They have been keeping slaves since their ancestors arrived in the 1890s, about the time our People were moved to our reservation.  Since the 1890s, the People and the Gorean Ranchers have co-existed.  Of course, we have a few war captives, but that is different.”

 

“War captives?  Who do you war with in this day and age?  It is modern times. You don’t go to war now!”

 

“War comes to us. The Wyld Wymen want our jewellery, our turquoise and silver, and in the last twenty-five years, since these ‘survivalists’ arrived on our eastern side, squatting where they pleased, we have had trouble with them. If we catch them, we put them to work in the silver mines.”

 

I must have looked shocked.  The two women from Montana seemed to take delight in educating me.  They must have thought that as a slave I wouldn’t be telling anybody anything.  But I wouldn’t be a slave long, as soon as Patrick rescued me, I would be free.  If Patrick got here in time. I hope he gets here in time.  He must get here in time.  These people keep slaves!  And it is legal.  Even I could see that.  Oh Patrick please hurry. 

 

The sun shone down on my naked body, the breeze from the northeast made me aware I was physically an animal, with needs and urges.  

 

Oh Patrick, please hurry.

 

We stood there, three women, chatting normally, if one ignored the circumstances, just three naked women displayed outside, our wrists braceleted over our heads, turning a bit to avoid cramps.  It was a surreal conversation. Kathy asked Lorna and me about going to college, and Lorna and I compared her experience at Agricultural College studying large animal husbandry, and mine at Berkeley getting my Mathematics Degree.  She was much more wild than I, for animal breeding wasn’t the only breeding happening in those barns!  Kathy Harris was disappointed with me and my small number of boyfriends.

 

“Three companions and your companionships weren’t renewed? How sad for you.  You must have been a respectable Free Woman before your master collared you.”

 

How that word respectable hurt!  I had been respectable before Patrick wove the rope collar around me.  Now I was on display, so many people just casually looking at me.   I was quickly losing my sense of modesty, my sense of myself.

 

Three men came up the steps from the corrals.  They smelled of leather and cattle.  The stage attendant shushed us, telling us to hush our chatter. Kajirae only spoke when spoken to.  That word, kajira, again!

 

The men walked right up to us, standing inappropriately close.  Kathy flinched and Lorna took a deep breath.  I was just scared they were going to touch me.  One did, tracing down my breast with the tip of his finger, following the curve down to my belly, flat from yoga and Pilates, then up again, circling my nipple.  My breath was coming more quickly, I couldn’t help it.  I was surprised I didn’t freeze under such a liberty, but in a way, I had been expecting in.  I suppose my body had been getting ready, under men’s gaze, however casual while being so vulnerable when displayed without covering and unable to use my hands or to run away.  He stood close to my side, watching my face as his finger traced delicately down my torso, down over the curve of my belly, down towards my sex, arousing me oh so delicately. He was so experienced in handling a girl!  As the finger traced closer and closer to what I knew was its goal, his other hand suddenly grabbed my butt hard.  As my pelvis moved forward to escape the assault from the rear, I impaled myself on his finger.

 

“Ho!  This one oils quickly,” he spoke to his companions. I had never really recovered from the intrusions of Granny Mowbray’s fingers earlier, because of being displayed, and now I was being shamed, or was it praised, for being aroused. Ugh, I did not want to be a slave girl!  

 

The three cowboys checked us all out. I was penetrated digitally by all three, with my breasts and butt grabbed and caressed, and I had to lick their fingers afterwards.  It was so terrible, and the worst was the response of my body. I had always been so private, but now I orgasmed in public on the fingers of strange men.  Then they just picked up their coffees and walked away, leaving us all panting and needy.

 

Lorna, I swear, had almost enjoyed it.  Kathy kept saying to herself she was a Free Woman who did not have needs, but she flushed and was aroused.  I was ashamed of myself for coming to orgasm in public, and yet,  I could not deny I had been aroused.

 

It was nearly Eleven.  We were led away to a little outhouse to pee and be watered. Our bracelets were not removed of course.  It was good to move and work out the cramps in our muscles from standing so long.  Kathy Harris’s pale skin had a bit of a pink tinge, I noticed.

 

When we were returned to our position on the stage, our feet on the now warm marble, two blonde women had been added to the end of the stage.  It was the two women from yesterday; the two women I had been too ashamed to be naked in front of while wearing my collar and leash.  We were all naked and collared now.  The two women had steel collars locked on their throats, with red ribbons tied around the collars, like the red ribbons tied around the uncollared throats of Lorna and Kathy, and the red ribbon worked into my rope collar.

 

The two new girls - slaves I guessed now - were crying that this was illegal, that they were Danes, protected by EU law, and this couldn’t happen to them in America. They had not yet realized, what I had realized hours ago, that this was all very real, and there was no legal remedy.

 

Granny Mowbray herself was explaining that to them.  They were on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lutha, which was not part of the United States, or the European Union, and legally under the ancient law of Trespassing with Intent, legally enslaved.

 

“You sluts are slaves.  The consul or his official representative will pronounce you later.  But you have lived the life of sluts and slaves for years.  You confessed all to me! Your wild lives, your like of modesty and discipline! You gave into your base needs, you acted like slaves, so kajirae you will be to the people of the Cornerstone. Accept the fate you chose.”

 

The scary old lady walked along the platform.  She stopped at me. She smiled and passed on to Kathy Harris and shook her head.  To Lorna she said nothing.  Her switch stirred.  I flinched.

 

“Yes, you should flinch at a switch in the hands of a Free Woman. Sluts and slaves like you lower the standing of all women.”  Then with a swish of her long skirts, she strode off the platform.  My chain sisters, as Lorna referred to us, and I, all breathed in. We had all been holding our breaths.

 

Oh, Patrick, please hurry, please hurry.

 

Patrick Masters’ Narrative

 

The evening Juliette was taken was terrible, and my helplessness was infuriating.  I kept reviewing the options, for they had not changed.  I listened to the little weather radio with its crank up generator, but there was no change, the river would be high until tomorrow afternoon.  Rafters were reminded that rafting on the river was both dangerous and forbidden without a permit, and that camping was strictly, absolutely, forbidden on the left, or western bank of the river, or anywhere on ranch lands. Absolutely no Trespassing, the announcer repeated several times in the broadcast.  I was glad we had stopped at the Sheriff’s office and purchased all our permits and had camped on the right and legal side of the Bighorn river.  

 

Early in the morning I went down to the river and saw it was still high.  The morning broadcast informed me that it would be impossible to cross until at least the middle of the afternoon at the earliest.

 

I was so impatient and desperate to do something that I climbed the cliff up to the Subaru and drove down the half hour to the bridge to the ranch, but the official from the Montana Department of Transportation confirmed the radio report.  I wasn’t allowed to park by the bridge for safety reasons, so I returned to camp. All I could think of was Juliette and how afraid she must be.  I resolved that I would rescue her as soon as humanly possible, and if she had been apprehended by the Ranchers, I would extract her.  The law is the law, but the law includes loopholes. And I was a very good lawyer.  

 

Juliette, I am coming to rescue you.  

 

And we will discuss the matter of your disobedience