More Girls are Displayed
The sun was high in the sky now, as we women, displayed and helpless, were sweating in the heat. There was dust in the air from the movement of trucks, of horses, and of livestock, human and otherwise. I saw some women brought in, collars on their necks, the collars chained together. They were trudging on foot, one end of the chain in the hand of a cowboy on a horse. Behind them rode another mounted cowboy. His quirt was in his hand, and he occasionally cracked it just to encourage them. I don’t think they were actually struck though it was hard to tell. The sad procession came down the avenue between the corrals straight towards the stage on which we were displayed. We were five now with the addition of the Danish holidaymakers, as other girls had been strung up, and then claimed. Girls came and went, but we five were a constant, the background to the noise and dust and confusion of the round-up. The line of girls was turned out into the second corral on the left. The cowboys dismounted and unchained them one by one. They would examine the left hip of each girl, for what I could not see from that distance. The collars on the girls were read and one by one they would be escorted from the sorting corral to one or another of the corrals on the other side.
“They are bringing them in for sorting to the corrals on the left,” Lorna explained. “Cows in one, Cows with calves in another, unbranded cattle in another, girls in yet another. Then they are sorted by owner. The calves are branded according to the brand on the mother, the male calves are castrated; all receive their vaccinations, and ear tags. Cattle for market are sorted into other corrals. Lots of hard work, thirsty work, see how the men gather at the refreshment hut there.”
I looked. Beside the stone hut in which Granny Mowbray had assessed us so brutally at the start of the long exhausting day, there was another similar hut. Outside it there were canopies under which there were tables at which sweating men quaffed drinks. Some looked like they were drinking huge mugs of beer.
“The Lazy F brews its own beer. It is strong and good,” contributed Kathy Harris, recovering a little from the shock of being harangued by Granny Mowbray. “Or so my brother tells me. A lady of course would not drink strong drink.”
Kathy Harris did not look particularly lady-like at that moment.
Girls in very short dresses with plunging necklines were carrying the beer and other drinks out to the men. Lorna said, “lots of those guys have the sense not to drink too heavily of anything but water, but we are going to have trouble with some of the heavier drinkers, I think. Lots of those wenches are going to see lots of action this afternoon and tonight. Their backs and knees will be mighty dusty.”
Kathy Harris just closed her eyes to the sight. Then two of the ‘wenches’ came out and set a small table on the porch of the hut. The table was then covered with a white tablecloth and laid with silver and fine china. Then a teapot, sandwiches and cakes were laid. Granny Mowbray, and what looked like two other Grannies, sat down, and in the middle of the round-up, took tea. It was the most incongruous thing I had seen all day, except of course being strung up naked in public.
My modesty was all gone, but my awareness of my body remained. Every breeze made me aware, every glance from a passing man, they all made me aware of my state, my vulnerability, my femaleness. I no longer tried to cover my sex by putting a leg out in front. The quirt was ever present of course, but what was the point of hiding, when so many had gazed upon me?
I lifted my eyes from the Grannies drinking tea on the porch and down the avenue between the sorting corrals and the corrals of the various ranchers. A procession was coming, two abreast, headed by two Grannies, formidable in black. They were headed directly towards where we hung on the stage. When the procession got closer, I saw about twenty women, with the two Grannies in front, and four younger but tough looking women in grey bringing up the rear. In the middle were younger women, dressed in coloured calico, but all in the long dresses which covered all but faces and hands.
The procession stopped in front of us, and spread out gazing at us. Women police women they say, and here we were naked and exposed, and they were almost completely covered. Some of the younger women clumped together as if for mutual support. One of the Grannies was ringing a bell. She might as well have being crying shame, shame, because we were certainly being judged. And harshly too.
“Look upon what happens to women who disgrace themselves. They did not control their urges, they gave into slave urges. Learn well, so you do not end upon the platform of shame!”
“Look at this one, a former woman of the Cornerstone; she was found out on the prairie. At night. Alone and unaccompanied by brother or father. Her clothes were dishevelled. When examined, she had been Opened!” The Granny enumerated the charges. The young women gasped.
“Kathy Harris, lift up your face, so your shame can be seen.”
I thought pretty much all of Kathy could be seen already, but slowly reluctantly she raised her head. There were tears on her face. The young women, some of them still in their teens drew back, as if afraid of contamination. They were herded off by the Grannies and the other ones in grey, maybe matrons I thought. I was finally realizing the depths of the taboos that Kathy had broken to be on the prairie with her lover. She must have loved him very much, while he, not so much. He had taken her in the dirt, and then vanished. Kathy was ruined and he rode away scot-free. An old story. She would never be married now. As for me, would Patrick ever want me for a bride, after he saw me like this when he came to rescue me?
Oh Patrick, you must come. Please.
----------------------------------------------------
Things were quiet after the young women had their object lesson. Occasionally cowboys or ranchers came onto the stage to check us out. We were grabbed and pinched, and fingers went to inappropriate places: our mouths and elsewhere. One of the cowboys got a rope around the feet of one of the Danish girls and pulled her off them, leaving her hanging from her wrists, but that was quickly stopped. The stage attendants grew a little bolder, as the stood near us. Two were behind me while the parade of young women was brought down to see us as an object lesson. As they moved off, two by two, they discussed if any of their classmates would someday end up on the stage.
“I don’t know, but Donna Black, her dress is a little tight. I wouldn’t mind having her in my collar.”
“As if you will ever be able to afford a girl in a collar! Anyway most are shipped off.”
“That’s not fair, we should be keeping more for us, my Dad says.” As they walked away, he grabbed my bum for a moment.
Oh Patrick, please hurry.
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A truck was coming down the central avenue now, with two cowboys in the cab shouting and cheering, and two more in the box doing the same. A crowd gathered, with people running from the corral, and from the refreshment area by the stone hut. Even the Grannies looked up.
“We caught two wyld wymen! We caught two wyld wymen! They had snuck out onto the ranch and we caught them!”
Whatever wyld wymen were, this was apparently momentous news!
While the crowd gathered around the truck, both Kathy and Lorna craned their heads as well. We woman are very curious. “What is a wyld wymen?” I asked.
“Tribes of man-hating women that live in the valleys and gorges near the Badlands, I have never seen one with my own eyes, at least not before taming.” It was Kathy who answered. She was distracted, trying to see the wyld wymen. After running into Granny Mowbray, and spending half a day being exhibited and touched in public, I had a pretty good idea of what taming meant.
Lorna added, “They don’t like men, but they use them for their pleasures; men they catch, if they are pleasing, they keep as milk slaves.”
“Like cows?”
“No, they make men come for their own pleasure. They milk them.” Lorna put emphasis on the word milk.
I understood and felt a little silly.
The cowboys pulled two women or rather wymen from the truck bed. They were dressed in tanned skin bikini like things, trimmed with fur. One, the older one, wore a necklace fashioned from cowboy belt buckles like a trophy around her neck. The other was younger and very beautiful. The older one was still quite handsome. They both looked fierce, but proud.
“To the assessment hut, Granny Mowbray?” shouted one of the men.
Granny replied in a voice that was not a shout, but carried clear and strong, “No, they are war captives, strip them and hang them up.” She sipped her tea delicately as if she had been discussing seedings at a badminton tournament.
I noticed that both womyn had full heads of hair. As if they had never been properly to a hair salon or ever thinned and shaped, but just had the ends hacked off when it grew too long.
The wyld wymen were dragged to the base of the Lost and Found Stage and forced to their knees. The driver of the truck took out his belt knife and cut away the shoulder straps of the leather and fur bikini top the older wyman wore. Her breast fell out and then he cut the back strap. She struggled and spit but still was forced to kneel. A truly impressive tide of vituperation came from her that only stopped when she tried to bite the men holding her.. A messenger girl from the Grannies came running up carrying two gags in her hands. Those evil old women were ready for any contingency. The gags were forced into the mouths of the captured wymen, which stopped the biting and the abuse. The two wymen were subdued and stripped easily now. These men seemed so practiced and efficient at this business of subduing and tying women. I was afraid in their hands.
They were dragged to the stage, tied and strung up like the rest of us. Now we were seven; the two Danish girls on a holiday which had turned out so badly for them, the two captured Wyld Wymen, then in the centre Kathy Harris, then me, then Lorna with still plenty of room at the other end.
Oh I wish this day would end. Oh Patrick!
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A truck rolled up, and inside was my old captor, Donnie. He got out of the cab, while a young cowboy got out of the passenger side. They started unloading bales of hay, which they arranged as seating in front of the stage. I hated the thought that instead of just being exhibited to people passing, we would be part of an entertainment. I shuddered as I thought of what entertaining we would be forced to do.
As he placed the last bale, the young cowboy, he could not have been more than twenty, took a closer look at us. He stared and stared at the two wild wymen. He grabbed his quirt and leapt to the stage. He was right beside them so quickly, he startled everyone. He lashed the older wyman across the hip.
“Look at me, look at me,” he shouted now, almost completely out of control.
“Do you recognize me, do you know who I am?” Even the fierce wyld wyman was afraid. She had endured being touched and prodded, but got as far away as her bonds would allow from this angry man.
He lashed her again.
“I am Aaron, do you remember me now? I was born a baby in your tribe, brought up in your lands until I was six and then driven away from my mother and all I had known! I was six! So I remember you, Velma! When I was driven away, given to the Lazy F as a throw in on a trade, you were there Velma. The Fricks took me in, gave me a life, a calling a place in this world. All I didn’t have was a mother. My mother lost her child. Worse, as I was torn from her arms, she dared shed a tear, just one tear. I stood there, ready to be traded away, as her own tribe turned on her, drove her away. You were her friend Velma, but you turned on her, even led them against her. I was six, and that memory was seared on my mind.”
He lashed her again.
“She was weak, your mother was weak. The tribe must be strong. We drove her out, we sent her away.”
“Oh I know that, Velma, we get word out of the tribe lands, all your tribes sell us information on the other ones, for you never make common cause. The Fricks got information for me as I grew up. My mother was driven from the tribe and from the wooded valleys, and was hunted into the Badlands. No one ever heard of her again.”
Aaron turned to the other wyld wyman. “And this is your daughter, Lita, I suppose. My old playmate, my friend who I played alongside, who didn’t even wave goodbye as I was traded away. Well Lita, I won’t wave goodbye when you are sold away either.”
“We have to be raised strong, Aaron. Your anger is weak.” The daughter was as contemptuous and as fierce as the mother.
Aaron raised his quirt again, but another cowboy had come onto the stage and put his arms around him in a bearhug to prevent him from continuing his beating.
Slowly Aaron took deep breaths and regained control. As he relaxed, the other cowboy released him. Aaron spat on the ground in front of the wyld wymen and turning, walked down the steps and walked away.
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?”
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