On the Banks of the Bighorn Part Thirteen – by Tracker

 

Pronouncements of Slavery

 

From Viki’s Narrative

 

The place on my hip where the kef brand was removed by a special field dressing was itching today. Of course my masters remind me often that just because a brand is removed from a girl’s skin, it does not mean she is free.  I know that. The scar made on my body is gone, but not the one on my mind.  The collar has been removed from my throat, but it has been replaced by the anklet.  Fastened by an app; ironic for a comms specialist.

 

My master’s agent on the Lazy F has been sending reports all day on the low power sub-space communicator.  This is bad security and not as safe as he assures me it is. Things were so much more secure when he handed me his reports for transmission on the occasions he visited Town.  He claims the Fricks have no way to monitor the low power broadcasts. I know the high power narrow beam I use to communicate can’t be monitored, while the low power broadcast can be traced, albeit with difficulty.  But what do I know? I’m just the comms expert, ordered to obey his every command, so I do, even the commands to send coded messages to addresses other than those of my masters. He thinks I can’t read his codes. He is the agent; I am just the comms expert. Who do you think is right? Damn, the place where my kef isn’t any more really itches.

 

From Patrick Master’s Narrative

 

I was so frustrated by waiting for the Bighorn river’s level to go down so I could go and find Juliette and rescue her from the situation her stubbornness and refusal to obey had landed her in.  It was so thoughtless of her to put me in this position of worry.  For her own sake, I hoped her situation wasn’t too bad, even though she had brought it on herself. I took out the quirt project I had bought in a leather kit shop years ago and never finished. To keep my hands busy, I continued the braiding where I had left off years ago, while listening to the crank up weather radio for any news that the river level would be dropping. I needed to rescue Juliette.

 

From Juliette Chen’s Narrative

 

The wyld wymen and the survivalist war captives have been acting up and abusing each other.  Funny that while each group is a prisoner of the Fricks, they abuse each other. They got so bad that the stage attendant boys were sent up along the horizontal pole where all the women prisoners of the Fricks are secured.  They rigged nooses from the pole, what they call the spar, and put one around the neck of each of them just as a warning.  That quieted them down. The Fricks, it seems to me, know how to control women captives!

 

When the stage attendants shimmied back down to the stage, the cutest thing happened. A procession came out of the refreshments hut and headed towards the stage.  It was headed by a Granny, not Granny Mowbray, but this one looked awfully scary too.  A grey dressed middle-aged matron followed, then five girls, each dressed in the fashion of the women of the ranchers, only faces and hands to be seen. They seemed the same age as the stage attendants.  Another grey Matron brought up the rear.  They came towards the stage, the girls not looking up at us, the shamed women.  At the side of the stage, they stopped and each girl, under the supervision of the Granny, handed one of the boys a boxed lunch. After each girl gave the selected boy his lunch, she curtseyed. As the boys began to eat, the girls were led away by the Granny. A couple of girls sneaked backward peeks, whether at us displayed girls, or at the boys, I couldn’t tell. they were admonished by the Granny anyway.

 

As Alex, the stage attendant, brought me some water to drink, I asked him how he enjoyed his lunch. “Curiosity is not becoming a kajira”, he told me, then added, “Donna Black gave me the lunch she prepared. I like her, she has a cute nose. Maybe her father will led us companion someday.”  I searched my memory, wasn’t this the same girl, that he and his friend had speculated about, how she might look in a collar some day?  And this was a girl he liked?  Do all men wonder about locking collars on women they know and like? If so, men must be very complicated, more complicated than women think they are.

 

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The dignitaries on the hay bales had finished their picnic.  They got up, while the collared girls in the grey tunics stayed kneeling beside where the men had been eating. The men walked towards the stage, two older men leading, the two younger men following, while Smith and what looked like a Security Agent, scanned the watchers.  On the stage, with its stone floor, I could hear everything that was said.

 

They stopped first at the Danish women.  The men looked them up and down, touched them inappropriately and then very inappropriately.  The older man, dressed in what seemed like a riding costume commented that the taller woman, the one who had flashed Patrick, seemed especially tasty,

She squealed, “Oh, you are European, you must help us.  They can’t do this do us, even in America.  It is illegal, it is against the European Human Rights Convention, it is against the American constitution, the 13th amendment. I studied it in school.  You must help us.”

 

The man shook his head.  “You are not in America.  You are on the Consulate grounds of the Grand Duchy of Lutha. We are not part of the European Union, or a signatory to the European Human Rights Convention.  You have trespassed on our land, and legally are now slaves. Reconcile yourselves to it.”

 

But she could not reconcile herself to it.  Exposed, humiliated, she could not believe her days of freedom were over. She cried out pleas and abuse intermingled with each other until a couple of slaps from the quirt quieted her.  The quirt is very effective at silencing unclothed women when it strikes the skin.  I know that very well.

 

The man then said in what Patrick sometimes refers to mockingly as a politician voice, “I officially pronounce you both slaves.”

 

 A bell rang.  I looked up. At one end of the pole that held us prisoner was a bell, like a ship’s bell in size and shape, about eighteen inches high. It hung just below the pole, and one of the stage attendants had just stuck it twice with a rock. The vibrations seemed to toll for the change in status of the Danish girl. The lad struck it again for the other Danish slave.

 

The dignitaries moved on to the wyld wymen. The older man, dressed as a working cowboy, the one addressed as Mr Frick. told the other dignitary that these were wyld wymen who lived in tribes in the valleys by the Badlands.  They hated men, he said, and hunted and traded, living off the grid.

 

“We got these sneaking onto our land, likely to rustle cattle.  Driven to desperation after being expelled from their tribe, I reckon.”

 

“Will they beg piteously for their freedom too?”

 

“No, they won’t, my dear Count, but let’s ungag them and see.”  Mr Frick smiled. The younger cowboy stepped behind the older of the two wyld ones and removed her gag.

 

“Velma, will you beg for your freedom?”  Mr Frick smiled as the younger man seized her tit from behind.

 

“No, never will a wyld wyman beg, she must escape her own collar, else she is not a wyld wyman.” She turned her head, “And neither will I beg you to release my breast, Mr Woodrow Frick.  Yes, I recognized you from years ago when you were a teen boy visiting the exchange point with that monster, your father.”  So the younger man was a Frick as well! 

 

He smacked the rear of the wyld wyman, Velma, and announced, “Slave it is then, slave you shall be.”

 

The Count pronounced her officially a slave and the boy by the bell struck it twice. It tolled as another woman lost her freedom. I flinched, as if I had personally been struck a blow.

 

They stopped by the younger of the wyld wymen. “And what about you Lita, will you beg for freedom or will you beg a collar? Yes I remember you as well from the Exchange  point years ago. Our rider Aaron remembers you too.”

 

Lita swayed back at the mention of Aaron. She remembered his visit from earlier in the day.

 

“I see you, I hear he has already visited you.  Don’t bother begging for your freedom. I think I will give you to him. His revenge will be to break you.”  

 

Woodrow Frick turned to the Count, “Lita  and Aaron were childhood playmates, before the tribe turned on him, and now she shall be his slave.”

 

“I officially pronounce you to be a slave.”  The bell tolled.

 

When the bell tolled the second time to confirm Lita’s slavery, I realized the procession was two girls from me.  With Lita’s condemnation to a life of legal slavery, only the consideration of Kathy stood between me and the same fate.  I was nearly frantic yet did not dare show it. Patrick had to come soon.

 

The dignitaries stopped in front of Kathy, my sister in misery. Her body was burned red from the sun and dried by the wind, and her face was a mess from crying while her hair hang down, lank and lifeless. She was a far cry from the vital creature who had been dragged by men into Granny Mowbray’s assessment hut for the crime of being out of the prairie alone at night. I wondered if the day had wreaked similar ravages on me. I stood up straighter.  I knew it displayed me better, yet I did not want to make a poor impression. What a mess of contradictions this day had made of me.

 

The man who was variously addressed as Prime Minister and as Count Franz Rupert looked on her with distaste.

 

“She doesn’t look like she will make a promising slave.” Kathy looked up slowly, resentfully, as if she had borne all she could possibly bear, resentful and being dismissed and yet too frightened to dare speak up.

 

The younger Frick explained, “This is Shamed Kathy; she was formerly Kathy Harris but she fell from the standards of modesty and chastity we expect of Free Women in our community.  Granny Mowbray has sentenced her to hang here until sundown in shame.  At sundown her family may claim her, or she shall become collar meat.  Cleaned up, she might be worth something.”

 

“Thank you, Woodrow, now about this next one?”  Oh Lord, they were now to consider and judge me.

 

“This was a slave we found abandoned and alone on our range.  As a kindness we brought her to the Lost and Found for Loose Women.  If her owner claims her by sundown, he can have her back.  We must allow a reasonable time for him to collect her.  It would not be honourable to deprive a man of his property.”

 

“She is a lovely property indeed.” The Count smiled. I stood up straight, thrusting out my boobs.  I couldn’t help it.  What had this place and this long day made of me?

 

He fingered my leash, feeling the quality of the rope and the braiding Patrick had so lovingly done when we were playing at Barbarian and Slave Girl.  He ran his hands up the braided rope leash to my collar which Patrick had fastened with his own hands  around my throat.  His hands grazed my boobs.  I could feel myself responding.  This day had been so revealing to me that nudity enhanced sensitivity.  Skin exposed, not deadened to feeling inside clothes, is so alive to sensation and stimuli.  I swore, if I ever got out of this mess, I would always wear multiple layers of clothes so men did not take such liberties, or expect me to respond so easily.  At this moment, getting out of here, seemed like a big if.

 

“The leash reaches all the way down to her knees,” the Count’s aide marvelled.  “He must value this girl very much, look, he even put his own monogram on her.”

 

He stroked the P that Patrick had put on my hip.  Almost every man who had come by had traced that P with his hand or finger.  Each time my P was traced, it seemed to be more incised on my skin and my mind.  P meant I belonged to Patrick.  How could I ever wash that off?

 

The aide pulled out my leash to almost full length, almost pulling me into the count, who put up his hands as I approached. I was able to stop, but only at the cost of being thoroughly groped: alas, something I was by now very used to. The Count stepped back, and the aide stretched the rope of my leash down my body which responded as the rope caressed my torso. He stopped to trace the mark Patrick made on my left hip and then pulled the leash between my legs. It pulled up through my butt and, as he continued to pull, it slipped between the lips of my sex. The rope touched the place there that had become chapped by over touching by men, by repeatedly becoming wet, then being dried by wind and sun.  I gasped.

 

The young Frick, Woodrow, slapped my rear.

 

“You were not given permission to speak!”

 

The Count laughed.  He had a nice laugh.

 

“Maybe she was overcome by needs. Perhaps I could help her relieve them?”

 

The older Frick, Mr Wilson Frick replied, “Well I reckon that she might like that, but her owner hasn’t been here to give permission for her full use, so really I can’t accommodate you there.  We have other girls though.”

 

Relief flooded me.  A sigh of thankfulness escaped me, which was unfortunately misinterpreted.

 

“But the slut seems eager. I am sure that her owner would not mind if she served you with her mouth.”

 

It was only fear of the quirt that kept me silent then. Patrick had once said that I would ‘rather fuck than suck’.  It was true, the position on her knees is embarrassingly submissive for the girl, and she must work hard for no reward. And now I would be made to perform this act in front of dozens, if not hundreds, in broad daylight instead of decent sex at night! I collapsed as my knees gave way.  This was interpreted as being eager to serve. I did not speak, for I had not been given permission to speak. Orders were given to the stage attendants to slack on the rope connecting my bracelets to the horizonal spar.  As the rope was slackened, I naturally sank to my knees in front of the Count. He opened his trousers and took out his thing. It was already getting hard. 

 

The green marble was hard and unyielding under my knees.  Patrick would always get me a cushion when I performed such a service for him, but no one provides cushions for slaves.

 

At that moment, I was a slave.  I had signed the scenario contract with Patrick. I had agreed to be his slave.

 

Then I had run away when I disobeyed his order to get out of the rising Bighorn River.

 

A slave who disobeys is punished.  This was part of my punishment, to be used sexually outside in the daylight, in front of dozens of men with no thought given to my comfort  

 

It was my own fault, for by contract at least, I was a slave. I opened my mouth and took the Count into my mouth.  I knew he wouldn’t excuse poor performance.  I had never tried to get good at oral, because I didn’t want to do it.  I knew that on that stage, under the bright wide big sky, that these men would accept no excuses.  I summoned up every memory of what my girlfriends had ever said about this act, and I tried to remember every direction that my boyfriends had given me, and tried to remember what I saw in the few porn films I had watched.

 

It wasn’t enough. I was going to gag, or worse, bite. I just wanted to shout “fuck your slave girl instead, Master,” but that was such a slave girl thing to do, I could not get the words out.

 

I felt a gentle hand on my hair, stroking it, calming me.  I heard a voice, “steady there girl, steady, you can do this.”

 

It was Alex’s voice, it calmed me. I felt it ease me. I resumed my task, as he kept stroking my hair.

 

I heard from far away, the Count’s aide ask about the use of Lorna.  I heard the Fricks discuss it.  They were really only holding Lorna for pickup, but Mr Wilson Frick reckoned that it would be all right for Lorna to repair the care and watering she had received by serving the Count’s aide.

 

So the two of us knelt side by side, naked on the hard marble stage, serving men, servicing men, on our knees.  Being one of two did not help my feelings of humiliation.  It just emphasized that I was not special, that I was just a creature. Things progressed as time seemed to stand still.  There were cheers from the crowd gathered at the foot of the steps leading to the stage.  The Count finished in my mouth.  I swallowed, another thing I had never done before. What a day of firsts!

 

All the way through, Alex stroked my hair and encouraged me.  At the end, he told me, “Good girl” and moved off.  I knelt there, with a taste in my mouth, beside Lorna, who grinned at me.

 

“At last some exercise after standing around all day!” She ran her tongue over her lips.

 

I heard the bell toll twice.  The first of the survivalist women had been officially pronounced into slavery.  Alex walked over with drinks of water for Lorna and I - a gesture I appreciated.  I was about to thank him for steadying me during my ordeal but did not.  He had facilitated the use of my mouth.  He had done it in the way a dog handler calms a puppy at a dog show, or the trainer of pony at its first event. He had handled me, the way a trainer handles a pet or a show animal!  It was kindly meant, and it kept me from a whipping, but then I expect a dog handler is kind to his dogs.

 

As our ropes were tightened again, pulling Lorna and I to display position, I heard Wilson Frick giving orders that the slaves should hang there another hour, unless more Loose Women were brought in, then the slaves should be move to the corrals.

 

I began to despair of the arrival of Patrick in time to save me.