On the Banks of the Bighorn Part Two: by Tracker

 

1) Smith’s secret Diary.

 

May 20^th.  The Big Roundup has been put off for another week or so.  Really bad weather, high winds and rain are expected over the next week and we don’t want to be caught in the open and the herds we have gathered scattered.  The range is quite dry and could really use the moisture.  I saw my first buffalo up close the other day.  They are really North American bison and are huge, really big.  The Indian, or First Nations reservation close by raises them because of tradition.  Those big beasts need strong fences or they will be all over our range and neither the People, as they call themselves or us want that.  Mixing the herds destroys the cattle bloodlines the Lazy F prides itself on and is bad for the Bison bloodlines too, so both the People and we keep the fence in repair.  I gather they are the only neighbours we have that we are on good terms with.  Randy Schlesinger, our group’s assistant foreman, approved of the People, “As long as they stay on their side of the Fence, ‘Good Fences make Good Neighbours’,” he quoted.  And we both like it that way.  So, Randy Schlesinger laid our group of him, me, old Bill and young Aaron and we met three of the People to make sure the fence was stout.  A young man, his sister, and one of his friends worked their side of the fence. We got most of it fixed before we had to head back to the ranch.  On the way back, young Aaron remarked that the young woman was really hot.  Randy Schlesinger rebuked him, “they are our friends, stay on our side of the fence.  Good Fences make Good Neighbours.”  Aaron was pushy, like a young bull, “What if they stray over the Fence?”

 

“Then that can be different,” Randy Schlesinger allowed. “But no cutting the Fence from our side.”

 

I am still out of contact with the folks who get my reports and I am working on a new method of getting my reports away.  I am moving slowly and carefully, as forty-five years of knocking around the world has taught me.  No hurry, as I overheard that the big boss, Mr Willard Frick himself will not be coming for the roundup.  He was going to oversee a shipment of human female livestock out, but there was some supply chain trouble, so we will be holding more stock until a new shipment can be organized.  From what I heard Mr Wilson Frick say to Randy Schlesinger, somebody named Madison messed up a shipment in Sussex which is somewhere in England.  This same Madison messed up three months ago in Oxford, also in England.  I guess Mr Willard Frick is really, really, angry, although from what I overheard he is hiding it well, until he can get his hands on this Madison to lay on a real punishment.  Mr Willard Frick is by all accounts a bad man to cross.  I must be very careful.

 

 

2) Patrick Masters POV

 

I am working in my office on a tricky problem in Patent Law, which is what I do, and I am exceedingly good at it.  On my desk was a tricky Patent Application and four strands of rope, which I had twisted in a complex knot.  Every time I found another difficulty in the Application, I added some complexity to the knot.  I made notes in red ink from one of my collections of Waterman Fountain Pens on the contract for each difficulty.  When I got to the end of the Application, it and the supporting documents would all be covered in red ink and the knot would be extremely complex; so complex only I could untie it.

 

Boilerplate Applications are easy, like easy knots, but a cunning attorney on the other side and easily untie them, resulting in lost time and money for our clients.  We in this office craft custom knots to secure our clients intellectual property in unique ways, knots that no one else can untie.  Throughout the morning I made the knot of the problem more complex, and covered the papers with red ink.  At noon I took a break, but not to eat.  I don’t eat lunch; I went to work out.  It is as important to keep the body supple and strong as it is to keep the mind in the same condition.  I worked steadily throughout the afternoon, as this solution had to be completed before my holidays to the Banks of the Bighorn.  I use green ink for the solutions to the red ink problems and as the amount of green ink on the papers grew, I was able to untie the knots representing the problem.  With about a half an hour to quitting time, the knots were all untied and the problems solved.  I called Ms. Jane Bennet, one of our associate attorneys, into the office and gave her my notes and draft of the Application to get typed and put into shape for review first thing in the morning.  She made a face, for she would have to work late, but what are young associates for, if not to work late at the grunt work, while the principles go home?  She was getting too big for her shapely britches.

 

For the rest of the day, I collected my ropes and considered some personal problems I wanted to solve.  First Juliette Chen.  I loved Juliette but sometimes she confused me. At times she is loving and eager, but at other times, she pushes me away.  It is like we can only have sex in the dark at night, and I can’t look at her at other times.  The other day, she was exercising nearly naked due to the heat, but no sex because it was too early.  But then she offered a blow job, which was weird, because that is sex or at least almost.  But not really from her side because there is no satisfaction or stimulus for her.  It is much more submissive, because she was on her knees, but in her mind was it okay because she got no joy from it?  She is certainly not good at it anyway.  But later in the bathroom we did it in the shower, but that was that okay because it was behind a locked bathroom door?  I put aside the problem of Juliette Chen and went to have dinner with my law school friend, Jerry Reece.

 

We had dinner in one of the restaurants on Fisherman’s Wharf.  Very touristy, but also very good.  I had a dark Irish Ale, while Jerry drank whiskey.  Over clam chowder we caught up.

 

“So, Jerry, what have you been up to?

 

“For the past year, looking into the mysterious disappearance of young women for an interagency task force.”

 

“Just the usual snatch and grab, that seems a bit below your pay grade now”

 

“More mysterious than that, it is hard to find figures, but hundreds around the world.  And that is just the ones we know about that fit the profile.”

 

“Profile?”

 

“Young, 18-24, living on their own or with a roommate, intelligent, usually with a university degree or some sort of credential, never married, likely not a boyfriend in the background, living a quiet life.  Not the sort to suddenly go missing with no trace.  There is no sign of force, they just suddenly disappear with no warning and are never heard from again.”

 

“There can’t be many vanishings of that sort, it would be all over the news.”

 

“It shows up on the local news occasionally now and again, but it is not illegal to fall out of contact with your family and friends, and with no sign of force…” Jerry trailed off.

 

He started, then stopped, then went on again, “but pretty women have been disappearing throughout history. There were some, even when we were in University, and there were stories going back decades.  Remember that guy in our dorm who had a theory about that - I can’t remember his name - he was taking Philosophy.  He said that pretty women used their looks to get advantages, job interviews, extensions on papers, going to the front of the line, getting into clubs and out of traffic tickets. It was only natural, and in the natural order of things, that some women paid the price for beauty.  They ended up getting snatched or living on their knees or serving men or some such.”

 

“Yes, he called it their fate, or their destiny or their bad luck or something.”  I went on, “it makes sense in a way, some people have that kind of luck, the world isn’t fair, after all, and the weak are preyed on by the strong.”

 

Jerry nodded distractedly.  “Maybe, but there is so much more of this right now.  It is hard to get figures from abroad, but in London it looks like twenty to fifty who fit the profile are going missing…”

 

“A year”, I asked, “That seems like a lot.”

 

Jerry shook his head, “A month.  It is hard to get figures from anywhere else, but from the UK, twenty to fifty a month who fit the profile. From this country, possibly one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty. Brazil: no figures but lots.”

 

“Brazil is famous for its beautiful women. Sun, sand, beaches, Carnival, The Girl from Ipanema.”

 

“It all points to a gang, a big organization, except for one thing.  Where on Earth do these women end up, all these beautiful girls from the States, Europe, Brazil, Japan, Hong Kong, Iran?  All these women fit the profile, beautiful and intelligent, but where on Earth do they end up?”

 

“The Middle East?” I ventured.

 

“Not in these numbers, there aren’t that many rich men with oil financed harems as all that, and we have pretty good info out of the Middle East.  They are not ending up there, not the ones that fit our profile.  Beautiful and Intelligent.  And if they are being taken for slavery, why value intelligence equally with beauty?  That is the second puzzle, after where on Earth do they go?”

 

We moved on to our main course.  Tuna for me, salmon for Jerry.  We ordered a bottle of Chablis.

 

We sat and thought, drank our wine and enjoyed our meals.

 

“Why London?” I asked. “There must be other cities in England, too, after all.”

 

“After school, all the ambitious ones, the clever, they all head to London to try and better themselves there. London has the loudest clubs, the biggest brass ring.  And it is so easy for someone to go missing in a busy anthill like that.  People are always giving up, or getting jobs overseas, or finding new opportunities; lots of churn, easy to miss a score of girls.  And in this country, so many centres like that.  The Californian girl, drop dead gorgeous and smart as a whip – so many as to be cliché.  New York and Boston are full of graduates from the Ivies going into publishing or finance, all hot repressed librarian types.  Southern belles, midwestern girls; so easy for quite a number of women to disappear when so many new ones arrive each month.  But where on Earth do they end up?”  Jerry shook his head. “With no answer to that, we are at a dead end.  So we are shutting the Investigation down, and I am looking forward to a private sector job.”

 

“Maybe Space aliens, after all once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth.”

 

Jerry laughed, “I think we can eliminate space aliens too.  Nope, it may seem that lots of women are disappearing, but if they are not disappearing to somewhere, it is only an illusion.  My wife has a theory though.”

 

I raised my eyebrows.

 

“Well, Maya, that’s my wife, she has joined a new fringe group.”

 

I knew Maya, a somewhat humourless woman who was an enthusiastic joiner of groups.

 

“She joined the New Feminists. They think that modesty and reserve and taking back the home as a woman’s sphere are the New Feminist Frontier.  And not too much sex, it is immodest.  I have been cut down to twice a month, and even that is pretty vanilla and boring.”  He shook his head after this personal revelation and ploughed on.  “She thinks, well the New Fems have told her to think, that all this choice that women have had in the past few decades has proven too much for them.  That many women are having a mental break struggling with careers and competing with men etc, so have just had a breakdown between our current society’s expectations and their true desires and capabilities. And so they find a man to take care of who will take care of them.  But they bug out of the rat race and disappear because they are too ashamed to admit it.  The idea sounds really improbable, but what else is there?”

 

“Have you ever found one of these women?”

 

“No.”  Jerry shook his head.  So we still don’t know where on Earth these missing women end up.”

 

We settled up the bill.  I went home to pack.  I saw Jerry head into the bar, where a woman, who was not a modestly dressed New Feminist, had been eyeing him up.  If Maya was cutting him off to two unsatisfying encounters a month, I could understand his actions.  We men have needs.

 

3) Patrick Masters Narrative.

 

One last night in San Francisco before we leave for our camping and hiking adventure along the Bighorn river!  Last night I went over to Juliette’s to check over her gear and her packing.  Tonight I will be checking over all the gear I am taking.  I don’t really need to check my packing or gear, and I didn’t really need to check Juliette’s, but checking and double checking is second nature to both of us.  Meticulous work and checking are key to success as a lawyer or a mathematician.

 

I drive a 2016 Subaru Forester.  Colleagues tease me that I should drive a more upscale car, and one more suited to the city, but I only work in the city. I really enjoy my life in the outdoors, camping and hiking.  For going to the backcountry parks around the Bighorn, my car Big Green is ideal.

 

All of Juliette’s gear was complete and packed, and any worn or doubtful climbing rope put aside or clearly marked to be used only around camp for securing tents etc.  Her hiking boots and climbing boots were both broken in, but in good condition, oiled, waterproofed, and with extra laces in the compartments.  All her clothes were clean, rolled for easy packing, and the tiniest gear ready, with spares if necessary.

 

She had purchased a new climbing harness, and I helped fit it to her.  It was quite fun tightening the straps and adjusting the harness and might have led to some fun, but she quickly shut that down.

 

Today she was going to pick up some books, and download some podcasts for the road.  Because she didn’t want to do any experimentation with the harness we had ordinary sex, behind locked doors, but because she felt more secure, the lights were not as dimmed as she usually prefers.  We might as well have been Jerry and Maya Reese.

 

Most women don’t appreciate or understand how much men like to look at women’s bodies.  It is not just a sex thing, it is a beauty thing.  The constantly moving curves, the hidden and open places, the way their faces change as the light changes, the way the breasts move and adopt different shapes, the curve down to the pelvis, the swell of the buttocks, the muscles in calf and leg.  All so beautiful, all always in motion and changing, all women different, and yet so many commonalities.  Men would have women naked all the time, if we could, not just from a ready for sex or vulnerability  viewpoint, but just from the beauty of them.  Whether it is Genes or Culture, I don’t know, but it is so deeply impressed in us, the desire to look on women unhindered.

 

Juliette pouted when I would not stay the night, but I had to review a patent filing for today, besides she only wanted missionary sex, when variety  improves everything.  I sometimes like to have her from behind with her on all fours, or bent over, but she objects, it makes her feel animal-like, or that she could be any woman if we are not face to face.  In a way though, she is every women especially in the throes of passion. She doesn’t like to have sex astride me either, as she objects to doing all the work!  Well maybe things will change once we are married and she is more relaxed.

 

The case I was reviewing for filing was a digital rights patent we are filing at the end of the week.  In the office they say I can tie up some property so tightly that no patent thief can untie it.  My office rarely has to go to court to defend a patent: I do my work too well for that.  I am told some judges only skim our filings now, as the name of my firm on the filing is a guarantee of the job being properly done.  The protection of property and the sanctity of contracts is what separates us from barbarism. Honour and Integrity are my watchwords. I know Juliette feels the same.  Once she had not carefully read an employment contract for teaching her classes and ended up doing three times more work than she had expected.  She did that without complaint. She said she had signed the contract and needed to fulfil it to be right with herself.

 

The only reason we usually need to go to court is to enforce penalty clauses.  These are important, as thieves must be punished and crime unprofitable, for society to function. Sometimes people complain that the penalties are too savage, but the bad people signed the contract or evaded the law so it is their own fault.  How else can they or others learn?

 

That is a lot of philosophizing by a practical man. It must be the third scotch I had, as I am not working tomorrow.

 

After I checked all my gear, including that we would have enough rope for climbing and securing camp; I brought several different colours of rope: blue, green, red, yellow. I like the patterns one can get tying knots with ropes of many colours.   I gathered a few personal items.  I packed my third best straight razor as the rituals of shaving are pleasurable to me, and vacation is no excuse for letting standards slip.  My joint two best razors are too good for camping.  I also packed a couple of my fountain pens and calligraphy pens; penmanship being a hobby of mine, one I share with Juliette, although she uses brushes in the Chinese style.  I made sure I had a variety of different knives for cooking and camp work, even throwing in a fighting knife I had been given by a client just because I felt fierce.

 

When packing, I came across a half completed leatherwork project, a souvenir of a case from a couple of years ago.  Decades ago, there was a company called Tandy, that provided leatherwork supplies to professionals and amateur leatherworkers.  They supplied leather, kits, tanning and dyeing supplies, awls and punches, dies and stamps for embossing leather.  Everything a leatherworker could need from making a saddlebag or saddle down to punching holes and adding a buckle to make a belt. But the hobby died out and so did Tandy.  There was one group of people who still wanted leather goods though – fetishists – and there are a lot of them in San Francisco.  One of the niche suppliers copied the old Tandy idea and put out fetish leather kits.  Our firm handled the Trademark and Branding.  Our client was doing well, until a foreign firm put out cheaper kits using inferior materials with a Trademark and Name that was intentionally close to our Client’s.  Our firm’s Trademark expert was out of the office, so I handled the case.  We shut down the competitor and secured substantial damages.  Our client was happy, “You spanked those buggers real good,” she said.  “And even after your fee, we still got money off of them.”  She was so enthused she gave me a couple of kits.

 

I had started a quirt, a sort of cowboy whip that is secured by a thong on the wrist for encouraging cattle to move in the desired direction.  I didn’t finish it.  I don’t like the idea of wanton cruelty, of getting pleasure from inflicting pain or degradation on others. It is distasteful and not honourable.

There is cruelty in war, but we have laws, rules and treaties to restrain unnecessary suffering and cruelty. When we discipline children or train animals we use, or at least decent people use, no more force than necessary.  When I was thinking of training, I thought back to my conversation with Jerry Reece about combatting a slavery ring.  Now a wholesale condemnation of a people to slavery is wrong, but condemning criminals, or debtors, when done by a competent authority would not necessarily be so.  There are, I am told, people who are submissive, many women, so putting them in slavery would be a kindness rather than otherwise.  There is now on Earth no authority that can authorize this, though in the past, creation of handmaids and bondmaids was common enough.  Then I suppose force for correction, for training, and for retention of property would be reasonable, but again there is no authority on Earth, no Priest or King that can make that proper.

 

That third scotch is making me long winded, time for bed.

 

4) Juliette Chen’s Narrative.

 

Patrick was here last night, double checking my packing.  He is so good and thoughtful that way.  When he thought I wasn’t looking, he slipped a couple of thongs in with my underwear, even though nothing I am going to be wearing really requires a thong.  He is so naughty. We did It last night before he had to leave.  Patrick was unhappy we did It in the regular way like married people.  Although some married people apparently do It other ways even after getting married.  One of the married women at work said that she and her husband pretend to be other people and have It in make believe stories.  Maybe we should try that. It would help to pretend we are different people when we are in a hotel or in tent. Sometimes I wish I were more adventurous, but most adventurous girls don’t become married women.

 

So today I went to a second hand bookstore and browsed in the Romance section.  There are two main themes.  Being a good girl, poor but honest, who attracts the attention of Rich, Single Young Duke, or being carried off by a rogue who is carried away by your beauty, and then being ravished.

The only problem is back in the old days, in these books anyway, England supposedly had about 15,000 Dukes, all handsome and in need of a wife.  I looked it up, there aren’t that many Dukes nowadays, and they are mostly old and wrinkly and married to unhappy looking horse-faced wives.  Frankly a girl would have a better chance of getting married to Prince Harry than to one of those wrinkly Dukes, as if Harry would ever marry an American!

The problem with being carried off by a rogue is that girls that get carried off by rogues don’t get married. After being ravished, the girls are abandoned when the rogue is carried away by the beauty of another girl and he takes off to ravish her instead. You can’t trust rogues any more than you can trust Dukes.

 

I went off to browse other sections of the store.  In the fantasy section there was a girl who looked like she was in High School.  She was standing in front of a book case, but was terribly indecisive.  She would pick up a book, then look around, glance at the cash counter, and put it down.  Then pick it up, then put it down and pick up another.  She looked annoyed to see another person in the section.  I browsed a few books, with rockets and monsters or witches on the covers.  As I browsed I moved back towards where the indecisive girl was still standing. She moved away when I approached, but kept glancing at me from the end of the aisle, as she pretended to look at books there.

 

On the shelf, there were a collection of books with bright yellow covers with lurid illustrations of them, the illustrations facing out.  The girls on these covers did not look like the kind of girls who got married. The one the girl had been looking at was called Dancer of Gor, and there was a nearly undressed girl on the front, dancing by firelight for a group of men.  She wasn’t dancing with the men, she was making an exhibition of herself.  Like her purpose was to entertain the group of men by offering herself to them: all of them, so she was definitely not the kind of girl to get married.

 

Beside the books with covers of abandoned women, there was one called Imaginative Sex which had scenarios that couples could act out.  I moved away from the shelf and as I did so, I could almost feel the girl run up the aisle between the shelves, then turn and leave.  Almost immediately the bell over the door rang and the door shut again.  I went back down the aisle.  There had been three copies of the Dancer book and now there were only two.  I was very angry.  It was wrong to deprive the shop owner of a sale. the younger me would certainly have been spanked if I had done so.  Wherever this Gor was, city or imaginary planet, it had a lot of scantily clad women at the feet of men.  Slave of Gor, Captive of Gor, Kajira of Gor; whatever a kajira was.

 

I didn’t report the girl because I didn’t actually see her take the book, but I did buy the Imaginative Sex book even though it was kind of embarrassing at the counter.  The older woman at the cash counter grinned at me and made suggestive comments.

 

I fled.

 

Finally the big day is here: two days’ drive to the Bighorn, then a week of hiking, camping, and climbing  I am sure it will be a big adventure.  Patrick seemed to have a bit of a headache as he drove, while at the same time he listened to a lecture on digital app patents on the car stereo.  I put on my headphones and listened to a podcast from NPR, The New Feminism – Fad or Flummery.  Some of the NF’s ideas sound like common sense, but they are put in such an old fashioned unattractive way I can’t see them catching on.  Anyway, no more Social Ideas. Bighorn here we come for a week of fun and adventure (and maybe we will be doing IT more than twice a day).