On the Banks of the Bighorn Chapter Twenty Two – by Tracker

 

Patrick Master’s Narrative

 

When I untied Juliette after the Ranchers, Frick, and Smith, had left, she did not seem much worse for wear, or usage, as I learned to call it from John Norman’s book.  Far-fetched as his fantasy story was, and convoluted as his prose was, he did seem to have some insight into the human condition.

Juliette seems to be a little disoriented, but she assured me that it was due to being tied for so long with her head hanging down, and her unsteadiness on her feet to being motionless for a while.

 

“You weren’t making sounds consistent with being motionless a few minutes ago.”

 

“Neither were you, Master.” Master was coming to her lips more easily all the time.  

 

We went down to the river to swim and clean off.  I carried the collapsible buckets down to the river to bring water back to our camp.  I would have her carry them back. It just seemed more fitting that way.

 

Out of the blue, while we were laying in the sun drying after our swim, she said, “I hate that Fliss.”

 

“Why? because I used her in the tent?  She is a slave, a real slave.  Branded even. It was her duty. Anyway, she loved it.  The reciprocal use of captive women seems to be a custom with these people.  I couldn’t refuse.”

 

“Yes, no, it is complicated.  I didn’t hate her for being used by you, really, it was that it should be me you are having sex with.”

 

“I wasn’t ‘having sex’ with her.  I was using her.  She was a convenience for my pleasure.”

 

Juliette was silent.  

 

“She was so graceful.  Every movement, every time she turned her head, even when she fell off the horse, she fell right into that graceful kneeling position.”

 

“Nadu?”, I asked.

 

“She was so graceful, so proud, she looked so right. She made me seem clumsy. I teach Pilates; I teach yoga.  My movements aren’t clumsy, I am not clumsy.  Yet she made me feel clumsy.  I hate her.”

 

“Maybe she has had some special training?”

 

“Mr Frick, I mean Master Woodrow, said she was not trained as a pleasure slave, she was just a ladies’ maid.  Yet every move she made was designed to get a man’s attention, to make a man want to throw her to the floor and screw her right there! And she knew how! She made me feel clumsy, like a galumphing elephant trying to dance.”

 

Juliette had tears in her eyes as she filled the buckets with water and we walked up to the camp.  I followed behind her to enjoy the view. Juliette did not seem clumsy to me.  The problem was, that once it was in my mind, I could not help comparing her movements to that of the slave girl, Fliss. I felt disloyal to Juliette when thinking of Fliss’s way of moving.

 

I could tell there was still something  bothering Juliette still though.

 

Slave Viki’s Narrative.

 

Still stuck in the Town Hotel. I am under orders to keep a low profile, lest I be spotted by either our treasonous agent, or by the Fricks.  If they caught our guy, or discovered he was using Kurii tech, my Master is in deep trouble.  Spying on the Fricks was bad enough, although I am told all these Families spy on each other, but when our spy turned out to be working with another group as well!  Yikes.

 

I go to the window and look out, just like a cop in a bad stake-out movie.  I used to love caper movies, the old ones, like ‘Topkapi’ or ‘The Sting’. I guess that is part of why I let myself get recruited to help the Teddy-Bears against the Spider-Kings.  Except the Kur aren’t Teddy Bears, like I said before.  

More like a cross between a bigfoot and a grizzly bear.  A bad-tempered grizzly.  

 

I spend my time waiting for orders and thinking about the Three Moon Saloon.  I am pissed that I failed as a Paga Slave.  Sure, I was a Paga Slave.  I mean I came with the price of a drink, didn’t I? After some time in a collar on Gor, I should have ruled that place, that two-bit saloon.  Did I? Heck no. I mean I wasn’t totally a failure - some meat-packers and some cowboys took me to the alcoves - I was okay, but I didn’t rock their worlds.  

 

I’m too smart, that is my problem. I am always analysing what I think I should be doing to get this guy or that guy hot, rather than reacting. All my blood going to my brain, instead of my sex, that is the problem.  I was sold to the Black Wine enthusiast on Gor, for my skill in making coffee, not because I was hot.  Once he used me, once! Then a few time by guards, but only as a last resort.  I was a coffee-maker and mat girl, and not much mat!

Then ‘rescued’ by Kur agents and put to work!  In the furs? Well only sometimes, mostly back running comm networks.  Just running them, not setting them up, as I would have been if I were free, or if they were using me properly. 

 

Too much time to think, not enough work or being ‘put to use’. So every time a guard or master looked the way of a short, not especially curvy pixie, I had already overthought the encounter.  Another average grade.  In school and university I never got average grades!  A failure of a slave, on a planet where no woman is allowed to fail slave school!

 

I am wearing an old T-shirt I found in the bottom drawer of a dresser here, and my peasant type skirt.  I am barefoot in this ratty hotel room, because I am more comfortable barefoot now.

 

I failed on my mission; and I failed as a Paga Slave. I hate the tea-less plains of Montana!

 

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From Slave Inge’s Narrative.

 

Another day, another day cleaning the corrals of animal dung.  I am getting used to being naked with other naked women under the eyes of men.  I mean, I was used to being naked in the sauna, but everyone was naked then.  In the sauna, nudity was not the division between men and women, our lack of clothing making us feel inferior, that it is here on this ranch in America.

 

Poor Sarah is recovering from her time ‘serving’ at the banquet last night. Reading, the English slave named after the University she attended, is recovering from her awful whipping yesterday.  Reading held Sarah last night and the two of them tried to comfort each other. I felt so helpless.  This morning in the shower, Sarah confided to me that Reading had already been made to serve at a banquet as she had.

 

“Only worse,” Sarah whispered.  “I only had to serve a table of four.”  Reading had to serve more than four!  No wonder she seems so meek and mousy!

I am the only one in our cell who is at all fit to try an escape. But if I go, I know I can’t leave them behind.  In a way they are hostages.  Every time we are let out of our cell, I look for a way to escape. These dungeons are old. I bet all the escape routes were found and stuffed up years ago.

 

On our work details, I look for unguarded ways to escape. Maybe a truck left with its keys in the ignition, even an unguarded horse. I keep my eyes out for even a hiding place I could duck into and wait for nightfall.  At nightfall I could return and free at least Sarah and Reading.  

 

We twelve slaves, Sarah and me from Denmark; Reading, Stanford, and Harvard, university women, named for their universities, two wyld wymen and five Survivalist women, are more used to working together chained in a coffle.  We got the animal corrals cleaned up earlier than we ever have.  I hoped we might be allowed to rest.  

 

There is no rest for slaves!

 

We were set to learning positions. 

 

How to kneel correctly in front of a man.  Back straight, kneels wide, breasts thrust out, our hands delicately resting on our thighs, indicating desire. There is something really sexy in being available to be taken, on the knees, dressed as an inferior. Legs wide is inviting a man to enter between the legs. I can feel it in myself.  I hate it, but I feel it.

 

How to kneel correctly in front of a Free Woman.  I could hear the capitalization in the cowboy’s voice every time he said the words. “Knees and thighs together. No Free Woman wants to see your pussy.  And it had better not be dripping when you kneel in front of a women, not like when you kneel in front of a man!”

 

We didn’t need to sit up as straight when kneeling for a woman either.  Of course I understood why a woman would not want us to kneel with thighs spread wide.  Our gaping pussies would remind them that they too are women, and men like the men on this ranch liked women naked on their knees.

I was sure no woman on this ranch would want reminding that they were one mistake away from being in my situation, naked, submissive, and vulnerable.  I remembered that Kathy Harris, who had hung with us from the lost and found.  She was out late without a father or brother just one night, and she ended up as we ended up.  As I knelt there in the position for kneeling in front of a Free Woman, I knew they would not want to be reminded that our sex was their sex and they could easily become as we were. I pressed my thighs tightly together, but could not forget I was kneeling in front of men who had the power to do as they willed with me.

 

Right then, one of the survivalist women made a break for it!  The cowboy didn’t even stir.  One of the boys, about ten or eleven ran after her, tripped her up, and tied her wrists behind her.  He was so quick!  He must have practiced this.  

 

Oh, God, they taught the adolescent boys to bind women!  The lad quickly looped an end of his rope around her left ankle and secured it to the woman’s bound wrists.

 

“Ten seconds”, announced the cowboy.  He was holding a watch.  “Not bad, but not really good either.”

 

He addressed the woman, “there will be a whipping for that tonight.”

 

I remembered where I had seen something like that before. It was not a woman who was tied thusly, it was a calf.  I had been watching a documentary by PETA on the mistreatment of animals in American Rodeos.  Calf roping it was called.  Calves were released and cowboys competed in roping them by the neck, throwing them to the ground and tying together three of its feet.  I thought the sport brutal.

 

The survivalist woman was tied the same way.  The cowboy had timed her roping and tying.  We were treated the same as the animals in a brutal American Rodeo. I felt dehumanized.  I guess that is the way I was supposed to feel.

 

Eleven of us were coffled up to be led back to the cells.  The one survivalist woman was fastened to a post to be punished for trying to escape.

As we were led back to the cells under the house, we could hear her beg for mercy as the leather whip bite into her skin. When I try to escape, I must have a fool proof plan. I know I could never bear to be whipped.

 

After being fed, and before being placed in the cells, we were showered and cleaned.  For a wonder, we received warm water, rather than freezing cold.  Even for small mercies we are totally dependent on the whims of our captors.

 

“We will be back in thirty minutes to collect the lucky girl from each cell who will privileged to serve at the banquet tonight,” the cowboy warned as he shut out the lights.

 

In the dark, in our cell, I told Sarah and Reading that I would volunteer to be the ‘lucky girl’ from our cell.

 

Reading told me, “You have no idea what you are in for.  Let me go, I have endured it before.”

 

I shook my head.  “Reading, you are still too weak after your whipping yesterday, and Sarah needs to recover after last night.  I don’t want this, but there is no point in putting it off.”

 

Reading shook her head.  “You will come back changed. But listen to what you must do and not do.”

 

“First, do not resist.  No matter what, do not resist. They have quirts and whips.”

 

“Second, no matter what they do, thank them.  Through gritted teeth if you must, but thank them.”

 

“Third, be prepared, they will likely use you all ways, and there are more than one to a table”

 

Sarah put in, “There were four at my table last night.”

 

“Fourth, and this will sound strange.  Be grateful for being used in different ways, even that way. If they just use you one way, you will become very sore.  Some variety will help.  And don’t think it is over once each has done you once. Captive women make them horny.”

 

“And lastly, use yourself now.  It will help you relax and become ready for them.”

 

“I can’t do that.” Reading’s quiet recital of what was coming had terrified me.

 

“You can.  It will help you juice later.  It is dark in the cell. Learn from me, from your friend Sarah.”

 

I was reluctant.  I finally took Reading’s advice and was starting to touch myself, when the lights came on and they came to get me.

 

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From the Slave Juliette’s Narrative.

 

On the way back to the camp, with Patrick walking behind me and me carrying the buckets of water, like a beast of burden, I brought up the other thing that was bothering me.

 

“Patrick, Master Patrick.  I have something to confess.”

 

“What is that, pretty kajira?”

 

“When those men took me this afternoon, Mister Frick and Master Smith.”

 

“Yes”

 

“When they had me bent over that tree, in that position I don’t like, with my hands secure, and they took me, thrust into me from behind?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I came, Master Patrick. They made me testify, each of them.  They made me testify.”

 

Patrick was silent for a moment. “Yes, I heard them make you cry out. So did Fliss, even over her own moaning.”

 

“But Fliss is a slave, a real slave.”

 

“I know she is, I felt the brand scar on her thigh, with my fingers as I took her.”

 

I was silent now.  Then I spoke again.

 

“Master, I came hard.  I did not want to disappoint you or disgrace you in front of those ranchers.  So I squirmed when they impaled me and I came, hard.  Much more than when I was a modest, respectable, woman. Maybe I find being a slave exciting.  How will I go back?  How will we go back?”

Patrick was silent now.  It was easier to talk like this when we were not facing each other. It was easier to talk as we focused on walking back to the camp.

 

“We will discuss what happens next, once this week is over.”

 

“Master?”

 

“Yes, pretty Juliette?”

 

“They thought I was adequately hot Master, and they were kind in their assessment of me to you, but they were not totally satisfied.”

 

“They didn’t think you helped in your own conquest enough? How were they disappointed?”

 

“Master, they didn’t say anything, but I felt they thought my orgasm should have been bigger?”

 

“They wanted you to make more noise, to testify louder.”

 

“No Master, they wanted to be more satisfied, to have a bigger orgasm. I don’t think they thought I was slave enough.”

 

I was almost in tears.  I had promised to be the best slave I could to Patrick for this week.  And experienced judges thought I was failing.  I was doing my best.  I was doing the best I knew how. What if I wasn’t good enough?