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

 

In the Big Tent on the Ranch

 

Fred the Spy’s Narrative

 

I came to take the sluts to the Victory Supper.  The damned Fricks are having these each night after coming back from a day fighting our guys out on the plains.  The people I was supposed to use to destroy the Fricks weren’t up thot the task. The Big Man in Silicon Valley can’t blame me though: the tools I was given just weren’t good enough.  Those Survivalists failed me, and the extra hard men, the contractors weren’t tough enough.  The Fricks beat them!  A bunch of ranchers, a bunch of hicks, beat them! And every night they have a big dinner after hunting out the rest of our crew.

 

Granny Mowbray is in charge of the slave pens under the house.  She scares me.  I rousted out four girls, one from each cell, and got three boys to help me take them over to the dinner tent. These cowboys know how to herd women, I will give them that.  Each had her hands behind her, with the handcuffs they call bracelets.  Then the girls were bent over at the waist and me and the boys grabbed a handful of hair and we marched them off. The heads were down, and they couldn’t see where they were going.  So humiliating for them; their heads at crotch height, held by the hair, bent over and trying to walk at our pace.  They can’t steady theirselves ya see; no balance with their hands secured behind their backs and them bent over.  A girl in a humiliated position can’t rebel; makes ‘em feel helpless.  And bein’ helpless makes them hot, or at least, easy. 

 

Them cowboys do know how to herd women, but I don’t see how they are beating us. It’s like they are super tough fighting on their own land, and like they have practiced how to do this. At least we burned down their pretty banqueting hall.  All that precious old wood roof on it that they were so proud of, it burned well.  The cowboys hold their victory dinners in a big tent.  Smith said it was the tent they use for ‘special processing’ out on the prairie when they don’t have time before a shipment and have to do it right before they are shipped off.  I never did find out how they got the women off the ranch. Me and the boys dropped the women at the tent and I left them with the Granny in charge.  She had two of their slaves there already: Kimmie and Fliss.  I never got to try either of them. Smith says Fliss is pretty good.  The rest of the cowboys’ slaves are still out on the ranch from when we drove them off. Boo hoo, let them screw the ‘untrained’ girls.

 

I headed back to the pens. No reason to let the boys who have been riding all day have all the fun!  That Sara, from the collection at the round-up, looks juicy.

Damn that Granny Mowbray!  She turned me away from the pens, and said I couldn’t use Sara!  She told me that as there was a restricted number of slaves, and their use had to be reserved for the “men actually doing the riding and fighting.”  

 

“You weren’t doing any fighting, Fred.  You were just standing guard.  Very useful, no doubt, but we are reserving the use of these women for the fighting men.  Indeed, throughout this whole episode, I don’t recall hearing at all about you being in a fight.”

 

Well of course I was not in one of the fights.  I didn’t want to get shot at by the men I had encouraged to attack the ranch! That would be stupid!  If I was dead, I couldn’t collect my reward.

 

It annoyed me that she had put it together that I was not in the fight though.  She might blab to one of those Fricks. I may have to bug out of this assignment.  It is getting more dangerous than I had counted on.

 

I turned away from the Ranch House, angry, worried, and horny.  The last time I had had a woman was the night before the round-up.  It was that timid virgin, Kathy Harris, that I had been flirting with to get information.  She found me on the plains, scouting for the attack the next night.  I had to pretend I was out there all for the love of her.

 

Stupid cow believed it.  She made the ‘Supreme Sacrifice’ and lay down with me.  Stiff as a plank she was, and convinced I would marry her.  Lord it was bad. She just lay there, braced against the earth!  She probably still thinks I will come and rescue her.

 

 I need to get out of here.

 

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Slave Fliss’s Narrative

 

Master Fred and three of the boys delivered tonight’s girls to Granny Bulstrode as we were setting up in the tent. I miss the old banqueting hall; it was so lovely.

 

The girls look scared, as they should be.  They are going to be serving men tonight. Kimmie and I are serving the head table, and they will each serve a table of four or so. Four men who know what to do with a naked serving girl.  They don’t know how lucky they are.  Kimmie and I, as befitted our status as trained kajirae, were serving in tunics at the high table. These sluts, collared and branded war captives, would serve their conquerors nude.  Kimmie and I, of course, would not retain our tunics throughout the night.  The ranch hand who brought them over disappeared back towards the slave pen, but the oldest boy un-braceleted the girls. As he left, he grabbed the butt of the one called Stanford.  She squealed, but I don’t think she was as upset as she sounded.  I don’t think she was as upset as she thought she should be. She is going to have to let go of those Free Woman notions, and quickly.  I think it is already happening; she was not as upset as she thought she should be.

 

I could see that factions had formed among the captives, as they always do when we women are cooped up together.  Stanford and Inge stood apart from the women named Dirt Two and Dirt Four. Kimmie and I had them kneel in nadu while we combed their hair and gave them a bit of quick makeup.  At least this lot looked as though they had been showered and cleaned, which made our task easier.  Got to make them look good for the men!

 

“Quick,” Kimmie hissed.  “Granny Bulstrode, knees together.”

 

Dirt Two was either rebellious or slow on the uptake.  Granny gave her a quick stroke on the thigh with her switch.

 

“Don’t flash your gapping sex to me, girl.”

 

Another stroke.

 

“I am a Free Woman, a respectable woman, and you will respect that.”

 

Another stroke.

 

“Is that clear, you miserable slut?”

 

“Yes.”  A mumbled and begrudging yes.  This girl was a slow learner.

 

Granny Bulstrode gave her two across the back. 

 

“That is ‘Yes Mistress’, you miserable slut.  And be respectful when you address a Free Woman.”

 

“Yes Mistress.”  Even the balkiest and stupidest of mules can be taught.  The same with us women.

 

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From Slave Inge’s Narrative

 

I am so degraded now.  I can see that in the presence of a Free Woman.  Even her title separates me from her status. ‘Free’.  Exactly what I am not. Even Kimmie and Fliss, the other slaves, who were allowed clothes, had to kneel in her presence.  We are both women, shaped the same, but now there is a gulf.  She is respected; I am not.  I fear her.  People respond mostly as they are treated.  She is treated with respect and I am not.  

 

Stanford’s butt was grabbed, her complaint was ignored, soon I suspect, she will be punished for making an outcry against her treatment.  I must remember that tonight.  Sarah, who went through this last night, said I should thank the men for every attention, every indignity I receive.

 

I fear Granny Bulstrode and her switch.  She switched that Dirt Two like she was a disobedient dog or pony. She taught Dirt Two as a cruel trainer treats a misbehaving animal!  We were taught all those positions just this afternoon.  Legs apart for men, legs together for Free Women, in both cases on our knees.

I will conform outwardly until I see a chance to escape; but I fear I am conforming inwardly too. I must resist.

 

Kimmie assigned us each to one of the smaller tables for four in the middle of the tent.  At one end was the high table set up on platforms for the leaders of the band of slaving cowboys.  At the other end was a part of the tent, divided from the rest by a canvas partition.  In the middle of the partition there was a service hatch. Stanford and I had the two tables nearest the hatch, while the Dirts, Two and Four, had the ones nearer the high table.

 

“We are lucky,” Stanford whispered to me. “We can get from the service hatch to our tables more quickly, and we won’t be distracted by the men at other tables when serving our own.”

 

“Have you had to do this before?” I asked.

 

“Once before, with Harvard and Reading. It won’t be as bad for me this time.  Remember, always kneel when serving them, do what you are told, thank them, whatever they do.  It will be hard, but you will survive.  Your English is very good.”

 

“Thank you.”  I am always astounded that English and American people speak so few languages. I guess when you rule the world, you can make other people talk to you in your own language.

 

Granny Bulstrode disappeared into the service part of the tent.  I guess it would be below her dignity to watch what the men, her men, were going to inflict upon us.

 

Kimmie and Fliss went to the head table and knelt, legs spread of course, now that Granny Bulstrode was gone, one at each end. 

 

We girls went and each knelt beside the table assigned to her.  

 

And so we waited.

 

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I heard singing from outside the tent.  It was men singing a bawdy tune.  I was becoming stiff with fear.  I was the woman they were going to take out their lusts on.

 

Away, away, with fife and drum,

Here we come, full of rum,

Looking for women to fuck in the bum

In the North Atlantic Squadron

 

In Newfoundland when it got hot,

We used to fornicate a lot,

Only the fools would be pulling their tools

In the North Atlantic Squadron.

 

There were more verses, many worse.  This is not a song men sing around women, not women they respect anyway. I remembered what Sarah my friend had said, “be grateful if the use you in many ways, then you won’t be too sore in any one place.”  I tensed up.  I had been trying to relax, hoping it would be easier that way.  

 

Across from me, kneeling by her table, Stanford gave me a brave smile, and whispered “courage”.  I remembered she had been through this before. 

It was getting dark, the boys were going through the tent lighting candles in jars upon the tables, and lighting kerosene oil lamps on ropes hanging from ropes strung between the poles at the sides of the tents.  

 

I recalled hearing Reading saying that “early in the evening they used me in the little rooms by the side, later when the lamps burned low they just took me on the table.”  So much of what Reading and Sarah had told me that I had only half understood was making more sense now.  At the sides of the big tent were little, smaller areas, partitioned off like the service kitchen. In each area there were a few short candles, encased in thick glass bowls, the kind of candle and bowl arrangement found in cheap spaghetti restaurants.  I could see, by the low light of the candles, chains and ropes.  Of course they would have chains and ropes, these people who had enslaved me.  

 

A boy was lighting the same candle in a bowl arrangement on the table at which I was to serve; a table of men who were going to rape me, put me to use, as these slavers say.

 

I knelt on the thick carpet by the table and really looked at it for the first time.  It was low and had no chairs, made of sturdy planks.  Into the sides of the table were set eyebolts, certainly sturdy enough to tie someone, i.e. me, to, and hold her tight. All around the table there was an eyebolt set every 10 to 15 centimetres.

 

The boy stopped by me. “Kneel up girl, the men will want to look at you.”

 

He put one hand in the small of my back and with the other pulled my collar back.  My shoulders straightened, and my breasts were thrust out.

 

“That’s better.”  He grinned and moved on to light the candles on Stanford’s table.

 

I thought of the boy who had roped and bound the girl who tried to escape this afternoon.  How he had caught her, and quickly tied her.  How these people taught their boys from a young age to catch and tie and herd naked women, slaves.

 

There was no danger these boys would grow up to treat women in a modern civilized way.

 

The men came in singing.  They were headed by the two ranchers, The Fricks, and the European aristocrat who had condemned me to slavery.  He has a hundred generations of considering woman as property.  No wonder he got along so well with these ranchers!  The three leaders and two others sat at the high table to be served by Kimmie and Fliss.  Thank the lord I hadn’t been given such a silly demeaning name like Fliss! Even in slavery there are small mercies.

Four men came and sat cross-legged at my table.  Not really my table though, I think I belong to the table, so I am the table’s slave?

 

“You won’t have Fliss tonight, Smith.  Tonight she serves the high muckety-mucks,” one of the cowboys observed.

 

“Fliss is good, really good, boys.  She claims she hasn’t any special pleasure slave training, but she is a natural.  If the Fricks offered me a slave of my own, I would ask for her.”  The one called Smith seemed older. He was tough looking and lean.

 

“And not so much with the muckety-mucks. Mr Wilson and Mr Woodrow rode just as hard as us today and didn’t shirk any danger. Our foremen, Hawkins and Randy Schlesinger, rode hard too.”

 

Another chimed in, “and even that European Count or Dook, or whatever he is, he is fighter, for all his city manners.”

 

I had been listening with my head down, as I had been taught in the afternoon.

 

“Let’s see what this one is called.”  Smith said and then he grabbed my left breast and pulled it towards one of the candles.  He picked up the candle and held my breast close to the light so he could see what name was written there.

 

“In-ge,” he sounded out.  “You Swedish, In-ge?”

 

“No, Master, I am Danish, Sir, if it pleases Master. Inge is Danish. I mean, I am Danish and my name is Inge, Master”

 

I was babbling now, trying to get his hard calloused fingers to release my breast.  He had pulled me forward, leaning over the table and I dearly wanted to kneel back down.  Another one had grabbed my butt, which had been pulled up towards him.

 

“She’s a nice butt too, Smith.” He probed between my legs.  “Moist, not quite wet, but getting there.”

 

Another entered the conversation, “Girls don’t like it when you say moist.”  He laughed.

 

“Free women don’t, but who cares what sluts like.” They all laughed at that.

 

Of course, I could not object to the way they referred to me.  I was a slave.  I was in their power.  I knew what these men were like.  They were working men, like the boys and men I had grown up among, like my father and brothers.  They were not modern in their attitudes or their language. They were demanding of their wives and girlfriends; when a slave girl such as I had been adjudged, they would have no mercy.  

 

It was almost a relief. I knew where I stood, or rather knelt.

 

There was a rap on the serving counter.  Two carafes of wine and four pitchers of beer stood there.  Kimmie and Fliss were already speeding to the hatch.  Each seized a wine carafe and clutching in between their breast tight to their tunics they sped back to the high table.  They moved, even when hurrying, with a particular grace.  It was a sort of short quick steps, not long strides like a man.

 

“Hist, hist”.  It was Stanford, she lightly touched me on the shoulder.  “Quick service if you don’t want to be punished.”

 

Stanford curtseyed to the men at my table and hurried away to the serving hatch.  I tried to emulate her curtsey and scurried after her.  At the serving hatch, Stanford grabbed a pitcher of foaming beer in each hand.

 

“Grab two,” she whispered.  She seemed to be able to communicate in a quiet tone that would not carry to masters or mistresses.

 

“What about the other two tables?”

 

“What about them?  Our job is to keep our tables happy, to serve our men.  The kitchen will just have to draw two more pitchers for the Dirt Girl’s tables.  Watch what I do and follow.”

 

Stanford turned towards her table, and I followed.  Just before she reached her table, she dipped each of her nipples right into the foam on the top of the beer pitcher, leaving foam on her tits.  Her table cheered.  She knelt, putting one pitcher down beside her.  The other she held to her belly and the pulled up between her breasts to her lips.  She kissed one side of the pitcher, and then poured out four glasses, kissing the lip of each glass, then holding out the glass to one of her men.

 

I quickly did the same.  The beer felt funny on my breasts, but I tried not to be clumsy, as I served each individual at my table.  As I served the man who had said I was moist, I said to him, “I hope my nipples are moist enough for you Master.”

 

He laughed as his finger removed the beer foam from one of my nipples.

 

One of the other men smacked my bottom, “You speak when you are spoken to girl. Keep on serving with your mouth shut.”

 

“Until we want it open of course,” said the man who said I was moist.  I was pleased to be found pleasing by one of the men, and the other man wasn’t too upset. His smack had been more affectionate than hard.

 

I ignored the shouts of anger and disappointment coming from the Dirt Girls’ tables and watched Fliss and Kimmie finish serving wine to the head table.  Their serving was much more intricate and sensuous than anything Stanford had attempted.  It was breathtakingly openly sexual, the way they made love to those wine glasses!

 

The head table all had their wine, and the table at which Stanford and I served all had their beer.  The Dirt Girls were making a clumsy job of getting beer to their tables. It seemed as though they had thought their task complete when they had plunked the beer down on the table.  There were a couple of yelps as they were instructed that they were to kneel when serving, and to pour daintily into the glasses.  Dainty will always be beyond these women, I think, but maybe these men have ways of training.

 

Mr Wilson Frick, the older Mr Frick, was standing with a wine glass in his hand.  He was staring down at the two tables still being served beer.

 

“When everyone is completely ready,” he started.  Kimmie and Fliss looked distressed at the lack of decorum, while Stanford and I had to conceal our happiness at the negative attention our rival slaves had attracted.  I was grateful she had helped me, even though she looked down on me as working class.

Finally Mr Frick spoke.  “We have had another hard day of riding and routing out the ones who attacked the Lazy F and the other ranch lands.  Fortunately, today we have had no losses and we look forward to an even better day tomorrow. You have all done well.  Rise and drink a toast.

 

            “To our Home Stone, The Cornerstone of the Ranch.

            It is set as the Cornerstone of our Ranch House,

            It is the Cornerstone of our values.

            It is set upon the solid rock of the land of the Lazy F

            The Stone upon the Rock.”

 

All the men rose to drink the toast.  I kept my eyes on Fliss and Kimmie.  They knelt in Nadu, and following that lead, so did I.  There was a slap as Dirt Four was pushed to her knees.

 

            “The Stone upon The Rock.”

 

The men practically shouted the response.  As they finished, I saw Fliss and Kimmie curtsey to the head table.  My ears heard the sound of dishes being placed on the serving hatch behind me.  As Fliss and Kimmie started forward, I quickly rose and curtseyed to my own table and hurried to the hatch.  Kimmie smiled at me as she was carrying a sizzling platter of starters towards the head table.  I smiled back.  I did not want to make enemies of the head slaves.  

 

Stanford squeezed my hand as we stood next at the hatch. “You learn fast. You might survive this.”

 

The boy at the serving hatch grinned at me.  

 

“Only one platter each girls, I saw what you did earlier with the beer. Don’t try that again.”  His voice was stern, but his grin remained. He moistened his finger and removed some of the dried beer foam from my breast.

 

“Use those little clothes there to carry the platters, they’re hot.”

 

As I turned away to return with the food to my men, Dirt Two tried to trip me.  I recovered without spilling the platter, though I had to steady it with my other hand, the one without the cloth protection.  The boy was right, the platters were very hot.  I heard the boy tell the Dirt girls to take the platters to their masters.  He did not warn them about the heat of the platters or tell them to use the hot clothes to cover their hands.  When you are a slave, being sulky and clumsy has its consequences.

 

In the slave pens, Stanford, Reading, and Sarah, my old friend, were my sisters.  These others were more of my enemies. When you are a prisoner or a slave, I was finding, relationships are stark and without nuance.

 

At the table, I curtseyed, and then knelt.  I held the platter close to my body without touching it, then placed it before my masters. 

 

“Be careful with the platter, masters, it is hot.”  

 

“Yum, Prairie oyster, fried with onions and garlic, such a delicacy.” One of the cowboys was almost salivating.

 

“Almost as hot as Inge here, and even more tasty.”

 

The smell was wonderful.  I truly wanted some.  I hoped they might take pity on a slave.

 

“Don’t kneel there with your mouth open, girl.  If you want something to put in your mouth, crawl under the table and serve me.”  It was the fourth man, the one who had not spoken at all until now.

 

I swallowed my disappointment and crawled under the low table and unzipped his fly, took out his penis and served him with my mouth.  As I served, Smith reached under the table and wiped his greasy hands on my body.  I could smell the meat, and the onions and garlic as the men continued to eat, and I continued to serve.

 

I was a slave, serving my masters.