On the Banks of the Bighorn Chapter Thirty – by Tracker

 

Slave Inge’s Narrative

 

Each day, as our processing continues, I am less and less able to think about life before I was collared.  All in our group are what the cowboys call red silk, opened to the use of men.  We have all husbands, or partners, or boyfriends and have known the pleasures of sex. Even the young wyld wyman, Luta, who grew up in the men despising camps has known a man or two.  She whispered to me that when she made her first capture of a man she was allowed to tie and then mount and ride him until she orgasmed.

 

In my present condition this seems strange now.  It seems like it is backward to what is normal.  A cowboy came yesterday and used her right over the water trough.  She cried out and the unprocessed women in the other corral mocked and jeered at her. The cowboy was still putting her to use, with her hands tied together and the rope holding her bend over when the rest of us gathered by the fence between the unprocessed and we the processed and we threatened them.  We are in greater numbers than they and they shrank back.  It is well for them that there is a fence between their part of the corral and ours.  The harshest condemnation came from the stripped rancher’s women who had been condemned for being captured and raped.

Luta’s mother, Velma, was strongest in her defence of her daughter crying out in passion as Aaron the Cowboy rode her daughter to ecstasy.

 

“You have never made a man happy as he used you.  To mount you was just a chore as you lay there, frigid and cold, not daring to move!”

 

The stripped women soldiers looked angry.  We went back to our training as the captured, unprocessed women watched intently as Luta was used.  Velma, her mother, stood near her, encouraging her to move her hips more and to gain as much experience as she could.  She whooped when Luta had a slave orgasm.

 

We have all surely been processed into sluts.  For not only have we all been opened for use, but we are constantly open for men.  When we kneel, as we must in the presence of any male, we kneel with our legs spread wide, making sure it is clear how open we are.  When we look up at a man in adoration, our lips are open a little, making sure that it is clear we belong to the masters, that our bodies are always open.  In whatever modality we are commanded to display ourselves, we are open for use at all times.  Sometimes we may even be ordered to hold open our bottoms.  I myself have had that done to me twice, my collar closely chained to a wall.  

 

With no clothes or scanty clothes, we cannot pretend we are not women, we cannot pretend to be equal persons, that we are not sexual beings.

The cowboy Aaron has finished with Luta now.  He has unroped her from the water trough.  She watched, her eyes shining, as he walked from the corral to his horse.  “Master Wilson Frick promised Aaron that he could have me as a slave.  I was afraid then, now I look forward to it.” 

 

A couple of cowboys have come to our corral now.  They are making girls run, then lassoing them and tying them with two arms and leg together. 

They measure the time it takes each one to lasso and tie a girl.  There is great competition.

 

One man lassoed Reading three times in succession, the third time he did not release her, but took her, roped as she was, right there.  Reading was eager for use, and Harvard, with her big soft breasts, knelt beside her, watching intently, their old institutional rivalries long forgotten.  When the cowboy reached out and stroked Harvard’s breast while still riding Reading, Harvard sighed and cried, “take me, take me.”

 

The unprocessed on the other side of the fence tutted and watched intently. So did a couple of Free Women from the ranch house, until they were shooed away by an old granny.

 

The old Inge Carlsen would have felt nothing but disgust for Luta and Reading, but Slave Inge is just jealous of them. When I was Miss Inge Carlsen, I would never have admitted to anyone that in my first year at the photographic Institute, her professor had bound her hands and blindfolded her before having intercourse with me. Later I was both jealous and relieved when another girl had supplanted me in his affections. That girl disappeared at the end of term. When I was helping clean out her room, I found a picture of her, naked at his feet drinking from a glass he was holding as he dined in his room.  I did not turn in the photo. It would have raised too many questions about my own behaviour. I stuffed it in the bottom of my photographic trunk. Occasionally, I would take it out and look at it. 

 

Slave Tiffani’s Narrative

 

While we waited for the friends of the man Master Patrick had killed, we sat around in our camp and chatted, pretending everything was normal.  Juli and I were dressed as Free Women, which made me very nervous and uncomfortable. The clothes themselves felt unnatural and uncomfortable, and of course, being clothed as a Free Woman made me very nervous.  Such a pretence was strictly forbidden. I just wanted to tear off this disguise, which denied my status as a branded kajira. I felt so stiff and inhibited.

 

My eyes darted around the camp.  I could not imagine where Master Patrick had hidden the bodies. I didn’t think there had been time to dismantle the woodpile, conceal the bodies there and rebuild it again.  Maybe it was under that pile of last year’s leaves?  No, it could not be there, they were matted and half rotted and clearly hadn’t been moved.  The only thing I could imagine is that Master Patrick had chopped them up and placed them in the food store hanging from the branch of a tree to keep it away from animals.  If so, he must have chopped them very fine.

 

I noticed that Master Patrick had pulled up and hidden the stakes he had used to secure us slaves.  Everything looked like a normal camp. This was so hard to imagine after the carnage of just a half hour ago.  There had been dirt spread over the place where the scruffy man had died. There had been pools of blood where Master Patrick had cut his throat and where the man’s half severed hand had flopped.  The axe with which Master had split open the skull of the other man spreading blood and brains everywhere was all cleaned up as well; the axe cleaned and put away.  Our camp seemed so normal after all the blood of just a little while ago. I am not used to all this blood and death, even though Fliss and I were in the Navy.  We were cooks, aka Culinary Specialists, and Culinary Specialists don’t get involved in killing and fighting.

 

To pass the time, Master Patrick told of the first girl he had collared.  Juli protested that she was the first girl Master had collared.

 

“I collared you first with rope, this was later, the first girl I put a steel collar on was in town, when I was buying supplies and your collar.  I was trying to find the right size collar for you, so I had her try on different sizes trying to extrapolate your size from hers.  Once I had figured out your size and picked out one in that size that I thought would suit you, I took one that fit the girl in the store and clicked it tight around her throat.  Then I paid for both collars, your and hers and left the shop with the keys.  I wonder if she ever got it off. I expect the store had a master key.  It was a good joke though.”

 

I just looked at Master Patrick in admiration.  He surely could not know the effect of hearing the click of the lock on a girl as the collar encircles her throat!  Or how it makes her feel, wearing the collar of a man, a collar she cannot remove.  She feels so vulnerable and yet protected. But Master Patrick had collared her and walked away!  How she must feel, owned and abandoned both.  The poor girl must have been frantic!  It proves one thing though. Master Patrick is a natural master. He must have always had the instincts.  They were just not released until now.

 

Slave Viki’s narrative.

 

My orders finally came today from my Master.  I am to leave Town and take a bus to Billings to meet him.  Patricia, the hotel chambermaid, brought me a FedEx envelope this morning with money and a ticket. At first I thought it was crazy that He would come here, so close to the Fricks when we need to find and silence Fred, the agent, we hired to spy on the Fricks.  The whole operation went sideways when Fred turned into a double agent, using the Gorean communication technology Master gave him to attack the Fricks on behalf of someone else.

 

I could have warned of such a danger, but I was not consulted!  I am just a slave, never mind all my experiences in computers and technology, and my time running ops for the Kurii. So why is Master coming to Billings?  Why to consult with the Fricks!  The Fricks have called in Master and his security group to hunt down Fred! He is the best, but what irony.

 

This tells me that the Fricks have totally beaten off the attack and are secure at the ranch, or else they would never have revealed to the other Families that they had been vulnerable.  Now they can boast of their strength.

 

It would never occur to Master that I would take the ticket and the money and disappear.  He is sure that I am a loyal slave.  (Which I am).  He likely thinks though that the connected slave anklet I have would make it easy to find and control me.  As If.  I could easily hack that piece of technology, advanced though it is.  But I am a slave, even if an unsatisfied one.

 

Patricia wants an anklet like mine.  She thinks it is pretty.  Which it is. I will say this for the Goreans, they design all their objects with beauty in mind.  A beautiful anklet does enhance the beauty of a girl, even me. I will recommend to Master that we mail her one.  Once she locks it on, she is ours.  Subliminal messaging will encourage her to seek us out.  The programming in her sleep will be irresistible.  It will amuse Master to steal a woman out from under the noses of the Fricks.  And why would I betray a girl who was friendly to me into the collar? Well, she is discontented here. The collar will release her from her unwanted freedom. And I need to do something to get back into Master’s good graces. This whole Lazy F operation went bad, and I will be blamed, what with being a slave and all.

 

Maybe we will become Chain Sisters.  I am very lonely.  I know I grew up and still am an introvert. It is very hard for me to summon the energy to be with people for longer than an hour or so.  I grew up a solitary child from an English speaking family in French Montreal.  By choice I was solitary.  Being able to work alone is part of what drew me to coding, and to my fascination with long distance communication.  I couldn’t connect with the other Kajirae due to my introversion any more than I could connect with a Master.

 

It is so hard to be with people.  I have been introspective these last five days, alone in my hotel room in this little town where good tea is unknown.  Cut off by my Master’s order from using my computer or phone I have thought a good deal about why I could not convince any of my Masters to send me for training as a pleasure slave.  Closeness is hard for an introvert when it means closeness all the time. So it is difficult, even though I really want to, to be that slave girl, the one who is able to so easily communicate her needs, and desires.  I mean, I have them, but by the time I summon the energy to rub up against a master, some other more extroverted girl is already there. But when I am chosen, I don’t have the training to truly impress, to make the master want to summon me again. But without impressing, I am stuck without training, a mat girl who is good at comms and operations.  

 

I mean, I thrive working alone in the back rooms, but I would like to be taken out for short periods of time and truly used as well.  I burn with slave fires that I can’t express.

 

What I need is a quiet master, a scholar, who would give me a task and leave me alone to complete it.  I don’t want to be sent out of the house to run the streets, the Kur gods forbid. Just set me a task, give me three bowls of Nutri-girl a day and a good tumble in the furs once or twice a day.  Which, apparently, is too much to ask.

 

But here, talking twice a day with Patricia, I felt a real connection, like we could really be friends.  And since I am collared, at least metaphorically when I am on a mission, we can only be friends if she is collared too. So I dream.

 

We had a nice moment yesterday.  I was sitting by the window around noon, when she brought me fresh sheets. I was looking out as a woman when a free woman came down the street.  Her stride seemed a little less than the stride of a free woman.  A slave girl can tell such things. I pointed her out to Patricia, noting the stylish bandana she wore tied around her neck.

 

Patricia told me her name was Janice, that she worked in Hardware at the General Store, and there was a bit of a scandal around her.

 

“A few days ago she was working in Hardware when a man came in looking for something to tie up his pet. Well Mr Williams who handles that part of Hardware was not in that day until noon.”  Patricia lowered her voice.  “That meant Janice had to go behind the curtain.”

 

“The curtain?”

 

The curtain that hides certain goods from general view, especially from the view of decent women and children. They sell fetish stuff back there.  Well this customer wasn’t looking for a collar for a pet he was looking for a collar for a girl!  One of those kinds of girls.”

 

From the way her voice rose and her speech quickened, I surmised that Patricia had thought about those kinds of girls and that ‘fetish stuff’ more than a good woman ought to.

 

“This man judged the size of the collar for his girl, by the size that fit Janice.  And do you know what he did then?  He chose a collar for his girl, and he took it to the counter.  But then he went back and locked the other collar on Janice.  Before she could object, he had paid for both collars and left the store, with Janice just standing there, a collar from ‘behind the curtain’ on her throat.  She was so embarrassed, and they wouldn’t even let her go home and she had nothing to cover it up with.  So shaming!”

 

Patricia sounded really pleased and excited by Janice’s shame. I wondered what Janice felt as she heard the collar lock click.  No girl forgets the first time she hears that sound.

 

“Why didn’t she take it off? Surely the store had a key?”

 

“They wouldn’t give her the key!  They pointed out that the collar did not belong to her – the strange man had paid for it, so they couldn’t give her the key to a collar she didn’t own. She went to the Farrier’s shop, and then the Feed Mill, even the slaughterhouse, anywhere they might have a torch to cut the collar off, but of course they wouldn’t.”

 

“Because the collar didn’t belong to her.”

 

“Exactly. She even contacted the Frick Restraint people in Pittsburgh, who made the collar.  They said she could have a new key, but she would first have to send them the serial number.  And she couldn’t.”

 

“Why not, couldn’t she get someone to read the number off to her?”

 

“No, the serial number is on the inside of the collar, you can only read it when the collar is off.  Janice is stuck, I don’t know what she will do.  She will have to leave Town in shame to get it removed.”

 

I am sure that Patricia will be a good friend and Chain Sister to me.  I need one, I am so lonely.

 

Tonight I get on the bus and travel to Billings to meet my Master. I must get him to send a properly programmed anklet to Patricia; one she can’t remove any more than Janice can remove her collar.

 

Patrick Master’s Narrative

 

So we waited and chatted nervously while waiting for the enemy to appear. I sipped my coffee, while Juli and Tiffany did the same.  We were all seated at the table, the girls continuing their imposture as Free Women. Tiffani especially, I noticed, was stiff and uncomfortable in her hiking clothes.  Good, I thought, there would be little trace of the grace of a collared slave. I had still not told them where I had buried the bodies.  If they knew, I was sure they would give the position away to the enemy by constantly looking in that direction when the enemy came.  Even studiously not looking in that direction would have the same effect.  Nothing must be done to arouse any suspicion whatsoever.

 

We heard the enemy before we saw them, The ATVs were noisy and unnatural sounding in the calm western air.  An alien sound.  Four ATVs came towards us from the north, while another two came from the south.  Just as well that we had not tried to flee either north or south along the river.  They drove slowly towards our camp, trying not to give out an air of menace, I suppose. They might as well as not bothered, as six ATVs ridden by men in camo, with rifles on the back is going to appear menacing to a camp with two women and only one man, far from civilization.

 

The rider of the lead ATV put up his right hand, like a cavalry captain in an old movie and the ATVs pulled up and parked.  The riders dismounted.  Two of them were women, but I guessed they would not be there if they could not shoot.

 

The leader smiled. 

 

“Hi, I’m Jim Reno. My friends and I have been hunting and we are looking for a way to get up the bank on this side of the Bighorn.”

 

I did not mention that it was not hunting season at all this time of year, except maybe for small vermin. 

 

“I’m Patrick Masters, these are my friends, Juliette and Teresa.”  I did not use their slave names, as the less they connected us with the Fricks and the Lazy F on the other side of the river, the better.  The girls did not get up.  I was pleased to see that.  Slaves would have to rise and then kneel in the presence of Free Men and Women.  I had been worried that especially Tiffani would not be able to resist that ingrained impulse if she had started to move.

 

“Can I get you some coffee?” 

 

“No thanks, we are looking for friends of ours, so we can get off the riverbank and up to the road above the valley.”

 

“You can’t get up there from here.  In this area the cliffs are quite steep and you have to have climbing gear. I think if you go further along the banks it becomes easier.” Reno nodded as I continued. “Were your friends on ATVs too?  We saw a couple of guys on ATVs about an hour ago.”

 

The girls started a bit when I admitted seeing the men I had killed. But there was no gain in denying it.  This group may have seen tracks or other evidence their friends had come this way. Mentioning it made it all seem natural, as though we had nothing to hide.  There must be no suspicion I had hidden two bodies!

 

“We only had a very short conversation.  The last I saw of their ATVs they were headed for the river, downstream I think.”

 

Nothing like telling the exact truth, even if it is not the complete story. If anyone is ever questioned, that is the best strategy.  

 

We then talked about inconsequential things: weather and fishing. I could see Jim Reno thought something was off, but he wasn’t sure what.  The two women with the group were strutting a bit around Juli and Tiffani. They were giving themselves airs, like soldiers around civilians. The pistols at their belts gave them confidence, I suppose.

 

We talked about nothing.  I was so very careful not to give anything away. I did not want to reveal any knowledge at all about the ranches on the other side of the river, let alone that I knew that there had been a range war.  The seconds just seemed to drag.  Where were the riders from the Lazy F?

Jim Reno probed again and again and I blandly countered.  Years of lawyering, years of negotiations had made me a master of this game. I changed subjects, I deflected hidden probes, I made us seem clueless city people just out for a little camping.  All the time I was listening for the sound of horses.  Where were the riders of the Lazy F?

 

One of the women in camo jostled Juli as she reached for some coffee.  Juli just smiled sweetly.  Even dressed as a Free Woman named Juliette, she would not push back of course. One of the other men interrupted Jim Reno, asking brusquely what we knew of what was across the river.

 

“Just some ranch land, I guess. Boring stuff.  The deputy told us not to trespass there.”

 

Reno looked angry that one of his subordinates had interrupted him. Their discipline must have been breaking down under the strain of losing and being hunted by the Lazy F. Add the uncertainty of where their other detachment was and these people were getting very jumpy, which made them more dangerous.  Reno was edgy.  He knew something was off, but he didn’t know what.  Clearly it bothered him but he could make no headway against my bland front and the girl’s silence.

 

He brushed around his face, like he was brushing away a fly.  I saw why when a red dot appeared on his forehead.  Then there was a black hole where the dot had been and I heard a flat crack.  Reno dropped.  I jerked into the man next to me, sending him careening into the two women in camo. The three of them tumbled into a heap of tangled arms and legs.  There was more of the cracks, gunfire I realized.  The man I had knocked down stood up and just as suddenly fell over.

 

The two enemy women were trying to engage, but I knocked one down with a blow, and grabbed the other and forced her to the ground.

 

Just that quickly it was all over. I took out one of the pieces of rope I always carry and tied the hands of the woman I had forced to the ground.  Women who try to engage in combat must keep men at a distance, otherwise their lack of strength condemns them to lose.  The ancient Amazons used arrows and bows, but when the Greeks could close with them, they were easily conquered.

 

As I finished tying one of the women, a cowboy had finished securing the other.  He said, “beat you, got mine tied first.”

 

I nodded, “likely more practice.  My knot is neater though.”

 

The two women squirmed and complained until the cowboy, who I recognized as Smith, who had been here earlier with Woodrow Frick, cut the arms off their jackets and stuffed the cloth in their mouths.

 

I helped Juli and Tiffani, no longer Juliette and Teresa, out from under the table, where they had prudently taken shelter.

 

I nodded politely to Woodrow Frick as he strode towards us. He frowned as he noticed how Juli and Tiffani were dressed.

 

“My orders,” I said, “to deceive the enemy. I don’t usually have them dressed like this.  In fact they aren’t usually dressed at all.”

 

He ignored that.  

 

“Almost done now.  Our reports were that there were eight in this group, the last group of them there was.  We got six, and once we get the last two, we will be done with this.”

 

“But there are eight here.  The other two are buried under the tent.”

 

Frick, Smith, and the two slaves just looked at me. One of the bound girls cried.  One of the dead men must have been her lover.