After the Bighorn, Chapter 20

The Bighorn River rises in Wyoming as the Wind River and flows north from the meeting of the waters flowing past the confluence with the Little Bighorn until it reaches the Yellowstone. The combined waters flow northwest until they join the rolling Missouri river. The rolling Missouri flows southeast until just south of St Louis it joins the Father of Waters himself, the ol’ man river, the Mississippi, not as long as the Missouri, but mightier. Combined again, the waters flow south, sometimes lazily, sometimes with stormy power until it reaches its delta, and in the delta, that Port Kar of Earthcities, the City of New Orleans. Ancient, brooding, filled with all the evils that have rolled with the waters, it sits. Full of old tales of missing sailors rolled in its bars and brothels, and farm boys come to no good in the same, it has been the ruin of many a poor soul. It is the same with all delta cities at the end of rivers and their joinings with the sea. An eternal story, from Alexandria, to Shanghai and Hong Kong, to Sydney and San Francisco. A place to make fortunes or to come to grief; a place to find a destiny.

But today our attention is far far upriver, up the Mississippi, the Father of Waters, up the rolling Missouri, up the Yellowstone of the upstart Dutton Clan and back up the Bighorn to a valley and ranch where first an Augie Frick built a cabin in 1797. In a secluded sheltered spot he built a cabin and their have been Fricks here ever since. Some of his family went east and made fortunes in steel and money in Pittsburgh and there have always been Fricks there as well. Two poles of a powerful family and clan

A little way northeast of where the main house now stands there are the corrals for the round-ups, where stock is gathered, and counted and sorted, and the mark of the Fricks, the Lazy F is placed upon them. For the Fricks are old-fashioned, believing in the old ways, marking their stock in the old way with a red-hot iron, as well, in some cases with the modern ear-tags.

In the round up area, there are two lines of corrals, separated by a wide street or avenue. At the end of the avenue is a curious structure, a plinth or platform topped with marble, like the base of an ancient Greek temple. It is 30 feet long and ten feet wide, the length running north to south. The east side is backed by some low rolling hills, but westward the structure looks across the plains to the mountains. To the left of the plinth are three small cabins, presumably for cooking or shelter. For its entire length on the westward side are five marble steps leading up from the ground to the flat top of marble.

In the fold of the badlands of the mountains, which mark the western demarcation of the Frick lands live the tribes of Wyld Wymen, with whom the Fricks are at armed truce, sometimes trading, sometimes fighting and raiding. They started arriving in the 1920s, or some perhaps a little earlier, women who were discontented with society and their place in it, women who feared men, or feared how they felt among men. They allowed no free man above the age of ten amongst them, although it is rumored that they sometimes maintain a few captive males for their own amusements and pleasure. They worship the moon rather than the sun, dancing strange dances to it and under it when the reflecting orb is full.  Northwest of the Lazy F is a reservation of native Americans, with whom the Fricks have been at peace for over two hundred years. The ranch is surrounded by smaller ranches, allied with the Fricks, sometimes working for them. They call themselves the traditional Families and follow some curious old ways.

Due north are squatters and survivalists, eking out a living on poor land, full of jealous fury at all around them. They envy their neighbors, and are surly towards outsiders.

 

The marble plinth has one more curious feature: There is a beam suspended over it, running longitudinally down the north south axis. The beam is supported by tripods at each end. One leg of each tripod is set at the front of the platform, meeting another rising from the rear, at their junction meeting with the third, which is set to meet them. From the beam a number of ropes hang down towards the floor of the plinth below. It is sometimes called the Lost and Strayed, and is for a particular type of Livestock kept on the Lazy F ranch.

It is towards this structure that the truck carrying Patrick Masters and his friend Gerald Reese came, with a naked slave Juli in a cage in the rear.

Narrative of the slave Juli

I had been here before, to these corrals and this display platform. It was where I first began my journey to what I am today, a helpless collared slave. Master Patrick and I had been camping in Montana, camping in a secluded box canyon on the other side of the Bighorn. It could only be reached by the river or by climbing down from above. Patrick, now my master, but then my almost-fiancé were climbers, we had climbed down into that secluded spot, that Eden. There we had played, like two innocents, like two children. There was no one to see us there. We had purchased an old paperback for fun. It was called Imaginative Sex. It was scenarios for couples. We made a bet, I lost. Patrick got to pick a scenario at random. Maybe Patrick cheated, maybe it was random; it could have been fate. Patrick chose Barbarian and Slavegirl. I was the Slavegirl. Patrick fashioned a rough rope collar for my throat: he was always good with knots. It was while we were playing that the river rose due to rains in the mountains. I was foolish, I was teasing Patrick by the rising waters when I was swept away.

I had landed a mile downriver on the opposite bank, climbing ashore, cold and wet. Naked, except for the rope collar around my neck, I could not cross back even though I am a good swimmer. The waters were too fast and too high. I climbed up the banks of the Bighorn onto rolling grasslands. Although I didn’t know it, I was on the Lazy F ranch; the property of the Fricks.

Patrick explained it to me later; how by coming on their land, uninvited and unescorted, with permission, I had made myself liable to slavery. For legally, by a quirk of history and international law, the Frick ranch was also a consulate of the Grand Duchy of Lutha. I hadn’t heard of it then, few people have. It is a European micro-country, one of those medieval survivals that persist into the twenty-first century, like that Vatican, or Lichtenstein. While the Vatican is a church, and Lichtenstein is a bank, Lutha, while bigger, is a vineyard and a silver mine. That is, it exports rare fine wine, and creates silverware and jewelry of excellent old fashioned beauty and craftsmanship. Few visit this small place, nestled in the mountains between Austria and the Balkans, just south of Ruritania, another micro-country.

The Grand Duchy’s is old fashioned in its crafting of wines and silver, and has other old-fashioned customs as well. For one, it never got around to outlawing slavery, especially female servitude. Persons can be enslaved for not paying their debts, and for trespassing on the grounds of the noble estates.

The Fricks, while American citizens were honorary nobility of Lutha, and protected by diplomatic laws, their American ranch, as a Luthan consulate, was protected by Luthan law. Which is a long-winded way of saying that slavery, especially female slavery was actually legal on the ranch. And by trespassing, I had made myself liable to such a law. I did not know that then of course, but I was cold and naked and night was coming. I found a hollow, out of the wind, and curled up for the night. A cow and her calf had had the same idea, and curled up next to her, their warmth kept me from freezing in the night.

The next day, the day I will never forget was sunny and hot. I found a puddle of water from which to drink, and started to make my way back to the river, to find my way back to Patrick. I was sure he must have been frantic and seeing me be swept away. But the water was still too high and fast to attempt a crossing. It was then I was found. The Fricks were doing their spring round-up of livestock on the ranch, to be brought in for counting, for the inoculations that cattle receive and for branding. Cowboys, actual cowboys on horses, found me. They were chasing the cow and calf that had been my salvation the night before and found me. They lassoed the cow, and they lassoed me as well. I think they would have thrown me to the ground and ravished me right then and there, except for the rope collar. It indicated to them that I was someone’s property. So they radioed for a truck. I was bound and foot and thrown into the back. It was thus I came to the lost and strayed platform for the first time.

Now, months later, here I was again, naked, wearing a steel collar coming again to the same platform. It was on that platform, that months ago, I had commenced my journey from pretended to be a slave in a game with Patrick, to being his slave in reality.

Today, there were four women on the platform, naked of course, the ropes from the great overhead beam attached to their collars. Two were quite pale, one of the others was a golden tan, and the fourth a light mocha. Master apparently knew one of them at least. It was one of the pale girls; he told Master Gerald, his friend, that her name was Nineteen, and she had tried to run away from the Frick Mansion in Pittsburgh. I was instantly jealous of her, I wondered if Master had been putting her to slave use while he was away. It was his right of course, but still I was jealous. She was very short, but with a tremendous set of tits.

And then Master left me there, while he and Master Gerald and two foremen from the ranch went to the Big House. Just me and the four other slaves. So we waited patiently, as slave must do.

The round-up corrals were empty today, there were no milling horses, people and livestock. When I was first displayed here, in all there were twelve of us, of various origins. I was the second to arrive; the first was a native American girl who had strayed onto the ranch trying to recover some of their livestock. Her people would be informed to come and get her, but until they arrived, she must be displayed on the platform, naked for all to see.

The next to arrive was a girl from the ranch, from one of the families that supported and worked for the Fricks. She had been discovered alone on the plains. One of the old women, the grannies, who enforced behavior among the Free Women, had examined her privately. When it was discovered she had been unchaste, had been opened by her lover, disgracing her family, she had been stripped and displayed between me and the native woman. She had cried, of course, but to no avail.

All of us on the platform were available to be touched and fondled, “just to see if someone owned us.” We were Lost or Strayed, we were displayed to see if someone would claim us. Over the day, in the hot sun, other women were added: two Danish tourists, who had been talking to Patrick and me when we were swept away. They were in kayaks, they had landed on the Frick ranch. They were displayed naked for claiming despite calling on the European Union to save them. Lutha is not part of the EU. They took it hard when they were caressed by the calloused hands of the cowboys. Like me and the others, their thighs, and butts, their breasts, their flanks were all assessed in a hands-on way. Fingers were inserted into them to determine how responsive they were.

Between me and the Danes were two Wyld Wymen, a mother and daughter, who had been captured by the ranch hands; they had been expelled by their band in one of the upheavals common in such groups. The daughter had been claimed by a boy adopted by a ranch family when he had been expelled from the group when he reached ten. They had been child hood playmates, now they were reunited as master and slave.

There were other women too, enemies of the Fricks, who had been caught in an assault on the ranch. Some were survivalists and squatters, some were actually fighters, mercenaries of whoever was behind the attempted takeover.

However we had come there, we were all displayed, for all to see and touch. It was that day, in the hot sun, that I realized that I was destined to be a slave. All day long the men touched me, fingered me, ogled me. I waited desperately for Patrick to come and save me, over the day I realized I wanted him to keep me for himself. At the end of the day, he arrived. He did not save me as a free woman; he claimed me as his slave. We returned to our canyon, over the next week, I became more and his property.  We had arrived on the Bighorn as friends, as people about to become engaged; when we left, it was as Master and Slave. I had ceased being Juliet Chen, BA in mathematics and become Juli, the Slavegirl.

I wondered why Master Patrick had brought me here; I knew he wanted to become the San Francisco consul of Lutha. He was a lawyer, he would not brand me until he could do so legally, he was a stickler for legalities. I did not want to feel the hot iron applying the brand to my thigh, but I did want to have been branded, to be Patrick’s legally.

I turned to the girl next to me, the one called Nineteen, “My name is Juli, is your name really Nineteen?”

The girl at the end, the one with the golden tan snapped at me. “You were not given permission to speak. In any case, that slut is in disgrace; she tried to escape her Masters.”

“Yes, Mistress”, I replied. Other slavegirls call the First Girl Mistress. I did not know if she was the First Girl over me, but I did not want to anger her.

“You may address me as Kailieka”, she continued. “Jade and I are here because these two sluts escaped while we were training them, it put us in disgrace due to them.”

Jade nodded, she was the mocha-colored girl. Between Jade and Nineteen was another girl, quite pretty, but not as top-heavy as Nineteen.

One of the foremen arrived, walking. He was the man who had transported the other women here to the platform.

“You are to come to the house now; you are wanted.”

He examined Nineteen and the other girl. “You are not branded; we don’t have unbranded livestock here, all beasts are marked.”

He did not chose to resist the urge to feel Nineteen’s boobs. He then checked the responsiveness of the next girl. He was very pleased as she writhed as he used his fingers to probe her.

“White silk”, he pronounced. “That won’t last long past your marking.”

“Yes Master,” she said. It was all she could say really, but she did not seem displeased.

He turned to me, “Your marking will be up to your Master. Why he hasn’t put the iron to your thigh is beyond me.”

I did not say anything. It was not up to me to explain my Master’s scruples to this man.

He formed us up then. Me first, as the tallest, the locking a chain to my collar, he attached next the responsive girl, then Jade, Kaileika and last the busty little slut. He made us walk behind him, our hands secured behind him leading us by a leash attached to the chain the quarter mile to the Big House. He seemed very skilled in handling Livestock like us.

Narrative of Patrick Masters.

Gerry Weiss did not pretend that the sight of the Big House was not a revelation to him. The ranch headquarters was a large three-story log structure, quite a beautiful place. The ancient logs had a wonderful patina. It was the women that he could not help staring at. Although clothed in short sleeveless tunics, with their bare legs and feet and collared necks it was clear that they were slaves. Again Gerry was learning that female servitude was not a game that Juli and I played, but a way of life, an actual reality in the twenty-first century. He did not know how to react: he wanted to react as a natural man, to take a female as his prey and property, and yet, he was a man of his upbringing and conditioning. He knew that by convention he should ‘rescue’ and ‘free’ them, but every fibre of his inner being struggled against such a course. I had taken a similar journey and I knew how he had reacted to Juli. I was in no doubt as to his final course of action.

 

As we entered into the main room, with its stone fireplace climbing three stories towards the log beams of the ceiling, a familiar figure rose from a leather armchair.  It was Franz Rupprecht, the chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lutha. We had met on the ranch earlier in the summer.

“Greetings, Mr Masters. I have good news for you.”