'Thank you, Master,' she said.
'Perhaps I will feed you,' I said.
'Thank you, Master,' she said.
'You may approach,' I said, 'on all fours.'
'Thank you, Master,' she said. She crawled toward me, on all fours, in the narrow pit. I put small pieces of pemmican in my hand. She fed from my hand. I put more pemmican in my hand. I then lowered my hand. I felt her kissing, nibbling and licking at my hand, taking the pemmican from it. I put more pemmican in my hand and the lowered it still further. I felt her hair on my body. She nibbled and kissed at my hand, delicately removing pemmican from it, her head following my hand, as I lowered it yet further, and then, with extreme delicacy, with tenderness and gentleness, she nibbled and kissed at my body. 'Master desires his slave,' she whispered.
'No,' I said, restraining myself. I thrust her back. 'Go to your place, Slave,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said, and returned to her palce.
'I must remain alert,' I said. 'I must keep my senses sharp.'
'Yes, Master,' she smiled.
I noted that she knelt now in her place, rather than sat there. I did not effect anything cirtical. I had merely ordered her to return to her place. I had not specified that she was to sit there.
I threw her the water bag. She kissed the spike, softly, tenderly, watching me. Then, unexpectedly, mischievously, she quickly swirled her tongue about the spike, and kissed it again. She then took it deeply into her mouth and lifted the bag, holding it with both hands.
'It is ot necessary to drink like that,' I said.
She put her head back yet further, and drank more.
Holding the water bag as she did, high, with her head back, arched her back and lifted the line of her breasts, beautifully. She had turned subtly, displaying herself to me in profile.
I observed how she drank.
'You are a lascivious slave, Mira,' I informed her.
She turned her belly to me, still drinking. The water bag now prevented her from seeing me.
Unable to see me, with her hands high, and occupied, she could be easily approached and, unexpectedly, embraced, or attacked.
I wondered if I should have permitted her clothing. Perhaps if I had given her some clothing she would have been less distracting. Yet as a lsave is clothed her clothing is often less of a concealment than it is a device to make her seem more vulnerable, more helplessly, whether she wishes it or not, tantalizingly attractive. The clothing of a slave is usually little more than an invitation to its removal, and her rape. The collar, too, of course, and she is already in a collar, a leather-rope collar, makes her exquisitely attractive, indicating her status, that she is only a lovely, owned she-animal, to be done with as one pleases.
'It is enough,' I said, angrily.
She brought the water back down. 'I did not mean to drink too much water,' she said, innocently. She replaced the leather cap on the spike of the water bag.
I took the water bag back from her, and put it beside me. 'Sit,' I told her.
'Yes, Master,' she said, and sat down, with her back against the other side of the pit.
She began to play with the narrow, dangling, braded rawhide rope ends of her leather-rope collar, that which I had put on her in the vicinity of the compound of the Waniyanpi. She fiddled with them, and sometimes jerked on them, showing me, thustly, as though inadvertently, that the collar was still fastened on her.
'Master,' she said.
'Yes,' I said.
She looked at e, and, as though not knowing what she was doing, drew on the rope ends, holding them out a bit from her body. This demonstrated, as though thoughlessly, the possible leash function of the rope ends.
'Yes?' I said, irritably.
'I am sorry I drank too much water,' she said.
'You are doubtless tired,' I said, 'and should rest. Lie down, on your side.'
'Yes, Master,' she said, and lay down, on her side, her head away from me, one of her feet drawn up more than the other. She lay looking at the side of the dirt pit, her head in the crook of her left arm.
'You are a pretty slave,' I said.
'Thank you, Master,' she said.
'The rawhide rope on your ankle looks well,' I told her. This was the rope which I had tied on her ankle earlier, before I had ordered her into the pit. Its other end was looped twice about the hobbling log.
'My master put it on me,' she said. 'Thank you, Master.' Women look well in bonds. The purpose of this bond, however, was her own protection. I wondered if she understood that. Perhaps she thought it was merely to hold her in the pit with me. But my will alone could have done that. She was a slave.
She stretched a bit. How maddeningly desireable are slaves!
If, outside the pit, she shoulc panic, and try to run, she might, by the rope on her ankle, be kept from doing so; that might save her life; similarly, if she should be paralized with fear and find herself unable to move, it might be used to drag her back into the pit. Also, of course, if, unfortunately, she should be seized, it might give us some time to encourage her captor, with blows, and lances and cries, to release her, before it could break and she could be carried off.
'Must you lie like that?' I asked.
'It is the shape of my body, Master,' she said. 'It is my hope that you do not find me displeasing.'
Light filtered into the pit.
Similar pits, though much smaller, are used for the capture of the taloned Herlit. In the case of the Herlit it is dragged bodily into the pit. There it may be delt with in various ways. It may be strangled; it may be crushed beneath the knees, with the hunter's weight; or it may be put on its belly, its back to be broken by a swift blow of the foot. This avoids damaged to the feathers. It is not easy to kill such a bird with the bare hands, but that is the perscribed methodology. It is regarded as bad form, if not bad midicine, to use a weapon for such a purpose. An adult Herlit is often four feet in height and has a wingspan of some seven to eight feet. The hunter must beware of being blinded or having an artery slashed in the struggle. The fifteen tail feathes are perhaps most highly prized. They are some fourteen to fifteen inches in height, and yellow with black tips. They are particularly significant in the marking of coups. The wing, or pinion, feathers, are used for various ceremonial and religious purposes. The breath feathers, light and delicate, from the base of the bird's tail, are used, with the tail feathers, in the fashioning of bonnets or complex headdresses. They, like the wing feathers, may also be used for a variety of ceremonial or religious purposes. The slightest breeze causes them to move, causing the headdress to seem almost alive. It is probably from this feature that they are called 'breath feathers.' Each feather, of course, and its arrangement, in such a headdress, can have its individual meaning. Feathers from the right wing or right side of the tail, for example, are used on the right side of the headdress, and feathers from the left wing or left side of the tail are used on the left side of the headdress. In the regalia of the red savages there is little that is meaningless or arbitrary. To make a headdress often requires several birds. To give you an idea of the value of Herlits, in some places two may be exchanged for a kaiila; in other places, it takes three to five to purchase a kaiila. We were not today, however, hunting Herlits.
'Master is looking at me,' she said.
I looked away from her, angrily. Then I looked back at her, again.
She lay naked in the pit, before me, on her left side, her head in the crook of her left arm, her right leg, the braided-rawhide rope on its ankles, drawn up a bit more than her left. She was exquisitly curvaceous. Doubtless she knew well how she lay before me. I wondered if she should be beaten or caressed, whipped or raped.
Sometimes slaves are skillful in immeshing masters in the toils of their beauty. How often do they conqure us with their softness! How often are we the vicuims of their delicious, insidious chamrs and wiles! What drums and alarms are found, upon occasion, in their glances and smiles. What battalions can march in a tearful eye and a trembling lip. What potent strategies can lurk in the line of a breast or the turn of a hip. How a bent knee and a bowed head can wrench a man's guts. Helplessness and vulnerablility seem strange shields; how implausible is gentleness as an insturment of diplomacy; what an unlikely weapon is her tenderness. Who is most powerful, I wondered, the master or the slave? Then I realized that it is the master who is most powerful for he may, if he wishes, put her on the block and sell her or dispose of her in any way he pleases. In the end, in the final analysis,
