'You understand, do you not,' asked Mahpiyasapa of the girl, 'that the words alone were sufficient, that in speaking them you became a slave, even if you were not a slave before?'
'Yes, Master,' she said. Matters such as intention, as I have earlier indicated, are in such cases irrelevant to the legal enactments involved.
'What is your name?' asked Mahpiyasapa.
'I have no name,' she said.
'These women are slaves,' said Mahpiyasapa, turning to the council. 'No longer is it fitting that they be subjected to the honorable death of a free woman.'
The council grunted its agreement.
'The sentence then,' said Mahpiyasapa, 'is rescinded.'
The girls looked up at him, elated.
'Now give them to the woemn,' said a man.
'They will be pleased to get them,' said another.
'That should have been done in the first place,' said another.
'Please, no,' begged she who had been Bloketu.
'As slaves,' said Mahipyasapa to the girls, 'you may now be subjected to lengthy and insidious tortures, and not even necessarily for crimes, at so little as the whim of a master.'
The girls looked at him, trembling, their eyes wide with terror.
'Give them to the women,' laughed a man.
'Take us as slaves, 'begged she who had been Bloketu.
'Please, Masters!' wept she how had once been the proud Iwoso.
'I do not accept you as slaves of the Kaiila,' said Mahpiyasapa.
The girls shuddered, rejected.
'Is there any here,' asked Mahipyasapa, 'who would accept these slaves?'
No one spoke.
'Give them to the women,' said a man.
'Give them to the women!' cried several of the man.
'Please, Master,' cried she who had been Bloketu, suddenly, turning and throwing herslef to her shoulder, and then to her belly, before Cuwignaka. She kissed his moccasins fervently, lying bound on her belly before him. 'Please, Master,' she begged, weeping, 'please accept me as a slave!'
Iwoso threw herself on her belly, on the rock, before Hci. 'I am a slave!' she wept. 'Please, Master, do not let them give me to the women!' Her tears flowed copiously, staining the rock and his moccasins. Her body trembled. Her small wrists moved helplessly behind her, confined in their tight thongs. Her lips pressed again and again to his moccasins, covering them with pleading, desperate kisses. 'I beg you, Master!' she wept. 'Please, please accept me as a slave!'
He crouched down, and turned her to her side, that she might look up at him. 'You said you would rather die than to be my slave.' he said.
'I lied,' she said. 'I lied! I am a slave! You may punish me for such things!'
'I often wondered,' said Hci, 'if you might not have been a slave.'
'You see now it is true, Master!' she said.
He regarded her.
'But not only am I a slave,' she said. 'I am your slave!'
'My slave?' he asked.
'For years,' she said, 'I have known that I was your slve. Surely, too, you, when you looked upon me, must have known that you were my master!'
Hci said nothing.
'These things were confirmed at the post,' she said, 'when you taught me my sex, and your power!'
Hci regarded her, not speaking. His face was expressionless.
'I ask only,' she said, 'the opportunity to prove to you that I am worthy of being owned.'
He stood up, his arms crossed. He was lean and strong, in the breechclout.
'Give them to the women!' cried a man.
'Give them to the women!' cried men.
'No,' said Cuwignaka.
The men were suddenly silent, startled.
'I accept this woman,' he said, indicating she who had been Bloketu, 'as my slave.'
She who had been Bloketu laid her cheek on the rock beside his moccasins, shuddering.
'Give that one to the women!' cried a man, indicating she who had been Iwoso.
'No,' said Hci, his arms folded, surveing the men. 'She is my slave.'
'So be it,' said Mahpiyasapa. 'The matter is done.' He, then, and the others, began to disperse.
Iwoso lay shuddering at Hci's feet, helpless.
'You are Cespu,' said Cuwignaka to she who had been Bluketu.
'Yes, my Master,' she said. In Kaiila, the word 'cespu' means 'wart.'
'You are Cesli,' said Hci to she who had been Iwoso.
'Yes, my master,' she said, named. The word 'cesli' in Kaiila means 'dung,' that of either men or animals. Among the Kaiila such names as Cespu and Cesli are not uncommon for slaves.
I looked about. Cuwignaka and Cespu, and Hci and Cesli, and I, were alone at the trail summit. I decided that perhpas it was time to take my leave, as well.
Cuwignaka, gently, was untying the ankles of Cespu.
'A slave begs boon,' said Cesli to Hci.
'Yes,' asked Hci.
'Please untie my ankles, Master,' she said.
'Why?' he asked.
'That I may serve my master,' she said.
I withdrew from the summit of the trail and, in a few moments, stood high on the escarpment, looking over the plains. The horizons in the Barrens are vast and beautiful.
I looked down, once again, to where the barricade had been previously place. There, near the trail's summit, about a hundred feet to my right and a few feet below me, on the ascendant, sloping, exposed surface of the trail, the cliff on one side, the wall on the other, slaves were in the arms of their masters.
I looked again then on the breadth of the Barrens, surveying them from the height of Council Rock, returning thereafter to my lodge.
Chapter 51
THE FLEER BRING A VISITOR TO CAMP
'They found it on the prairie,' said a man, 'the Fleer did. They have brought it here.'
Two stout ropes were on its neck, each slung to the saddle of a kaiila, on its opposite sides. Men with lances rode behind it. The creature was weak, and had been much bled. Its upper body was almost covered with ropes, binding its arms tightly to its sides. A heavy branch, about eighteen inches long and three inches thick, had been thrust between its jaws, and its jaws tied shut about it. The claws had been torn out of its feet.
'What is it?' asked a man.
'It is one of those who were with the Yellow Knives,' said a man, 'those defeated on the trail.'
This was the Kur I had come to think of as the eight Kur. It had been apparently separated from its companions at the time of the massacre of the wagon train and the fight between the soldiers and the savages. I had met it once before, when it had returned to the field to feed. It was that Kur which had been threatening the Waniyanpi, and whose attack I had frustrated. As we had not been similarly armed, it alone, afoot, and I with Grunt, he with an armed crossbow, and as it had not rushed upon me, I had not contested its withdrawl from the field. Such had seemed in accordance with codes to which I had once subscrived, codes which I had never
