Time Slave

17

Brenda Hamilton laughed.

She had made good her escape.

Yesterday night she had fled from the group. The group had come, in the late afternoon, to a group of high, almost sheer cliffs. In them, here and there, high, some of them more than two hundred feet from the ground, there was a set of openings, leading to deep caves.

These were the shelters.

They were the home of the Men, and of their properties, their skins, their flints, and their women and children.

The cliffs, with their height, and the dark openings, had frightened Hamilton.

She was afraid to be owned in them.

Camp had been made at the foot of the cliffs, for the men must investigate the caves again, many with torches, to make certain that the cave bear had not, in their absence, claimed them as his own.

The group was in good spirits. The cave lion had been killed, and such beasts, preying on humans, were extremely rare. Many hides and much meat had been taken at the game camp, and the men had found salt; and much flint had been carried to the foot of the cliffs.

Brenda Hamilton, naked, thonged to Ugly Girl by the throat, her body aching from the weight of the flint sack, had, with the other women, thrown down the flint, and knelt with them, at the base of the cliffs, exhausted. No longer were she and the others hurried forward by the switches of Fox and Wolf. Her body had been struck many times. The other women, except Ugly Girl, were happy; they were home; Brenda Hamilton, her body aching from the weight of the stone, and stinging from the blows of switches which had encouraged her to carry it more swiftly, looked up at the cliffs; she was afraid; they were very high, and the dark openings frightened her; some of them were more than two hundred feet high in the cliff. Ugly Girl did not seem happy or unhappy; she seemed only stupid, docile, vacant; she would do whatever her masters told her; Brenda Hamilton would not; she was determined to escape. She no longer wished to carry flint as a slave; she did not wish, again, to be used as a piece of meat, living meat, to bait a trap. Many of the women had smiled, when she had been tied with Ugly Girl, particularly the dark-haired girl, and the shorter, blond one. And the hunter had looked upon her, when her eyes had pleaded with him, impassively. She would flee.

Her opportunity had come much earlier than she had hoped. The men had gone up the cliffs, to investigate the caves. The women and children, thus, had been left below.

Before the men had left, dried meat had been distributed. Brenda and Ugly Girl had had four cubes apiece. It had been held in the palm of the hand of Runner. They had taken it, as kneeling women often did, in their teeth, directly from his hand.

At the flint lode, in gathering fruit, and roots and vegetables, and watching what was eaten, Brenda Hamilton had learned much.

She was confident she could now, in one way or another, survive.

She must make her way to the south before the onset of winter.

When it grew dark, and the others were asleep, the men, not wishing to descend the cliff at night, in the uncertain light of torches, camped in one of the shelters, Brenda Hamilton, carefully, silently, began to chew on the rawhide thong that tethered her to the slack-jawed, vacant-eyed, inhuman Ugly Girl. Ugly Girl approached her, whimpering, and tried to push her hand from the thong, but Hamilton, frenzied, furious, struck her back. “Stay away!” she hissed. Whimpering, Ugly Girl withdrew to the end of her tether. In time, biting and pulling and scratching with her fingers, she managed to part the thong. “What fools they are not to have bound me hand and foot,” she laughed to herself.

Then she had crawled from the group, slowly, silently. When she had cleared the area of the bodies, and the low, dim light of the dying fire, she leaped to her feet and ran.

She had escaped.

She had run for many hours, until she had gone so far no one could follow her.

Then she had slept. In the afternoon she had arisen, and, finding some nuts and roots, had fed; had, with the aid of a small stick, sharpened with a rock to a point, removed the remains of the tether from her throat, which had fastened her to Ugly Girl; and had then continued on her way.

“No more will I be subject to their switches,” she laughed. “No more will I have to eat like a female animal from their hand. No more will I have to carry flint. No more will I have to see that hateful hunter!”

Suddenly Brenda Hamilton threw her hand before her mouth. She saw the eyes, briefly, in a flash, between bushes. It was not an animal the size of the cave lion. It was much smaller. But it was a sinuous, stealthily moving animal. It weighed perhaps only forty or fifty pounds more than Hamilton, but it was quite capable of taking prey twice its weight or more. It was a strong predator, which could pull its prey, even if heavier than itself, high into the branches of a tree, to keep it from scavengers. It was the most agile of the large cats, and, to men, perhaps the most dangerous. Hamilton had seen one of its descendants in Rhodesia, smaller, but still quite dangerous. To her horror, it was stalking her.

She remembered the body of the calf, half torn, lying over the limb of the tree in the Rhodesian bush. She recalled the great care of William and Gunther, even armed, in approaching it, even when it was sleepy, somnolent and gorged. Gunther, who was a remarkable hunter, with excellent weaponry, would not have followed it into the bush.

“Oh, no!” wept Hamilton.

Sometimes she thought that she had lost it, but then, again, shifting in the darkness, almost indistinguishable among shadows, she would see it again.

Once she picked up a rock, and hurled it at the shape.

She heard only a snarling, and saw it crouch down. She sensed its nervousness. She remembered the cave lion.

She was terrified that she might provoke its charge. She moved a little away, and it moved a little toward her. She ran, shouting, toward it, but it did not retreat. She saw it gather its hind legs, like springs, ready to leap.

She stood still, terrified.

It hesitated, and lay down, tail slashing, watching her.

She looked about. It could be upon her before she could climb a tree. She sensed that it would charge when she turned her back. And, too, she knew, a tree would not be likely to much protect her. It was a far more swift, expert climber than she. If she were already in a tree, and had perhaps a heavy branch, she might perhaps, striking and thrusting, be able to keep it away, as it tried to approach, scrambling after her, but she was in no such position, and had no such implement.

The beast, eyes blazing, snarling, crept toward her.

Hamilton began to back away.

She wanted to turn and flee, but she knew that it, bounding and leaping, would be on her in a matter of seconds.

Hamilton backed into a grassy clearing, moving back, step by step. Her eyes were wide. Her hand was before her mouth.

The beast, creeping, eyes blazing, every muscle of it excited, tail switching, followed her.

Hamilton tripped over a root and, crying out with misery, fell.

In that instant the leopard charged. In less than the time it took Hamilton to see it clearly it was across the clearing and, snarling, leaping toward her. She saw the heavy shaft, not realizing at the time what it was, strike the beast in its leap and saw the flailing paws, claws exposed, striking toward her. Another body leaped over hers and she cried out in fear and, her weight on the palms of her hands, saw the leopard biting at the shaft protruding from his side, and the other shape, human, but bestial, ferocious, like nothing she had ever seen that was manlike, hurl itself on the spotted beast, a knife of stone in its hand. He clung to its back, one arm about its throat, rolling with the animal, jabbing and pulling the knife again and again across the white, furred throat. The great, clawed hind feet raked wildly but could not find their enemy. The blood flooded from its lungs, sputtering out like hot red mud, and then the blood, no longer flowing from its mouth, burst from its throat and the assailant, his fist and knife red to the wrist and hilt, drew his hand from the beast’s body.

The beast then lay at his feet, the arterial blood throbbing out, a pulsating glot to each beat of the animal’s heart. To Brenda’s horror the assailant then knelt beside the beast and, catching its blood in his hands, held it to his mouth, drinking. Then the glots became smaller, and their expulsions weaker, as the heart slowed, and then stopped. The assailant, dipping his finger in the throat of the animal, then drew signs on his own body with the blood, luck signs and courage signs and, among them, the sign of the Men.

Tree rose from beside the beast and looked down at the lovely naked female on the grass, whom he had saved.

Brenda Hamilton felt her ankles tied tightly together. Her hands were left free. She did not try to free her ankles.

Tree lifted the leopard.

Hamilton was indescribably thrilled, for what reason she knew not, to see that the stone. tip of the spear had emerged, inches of it, from the right side of the leopard. She could scarcely conceive of the incredible strength of such a cast.

Tree, placing the butt of the spear on the ground, forced the shaft through the leopard completely, thus freeing the weapon and protecting the bindings which fastened the long stone point to the wood.

Then, spear in hand, he stood over her. He was breathing heavily. She had seen him drink the blood of the leopard. And its blood, too, in strange signs, he wore on his body.

Her ankles were bound. She could not run. She lay at his mercy.

She could not even thank him for having saved her life. She only hoped that he would not kill her. She could not meet his eyes. Such a man, so mighty, so frightening, terrified her. She knew she would do whatever such a man commanded her, unquestioningly, even eagerly.

She dared to look up, to look into his eyes. Never had she felt so helpless, so much a mere female.

Quickly she looked down at the grass.

How miserable she was. She had been caught.

He went to the leopard and began to gut the beast, saving meat and skin, the head and claws.

When he had finished he untied her ankles, and gestured that she should stand.

When she did so he put the leopard over her shoulders. It was heavy, even bled and gutted. She felt the stickiness of bloody hair on her back, and the softness of the fur, and the heavy paws, with their claws, limp and weighty, touch her body.

She looked again into his eyes. She suddenly realized she was a runaway slave. She looked down again. She knew she would be beaten.

He then turned away and she, carrying the carcass of the leopard, followed him.

She understood then only too well, though she did not understand how it could be, that such men could follow her like dogs, that they might pick up her trail and, with ease, when they wished, pursue and retake her. “There is no escape for me,” she whispered to herself. “There is no escape.” And too she had learned that the primeval forests would offer her small refuge. She looked about herself now in terror, for the first time better understanding the ferocities and perils of her environment. Within twenty-four hours of her escape she had nearly fallen to a leopard. Had it not been for the intervention of the hunter she would, by now, have been half eaten. A lone female in these times, she realized, had need of the protection of a man. Without the protection of men she could not survive. The choice was simple for the female. Either serve men on their own terms or die.

Staggering under the burden of the leopard, Brenda Hamilton, the slave, followed the hunter back to the shelters.

Brenda Hamilton scrambled to the back of the cave. She put her cheek against it, the palms of her hands. It was rock. She could go no further.

She did not look over her shoulder.

She knew he crouched in the entrance, the switch in his hand.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she begged. “I’m sorry I ran away. I will not do it again!”

He, of course, could not understand the strange noises she made, not of the language of the Men, nor, if he could have understood, would he have listened.

She was a girl to be disciplined.

Brenda Hamilton’s fingernails scratched at the rock. The cave, for a full day now, twenty-four hours now, had been her prison. The entrance, for the caves, was a large one, though it had appeared much smaller from far below. It was some four feet in height and three feet wide, irregular. Outside it was a narrow ledge, not more than two feet in width. The fall from the ledge to the valley below, Brenda Hamilton had seen in terror, was better than some one hundred and seventy-five feet, approximately that of a seventeen-story building. Above and below the cave, and to the sides, the cliff was sheer. It was reached from a ledge above, by a knotted rawhide rope, which, when the hunter left, he drew up after him. Inside the cave there was a gourd of water, and two frayed, worn bides. There were also some pieces of fruit, and rinds. The cave, within, was much larger, like many of the caves, than one would have expected from the outside. It was roughly some eight feet in height and width, and some forty feet deep. It was lit by light from the entrance and, overhead, in the ceiling, some fifteen, feet in, by a long, narrow cleft in the rock, extending some fifty feet upward diagonally, too small to admit a body.

She had been brought to the cave blindfolded, that she might not struggle in terror. Her wrists had been tied together and placed about his neck and shoulder. He had, after lowering them both to the ledge, disengaged her arms from him and thrust her into the cave. There he had removed the blindfold and wrist thongs and left her, taking them with him, thrust in his belt, climbing the knotted rope, which he drew after him.

She had run to the cave entrance and, dropping to her hands and knees, had entered into the sunlight, and screamed, seeing the drop below her.

She heard a scrambling above her and saw the hunter attain the ledge above, some twenty feet higher. Then the rope was jerked up, following him.

“Don’t leave me here!” she screamed. “Please! Please!”

But he was gone.

Sick, she inched herself backward, timidly, and lay down inside the entrance, helpless, surrounded by the walls of stone.

She felt certain that she had been abandoned, but, in the morning, on the ledge outside, she had found the gourd of water, and some pieces of fruit.

Now the hunter crouched in the entrance. She saw the switch, and knew she was to be disciplined. She was naked.

She had scrambled to the back wall of the cave. Her fingernails scratched at the stone.

She heard him behind her.

She did not look back.

Suddenly the switch struck, wielded with a man’s strength. She screamed in pain.

She turned to face him, to plead with him, and the switch struck again.

She fell to her knees and again, this time across the shoulder, the switch fell.

She leaped to her feet, trying to escape, and ran to the entrance. She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled onto the narrow ledge. She cried out with misery. By the ankle she was dragged back into the cave. Four times more fell the switch. She rolled, and scrambled again to her feet. He struck her again. Weeping she tried to escape him, but there was no escape. Twice, by the arm, he threw her against one of the walls, beating her at the foot of it. Then he took her by the hair and hurled her back to the rear of the cave. There she fell to her knees and covered her head. Ten more times the switch fell on her body. Then the hunter threw her to her back, on the hides, weeping, and swiftly raped her, after which, she moaning in terror and misery, he left her. “I won’t try to run away again,” she wept, eyes glazed, looking after him through her long dark hair. “I will not try to escape again,” she wept, “-Master!” She was startled that this word had involuntarily escaped her. She lay there in misery, wondering at what it bad meant. Could it be, she asked herself, in horror, that, subconsciously, the lean hunter had been truly, incontrovertibly, acknowledged as her literal master? “No!” she wept. “No!” But she could not forget what she had said. Not meaning to, unintentionally, in misery, she had called him “Master.” She lay in the cave, sullen, in pain, knowing she had, unconsciously, unable to help herself, called him “Master.” “He will never master me,” she wept. “Not Brenda Hamilton! No savage, no barbarian, will ever master Brenda Hamilton!” But she could not forget that she had called him master. This troubled her greatly. And, too, it made her furious. “No savage, no barbarian,” she hissed, “will ever master Brenda Hamilton!”

“Old Woman,” said Tree, “I would talk with you.”

“Talk,” said Old Woman. She was sewing, poking holes through hide with a bone awl, then pulling a thread of sinew after it, through the hole. She worked carefully. Old Woman’s eyes were still sharp. It was a winter garment for one of the children, the oldest boy. He would soon be able to run with the hunters. Old Woman was fond of him. He was the son of a woman who had been her friend. She had been killed in an attack of the Weasel People, some ten years earlier, on a game camp.

Tree did not speak, for Nurse was walking by. She held at her breast one of the camp’s infants.

On a ledge nearby Tree could hear Fox and Wolf arguing. Wolf had hidden meat and now could not find it. Fox was asking him where he had hidden it. Wolf would not tell him, only that it was gone. “You should not hide meat,” Fox was telling him. “It is not good to hide meat. “Where do you hide meat?” “I will not tell you,” said Wolf. “I am your friend,” said Fox.

“Talk,” said Old Woman to Tree, regarding her sewing.

It would not have occurred to Tree to talk to the women, except to give them orders, but he did not think of Old Woman as being of the women. She was different. She was independent. She was shrewd. She was ill-tempered. She was wise.

“You know the pretty bird I brought to camp,” said Tree.

“Stupid little thing,” said Old Woman.

“Yes,” said Tree, “she is stupid.”

“But pretty,” said Old Woman, pulling the sinew tight with her teeth, still, in spite of her age, sharp and white.

“Do you think she is pretty?” asked Tree.

“Yes,” said Old Woman, “more pretty than Antelope, more pretty than Cloud.”

“But not so pretty as Flower?”

“No,” said Old Woman, “not so pretty as Flower.” Old Woman looked up. “How long are you going to keep your pretty little bird on her perch? She has been there for four days. There is work for her to do down here.”

“I will keep her there as long as I please,” said Tree.

“Poor little slave girl,” grinned Old Woman.

Tree, squatting beside Old Woman, looked out the entrance of the shelter. Fox and Wolf had gone.

“I am angry with her,” said Tree.

“Why?” asked Old Woman.

“I do not know,” said Tree.

“Does she know?” asked Old Woman.

“I do not know,” said Tree.

“She is stupid,” said Old Woman. Anyone knew that when a man was angry with a woman she would lift her body to him, to placate him, and beg to kick for him, that in the pleasures of her body, he would forget his anger. Else she might be beaten. Any woman with half a brain knew that.

“It is too bad that she does not kick well,” said Tree.

“Why?” asked Old Woman.

“She is pretty,” said Tree, “very pretty. She should be a good kicker.”

“Does this woman trouble you?” asked Old Woman.

“Yes,” said Tree.

“Do Antelope and Cloud trouble you?” asked Old Woman.

“Not like this woman,” said Tree.

“She is not of the Men,” said Old Woman. “She is a foreign female, she is a slave.”

“I know,” said Tree.

“Take her,” advised Old Woman. “Use her as much as you wish. Tire of her.” She grinned. “That is the cure for sickness over a woman,” she smiled, “use her repeatedly until you weary of her.”

Tree smiled. “I want more from this woman,” he said.

“Ah,” smiled Old Woman. “She has stung your vanity. You want to make her kick for you.”

“Perhaps,” said Tree.

“The poor little thing has been abused enough,” grinned Old Woman. “You surely would not be so cruel as to make her yield to you?”

“You area wise old woman,” said Tree.

“Poor little slave girl,” cackled Old Woman.

“It takes time,” said Tree, irritably.

Old Woman laughed. “A little patience is a small price to pay for a night of pleasure,” said Old Woman. “Be patient, great hunter,” she advised, “until you catch her.” She pointed the sewing awl at Tree. “What you catch,” she laughed, “I assure you will be well worth the wait.”

Tree rose to his feet.

“Remember all that I have taught you,” said Old Woman. “Any woman-any woman-can be made to kick.”

“I will make her kick and squeal like a rabbit,” said Tree.

“Poor little slave girl,” said Old Woman.

Tree turned about, and left Old Woman.

Old Woman looked after Tree. She was old and wise. She had not come on this sort of thing often, but she knew of its existence. She remembered Drawer, whom, when he had become Old Man, and when he had gone blind, Spear had killed. She continued her sewing, crooning to herself a little song.

Old Woman was happy.

It was noon, and the sunlight was hot on the cliff, when Tree slipped down the knotted rawhide rope to the ledge outside the cave where the lovely slave girl was kept.

He dropped to the ledge.

She moved back further, within the cave. She put out her hand, and shook her head. Her eyes showed fear. She said something in her barbarous tongue, unintelligible to the Men.

Naked, defenseless, slight, the stone wall at her back, she was quite beautiful.

Tree leapt forward and thrust her, standing, stomach to the stone, against the wall.

Then, with a length of rawhide, he fastened her wrists behind her back, and turned her about to face him.

Her back was now against the stone. She looked up at him, frightened. He touched her hair. She said something in her barbarous tongue. He lifted her from her feet and put her, bound, on the two hides.

Though the sun outside was hot, the cave was cool. Tree went to the water gourd and took a drink. He ate one of the pieces of hard fruit at the side of the cave. Twice a day he had fed and watered the slave.

He then turned and looked at her, hands tied behind her back, sitting on the hides, looking at him.

He approached her, and sat, cross-legged, beside her. She tried to edge back, but the wall prevented her retreat. The stone was at her back.

She spoke again in the barbarous tongue, questioningly, fearfully.

He made no move toward her. For a long time he looked at her, carefully, relishing the delicious, captive curves of her slave body.

She said something to him, pleading, obviously begging him to go away.

He spoke to her in the language of the Men. “I am going to make you kick,” he told her. “I will teach you what it is for a female to kick for a man. I will teach you to kick as you have never kicked before. I am going to make you kick superbly.”

Then he reached down and took her right ankle in his hand.

The lovely slave looked at him with horror.

“Go away!” cried Brenda Hamilton. “Go away!”

She tried to free her hands, but she, tied by a hunter, could not do so. She moaned. She was defenseless. Her entire body, each inch of it, curved and vulnerable, lay open to his tongue, his teeth, his fingers, his hands, his forces and pressures, his touch.

She tried to pull her ankle away but could not do so.

He seemed amused that she, with only the slightness of the female, should try to pit her strength against his.

She saw the dilation of his pupils, and knew that she was beautiful to him.

A tremor of sensation coursed from her ankle up her leg. She shuddered.

“Rape me swiftly, you beast,” she begged. “Be done with it!”

His hand still on her ankle, he reached to her hair and pulled her head forward, exposing the back of her neck. She felt his teeth, gently, biting at the back of her neck. Once she felt his jaws half close about the back of her neck. She knew he could, if he wished, with those strong jaws and white teeth, that large head, bite through the neck, breaking it. Then she was on her side, his hands moving on her body, with the full liberty of those of a master on the body of his female slave, in long, possessive, stimulating caresses. She moaned, and tried to pull away, but his hands held her. Then she was put on her back. He delighted himself with her breasts. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. For a long time Tree, slowly, tenderly almost, but with the underlying hardness of a master who, ultimately, will permit no compromise, and this the girl knows, kissed and touched her. He avoided only the delicacies of her delta, which she feared most, shuddering, he might touch. Should he do so, could she resist him?

Brenda Hamilton lay miserably on two hides, on the stone floor of a primeval cave, her hands tied behind her with a rawhide thong.

She looked up at her master.

Her body was helpless. In it stirred tumults of sensation. But he had not yet even touched her most intimately.

He was the most magnificent man she had ever seen, and she was helplessly his. But he was only a savage, a barbarian! She was a thousand worlds and times his superior. She was sensitive, intelligent, educated, civilized! She jerked at her wrists, trying to free them. But she looked up into his eyes. She saw that he was mighty; she sensed, too, in his eyes that his intelligence, in its raw, untutored power, was far greater than even hers, greater even, she suspected, than that of Gunther, who had been the most brilliant man, saving Herjellsen, she had ever known. She looked up at him, and knew that he was her superior in every way. She turned her head miserably to one side. And this was his world, not hers. She was not a thousand worlds and times his superior. No. He was a thousand worlds and times her superior! She, in this world, naked, bound, lying at his mercy on hides in a primeval cave, was no more than a slave, only a slave.

His hand moved toward her helplessness, but he did not touch her.

She looked at him, in terror, her body charged with blood, hurtling in the rapids of her beauty.

This was the beast who had taken her in the forest, who had brought her slave to his camp. How she hated him! She had been forced, as a beast of burden, to carry flint. He had looked on, impassively, when she had been tied as bait, to lure a predatory beast to a trap. She, and Ugly Girl, too, for that matter, might have been killed! She hated him! And she had fled, but he, like a dog, had followed her, easily. There had been no escape from him! She looked up at him. She knew she could not escape him. She shuddered, remembering the leopard. She had fallen. It had leaped toward her. The great shaft, tipped with sharpened stone, had struck it from her. Then he, seemingly as terrible, as fierce, as inhuman and bloodthirsty as the beast itself, had fallen upon it, and, striking again and again, had killed it. She remembered the grass, the night, the blood pulsating from the beast’s throat, and the killer hunching beside it, drinking its blood, and then, as a man, drawing signs upon his body, and among them, the sign of the Men.

And then standing over her, she only a naked, frightened female, from another time, at his feet, with the great, stone-tipped spear.

The leopard, gutted and bled, he had forced her to carry back to the caves, his trophy, borne on the shoulders of the recaptured female slave.

Then he had put her in this prison, in this cave, where she, nude, confined by the steepness of the cliffs, must, helpless, await his pleasure.

And then, the day after her incarceration, he had, viciously, with his man’s strength, laid the switch richly to her beauty, well disciplining the slave for her flight. She had cried out to him that she would not run away again. She had, inadvertently, to her astonishment, and horror, in English, addressed him as “Master.”

“No man will ever master Brenda Hamilton,” she said. And then, helplessly, closing her eyes, she lifted her body to him.

She, body arched, heard his great laughter in the cave, and, opening her eyes, saw him sitting beside her, his head thrown back, roaring with laughter.

She lowered her body, and turned her head to one side.

When he had finished laughing, she again regarded him.

“Yes, I’m yours,” she said, “Master.” She again lifted her body. “I am not ashamed. You are my master. Do with me what you will. I am your slave.”

Tree saw the lovely slave girl lift her body to him, as though sloe might be of the women.

He knew then that he could make her kick, and make her kick superbly.

He threw back his huge head and laughed.

When he looked again upon her, she again, pleadingly, lifted her body to him. She said something in her barbarous, unintelligible tongue. Tree did not precisely understand what she said, of course, but he understood clearly the submissiveness of her tone of voice. She was asking him to use her as a female. She was submitting herself to him.

Gently with tongue and fingers he fell upon the most vulnerable delicacies and beauties of her helplessness.

She began to writhe and scream with pleasure.

But Tree did not forget the lessons of Old Woman for he, in his strategems, had only begun to arouse the lovely, helpless slave. When he finally entered her she was quivering and crying and biting at him, but even then he, following the advice of Old Woman, resisted her pleadings, and the piteous, supplicatory movements of her body, sometimes, by sheer force, holding her, weeping, immobile. But at last, after more than a thousand, varying stabs of pleasure, swift, and slow, and gentle, and fierce, and sweet and hard, he, as she screamed with pleasure, rearing under him, shattered her, exploding within her the long-withheld tenseness, the force, of his manhood. He did not then withdraw from her either, for Old Woman had told him to stay with the woman, and hold her, and caress her, or it would be like taking food from her mouth, leaving her half hungry.

“Don’t leave me!” wept Brenda Hamilton. “Don’t leave me!” She fought the thongs that bound her wrists behind her back. She wanted to seize the hunter, and hold him, tightly, in her arms, never letting him go. But her wrists were behind her back, fastened tightly in rawhide loops. He could leave her with ease, should he wish.

“Please don’t leave me!” she wept.

And the hunter continued to hold her, small, soft, yielded, piteously his, against the now-relaxed gentleness of his leanness, his supine might, his hardness, now suddenly gentle, now unbent like a great bow.

Though she knew he could not understand her, Brenda Hamilton, in English, softly, her head against his chest, spoke to the hunter.

“My name is Brenda Hamilton,” she said. “You could not perhaps understand my world. It is very different from yours. I come from a different time. On my own world I am of some small importance. There I am a respected person, highly intelligent and well educated. I have an advanced degree in a technical subject from a great university. Here I am only a naked female, and even my wrists are bound. Here I am only an outsider, and a despised slave, but here I am in your arms. My world, in many ways, is empty. This world, in many ways, is much more real. I suppose I should be horrified that I lie here a slave in a primeval cave but I am not, dear hunter, dissatisfied. I would not have it otherwise, dear hunter. Do you know why that is? Do you think it is simply because you have mastered me, and made me behave as a slave in your arms? Because you have made me truly a slave? Oh yes, dear hunter, I acknowledge that I am your slave, completely. You have given me no choice in that. But is there not more to it, dear hunter? It is not that I am simply a slave girl. I am rather a slave girl who helplessly loves her master. Did you give me choice, either, in that? No, you did not, you beast.” Then Hamilton, gently, kissed the hunter. “The slave girl loves her master,” she whispered. “I love you, my master.”

It was late afternoon when the hunter left the slave. Before he left, he untied her hands. But he did not let her touch him; rather he thrust her back, stumbling, tears in her eyes, for she was, after all, only a slave.

Then his lean body, band over hand, disappeared up the knotted rawhide rope, which he drew up after him.

Brenda Hamilton extended her hand after him. “Come back to me, Master,” she cried. “Come back to me, soon!”

In the cave Brenda Hamilton threw herself on the hides and cried out for joy. “I love him!” she cried. “I love him!” And then she moaned, “Come back to me, soon, Master!”

Not only had the incompleted sensation in her body, which the hunter had long ago induced in her, been completed, but it had led to a thousand other rhapsodies of pleasure, dimensions of feeling, of emotion, of tissue sentience, of body awareness, of which before in her life she had never suspected the existence. Her body, for the first time, seemed rich and glorious, and saturated with excitement and feeling. She wanted to kiss his hands and lips and manhood for what they had done to her. For the first time in her life she felt the fantastic sentience of an owned, loving female. And, too, she had begun to suspect, in his touchings and lovings, that even beyond these dimensions of joy, like thousands of doors and horizons, there might lie others, and more. She wanted to train herself, and to grow, from day to day, from year to year, eagerly exploring and learning, in sentience and feeling. She knew women could improve themselves in such matters, as in any others. She must give attention to them. She must train herself to become more responsive, perhaps more swiftly reflexive, to feel more rapidly and more deeply. She had just begun to sense the possible depths of her feelings, the possible heights of her ecstasies. She had just begun, under the hands of a primeval hunter, to learn the possibilities, the capacities, of her femaleness.

“I love you, Master!” she cried.

That night, bringing a piece of hot meat in his teeth, Tree returned to the lovely slave.

He did not tie her hands.

He offered her the meat. She threw it aside and fell to her knees before him, thrusting her head beneath his skins, kissing his manhood.

Tree took her in his arms and, laughing, threw her back to the hides on the floor of the cave.

Four days more was the lovely Brenda Hamilton kept a helpless love slave in the primeval cave.

In this time the hunter spent much time with her, day and night, only leaving her to fetch food and water. When he returned she would welcome him, helplessly, deliciously, and melt into his arms.

“Tree keeps his little bird long on her perch,” said Spear to Old Woman.

“He is training her well,” said Old Woman.

Spear had laughed, and turned away.

Old Woman smiled to herself. She remembered that, years ago, though it was still fresh in her memory, when she had been a young and beautiful woman, Drawer had similarly trained her, and superbly.

Above, in her high, prison cave, Brenda Hamilton lay in the arms of her hunter. “I love you, Master,” she whispered to him. “I love you.”

Had she known of the conversation of Spear and Old Woman, and could she have spoken the language of the

Men, she would have stood brazenly before Tree, laughing, her hands behind her head, her body thrust toward him. “Yes, Master,” she would have laughed. “You have trained me well. I am now a well-trained slave.”

And Tree would have seized her by the ankle and again pulled her to the hides, laughing, and she, in his arms, looking up at him, a lovely, eager slave, would, lifting her lips and body again to his, have again addressed herself to her duties, those of his pleasure.

“Thank you, oh thank you, Master!” cried Brenda Hamilton. She reached out and took the rectangle of soft deerskin, about a foot wide, and some two feet long, beveled inward on each end. Both edges, and the beveled sides, were turned and sewn, and through the top edge, through perforations, was drawn, as though stitched through, a slender rawhide strap, serving as a belt. Delightedly she wrapped this simple skirt about her, and tied the ends of the strap belt, as she had seen the women do, over her left hip. Because of the inwardly beveled edges, her left leg was muchly revealed, and thrust provocatively from the skirt. Many of the younger women wore such garments. Flower, and Antelope, did. Cloud did not.

Brenda Hamilton, delighted, proud, walked and posed, and turned, before her hunter, her master.

He, she saw, was startled to see her thusly.

Then she walked before him as one of the women, as she had seen the women walk, displaying themselves in their walk to men.

She saw him grin widely.

He gestured her to him, and she ran, barefoot, to him..

He jerked on the knot at her left hip. It could not be immediately loosened.

“Tie this properly,” he said to her in the language of the Men.

“Yes, Master,” she said in English, shyly, well understanding him. Obediently she tied the knot in the fashion of the younger women. She lifted her lips to him, and kissed him. “You beast,” she whispered. Now, at a single tug, she could be stripped. “You make your slave feel very vulnerable, Master,” she whispered to him. She kissed him again, excited. Then she darted away, and turned to face him. She then, in her movements, well displayed her legs. They were marvelous. Tree regarded them as the best legs of any female in the camp, except perhaps those of Flower or Butter fly. “The slave thanks her master for her beautiful gown,” said Brenda Hamilton. She then, looking demurely down, her left index finger beneath her chin, holding with her right hand the deerskin from her right thigh, curtsied to him.

Tree had never seen such a movement. It made him laugh.

“Come here,” said he, in the language of the Men, gesturing to her.

Brenda Hamilton quickly sped to her master. She knew that he, like any powerful male brute of these times, must be obeyed swiftly and well by his females. Too, unaccountably perhaps, she found herself eager to be promptly obedient to him.

From his pouch he drew forth a long tangle of claws, shells and thongs.

He untangled it and held it out, up before his face, smiling.

It was an ornament, a necklace, of the sort that the females of the Men often wore about their neck.

Brenda Hamilton put forth her hand, but she did not touch it. “It is beautiful, Master,” she whispered.

“See,” said Tree, in the language of the Men, pointing to a small rectangle of leather, about an inch square, one of five, threaded into the thongs, with the claws and shells. Brenda Hamilton looked. On it she saw, drawn, scratched into the leather and pigmented in red, the sign of the Men. The same sign, identically, appeared on the other four rectangles. Tree turned her about and then, standing quite closely behind her, wrapped the necklace, in four loops, snugly, about her neck. He then tied it behind the back of her neck, tightly. She knew it identified her, by means of the rectangles, as a woman of the Men. She put back her head, to touch the hunter. She wondered if this sort of thing were the origin of the necklace, that it served in the beginning not simply as an ornament but as, in its way, an identifying slave collar. Tree turned her roughly about. Eagerly her lips met his, those of her master.

She felt his hand reach to her hip.

An hour later, in his arms, pushing back his hair at his neck, kissing him, Brenda Hamilton saw again the tiny, strange mark on his neck. She had seen this before. It intrigued her. It was a birthmark. It was like a tiny bluish stem, with branches reaching upward. It was from this mark that her hunter had had his name, “Tree.”

She kissed the tiny mark.

He smiled and pointed to the mark, and to himself. “I am Tree,” he said, in the language of the Men. “Tree.”

She kissed him beneath the chin. “I am Brenda,” she said. She kissed him again. “Your slave’s name is Brenda, Master, unless you wish to give her another name. Then the other name would be hers, and not Brenda.”

“Brenda?” he asked, picking the name from her words.

She knelt beside him, and pointed to herself. “I am Brenda,” she said. “Brenda.”

“Brenda,” he said. She smiled.

The word “Brenda,” of course, in the language of the Men, had no meaning. Tree, or Spear, or one of the other men, could eventually give her a name in the language of the Men. In the meantime the noise “Brenda” would do. It provided a means by which, when she was wished, the beautiful slave could be summoned.

Tree rose to his feet. He indicated that the beauty should clothe herself.

Hamilton wrapped the brief skirt about her and tied it over the left hip, tying it as she knew her master desired, that it might be loosened with a single pull.

She stood across from him, some eight feet from him, on the floor of the high cave. She was barefoot. She wore a brief skirt of tanned deerskin. She was bare-breasted. Her hair was long, loose and dark. About her neck, twisted and looped, four times, was a necklace of claws, shells and thongs, and, threaded among them, part of the necklace itself, the small squares of leather, bearing on them, clearly, the sign of the Men. Brenda Hamilton stood proudly, a primeval female, one of the women, facing a primeval man, one of the Men, one of her masters.

“Come, female,” said Tree, turning about and going to the ledge.

He grasped the knotted rope.

Brenda Hamilton came, too, to the ledge, and put her arms about his neck.

In an instant she was swinging, clinging to him, over a drop of more than one hundred and seventy-five feet. But she was not afraid. Quickly, seeming hardly impeded by her weight, he climbed up the knotted rope. He drew the rope up after him, freed it from a small, stunted tree, and looped it over his shoulder. Then, scrambling and climbing, moving from ledge to ledge, he gained the height of the cliff. To Hamilton the view was breathtaking, the sight of the fields and forests, and two rivers, extending to the horizon. Then, rapidly, she followed him.. He was moving across the top of the cliff, one of a series of such, and, then, making his way downwards, in a roundabout fashion. In some places steps had been chipped from the stone. In other places a branch of a small tree provided a handhold. Taken with care the descent was not dangerous.

Brenda Hamilton smelled meat cooking.

The slave, hungry, no longer fearful, delightedly, followed her master.