Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 18:28:33 EDT
From: Savagetrainer@aol.com
Subject: Odessa Ranch 7

Archive;'Odessa Ranch 7'{Ian Jacobs}( MM, sm, ws, scat, bd )[ 7 of ? ]

Odessa Ranch

Part 7, The Bunkhouse

	When a hand is either asked to leave, or decides to leave on his
own, he meets with the man-himself.  He is then given a cashier's check
equal to $2,000 for each year he served on the ranch.  They do not know
that when they get there, and since they are escorted immediately off the
ranch, this information never gets back to the hands still in the
bunkhouse.  The man-himself uses interest on static accounts to pay for
these departures.  He also gives them a name and number for references if
they try to find work.  They are also given the option of a destination.
If they choose, the man-himself buys a bus ticket and Buck takes the man to
the bus station in Odessa.  Field slaves get $500 for each year, and
novices get nothing-they obviously haven't spent long enough on the ranch
for it to matter.

	Tapping

	Buck looked at data from his computer profiles.  Choosing which
field slave becomes a hand isn't as simple as seniority.  The ranch isn't a
union shop, it isn't a meritocracy, it is built on whim and the shifting,
diaphanous politics that will create.  Buck had an excellent memory, he
knew what impressions he had of each slave as he entered and whether or not
that impression needing editing after they'd been active a while.
Technically, there is no rule that stopped Buck from going into the toilet
and tapping one of the honey boys to be the next hand-he knows enough to
know that would cause a breakdown in the already chaotic structure.

	He pulled up the list of trustee slaves; there are 8 for the
fields, one for the stable, and one for the kitchen.  He checked the age of
each, brought up the mental image of their looks; in short order he decided
that none of them would do.  Whim pushed its case more forcefully than
reason and logic.  He expanded the search to the field slaves who have been
active for at least 2 years.  In the list of ten additional names he came
to one that makes his cock stir-whim elected a soybean slave called Mike.
Mike required only one lash when he first arrived before he emptied his
bowels.  He was also Buck's kind of pretty.  Mike was about a head shorter
than six feet, weighed 160 and was toned the way Buck liked-a nice thin
coating of fat beneath the skin that gave him a natural look, not a
chiseled one, he looked made of flesh, not stone or clay.  His hair was
almost white and hay dry because of the sun, his skin was the color of
stressed hickory and jade colored eyes.  Buck knew Mike very well; Buck had
made several trips to the toilet and to his shack.

	He went behind his office to the small attached stable.  He cared
for his own horse.  He didn't want a horny city slave fucking around with
his horse, he loved the stallion, Texas, too much even to risk poor
treatment.  He saddled Texas and rode out to the soybean fields.

	Mike was handling the compost quickly and efficiently.

	"Mike."  Buck's voice was almost tender, not the normal skeptical
tone he used for everyday business on and off the ranch.

	"Sir yes sir."

	Buck dismounted and tapped Mike on the shoulder.  "Go to the toilet
and get the last honey boy and bring him to your trustee, then go wait
outside my office.  You're moving to the bunkhouse."

	"Sir yes sir."

	Buck got back on Texas and went to check on the herd.

	If you were not part of the system for 4 years as Mike had been,
you would probably think Mike would cry or be overjoyed at his promotion.
At this point, what Mike heard was Buck's orders and he would do exactly
that.  He knew what tapping meant.  He knew he was going to get to sleep in
a bed and would wield the whip for a change, but knowing it and accepting
it are very different things.  He had three tasks to perform and from years
of whippings and practice, those tasks took up all his attention.

	He went to the toilet and did what he had to.  He removed the chain
from the last slave.  Then he unattached each of the others, one at a time,
and moved them into the hole left.  He brought the silent slave, who was
walking very slowly on wobbly legs that hadn't held his weight in some
time, to his trustee.

	"Sir, Buck said I was to present this slave to you and go to his
office, sir."

	"Did he tap your shoulder?"  The trustee, six six and more muscular
than most (John had been a trophy slave for a puny master, who wanted very
muscular slaves before, deciding on the ranch).  His tone was almost
desperate.

	"Sir yes sir."

	"Fuck, fuck, fuck."  He grabbed the new slave by the collar and
dragged him to Mike's former square of soybeans.  "G'on, get," he yelled
back at Mike.

	"Sir yes sir."

	Mike walked to Buck's office.  He knew the news was good.  If they
want you to leave, they just take you.  If you are tapped, you get clothes,
a whip, a horse, a bed.  The specifics began to prick his hidden emotional
store and he smiled and felt like running to the office, but just decided
to take his time, go slow, something he hadn't done in years.

	Mike waited for Buck to return.  Buck rode Texas quickly into the
stable, but took his time unsaddling the horse and giving him a bucket of
oats.  His demeanor was always blunt-to-harsh as would be imagined for
someone of his position.  He walked past Mike without looking and simply
said,

	"Follow me."

	"Sir yes sir."

	"From here out you don't use that for anyone but the man-himself if
you ever see him.  Sit."  Buck pointed at a ratty arm chair.  Mike sat,
silently.  Any slave there for even half as long would be able to follow
any directions not made impossible by physical law, so the commandment not
to use sir was just one more order.  After just six months in most cases,
slaves are even stripped of habit-their world is usually as changeable as
it is static, so they have little to count on, so the foundations for habit
are not sound, so neither is habit.

	"Do you remember your shoe size, Mike?"  Buck looked at the naked
man in the eyes.  Though as tough as the stereotype demands, he liked this
part especially.  It was the one act of kindness he allowed himself; and
none of the tapped slaves failed to recognize it.  He looked directly into
their eyes, he said their names.  No obscenity, no title of "slave," just
their name.  The reactions fit into one of two categories, and despite
people being different, the reactions were just minor variations on the two
categories: they either had tears well up and sniffled, or they just smiled
with a specific joy that took years of torture, and the promise of removal,
to create.  Mike fit the second; Buck preferred that response, the tears
tended to make him a little squeamish.

	"Ten and a half."

	Buck opened a wardrobe.  It contained mainly boots, some kind of
used, some new.  They ranged in sized from 9 to 12; if a tapped slave had
larger or smaller feet, Buck's trip to the tack store would require a pair
of boots along with the hat.  He opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of
well worn cut-offs (Buck was practiced enough to be able to gauge a slave's
waist measurement without a tape) and a pair of socks.  He put the boots,
socks and shorts on his desk.

	"Kneel."  Buck knew what hat size Mike would need, but this was
part of the ritual.  Mike knelt; Buck took a tape measure and wrapped
around Mike's crown.  "For your hat.  Get back in the chair."

	Boots, jeans, socks could all be shared among the hands if they
really wanted-there were no proscriptions about it.  But the cowboy hats
were another story.  Each hand received a new one when tapped.  His goal
was never to need another-weather was the only element considered beyond
their control.  If the hat wore out before weather would typically
indicate, the hands punished the offender themselves.  More than anything
else, the hat was the purest symbol of their authority.


	Initiation Rite


Before Buck went to Odessa to drop off the hand who decided to move on, and
to pick up Mike's Stetson, he gave Mike the initiation ritual.  It was
intended to prove that he could make the leap from slave to hand; that he
could go from servitude without question to a role of leadership.  As with
most things on the Ranch, the transition from slave to hand had to happen
quickly, or Buck would demote the novice hand.

	The rite was actually simple in design, but making it happen would
determine whether or not Mike could remain a hand after the next day.  The
specifics were that he had to choose 4 field slaves. The four slaves would
be reigned and yoked just as mules would and their task was to move bales
of hay from one part of the Ranch to another.  The only rule was that Mike
would not be able to touch the hay in any way or help the slaves at all,
except with his voice and his lashes.

	Mike's task now was to find 4 men.  He knew of the initiation since
others he'd worked with had suffered through it, so he immediately knew he
didn't want to make any of his "friends" undergo it with him-there are
pragmatic reasons for this as well as emotional ones; you cannot expect
someone in bondage not to grow affections for others in his situation, but
there is a more pragmatic reason: those he knew might not react well to him
and embarrass him (familiarity breeding contempt like it can).  He knew he
would be getting a horse, so he started in the stable.

	He didn't have his hat yet, but he was wearing shorts which meant
he out ranked the slaves in the stable.  They knelt at attention when he
entered.  They were silent.  All but one of the horses were out on the
range.  So he was able to see the mare that would be his.  He also guessed
by proximity which slave tended his horse.  He would be perfect because he
would be caring for Mike's horse daily, he might as well learn now just how
severe he could be if displeased.

	"Come with me."  He grabbed a bit of rope from the stable and
hooked it to Nick's collar.

	"Sir yes sir."  Nick hadn't heard enough varied talk at the ranch
to have the slightest idea what was going on.  Only Ed knew, and he knew
from experience.  He just laughed a little as Nick tried to keep pace with
Mike who pulled him roughly out of the barn.

	Mike ordered Nick to sit at the base of the whipping post.  He tied
the rope around the post.  "Just sit tight faggot."

	"Sir yes sir."

	Nick had no idea what to think.  His couple of weeks spent away
from the honeyroom did not help reinforce the fact that whatever analysis
he came up with, he would likely be wrong.  He knew pain and humiliation
would be part of it, but that is the way it worked on the Ranch.  Pain,
humiliation, boredom were the three things that they could count on every
day.  But his mind still raced.

	Mike had no clear idea of how to fill out the mule team.  His only
goal was not to use anyone he knew, even those he disliked, especially
those he disliked because of the potential power they would have.  He
walked towards the fields.  He would have to take the remaining 3 from here
so he basically went shopping.  He walked past the first patch of corn.
Attached in that familiar, ass-up, exposed and painful way that Mike knew
well, was Seth.  If he thought logically, he would likely have gone deeper
into the corn or any other patch for that matter and gotten a slave not
prone to fucking up.  But he noticed two things about Seth that made him
pick the German.  The first was the bandana.  This would be a way for him
to tell his new mates that he wasn't some sort of pussy who was still
thinking like a field slave.  The second was what Nick saw.  Seth had a
magnetism that just made people want to be with him-since being with
someone at the Ranch meant one had dominion over another, at this point
Seth only saw the submissive end (not having enough seniority to do it any
other way).

	Mike bent down to separate Seth's collar from the concrete slab.
He noticed movement in the corn.  He stopped what he was doing.

	"You, come out here."

	Ty came to the edge of the corn but did not step onto the
hardscrabble.  "Sir yes sir."

	"Get this slave up and both of you come with me."

	"Sir yes sir" in stereo.

	At this point it was a matter of timing.  He needed 4 slaves, now
he had 3.  Lunch was in the process of being doled out so there was cross
movement from the fields to the kitchen.  He just grabbed literally the
first one he saw and took them to the whipping post.  Each slave sat when
ordered, each at a different side, and all were bound through their collars
to each other around the post.  Mike went to Buck's office to wait for what
came next.


	Mule Team


By habit, Mike stood in Buck's office at attention until the man returned.
He was wearing clothes for the first time in almost 4 years but that mantle
didn't change his behavior.

	"Kneel."  Buck said evenly when he returned.

	Mike knelt without hesitation and remembered not to utter the
mantra of his slavery.  Buck put the plain, brown Stetson on Mike's head.
Before Buck took over administration, the crowning took place after the
initiation.  Buck was confident enough in his choices that he changed the
order and removed the public display of the formality: most hands simply
couldn't give a shit (Buck knew because as a hand he didn't give a shit and
most of his peers expressed the same sentiment).  This also removed
whatever limited possibility that the slaves involved in the initiation
would rebel because their commander wasn't fully decorated.

	"Stand up."

	"Is that it?"  Mike didn't sound disappointed, his tone was steeped
in pragmatism, literally just his way of asking, what next?

	"Next we take a look at the slaves you picked and get them ready.
They don't start the work until the morning, but you need to spend the time
between now and then making sure they will act as a team."  Buck knew what
Mike meant by his question.  Only someone from outside the Ranch would have
thought twice about its format.

	Buck led Mike to the stable where he kept his horse.  He pointed to
a contraption.  It was basically a wooden I bar shaped along the top and
bottom slats to conform to a slave's shoulders.  There was padding, but it
was warn from use and lack of care.  "Grab that and the 4 bridle sets
hanging next to it."

	As Mike gathered the equipment, Buck gave him this advice and
warning,

	"You will get no help from here out.  You figure out on your own
how to hook them up, make them work as a team, get the hay moved.  I'll be
watching and from time to time other hands will ride over to take a look,
but none will comment.  Best thing for you to do is keep your mind on
making the 4 slaves you picked do what you tell 'em, pay no attention to
the rest of us."

	Mike nodded.  Buck pulled the rocking chair from his office and
watched from the narrow shade just outside the door.

	Mike untied the slaves and ordered them to stand.  He ordered Seth
to place the I bar on the ground and straighten the moveable cross beams
parallel to each other.  Mike ordered Seth to stand at the lead spot front
left, Nick front right, Ty behind Seth, and Jayson (the last unfortunate)
behind Nick.

	"Hands and knees, slaves."  No verb necessary, it was one of the
things they learned shortly after leaving the honeyroom.  They complied in
concert, all with the "sir yes sir."  Mike then put the first cross bar
over Seth's and Nick's shoulders; he moved to the back and slipped the
other bar over Ty and Jayson.  He took the bridle sets and slipped the bars
into each slave's mouth and hooked the bridle over their heads as he would
any horse.  The shoulder harnesses had rings that attached to the slave's
collars.  This is where the strange balance took place.  Only the lead
mules felt the reins, but the back mules would be much more likely to feel
the lash.  Mike hooked the leather reins through their places and wanted
deeply to kiss Seth who just knelt motionless, drooling lightly over the
bar running through his mouth.

	"From here until I unhook you, you are mules.  You don't speak, you
don't use your hands, you don't do anything a mule can't.  Until I say, you
stay on hands and knees."

	Mike walked over to Buck.  "I think you forgot to give me
something."

	Buck allowed the smile that started to turn into a smirk.  This was
actually a test, really one of his best.  Most hands used riding crops to
deliver their blows, but they had access to just about any type-the
bullwhip being the only exception, only Buck was allowed that-but it was
such a part of the slave's day that it was amazing how many who became
hands began the initiation without asking for it.  Buck had no fears once a
novice hand asked for his crop; it meant he was already thinking in the
right way.  To Buck, it was essentially over at that point, the rest was
formality.

	"I don't think so.  You got your hat and boots."

	"But the whip?  Do I have to wait for that?"

	"Oh, I guess you're right, I did forget."


	Mike held the reins and stood behind the team.  He was given his
riding crop, which he put in his boot the way most hands did; he was also
given a carriage whip so he could reach the mules once he was standing on
the wagon's buckboard.  Buck told him where the hay had been stacked-he
took care of that earlier in the day, getting a group of slaves to stack
two tons of hay bales in a corner of the ranch farthest from where the
cattle were currently grazing.  Mike was going to take the slaves out to
that spot and spend the night with them.  He wanted to put them through
some paces with little chance of a wandering audience.  He knew others
would come to see, but if they wanted, they were going to have to make a
long and purposeful trip to do it.

	"Hup, mules."  He didn't bother whisking the reins.  They didn't
start out well, each slave was crawling at his own pace which caused the
contraption to spasm and rattle.  "Hold."  They all stopped.  'Shit,' Mike
thought, but instinct or will divined the best way of getting them in sync,
they had a long trip to make on hands and knees and would have to work
together to make it happen.  By the time they arrived at the pile of hay
bales, they would pretty much be moving smoothly.

	"Left, right, left, right" And so on.  It was slow at first, but
Mike used the whip to get them to go faster.  He only had to revert to the
cadence if one began to lag or lead; on the way to the hay, he had to stop
only half a dozen times.  Each time he picked the slave he believed to be
at fault and delivered as many lashes as he thought necessary on their
asses.

	The team and its driver made it to the site at about dinner time.
The mules were hungry but only their stomachs could speak.  Buck didn't
anticipate that Mike would take the team to the site to practice, but there
was food and water there all the same for the next day, so Mike placed a
bowl in front of each slave and removed the bit from the bridle so they
could eat.  He followed that up with water for each.  When they were
finished, he re-bit them.

	He looked at the huge pile of hay and had no idea what to do.  He
moved the hay so he could make a bit of a chair for himself, and ordered
the team to back up so he could use one of them as a footstool-he opted for
the horse-hung Ty.  He put his new boots up on Ty's ass and tried to think
of the best way for the work to flow.  Would it be easier for him to unhook
all 4, let them load and then hook them back, or would it be best to unhook
just 2 and rotate them out on each return trip?  The first option would
mean the wagon would get filled faster, but would it leave them too tired
to pull.  The second option seemed to balance out better, but would he lose
too much time with just two filling the cart?

	The wagon he was to use wasn't there, so he couldn't do any actual
figuring to see how many it would hold and how many they would be able to
pull.  So he just had to guess.  He was literally lost in the math he was
trying to do since he hadn't had to use it in so long; he hadn't forgotten
how, he was just fully lost in it, wanting to get it right so he would look
cool under the pressure.  Then he noticed a familiar smell and heard some
snickering.  Ty, the most animal of the four, maybe the most animal of all
the field slaves, shit a huge load; the idea of being a mule for him was
something he really enjoyed.  He couldn't help but laugh.

	Technically Mike could have whipped him for shitting, but he had
ordered them to behave as mules, but he could whip him for laughing.
Basically Ty broke his concentration.

"Mules don't laugh you piece of shit."  He delivered a series of lashes
across the offensive ass.  Ty grunted a little when the lashes stopped and
squeezed out a little more shit just to have what amounted to the last
word.

Mike could do anything he wanted, but what he really wanted was some sort
of respect which he knew didn't derive from the lash, but from the way the
hand carried himself and how he handled or created situations.  Whipping Ty
had given him a new hard on.  He hadn't been this stiff since just after he
left the honeyroom.  He was desperate to fuck one of them, and Seth was the
object of his cock's specific lust.  But he had enough presence of mind to
want to be creative about it.  So he unhooked both Ty and Seth.  Each was
still on hands and knees (knees now bloodied from the trip).  He ordered Ty
to get hard.

"Stick that slave cock up his hole, I want to see if he's clean enough for
my cock."

Ty tried to comply, but couldn't get more than the head in.  He tried to
push harder, but Seth jumped slightly and whined.  "Go on, pull out mule."
Ty's cock head was streaked brown.  Mike thought briefly about making one
of the others clean Ty's cock, but thought better of it, he considered it
more punishment for Ty to be stuck like that than to put one of the other
compliant slaves through something unnecessary.  Instead he just focused
his attentions on Seth.

"Shit mule."  Seth tried to comply.  Ty's attempt to force his cock past
his full rectum made it difficult.  Mike lashed Seth across the shoulders
with the carriage whip and that essentially did the trick.  Mike led Seth
to a hay bale and ordered him on it so he wouldn't have to get on his own
knees to fuck that gorgeous ass.

He lubed his cock with a little spit and went wild.  He came in a very
short time, but it was an enormous load.  He came regularly, but this was
his first without any expectation of reciprocity, where he could cum and
not have to worry about anything else.  Before he buttoned the fly, he
noticed his cock was a bit streaked too.  He decided Ty deserved one more
reminder that he could act like a mule, but he was still a slave.  He
removed the bit and made Ty not only clean off the shit, but suck him until
he was hard again and came again.


In the morning, Buck arrived with two horses pulling the wagon.  He told
Mike where the hay was to be dropped off.  Then he faded a bit into a
distance and watched.

Mike hooked the I bar to the wagon which required each of the slaves to
stand.  Their knees were bleeding a bit still and caked with dust.  He
would tend to that personally as a form of thanks once he passed the
initiation, for now though, he couldn't care. He decided that two on, two
off, rotate was the best way.  He unhooked Ty and Jayson and had them load
the wagon first.  He tested things.  He had them load it to a point, put
the two back in place, stood on the buckboard and made them pull.  It moved
too easily at first so he had the two add more bales.  The pulling was
still pretty easy, but he needed to know how far he had to go and return
more than he needed to get the load balanced.

The trip to the drop spot and back took about an hour.  He had 5 more loads
to go, so it wasn't going to be a difficult task.  He looked at Buck and
smiled as Nick and Seth loaded the wagon.  Buck smiled back and tipped his
head slightly.  Buck knew by design, now Mike knew that the test was the
process, not the completion.  Mike had passed the initiation by just
proving he knew what to do; Buck never put more than a half day's worth of
hay in the pile because the journey, and how it happened, was far more
important than the finished product.

After the final load was delivered, Mike stood down from the wagon and
allowed the 4 slaves to pull the wagon back to the barn with no extra
weight.  He unhooked each one and ordered them to the shower.  He watched
quietly, but with great ease as each one had their first shower in quite
some time.