D I V O R C E by cmsix

Chapter 7

I know that there's always been sort of a myth of the beautiful Indian maiden among the stinking savages. It was common knowledge from black and white old-time TV that all the Indian girls were pretty, and there'd even been subtle hints that they were teasing temptresses.

The cold hard facts of the morning-after had only come when, in high school, I was actually exposed to very old photographs of said Indian maidens; they were barkers to the last.

The girl approaching us was making great strides toward restoring my original enthusiasm for Indian maidens and their pulchritude.

My best guess of her age was sixteen years old, maybe. Her face didn't favor the others, no real familial resemblance to it. It was actually remarkably pretty. Even under buckskin her breasts looked substantial and they were doing what almost all sixteen-year-old breasts do, standing right out.

Her feet pointed straight ahead as she walked toward us and the fact that her buckskin dress was made from the skin of only one, or at the most two bucks, let me see that her legs, all the way up dangerously close to her noble red savage cooter, were well shaped and frankly, beautiful.

Her hips were only slightly rounded and I wished like hell for a look at that ass she'd started swinging a little more prominently since she'd noticed I was watching. She was also a good six inches taller than any of the others, or that was my first impression anyway.

The headman wasn't paying her any attention; he was gawking at the visqueen she was bringing. I felt relieved by this and thought I'd need to rein in my staring. I didn't want to let my budding diplomatic relationship with the noble savages go down the tubes from lusting after their children.

Alas, the visqueen was here and the show was over. At least I got my long awaited look at her ass after she turned around and went back to help with the bear's last rites. She had a cute one too, more than cute really. Her buns stood up as proudly as her breasts had seemed to and the cats in that buckskin sack looked like they were in a fight to the death.

Oops, the noble red savage headman of this project had caught me lusting this time, but thankfully he'd didn't seem upset. In fact, the look on his face could be considered one of conjecture - if, and only if - you can bring yourself to accuse a noble red savage of having a profit motive.

Thinking fast for once, hoping to get whatever that thought had been out of his mind, I pointed to myself and said my name, slowly and precisely and then pointed to him and raised my eyebrows hoping he'd get the hint.

He did, but I was still fucked on this deal. When he tried, he didn't have any trouble at all saying Bill. I, on the other hand, couldn't even make a start on what must have been six syllables of his name. I did notice that at least two of the syllables seemed to require a swallowing sound.

After three attempts, I shortened his name to Sky. He smiled widely, nodding his head, pointing to me again, and repeating, Bill. I pointed to him and said Sky again, and we were done. In fact, he seemed thrilled. Probably because he realized I was too stupid to ever get it right and no doubt he was glad to be done with the whole name exchanging drill.

We got down to the serious business of the visqueen then. He was examining the shreds carefully, pulling and tugging and looking closely at the dried deer blood on them. Then he turned his face to me with an obvious question in his expression.

Seeing a chance to further my diplomatic coup, I held up one finger and then turned back toward my camp, asking him to follow me by crooking the extended finger. He understood at once and picked up his bow, then as I walked back to my truck, he followed.

Poor Sky, it was culture shock all over again when he saw the U-Haul, my camper, and my pickup. It was so foreign to him that after a few seconds he tried to ignore it and look only at me.

Opening the U-Haul, I took out the box that held the balance of the eight-foot three-inch by two hundred foot roll of visqueen and grabbed the roll of masking tape I'd used to wrap my former deer meat in.

Closing and locking the U-Haul's doors with the combination lock, I went to the small tarp I'd used to keep the deer off the ground while I'd tried my skinning experiment, rolled it up, and then we left with the tarp, visqueen and masking tape.

Back at the ranch, or the bear as it were, my arrival caused all activity to stop and I spread the tarp out on the ground near the bear, as close to the body as I could get it. Thankfully we'd made it before the skinning really started, and I saw that they were being very careful with all the delights of the bear's internal organs.

I pulled the roll of visqueen out of the box, unrolled about thirty inches, and cut it off the roll with my sheath knife. Together they all made a sound like a gasp when I unfolded the visqueen and they saw how big a sheet it made.

In only a few minutes I had it cut into three roughly equal squares and I put the bear's liver on one of them, wrapped the visqueen around it carefully, and closed the package with masking tape.

They were flabbergasted, totally stunned. My next trick, slowly peeling back the masking tape to reopen the package was blatant magic in their eyes, and shutting it back a few seconds later was almost too much for them.

It was no trouble now for me to get help rolling the bear over onto the canvas tarp and I could almost see the light shining when they put the dried blood they saw already on the tarp into the equation and realized that it would be much easier to keep pine needles and other detritus out of the meat by skinning it on the tarp.

Now that they had the idea, they were back at the bear with their flint shard knives in seconds, and his hide practically flew off. Anticipating the next development, I cut off a longer length of the rolled visqueen, probably three and a half feet, and had it waiting for the first quarter of the bear they got loose.

In an astounding leap of intuition, the oldest female - the obvious commander of the cleaning and skinning operation - took the forequarter, placed it in the center of this larger piece of visqueen, wrapped it securely, and then held it in place looking expectantly toward me for the magic tape.

After doing my duty, I showed the woman how to peel off a starting place on the masking tape roll and then how to tear it to length. She caught on at once and so I showed her how to deal with the heavenly visqueen. We went slowly through the process of unrolling it first and then, after borrowing her flint shard, I demonstrated how to slice off another portion, making this one about the same width as the last.

The folding, or unfolding rather, was more difficult but she finally caught on. She rewarded my faith in her next by folding it back up like it had been when it came off the roll. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was setting Rega up for high status for life. Of course Rega wasn't her whole name, and maybe not even part of it, but it was the best I could do - and she seemed thrilled with it.

Rega took command of the wrapping ceremony from then on. When the meat was all wrapped, she declined to waste visqueen on wrapping the skin and no doubt it was better that way anyhow. They rolled the skin up like I assume they'd always done and tied it with a couple of rawhide thongs.

At once I wished I hadn't thought of that word. I'd never seen one in real life, but there had been sneak peaks in Penthouse just lately of women wearing thong bikini bottoms. When I played the word through my mind, an image of the girl who'd brought Sky and I the visqueen, wearing one, jumped into my mind uninvited.

I switched that vision quickly to one of me drunk out of my mind and puking in my pickup floorboard, hoping to keep from getting a boner. I didn't want to speculate on what my noble red brothers would think of me walking around with a lump in my pants after cutting up a bear.

With the bear wrapping all done they were nearly ready to travel. Rega showed her intelligence again by putting the remainder of the roll of visqueen back into its box. She was stymied by the flaps on the end so I gave her another quick lesson, showing her how to fold them together so they'd stay. She smiled widely at me and then set the box down, set the masking tape on it, and proceeded to fold the tarp in half on its longest side and then rolled it up, dragging it into place beside the box of visqueen.

The rest of them gathered their bear packages and rolled fur in a different pile and then they all said some things to me at once, and I assumed it was some sort of thanks.

I didn't understand all of this, but it struck me that we were having some type of parting ceremony. This didn't really fit my hopes. I didn't know where they'd come from and I didn't know where they were going back to. Hell, I didn't even have any idea how far they were going.

It seemed to me that I'd be much better off knowing at least someone, even if I couldn't talk to them. I also saw that the tarp, visqueen, and masking tape were specifically placed in a pile that seemed to be mine and that the disassembled bear was in a pile that seemed to be theirs. And what about my closing ceremony?

At least that came to me with no great trouble. What they'd all repeated was like a ritual chant, kinda, sorta. Since I could sing, a little bit anyway, I faced them and sang the first two lines of the chorus from Garth Brook's "I've Got Friends In Low Places." It seemed appropriate somehow. It was more * well received * than I'd expected and my own estimation of my singing voice shot up at once.

With the formalities apparently over, they started trying to determine how the six of them were going to divide the load for what I figured was their trip home. I was trying to think of a way to stall them for at least a while longer and I hit it out of the park with one swing.

I picked up the rolled tarp, the visqueen box, and the masking tape - no small feat in itself - carrying them all over and putting them down in their pile, making my best waving gestures toward them trying to indicate that they were gifts to them. It might or might not have been significant that I did my gesturing mostly to Rega.

Much later, I learned that what she did next probably overstepped her authority, to some extent at least. She looked toward Sky, as if waiting for something but he was just looking at me as if in shock.

Rega made a small disgusted sounding snort, grabbed the girl who'd brought the tattered visqueen to Sky and I by the upper arm and led her over to me, making it seem like she was putting her in my pile, even though I didn't have a pile any longer.

Even to me there was no way to mistake the gesture. She was trading me the girl for the tarp, visqueen, and masking tape. The rest of them seemed to come out of their * closing ceremony daze * all at once, and they began nodding their heads and grinning like fools. Now I was stunned, speechless in fact, though that didn't matter because nothing I could have said would have meant a thing to them.

I was about to protest but I looked at the girl and saw that she was grinning as wide or wider than any of the others. Who was I to complain, I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her up against my side.

Somehow this was more significant to them than it was to me. I can't say exactly how I could tell, but I could. It was mostly by their looks and body language I guess. The way the girl turned toward me, wrapping both arms around me to squeeze tightly, and pressing herself almost lewdly against me was another big hint. So I had done something, I just didn't know what.

This last bit, the gift of the tarp, visqueen, and masking tape plus the arm around the girl's waist and the hug seemed to have canceled the previous departure ceremony. Sky said something to the youngest * brave * and he took off running through the woods almost at once.

The body language of the others let me know that their trip was off and when they began sitting on the ground, I knew for sure that they weren't going anywhere for a while.

The girl took this chance to step back from me a pace, point between her titties, and say something. I realized at once that it must be her name, and also that I had no hope of pronouncing even the first few syllables. I knew it started with what I'd call a * Lou * sound and so I sent up Louise to see if she'd salute.

I can't tell you how happy she looked. Pointing to myself proved needless since she said Bill before I could. In my defense, Bill is a lot easier to say than any of the names they'd trotted out.

I wondered where the other one had been sent and as I thought about what had happened, a possible explanation came to me. They'd been in for a hell of a trek to start with, what with five hundred or so pounds of bear to be carried. My gift of the tarp, visqueen, and masking tape would have made things even more troublesome. Rega's gift of Louise to me might have sealed the deal, since it cost an already overloaded party one of their bearers.

Whether I was right or wrong, we were waiting now and we were doing it out in the woods. I tried to signal Sky that we should go to my truck. He started toward me and Louise got the message but all the rest remained seated.

I turned back to them, facing Rega, pointed to her, and then made a circling gesture around all the others and waved for them to follow. I was trying to indicate that all of them should come with us.

I'm sure Rega got the message, because she grabbed the tarp, visqueen, and masking tape and began rattling off directions to the others. There was really too much for them to carry, even the short distance to my camper, so I went over to help.

This caused some consternation though it wasn't alarming, but when I made the move to help, Sky and Louise jumped to it too and with more hands to help we didn't have much trouble.

When we got to my camper, Rega, showing even more intelligence in her new role as keeper of the tarp, spread it out on the ground and had the others place their burdens on it. Apparently she'd already realized that the visqueen could be easily punctured and that the tarp would go a long way toward preventing it.

Once that was taken care of, we were at my camp with nothing to do but sit around. As host this was a little distressing so I thought a pot of coffee would be a good thing. For a few seconds I considered getting us all a beer, but thoughts of Indians and firewater reared their ugly heads and coffee prevailed.