Blood Brothers of Gor Read Online Free PDF Page B

and honors, adorned their hair. Necklaces and rude bracelets glinted in the sun. High-pommeled saddles were polished. Coins and beads hung from the reins. Exploit markings and lucksigns were painted on the flanks and forequarters of their animals, and ribbons and feathers were fixed in the braided, silken manes. Women, too, in thier shirtdresses and knee-length leggings, and beads, bracelets and
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    armbands, and colorful blankets and capes, astride their kaiila, riding as red savages ride, participated in this barbaric parade.
    Some of these rode kaiila to which travois were attached. Some had cradles slung about the pommels of their saddles. These cradles, most of them, are essentially wooden frames on which are fixed leather, open-fronted enclosures, opened and closed by lacings, for the infant. The wooden frame projects both above and below the enclosure for the nfant. In particular it contains two sharpened projections at the top, like picket spikes, extending several inches above the point where the baby's head will be located. This is to protect the infant's head in the event the cradle falling, say, from the back of a running kaiila. Such a cradle will often, in such a case, literally stick upside down in the earth. The child, then, laced in the enclosure, protected and supported by it, is seldom injured.
    Such cradles, too, vertically, are often hung from a lodge pole or in the brances of a tree. In the tree, of course, the wind, in is rocking motion, can lull the infant to sleep. Older children often ride on the skins stretched betwen travios poles. Sometimes their fathers or mothers carry them before them, on the kaiila. When a child is about six, if his family is well-fixed, he will commonly have his own kaiila. The red savage, particularly the males, will usually be a skilled rider by the age of seven. Bareback riding, incidentally, is common in war and the hunt. In trading and visiting, interestingly, saddles are commonly used. This is perhaps because they can decorate lavishly, adding to one's apperance, and may serve, in virtue of the pommel, primarily, as a suppot for provisions, gifts and trade articles.
    "It is a simply splendid," said Cuwignaka, happily.
    "Yes," I said.
    Children, too, I noted, those not in cradles, greased, their hair braided, their bodies and clothing ornamented, in splendid finery, likeminiature versions of the adults, some riding, some sitting on the skins stretched between travois poles, participated happily and proudly, or bewilderedly, in this handsome procession.
    "They are bringing their goods with them," I said. The travois with them were heavily laden, with bundles, and lodge skins and poles. Indeed, the travois poles themselves, when untied and freed from teh kaiila, would be used as lodge poles.
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    "It is the way our peoples move," said Cuwignaka. Goods would not be left behind, save occasionally in hidden caches.
    At the flanks of some of the warriors' kaiila marched stripped white women, in beaded collars. Their wrists were tied behind them. About their throats, on thong loops, below the collars, dangling between their breasts, hung leather, braided kaiila quirts. There was little doubt as to what such women were. I met the eyes of one, and she looked away, tossing her head, disdainfully, in her bonds and collar, the quirt about her neck. She was the property of a red master. I then met the eyes of another. This one, too, looked away, but she did so quickly, fearfully. She was very frightened. I gathered that she was terribly afraid of her master. She did not so much as dare to look at another man. These girls had both been blond. So, too, I noted, were most of the other such women.
    "The two-legged, female animals here are mostly blond," I said to Cuwignaka.
    "Yes," he said. "They are being displayed."
    I nodded. Such a hair color is a rarity in the Barrens.