Bettylou was amazed at the silence of the raiders. Not a single word was exchanged among any of the men, while the grazing hones ceased to feed almost as one and rapidly ambled over to stand still as girths were tightened and the men mounted them, ready now to lead all of the beasts stolen from the Abode of the Righteous. The ram blatted piteously just before a sharp raider knife slashed open his throat; the blood was carefully caught and shared out equally between all of the men. Bettylou was offered a horn cup, but she paled and gagged; she knew that she would certainly have spewed had there been aught save pure emptiness in her stomach.
Still without a word spoken, the raider drank the hot blood himself and turned away just as another approached bearing a greased hide bag from which he took a lump of whitish-gray and very strong-smelling cheese. This lump he held at the bound girl’s mouth until she finally took a bite of it then a larger bite, then all of the remainder of the lump.
Tied into the saddle of one of the captured horses—Solomon Claxton’s hunting horse, God-sent, she noted—chewing at her mouthful of the delicious cheese. Bettylou saw the pair who had captured the stray ram flop the still-quivering carcass onto its back, open it and rough-dress it, helping themselves while they worked to the raw liver, heart and kidneys of the sheep as well as to the blood that collected in the body cavity. The gutted ram was lashed onto another of the stolen horses, and leading it and all the others, the raiders set out at the same slow, easy pace toward the western prairie.
As dawn began to streak the eastern skyline with muted reds and oranges and yellows, the raiding party and their loot—equine and inanimate and human—had advanced well out onto the endless expanse of grasses. Exhausted by the long ride, Bettylou Hanson drooped, her chin sunk upon her chest, no longer even trying to really ride and letting the hide thongs knotted about her legs and body keep her in the saddle of the big, powerful gelding. God-sent. But tired as she was, she could not sleep for the ache of her bruised, abused bottom and the discomfort of inner thighs rubbed raw and incessantly stung by salt sweat.
She was dimly aware that someone was riding now beside her, did not really take notice of the fact until a rough. callused hand lifted her chin to better view her face, then began to untie the thongs securing her numb hands.
They had been moving steadily southwestward, but then, as soon as her hands were freed, the entire party turned almost due north, coming presently to a trickling watercourse and following this to its confluence with another, larger one some few hundred yards from the marshy shore of a small lake.
In a sizable clearing carpeted in short grass—rare, this far out on the prairie, and of a bright, intense green—and surrounded by a dense stand of trees—cottonwood, elm, elder, basswood, walnut and, nearing the lakeshore, huge, droop-branched willows—the raiding party reined up, dismounted and began to unpack and unsaddle. Their own small horses they left unfettered, free to roam where they would, but those recently lifted from the Abode they made haste to hobble firmly, lest they essay a return from whence they had just been brought at such a cost of long, careful planning and deadly danger.
Bettylou was untied and lifted down from the saddle of the gelding with a rough gentleness, allowed to drink her fill from a skin of fresh, bitingly cold brook water. Then one of the raiders led her over to the shade of an elm, tied her ankle to its trunk with a long rawhide riata, indicated that she should sit there upon the sward, then left her to her own devices along with the waterskin and a leather bag of the strong, tasty, whitish cheese.
Munching at the cheese and sipping from the waterskin, the girl stretched muscles stiff and sore from the long hours in the saddle and watched the smoothly efficient activities of these strange, silent little men. Thus far, the only words she had heard any of them speak had been addressed to her, they never exchanged a single utterance between themselves or to horse or mule, yet they went about the communal-effort tasks of setting up camp without pause or miscue.
After unsaddling but before picketing, all of the captive horses and mules were led in groups down to the brookside and there watered, then briskly rubbed down with handfuls of the bigger, coarser grasses brought in from the encroaching verge of the tall-grass prairie.
This accomplished, the raiders posted guards, gathered wood, built a fire and finished dressing the sheep carcass for cooking. Bettylou noted how carefully the inedible portions of the sheep were retained—The stomach bags and the large intestines emptied of contents, turned inside out and washed in the brook, thicker, longer sinews painstakingly separated from bones and muscles, scraped and washed, then hung up on branches to air-dry; the small, pointed, black hooves were put aside and the inner surface of the hide was scraped clean of clinging bits of fat and flesh.
They set the legs of the sheep aside to roast, but the rest of the carcass was reduced by flashing knives to a pile of meat and fat and gristle which was heaped atop the offal—lung, small intestines, various glands and larger veins and arteries. The defleshed bones were all cracked and placed in a water-filled caldron along with the sheep’s head and the contents of three or four pouches produced by as many of the raiders, plus the partially digested herbiage that had been removed from the stomachs of the beast.
When she watched this penultimate addition, it was all that Bettylou could do to repress the urge to vomit up the fine cheese, and she vowed to herself then and there that come what might, she would never, could never partake of so barbaric, so nauseous a mess.
And, in her eyes. it got worse, While most of the raiders lay snoring or lazed or sat working sporadically a sundry small tasks, and the stew-pot began to send the first tendrils of steam aloft, hunters came strolling in from individual forays in the morning coolness. One bore a small, straight-horned antelope; two others had killed large hares; and these were dressed, skinned, butchered and added to the pot; and so too was a large fish one of the men had caught barehanded at the mouth of the brook. But meaty portions of each slain creature were always added to the pile of mutton and sheep scraps. Bettylou wondered why. Were these for a burnt offering to their false gods? (After all, the gods of these raiders were most assuredly false, for of all living folk, only the Chosen worshiped God Almighty.) But she dared not draw their attention to her by asking.
Once she had been tied to the tree and provided with water and cheese, she had been afforded all the attention and obvious scrutiny they had afforded the hobbled four-legged captives Very soon after the man who had tied her and brought the food had left her, Bettylou had repaired behind the thick trunk of the ancient elm and lifted her worn, torn, filthy scarlet smock—the only garment that such as she were allowed by the Elder and the Patriarchs of the families—and squatted long enough to empty her painfully full bladder. But if her brief absence was noted by her captors, such was not apparent upon her return to view.
Of a sudden. Bettylou recalled that rare visitors from other Abodes of the Righteous had been said to have spoken of fierce, murderous tribes of sinful thieves who called themselves the Folk of the Horse or some such name. Saturated with Sin, they were said to be true Servants of Satan, headhunters, cannibals drinkers of blood rather than water, filthy, stinking folk who never washed and who wore their clothing until it rotted off. These same visitors had averred, she had been told, that the Satanic savages lacked the ability of speech and made no other sounds save screams and roars and screeches like any other wild beasts. Could her captors be … ? Had she, Bettylou Hanson, been taken to provide a cannibal feast? Was this horror the final punishment of God for her Sin?