"You should have said you had the quirt," said the youth. Then he said to the two others, "Round them up!"

They raced away, through the grass.

"Follow me," said the first youth, and then turned his kaiila, and led the way from the place. These youth were naked save for the breechclout and moccasins. They carried ropes and whips.

In a few moments we had surmounted a small rise, and I was looking down into a wide, shallow, saucerlike valley, some half a pasang in width. "Hei! Hei!" cried the boys, in the distance, bringing together the members of the herd. Their ropes swung. Their whips cracked. Then the herd was together, well grouped by its young drovers. It now occupied, its members bunched and crowded closely together, a small, tight circle. It was now, in effect, a small, relatively fixed, directionless, milling mass. In such a grouping it may be easily controlled and managed. In such a grouping it has no purpose of its own. In such a grouping it must wait to see what is to be done with it. It must wait to see in what direction it will be driven.

"Hei! Hei!" called the young drovers, kicking their heels back into the flanks of their kaiila, waving their ropes, cracking their whips.

The herd now, the young drovers on either side of it, and slightly behind it, began to move in my direction.

"Hei! Hei!" cried the young drovers, ropes swinging, whips cracking. The herd then began to run towards me. I could see the dust raised. Lagging beasts were incited to new speeds, treated to the admonishments of hissing leather, falling across their backs, flanks and rumps. Then one of the lads sped his kaiila about the herd, heading it off and turning it. He had done this expertly. Not more than a few yards away, below me, below where I stood on the small rise, the herd was again in a small tight circle, turned in on itself, purposeless, milling, stationary.

"You boys drive them well," I said.

"Thank you," said the young man on the kaiila, with whom I had been waiting. "We practice it, of course. If danger should threaten we wish to be able to move them quickly into the vicinity of the camp."

"It is the same with kaiila," said another lad.

I nodded. These lads, and lads like them, were set to watch the herds, not to defend them. At the first sign of danger, such as the apperance of an enemy party, they were to bring the herds back to the village, sending one lad ahead to sound the alarm. Under no circumstances were they to engage the enemy. Red savages do not set boys to fight men. Too, the lads were in little danger. It would be very difficult for a mounted warrior, even if he wished to do so, to overtake a boy, lighter in weight than he, on a rested kaiila, by the time the lad could reach the lodges, usually no more than two or three pasangs away.

"It is a fine herd," I said. It was the third wuch herd I had looked at this morning.

"We think so," said the first lad, proudly. "There is one with nice flanks," he said, indicating a brunet with his whip."

"Yes," I said.

The girl, frightened, seeing our eyes upon her, tried to slip back, unobtrusively, among her fellow lovely beasts.

"I have used her myself," said the first lad. "Do you wish to have us cut her out of the herd for you?"

"No," I said.

"There is a pretty one," said another lad, "the one with brown hair and the little turned up nose."

"She is pretty," I said. "What is her name?"

The lads laughed. "These are herd girls," said one of them. "They have no names."

"How many are here?" I asked. I had not bothered to count.

"Seventy-three," said the first lad. "This is the larges of the Isanna girl herds."

"And the best," added another lad.

"They seem quiet," I said.

"In the herds they are not permitted human speech," said one of the boys.

"No more than she-kaiila," laughed another.

"They may, however," said the first, "indicate their needs by such things as moans and whimpers."

"This helps in their control," said another lad, "and helps them to keep in mind that they are only beasts."

"Do you drive them sometimes to water?" I asked.

"Of course," said one of the lads.

"We feed them on their knees," said another lad.

"They supplement their diets by picking berries and digging wild turnips," said the first lad.

"We make them chew carefully and watch closely to see that they swallow, bit by bit, in small swallows, sip roots, as well," said another.

"We then examine their mouths, forcing them widely open, to determine that they have finished their entire allotment of the root," said another.

I nodded. Sip roots are extremely bitter. Slave wine, incidentally, is made from sip roots. The slaves of the red savages, like slaves generally on Gor, would be crossed and bred only as, and precisely as, their masters might choose.

"Do you often have strays?" I asked.

"No," laughed a lad, slapping his whip meaningfully into his palm.

"At night," said another lad, "to make it hairder to steal them, we put them in twist hobbles and tie them together by the neck, in strings, thier hands tied behind their backs. These strings are then picketed near the village."

"Do they ever try to escape?" I asked.

"No," said one lad.

"Not more than once," laughed another.

"That is true," said the first lad. "No such beast ever tries to escape from the Isanna more than once."

"Some who try to escape are killed by sleen on the prairie," said one of the lads. "The others are trailed and brought back to the camp where they are tied down by our women and, over three days, taught that escape is not permitted."

"What is the penalty for a second attempt at escape?" I asked.

"Hamstringing," said one of the lads, "and then being left behind when the camp moves."

"I see," I said. "May I speak to one of them?"

"Surely," said the first lad.

I approached the women.

"You," I said, indicating a dark-haired woman, "step forward."

She came forward immediately, and knelt before me.

"You may speak briefly to me," I said. "After that, you are returned, once more, to the linguistic conditions of the herd, that condition in which, without permission of a master or masters, or one acting in such a capacity, you may not use human speech. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Is there any escape for you?" I asked.

"No, Master," she said, frightened, and then put down her head, trembling. I saw, too, several of the other women shrink back.

"Are you certain?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said, frightened.

"What of these other women," I asked, "do they, too, know that?"

"Yes, Master," said the woman. "We all know it! We all know that escape is impossible for us!"

"You may withdraw," I said.

Quickly the woman scrambled back, into the herd.

Several of the other women in the herd, I had noticed, had been following these conversations, my conversations with the boys and then, later, my conversation with the woman. In their eyes I had seen terror. Well did they understand, I saw, the hopelessness of even the thought of escape. Even if they should elude their red pursuers, which seemed almost unthinkable, there would be waiting for them only the prairie, and the sleen. These women, like most white women in the Barrens, and they well knew it, to their terror, lived at the mercy of, and on the sufferance of, red masters.

"In a moon or two it will be time to think the herds," said one of the lads.

"We will trade some off and sell some others," said another lad.

"It seems that any of these would be worth keeping," I said, admiringly.

"It is a sleek herd," said one of the boys. "Doubtless serveral will be clothed and taken into private lodges for the winter moons."

"They are useful for digging under the snow for kailiauk chips," said a lad. Kailiauk chips were a common fuel on the plains.