Chapter 21

After we'd entered our hut my mates began teasing me about my new sweetheart, and I admitted openly and freely that I thought Lanita was a little treasure.

"Good. Here's hoping you start thinking of Nita that way too, and soon," Shaeta said.

"Of course Nita is a treasure. What Calak wouldn't be thrilled to have two healing women?"

"That isn't what Shaeta was talking about. The treasure she meant would be a little closer to your hut, especially at night," Katia said, and they both giggled.

"I haven't even considered such a thing. Should I? Do you think Breezus will put us together?"

"No, that is not Breezus' job. When a mated woman loses her mate, as Nita has, it is usually left up to a man in her Calak to take her in, with her permission of course," Shaeta said, explaining.

"What do you two think? Is it something you want?"

"We are your mates, mighty hero, we will obey your every whim so that we don't earn one of your fearsome spankings," Katia said, and she nearly got all of it out before they both started laughing at me.

"Even men are not stupid enough to believe that," I said, and it only caused them to laugh harder. Finally Shaeta caught her breath.

"Yes, we would like for Nita and Lanita to join us, even if we didn't like her so much already. She is a woman with a child and she needs a man to take care of her and her baby. For me, I think that Lanita has already made her choice and is busily going about making sure she gets you. She is very affectionate to Shaeta and I too," Katia said.

"In that case we wouldn't have a chance of avoiding it if we wanted to, and I can't think of a single reason to avoid it. As a man I may be just a dummy, but if the two of you want this, and Lanita wants it, and Nita wants it - I'll just give in and declare myself the winner. How should I do this?" I asked.

"You must ask her to become one of your mates. If she agrees, there will be a small ceremony with Zakat and Matatu, but there will be no feast or night of gajee drinking," Shaeta said.

"Don't worry my mate. Lanita will fall asleep early each night, and probably won't wake no matter how you make us scream. If she does she will pretend to be asleep anyway. Unless she giggles, but she will try not to," Katia said.

It sounded logical to me after they had it all explained. They told me if Nita agreed the ceremony could be tomorrow night, before supper, and that Nita and Lanita would just move into our hut with us. Hell, the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.

Nita wasn't over five years older than Shaeta or Katia and she was every bit as desirable. In fact, thinking of what I could tell about her figure through her clothes made my dick hard. Poor Shaeta and Katia had to help me relive the pressure. For some reason I slept like a baby afterwards.

As soon as I woke I realized I'd be asking Nita and Lanita to join our family, but that wasn't all I knew. I'd had a delivery during the night. I wanted to go check things out right away, but didn't. We dressed and headed for breakfast.

Almost as if they knew what was going to happen, Denac and Jekaycey didn't eat with us this morning. It didn't cause us to miss out on company though, for Nita and Lanita were there. Lanita came to sit in my lap as the women went to get our food.

"Would you like to come and live with Shaeta, Katia, and I?" I asked, as soon as she was settled in my lap.

"What about my mother?" she asked.

"Why I want her to come and live with us too. I want her to be one of my mates," I said.

"It would be wonderful. Do you think she will? Lanita asked.

"I hope so. What do you think?"

"I think she will. She has been lonely since Kaglao killed my Daddy. She cries at night sometimes when she thinks I'm already asleep."

"Maybe I can stop her crying," I said.

"I hope so. I hope you can make her squeal, like Daddy did," Lanita said, and then giggled.

"You will probably giggle if I do," I said, teasing her.

"Of course I will giggle if I hear it. What are children for if not that," she said, and smiled.

When the three of them returned I decided not to wait until we'd finished, and I thought I might as well use my talk with Lanita to any advantage I could.

"Nita, Lanita and I have decided that we would like for you to join Shaeta and Katia as one of my mates. It would make us both very happy. Wouldn't it Lanita?"

"Yes Mother, it would make us very happy, and I promise not to giggle too loudly if he makes you squeal at night," Lanita said.

It surprised not only Nita, but Katia and Shaeta too. They recovered quickly enough though and did some giggling of their own, along with another pretty blush up Nita's neck.

"I will be happy to join with you Carl, and to become one of your mates, if Katia and Shaeta agree," Nita said.

"Of course we agree," Shaeta told her, "Carl is much too well trained to ask you without our approval first."

This surprised Nita, and I don't think it was what Shaeta said, but that she said it in front of me. She was at a loss for words for a few seconds.

"No need to look so surprised. When we asked Carl about training the cashda he said he would have an easier time training them than women had training men," Katia said.

That was it for Nita's control and she burst out laughing, keeping it up until tears were streaming.

"I don't know what's so funny," Lanita said, "I didn't have a bit of trouble training you to hold me in your lap and feed me."

The rest of us lost it then while Lanita sat in my lap smiling at her own joke. She was too smart to be so young, but I knew she would keep things interesting.

One of the best things for men about living in this time and place was that the women took care of all the little details and usually got huffy if a man tried to help them. The men didn't need to worry their thick skulls about domestic duties.

After we'd eaten, all of them left me to my own devices, even Lanita, while they were off to clean and put away the bowls then buttonhole Matatu and Zakat about the evening's upcoming nuptials. At least Denac came over to join me after they'd left.

"Jekaycey told me something was going to happen this morning that we would interfere with if we ate with you. By the look of it you'll be getting a little more crowded in your hut," he said, teasing me, or trying to.

"I suspect that's why Shaeta had me build it so large to start with. It seemed too big at the time, but now I think she planned on Katia's arrival from the start," I said.

"Better you than me," he said, laughing.

"Don't count yourself out yet, Denac. Seems to me that Jekaycey has found a friend among the new women too. Remember, yours is not to reason why," I said.

"What does that mean?" he said.

"It means that your best policy with a mate is to always listen carefully and then try to do exactly what she tells you to do."

He roared with laughter and then told me he considered it the best advice he'd ever had.

"You are right. After all, she has control of most of my food and all of my pussy," he said, and laughed loudly again with me joining him this time.

"What are you two up to?" Jekaycey asked, as all the women in question came back.

"Denac and I were just talking about how nice it was to have women in our lives so that we would know what we were supposed to be doing."

"Well it can't be any better than having a man who appreciates you and who will mind," Katia said.

"One who is well trained you mean," I said.

"There is that too," Jekaycey said.

You two should run along and play now. We have things to take care of," Shaeta said, and then they all, including Lanita, laughed at us.

"Come along Denac, we have been dismissed," I said, leading him around to the back of my hut.

"Aren't we going to the canyon where the cashda are?" he asked.

"Yes, but I had a feeling when I woke that something had been left for me in the night."

Something had, some things in fact, as in more than one. I spotted a pair of posthole diggers first and then saw two round point and two flat point shovels. Lying near them were a nice drawknife, a spoke shave, a tenon cutter, and a hub-boring tool. Stacked beside these were eight wagon wheel rims. I was almost ecstatic. I would have been thrilled with only the rims, since they would be by far the hardest mandatory items to make. I could have managed without some of the tools, but not without the rims, or not nearly as well anyway.

A little more investigation let me find a shingle cutting froe, a brace, a nice box of bits for the brace and a couple of dozen chisels, some for wood and some for metal. Last but certainly not least was a set of blacksmithing tongs. I knew that the shed was going to need to be moved forward on the agenda, but by now I thought it needed to be workshop size instead of just a shed.

"What is all this, Carl?" Denac asked.

"There are several new things that will serve us well later, but for today these will be invaluable. They are posthole diggers."

"What are postholes?" he asked.

"We will have to put post into the ground to make other fences for catching and training the cashda. They will not let us just walk up to them and hop onto their backs."

"I can understand that. I'm glad that you seem to know how to go about it, and I am anxious to learn," he said.

I took a shovel and let Denac carry the posthole diggers and we headed for the canyon. Half way to the river we did an about face and headed back for my stash of new tools.

When we got there I picked up the brace and the box of bits and other tools, grabbing a two-pound hammer while I was at it. As we'd been heading out the first time I had come across the idea of using pegs to hold the fences together instead of rawhide thongs. Pegs were easier to make and would probably be stronger anyway.

We stopped at the river to get naked below the waist for the transit. This was getting to be a bother and I wished it wasn't necessary, since it was time consuming and the reward, dry clothes, seemed small.

Most of our crew was sitting around on their asses, just now recovering from the breakfast that four of them had gone after this morning. They got to their feet as soon as they saw us though and were anxious to do something, anything it seemed.

We left half of them adding to last night's fence but I told them to only cut more trees for rails, and that I'd come and show them how to make the attachments later. Denac, the other half of our workers, and I walked on into the now enclosed pasture.

We had the cashda captured already, sorta. They couldn't get away, but there was still plenty of room for them to avoid us. I did a little planning and then showed everyone how posthole diggers worked. I was surprised to see them all waiting anxiously for their turn to try them out.

The rest of the day was mostly old-fashioned work. We had to cut more trees for the posts, and then some smaller ones to make dowels to use as pegs. Luckily the newness of the diggers hadn't worn off before all the holes were in place, and there'd been quite a few needed.

Once we had the pen built, we started on the chute I'd decided to use instead of trying to rope these monsters with the rawhide lariats. I wasn't nearly as worried about breaking a lariat as I was about being dragged all over creation if I actually roped something that didn't want to be roped.

Shortly after noon our food was delivered and I was happy for the break. My mates, Nita, and Lanita had come with the group and I ate with them, holding Lanita in her now expected seat. I'll admit that I let the break run longer than it really needed to. As they left, Shaeta reminded me not to stay until dark tonight, since I had an appointment.

Even though the chute had to be larger and stronger than any I'd ever seen, and though we had to tamp hell out of all the posts, not to mention the pain in the ass of cutting dowels, drilling holes for them, and hammering them in turned out to be, we still had things eighty percent done by about an hour before sunset.

I told the workers that they could come on back to camp tonight, since I was sure the cashda couldn't get out, but they said they'd stay just in case. Half of them did return with us to pick up food for them all, but every one of them said they'd rather stay out to make sure nothing went wrong.

The mating ceremony for Nita, Shaeta, Katia, and I took place before the meal. I was glad it was short and that all of the women we'd rescued looked happy about it. I hoped they would put their ordeal behind them and get on with their new lives, though I figured it would take more time.

We ate together after the business was taken care of, with Lanita in my lap and all my mates and I clumped together onto the one large rock that was getting too crowded for such. I needed to take a day off from cashda tomorrow and build some damned furniture, or at least cut some logs into manageable sizes so we could drag them up for seats. We weren't the only ones that were scrambling for a place to sit.

Later, when we headed to the hut Shaeta told me I'd be seeing a little surprise when we got inside. I wondered what could be surprising inside the hut but once I entered I couldn't miss it. Our hut seemed to be carpeted now.

Of course it wasn't a carpet, the floor was completely covered with furs. It didn't take that many either, since they'd finished with the giant vadeesey's hide without me noticing. In fact, I hadn't even seen them working on it.

"How did you ever get it ready so soon?"

"Almost everyone helped some. It doesn't take that long when there is plenty of help," Katia said.

"But why did we end up with it?"

"Because you're the one that killed it, silly. Not only that, you killed it before it injured anyone at all. Darita did a lot of the work, since you saved her so much patching up," Shaeta said.

"I have never seen a vadeesey fur off the vadeesey. How did you ever kill it, Carl?" Nita asked.

"With the weapon you saw me using at the loner's camp. It came with me. It was still a close thing though. Vadeesey take a lot of killing."

"Well, I think it is wonderful, and so soft," Lanita said, from where she lay squirming on it.

We talked a little and then undressed and went to sleep. Even though I enjoyed seeing them all bare assed in the candle light, I was just as glad that it seemed to be custom for sex to start on the second night after you were mated, or later. It wasn't that I didn't look forward to dipping my wick in Nita, but it seemed more comfortable somehow if you didn't rush to bed and start fucking.

It was slightly surprising but not alarming the next morning when I woke and discovered that Lanita was sleeping comfortably on my chest. When I moved a little her eyes opened and then she gave me the cutest little smile.