by Maren Smith
“Ha!” she crowed, and stood. Her smile vanished when she saw him coming. She tried to run, but he caught the scruff of her dress first and then her arm. Her shrieks caught the attention of the men in the lumberyard. “No, wait! Cal! Don’t!”
“This is just a taste.” He snapped his belt across her bottom with a great deal more force than he would have used, but for all the layers of clothing that padded her bottom from the full effects of the leather. Those three sharp strokes still made her hips jolt outward, eliciting fresh yelps from Katy. “Something for you to think about until I get you back upstairs, where I’m going to bare your bottom and do the job properly.”
He gave her one last lick, laying it low across the very tops of her thighs, and from her howling, bouncing response, he guessed she was probably wishing she had more protective padding, not less.
In the lumberyard beyond them, some of the men had paused to see what the commotion was about. Others were already going back to work. Cal wasn’t sure if she had even noticed they had an audience. If she had, it obviously did not rank high on her immediate list of concerns.
“You have no right!” she wailed.
“No? Well, I guess that’s something we need to add to the list of things we’re going to talk about back in our room.”
“No!” She bounced, catching the back of one stinging leg with her free hand and rubbing fiercely.
“Yes.” The belt in one hand and her arm in his other, Cal turned her around and marched her down the narrow alley toward the front of the hotel. “I can promise you, Katy, this is going to be a long and thorough discussion because I’m tired of having to chase you down. I’m tired of the arguments, the attitude, the sulky looks. You and me…we are going upstairs and we are going to sort this out.”
She stopped rubbing her bottom when they reached the main street. She tried to pull away from him only once, and that was when he pushed her through the swinging doors into the hotel. When that failed, she became very quiet and very obedient, moving almost woodenly. He saw her face reflected in the mirror of the bar. She was biting her bottom lip and looking up at the stairs, her fingers twisting and wringing at the skirts of her dress, no doubt thinking about what was still coming and trying to weigh it against the smart she could already feel.
The proprietor was a professional. He took one look at the belt dangling from Cal’s hand and then pretended to be absorbed in wiping down the glasses behind his bar.
“Two hot dinners,” Cal repeated as he marched Katy passed the bar and straight toward the stairs. “One iced tea. Two beers.” He tossed the hotel owner a small, weary smile. “And you’d best make it twenty minutes.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Cal awoke with a start when he heard the sharp knock at the door.
“Stage,” the muffled voice of the proprietor called.
Struggling through the stiffness, Cal sat up. He rubbed at his head first and then yawned. It was an even harder struggle to get up off the floor. His foot kept tangling in the blanket that lay half on and half off the bed. Kind of like Katy.
She lay sound asleep on her stomach, her feet hanging off the foot of the mattress with her bloomers still dangling from one ankle. Her dress was bunched around her hips, her bottom only just covered by the volumes of rumpled cloth. The twin stripes he’d laid across the tops of her thighs showed as a crisscross of vividly wide and overlapping lines. Having concentrated the majority of his discipline upon the lower swells of her bottom, he knew for a fact that had to be at least as red and quite possibly even darker. She had fallen asleep with one hand still resting just above the tender swells, palm up, as if she were still trying to ward off the spanks that were no longer falling. She hadn’t even touched her supper.
Cal looked from the ham and potatoes on her plate, back to her. She couldn’t have been asleep for very long. Her cheeks were still a little flushed from crying, as was the tip of her nose, and still to him she looked as pretty as a painting.
Loathe to wake her, he reached down, brushing a wisp of honey-blonde hair off her forehead before letting the backs of two fingers glide down her cheek.
Her eyelids fluttered. Her soft and steady breathing hitched.
“Stage is ready to go,” he said.
Groaning, Katy closed her eyes again.
“Yeah, I know.” He was implacable. “Change your clothes and let’s go. You can sleep on the way.”
Turning her face into the mattress, Katy groaned again, then sighed. Dragging her hand back off her bottom, she pushed herself up and rolled gingerly into a sitting position. Her face underwent a myriad of expressive winces, all of which Cal pretended not to see. He turned his back, making himself busy over a basin of cool water, washing his face and trying to close his ears to the whisper-soft rustle of the young woman striping out of her dress just behind him.
Katy stood up slowly. She looked at the rip in the back of her bloomers—a casualty of their earlier ‘discussion’, when she had fought so valiantly not to be bent over the bed or stripped of her underwear—then kicked it all the way off and left it to lie as a crumpled puddle of dusty cotton on the floor. Moving slowly, listlessly, she took off her cactus thistle infused dress and dropped that on the floor too. Left now in only knee stockings and a waist length camisole, she pulled the dress Cal had bought onto her lap and then just sat there, shoulder hunched, idly fingering the cotton cloth. He knew all this because he couldn’t quite make himself stop peeking at her reflection in the dressing mirror. He watched her squirm and wince, very tenderly reaching back to press her hand along the side of her hip and then grimace, shooting his back a very disgruntled glare. That look did not last more than a few seconds, before smoothing away into first a grimace of guilt and then reluctant acceptance.
“Aren’t you going to leave?” she finally asked, when he straightened from his selective bath and began to dry his face and hands.
“Nope,” he replied. He did, however, step off to one side, moving out of range of the mirror. Facing the wall, he folded his arms across his chest and waited. This time, he kept his eyes firmly off the mirror.
Katy didn’t move. “I can’t change clothes with you in the room. It’s not decent.”
“You show your drawers to a room full of strangers for a living.”
“Not privately!”
Cal almost started laughing. Almost. “First of all, I’ve skinned your drawers off you not once now, but twice. We don’t have much more in the way of secrets between us. And second, I’m not looking at you. I’m looking at the wall.”
“You’ll peek.”
He tipped his head slightly, trying hard not to roll his eyes. “I won’t peek.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“There’s only one person in this room who hasn’t lied to the other. I’ll give you a hint: it’s not you.”
“You’ve lied,” she muttered, but he also heard the familiar zip of laces being irritably jerked loose.
“When have I ever lied to you?”
“Never mind.” The sound of rustling cloth became short and angry sounding. Then her foot kicked at the floor, and a moment later, her dirty dress landed just behind him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
If his arms weren’t already folded, he’d have folded them all over again. Cal struggled for patience. “No, ma’am. Huh uh. You made an accusation, now you back it up with fact.”
“You said you wouldn’t leave me.”
“When did I say that?” Cal stared at the wall, his eyes narrowing. “I never said anything like—”
“You did too! When I was sick in bed with the mumps and everyone went down to the barn because Sookie was having her calf and it went bad, and you were the only one who stayed with me because I said please don’t go. You said you never would, but then you did.”
Irritation gave way to bewilderment. “No, I didn’t,” Cal said. “I stayed with you all night, feeding you sips of sweet cream and tea with a s
poon because it hurt so bad you couldn’t open your mouth wide enough to drink from a cup. I never left your side, not once.”
“You did too! You and your father both, you left.”
Cal’s jaw dropped. “Three years later!”
“You still left! That’s still a lie! It’s even worse, because you didn’t just lie to me, you lied to a child!”
“Now hold it just one minute.” Cal shoved away from the wall and turned around, forgetting everything except the irrational argument brewing between them. It wasn’t until he saw her, sitting on the edge of the bed with that gown lying over her lap and no closer to being dressed than she had been before, that he suddenly remembered why he’d been facing the wall in the first place. He quickly snapped back around, but it was too late.
“I knew it!” Katy jumped off the bed with a shriek, yanking the dress up to cover herself. “I knew you’d peek!”
Cal ground his teeth in frustration. “Put your damn clothes on so we can talk about this like adults.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” Her voice muffled as she threw the dress on over her head and quickly swam up through the volumes of cloth until her arms came thrusting out the sleeves and her head poked up through the top. She slapped an errant tear off her cheek, and then began hurried working her way up the long stretch of mother-of-pearl buttons that lined the front. “There’s nothing to say anyway. Everybody leaves. It’s just one more fact of life I have to get used to. The only thing anyone can do to stop it is leave first!”
The next thing Cal knew, Katy did just that. While he was still struggling to figure out how she had come to that lonely life-changing conclusion, Katy walked right past him and out the door. She’d left her food untouched, her dirty dress and ripped bloomers abandoned on the floor, and him facing the wall, although he turned around quick enough when he heard the door slam shut behind her.
Cal caught up to her halfway down the stairs. There were several people lined up at the bar and one couple, probably fresh in off the stage, enjoying a late lunch by the windows. The hardest thing he’d ever done in his life was keep his tongue in check while he followed her out of the hotel. She glanced once at the Abilene, but though it knocked at the back of his head to wonder if she might try running that way, but she didn’t. Instead, she gathered her skirts and stepped off the high wooden walkway, marched out into the sunlight and across the hard-packed street, to where the stagecoach was parked just outside the livery. Four fresh horses had been hitched up to the coach, and the driver and his companion were just coming out of the saloon next door, with lunch in a satchel and two canteens each of water for the road. Katy spared neither of them more than a glance. She simply boarded the coach, disappearing into the shadows inside.
Cal followed her. He had no idea what he was supposed to say, but there were a hundred unlikely, argumentative prospects nipping at the back of his tongue. When he boarded, he discovered that he and Katy were the only two people in the back. He took a seat on the bench opposite of hers. The thin padding was worn and not particularly comfortable. He’d probably come to hate it by the time he reached Salt Lake City, but he was equally sure that what padding there was was likely to feel like a God-send once the coach lurched into rattling, jostling motion.
Katy avoided his eyes. She sat, hands folded primly in her lap, her face turned to the curtained window. Twin spots of temper pinkened her cheeks and there was a decidedly watery glimmer in her eyes.
“Katy.” Cal leaned toward her, lowering his voice so he would not be overheard by anyone passing just outside. “Is that what you think you father did, or your mother?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper. She swallowed convulsively. She blinked hard, trying to keep the tears at bay, and parted her lips just a little so she could breathe slowly and quietly, and without any tell-tale sniffling sounds.
Unfortunately for her, Cal very much wanted to talk about this. “Your father had an accident. It wasn’t his fault or his choice to leave; it just happened.”
“I know that.” She flashed him the most annoyed glare, and Cal promptly switched fishing holes.
“Your mother didn’t leave you either. She found herself alone and did the best she could in the face of a very bad situation.”
“She wasn’t alone!” Katy snapped. “She had me.”
“You were a kid, and no offense, honey, but I don’t think you have a realistic understanding of how hard it was for your mother to try running the ranch after your father passed. Hands are transient. Most respect only the stability of their pay.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about! They respected my father. They gave him their loyalty.”
“Did they extend your mother that same loyalty or respect?” Cal softly countered. “Or did they just walk off?”
She turned her face more fully toward the window, her brow furrowing slightly as she frowned.
Lowering his voice again, Cal leaned toward her, hands clasped, forearms resting on his knees. “Katy, you say I don’t understand, but I think I understand better than just about anyone else in the world. When I took over after my father died, those men who had been so loyal to him, who I had worked alongside and thought were my friends—every one of those men turned on me. That’s not to say they weren’t civil; they were. They were very civil, but they didn’t trust me. I had to earn that by showing I knew how to accomplish every task I set to them, down to the smallest detail, and by proving I could make hard financial decisions, regarding my herd, regarding my men, and most importantly, regarding the money with which I paid them. I was late one time, and I lost two hands. They just left. It’s been almost two years and I think I’ve got about half of them won over now, but my ranch isn’t anywhere near the size of yours and I don’t have half your hands. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for your mother, because I guarantee, not one man in your father’s employ—whether they liked you or not, whether they liked her or not—cut your mother one inch of slack. In fact, I’ll bet they were twice as hard and twice as unforgiving because she was a woman. Yeah, four months is awful quick to marry after losing your husband. I doubt it was easy for her; I’ll bet it tore her up, especially when she realized that she might have saved her home and her ranch, but she’d lost the loyalty and respect of her only child in the process.”
The coach rocked slightly as the two men climbed up onto the seat. One knocked on the side. “Heading out!” he called, giving them warning only half a second before Cal heard the snap of the reins and the coach began to roll. It was just as he thought too. The wagon wheels found every dip and rain-washed dent in the road—little more than a well-worn path of ruts that led out of town—and he very nearly bounced off the seat when they hit their first real hole.
Katy grabbed onto the bench and the wall, wincing once when her bottom also became disconnected from the seat, only to find it again an instant later. The padding wasn’t anywhere near thick enough, but he didn’t think that had much to do with it when Katy started crying. She turned her face all the way to the window, trying to hide it, but the space was too small, and she just couldn’t turn far enough to hide her tears or the wracking spasms that jerked at her shoulders.
She hid her mouth behind one hand and Cal switched seats, sliding onto the hard bench beside her. He slipped his arm around her shoulders, but she resisted being drawn against him. Prickly as she was, she thumped him in the ribs with her elbow, but Cal could be stubborn too and this was too important to just let go.
“Come on, honey,” he said, coaxing her to turn from the window to him. Eventually, she did. Eventually, she let go of the seat and the wall and her small fingers hooked into the folds of his shirt, clinging to him as she gave up all the effort it took to hide, to be silent, or to be angry.
“I don’t want to go home!” she wept.
“I know.” Cal folded his arms that much tighter around her. He rubbed her
arms and her back. He pressed a kiss upon the top of her hair. He tried to be as comforting as he knew how.
The only thing he didn’t do was order the coach to turn around and take them back to town.
* * * * *
Katy couldn’t remember falling asleep. She certainly didn’t mean to, but she woke with a start, almost pitching forward straight off the bench and onto her nose when she heard the gunshots. It was evening now. The sun had almost set, casting the desert in a gloom of shadow and greyness. The lamps were lit up near the horses, but inside the coach everything was much darker and all Katy could hear was the rumbling rattle of carriage wheels coming to an abrupt stop and a frightening cacophony of shots and shouts.
“Don’t be stupid!” and “Put that rifle down!” were both repeated numerous times and in a variety of hard and growling voices. They were followed by a particularly chilling pistol report and an almost congenial sounding, “I’ll put the next one right through you, my friend. Now, drop it.”
Beside her, Cal must have fallen asleep too, because as fast as she came awake, he was also struggling to sit up. He still had one arm around her, and he quickly shifted it from her shoulders to her stomach, pressing her flat against the cushioned wall and out of view of the fluttering gaps between the window curtains. There was a slight rock to the carriage and then the unmistakable sound of a wood and metal rifle falling to the ground.
“Thank you,” the congenial man said. “Hands up. There’s a good boy. Now, don’t do anything we’re going to have to shoot you for. This is just a friendly, localized robbery. Do as we tell you, and we’ll leave living people instead of bodies behind us.”
