The Wyoming Debt
Page 17
With no back door and bars on the few office windows, there was no real opportunity for escape, only for delay, and after the day he'd already had, delay was doing only one thing for the sheriff's mood. It was making him madder. Mad as hell for being put in this position, and more determined than ever to start applying that "firm justice" the mayor wanted. Whatever he'd said to Elmer Quigley, Holman knew without a shadow of a doubt who the "guilty party" was. And one way or the other, this particular guilty party was going home with a changed attitude, a better respect for the law, and a thoroughly blistered butt.
Holman sat down at his desk and put his feet up on the desk. "You may as well get your tail on out here and face the music, " he called back to the section of his office that held the town's only jail cell. "My mood's not getting any better."
There was no answer.
"You know, darlin'," he shouted, a lot louder, this time. "If you make me come back there and crawl around on my hands and knees, dragging you out from under the cell bunk, you're not gonna like what happens."
"I'm not going to like it anyway, Daniel Holman, and you know it!" Molly shouted. "I saw you, standing there like a lily-livered coward! Swallowing every lie that lowdown snake Quigley told you! And now, you've made up your damned mind to give me a whipping, without even hearing my side of things."
Holman sighed— again, something it seemed he'd been doing a lot since marrying Molly. "I didn't have to hear your side of things," he said. "I saw some of what went on down there, and even if I hadn't, I'd be looking around for a good sturdy hairbrush about now. I know your style, sweetheart, and that little shindig has your brand all over it. You've got just two choices, here. Over my nice clean desk, with a fat wooden ruler, or back there in a dirty jail cell, with my belt—and with me even more pissed off than I already am. Me? I'd go with the ruler. Smarts like blazes, but it'll be a damned picnic compared to what I can do to your backside with a couple of minutes and a leather belt."
"Neither one is fair, damn it!" she called. "Besides, there were extenuating circumstances!"
He chuckled. "I always said you should have gone to law school, love. Just your bad luck to marry a poor, uneducated lawman and not a big city lawyer, who might take into account all those extenuating circumstances you mentioned. Of course, if this fellow was an honest lawyer, he'd still end up hauling you across his knee and setting your tail on fire."
"I hate you!" she yelled.
Holman laughed. "No, you don’t. You're crazy about me. You’re just feeling a little nervous about now about what's going to happen when I get my hands on you. Not too surprising, I guess, considering what happened last time. How long has it been, anyway? Since you and I had our last…Our last misunderstanding?"
"Misunderstanding!" she cried. "Is that how you remember it?"
"Nope, but I figured it sounded a little nicer than, 'How long has it been since I spanked you hard enough to leave fingerprints on every square inch of your pretty ass?' Those red prints lasted two whole days, if I remember it right. You had to sleep on your stomach. Or was that the time before? When you set the kitchen on fire by trying to start the stove with an open can of coal oil? After I’d told you twice not to?" He thought for a moment. "No, seems to me I used a couple of willow switches on you that day. Wore the damned things to nothing but nubs, with you doubled over the back porch rail, screaming like a banshee, with your drawers down around your ankles."
"You're enjoying this, aren’t you?" she shouted. "Torturing me? While you wallow around in what you no doubt recall with nostalgia?"
"Wrong again, darling. Just trying to make sure I don't repeat myself. I read once where this fella said, 'Variety is the spice of life.' I think he was right, don't you?" With a resigned sigh, Holman got up from his chair and walked back to the lone jail cell. Molly had shed most of her food-stained clothing, and was sitting on the bunk in her shift and drawers.
"The man's name was William Cowper," she said smugly. "And for your information, he also said, 'They who fight for freedom undertake, The noblest cause Mankind can have at stake.'Which was exactly what I was trying to do, today, in case you hadn't noticed."
Holman smiled. "I do love having a wife with a fine eastern education. So this fella's name was William, like me?"
"Yes. He was crazy as a bedbug, and had fits."
"A married man, then. Tell me, was his wife a suffragette?"
"That's very funny. Promise me you'll listen to what I have to say, and not lose your temper?"
"Sure, but you’re still in for one hell of a licking. Like Elmer says, the law's the law, and the law says you can't go around busting up city property and punching elected officials in the nose. Especially when the elected official can fire your husband and put you both out on the street."
"Elmer Quigley wouldn't do that," she insisted. "He knows you're the best sheriff this town has ever had. And the only honest one."
"Elmer Quigley would fire his own grandmother if she did what you did. Elmer's never had a sense of humor. Besides, he'd had rather stick his pecker in a hornet's nest than see women get the vote."
"You think we should get the vote, though," she said. "So why would you take his side?"
"I'm not, but there's got to be a better way to go about it. I warned you what could happen if you went too far, and now you have."
"Then why don't you just see to it that all the women who protested get punished equally?" she asked sarcastically. "Why just me?"
"The others aren't my problem. You are. But I wouldn't be real surprised to find out that a couple of them get taken to the woodshed, tonight. The fact is, if it had been a group of men doing what you ladies did today, I'd throw 'em all in the clink and lose the key for about a week. I can't do that to a bunch of women."
"We of the women's suffrage movement are not cowed by the idea of prison," she declared haughtily. "Why, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton have been defying…"
"You’re not Susan B.Anthony, and this isn't New York City," he said grimly. "A lot of the rowdies in this town wouldn't think twice about hogtying the lot of you and tossing you down a well, especially when they're liquored up and in the mood to put a few uppity females back in their place. Two women over at Gage City got themselves stripped naked and tarred and feathered just last week—for demonstrating the same way you did."
"And if someone tries that here, you can arrest them."
"Me and who else? I haven't had a deputy since Ollie Jackson got himself kicked in the head by his horse."
Molly groaned. "Oh, all right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to happen the way it did, and if you want to give me a whipping, I'll bend over right here, and not make a sound. But it still won't be fair, and you know it." She began to undo her drawers. "I know you’re mad. Are you going to use your belt on me?"
Dan grinned. "Nope. Even I can't use a belt on a pregnant woman."
Molly turned and stared. "Thank you, but, I'm not pregnant."
He took her in his arms. "You will be, after a week or so in a soft bed with me, maybe in a fancy Phoenix hotel? Seems to me it's high time we started taking care of things like that. And we've never had a real honeymoon, you know."
"Does this mean you’re tired of Little Salt Creek?"
"It means we've both outgrown it, " he said softly. "Do you still want to be a teacher?"
Molly smiled. "After the baby comes, maybe?" After a moment, though, she sat down on the bunk again, looking glum. "You may as well just take down my drawers and give me that belt whipping, Dan, because I swear to God I'm not going to wash Elmer Quigley's dirty long-johns, even if you set my ass on goddamned fire!"
Dan chuckled. "And risk losing your vote, when you get it? No thanks. Not for a pompous idiot like Quigley. But I kind of like that part about taking down your drawers. The front door's locked and the crowd's gone home." He gave her a big old-fashioned grin. "Why don’t we take a few minutes and get an early start on that baby?"
THE END
&nbs
p; April Hill
April Hill is a best-selling author of women’s romance, known for her wry humor, sensitive character development and of course, the love.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Bonus Short Story: A PICNIC IN THE PARK
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