by Patty Devlin
“You plan to bring some of your herd there in the fall to sell, do you not?”
She nodded. “Yes.” She darted a glance at him. “Which ones do I bring?”
He sat back and reached his arm across the back of the seat, coming just shy of draping it over her shoulders. “Any that will not make it through winter. And all the males that are over three or four years. If there’s drought in the summer and you don’t think they will have enough food for winter, bring more. You do not want to lose any that you could have sold.”
She nodded. “I understand.” After a moment, she ventured, “How do you know so much about ranching?”
“I had a ranch.” He did not offer more.
The thought of his lost ranch still angered him, though as the time away from it wore on, part of him felt relieved to be free of it all. Working it had reminded him too much of Sarah, his wife who had died in childbirth two years earlier. Perhaps being forced to leave had been a blessing of sorts. Except the price on his head made it impossible to start anew.
He shoved away the pesky idea of staying with Mabelle to work her ranch with her. He had brought her enough difficulties already.
“How did a rancher learn how to shoot like an outlaw?”
“Like a sheriff,” he corrected. “Well, I learned from the marshal.”
She looked over at him with interest. In the sunlight, her brown eyes shone with flecks of gold and green and she made a pretty picture driving the wagon, her slim feminine figure contrasting with the man’s wide-brimmed hat and her place in the driver’s seat.
She had put on a green print calico dress, and he would swear this time she wore a corset underneath, her breasts pressed up to perky peaks, her waist tapered to a narrow circumference.
“You were right when you called me a bastard,” he said with a twisted grin. “I never knew my father. My mother ran a saloon in Central City during the Colorado Gold Rush. I grew up in it, watching gunfights and hearing stories about the quickest draws in the West.
“The sheriff there took me under his wing. Taught me to shoot before I could stand tall enough to serve behind the bar, and I practiced every chance I got.”
“How many men have you killed?”
His jaw hardened. “Enough.”
“Is that why you’re Wanted?”
He exhaled. “Yes. I killed four men back in Colorado Territory. I had a ranch there—sheep, mostly.”
“I’m sorry,” Mabelle said. He could feel her looking at him, but he didn’t turn.
“I had a fine homestead—access to water and old trees. But the cattle men couldn’t stand the homesteaders fencing off what they considered their land. They cut my fences and killed my sheep. When I caught them at it, there was a gunfight.”
He looked out at the horizon, the blue sky dotted with a few fluffy clouds. Mabelle’s eyes still bore a hole on the side of his face. He turned to face her. “I never shot a man who didn’t draw on me first. Never in my life, I swear it on my mother’s grave.”
Her eyes were round and she blinked at him. “I believe you,” she said softly.
He snatched up one of her hands, pulling it to his lips to kiss. Realizing the inappropriateness, he dropped it again and cleared his throat. “I will drive now,” he said gruffly, looking away.
#
They rode for the whole of the day and stopped for the night when Sam found the perfect campsite in the shelter of some boulders, near a creek.
He gathered wood for a small fire and she produced boiled eggs from her pack, counting out three for Sam and two for herself.
They ate in comfortable silence, sitting on a large flat boulder. Dusk had settled, the light taking on the shimmering dream-like quality that made immobile shapes appear to move. She neither heard nor saw anything before the moment Sam looked up and froze.
Seven Native warriors surrounded them, watching their activity.
She screamed and lunged toward him for protection. The memory of Frank’s murder just a few short months ago came flooding back. “Shoot them!” she demanded.
“Shh,” Sam said, not moving. “Do not threaten them. Keep still and do not speak unless I tell you to.”
They had bows and arrows poised to shoot, staring at them without expression.
“Buh-nuh,” Sam called, holding his palm face out in a peaceful gesture.
He spoke their language? Well, she did not care. They were not trading horses. They were under threat.
“Shoot them,” Mabelle pleaded. “Shoot them now.”
“Shut it, Mabelle,” he hissed.
She lunged for the gun at his waist and the Natives tensed. Sam caught her before she could close her fingers around the handle and yanked her onto his lap, his arm steeled around her waist.
“Buh-nuh,” he repeated quickly, still holding out his palm.
“Do not move,” he said to her from between his teeth.
Her heart slammed wildly against her ribs, her body shaking out of control.
The air practically shimmered between the two parties, rife with tension. One of the Natives spoke and another answered. The warriors walked forward cautiously, weapons still raised. The man who appeared to be a chief or leader approached, speaking to Sam in his guttural language. He sounded angry, or perhaps just firm. He used chopping hand gestures and pointed downstream.
Sam bowed his head respectfully, still holding out his palm. The chief bowed his head in response. Sam bowed again. The rest of the warriors bowed their heads and turned, stalking off downstream.
“Wh-what did he say?” she asked when they had disappeared.
“I have no idea.” he continued to hold her firmly against his body.
“You do not know?” she demanded. “But you spoke—”
“I don’t even know if they were Shoshone, and I only know a few words.” He shifted his knees so she turned toward him. “We are lucky they accepted us as peaceful. Especially considering your behavior.” He gripped her chin and gazed up at her. “You are getting the spanking of a lifetime, little miss.”
“What? No!” She struggled to free herself, but he had her locked in his grip.
“Why am I going to spank you, Mabelle?” he asked with perfect calm.
In the wake of the terror from moments before, her emotions flooded out, tears stinging her eyes, her chin quivering. She swallowed. “That’s not fair—”
“Why, Mabelle?”
She clamped her teeth together. “For disobeying.”
“That’s right. Belt or switch? I’ll let you pick this time.”
She closed her lips to keep him from seeing them tremble. “Belt,” she said, her voice wobbly.
“Be a good girl and lift up your skirts for me,” he said, releasing her.
For one instant, she considered running, but immediately realized she had nowhere in the world to go. She stood and lifted her skirts to her waist, her bottom clenching as she watched him remove the belt from around his waist, carefully placing the guns behind him. He tugged at her pantalets. “I want these off,” he said. “I intend to smart the backs of your legs with the strap.”
As if on cue, the backs of her legs began to tingle, even her nether region quivered at the idea of baring her most private parts to his view and punishment.
“What if they come back?” she whispered.
He shrugged. “Then they will see a white woman getting whipped.”
She sucked in her breath, unshed tears swimming in her eyes.
He tugged again at her pantalets. “Off, Mabelle.”
“You are so mean,” she whispered, fumbling with the ribbon while she attempted to keep her skirts lifted at the same time. When she loosed it, he tugged them down, leaving them mid-thigh, which somehow seemed worse than off. She could not look at his face, so she did not know whether he glanced at her most private parts, now exposed to his view. He guided her across his lap, his doubled leather belt ominously gripped in his fist.
“Please—” she began.
<
br /> “No.”
The leather struck her bare skin, shocking her first with the force, then with the terrible sting. He whipped her again and again, laying even stripes across both buttocks from the place her cheeks first parted, to the backs of her legs, as he had promised.
It hurt worst there, and she squealed, bucking against his hold. As if to prove a point, he landed the belt there three times, each time creating a greater panic in her so when he began to stripe his way back up, she almost felt relief.
“What did I tell you about picking up a weapon?” he demanded.
She kicked her legs and he instantly trapped them under his. “I intended to use it this time!” she insisted.
“Oh really?” He continued striping her as he spoke. “You thought you could shoot seven men before they killed you, having never handled a gun before?”
“Owwww,” she wailed. “I have handled a gun before.”
“And you are a pretty good shot?”
“No,” she admitted, trying to reach back and cover her poor bottom, certain she could not take any more.
“But you would have helped me.”
He struck the backs of her thighs again. “Without my gun?”
“All right, all right! I made a mistake!” she wailed. “Please stop…please?”
“When did I say I would stop?”
She could not think what he meant until she remembered the deal they had made before they left.
I will tan your hide with my belt, or with a switch and I will not stop until you cry...
To hell with him. He could spank her until he wore her out, but she would never cry.
“You came very close to getting both of us killed, Mabelle,” he said, still whipping as if his arm would never tire.
She considered his words. As usual, he made sense. She would not have killed even one of them before the arrows found their marks.
“I know you were scared, sweetheart—I could feel you shaking,” he said, his tone softening, though the bite of his belt did not. “But next time I’m going to ask you to trust me to lead.”
Something about his acknowledgment of her fear—naming it, perhaps, released everything like a dam bursting. One sob welled up and erupted from her throat, then another. The next thing she knew she lay collapsed over Sam’s hard thigh, bawling her eyes out. As he continued to whip her, she cried for Frank and for Susie, for the loneliness and the fear she had endured since their deaths. She wept for the strain of having the outlaws show up and the horror of carting their dead bodies across the Wyoming Territory.
She did not notice when Sam had stopped the spanking, just realized he had gathered her up in his arms and onto his lap, cradled like a babe. He rocked her, stroking her back and kissing the top of her head.
Her pantalets still hung down at her thighs and her bottom burned and throbbed, but she gave herself to him fully, drinking in the comfort he offered.
“They killed Frank,” she sniffed, wanting to explain her behavior. “My brother-in-law. Indians came onto the ranch and killed him. They took our horses. I think they would’ve taken more, but they saw my sister coughing up blood, and they turned tail and ran.”
“I am sorry,” he whispered into her hair.
“I dug his grave and buried him, all by myself. Dug Susie’s, too.”
“Your sister?”
“Yes,” she snuffled.
“You were brave,” he murmured, still rocking her. “You have grit, Mabelle. You deserve every penny of that money you will get when you turn those boys in.”
She stilled, a thought occurring to her. Wiping her eyes, she lifted her head. “Sam, couldn’t you use the money to hire a good lawyer? Get out of your pickle with the law?”
#
His heart contracted. He had just spanked the daylights out of his little ranch girl and her thoughts were on his dilemma? Perhaps she had been trying to imagine a way he could stay with her, too. Of course, she needed the help, he reminded himself. It did not mean she was sweet on him.
He stopped rocking her and stroked back the wisps of hair stuck with tears to her face. “I don’t think anything can be done for me. The sheriff came by after it happened. Told me Mick Malone, the Wyoming cattle baron, had hired the men I shot, and that every judge in the West is in his pocket. He told me I’d better run or I’d be hanged within the week.”
“Maybe he was in Mick Malone’s pocket and he just told you that to get rid of you.”
“You have a point,” he conceded. “But if I turn myself in and my lawyer can’t help me, my jig is up.”
She shuddered.
He picked up one of her thick braids and rubbed the end between his thumb and forefinger, reveling in the silkiness. Bringing it to his lips, he touched the feathery ends to them, imagining the pleasure of unwinding those braids. How he longed to see her hair falling across her shoulders, perhaps with nothing more on than her corset and pantalets.
He remembered her drawers still hung around her thighs, and he nudged her to stand, sliding them up for her. Her skirts fell down over his arms, so he could not see her little thatch of brown curls, but once he had tied the ribbon in front, he allowed his hands to wander to the back and slip inside the slit, stroking over her welted flesh.
She flinched but stood still for him, a blush visible in the growing darkness, her eyes lowered. How different from her first spanking, when she had clawed and bit him like a little wildcat and glared daggers at him when it had finished. He loved the feel of her bare skin under his hand, the shape of her muscular bottom. He regretted the punishment had been so serious, because he found himself wishing he could give her a different sort of spanking—the kind that ended in lovemaking. But no, he could not have Mabelle.
Reluctantly, he closed the slit in her drawers and released her.
“I’ll light a fire if you get the bedrolls,” he said.
“Oh!” she said, seeming dazed. “Where will we sleep?”
“Right here by the fire, unless you want to bed with the dead bodies.”
“No, thank you,” she said as she walked to the wagon, sounding almost cheerful. A good spanking sometimes did that for a girl. He remembered that from living with Sarah. He did not spank her often, but discovered it to be the quickest way to resolve a quarrel and it always transformed his wife into submissive sweetness.
He stoked the fire and helped Mabelle spread the bedrolls, amused when she moved hers closer to his.
“What if they come back and scalp us in our sleep?”
“If they wanted to scalp us, they would have done so. But I promise I will protect you. Look here,” he said, slipping his belt back around his waist and holstering the guns. “I’m armed. So long as no pipsqueak ranch girl tries to take my gun in the night, we will be safe.”
She laughed, the sound musical and light, the way her smile transformed her face, magical. Picking up a small stone, she threw it at him, hitting him square in the chest.
“Be careful, little girl. I’m quite certain you don’t want a spanking on that sore bottom of yours.”
Her hands flew to her behind, rubbing gingerly, her lips twisted into a wry grin. “I will curse you the entire ride tomorrow,” she complained.
“Curse yourself, you agreed to my stipulations.”
She knelt on her bedroll and stretched out on her belly. “Does it make you feel better?”
“What?”
“Spanking me?”
He settled onto his side, looking at the way the firelight danced on her face. “I did not take satisfaction in punishing you tonight, if that’s what you’re asking.”
She plucked at the edge of her blanket, leaning up on her forearms. “I needed that cry,” she admitted in a low voice.
“I know you did. I’m glad you trusted me enough to let it out.”
She looked over at him with surprise and he thought he saw a blush spread across her face again. “Goodnight, Sam.”
“‘Night, Mabelle.”
He leane
d his head on his arm, watching the lovely young spitfire attempt to get comfortable. He wanted to move even closer, offer his shoulder as a pillow, his arms as protection. He wanted to soften the blows life had given her. But he could not. He would have to settle for escorting her to Cheyenne.
Chapter Four
In the morning they ate the rest of the boiled eggs and packed up, getting back in the wagon shortly after dawn. He spread the folded blanket from his bedroll across the wooden seat, because, even though she had deserved the spanking, he did not want her to suffer any more than necessary.
She flushed when she saw it and sat down, taking the reins and urging the horses forward.
“Thank you,” she murmured after a stretch.
He gave her a small smile.
By noon Cheyenne appeared on the horizon, and he stopped her when they were about a mile out. “This is where I leave you,” he said, climbing out of the wagon, and removing the lead ropes from Bean and Jim’s mare.
Mabelle hopped out and stared at him, her hands on her hips. She looked feisty again, the softness of the night before erased in the glare of day.
“Just ride straight to the sheriff’s office and claim your reward,” he instructed her.
She nodded. “I know.”
“Yep. You know. You could have made this trip without me just fine, too. You have nothing to worry about. You can hire some help with that bounty in your pocket, too.”
She looked at him, her mouth twisting a bit. “I cannot hire a man to help out when I live there alone. It would not be proper.”
Right. She would have to take her help in the form of a husband.
That thought made his fists clench at his sides.
He marched over to her, grabbed her shoulders and yanked her body against his, kissing her lips with a bruising ferocity. “Make sure he takes good care of you,” he said gruffly when he pulled away.
Pulling Curly’s gun belt out of the burlap bag where he had stowed it, he replaced the bullets in the six shooter, and strapped it around her waist. “Remember what I told you. Don’t point it if you’re not willing to shoot.”
