by DJ Black
Caroline Humble was down to her last 20 dollars with nowhere left to go. The teaching position at the school in Bixby Montana had fallen through. It seems they hadn't expected a youthful 26-year-old to teach school and they had wanted someone older.
Any other woman might have looked at the distant mountains and the empty railroad tracks out of town and wept. But in Caroline's short life, she had already seen so much disappointment that instead of despair, she now only felt a certain resignation.
Four years before, she had been engaged to be married, but then war had come and her beloved had been lost somewhere on the plains of France; killed in the last days of General Pershing's attempt to prove that the American soldier was as good as any European.
"You looking for work ma'am?" The voice interrupted her reverie.
"What was that?" Caroline asked pleasantly, her big blue eyes blinking fast as she shook herself back to reality.
The woman who had spoken was fat, but with a friendly demeanour. She seemed to wait for Caroline to compose herself before asking her question again. "Are you looking for work?"
Caroline pulled a stray blonde hair from her face and attempted to hook it behind her ear, but the breeze blowing from the snow-caps that dominated the valley seized it again and draped it back across her pert freckled nose.
"Why... eh... yes," Caroline said, abandoning the wayward hair and giving the woman her full attention.
"Clementine Darling is usually looking for pretty girls out at the Big Muddy."
Caroline frowned.
"Oh, it ain't nothing like that, leastways I don't think," the woman chuckled. "It's a horse ranch."
"And she's looking for girls you say?" Caroline asked suspiciously.
"She keeps a few men about the place, but old Clementine has always been a might peculiar. Some say she is one of them suffrage girls or some such."
Caroline nodded. What did she have to lose? She certainly had nowhere else to go.
Clementine Darling eyed the worksheets for the week. Both Betsy and Tilly were vying for last place and Jenny Sullivan was not out of the woods yet. Secretly she hoped it would be Betsy again, but both Tilly and Jenny held some interest too. She always loved the weekly tally.
Moving to the window she placed her hands on each of her hips and stretched. Too much damn paperwork... when was the last time I just set out on a horse to look the spread over? She asked herself. She ambled onto the porch and gave the ranch the once over with her eyes.
The girls already busying themselves around the ranch attempted to look even busier, but in truth all eyes were on the fiery 32-year-old redhead. With varying degrees of dread, all the girls had one thing on their minds - who would it be this week?
Clementine did not watch them for long, there was no need. They were all good girls on the whole and none of them bore her much of a grudge for unorthodox ways. Instead she glanced over at the road to town as if expecting the doc or Jim Ballantine to come over the hill. But she knew that Doc was over at Bixby delivering a baby and that Jim would not be back for months. Damn the man, she cursed inwardly. It was Jim that she missed most, not that the doc didn't have a cure for what ailed her when the need arose.
She was just about to go back into her office when she saw the buckboard clanking down the dirt track. Old man Weaver was at the reins, but it was the girl next to him that got Clementine's attention. A small elegantly turned-out blonde woman sat perched on the buckboard seat with only a faint air of disgust to mar her pretty face. She looked more like a bluestocking or a teacher than a ranch hand, but that could change, Clementine thought.
"I am really not sure I would be much use in an enterprise such as this," Caroline said as she looked about her, the hint of bitter disdain never quite leaving her face.
Clementine had shown her new prospective worker around the Big Muddy and with almost every step, the girl had not endeared herself to her.
"Oh there is plenty you can do if you ain't afraid of hard work," Clementine assured her.
"Well if you're game then... well I don't suppose I have a whole lot of choice," Caroline sighed, almost disappointed to have been saved from destitution, which at that moment she wondered if might not be better.
"There is just one thing," Clementine said, leading Caroline into her office. "You might not want to stay when you hear my terms."
"Terms?"
"The money is good and a clever young woman like you might even learn the business side of things. But we do run a tight ship."
As Clementine laid out her own personal philosophy, Caroline baulked and at one point considered running for the hills. Surely the woman was mad, this was the 20th century and Queen Victoria, God bless her, was dead.
"Let me get this straight..." Caroline could hardly get the words out.
"It is very simple Miss Humble. Once a week, the girl who has done the least work is required to come to my office to be soundly spanked. In addition, any girl who crosses me or breaks one of the rules, well she can expect to be hauled off to the barn in full view of everyone and feel the foreman's leather across her bare behind," Clementine explained, enjoying the girl's consternation.
"But that's... barbaric," Caroline gasped, although something about the notion caused quite a stir somewhere deep within her.
"Hardly that," Clementine scoffed. "But it is rather fun."
"Fun? You wouldn't like it," Caroline said indignantly.
"Like it? Why no, one is not supposed to like it. But it is rather... invigorating and I am not immune, I do assure you."
Clementine watched Caroline for any signs of open distress, but despite the woman's proclaimed outrage; she was far less agitated than some had been in the past.
"Very well, it seems I have very little choice." It was a lie and both knew it.
"Good. Now let's see what you are made of," Clementine said, moving to the desk and taking up a clothes brush.
"Eh... wh-what?" Caroline gaped.
"Think of it as an initiation," Clementine said breezily. "I don't want you agreeing to things and then backing out when it comes to it. And it will come to it. That would be a waste of our both our time."
Caroline eyed the brush and swallowed. She hadn't been spanked since she had been 17, although she had felt a stick once or twice whilst training after that. How bad could it be?
"Slip your drawers down and come across my lap. I can arrange your skirts and petticoats from there," Clementine said, sitting in an armless chair.
"My..." Caroline gulped, "...drawers?"
"All spankings at the Big Muddy are given on the bare bottom," Clementine said with a smile.
"Oh my gosh," Caroline said standing wide-eyed like a lamb ready for the slaughter.
Clementine knew she had won.
At first all Caroline could think of was whether anyone could hear, although to be across Clementine's lap, half-folded with her toes barely touching floor one side and her arms and nose draping over on the other, was most undignified. Although her new employer was proficient enough it took some time to draw up the narrow ankle-length skirt into the small of Caroline's back and slip her drawers the rest of the way down so that they hung from her booted ankles.
Caroline blushed as her bottom was finally bared to the slight chill of the room.
"Look I really think..." Caroline didn't finish her sentence as the flat side of the brush impacted across her tight smooth bottom and her eyes went wide. "Ah, that hurt."
"Naturally," Clementine chuckled as she struck the girl again.
Caroline rocked and kicked her bloomer-hobbled legs impotently as the brush was plied again and again across her bottom. The sharp pistol crack impacts quickly became intolerable and soon the hapless blonde was yelling regardless of who outside might hear.
The girls working outside exchanged smirks and began to edge closer. It was something of a Big Muddy sport to take a peek whenever a girl was getting it over Clementine's knee, but it was a risky one. Most of the girls just laughed openly for a moment or two before getting on with their work, but Betsy, Tilly and Jenny could not resist, and after a brief attempt at nonchalance, scuttled over to the office window and snuck a look inside.
The new girl had long straight legs all topped off with a neat and shapely bottom, which by now was a deep apple red. Not that Clementine showed any signs of slowing. The spanking looked set to continue for a might longer and there was not one of them who didn't know what that felt like.
"With a prissy new girl like that... well I reckon that she'll be making lots of mistakes for the next month or two," Tilly observed.
"I reckon," Betsy giggled. "Looks like our behinds are out of the heat for a while."
"Not yours, Betsy Kingdom. You'll always find a way into trouble," Jenny scoffed.
Betsy punched her arm and then turned back to watch the show.
Caroline took slow painful steps towards the bunk house. She just knew that everyone was laughing at her and it was all she could do not to break down crying.
Then one of the girls pretending not to watch broke away from the sniggering group and came over.
"Pretty rough for a first time," Jenny said sympathetically. "Oh, I am Jenny Sullivan by the way. Here let me help you with your bags." She grabbed Caroline's valise and carpetbag and fell in beside the new recruit.
"Is it always like this here?" Caroline winced.
"Pretty much, but it ain't so bad. It's just that Clementine has her little ways. Spanking is something of a tradition around her you might say."
"Do you ever get it?"
"Oh heck yes," Jenny giggled. "There is no getting away from it, but it don't happen too often. Well, not once you're settled in anyway. Not unless your name is Betsy anyways."
"Betsy?"
"She's the wild ginger girl over there; the one with hips like a barrel. If she ain't paddle whacked for slacking, then she's running afoul of the foreman and gets it good in the barn. It's a great show."
Caroline gaped at Jenny and her apparent jocular approach to the madhouse discipline.
"Oh just one thing. If Clementine calls you in for a spanking, just take it, no matter what. She wields a mean switch and she usually has you cut it. It stings something fierce on top of a lengthy spanking."
Caroline filed that snippet away for future reference and hoped against hope that it would never come up.
"Here's the bunkhouse, nothing fancy, but we keep it nice," Jenny said enthusiastically.
The door to the single-storey long house swung open to reveal a long room with a dozen beds in it. Most of these were screened-off and had pieces of furniture arranged around the bed on a rug; just like a regular room. There were also flowers in vases and pictures on the wall.
"There's a shed out back with bits of stuff in it. Help yourself to anything you want. You can even change the picture above your bed if you like," Jenny said, leading the pigeon-stepping blonde over to a bed at the far end. "This one's yours."
Jenny dropped the bags next to the bed and nodded.
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