by DJ Black
Rachel Kent's bottom was a little stiff after sitting on the stagecoach seat for most of the day and she was about ready for any excuse just to stand. It had been three days since she had left Albuquerque and she was getting altogether very tired of the damn coach.
She shared the coach with two companions, neither she had met before coming aboard. One was a travelling salesman and the other, a schoolteacher heading out to her first position in a small town on the Colorado and New Mexico border. In the beginning, there had been some conversation, but the trials of the journey and the nature of the talk had soon discouraged further discourse.
"You have folks out here?" the woman had asked days before.
"In a manner of speaking. A distant cousin of my mother's and her family," Rachel had replied.
"It's a long way to travel for one so young, you'll be from the East I take it?" the woman suggested.
"I am near 21 and mother is dead," Rachel snapped. "I am to settle with kin out here somewhere."
"Oh my, a snippy one aren't we?" The woman pursed her lips in disapproval. "You'll find things very different out here."
"I am quite sure of that."
"My folks were from Virginia originally. I am all alone now myself. I know how it feels."
"Oh have you been forced upon distant cousins you hardly know also?" Rachel said, letting some surliness show.
"My we are sorry for ourselves aren't we?"
"Oh are you feeling sorry for yourself as well?" Rachel said sarcastically.
"If I had spoken to my elders and betters like that when I was your age, my mother would have taken a switch to my bare behind," the schoolteacher responded.
The salesman who had been pretending to sleep choked back his laughter causing his hat to fall off his face. He quickly doffed it to the women, took a swig from his flask and went back to dozing.
"Is that barbaric custom a southern practice or did your mother acquire it here in the West?" Rachel sniffed, turning back to address the schoolteacher.
"It's a tried and trusted custom in many places," the woman continued. "As the young ladies of my class will no doubt find when I take charge of them. A custom you would do well to keep in mind because if you speak so of my Mother again, I will stop the coach to demonstrate on your tender bottom for the edification of this gentleman and the men above."
The salesman began another coughing fit and after yet another swig settled down to sleep.
That had been some days before and neither had spoken much since.
At last the stage arrived at Benson, the small town nestled in sight of the San Juan Mountains, which was near the ranch that was to be her new home.
As she stood next to her trunk on the unpaved street opposite the small hotel, she suddenly felt more alone than she ever had in her life. This was it and for better or worse Boston was far behind her.
"Are you Miss Kent?" said a tall nervous man wearing a blanket coat and a large hat.
He was about 45 and as he spoke, he took off his hat to reveal his thinning grey hair and held his hat to his chest.
Rachel blinked not knowing what to say.
"It must be her, Pa," said a young girl emerging from behind him.
She was a cute blonde of about 15 or 16, a storybook image of the West from all the books she had read in Boston. She wore a blue gingham dress over ridiculous over-large boots and had pigtails.
"I am Rachel Kent," Rachel replied. "You must be Mr Peters and Hannah?"
"I ain't Hannah," the girl giggled. "I'm Becky-Sue."
"This is my youngest Miss Kent," Mr Peters explained. "Hannah my eldest and my wife, your cousin Ginny, are back at the house."
"I see," Rachel forced a smile. "Your wife is not exactly my cousin, she was my mother's second cousin."
"Better go back home then," Becky-Sue teased.
Mr Peter's launched a hard slap across Becky-Sue's rear making her jump and squeal.
"You mind your manners or I'll take strop to you," Mr Peters growled.
"I was only funning Pa," Becky-Sue wailed as she rubbed her behind. "Course I don't want her to go."
"Don't mind her," Mr Peters smiled. "That still makes you some sort of cousin don't it?"
"A second cousin once removed," Rachel smiled back.
"Oh shoot I never learned all that stuff. Ginny said you had education Miss Kent," Mr Peters grinned.
Despite the matter-of-factness of the Peters' attitude, driving home in the wagon was to take a good few hours, and it was a long drive before they reached the ranch.
"Mom, Hannah, Miss Kent is here," Becky-Sue said excitedly once they had arrived.
"I'm not having any of that Boston nonsense here," said a much younger woman than Rachel had been expecting. She had stood up suddenly from behind a fence holding a rake. "Rachel you are so welcome."
Rachel was slightly appalled at the state of her cousin's clothes, assuming this was Ginny, but said nothing.
"Mr Peters said you were expecting me two days ago," Rachel said instead.
"Mr Peters is it? Lance, you call him Lance, we don't want no airs here," Ginny said.
"Lance," Rachel tried it on for size.
He nodded shyly and touched his hat.
"You Rachel Kent?" said another newcomer.
Rachel turned to look as a girl, who could have been an older Becky-Sue, walked out on to the porch of the ranch house. She was wearing a plainer dress and her hair was strawberry leaning on red, but otherwise there was no mistaking the resemblance.
"You must be Hannah."
Hannah returned a hard stare. At 18 she had been first here where the kids were concerned and now she was sizing up whether Rachel was an adult or a rival kid.
"Lets not all stand here gawping, you must be starved," Ginny said ushering her enlarged family towards the house.
Rachel took to them all at once and even Hannah decided she couldn't compete with Boston. Whatever else she was, Rachel was sensible and always offered to help in the coming days.
Ginny couldn't help but think that Rachel had her mother's airs, but she hid her distaste for their simple ways well: well enough so that Lance did not notice, and that was good enough for her, for now at least.
It had irked her some that she had taken to calling Becky-Sue plain Becky. It was far too high and mighty for her tastes, but Becky liked it as it sounded more grown up and so it was one more thing that Ginny let slide.
Rachel had been there a week when she got see old frontier ways first hand. She had been helping Becky with her studies when they heard what Ginny would call a ruckus outside.
"What did I tell you about sloping off with Anna-Marie Webster to spy on the Carlson boys?" they heard Ginny roar all the way back in the house.
Becky's face lit up and she dropped her books and went to the window.
"Shouldn't we finish this?" Rachel asked.
"No fear, there's gonna be a whooping," Becky replied.
A puzzled Rachel went to join Becky at the window just in time to see Hannah being dragged by the arm towards the woodshed. Once they were out of sight Becky made for the door and headed around the back with Rachel hastening after, still at loss as to what was happening.
Becky got to a place a little way off and behind the woodshed, half hidden by a stand of bushes, where she crouched down to watch the unfolding scene.
"What are you doing?" Rachel asked, making no attempt to hide.
Then she saw. Ginny was sitting on a woodpile and had upended her daughter over her knee and was busy rucking up her skirts.
"Mama, No!" Hannah wailed.
"Mama, yes," Ginny said with steel in her voice. "The very idea of spying on naked boys bathing."
"I was just. Oooh."
Her words were cut off by the sudden rush of cold air on her bare bottom as Ginny parted the back of her daughter's bloomers.
"This is too much," Hannah pouted.
Ginny, well used to securing the hapless girl, held firm and took up a flat lathe of wood.
"Oh my gosh," Rachel gasped suddenly realising what was about to happen.
"I am going to give you such a spanking my girl, you won't sit down for a week."
Then she brought the improvised paddle down hard on her daughter's naked bottom.
Hannah yelped and tried to reach back, but her mother secured her wrists and struck twice more.
"Please Mama, I was only looking," Hannah wailed.
"Oh I know what you were only doing."
Rachel could now see that there was an orange-pink bar of colour vividly staining her young cousin's snow-white bottom. Despite herself, she flushed with the novelty of it. Becky looked up at her from where she squatted down and grinned.
"Get down here or we'll get shooed away," Becky whispered.
"The very idea," Rachel protested. "Come away at once."
Becky made no attempt to move and Rachel could barely tear her eyes from the action as she half-heartedly tugged on the crouching Becky's arm.
The spanking had begun in earnest now and Hannah was lodging her protests at volume. Protests noted and ignored, Ginny set about extending the ever-reddening territory across both hams and well down her hinds to her under-bum.
"Please Mama, I'm sorry," Hannah gasped tearfully.
"We both know you're not. Not yet anyway."
Hannah flicked the lathe up and under to elicit some high notes from her bawling daughter.
Rachel made one last attempt to pull Becky away but was herself pulled to a crouch by the determined voyeur and sank to her knees.
"How long will it last?" Rachel asked in hushed tones.
"A while yet I hope," Becky said excitedly. "Last time Hannah was caught peeking she got a switching."
Meanwhile, Ginny had a determined look on her face and was swatting the girl's tail end with a will.
"Pleeease Maaaaa," Hannah sobbed. "I'm sorrreeee."
Rachel clapped her hand to her mouth and was surprised at the heat on her face. Becky was grinning like an ape and beside herself with it all.
The spanking lasted another good 10 minutes before Ginny dropped her sobbing daughter to the floor. Rachel felt a strange pang of regret that it was over but shook herself suddenly embarrassed to have been caught up in Becky's mischief.
As she tried to stand Becky hauled her back down.
"Wait," she hissed. "Ma's cutting a switch."
Rachel remembered the conversation in the stagecoach and blushed. Seeing what was about to happen Hannah began to plead.
"No Mama, I'm sorry."
Ginny ignored the sobbing girl and hauled her over to the saw-trestle and up ended her bottom upwards. Then she hauled her drawers all the way down and set to her daughter's bared hiney with the switch.
Rachel could hear the whisk-crack from where she squatted next to Becky and could see the dark lines that were raised on Hannah's bare bottom.
"This is the most fun," Becky gloated.
Rachel glanced incredulously at her evil little cousin and then blushed as she recognised something in herself.
"Mama!" Hannah howled angrily.
"Hush now, you know you got this coming," Ginny said switching away.
The switching lasted almost as long as the spanking had, until the thin branch was in a most sorry state, as was Hannah. Then at last Ginny tossed the broken stick away and cocked her head as if inspecting her handiwork.
Ginny helped her sobbing daughter to her feet and murmured something in her ear.
"Yes Mama," said the defeated Hannah.
Rachel watched as Hannah shuffled over to the back wall of the half open woodshed and pressed her face to the wall.
"Not as bad as corner time back at the house," Becky smirked.
"Or the porch," she added with her eyes wide in genuine horror.
Rachel's eyes were fixed on Hannah's bare bright red striped bottom and decided to stay hidden until Ginny had gone.
Then without looking their way Ginny said, "No work to do girls?" A smile played about her lips as she said it and she dusted her hands off with satisfaction.
Rachel and Becky stood up sheepishly, although Becky offered her mother a smile and shrugged. Rachel just wanted a great big hole to open up before her.
Rachel followed Ginny back to the house feeling both embarrassed and foolish, while Becky strolled over to the woodshed to take a longer peek at her big sister as she stood bare-bottomed facing the back wall of the open shack.
"I was just..." Rachel tried to explain.
"Why Rachel Kent I am surprised at you," Ginny teased, then added. "I know all about Becky-Sue and her relish of such things. Anyone would think she didn't get her share. More than her share, why only days before you came I left marks on her hiney she may still have."
"I tried to pull her away but I was distracted," Ginny smirked.
Both women giggled together as they entered the house.
Later at supper, Hannah stood at the fireplace mantle, wincing with each motion and periodically reaching behind to rub her bottom through her skirt.
"What nonsense has our girl been at today might I ask?" Lance said as he shovelled potatoes on his plate.
"Hannah was..." Becky began with glee.
Rachel kicked her under the table.
"A feminine matter," Ginny said pleasantly.
Lance shrugged satisfied that it had been handled.
"Thanks, I get carried away," Becky whispered to Rachel. "Mama spanks if I tattle."
Ginny and Rachel exchanged glances across the table and something of a bond was formed.
Hannah was subdued all the next day and Rachel noticed she didn't sit at all. Becky explained that unless she could sit at supper she would take it at the mantle again. Rachel affected not to care, but something about the situation gave her a tickling feeling on her skin and warm glow of belonging.
Determined to embrace this new optimism, she decided to chop the wood. Ginny winced when she saw the clumsy way that her cousin handled the axe but decided not to interfere.
"She has to learn," she sighed.
After Rachel had been struggling with the axe for an hour with little to show for it a dark voice said:
"You struggling with that ma'am?"
Before she could answer or even see who had spoken, strong arms seized the axe and she was gently moved aside.
Rachel watched in awe and not a little irritation as a large man in buckskins hefted the axe with skill and in a few moments had cut more wood than she had all morning.
"You see ma'am, you have to cut with the grain and chop with confidence or you'll cut more than just the wood."
"I can manage quite well without your help thank you," she bristled.
"Oh I can see that ma'am," the man chuckled. "I'll just get you started some and then I'll be about my business."
Ignoring her protests and gentle curses he proceeded to chop more wood than Rachel could have managed in a day before handing her back the axe.
"Tom Bannerman," Ginny said happily, moving to embrace the stranger. "I see you have met my cousin Rachel."
"Please to make your acquaintance ma'am."
"I am not so sure the feeling is mutual," Rachel harrumphed and walked off.
"Forgive my cousin, she is from Boston," Ginny said as if that explained it all.
"Nicely turned out," Tom said with admiration as he watched Rachel sashay off. "Not here for a vacation I guess."
"Her ma died and we are her only kin."
"I see," Tom said storing that nugget away.
"Are you staying for supper?" Ginny asked.
"If I am invited and there is a place for me in the barn."
"You are and there is," Ginny nodded solemnly and took his arm as they walked to the house.
Tom, Rachel learned, was an old family friend who had been helpful in the early days of the ranch. He had once saved Lance from a bear while hunting, and when Tom had been on the wrong end of a knife fight, Ginny had nursed him back to health.
That evening at supper, Hannah asked to be excused. When permission had been refused, Hannah had tried with all the dignity she could muster to sit at the table. She had stood up quickly enough and her hands had flown to cup her behind.
"Ahh," She gasped as Becky giggled.
Even Ginny smirked a little as she quietly set a place at the mantle, while Hannah blushed every colour red and tried not to cry.
"Some one get a licking?" Tom asked dryly.
"Oh I hate you Tom Bannerman." Hannah scowled.
"Hush now it ain't the first time you got switched and Tom knows it. He's seen it too remember?"
"I seem to remember I once paddled her myself," Tom added with a wink.
Hannah was mortified as she remembered not only previous switchings, but also the time not so long ago when Tom had ridden up and had seen her nose to the porch wall with her freshly switched bare bottom on display. At least this time her skirts were not pinned up in back.
The other memory of a getting a spanking from him stirred altogether different feelings that she didn't want to dwell on.
Hannah's meal tasted like sand and when her mother finally released her, she had never been so happy to go to her bed.
Rachel for her part tried hard to dislike the house-guest but he was witty and spoke softly to Becky and Ginny. She also had to admit he was perfectly polite to her although she tried her best to be as rude as she could, which puzzled her somewhat as she was not just sinking to his level but far below it. This was not the Boston way at all. But she couldn't seem to help herself.
Then when the time came for him to go to the barn he had offered a warm farewell to her that set the Peters to exchanging looks.
By the time Rachel got up the next morning, he was gone, but not without a small gift for her. Out by the woodshed on the old stump she had singularly failed to cut wood on was a lone flower. She picked it up and suddenly regretted being so mean to him.
"What's that?" Hannah asked when she saw it.
"Oh I rather think I am being wooed by Mr Bannerman," Rachel replied with the lightest of smiles on her lips.
Hannah glared at her in dismay and then stamped her foot angrily, an act that she immediately regretted as she winced and clutched at her bottom.
"Tom?" Becky pulled a face. "He's so old. Near as old as Pa."
"Oh that's not so old," Ginny said leaning forward to study the flower. "Never thought he had it in him."
Then she shrugged and gave Rachel a woman's look.
"Won't sit well with Hannah though," Ginny added in a whisper. "She is kind of sweet on him herself."
"Nothing is sitting too well with Hannah at the moment," Becky jeered as she ducked a swipe from her sister and ran off with a giggle.
"Oh, Becky is right, he is too old for me," Rachel said dismissing the idea.
All the same, she carefully placed the flower in a pocket within the folds of her skirt.
Less than a week later, it was Becky's turn to be unseated.
She came home one day from school with a downcast look, ruefully rubbing her bottom.
"Best I tell you now Ma," she said reluctantly. "I got whooped at school today."
"You been fighting again?"
"Oh Ma I was just..." Then she stopped in recognition of the futility of excuses. A whooping at school meant a trip to the woodshed, a time honoured tradition. "Yes Ma."
"Go cut me a switch and then wait in place," Ginny said sadly.
Hannah cast Rachel a look and then with a smile returned to her stitching and Becky trudged over to the woodshed chewing her lower lip.
"Are you really going to punish her again?" Rachel asked.
"It's usual and she knows it."
"But she has already been punished."
"Not by me."
After a while, Ginny dusted off her hands and made one last check on the supper she was cooking and then went to the door.
"You want to see how it's done again?" Ginny asked Rachel as she left.
Rachel blushed and shook her head, although strangely she very much did want to.
"Suit yourself," Ginny shrugged and went to meet her youngest at the shed.
Rachel turned and idly stirred the stew pot while Hannah watched her grimly as if making a silent promise.
It wasn't long before the sound of wailing and howling assaulted their ears from outside.
"She won't get it as bad as I got," Hannah observed. "But still it will be the mantle for her come supper."
"And how is your, lower person?" Rachel asked.
"Just fine thank you," Hannah replied tartly, although she would feel it a while when she sat.
Sure enough, Becky stood at the mantle for supper but she didn't seem as subdued as Hannah had been and in fact showed no reluctance to join the family conversation and added cheeky asides at every opportunity.
Later when she went to bed Rachel was shocked to see the extent of the wheals on Becky's bare bottom. Becky was lying on her bed, face down, making no attempt to cover herself.
"Ma got me good today," she giggled. "Worse than Miss Hacker anyway."
"Yes it's quite red," Rachel observed.
"Ain't nothing," Becky replied. "I had worse."
"Never be licked yourself have you?" Hannah asked innocently.
"No. Not that it's your concern," Rachel blushed. "If you children will misbehave then, well I advise you not to, that's all."
Rachel left quickly for her partitioned end of the room.
"Who does she think she is, calling us children?" Hannah said haughtily.
"I thought it was good advice myself," Becky said missing the animosity in her sister's voice.
As the weeks passed, Rachel increasingly felt at home and she felt that she had learned all there was to ranch life and its customs. She even learned to cut wood, after finally admitting to Lance that she did not know how.
"That does my nerves a parcel of good to hear you say that," he laughed. "I thought you would never admit defeat."
From time to time Becky got a trip to the woodshed and if she could, Rachel couldn't help but spy on the proceedings as Becky had done that first time. She even got to see Becky stand penance on the porch a few times, and several times, more than a woodshed vigil it seemed, stand in the corner of the family room instead of supper.
Becky always took this in good heart even if her bottom often resembled raw liver after and never bore Ginny the slightest resentment, even when she had to stand at the mantle for three suppers in a row, on account of the welts.
Then one day after church, Rachel came back to the house unannounced, the Peters having gone ahead. She found Ginny doubled over a chair in the kitchen with her full bottom red as two tomatoes. She was moist-eyed and yelping as Lance's belt scored her bare bottom over and over.
Rachel stood dumbstruck as the thrashing continued, Lance making no effort to ease up in her presence. In the end, Ginny found the presence of mind to signal her displeasure with her witness and her eyes and looked daggers at the door.
Rachel, finally getting the message, fled to the porch to listen and steeled her honour not to peek through the window.
The stropping continued for as long as any of Becky's switchings and long before the end of the punishment, Ginny was expressing her regrets and loudly 'suggesting' that Lance desist.
All afternoon Rachel avoided the house as the couple made up and wondered if Ginny would excuse herself come supper. She didn't.
Ginny dutifully, and with a face as red as her bottom must have been, set a place at the mantle for herself.
"Mama got a whooping, Mama got a whooping," Becky sang with glee.
"Yes Mama did," Ginny groaned. Then added ruefully, "Mama had it coming."
Rachel sat still dumbstruck in embarrassment for her cousin and amazement at her fortitude. All the while Lance sat there like a king without a care in the world. And Rachel had had him pegged as such a kindly shy man.
As she was going to bed, she caught Ginny's eye, although the freshly strapped woman had the grace to blush she just shrugged and smiled.
After that, life went on much as usual, Becky got woodshed time, everyone got chores and every once in a while Ginny and Rachel would talk about their former lives.
One day after both women had finished with the autumn round up, they hobbled down to the creek to bathe. Hannah and Becky had found other things to do and so the cousins found they could talk.
Rachel winced as she sat to remove her boots having been in the saddle all day.
"This country is certainly hard on the rear end," she complained.
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