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THE SPANKING DIGEST: ISSUE 15

by LSF Publications


Frontier Doctor

by Wayne Gray

In 1861, Samuel Stephens was a lonely young man. A city boy and a recent orphan, he was alone in the world. However his response to his loneliness was at least helpful; he buried himself in his studies at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

The medical schools of the day stressed Latin, which left their graduates able to fluently describe their patient's symptoms in a dead language, but little able to cure them. Of more practical use was Sam's hands-on experience in Philadelphia's hospitals, where he did everything from setting broken bones to delivering babies.

Only five years earlier, Sam's parents had died of a fever, leaving the teenager alone in the world and too young to run his father's business. Sam's family doctor convinced the boy to sell his family home and business to pay for his education. To the doctor's surprise, Sam chose medical school.

Sam did well in medical school, but his savings barely saw him through school. So the handsome man in his early twenties did what many medical school graduates do, he perused the advertisements in the medical journals of the day looking for a job.


Shortly before Sam's graduation, a doctor in a small town in Texas became ill. Perhaps because he was the only doctor in the county and there was nobody qualified to care for him, he died.

In a popular medical journal, an advertisement appeared in the name of the Mayor of the town of Trailhead Texas seeking a doctor for an established medical practice. The ad offered an "office with living quarters" free to a qualified physician.

To be fair, the townsfolk of Trailhead were looking for an experienced physician, not a wet-behind-the-ears recent graduate. Their last physician had been an older man who semi-retired to Trailhead from a big city practice.

To be equally fair, Sam had hoped for a better offer than that little office on the edge of nowhere. But Sam was nearly broke and in no position to choose. So he made the arduous journey to Trailhead.

For a city boy like Sam, Trailhead came as a cultural shock. The entire town had an unfinished look, buildings were mostly rough looking and unpainted. The town consisted of only two streets, a main street for business and a narrower street for homes. Both streets had random gaps, as if buildings were missing. The streets were paved with Texas dust and were liberally strewn with animal dung which was never cleaned up. It hadn't rained yet, but Sam had been told that the streets melted into a disgusting mixture of shit-laced slime when it did.

On windless nights the smell of the place could be downright oppressive, a pungent mixture of dust, smoke, animal dung, and outhouse.

Sam's new "office and residence" proved to be a two-room building. In front was the medical office, while the back room held a cot, a table, and a stove that served both for cooking and heat. Behind was a nasty outhouse and a rickety little one-stall barn. There was no horse, but that was OK because Sam could barely ride!

Fortunately, the office retained everything that his predecessor had left behind, so he was immediately equipped to see patients. The trouble was, they were few!

For the first few days, Sam had little to do except to acquaint himself with the town and it's occupants. Since Trailhead was so tiny, that didn't take him long.


Trailhead got its name from its location at the end of a cattle drive trail that lead to the famous Chisholm trail, a conduit to Kansas cattle markets and railroads. Every spring, ranches would round up their cattle and then combine them into giant herds for the long walk down the trail to market. So each spring the population of Trailhead would briefly expand until the tiny town seemingly burst at the seams.

Between cattle drives, Trailhead was a sleepy place.


Fortunately, Sam arrived at a 'sleepy' time for the town, giving him time to meet the town's few permanent citizens, and to learn how the place worked.

Among the first things he discovered was that the town didn't work the way he had first assumed. He had received a letter from the town's Mayor accepting his application and offering him the use of the town's medical office. But he soon discovered that the so-called Mayor was the town drunk and didn't actually run the place. (Although he could deliver a rousing holiday speech if properly sobered up.) The town was actually owned and operated by a diminutive but strong-willed and red-headed lady named Mildred Ross. Woman's suffrage was still a half-century away. So even in Texas it was unthinkable for a woman, even a rich woman, to call herself Mayor of a town. So the town drunk served as a convenient and compliant figurehead for the practical-minded woman.

So now Sam realized that Mildred was actually his landlord and 'sort of' his boss, although she never once mentioned it.

A chronic asthmatic, Mildred was as weak in her body as she was strong willed. The town of Trailhead actually occupied a corner of Mildred's huge ranch, which is how she owned the town. Mildred had inherited the ranch from her husband, who had died in an unfortunate accident. However, inherited implies that Mildred had done nothing to earn her ownership, and that simply wasn't so. It was largely through Mildred's brainpower that her husband had managed to find markets for his beef and ways to get the cattle there. While her husband had been driving cattle to market over the new cattle trails, Mildred ran the ranch with an iron fist and made land deals that grew it. Now the Ross ranch (its brand a stylized "R") was known throughout Texas.

Since her husband's untimely death, Mildred, with help from a trustworthy Superintendent, ran the Ross ranch. Running the town was merely a sideline for Mildred. Trailhead was important because its businesses were vital to the Ross ranch and other local ranches, and because it hosted the annual cattle drives.

Fortunately, Sam managed to quickly get into Mildred's good graces. No medical genius, Sam at least had the benefit of the very latest in medical knowledge. So where the last doctor couldn't help Mildred's asthma, Sam introduced her to a treatment, a herb called atropa belladonna, that actually relieved her coughing fits.

Trailhead was a tiny place, and the population was mostly young, male and healthy. Also, excepting Mildred, the few women of the town avoided Sam entirely except when desperately ill. It wasn't personal, just an understandable reluctance to show their bodies to a young man. So poor Sam had lots of spare time, and was barely making a living.

Fortunately, Trailhead lacked a veterinarian. The previous doctor had also served as the area's animal doctor and his reference books were still in the office. Sam studied those books and worked often at the town's livery stable to gain experience and confidence with animals. A city boy, Sam had much to learn before he could call himself a veterinarian!


Like most places in the American west, the few women in Trailhead were mostly either taken or not worth taking. Attracted by adventure and opportunity, couples and single men migrated west, but rarely single women. Thus, their scarcity. So single men, obviously including Sam, had a big problem finding mates.

Sam had only briefly been in Trailhead before spotting the town's one eligible and desirable female. She was quite unmistakable, a shapely but compact lady about his own age mounted on a huge spirited stallion galloping through town with her golden red hair streaming behind her. Shockingly, she wore man's pants. Equally shocking to this city man, she was riding astride her horse rather than sidesaddle or in a carriage as respectable ladies do.

As she passed by his office, she locked eyes with him just long enough to acknowledge his existence, and then she was gone. After that, he spotted her often, but she never again seemed to notice him. Although her bright red hair provided a clue, he easily learned her identity. She was Ethel Ross, Mildred Ross's daughter.

One day when Mildred came by for another batch of asthma medicine, Sam obliquely mentioned Ethel. Mildred grimaced at the mention of her daughter's name, "That Ethel will be the death of me yet! If only you had a medicine that would turn her in to a responsible adult. She runs around on that horse instead of tending to ranch business. I'm afraid she's going to hurt herself. That girl is as wild as a Texas thunderstorm." Her voice lowered, she added, "She doesn't think I know, but she likes cowboys a bit too much. I hope she doesn't end up in the family way."

Sam had no reason to be jealous of a woman he hadn't even met, and he assumed that a poor city boy like him didn't have a chance with her. Still, his stomach twisted at the thought of her with another man.


Sam would never forget the first time he saw Ethel close-up. Intent on buying beans, he had walked into the general store. He must have seen her white stallion at the hitching post, but his thoughts were elsewhere. So he walked into the store and almost collided with Ethel. The sight of her took his breath away! To a man used to seeing ladies only in figure-hiding outfits with multiple layers of petticoats underneath, the sight of this shapely pants-clad woman was a shock. Ethel was a short woman, a younger and curvaceous version of her mother. Her face had delicate features and lightly freckled skin, framed by her mother's bright red hair.

Ethel looked Sam up and down and said, "You must be the new doctor."

This wasn't Sam's best moment! He could only nod mutely. Not having received a response, Ethel simply turned to finish her business with the clerk. Sam found himself staring at the delightful, but naughty, outline of Ethel's buttocks, which were straining the seat of her pants. When he realized where he was staring, Sam blushed and quickly turned his head.

Embarrassed and aroused in equal parts, Sam fled the store, his need for beans forgotten.

Sam would never forget the sight of those buttocks. Thoughts of Ethel filled the young man's nights. But still, tiny as Trailhead was, he seemed unable to meet her.


That all changed one day when a cowboy galloped up to Sam's office. "Come quick," he yelled through Sam's open window, "Misses Mildred says that Ethel is in a bad way."

The cowboy's horse was too winded to immediately return to the Ross ranch, so Sam ran to the livery stable to hire a horse. (By now, he could at least remain in a saddle.) It was five miles to the Ross ranch house, and Sam rode as fast as he dared.

Mildred led Sam to Ethel's bedroom, where he found her suffering cramps. Here again, Sam's medical training was easily equal to the task. In his hospital experience, Sam had seen this condition in women often. Ethel was having a miscarriage.

There was no keeping the truth from Mildred because the evidence would soon be clear enough, so he was forced to tell her. The lady was instantly furious, but her Irish temper quickly passed. And then they got to work.


It was midnight before Sam returned home. In the process of caring for Ethel, he had seen her most intimate parts, but it had been no thrill at the time. His mind had been totally on business.

Later however, was different. Now his nightly visions of Ethel were anatomically accurate, and all the more tantalizing for it. Still, Sam glumly assumed that Ethel's embarrassment would erase what little chance he had ever had with her.

To deal with typical small town rumor-mongering, Sam, Mildred and Ethel had agreed that Ethel's short-term malady had been a severe digestive upset.



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