by Emily Tilton
Alice drew a sharp breath and her eyes went wide. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Beside Joe, Elder Hilton had narrowed his eyes; he seemed unhappy with Joe’s declaration, but Joe clearly didn’t care.
“You’re going to come back on my horse, now, and you’re going to come to my cabin, and I’m going to spank you, to teach you to respect the rules. We’ll go to the public meeting tomorrow, but there isn’t going to be any contest. I’ll share you with Ken Sweeney, if the elders say you’re mine to share, but when I fuck you in front of the town tomorrow, it will be because I claim you, not because the elders are giving you to me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Elder Hilton didn’t speak to Joe all the way back to the railroad, where they met up with the rest of the search party. Joe didn’t much care, though; he had Alice in front of him in the saddle, his arms around her to stop her shivering in the cold night air.
He would hate to leave Brownsville, if it did come to that. He knew he didn’t have the book learning that let men like Elder Hilton interpret the word of Dr. Brown with such elegance and persuasion, but he felt sure nonetheless that he had discovered a deeper, more natural truth than the one the elder had outlined to him when he had persuaded Joe that Alice should be given to the man chosen by the town. Joe probably would never be able to point out the passage in Dr. Brown’s treatise that gave him the true right of the phallus over the girl snuggled in his arms on horseback, coming back to his cabin to stay, now—or perhaps to go away with him to Oregon. But he had not the slightest doubt that she belonged to him, and he belonged to her.
Ken Sweeney glowered when he saw Alice smiling weakly from within the shelter of Joe’s arms, and he looked sharply at Elder Hilton.
“Girl’s got a caning coming from Elder Shaw, I reckon, when those birch marks heal,” he said. Joe heard in Ken’s voice, and felt in the way the man looked only at the elder and not at his rival, that Ken somehow sensed how Joe had asserted his claim. Joe curbed his instinct to answer back in defiance; he wanted to hear what the elder would say. Joe had his sweet girl in his arms, after all—he didn’t see the need or the use of rubbing it in Ken’s face or getting into a shouting match, let alone a fight.
“We’ll see about that,” Elder Hilton said a little wearily. “She’ll be with Joe tonight, though.”
Joe couldn’t keep the smile from his lips, then, since he could hear in the elder’s voice that the Englishman who had brought him to Brownsville, at least, intended to support Joe’s claim. He felt Alice’s little body move a bit in front of him, pushing back as if to nestle herself more deeply in her master’s embrace. Joe kissed the top of her head, her messy but still beautiful hair, since he felt he could do nothing else—nothing at all. Alice gave a little sigh as she felt it.
He glanced at Ken, and found that the elder’s words and the sight of Alice’s and Joe’s affection had turned the man steely-eyed, as he looked grimly from Alice to the elder, still refusing to meet Joe’s own eyes.
“Is that so?” Joe watched Ken survey the rest of the search party, as if to see how much support he could gather among the other men of Brownsville. “You planning to tan her hide, Joe?”
Ken didn’t address Joe himself, but rather Alice, with this question.
“‘Cause she needs a good whipping after what she put us through. Don’t you, girl?”
Now Joe knew he had to respond, somehow, or risk losing everything he had gained in the Sioux village, with the Indian medicine man and Ma Gantner standing there as if in witness to his true, natural claim. Here among the men of this community that announced itself to be founded for the advancement of that kind of claim, for the enjoyment of dominant men and submissive women, the fundamental idea seemed much more complicated.
He could feel somehow in the way Alice stirred against him in the saddle, and in the tiny whimper that came from her throat, that she had responded, in her body and perhaps even in her heart, to the harsh tone in which Ken had spoken to her. The challenge Miss Reynolds had made much too clear, of Alice’s need for truly firm guidance, for regular punishment, posed itself first of all in Ken’s almost cruel voice. It also reared its head in Alice’s squirming, though, as she—it seemed perfectly clear to Joe—couldn’t help acknowledging, somewhere deep down inside her, and between her parted thighs, the truth of Ken’s words. She certainly did need a good whipping, after what she had put the men of Brownsville through.
The elder began, “Joe has promised—”
But Joe knew he couldn’t allow Elder Hilton to speak for him. In front of Ken, of the rest of the men, of the elder himself, and above all of Alice, he had to make clear exactly what had happened in the Indian village. It had seemed a good deal simpler then, only an hour before, but it wouldn’t have meant anything if he gave an inch, now.
“She’s got a trip across my knee coming when I get her home,” he said, interrupting the elder. He felt Alice squirm again, at his words and at their authoritative tone, and knew he had at least begun the right way.
Ken’s eyes narrowed, and Joe sensed in that look the man’s instinctive understanding of the shifting tides between them. He saw danger there, too, and perhaps the decision to try what he could to hold back the rising of Joe’s power over the girl they both desired so much.
“A spanking,” Ken said dismissively, his eyes darting from Joe, to Alice, to Elder Hilton, to the rest of the men. “Don’t you think she needs the belt at least, even over those birch marks? I know that’s what I’d give her, in front of all the men at the bunkhouse, after the way she ran away. A girl like Alice needs to know her backside is going to pay a terrible price when she breaks the rules. That birching today didn’t get that lesson across, now did it?”
As Ken spoke, he did his best to widen his audience, turning with each phrase to look theatrically at a different man. Again Alice squirmed, moved back into Joe’s arms, and now he could feel her heart beating wildly, her little chest heaving with her frightened breath. The whimper that escaped her lips, though, told him how effective Ken’s challenge was, though: Alice was afraid, and she wanted Joe’s protection, but her sweet body couldn’t help answering the other man’s stern call for the strictest correction to settle her debt to the men of Brownsville.
Ken finished his little speech with words addressed to Elder Hilton. “Elder, are you going to let the girl off that easy? Shouldn’t she come with me tonight to get her punishment? We can make her watch the bunkhouse girls getting fucked over the benches, too, so that she understands what will happen to her at the town meeting tomorrow. I say it’s time for our little runaway to have a night in the bunkhouse. If she comes home with me, she’ll have a lot of nights like that, riding as many cocks as the men can put in her—she needs to get used to it now.”
Joe spoke before the elder could reply. He felt sure that Ken’s bid—a desperate one, Joe fervently hoped, though the man had delivered it with his usual confidence—for the support of the men and of the elder had brought them to the brink of the conflict that might well mean he had to leave Brownsville. It might, he thought angrily, even mean he had to leave without Alice, if Ken could persuade the men of the town to keep her under lock and key until Joe had departed and she had no choice but to accept the elders’ will for her.
He had this chance, though, to speak for himself and for all of them—especially Alice—the truth he had grasped in the Sioux village. Even if the elders, and Miss Reynolds, somehow could bring his sweet girl around with crooked words to think Joe’s truth misguided and wrong, he would do what he could here and now to make it known.
“Yes, I’m going to spank her, over my knee, with my hand,” he said, making his voice quieter than Ken’s, so that the men had to lean in and listen in the light of the rising moon. Their breath, and the horses’ breath came out as little puffs of smoke in that silver light.
“She will take off her dress, her shift, and her drawers,” he continued. He felt Alice’s body move against his again, and it made h
im smile: perhaps his words had less severity, but it seemed their greater intimacy and warmth could also have an effect.
“She’ll go naked over my knee, and she’ll stay there a good long while so that I can talk to her about what she did, my hand on her sweet bottom, getting her ready for her punishment.”
Joe spoke just as simply as Ken had done, but he felt in his words the power of Dr. Brown’s ideas, as he had learned them from Elder Hilton himself, and that made him bold. Alice’s breath came harshly again, now, and Joe had to resist the temptation to put his left hand down where the fabric of her dress rode up over the saddle, and to see if her drawers had gotten wet.
His next words came without forethought, but he knew as he spoke them that the challenge in them, to Ken’s way of handling a girl like Alice, could either win him the girl he loved or lose her to his rival.
“Then I’ll spank her, nice and hard, but not the way you would, Ken. From now on, Alice is going to learn that I’ll be the one to decide what she needs. Sometimes she’ll get the belt, and sometimes she’ll get the cane. I’m going to cane her once the marks from the birch go away. She needs that, just like you say, and she’s going to get it. But I’m going to be the one to decide that. She came to me, and I love her, and I think she loves me.”
“Oh, Joe,” Alice whispered. Joe wished he could see his sweet girl’s face, but on Ken’s face he saw that Alice’s expression must reflect the love he hoped might be there. In clear frustration, the other man looked at Elder Hilton.
“The elders are just going to let this stand?” Ken said bitterly. He glanced around at the other men, whose faces wore uncertain narrow-eyed looks. “The girl needs more discipline than Joe here will give her, I’m telling you—that’s true even if you don’t grant me the right of seniority I was promised.”
“Ken,” the elder said with a placating tone. “Elder Shaw just brought half a dozen new girls to town. Irma Fenton is ready to go to a man’s home, and she’ll come straight to yours. She needs a firm hand, just like Alice.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it, Elder,” Ken retorted, his face beginning to show real anger. “We have a problem here. This girl ran away and disturbed the town. She needs to be made an example of, and I’m the right man to do it, in the bunkhouse where the men give the best examples. I’m not—”
Joe saw then that although the rest of the men felt a certain loyalty for Ken Sweeney, they didn’t necessarily like the way he challenged the elder—or even the way he had challenged Joe, who was also well enough liked in town. Now Joe risked speaking over the other man, feeling that he might at least win his point for the evening, and get Alice home so that he could tend to her—both to her lesson over his knee and to the much softer way he wanted to settle some other important issues, lying together in his bed even if her virginity must be spared for the town meeting.
“It’s time for this problem to get out of the cold,” he said, flicking his reins to get his horse going back toward Brownsville. He felt Alice shiver in his arms, at that, and nestle in against his chest. Joe knew the conflict wasn’t over, and he knew Ken hadn’t spoken a falsehood when it came to making an example of Alice, but he thought he could make sure he decided how that example would be made. He definitely didn’t intend to let Ken, the elders, or anyone else make the decision without putting up a fight.
Chapter Nineteen
Alice went over Joe’s knee as soon as he had warmed her in his arms, by the stove, for long enough that the chill left her bones. As she took off her gingham dress, her shift, her drawers, she couldn’t keep the memories of the tense moments by the railroad tracks from replaying over and over in her mind.
It’s time for this problem to get out of the cold.
This problem.
I am a problem.
Yes, she realized, Miss Alice Rhodes was a problem… to Mr. Joe Smithers, to Mr. Ken Sweeney, to Elder Thomas Hilton…
A problem to Dr. Reginald Brown, in far-off Scotland, because she was a problem to the whole town named after him: a small town, perhaps, but one that the doctor intended to make mighty in the erotic history of the world.
“Come here, sweetheart,” Joe said. He sat on the edge of the big bed, now, the same big bed where Alice had been tied to watch him with Mary, doing the thing she had come to long for and to dread. For if he did it with her, Miss Alice Rhodes, she would show him that she needed it so very, very much. And Joe would know that—Joe would never forget it.
She would belong to him, this problem for Brownsville.
She watched him pat his left thigh, turned a little and spread from his right so that when Alice lay herself down over it, her face would lie upon the patchwork quilt, comforted by the softness. Her upended bottom, though, would lie exposed, its still very sore bruises from the terrible birching and then from the saddle ready for him to rub, and then to spank. Her poor little cheeks, rosy from the stove, would rise for his firm right hand’s correction, his left arm ready to hold her down as would surely be necessary since it would hurt so very much to be spanked atop the lingering smart of the flogging that had made her run away.
Part of her stood back, separated from herself in the fear of the moment to look at the rest of her and gape at its obedience. How could her feet carry her over there to Joe’s waiting knee, to the strong, canvas-covered leg of the man who said she belonged to him, and he to her?
How could she not be running away again, this very instant, to stand in the path of a train if necessary and flag it down, or to beg Mrs. Gantner to let her stay with Three Rocks, to be the medicine man’s second woman, for fucking just as he pleased?
Shouldn’t a girl who had been told in no uncertain terms that she was a problem for this outlandish place, where all the laws of decent society received not just violation but positive repudiation, do everything in her power to get away from there? Would they not, eventually, just let her go—especially if they could give her to the Indians?
But that detached part saw something else, as Alice came to stand naked in front of Joe, between his legs, as she felt him put his right arm about her waist to draw her down into position to learn her lesson.
The person for whom Miss Alice Rhodes truly represented a problem was Miss Alice Rhodes. Miss Reynolds hadn’t helped much, with her efforts—though Alice could see them now as well-intentioned, since they had brought her back here to Joe’s cabin, after all—to set Joe and Ken at odds. But that would never have caused Alice to doubt her love for Joe if she hadn’t started out twisted inside, in the way Dr. Brown thought girls could get twisted by so-called civilization.
Ma Gantner had helped, though, with her wooden spoon—if only to make it possible for Alice to understand that yes, she did need regular spanking. And now, thinking about the way the older woman had apologized to her in the tipi, the way she had talked of finding joy and pleasure with the Sioux medicine man, Alice could see that Joe did indeed have the solution to the problem of Alice Rhodes, in the firm right hand that had now started to rub her bottom so very gently, making her moan loud and shamefully in the little cabin.
“Hush, sweetheart,” he said very gently. “You know you have this coming.”
“Yes, sir,” Alice whispered into the comforter, very glad that he couldn’t see her red face at the way he took such liberties with her bottom.
What did she have coming? The spanking, of course, to enforce with chastising pain how naughty she had been not just to run away and make the men have to come and fetch her, but much more important, to pretend that she could find some sort of cold solace with Ken Sweeney if the elders gave her to the bunkhouse manager instead. To pretend even that she didn’t want Joe, but rather Ken, because Ken knew how to whip her properly, unfeelingly, with desire but without love, because Alice’s love for Joe was indecent.
If she had to have her bottom fucked the way she had seen Joe thrusting hard inside Mary Jones that first night, it couldn’t be with love, but only with the need a ma
n like Ken had to use the tiny flower of a pretty girl’s anus. It must only be for a strong man to use her anus, her cunny, her mouth, for his pleasure, and for Alice to be used that way, and have her terrible need to yield to a man’s strength satisfied in silence but for her cries of discomfort as he had his way.
But Joe’s hand caressed her so tenderly, even though she had the spanking coming, so he must think she also had that coming… the way he pushed his hand between her thighs, the way he gently roused the aching secrets there, so very wet now, just as they had been in the saddle, in his arms, when the men were talking about her punishment as if she weren’t there.
“There we go, little Alice,” Joe said softly. “Let yourself get wet now. Let me know you’ll be ready for fucking tomorrow over the bench in the meeting hall. Move your sweet cunt on my hand to show me you need it.”
Alice cried out as she obeyed, pushing up her bottom as much as she could to invite his lewd fingers down to the place that burned the hottest, then moving her hips desperately, pleading for more. She had run away because of the love she felt now in Joe’s hand, heard in his voice, but she wouldn’t try again to escape. Even if the elders decided to give her to Ken Sweeney despite everything that had happened tonight, she would love Joe, and beg Ken to send her to him.
Just as she would beg Joe to send her to the bunkhouse. Now, riding his hand so lasciviously, she remembered the way Ken had spoken of his own idea for her punishment, how he had talked of a night in the bunkhouse. Though it was Joe’s hand between her legs, her mind went elsewhere, strayed terribly, and her only consolation came from being not there but here, in Joe’s cabin.