The Wyoming Debt

by April Hill

  With the possibility of another painful switching at hand, Molly had finally decided to pay Mrs. Frawley something on account, then pay the grocer by borrowing some of the next month's rent money. The solution had seemed reasonable, and might even have worked—had Dan not run out of coffee in the office, and stopped by the grocer's for a fresh can. When he found the bill still unpaid, he came home early, hung up his hat and gun-belt in the front hallway like he always did, then made a quick stop in the bedroom—to get the hairbrush from his wife's dresser.

  Molly was enjoying a cool afternoon bath in the galvanized tin tub when Dan appeared unexpectedly in the kitchen, and while she wasn't much of a bookkeeper, she was quite a good detective. The sight of the can of coffee in her husband's left hand and her own large woodenhairbrush in his right made it all too clear that she'd be eating her supper standing up.

  Dan had to be back at work in less than twenty minutes, so the dreaded "money" lecture was not a long one. Which left plenty of time for the spanking. Molly had no chance at all to rinse off before she was pulled out of the tub and pushed face-down over the cluttered kitchen counter. It was the first time she'd been spanked dripping wet and soapy, and after the first few whacks, the differences between being spanked dry by an irate husband and being spanked wet by the same irate husband became obvious. To make matters worse, Dan had found it hard to get a firm grip on his slippery wife, let alone hold her still long enough to accomplish what he had in mind. As it turned out, this wasn't an especially advantageous thing for Molly, since it had only made him more irritable and more intent on finding new places to land the next blistering swat. And since Dan was also getting wet and soapy, that made him more irritable, yet. Last, but far from least, Molly discovered that each time the fat hairbrush cracked across a previously unspanked wet spot on her squirming buttocks, it did so with a humiliating and very audible splat!

  * * * *

  Molly McKenna had met Dan Holman at a theater in Boston, just after she graduated from The Reardon Teaching Academy for Young Ladies. He was visiting his sister that summer, but he lived in a small town in the Arizona Territory called Little Salt Creek. Having grown up in a large eastern city, Molly knew very little about either of these places, but she went home that night and read everything she could find about both. What she did know was that Mr.Holman was intelligent, charming, and funny—the three things Molly had always known she wanted in a husband. Unlike most of the men she had already met, this one didn't smile indulgently, thendismiss her views on politics and women's suffrage as "naïve." He even expressed the opinion that it was only a matter of time before women were granted the vote. When Arizona finally achieved statehood, he told Molly, it was his hope that the new legislature would move quickly in that direction. Wyoming had done it, after all, along with a number of other countries in the world. Why not the United States?

  Molly had always associated the far West with untold excitement and glamour, so the fact that Dan was tall and handsome and from the far West only added to his appeal, That night at the theater, he had arrived dressed in a suit and tie— along with tall leather boots and a white Stetson that shaded his deeply blue eyes and made them look even bluer. Molly was instantly smitten, and to her delight, Dan fell in love with her almost as quickly as she had with him.

  Over the nervous protests of Molly's adoring family, the couple were married just two weeks later. After a small ceremony, during which the bride's mother wept inconsolably, Daniel Holman and his winsome new bride boarded a westbound train bound for the Arizona Territory and for Little Salt Lick, where he was employed as the town's Sheriff.

  * * * *

  When the sheriff's new bride found that the Arizona Territory was not what she'd expected, and when she began to understand that Little Salt Creek (population 232) was only slightly less glamorous and exciting than its name suggested, she had an alternative to suggest. "We could move to Phoenix," she said sweetly, less than a week after she arrived. "I hear there's close to 4000 people there, darling. They have these lovely new streetcars, and electric lighting, and public parks with real trees, and…"

  Dan shook his head. "Big cities like Phoenix are expensive," he said. "Maybe in a year or two, when we've saved some money." It was a phrase Molly would hear often in the next few months, and learn to hate.

  She also learned that her new husband (despite being the kindest, sweetest, most romantic man she'd ever known) definitely had his limits. Little Salt Creek was not Boston, he explained patiently the first time she overdrew their account at the bank. If they were to survive on a small town sheriff's monthly salary, they would have to live within what he called a "sensible budget." Since "sensible budget" was not a phrase, nor a concept, with which Molly was familiar, she set about proving to Dan that there were more important things in life than budgets. What was to be gained by hiding all one's money away in a bank, where it did no good at all? There were more useful things to do with money—such as making the two of them a gracious home, filled with lovely things. Things like the beautiful mahogany spinet she found in the Montgomery Ward catalogue.

  The first spanking of Molly's life arrived a mere two hours after the arrival of the mahogany spinet.

  She had planned the spinet as a lovely surprise. She played passably well, after all, and Dan loved music, and the catalogue had promised that after her very generous first payment, the remaining payments would be only three dollars a month. (For a very, very long time, of course, but Dan would surely be making more money by then. He didn't want to be a small town sheriff forever, did he? )

  The concept of being soundly spanked, especially at the hand of her husband, was even more foreign to Molly than a budget. Dan listened patiently, as he always did, to what she had to say about the spinet, then explained just as patiently that the instrument had to go back.. It was when she told him that the spinet was not returnable that he rolled up his sleeves, sat down on the pretty little hand-carved bench, and positioned her across his knee. Seconds later, with her flailing legs secured under one of his own and her petticoats safely over her head, he untied her drawers and lowered them to her knees, baring her from waist to ankle. And at this point, suddenly aware of what was about to happen, a shocked Molly sent up a wail of complaint.

  "You can't do something like this!" she cried, throwing back her one free hand in an attempt to defend her unprotected buttocks. "You just can't!" But he could— and he did. After pinning her arm behind her back, he spanked her harder, longer, and more painfully than an indulged young woman like Molly could ever have imagined. For the first time in her life, the new Mrs. Holman was being called to account for something she had done. And since it was her first experience of this sort, her husband steeled himself against her piteous howls, then did his level best to make the walloping a life experience his spendthrift bride would never forget.

  For two days after the spanking, Molly alternated between bouts of weeping and sullen pouting, interspersed with threats to leave him and go back to Boston forever. On the third day, when she "accidentally" dumped a pot of coffee in his lap during a silent breakfast, Dan took a wooden spoon to her still sore backside, then carried her to the bedroom, threw her on the bed, and made love to her with both of them still half-dressed.

  "Is this the way it's going to be?" she asked afterward, lying peacefully in his arms.

  "Could be," he replied. "I might just turn out to be as stubborn as you are, you know. And I'm a lot bigger, of course."

  Molly giggled. "Maybe. But I'm smarter."

  He chuckled. "Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see about that. You’re a lot wilier, that's for sure. Just rein it in a bit, and we'll be fine."

  "And if I don't?"

  "Did you ever take a real good look at that razor strop of mine? I figure a thing like that could leave some serious welts on a person's bare butt." "Dan! You wouldn't!"

  * * * *

  Some twelve years after it was first observed, Labor Day had finally been declar
ed a federal holiday by the Congress of the United States, and though Arizona was not yet a state, the town council of Little Salt Creek had immediately begun plans to celebrate the new holiday. There was to be a festive parade down Main Street, with a brass band composed of two trumpets, a smattering of ancient clarinets, and a badly dented tuba on loan from a defunct Knights of Labor lodge. After the parade, everyone would gather in the little cottonwood grove at the edgeof town for a picnic and ice cream social, preceded by a series of patriotic speeches by an assortment of dignitaries. In a town the size of Little Salt Creek, of course, genuine dignitaries were in rather short supply, so His Honor, Mayor Elmer Quigley, had graciously volunteered to speak twice—on "Our Glorious Past," and "Preserving the Sanctity of American Womanhood."

  "How on earth did Elmer Quigley ever get elected?" Molly exclaimed, upon hearing of the mayor's proposed topics. "Everyone knows the man's a pompous idiot—and a bigot, as well!"

  "You won't get an argument from me about that, but Elmer Quigley owns the bank, the mercantile, the newspaper, and the livery stable," Dan explained irritably. "And me, come to think of it. He may be an idiot, but he's got the town council in his pocket, so be careful who you say that to, will you? The bank holds the mortgage on this house. He can toss us out anytime he wants to."

  Molly sighed, but said nothing else of a political nature for the remainder of the week. Her unspoken opinion was that the mayor and the town deserved one another. Little Salt Creek was a dusty little cattle town, boring, old-fashioned and hopelessly behind the times. What the town really needed was to be dragged— kicking and screaming if necessary—into the nineteenth century.

  And if she and the other pro-suffrage ladies of Little Salt Creek had their way about it, this very first official Labor Day was going to mark the beginning of some very big changes.

  * * * *

  The plan was simple, suggested by Molly herself and agreed upon by the other women of the town's small and necessarily discreet women's suffrage movement. Six of the members would march in the Labor Day parade as "The Little Salt Creek Ladies' Temperance Society." Then, when the parade reached the picnic area, Molly and the remaining four members would hoist their real banner aloft— directly over the podium, and over Elmer Quigley's pompous head. Their shouts of protest would effectively drown out the mayor's call for the continuing enslavement of the American woman. The ladies' greatest hope, of course, was that the small but courageous demonstration would encourage the town's less outspoken ladies to join their sisters in proud but peaceful rebellion.

  The problem was that the rebellion didn't turn out to be quite as peaceful as the ladies had hoped.

  And it was all Elmer Quigley's fault.

  The mayor had just begun his speech, and the ladies had barely begun their shouts of protest when two laughing townsmen climbed onto the makeshift stage and tore down the homemade suffrage banner. Quigley applauded, gathered up the ripped banner, and to the crowd's delight, blew his nose on it. As the male audience cheered its approval, the mayor grinned, then dumped the banner of protest over the rail into the muddy creek. The ladies of the movement looked around, desperate for support, only to witness two of their comrades in arms being dragged away by angry husbands. With their own husbands nowhere in sight, and spurred on by the enraged example of the sheriff's wife, the remaining suffrage ladies began hurling an assortment of food items and picnic utensils. But Molly, dissatisfied with merely lobbing fruit and vegetables at the opposition, broke from the others and strode up onto the podium, where Mayor Quigley, still roaring with laughter, was peering over the rail to watch the sadly torn banner being stomped into the creek bed by a group of rowdy boys.

  The stage was less than four feet high, so when Molly slugged the mayor in the nose with all her might and shoved him over the rail into the creek, the fall itself was not particularly dangerous. It was the mayor's hard landing on the muddy creek-bank that did most of the damage. That, and an incidental wallow in the steaming piles of manure contributed by the several horses cooling their thirst after the hot parade down Main Street. After most of the picnic items and a good deal of melted ice-cream had been thrown, the rebellion died down fairly quickly. Molly left the scene just short of being apprehended by a gaggle of angry male spectators. She ran up the street to Dan's office, with Mayor Quigley and a group of his badly soiled supporters right behind her.

  "What the hell happened?" Dan exclaimed as his wife ducked behind him and into the relative safety of the jail.

  "It's a little hard to explain," she said breathlessly. By now, though, the crowd was milling around outside Dan's office, and Elmer Quigley was offering his own explanation. At the top of his lungs.

  "All I need to know from you is one thing, Holman," the mayor demanded, doing what he could to scrape clean his mud-spattered hindquarters. "Are you or are you not going to uphold the law and arrest that…that woman of yours?" Dan couldn't help but notice that the mayor's large red nose was bleeding profusely.

  Holman stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I know the woman well enough, but which law might that be you're speaking of, Elmer?"

  "The law against…" The Mayor sputtered for several moments, apparently confused by the question. "The law against assault…And against humiliating me!" he bellowed. "Well, what I meant to say, of course, is the law against striking and humiliating a duly elected public official! And for committing said offenses in public!"

  "Well now," Holman drawled. "I'm not real sure there's actually a law exactly like that on the books. You know of one?"

  "Finding the specific statutes that have been offended is your concern, sheriff, not mine," the Mayor replied huffily. By now, Mayor Quigley had begun to regain his composure, but with the perpetrator of the civic outrage still at large and unpunished, his rage was growing with every passing moment. "What happened here is an open and shut case of assault and battery, Holman! Any fool can see that. I expect you to apply the appropriate laws firmly, and without delay, and if you won't, then as mayor of this town, I say you’re no longer fit to hold the office for which you were elected—without my vote, I should add! The fact that your wife is the guilty party here is no reason for your refusal to do your job. To see to it that proper justice is done."

  Holman sighed. "That's quite a mouthful. Elmer, but I'm not a lawyer, and last time I looked, neither were you. Guilt or innocence is for a judge to decide, and if it's my badge you’re after, I'll have to ask you to take that up with the Town Council, and the voters who put me here. As far as my wife is concerned, when someone convinces me that she's the only one to blame for what happened today, you can bet your bottom dollar that proper justice will be applied—firmly, and in a way she won't soon forget."

  Listening nervously just inside the office door, Molly winced with embarrassment. She could only pray that neither the mayor nor the small crowd of people standing around fully understood the real meaning of her husband's words. But the mayor wasn't giving up that easily. "That's all well and good, Sheriff, but there's also the matter of my considerable damages."

  "Damages?" Dan repeated.

  "My new blue gabardine suit, damn it! Ordered just last month from the best haberdasher in the territory, damn it! And shipped by Wells-Fargo special delivery in time for today's festivities. And now, look at it! Ruined!" The mayor waved his dripping coat, flinging muddy water and clods of gritty dirt on several of the bystanders who had gathered around.

  "Looks like plain old mud to me, Elmer," Dan said, stepping down to get a closer look at the mayor's purported damages. "Maybe a little horse manure mixed in, seeing how the alleged illegal incident occurred, but mostly mud, I’d say. Still, justice is justice. I'm going to look into this, and hear both sides, and if Molly is responsible, you have my word that she'll make good on whatever damage she's done. Tell you what. Why don’t you just go ahead and bring that coat and trousers of yours around to our place tomorrow, and I'll see to it that she cleans everything up, good as new. Your socks and long-
johns, too, if they're in need a good scrub."

  Like hell, I will! Molly clapped a hand across her mouth to stop herself from screaming her protest aloud. It'll be a cold day in hell before I wash Elmer Quigley's dirty drawers. Or anything else of his! I don’t care if I get walloped 'til I can’t sit down for a month!

  Which, considering the grim look on Dan's face, was shaping up as an excellent possibility.

  When the mayor finally strode away, oozing muddy creek water with every step, Dan Holman turned with a weary sigh and walked back into his office. Molly was nowhere in sight. In the back, of course. Smart girl, he thought, mildly amused in spite of his anger. Making herself scarce until I cool down, like she always does when she's got spanking coming. The usual game of hide and seek wasn't all that clever, though. Not this time. Not when she'd put his job and their living in jeopardy. And for that, his sweet wife had earned herself one rip-roaring, hell-bent for leather walloping. As much as he hated having to do it, Molly was going to find herself on the receiving end of the hardest spanking he could bring himself to deliver. The kind she hadn't had in too long a time. The kind of barnburner she'd still be remembering when they were both old and gray. The kind of whipping that just might make her listen and behave—finally