Part I here

The lock was old. The handle was the kind wrought of iron by a local blacksmith, making it at least a hundred years old, Stacy guessed. Tampering with an antique felt wrong somehow and after looking around she strained on tip toes to see through the dust caked window. The desk she could see was even older than the lock and it came complete with a covered typewriter and a Bakelite phone.

The young writer wondered when the office could last have been used and why it had been shut up in this way. It either contained some real old treasures or it was a waste of time, she concluded. She snorted, well duh, “Glad I got that settled,” she muttered.

Neither of the reachable windows would budge and the door may have been painted shut. She jemmied the lock and listened, but the creaking scratching told her nothing. It was always easier in the movies.

Stacy took a step back and crinkled up her nose as she surveyed the old outbuilding. It looked hopeless. Then up to her left she spied a small window with a modern frame. It was too high as such, but just under it and a little to the right was an old rain barrel. Maybe she could… she made with the frog lips and then let them go with a pop.

Ten minutes later, and after she had struggled with more exercise than she was used to, she had managed to slide open the small high window and swing her leg inside. It was a squeeze and Stacy doubted that a grown man could have gotten in. It was dark too and her whole body blocked out the light. But as far as she could gather she was on an upper floor that was less than a third the size of the whole building, like a mezzanine that overlooked the lower office.

“This must have been where the boss sat,” Stacy said aloud and moved away from the window to let in more light. She had brought a torch, but it was less use than the sunshine from outside.

The thing that struck her most was the smell. It was dusty with a hint of decay. Paper she guessed and she scanned the desk on the upper floor. There was nothing much, another typewriter and a pot with pencils. On top of the writing blotter there were a couple of old notebooks but these had nothing but faint columns of numbers like a ledger.

The pictures on the wall were from the 1930s; photographs with no one she recognised. Except for an old Navajo who looked a lot like Sundance and she took a closer look. Not Sundance, she was sure, but then she saw who the man was standing next to. Garrick, Garrick looking maybe 20 years younger. Stacy hastily scrubbed at the dust to read the caption.

“Stone Ranch, Pulver, 1931,” the handwritten legend ran. Stacy looked again at the picture and looked hard. There was a group of men in working clothes posing for the camera. There were a couple of Native Americans, but most of the men were white. Her gaze kept coming back to the one in the middle. It was heady stuff and she felt her mouth go dry. There was no mistake, it was Garrick.

“Hmm, so 80 or odd years ago Garrick Stone looked not a day over 40,” Stacy said aloud as if saying it would make it take on more sense. It didn’t.

There was nothing else she could see on the upper deck that gave anything away. Although a stash of Picture Magazines was fun and probably valuable, she pondered. But she resisted the temptation to browse and headed down to the main office.

“Okay, what have we here?” she muttered as she headed over to a file cabinet.

It was locked and so was the next one. Finally she found one that she could force and it slid back with a grinding crack. There was an old half-empty bottle of rye and two tin cups. She also found a dated Webster’s dictionary, some more packets of pencils and some empty notebooks.

The next drawer had some actual files or at least holders for them. Rifling through she found invoices, bills, mostly for farm stuff. The names were interesting, in a grocery bill for 1947 she found Jared’s name. Augusta was there and Sundance. Not one document was dated past 1957.

It was fascinating stuff and Stacy thought if she could kick back for a few days she would find gold. But so far, nothing she had seen told her anything she hadn’t already suspected. She slammed the drawer with a curse.

Next she tried the desk drawers, none were locked. She found an old Colt .45, but no ammo. It didn’t look like it worked, but she knew little about guns. With the gun she found some tame 1950s girlie mags and a couple of calendars from the 1940s.

The she startled and jumped back. Her breathing was like an oncoming freight train and she fixed her gaze on one gloomy spot in the shadows at the back of the desktop.

Staring at her were the blood red eyes of a wolf. A picture of course and she reached out a careful hand to take up the paperback sporting the picture. It was a horror pulp fiction offering from the 1950s. Someone had a sense of humour.

Stacy started to laugh as she tossed the book aside. Then she sighed. “Come on, there must be something,” she snapped and slammed the desk drawer shut.

The rattle at the door was worse than seeing the book and for a long second she wondered if her heart was about to leap out of her chest and make its own break for it.

For a second more she thought about hiding but the door opened to light up the room.

Silhouetted by the doorframe stood Augusta, she was poised like a hungry dog and wore a face like summer thunder.

Stacy clutched her chest and let out a breath that was halfway to being relieved.

“Augusta, I was…” she blurted.

“I know what you were doing, precisely what I told you not to do,” Augusta accused, but even she had relaxed some.

“Yah,” Stacy drawled, adding with a wincing face, “Totally busted.”

Augusta almost smiled and shook her head before turning to try the light switch by the door. When nothing happened she closed the door anyway and crossed the room to try a freestanding lamp in the corner. The abandoned office lit up.

“Man this is a mess,” Stacy suggested and dragged her fore finger along some dust. The action made her sneeze twice.

“Do you know who you are? Really I mean?” Augusta asked as she strolled towards the younger woman.

Stacy laughed and grinned at the larger older woman. “I think it goes, ‘Who do you think you are?’ but I get it, I am out of line. I was just curious, but you knew that.”

“Oh I know who you think you are,” Augusta countered, “I know too that you are lost and searching for something. But you won’t find it in here.”

“I can see that, I guess,” Stacy sighed, “What do you say we go get a coffee and… eh why are you looking at me like that?”

Augusta drew in a breath through her nose and took hold of her temper. “I know what you need right now and it isn’t coffee.”

“I think I’ll just go,” Stacy tried to push past and pointed at the door.

Augusta took hold of the girl and half carried her over to a chair against the wall. It was an easy matter to deposit the young woman face down across her lap; less so to tug down her denims to expose the brief covering on her bottom. But the matron managed it.

It was so quick that Stacy was still trying to make sense of it when she felt a breeze across her bare bottom. “What the hell? Are you crazy this ain’t 1950…” the young woman gasped in a frantic voice.

“Sadly no,” Augusta sighed and spanked the girl once across the bottom to extract a yelp.

Stacy looked back at the woman in horror, although as the blood flushed to her face, she kind of wished she faced a wolf. “That hurt,” she said scornfully, “and if you don’t let me up…”

Augusta spanked the girl again and watched the consternation run wild on her upturned face. The third swat was a stinger and three more left two red hills on fire.

It was killing, as Stacy might have said as a teen, but the humiliation was still worse. “I get it, I’m sorry, it is just an old…” she blurted.

Augusta tilted the girl so that her running-at-the-mouth end went nearer the floor and her bare bottom was elevated to be more fully exposed. Then she spanked with real force, adding three or four spanks in rapid succession.

Stacy’s cries and pleadings couldn’t successfully make words and she communicated with futile bucking and yelling. It didn’t save her bottom though, which after a minute was a hot red and rash-mottled. Someone had found a blowtorch and was bathing her tail with it.

Augusta was never one for counting or timing a spanking, she just chartered her course for a long haul until she heard that sea-change in a girl towards half way through their voyage.

“Okay, I get it,” Stacy shouted angrily through the increasingly wet babbling she had been contending with.

“You definitely are getting it and I am going to give it to you,” Augusta snapped, angry at this brat’s defiance.

“Please, I’m sorry,” Stacy wailed.

“I don’t think so,” Augusta said spanking harder and faster.

Stacy rapidly jack-knifed herself to try and break free and then she started cry properly. After that among the weeping and wailing there was an occasionally ‘please’ and ‘sorry,’ but mostly the girl bawled into the floor having given up the fight.

After a few minutes more and every two or three minutes after that Augusta paused to lecture the girl on respect, privacy, ingratitude and a host of moral concepts Stacy had skipped reading about and hadn’t even bothered with the movie.

“Please I am so sorry, I get it, really I do, please,” Stacy croaked, her face was a cascade of tears and she even had a snotty nose.

Augusta inspected the bare bottom. It was hot to the touch and the colour had moved on from strawberry towards plum. The girl was sobbing hard and almost broken.

“Now, I know you won’t listen, I get that. You think you will, but an hour, a day, a week after this spanking you will think it won’t happen again and you will screw up. I just want you to know that I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but when it comes to it I will spank you again. Next time I will spank you pert little bare bottom out there in front of everyone, is that clear?” Augusta said firmly.

“Yes Ma’am,” Stacy sobbed, hoping like she never had before that this was the closing speech and it was over. She knew there wasn’t much she wouldn’t beg to do to be allowed to get off Augusta’s lap just then.

“Good,” the older woman said in a tight voice. “Now stand up and make your way over to… that corner,” Augusta said pointing to an empty part of the office. “Leave your pants and panties down and stand there. No rubbing, no talking.”

Stacy gaped at her and then at the corner. She wanted to protest that she wasn’t five, but she knew better. Now she did.

“Stacy the corner,” Augusta said sharply. “Move or rub before I fetch you and I will spank you again and believe me I will know.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Stacy squeaked and after regarding the woman with a mix of awe and apprehension she tottered across the room to where she had to stand in time out.

“Good girl,” Augusta sighed. “I will look I on you in a bit, you won’t hear me. You had better be standing just like that.”

Stacy sniffed and nodded vigorously.

Augusta smiled at the bare bottom as it cooled and shook her head maternally. Then she left.

Stacy cursed the wall under her breath as her fingers clawed the air in proxy bottom massaging. She didn’t dare rub and God help her if she moved. She never wanted another spanking as long as she lived. For a minute she blamed the world and everyone in it for letting this happen to her and then she burst into heavy sobbing.

Strangely after she tried to hate Augusta she found she couldn’t. She could see her point even if her methods were… Stacy grabbed at her behind, not believing the heat and singing flesh under her fingers. Then she remembered and in a panic snatched them away. It was a full minute before she realised Augusta wasn’t there and she could relax. This was utterly crazy, why was she even standing in the corner like a kid. Then a sound came from somewhere outside and Stacy stiffened. She didn’t dare move.

To be continued…