Matt Harrington heard the screams and shouts and he didn’t even need to look to know that his wife and sister-in-law were at it again!  “Come on, Mike,” he said, nudging his younger brother on the shoulder to get his attention.  “The girls are at it again.”

“Will they ever learn to get along?” Mike asked in exasperation, dropping the canvas he was trying to repair and running after his brother and down toward the stream, where the ladies were supposed to be washing their clothing while they had the water to do so.

“I can’t understand this animosity they bear each other,” Matt answered as they hurried to get there before the women actually harmed each other.  “They’ve been fighting since the day you brought Nellie home to meet the family.”

“They are going to get us kicked off the wagon train,” Mike predicted as they got closer and heard the screams and obscenities coming from their brides.

There was a crowd gathered to watch the two women fight, but no one thought to break it up. They were enjoying the spectacle too much.  Matt saw his Kady give Nellie’s blonde hair a jerk and heard Nellie holler bloody murder.  “That is enough, Kady Marie Harrington,” he growled as he reached down to jerk her to her feet.  The target of her temper changed, but he was prepared when she tried to slug him next and he ducked before trapping her arms to her sides.  “ENOUGH!”  He raised his voice to be heard and Kady went still, looking up at him with her lower lip trembling.  “She started it, Matthew.”

Mike had Nellie subdued by then and he gave her a single shake.  “I am sick and tired of this fighting with Kady, young lady.  What am I going to do with you?”

“Cut a switch and stripe her with it,” was the advice from the wagon master who had made his way down the line to find out what was going on.  He addressed the gathering crowd. “All you women said you wanted to stop here so you could do some wash and fix a decent supper; you men are supposed to be greasing axels and checking out your wagons; all of you get to it and make the most of this early stop.  We’ll be in Indian country soon and we won’t be stopping early because we’ll want to get through there as fast as we can.”  People started going about their business and the wagon master motioned for Matt and Mike and their wives to follow him.  “I’m sick and tired of you two girls fighting all the time, and I’m sick of you two men allowing it to happen.  I don’t want to have to put you off the wagon train, but I will if it doesn’t stop.  You two men need to take measures to put an end to this constant bickering and fussing.”

“She always starts it!” Kady angrily declared.  She looked like she’d been in a fight; her thick red curls were minus the hairpins that normally held them up.  Her hair was hanging down her back, her shirtwaist was torn and minus a couple of buttons, and her dark skirt was dirty.

“I do not; you do!” Nellie argued.  She’d gotten the worst of the fight and it showed.

“You are such a liar.”

“You are the liar!”

Kady took a step toward Nellie, prepared to resume the fight, but Matt lifted her off her feet so she couldn’t reach the other female.  “Settle down, Kady!” Matt ordered sharply.

“See here, son.  This is exactly what I’m talking about.  These two females have done nothing but fuss and fume at each other since you two boys joined the wagon train.  You need to take measures to put an end to it.  If things don’t change by the time we reach Willow Springs, I’m going to refund your money and leave you behind.”  With those final words he walked away, leaving the four young people alone.

“See what you caused, Kady!” Nellie hissed at the redhead who was the bane of her existence.  “Mr. Barnes is mad at all of us because of you and your nasty mouth!”

“Nellie, you are just as much at fault as Kady,” Mike told his wife before looking at his brother to say, “Matt, I think we need to keep the promise we made to each other and the girls.  We can’t afford to be put off the wagon train because these two can’t get along for five minutes.  It’s time we deal with this firmly.” 

Mike didn’t look happy, but Matt knew he was right.  They had to get the girls’ attention before it was too late.  He nodded and said, “I agree, little brother.  I think we need to take this away from the camp, though.  I don’t want an audience,” Matt explained.  Then he looked down at his wife and said, “Come with me, Kady.  This time you’ve gone too far, and we’re going to have it out.”

“What are you talking about, Matt?  Kady tried to resist as her husband moved forward.  “I didn’t start it,” she insisted.

“You did, too!” Nellie argued, even as Mike pulled her along after Matt and the other woman.

“I did not!  You believe me, don’t you, Matthew?” Kady wheedled, thinking to win his sympathy as she always did.

“I don’t care who started it,” he shocked her by saying.  “You are going to stop this fighting with Nellie as of right now, and I’m going to make sure you hear me this time.”

“You can’t expect me to let her call me a bitch and not do anything at all about it!” Kady gave him her wide-eyed innocent look, the one that normally made him think her completely innocent.

“I did not call you a bitch, even though you certainly are a bitch!” Nellie exclaimed, tossing her blonde curls.

“I think this is far enough, Mike,” Matt told his brother, as he held onto Kady to prevent her from flying at Nellie again.

“What are we doing out here?” Kady looked at her husband to ask.  He was acting different than he usually did.  She’d expected him to yell at her, but instead he was being very patient.

“We are out here because you and Nellie are going to get your backsides tanned. Talking to you hasn’t worked, so it’s time to make it clear that we are done with this.  Maybe a sore behind will help you think before fighting again.  I know it’s long overdue.”

“No, you are not going to spank me!  You aren’t my Pa!” Kady’s temper flared, and she turned on her heel and would have walked right back to the encampment but for the fact that Matt grabbed her arm and halted her once again. “You let me go, Matthew Harrington!”

“Not on your life, Kady.  You are going to get a spanking to remember.”

“And you are getting the same, Nellie,” Mike said as he pulled his wife over to a tree stump.  He sat down and hauled her over his lap. 

“Nooo!” Nellie protested loudly, but in the next instant Mike’s hand landed on her bottom and it hurt, even through her dress and petticoats and her drawers. “Nooooo!”  She scissored her legs to try and stop him, but it merely fueled his resolve to see her well-disciplined.

“Stop that, Michael Harrington!” Kady ordered sharply, coming to Nellie’s defense.  She was incensed with her brother-in-law.  “Have you two taken leave of your minds?  Nellie is too old to be spanked like a little girl.”

“I agree,” Mike replied.  “That is why I’m going to spank her the way a man spanks a wife who has disobeyed him… Long and hard!”

“Do something, Matt!” Kady pleaded with him. 

“I intend to,” he answered her, and Kady found herself spinning through the air only to land with a whoosh over his bent knee as he propped his foot on a large rock.  Her long hair fell to the ground, but her arms couldn’t reach and she was left dangling like a limp ragdoll.  Matt raised his hand and brought it down with a crack on her rounded bottom.  “This is long overdue, wife.  Maybe now you will realize that Mike and I are serious about this.  There will be no more fighting.”

Kady was stunned, and then she was furious.  “You son of a bitch!” she cursed him fluently.  “You stop right now or I swear I will take a whip to you until you are raw!”

“Cursing me and threatening me right now is only going to get your skirts tossed up over your head,” Matt announced, suiting actions to words.  Kady screamed, but he ignored her and spanked the seat of her pink ribbon-trimmed drawers.  Kady hollered in earnest then.

“Good idea, brother,” Mike nodded, and then he flipped up his wife’s skirts, too, deciding a bit of embarrassment would be good for her.

“No, honey!  No, please!  You’re hurting me!” Nellie tried to throw herself off his lap, but he held tight.  “Put my skirts down!  Your brother can see my drawers!” she complained, sobbing as she tried to get away from him.

“You might as well settle down, Nellie.  You went out of your way to earn this spanking, and I aim to do a good job of it.”

“But this isn’t fair!  I didn’t do anything; it’s all Kady!” Nellie insisted.

“It is not!” Kady protested.  “You started it, just like you always do!”  Matt spanked lower, catching her sit spots with the palm of his hand.

“I did not!” Nellie argued heatedly.

“I don’t believe this.  Here we are, spanking the two of them for fighting with each other, and they are still fighting!”  Matt shook his head in anger, and then his hand went to his waist as he fumbled with the buckle on his belt.  He slid the leather through the loops on his pants, and then he doubled the strap in his right hand and brought it down across Kady’s upturned buttocks.

Kady yelped and then yelped even louder when the strap fell again.  “No, Matt!  No!  I am already sore!  No more!  No more!”  She started crying when the strap fell on her sit spots.  “I’m sorry!” she sobbed.  “I’m sorry, Matt!”

“You are sorry you’re getting a whuppin’,” Matt said quietly.

Mike decided that Matt was on the right track and he followed suit, taking his own belt to Nellie’s backside.  It didn’t take long for him to realize that he was finally getting her attention.  Nellie was telling him repeatedly that she was sorry and promising to behave if he would only stop strapping her.  He wasn’t a fool.  If he stopped too soon she would be fighting with Kady again in no time at all.  “I’m not stopping until you are welted from your waist to your knees.”

“Oh, God, no!  Honey, noooo!  I can’t take any more.  I can’t!  Please let me go.  I’ll be good!”
Kady was sobbing as loudly as her sister-in-law.  The pain in her buttocks was excruciating, and she feared that Matthew was never going to stop the painful punishment.  “I won’t fight with Nellie any more, Matt!  I promise!  Please give me a chance to prove to you that I can behave!  Please…!” she begged.

“I promise, too,” Nellie echoed.

Matt nodded at Mike, and the spankings ended.  Matt put Kady on her feet, and Mike did the same with Nellie.  Matt spoke.  “Ladies, let me make this clear.  This is exactly what you can expect from now on for fighting with each other.  Mike and I don’t care which one of you starts it, if there is a fuss, there will be a sound spanking, and Kady, I will bare you if there is a next time… I don’t care if Mike is right here watching.  Is that clear?”

“Yes,” she tearfully answered Matt.

“What about you, Nellie?  Did you hear Matt?  What he said to Kady goes for you, too.”

“But what if she starts it, Mike?  It isn’t fair to spank me when she baits me.”

“If you take the bait, then you both get spanked,” was Mike’s inflexible reply.  “There is to be no more fighting.”  He looked at his brother and said, “Matt, if I’m off hunting with the men and these two go at it, I want you to deal with Nellie as if she is yours.”

“Same here, Mike.  We need to show Mr. Barnes that we are making an effort to handle these two girls.”

“Let’s get back to the camp.  You girls need to get our clothes washed, and Mike and me need to finish repairing that canvas.”

Kady was furious with her husband.  It was all her evil sister-in-law’s fault that Matt was angry with her, and that her behind was burning furiously.  She hadn’t been spanked in a long time, and her husband spanked harder than her Pa used to.  It was so embarrassing to be treated like a child when she was all grown up.  She heard Nellie sniffling, and suddenly realized that everyone on the wagon train was going to know they’d been punished by their husbands.  She stopped walking and said, “You all can go on.  I need some privacy.”

“Me, too,” Nellie said quietly.

“Don’t think we won’t stripe you again if you start fussing,” Mike warned.  He looked at Matt and they moved on back to camp.  If they were foolish enough to start fighting again, the spanking they got would make the other seem like love pats. Still, they had work to do and there were only so many hours of daylight left.  He and Matt couldn’t watch over them every second of the day.

Once the men were out of hearing, Nellie looked at Kady and asked, “Do you hurt as much as I do?”

“Yes!  I feel like Matt used a belt made of fire to stripe me.  It burns like fire, Nellie.”

“I know.  I can’t believe they did that.  We aren’t little girls,” Nellie complained.

“No, we are not.  I don’t want another spanking,” Kady whispered tearfully.

“If you don’t want another spanking then you need to stop baiting me,” Nellie told her, hands on her hips.  “You are so mean, Kady, and Mike won’t even let me defend myself!” she pouted.

“Defend yourself?” Kady repeated, incredulous that Nellie would say such a thing.  “You are the one who does the name calling and the fault finding.  I just want you to leave me alone, Nellie.  You are an evil witch.”

“I am not!”

“We have to promise each other that we’ll try real hard not to fight with each other.  Matt and Mike wouldn’t like it if Mr. Barnes left us behind.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” she agreed, and then asked, “Do you know why we fight so much?”

“I think we just got off on the wrong foot,” Kady stated, recalling the incident in the dry goods store that started everything.  “We both wanted that blue calico,” she stated.

“We reached for it at the same time,” Nellie added.  “And you said you’d been looking at it all along.”

“I had been looking at it and trying to decide if I wanted it or another piece.  It was for my sister,” she explained.  “It made me angry when you picked it up.”

“I wanted it to make a new dress because I’d met this real cute boy and I wanted to impress him,” Nellie said.

“Mike?”

“Yes.  I had no idea that you were engaged to Mike’s brother, and when Mike took me to meet his family, I was embarrassed to see you there.  We’d been so nasty to each other in the store.”

“I was embarrassed, too.  I knew that Matt would be upset that I’d been rude to you… He was so pleased that Mike had found a special girl.”  Kady looked at Nellie.  “I think we’ve been fighting over that bolt of yard goods ever since.”

“We’ve got to stop, Kady.  My hind can’t take another licking like that one.”

“You’ve got to stop picking on me all the time.”

“Me?” Nellie exclaimed.  “You are always finding fault with the way I do things!”

“It’s because you do everything in a backwards manner,” Kady stated, putting her hands on her hips.  “Everyone knows you should wash your whites first!”

“It doesn’t make a difference, Kady Harrington.  Your Ma taught you all sorts of stupid rules.”

“My Mama was not stupid, Nellie Harrington!”

“She sure taught you to do things all wrong,” Nellie insisted.  “Then you open your mouth and try to make everyone else do them wrong, too!”

“You do do things all wrong and how are you going to learn to do them right if I don’t tell you?  Do you want other folks to think that you’re stupid and feel sorry for Mike because he was dumb enough to marry you?”

“Don’t you dare say that Mike is dumb!  At least he’s handsome, and I know that you wish Matt looked like Mike!” Nellie argued.

“I do not!  Mike is puny!” Kady snorted in disgust.

“He is not, you witch!”

“Oh, now I am a witch just because you can’t face up to the truth!  The only reason you settled for Mike was because I already had Matt for mine and you couldn’t have him!” Kady declared, doing her best to antagonize the blonde.

“As if I would want him!  In fact, you couldn’t pay me to be his!” Nellie insisted.

Kady smirked at her and said, “Like I would believe you!”

Nellie let out a cry of rage and she slapped Kady hard across the cheek.

“That tears it, you bitch!” Kady gave vent to her own seething temper and she picked up a long stick that was lying on the ground and started swinging it at Nellie.  Nellie screamed and took off running, Kady right behind her, swinging the stick and catching Nellie’s backside with it every few steps.

“I can’t abide you, Nellie Harrington and I rue the day you married Matt’s brother!”

“Help me!  Help me!” Nellie hollered, running toward the spot where the wagons were circled for the night.

Six-year-old Joey Knight saw the two women and he ran to where The Harrington brothers were working.  “Mr. Matt, Mr. Mike, your Ma’s are at it again!”