The farmer's daughter had been a pernicious and spoilt little brat when she was younger. Now that she was older she was the epitome of a pernicious and spoilt big brat. She delighted getting people into trouble, snooping around and finding errors in their work. I've always suspected that she wasn't above introducing those errors.
I'd had a few run-ins with her myself, but nothing too serious. She may have considered me the odd job man but her father knew my value. If he fired me or leant on me hard enough to make me decide to quit he'd have been in the shit. He might be the owner and have the legal authority but I was the one who really ran the farm and he knew it.
Katherine didn't know it. She saw me as some sort of favoured, lazy employee and tried a few times to get me into serious trouble. As far as she was concerned the only one entitled to any favours was her.
Things sort of came to a head shortly after her eighteenth birthday. She deliberately reopened a gate I'd closed, letting the sheep and new lambs get loose. I'd spotted her doing it and managed to get back to the paddock and round them up in a timely fashion.
There was, I knew, no way her father would take any action against his darling daughter. I didn't even bother to tell him about her latest prank. Instead, I took steps.
I kept an eye out for Katherine, wanting to know when she was snooping around watching me. Eventually time and place fell into line. I slipped into our minor barn, knowing she was watching. It was currently underused, just storing a bit of excess hay. At the back of the barn there were a couple of small bales of hay with some loose stuff scattered around them. I made a bit of a show of taking something out from behind the bales and then returning it.
Show over, I sneaked out of the barn, conscious of a pair of nasty eyes watching me. As I walked away, out of the corner of my eye I saw Katherine hovering, then darting into the barn. I turned and headed back to the barn, watching from beside the door, waiting.
Katherine went scurrying down to the bales and leaned over them, just sort of fishing around to see what was there. It didn't take her long to see the mesh tubing and she promptly stuck her hand down it to see what was in the tube. What was in it was now her hand.
Have you ever seen a Chinese finger trap. It's a simple little tube made of woven straw. You stick a finger in either end and then try to take them out. The straw mesh closes over your fingers. The harder you pull the tighter it grips. That was basically the sort of mesh tube that Katherine had stuck her hand down.
Finding nothing in the tube Katherine went to pull her hand out, only to find the mesh closing tightly over her arm, holding her prisoner. I heard her swear and could see that she was tugging quite strongly, just not getting anywhere.
Now I'd placed two tubes there, really only expecting one to be of use. Katherine got the bright idea that if she stuck her free hand down the second tube she could reach around and push her first hand free. It didn't work that way. It just resulted in both hands being stuck.
Mind you, she could still have got free if she'd stopped to think. All she had to do was push down on the tubes until they were loose and hold them like that while she extracted one hand and then the other. She probably would have figured it out eventually, but in the short term she panicked. I could see her struggling and her language was not at all nice.
Before she could solve the puzzle or rip the tubes apart by sheer force and fury I wandered back into the barn.
"Katherine," I greeted her. "Got a problem?"
She turned her head and glared at me.
"I'm stuck and you know it. You did this deliberately. Get me loose. Now!"
"Quite right. I did do it deliberately. I wanted you in a position where you couldn't walk away while I have a little chat with you."
"What? You let me loose right now."
"Tell me, why did you undo that gate and let the sheep out the other day?" I asked, blandly ignoring her request. "You know better than that."
"I didn't and you can't prove I did," she snapped. "Now get me loose."
"You did. I saw you. I decided that it was time you started taking responsibility for your actions and their consequences."
"What consequence?" she sneered at me. "You had to round up a few sheep. Big deal."
"Quite a few consequences or possible consequences," I pointed out. "While I was rounding up the sheep I wasn't doing other work I had to do. The sheep could have ruined the vegetable garden if I hadn't seen you acting like a ninny. There could have been an accident and we might have lost some valuable live-stock."
"Big deal. None of that happened. Are you going to let me loose or not?"
"Not," I said. "There is one consequence that I didn't mention that is about to happen."
"What do you mean, not? And what consequence?"
I reached down and lifted Katherine's dress tucking it up around her waist. Then I took her panties and pulled them down.
"I'll be letting you free after I've given you what you've been begging for. Your father is too soft-hearted to do it so I thought I would."
"What the fuck do you think you're playing at," came the not unexpected shriek. "Leave my clothes alone."
My hand came down smartly on her bottom.
"I'm going to spank you. What did you think was happening?"
