Reno's Journey: Cowboy Craze (The Wild West)

by Sable Hunter

  “Well, that’s good.”

  Reno read on. Opening another attachment. “Well, hell. Dammit! I should’ve known. Why in hell didn’t I think of this?”

  “What?” She leaned nearer to see what he was seeing.

  “Jubal Pierce. He was the one who turned Cole in. He was the one who started this whole tragedy by making a false accusation.”

  “Who is Jubal Pierce?”

  Reno was still deep in thought. “Pierce was the traitor. Not Cole!” He blinked and looked back at Journey. “Jubal was a damn thorn in our side from the very beginning. He hated us all because we exposed a racket that he was running to make money off the war. Lord, he had it in for Cap. Jubal even tried to kill him once. Later, he attempted to pull a dirty trick on our Captain.” Reno let out a wry laugh. “Of course, his attempt at meanness turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Kingston Ramsay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Boone and Jericho contacted the Hearts and Hands column of the Waco newspaper to find a mail-order bride for King. They had no idea the newspaper was owned by Jubal Pierce.” He managed a smile at the memory. “Fancy wasn’t the woman who Boone and Jericho picked out. They’d found some little blonde who made them think of King’s former fiancé. Jubal thought he would cause trouble for the Captain and us by sending Fancy instead…because she didn’t look like the other woman.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she wasn’t as pleasing to the eye.”

  “What? I’ve seen Fancy’s picture and she was beautiful.”

  “She is beautiful,” Reno corrected her. “When she first came, however, she was almost starved to death.” He smiled sadly. “Love made Fancy beautiful.”

  “Love makes us all beautiful.” Journey kissed him on the cheek. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

  He took the time to hold her close, then hit the flat of his hand on the table. “Do you know how helpless this makes me feel? He was innocent! He died for nothing!”

  Journey rubbed his back. “Reno, there’s something you’re not considering.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked morosely.

  “If…when you go back, you know how to help Cole. You won’t have to spend the time searching for Jerome Grassley and you’ll know about Jubal Pierce. You can take this information Saul found in 1922 back to 1869. You can use it to save your brother’s life.”

  “I just hate Jubal is already dead. King shot him when he tried to hurt Fancy.” He pondered things for a moment. “Hell, what does that matter? If I can save Cole, that’s what I’ll do.” Reno took both her hands in his, then raised them to his lips. “Journey, I believe if I can return to the past, I can make all of this right.”

  * * *

  Feeling as if they’d made some progress, Journey and Reno decided to spend the remainder of the day making memories. She asked him what he would like to do or see. “Maybe a day trip to Houston, we could see the ship channel, NASA headquarters, and maybe visit a winery on the way back.”

  He surprised her by requesting to just spend the day with her – talking and getting to know one another. “That doesn’t mean we can’t have a bottle of wine,” he conceded.

  “Sounds ideal. How about if we take that wine to the creek and have a picnic? How does that sound?”

  “Like my kind of day.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of what lay ahead.

  “Don’t let me forget to run the vacuum and the dust mop through the house before I go to bed. I don’t want Aunt Myra to say I didn’t keep her house clean.”

  Reno gave her a funny look. “Let’s do it first and get it out of the way. I’ll help. And I don’t have any idea what running a vacuum is, but I want that job. It sounds fun.”

  “Say no more.” Journey proceeded to introduce Reno to the vacuum cleaner. “This handy contraption uses an electric motor that spins a fan to suck in air and small dirt and dust particles with it. The air pushes it out the other side into a bag, creating negative pressure. Like this.” She proceeded to demonstrate, and the dogs went crazy. Barking, bouncing, and running. Quickly, she turned it off again. “Oh, I forgot about how they act. I’ll put them out.”

  “No. No.” Reno got this evil look in his eye. “I’ll vacuum and give these animals a run for their money at the same time.”

  Journey’s dusting didn’t go very fast. She was too busy laughing at Reno running the vacuum and the dogs at the same time. It was a great game and by the time the floors were done, the dogs were completely tuckered out.

  Seeing she wasn’t quite through, Reno pitched in to help her. He also loaded the dishwasher and changed sheets on their beds. When they were both through, Journey announced in all seriousness. “Remind me to marry you. I can’t let you get away.”

  “I will make a note,” he informed her, and he made a mental one as well.

  He planned on buying a ring at the first opportunity.

  …After packing their picnic lunch, she called Reno to help her pick a bottle of wine. “Aunt Myra keeps quite a collection. This will be our first adventure in getting to know one another. I’ve always heard you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of wine he chooses.”

  “Okay.” Reno stood by the wine rack to survey the myriad bottles. “Whites, reds, chardonnay, French, domestic, dry, sweet – she has a great selection.”

  “Do you know a lot about wine?” Journey asked, about to reveal her plebian tastes.

  “A fair amount. When one lives with royalty, one picks up a few social graces,” he announced in a haughty tone.

  “Okay. The main part of our menu consists of thinly sliced prosciutto wrapped around sweet melon and gourmet chicken salad with grapes, dried cranberries and pecans. We also have a platter of assorted fine cheeses, and a wide array of fresh fruit. Plus, there’s chocolate ganache cake for dessert – which, along with the chicken salad, are my homemade contributions.”

  “I can see now that I’m going to be a fat old man.”

  She gave him a sweet smack on the cheek. “Yes, but a happy one. So, what do you recommend?”

  “Okay, I select…” Reno ran his finger over several bottles. “Hmmm. I select a Chianti made from the workhorse grape of Tuscany, the Sangiovese.” He pulled out a bottle and smiled. “Big, ripe, cherry fruit flavor, firm tannins, and high acidity.”

  Journey frown at the acidity part, but quickly regained her game face. “One more, just to cover our bases.”

  “Are you going to select one also?”

  “I thought I would,” she said. “We don’t have to drive – not even a horse and carriage.”

  “We have to walk, though. Without falling down, hopefully.”

  Journey tapped him on the scruff of his chin. “You have to walk. You get to carry me.”

  “Ah. Okay. My second recommendation is a beautiful Chardonnay. He pulled out a bottle. Now, what about you?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll be drinking most of those two.” She pulled out a bottle full of a beautiful pale pink liquid. “I drink Moscato. Almost exclusively.”

  Reno gave her one of those ‘surely, not’ stares. “Moscato is too sweet.”

  “Look who’s talking? What about your coffee?” She took all three bottles and carried them to the picnic basket. “I’ll try your selections. At least a few sips. Okay?”

  “Okay.” He agreed, continuing to check out Myra’s collection. “I see she has a lot of Texas wines. Gentry would be shocked to know they have vineyards in Texas. He’s such a wine snob. Only drinks the finest French wines.”

  “Aunt Myra is gung-ho on Texas wines. She says the Hill Country soil is perfect for high-quality grapes. In fact, she’s fond of telling me the story about the time Texas saved the French wine industry.”

  “When was this?” he asked, intrigued.

  “1887 or 1888. Somewhere in there. What happened was that a tiny aphid called a phylloxera wreaked havoc in France, destroying eighty percent of their grapevines.
In an act of desperation, a French scientist, Pierre Viala, contacted T. V. Munson, a renowned horticulturist who lived in Texas. Munson had been working tirelessly trying to find a location in Texas that would grow grapes to compare to the finest found in Europe. The world was skeptical and not always kind to the idea of Texas wine – that is until Viala contacted Munson for help and he gave it willingly. Together, they found three Texas native species that were resistant to the aphids and they grafted their European vines onto this hardy Texas rootstock. Thus, the French wine industry was saved. France honored Munson by inducting him into the French Legion of Honor.”

  “Oh, my God. Wait until I tell the Duke that story. He’ll go hunting Munson up himself. They’ll probably end up being best drinking buddies.”

  “I want to be there when you tell him.” Journey imagined what their life would be like. “I can’t wait to go with you.”

  “Won’t you miss your life here?”

  Journey thought a moment, considering everything. “I’ll miss my friends and my aunt. Other than that – no. Not at all.”

  “Not even all of the appliances, doo-dads, and fast modes of transportation?”

  “Not a bit,” she promised him.

  …The weather was perfect for a stroll to the creek. Reno carried the basket and a blanket for them to sit on. The sky was blue with just a few wispy clouds here and there. Journey couldn’t take her eyes off him, he looked so handsome in a pair of jeans and a western shirt. “If you take that shirt back with you, people will be baffled over those snaps.”

  “I like them.” Reno fingered one of the flat, smooth covers. “So, I take them back and someone sees them. They are ‘invented’ or discovered at some point. I wear them back and someone copies the idea. How do we know that doesn’t happen all the time?”

  “I guess we don’t. I remember hearing how our technology just exploded after the Roswell incident. Many people who want to believe in extraterrestrial life say that we took one of the UFO’s apart, reverse engineered it, figured out how it all worked – and copied it for our own use. That’s how we got fiber optics and integrated circuits.”

  He held up his hands. “Slow down. This sounds interesting. And by the way, you’re brilliant – I just thought you ought to know.”

  “Maybe I may know a little bit more than I think I do.”

  “So, what are you talking about when you mention Roswell and UFO’s.”

  “Oh, boy. You oughta be sitting down for this.” She talked as they walked slowly, arm in arm. “Roswell is a town in New Mexico where a UFO supposedly crash-landed back in the 1940’s. The tale went like this - a rancher found this spacecraft crashed in his pasture. Some say there were aliens on the craft, some alive and some dead. The army rushed in and the newspapers covered the event. They even had pictures of the unusual light material the craft was made from. Soon, the remains of the craft and its passengers were taken to a nearby airbase. The world awaited further word, but something went crazy. The next day or the next, the story about an alien spacecraft was retracted and they said the crash was nothing but a weather balloon. Oh, and you’ve probably never heard the term UFO before, it stands for Unidentified Flying Object. In other words, some people believe we’ve been visited by aliens from other planets. A few years later, some people spoke up and said the original story was true. And like I said, a few scientists confessed that the great leap we saw in technology after this incident was because we learned a bunch of things from the wreckage. The fiber optics and the integrated circuits that I mentioned are two of the main things that make computers possible, which, in turn, makes our own space travel possible.” She gave Reno a knowing look. “So, what do you think? Isn’t that the craziest thing you ever heard?”

  Reno surprised her. “Well, not really. Boone swears he saw something similar once. He described a flying ship with writing on the side.”

  “Huh. Well, I’m surprised.” She wrinkled her nose. “I guess I always thought of UFO’s as a modern invention.”

  He chuckled again. “I believe I saw part of a program on the television called Ancient Aliens.”

  “Oh, you!” She pushed him playfully. “You’re catching on entirely too quickly. Soon, you’ll be teaching me how to live in this modern world.”

  “No, I guess we’re all the same. In some way, every generation thinks the world somehow started with them. As far as this topic is concerned, Clay says there are UFO’s referenced in the Bible. And Gentry once told Boone that the Puritans saw an unexplained light in the skies back in the 1600’s.”

  “Interesting,” Journey considered what he’d told her. “When I was a kid, Myra took me to a cemetery in Aurora, Tx to see the grave of an alien. A spacecraft supposedly crashed there in the 1890’s and the town gave the little pilot a Christian burial. In later years, they wouldn’t let anybody disturb his grave.”

  Reno helped Journey step over a fallen log. “If I were the aliens, I’d try to figure out why all my spacecraft keep crashing.”

  “You got a point there.” They walked a little further on before Journey spoke up again. “When I came looking for you at the barn, you said I’d provided a timely interruption. What did you mean?”

  “Oh! After the news from the lawyer, I forgot all about it.” He cleared his throat. “Kota seems to know something.”

  “About what?” Since he didn’t seem to be paying attention, she nudged him to the right toward the creek when the trail was about to split into two paths.

  “I tried to get him to talk about Ela and he said something really strange. I think he knows I’m from the past.”

  Journey stopped in her tracks. “What did he say?”

  “He said it sounded like I knew Ela better than he did.”

  She touched his arm. “That is a little odd, but I don’t think it means anything.”

  “That’s not all. He started talking about how saddles had changed over time and how you could tell one that was made during civil war times. Journey, he was talking about my saddle. He knows.”

  “Okay.” She tried to think. “This might not be a bad thing. Kota is a brilliant man. He is educated and well-read. Instead of teaching in a university, he chose to work with his hands. He used to own a saddlery shop. I’m sure he knows everything there is to know about saddles and their history. Did you say anything about the hints he was throwing?”

  “No. I pretended I didn’t notice anything.”

  Journey slowed her steps as they came to the creek. After the spring rains, it was wider than normal. The rocks where she normally picnicked were underwater. “What looks like a good place to you?”

  Reno surveyed the area and pointed to a slight rise beneath a big oak. “Is that close enough?”

  “For sure.” As they moved toward their destination, she considered what Kota might be thinking. “Maybe he does know something.”

  “That’s what I said.” Reno placed the basket on the ground, then spread a red and black plaid blanket next to it.

  Journey knelt on the soft surface and opened the basket, retrieving one of the bottles of wine. “He may know something about your arrival that we don’t know.”

  Taking the bottle and a corkscrew in hand, Reno proceeded to pop the cork, filling the two glasses about half-way with the dark, red wine. “Like how I came through? Or why?” He felt like he was grasping at straws. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  She gave him a disbelieving look. “You’re the one who traveled through time. You don’t get to doubt things.”

  “You’re right.” He gave her a wink. “You’re always right. Is this how our marriage is going to be?”

  She bit her lip and looked down into the wine in her glass, then drew it to her lips for a small sip. “Oh, you’ve decided our courtship has been successful?”

  Reno saw the twinkle in her eye she was trying to hide. She was teasing him. Dammit, he should’ve insisted they go into town today. When he did officially propose, he wanted to have a ring in hand. H
e wondered if he had enough money for a ring in this time. With the way the prices of everything had skyrocketed, he probably didn’t. Perhaps he should wait…

  “Reno!”

  He jerked his head up. “What did you say?”

  Journey felt a bit put out. He’d delayed just a little bit too long in his answer. Now, she knew how those people felt who offered an ‘I love you’ and didn’t get anything in return. “Nothing. We were talking about Kota.”

  “Oh, yea. You said he might know something about my arrival. Do you have a theory?”

  She exhaled a long breath, still a bit peeved. “Well, everyone else left something behind. Journals. Papers. Deeds. Marriage certificates. Perhaps Ela passed something down to Kota. Something about you.”

  He took a sip of wine, pondering her observation. “You may be right.”

  “May be right? You just said a moment ago I was always right.”

  Reno gave her a beaming smile. “Did I?” When she gave a tiny little growl under her breath, he laughed out loud. “Yes, I did say that. Now, tell me more. I want your insight.”

  Pacified to a small degree, she thought of what she knew of Kota. “He’s lived in this area all of his life. If anything out of the ordinary has ever happened here, he would know about it.”

  “You think I should confide in him?”

  Journey thought a moment more. “I do.” She took another sip of wine, then made a face. “I like my Moscato better.”

  He took her glass, drained it, then opened the bottle of Moscato and filled it to the brim. “You should always have what you want.”

  Those words coming from his lips made her smile – despite her faint case of ire. “Should I? Even if what I want is you?”

  “Most especially.” Her took her glass from her hand and kissed her soundly. “Now, how about some food.”

  For the next little while, they enjoyed the food, the beautiful scenery, and one another. A bird flew down and lit on a fallen branch nearby. “Look, Reno, that’s a yellow-cheeked warbler. Isn’t he pretty?”

  “He is.” Reno glanced around. “I don’t seem to see as many birds in this time. Or butterflies. Or bugs.” He looked on the ground. “Why is that?”