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

by Sable Hunter

  “By whom?” Reno asked.

  Kota smiled. “Who do you think? Wise Ela. The stories of our people are taught by father to his child or by the mother to her child. From these stories we have preserved our traditions and our beliefs. Some think the tales of the past are nonsense. A form of entertainment. That is not their purpose. For those who have ears to hear, great wisdom has been passed down.” He patted his jean clad knees and stood up. “Who wants a beer?”

  His overture took Journey by surprise. “No, thank you.”

  Lou and Reno took him up on his offer. As they watched, the old man ambled off, only to return with three longnecks. “Here, wet your whistle. This is going to take a while.”

  He returned to his sitting position and took a long swig. “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t believe the prophecy concerning you. I mean, a cowboy riding from the past, dashing up on horseback to save the day. Sounds ridiculous, right?”

  Stunned, the trio didn’t know whether to agree or not.

  “Yet, here you sit.” He took another long swig. “Bigger than life. Just as my venerable ancestor foretold.” He passed his hand through the air as if brushing aside an invisible curtain to reveal the future. “The journeyman comes to make right the things that were wrong.”

  “Can you tell us how this was all possible?” This question came from Lou. Anyone who knew her well would know what a hard time she was having being still.

  “I can and I will.” He took a sip of beer. “Just don’t rush me.”

  Journey felt odd. Clearly, Kota was not the man she’d thought him to be. He was more. Much more. She felt a little intimidated in his presence.

  When he began to speak, his voice seemed fuller. The words seemed to echo from the beams and rafters above them. “The power lies in the mountain; it’s always been here. Mankind has the mistaken belief that they are the epitome of creation, the greatest example of what being alive could be. What we forget is that the earth is much older than we are. This mountain has existed since the earth was born. The very stones of the ground are the original inhabitants. They have survived and thrived since time came to be. One day, our race will rediscover a great truth. The rocks, the crystals – they are alive. They thrive. They reproduce. They take in energy and they expel energy. They are a source of power. This power can be utilized, but the rocks and crystals cannot be programmed – they must be petitioned.”

  “Fascinating.” Lou scribbled down every word he uttered. “Oh.” She jumped a bit, then pulled the single page of the article out of her purse to wave around. “You’re quoted in this article.” She held it up to read the sentence. “This is cut off in mid-sentence, but you say something about…oh here it is! I will tell you the mystery of the man who vanished on Enchanted Rock…”

  Kota nodded sagely. “There are many legends concerning the granite mountain. Many of them are true. The one I was referring to in that interview is the tale of a Spanish priest who fled through the canyons and boulder fields to escape a Tonkawa war party on his trail. As he ran for his life, hiding near the great granite walls of the dome – one of those rocks opened up and swallowed him whole.”

  Journey and Lou visibly shivered.

  “I guess that’s what happened to me,” Reno whispered. “The rock opened up and swallowed me.”

  “Yes, but you were spit out on the other side and in the right place,” Kota observed dryly.

  Leaning forward, Lou spoke in near reverence. “Tell us how it happened. Exactly how it happened.”

  Kota looked a bit disgusted. “Divulging tribal secrets is unwise.” Squaring his shoulders, he gritted his teeth. “Nevertheless, I will do this to fulfil the Journeyman prophecy.” Apparently coming to peace with his decision, the old man began to speak. The three who were listening sat at the edge of their seats.

  “As I said, the power has always been here in the mountain. The great rock itself is the source. The very ground vibrates with energy.”

  “Ley lines. Portals. Vortices.” Lou whispered with bated breath. “How do you activate the energy?”

  He pooched out his lips in a thoughtful manner. “The energy is always present, but the zenith is reached by the light of the full moon.”

  “Of course.” Lou slapped the arm of her chair so hard the old man jumped. “Obvious!”

  “Easy, girl. Easy.” His frown turned his face into a topographical map of his existence. “We are all very familiar with the power of the moon. The ebb and flow of the great waters is evidence of its strength. Yet, we foolishly assume the tides are the only place where the draw of the moon can be felt.

  “So, the power of the granite mountain was activated by the moon.” Reno was trying to follow. “I still don’t see how it all worked as it did.”

  Kota took his time, but he began to tell a story. “It’s odd, I know more about Ela’s powers and beliefs than I know about her as a person.”

  His confession made Reno feel lucky. “I knew Ela well.”

  “Well, you don’t know this. Now, listen to my words.” He folded his hands and begin to speak. “Ela could foresee it all. Today, in our culture, she would be said to multiverse. She can exist spiritually in more than one place. You see, Ela knew the tricksters, the imposters, would attack the Stanton children. She also knew you would lead them away. Ela foresaw how the tricksters would reveal themselves to you so you would know they were the ones responsible for the atrocities being blamed on our people. Ela could see the path into the canyon you were foreordained to take. Ela saw it all.” He held up one finger to get their attention. “If she hadn’t intervened, you would have taken that same path, the rock would’ve opened – but where or when you would have emerged is unknown.”

  The three guests sat still, trying to absorb what they were being told.

  “Ela could see beyond the veil. She knew the various paths that lay open before you. What she did was place her finger on the scale to direct your path to a place of hope.”

  “How did she ensure which path I would take?” This soft question came from Reno as he relived in his mind those moments he had spent with Ela. “I remember her saying some cryptic things that day, but I don’t think that’s what did it.” He locked eyes with Kota. “It was the rawhide bag, wasn’t it? She put something powerful in the bag she gave to me.”

  Kota dawdled his head back and forth. “That wasn’t all she did, but the medicine bag contained some items to keep you grounded. She sought to guide your path, to lend strength to your lodestone so the portal would open to this same piece of earth, just to another time. Many souls are lost when they unwittingly travel through one of these doorways with no anchor on the other side.”

  “An anchor?” Journey asked. “What does that mean.”

  Kota looked between Reno and Journey, his gaze at last settling on the young woman. “You were the anchor. You are his lodestone. Like a homing beacon, the power of your love forged a byway, a shining light that drew him through the darkness of the vortex to emerge safely on the other side. In this time. In this place. To you.”

  All were stunned. Speechless. Journey and Reno’s eyes were drawn to one another, both realizing their connection was more powerful than they’d even realized.

  Finally, Lou found her voice. “Do you know what was in the bag Ela gave to Reno?”

  “I’m pretty sure.” The old man shrugged his narrow shoulders. “A piece of Galena, a fossil, perhaps a geode. Probably a sprig of rosemary. Most certainly a stone carved with words of power.”

  “You mean you don’t know, for sure?” Journey asked, the thoughts in her mind swirling like one of the vortexes Kota mentioned.

  “The recipe, as such, did not make it down to me. The wisdom and knowledge to recreate such a talisman did.”

  At this point, he stood and gave them each a glance of apology. “Excuse me a moment, I can’t hold my water the way I used to be able to.”

  When he left the room, they all exchanged a dazed look. “This is incredible,” Lou mutt
ered. “I want to ask him a million questions.”

  “You can ask him all you want at another time,” Reno cautioned. “Let’s concentrate on finding out if he can help me get back to where I came from.”

  “Help us go back,” Journey corrected.

  Reno didn’t acknowledge her comment. Instead, he turned to Lou. “Does this sound logical to you? I know you said there should be a scientific explanation for all of this. Are we dealing with science or are we dealing with magic?”

  “Magic is science. Science is magic.” Kota announced his return by proclaiming this circular reasoning. “Both exist and share a far greater relation to one another than we can imagine. If man dreams of something unbelievable, then creates it with the power of his mind, we call it an invention. But an invention starts with an intention. Our minds act as conduits to receive the rich blessings of the universe. What we can conceive, we can believe in. Our belief translates into reality by our actions. Helped along by powers greater than we, of course. This is called the law of attraction or the theory of electromagnetism.”

  “That’s a familiar sounding word,” Reno looked to Lou, who appeared to be in a near ecstatic state, like she might swoon and faint at any moment. “I’m not sure this discussion is going to help me go back in time.”

  “Since you’ve come this far from the past, you might as well learn something.” Kota shook his finger at Reno. “This is important and brief. It explains how your human body traveled through a powerful electromagnetic field without flying apart in a bazillion pieces. It’s also an example of how science is nothing more than the structured study of miracles.”

  Everyone grew suitably subdued.

  “We all consider ourselves to be solid, made up of flesh and bone. What would you say if I told you that your body, your car, the trees outside, even the mountain itself are composed, almost completely, of empty space?”

  “Well, I’d say you were…”

  “Hush.” Journey tugged Reno’s hair that he had tied at the base of his neck with a leather cord. “This is our best chance.”

  Reno nodded, returning his attention to Kota Blue.

  “Everything in the universe is 99.9999999 percent empty space. That miniscule part that’s left of anything is made up of atoms. If you look deeper, an atom is made up of a nucleus filled with even smaller particles called electrons, neutrons, and protons. The size of something is determined by how much space there is between the nucleus and the atom’s outer shell. Picture this, the nucleus is a hundred thousand times smaller than the atom it is housed in. If the nucleus were the size of an almond, the atom would be the size of a football stadium. If somehow all of the dead space in our atoms was lost, each one of our bodies in its entirety would fit into the tiniest particle of dust, and the volume of the entire human race living now would fit into one die, not a pair of dice, but one die.”

  “I feel pretty small about now,” Reno muttered. “But, I still don’t…”

  Kota held up that finger again. “But that empty space isn’t really empty, it’s filled with energy contained inside a massless strong force called gluon. You can think of gluon as the glue that holds everything together. Literally. If it were not for this glue, your body – hell, everything in the universe would scatter wildly out into a formless sandstorm of nothing.”

  Stretching out his arm, Kota poked the muscle of his forearm. “I may be old as the hills, but I still feel pretty solid.” He winked at Journey. “Feelings can be misleading. What if I told you that your butt isn’t really touching the chair you’re sitting on?” At their skeptical looks, he laughed aloud. “Since the dense part of your atoms is contained within this gluon, you physically aren’t feeling the atoms of the chair. Basically, you’re not sitting in the chair – you’re hovering above it. The same goes when you touch one another, what you’re feeling is the electromagnetic force of your electrons pushing away their electrons.” Kota seemed to be amusing himself. “Talk about killing a romantic moment, huh?”

  Reno raised his hand, feeling like he was back in the one-room schoolhouse he’d attended as a boy. “Again, how does this apply to our problem?”

  “Two ways. Now, you have a tiny clue at how your seemingly solid body moved through the barrier of time and space. And that’s because your body is primarily nothing but empty space made up of magnetic energy. And two – the glue that holds everything together, that strange force science cannot explain, the force that keeps the universe intact…that force is the most basic definition of God there could ever be. In fact, if you’re a religious man, you might be familiar with one particular verse in the book of Colossians. Chapter I, Verse 17 goes something like this: God existed before anything else existed and by his power all things are held together.”

  There was a hushed silence in the room. Journey felt like they were sitting in a sacred place. Until…Reno broke the silence with a protest. “I still don’t understand. I wasn’t even aware I’d come through the rock. I didn’t feel a force and I didn’t feel like I was about to disintegrate.”

  Kota threw up his hands. “Doesn’t make any difference anyway. I didn’t really believe Ela’s prediction until I saw you at Myra’s. I’ll admit I was wrong about that – but I still don’t believe you’ll return to the past to make everything right.”

  “You don’t?” This question was voiced in chorus by all three people.

  “Do you think he’ll fail?” Journey asked in a shaky tone.

  He held up both hands and shrugged. “I’m not saying he’d fail; I’m saying he won’t choose to try. Why would he go back?” Kota turned to look at Lou and Journey. “Why should he? The present is amazing. He can see and do things he never dreamed to do in the past. Plus…” He pointed at Journey. “He has you. I can see the way you two look at one another. Why would he return to the past when he can stay in this wonderful world with you?” Even while Reno was making protesting noises, Kota continued. “I wouldn’t leave this life and someone I loved to go back in time to save a few people I barely knew.”

  Reno raised his voice to be heard above Kota’s. “I’m not going back in time to save a few people I barely knew; I’m going to save my friend Ela and those she loves. I’m also going to save my brother, my flesh and blood, from death by a firing squad.”

  Kota watched Reno closely. “So, you want to return through the stone?”

  “Yes. To 1869. Can you help me?”

  “I’m going with him,” Journey announced loudly.

  Kota shook his head. “I don’t think that would be wise. This is very dangerous. Even with all the mumbo-jumbo I just rattled off to you, you must realize this is more dangerous than swimming in a tank full of sharks. This is more dangerous than free-falling from thirty-thousand feet out of a plane. This is even more dangerous than blasting off to the moon in a tin can the size of a VW beetle.” He scoffed and frowned at Journey. “Willingly stepping into a portal is…stupid. On any level. Science is just on the fringe of this discovery. And regardless of what Ela masterminded, engineered, or helped along – there is no magic spell for time travel either.” He dropped his voice to a degree. “Now, I’m not saying people don’t vanish. They do. That’s my concern. I know this is real. I know there are portals that open and close throughout our universe. And I know people vanish into them much more often than we’d like to believe. I also think there have been times with other things have come through these portals.”

  “Like what?” Lou asked with rapt attention.

  He chuckled. “Monsters. In my mind, this explains the unexplainable. Take your pick. Aliens. Bigfoot. Mothman. Wendigo. All or none of the above.” At their looks of incredulity, he shrugged and sighed. “It’s possible.” Seeing the resolute look on Reno’s face, he conceded, “Hell, anything’s possible.” He sighed audibly. “Black, if you’re fool enough to try this, I’m fool enough to try and help you. I’ll begin my preparations and we’ll set a date for liftoff on the next full moon.”

  Lou jumped up and pump
ed her fist. “Yes!”

  Journey wanted to reiterate that she was going with Reno, but she let the moment slide. She could see that he looked uncertain, but relieved. As she watched him, he moved forward to shake Kota’s hand.

  “Thank you for agreeing to help. And thank you for believing in me.”

  “Oh, I believe in Ela more than I believe in you. But if you can go back and stop the horrible massacre, I want to be a part of that.” Kota pulled his phone from his pocket. “Let’s look at the calendar. The next full moon is on May 18th. You have less than three weeks to get your mind-set straight and your sins confessed.” He nodded at Journey. “Enjoy yourself. The clock is ticking. Remember, we’re not only making history; you’re going back to change it.”

  As they readied to leave, Lou lingered to speak with Kota in private. Reno and Journey watched the pair from Kota’s front yard. They could see the exchange between the old man and the young woman was animated, but it looked more intense than tense.

  “Just a few more days,” Journey whispered. “This is incredible isn’t it? We came over here without a plan or very much hope. Now, we’re returning home with the knowledge that you could be leaving soon.”

  “I feel good about it.” Reno didn’t want to say too much. After all the talk of danger and risk, he was having serious doubts about Journey going with him. How could he risk her life? Yet, how could he leave her behind? The hopelessness of the situation hurt his heart.

  “You should feel good. Once more, you’ll be the hero I’ve always known you to be.”

  “I don’t want to be a damn hero.”

  “I’m not sure you have a choice in the matter.”

  She was right. What choice did he have? He couldn’t stay and she shouldn’t go.

  “I guess I’ll have the peace that comes with knowing I’ve done the right thing.” The words he uttered burned his throat, leaving it raw with concealed emotion. Shutting his eyes in pain, Reno couldn’t even bring himself to look at Journey. His love for her was ultimate, yet the burden of his responsibilities lay heavy on his soul.