OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel)

by Jocks, Yvonne

  The whip actually whistled as I brought it down on the snake. The rattling stopped but the snake wasn't dead—it was moving, a ripple in the grass, and the mules bellowed their outrage and began to hop around, so I hit it again. And again. Someone was screaming, and as I kept hitting the snake, trying to make it stop writhing and being dangerous, trying to make it dead, I realized that it was me screaming. My scream wobbled, loud with each blow, but inhaling between.

  The snake stopped writhing, but I hit it a few more times for good measure, aware that Schmidty was suddenly there, stepping too close to the snake, then jabbering in German as he backed away.

  One mule brayed, long and squeaky, rearing up to paw the ground and eyeing me as warily as it had eyed the snake. Two more mules ran away in a funny, hopping run, bucking for good measure. One lost its nose bag.

  I panted for a moment. Then I thought I saw the snake move again and so I hit it again, vaguely aware of the sound of hoof beats. There was some sort of commotion to my right as a horse ran up, a rider swinging off before it had fully stopped, and then Boss Garrison was shouldering between me and danger.

  He looked down at the snake—no, the ex-snake. I'd killed it. Me.

  Then the cowboy turned to me, reached out one hand, and slowly—as if not to scare me—grasped my wrist and gently pried the whip from my death grip.

  "You bit?" His rough voice sounded low and calming, like I'd been remembering it. Just like he'd talked to the horses.

  I panted up at him, shivery gasps of residual fear and outrage. That had been a rattlesnake!

  Garrison quietly handed the whip to Schmidty and took me by the shoulders. The strength of his grip, the calm steadiness of his gray gaze, sliced through some of my thrumming adrenaline. Besides, he was between me and the ex-snake. He repeated himself, more firmly. "Are you bit?"

  Clinging to his calm—and, I realized, gouging my fingers into the material covering his solid arms—I managed to shake my head. I wasn't bit. I'd killed it first.

  Schmidty put the whip away and then circled us to look more closely—much more closely—at my kill. Both Garrison and I watched him. To my horror, the husky cook crouched and picked the snake up. "Is dead," he said, and snorted in my direction. "Tender, too."

  For a moment that smile brightened Garrison's expression, a rarity in his somber face. In another moment it was gone, and he'd dropped his comforting hands from me. "You're the cook," he told Schmidty.

  I'd barely started full-fledged trembling, and they sounded unconcerned!

  I tried to say something, but it came out as a little gaspy noise. In the meantime, a whole percussion-section of hoof beats heralded the arrival of more riders. Cowboys! The dreaded rough men of the cow camp had arrived, at the worst possible time, and the traitorous Garrison was even peeling my hands off of him, first one and then the other, as concerned as he would brush off dust. Horses whickered, men's voices called out—and Benj's horse circled around toward the two remaining mules, into my line of vision.

  "Is the little gal all right?" he demanded of Garrison, as if I weren't capable of answering on my own. Maybe, for the moment, I wasn't.

  But I looked over at the dead snake and thought that, in a while, I might be. All right hovered as a decent goal, somewhere in the future.

  The trail boss nodded. "Jest spooked. Kilt herself a snake."

  Benj whistled and knuckled his hat back from his forehead, blue eyes dancing. "If that don't beat all."

  And that's what it took—a friendly face. Now I began to tremble in earnest. Since Benj was still mounted, Garrison eased me back toward the wagon, then pushed me firmly—yet gently—down toward the higher end of the thick, round wagon tongue. I didn't want to sit down. In fact, what I really wanted was a hug.

  Yeah, right. I sat down like a good girl and trembled.

  I also began to distinguish other voices: "Who's that, Boss?" "That snake is dead, ain't it?" "What's she doin' here?"

  Searching my face one last time, Garrison nodded at me as if to say I'd live, then awkwardly patted my shoulder once before stepping back, turning to his men. But it wasn't Garrison who introduced me. It was Benj.

  "Boys, this here is a new companion of our'n 'till we strike Dodge. Miss Lillabit, these here are some of the boys in our outfit."

  Garrison's gaze slid back toward me, obviously surprised—he hadn't heard the name before. I focused on his brown-bearded face and shadowed eyes for one last boost of familiarity before risking the new faces, in my new identity as Lillabit. Here stood five of the rough men Peaves had warned me about. But if I could take on a rattlesnake....

  Of the lot, two were African American, two Caucasian, and one was Hispanic. They looked high-school or maybe college age, despite light beards and some long, droopy moustaches. And they didn't look at all as frightening as I expected—in fact they looked dirty, and tired, and really young, and as wary of me as I was of them. Their clothes were baggier than I'd expected, none of them wore guns, and two had ears that stuck out from under their hats in a really silly way. Was this the trouble Garrison had been warning me of?

  I swallowed, trying to regain my composure. "Hello." It came out almost audibly.

  There was a sudden fumbling for hats, and two of the men said, "Howdy."

  "Lillabit, these here rascals are Milton, Shorty, Seth, Juan, and Ropes," continued Benj easily while, beside me, Garrison shifted his weight—worried about imminent trouble? I found myself automatically making mental notes by which to remember the names when I saw the men again.

  "Ma'am," said Shorty, one of the older white guys, which means he wasn't quite a teen. He also was indeed short. Ropes, a lanky black guy, said "Miss Lillabit." The others just nodded.

  Then Garrison cleared his throat and folded his arms in feigned nonchalance. "Lost two of them wagon mules not to mention the cattle are like to try walkin' to Dodge tonight less'n you plan on beddin' them down afore they done passed us."

  Amazing. He said it all on one sarcastic breath, like the most casual of comments, but the effect on his men was instantaneous. Those who didn't glance guiltily at one another swung their horses around and galloped off first; the others were at their tails. All except one.

  "Trouble," said Garrison firmly to Benj, as if restating a point he'd already argued.

  Benj only laughed. "They'da come just as quick if it was Schmidty hollerin, and you know it," he scolded, hopping nimbly down from his horse. "Leastwise, they survived seein' her in trousers."

  "Won't know she's here," muttered Garrison—that rapier-like sarcasm again. Stalking over to the two remaining mules, he performed his personal magic, reaching toward their long noses and touching their shoulders, muttering assurances to them that they apparently believed. Their overlong ears began flicking toward him, and they stopped snorting and dancing.

  They got a lot more comforting from him than I had.

  "What trouble?" I demanded of Benj, and I sounded pouty even to my own ears. "I'm the one who almost became snake-kibble." I started to stand up, lest I appear weaker than I already had, but didn't make it and thumped back onto my butt. So much for impressing the men.

  "A scattered herd would be trouble enough, darlin'," explained Benj, extending a hand to help me stiffly up. I'd given him back his gloves when he left me with the wagon, and he was wearing them. He also looked dustier than before—almost as dusty as the boss. "Losin' mules might be even worse. But don't you fret your purdy head about it. I've seen a seasoned hand let out a yelp or two when a rattler surprised him."

  My yelling was trouble? Scattered animals was trouble? I'd been picturing stampedes, gunfights, strangely slow-motion Indian attacks. "How stupid of me, to have not killed the snake in complete silence," I muttered. "So sorry to have caused problems."

  Benj laughed. "You did just fine. And here the Boss figured you'd be a helpless l'il piece of calico."

  The boss in question stopped his Dr. Doolittle routine to glance stonily back to us. "No good comes of
women on a job," he stated firmly—to Benj.

  The way he phrased that surprised me. Sure, there hadn't been any women in the small group that had come and gone after the snake scare. Part of me had surely already guessed it, but now I faced the concept dead on, and found it foreign. "You mean you never have women on these drives?" Not even a token girl?

  Garrison stared at me as if I were speaking French. Benj laughed again, as if I was joking.

  That didn't seem right, somehow. Herding cattle might be a male-dominated profession, but there had to be some cowgirls who took to it. Didn't there? "Surely there are women competent enough to do the job too!"

  Garrison sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. I was still there when he opened them; you'd think he'd have figured that out by now. "A suffragette," he murmured, more to God—and as an accusation—than to me.

  "As I understand it, Doc Barton's wife did handily," interjected Benj. "Recollect hearin' tell of that, Jacob? I b'lieve it was six or seven years back...seems to me the cook kept her infant in his wagon while she helped trail the beeves."

  Point made. I looked back to Garrison, to gauge his reaction. He didn't like the story. His shadowed face, beneath his hat, looked darker.

  I looked back to Benj, who continued cheerily. "And if I remember rightly, Colonel Snyder trailed with George Cluck's wife and three young'uns. So I reckon you ain't quite the martyr you think you are."

  Back to Garrison.

  "They had buggies," he stated. Then he eyed me, displeased with whatever he saw. "And young 'uns. They was the owners' wives."

  I waited for Benj to argue back—this had become an interesting spectator sport—but he disappointed me. "You've got yourself a point, at that. Lillabit here ain't quite as off-limits as them blessed wives and mothers were."

  Wait a minute. "I am so off limits." Despite that he'd kissed me.

  Garrison nodded sharply in agreement and headed back for his horse.

  "Unless we run across a preacher and the two of you marry up," Benj couldn't resist adding. "Though we ain't got time for no babies between here and Wyoming."

  WHAT? Garrison stopped and turned to stare again—still at Benj, and for once I was glad, because I didn't want to ever be the recipient of that kind of malevolence. How dare anyone suggest he'd marry me, even in jest?

  Benj grinned brazenly.

  Garrison gave up. The idea was so obviously ludicrous it apparently didn't need answering. He vaulted into his saddle, done with me and my trouble for the time being.

  Strangely insulted, I called, "I see you bought your saddle back."

  That caught his attention, and at last he glanced toward me, obviously at a loss. Anger? Humor? His expression settled into one of exasperation as he thumbed his hat in stoic politeness. "Ain't never sold it," he drawled.

  The glare he saved for Benj; I didn't even merit that. What was it he'd warned me? They ain't supposed to like you; they're supposed to leave you be.

  Well here was a man who led by example on both counts.

  I sat high on the seat of the parked chuck wagon, safely out of the way of all trouble from snakes to cowboys, and I watched the distant cows being put to bed. Especially with the quiet of evening upon us, I felt increasingly lost. Useless.

  I also had the strangest certainty that there should be harmonica music drifting across the scene.

  For some reason, I'd never—that I knew of—pictured cattle actually lying down to sleep at night. I had a surprisingly firm image of them eating or mooing or plotting stampedes all night, in much the same way they did during the day, just standing still. These cows—two thousand head was a lot of cows!—were herded off what was literally a beaten path and onto a higher stretch of prairie which Garrison, waving his hat, had apparently picked for reasons beyond my meager, womanly understanding. The cowboys herded their charges into a wide spiral, doubling onto themselves until the animals couldn't really go anywhere and so just quit, content enough to eat the grass they found beneath them.

  The cowboy named Seth came back with the truant mules, and said "Ma'am," to me before leaving them nearby and riding to help with the cows. So much for trouble on that front. Some of the men working the herd seemed to be looking at me as they swung their ropes or made their horses dance. That didn't count as trouble, did it?

  If Garrison happened to look my way, though, I didn't notice it. Not that I was watching the trail boss, of course—I was watching cows.

  Not real liberated animals, cows.

  A few of them lay down right there and then, as if to announce what a day they'd had. Most of them just dined. Two cowboys headed in toward the back of the wagon and—I leaned over to see past the bedroll-stacked wagon—unsaddled their horses with a few well-planned jerks of leather.

  One of those two riders I recognized as Benj, who sent a brief wave and grin in my direction with the hand not holding his saddle, but seemed to have more important things on his mind. The sweaty horses headed, by themselves, toward the larger remuda where what looked like a child met them. The men homed in for the wagon. In a moment I heard the sound of metal on tin, and the scraping of plates with utensils.

  My stomach growled. But everyone else continued to monitor slow-poke cattle which were still catching up. One elderly man unloaded what looked like three baby cows from a one-mule cart. I didn't want to rush back and demand food while the people who'd actually done the work still hadn't eaten.

  Though maybe my good manners came, in part, from the knowledge that at least one person would take notice if I didn't show them? Garrison might be counting on me to mess up, but that didn't mean I would.

  Assuming I could help it.

  The sun was gone by now, leaving only a wash of orange light in the huge western sky, and the sheer remoteness of our camp added to the beauty of the scene. But I had that unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach that went beyond hunger or fatigue. Yes, you guessed it!

  I didn't belong here.

  When I tried to picture where I did belong—somewhere back East?—my memory wouldn't oblige. If I had a place in this world, damned if I could remember it. If anyone was looking for me, they hadn't found me yet. So here I sat in thick pants and long underwear and heavy sodbuster boots, surrounded by about fifteen men, fifty or more horses, approximately two thousand cattle and five or so mules, and I was alone. I'd been found alone. No tracks. How could I have gotten into that creek bed with no tracks?

  My mind balked. Something awful happened. Leave it alone.

  The person in charge of the horses returned with two more—plus the one he rode—and he really was just a kid. Benj and his friend saddled them, mounted them, and rode back out to the herd. Talk about your fast food.

  Once the tail-end of the herd caught up to the front end and joined the grassy buffet, and groups of animals stopped trying to put in some overtime by hiking on alone and having to be herded back, other riders started heading in to the wagon. Two, then five. Men dismounting, claiming their saddles, sending their horses off to the horse-boy. Lots of scruffy, dirty cowboys. Texas cowboys.

  Trouble?

  A few glanced surreptitiously toward me. When I recognized a face—Ropes, Juan, Shorty—I smiled a tentative hello, and Juan and Shorty smiled briefly back, before looking away, but that didn't mean anything. I'd been intimidated by only two Peaves men. The murmuring group at the fire neared seven, then nine, then ten, until only three men remained amongst the multi-hued cattle and the prairie dusk. Two of those—the two who'd eaten first—seemed to be riding a wide circle around the herd, taking their own sweet time as if they meant to do it for awhile. And the third....

  The third rode deliberately toward the front of the wagon, where I sat, growing increasingly familiar until he reined his horse in not twenty feet from me. I knew him immediately, even before he swung down from the saddle. Unlike the others, he didn't unsaddle his horse, but instead loosened the straps, then slid the bit from its mouth and left it to crop at the grass, still ready fo
r riding.

  Then he looked at me. His eyes seemed bright in the hat-shadowed darkness of his face which, like the rest of him, was silhouetted against the dregs of light in the sky. I was vaguely aware that some of the other men were watching me too—had been, all along—but my attention focused on Garrison.

  Because he was the first person who'd found me, I guessed. The words Stockholm syndrome floated into and then out of my traitorous memory.

  I checked to make sure there were no snakes lurking in the grass beneath the wagon, then half climbed, half hopped stiffly down. I even managed not to scream in agony as my stiffened muscles protested the acrobatics. When I looked up, I caught the Boss lowering his hand, as if he'd considered extending it at my awkward leap. Stiffly polite to the bitter end.

  Wendell Peaves had implied a dire future for me at the cow camp. Even Benj had mentioned that I wasn't as off-limits as other women who'd been on cattle drives—I guess his stolen kiss this afternoon confirmed that. But Garrison, who seemed to expect the most trouble of all, had promised I would be safe, and he was here now, and he understood this place better than anyone because he ran it. I took a deep breath and, head high, walked to the back-end of the chuck wagon where waited stew, and coffee....

  And nine of the most polite young men you could ever hope to meet.

  I kid you not. Every one of them popped to their feet and took off their hats as I approached. By the look of the empty metal plates, they'd waited for my arrival to start eating. And they all called me "Miss" and "Ma'am."

  I blinked at them, bewildered. Wasn't there supposed to be trouble?

  Garrison cleared his throat behind me. "Come upon the lady in the mornin', set afoot and strayed from her folk. She'll be with us to Dodge."

  And that was it for speeches. In the morning, huh? But I didn't have time to ponder how he'd made the others believe it had been today, because cowboys were nodding and smiling shyly and giving me their names in a jumble that, through dinner, I began to sort anyway. A special talent from my past, maybe?