OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel)

by Jocks, Yvonne

  She was somewhere in me, just aching to get out. But so far, as a seamstress, a donut dolly, and a cook, I wasn't exactly helping her accomplish her dreams.

  In the meantime, the one thing I hadn't messed up was my ability to wash dishes with dirt. If breakfast was half over, my meager job called. So I pulled on Eb's shirt, pants, suspenders and boots, careful not to elbow the canvas. Then, still in private, I combed my hair with the crude comb Benj had whittled for me, and tied it back with the rawhide thong Lee had given me. I paused long enough to call the same thing that a nightguard called when he stopped in for coffee in the middle of the night, so as not to startle anyone—"Hail the camp!"—before I poked my head out over the side of the wagon, over one of the rear wheels.

  Cowboys looked up at me, a ring of sleepy eyes, dirty faces, droopy moustaches and stubbled chins. Everyone now had his shirt on. It was so "late" that the pointers and the relief for the last of the night's guards had already finished eating and headed out. Tomas, the young wrangler, had joined the horses for the day and Clayton, the sixteen-year-old nighthawk—he watched them overnight—was having breakfast before he would catch a nap in the wagon, on top of the bedrolls

  "Good morning," I said to the group in general. Most of them nodded or smiled and said good morning back—rough and dangerous men that they were—but breakfast wasn't a particularly chatty time of the workday.

  Benj, who quickly came to the wagon to help me clamber down, went so far as to say, "How can it be otherwise, with a pretty gal like you here among us?"

  Considering that I still hadn't washed my hair and craved a bath like those cows were starting to crave a drink, I figured he was pushing the truth some. But I appreciated the effort, so I used one of his own phrases on him. "Go on with you, Cooper."

  Then I took back my hand, and we shared a good-morning smile.

  Someone other than Schmidty handed me my breakfast, with cornpone instead of biscuits. Nobody mentioned the sourdough incident. Oh, these men were terrors, all right.

  Garrison put down his coffee cup, thumbed his hat at me and swung onto his horse—as if now that I'd joined the fire he took no more joy in being there. I watched him ride away and wondered why I tortured myself, expecting some crumb of approval, when he so clearly didn't like me. Benj liked me. Admiration had to be as sexy as competence, and Garrison was about as free with his praise as he was with his smiles.

  "Now don't you go wearin' yourself out today, Lillabit," Benj advised me, putting down his empty plate and collecting his saddle. "As long as we reach Mulberry Creek by nightfall, we might just have a goin' away party for you tonight. What with you leavin' us at Dodge."

  Party? What this rag-tag group of cowboys could throw couldn't possibly equal what my defunct memory tried to label a party—glitter, buffets, wine, fancy clothes. As usual, the minute I tried to bring the vague images into focus, they vanished completely. But they supported the idea of me being well-off, didn't they?

  Still, not only Benj but several of the boys seemed tickled by the idea, so I smiled back and gave him a thumb's up, which he squinted at, then accepted.

  How would I wear myself out, anyway? I couldn't do anything of worth.

  One more day, I told myself again, eating breakfast just as I'd eaten all meals since my memory began—al fresco, complete with sand crunching between my teeth. We should reach Fort Dodge sometime tomorrow, and Fort Dodge was an Army base, and an Army base meant civilization. Doctors and authorities and baths and clean clothes and indoor meals. Transportation and beds and telegraphs or even telephones. Maybe even....

  But as I finished eating, the deliciousness of the air distracted me from my fantasy. Beyond the aroma of food, the morning smelled of nature, so fresh, so clear I wanted to drink it in like water instead of merely breathing it. I wanted to roll in the grass, drown in its not-quite-coolness. And maybe I could. We were surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but grass and sky and....

  The ever-present underscore of "moos" registered. Okay, and cows. Some had begun to stand with that funny, single leap of theirs as the guard changed. But many still lounged, horned lumps dotting the grass for an amazing distance. In that way they were more intelligent than cowboys, cooks, trail bosses, or me. I inhaled another deep lungful of air, glad that Garrison's guess about the direction of the wind, when he chose a campsite for the chuck wagon, had once again held—would even the wind dare brook his disapproval? Morning tingled through my body. Okay, so there were some things about this barbaric world that I actually liked.

  Schmidty startled me by dropping a stack of dirty tin plates on the ground near me. Unfortunately, those things didn't necessarily like me back.

  Time to wash dishes with dirt.

  Because the chuck wagon's mules were grain-fed instead of grass-fed—it's a long explanation—they could move faster than the herd, so the cows always headed out before we did. Despite the meager speed with which longhorns gain their feet, their exodus took effort and coordination on the part of the cowboys. The cows not only didn't seem to want to hit the trail again; those who were ready to move out didn't want to continue north.

  Part of the reason, as Murphy had shyly explained it, was that they didn't want to walk even further from the last place they'd had water, almost four days earlier, and certainly didn't want to do it at a blistering 20 or 25 miles per day. But another reason they complained was because mommy cows and baby cows got separated in the confusion, and started crying for each other in long, timorous moans or higher pitched, squeaky bawls.

  I hated that part, and scrubbed faster. As soon as I finished I politely asked Schmidty, "Anything else I can do for you?"

  He didn't thrust a crucifix between us to banish me from his realm, though I could imagine him feeling just that strongly about me by now. But he did say, "No."

  I didn't bother apologizing about the sourdough for an eleventh time; it was getting old. "I could put up the supplies, or help you and Clayton toss the bedrolls into the wagon."

  Busy with his own clean up, Schmidty didn't even look at me. "No."

  Sandy-haired Clayton, the only hand left by the fire, shrugged at me. His freckles stood out on his face, he looked so tired. "We can manage, Miss Lillabit," he assured me, lifting his chin.

  Not for the first time, the phrase "Child Labor Laws" popped into my head. Ideas were doing that more and more often, now, the more I relaxed. A phrase here, an image there. I had no idea what to do with them. They were hard to remember, without the option of writing them down someplace.

  "Then I'll get out of your way." Words guaranteed to warm Schmidty's heart and to give mine wings. They meant I got to escape the oppression of Schmidty's domain—the cook, if cattle drives had an org-chart, would be second in power only to the Boss. They meant I could run in my clodhopper boots to my favorite place in the whole outfit. If I had to remain useless for another day, I might as well enjoy myself.

  And oh, I did enjoy the calf cart.

  The cart itself was fairly small, pulled by one mule and driven by Old Amos who, in his fifties, was the oldest man on the whole drive. Dark-skinned and deferential, the complete opposite of Schmidty, Amos made good company and so did his babies. Every day cows gave birth, but newborn calves couldn't keep up with the herd. As Benj explained it to me when he first introduced this petting zoo on wheels, if the babies couldn't keep up, the mothers wouldn't keep up, and if the mothers started stalling, then other cows did too. Herd mentality in action. So to facilitate things, the newborns got a free ride with Amos for the first few days of their little lives.

  They were so cute, I didn't even mind them not being housebroken.

  "Mornin', Miss Lillabit," said Amos, taking a calf that Murphy had ridden over with. "We got two more so far today."

  "Is that a lot?" I asked, grasping the fence-like side of the cart and hopping up to look at the babies. I remembered some from yesterday—Ferdy and Daisy. There were some new ones too, and I tried to let names come to me without push
ing them, from whatever vague memories my subconscious hopefully still held. Elsie, I thought. Patches.

  Some were lying down; others stood on wobbly, knob-kneed legs, and most of them bawled for their mothers. They had big, dark, dewy eyes and the longest lashes. "Poor babies," I cooed at them, reaching over to scratch behind their ears and under their furry chins, to try to make them feel a little more loved until their mothers could pick them up after dogie daycare. "Poor little cows—it's okay! Do you know how pretty you are, sweet babies? Do you know, you're the cleanest things in this whole outfit?"

  That was true. The cows, the horses, the wagons, the mules, and the people, myself included, were smelly and sweaty and dusty. But the calves' whites were white and their patches of color—reds, browns, blacks, blondes—were bright waves of fur.

  "You ever been licked by a mama cow, Miss Lillabit?" asked Amos pleasantly, and I took a gamble and shook my head. "They's rough like a cat's tongue, but bigger. You'd be clean too, miss. Now best get up here safe."

  So I climbed onto the cart's seat while he finished situating the calves. Cows were already locating their missing babies, thrusting their heads forward to call to them, and Amos didn't like having me in easy goring range. That made two of us. Turns out, female cows have horns too—long, twisty, sharp horns. When I made the mistake of assuming otherwise at dinner two nights back, even these most polite cowboys in the world had laughed until their eyes watered.

  I'd even gotten a glimpse of that bright, unnatural smile of the Boss's, too.

  Jorge—whom most of the crew called "George," not "Hor-hay"—rode up with another calf; this one had a black nose and a brown splotch over one eye. I'd call him Bandit. "You got room?" he asked Amos, after the customary nod and touching-of-hat at me.

  "Yessir, I do just," said Amos, and Jorge handed the baby down. "I hope there's no more today, though."

  "What happens if you have too many to ride?" I asked, watching to make sure the over-crowded class welcomed the new baby nicely.

  "Mister Garrison, he takes care of it," Amos assured me. Big surprise. Garrison took care of pretty much everything.

  Noticing something, I cocked my head at him. "You know what, Amos? You're the only man in the outfit that calls the Boss 'Mr. Garrison.' Why is that?"

  He finished lashing the back of the cart shut and circled to the front. I scooted as close to the edge of the wooden plank seat as I could, to make room. "I reckon it's on account I known him since before he become the boss, miss."

  "How long's that?"

  He jiggled the reins and talked the mule into heading out before he answered me. We wanted to head out before the last of the cows, to avoid the dust and to confuse angry mothers. Once we were safely bumping along, Amos said, "I drove cattle with his daddy. I known young Mister Garrison since before he went off to war, not much older than little Clayton is now."

  Clayton was the youngest cowboy on the drive at, maybe, fifteen. I couldn't imagine Garrison that young. Sadly, that wasn't the only thing I couldn't quite wrap my mind around. "Which, er, war?"

  If Amos thought I was foolish for asking, he didn't indicate it. That's why I asked him so much. I'd already learned from him that the month was June—which felt right, hot as it would be by mid-morning—and that today was Monday. We'd had tomatoes with dinner yesterday, to celebrate the Sabbath. "War between the States, miss," he said.

  I accepted that news with growing resignation, as I was accepting a lot of stuff nowadays. On a deep down instinctive level, it just didn't seem right. But logically, why wouldn't it be? "The Civil War?" I clarified.

  "Yes'm. That one. I went with him and Mister Benjamin on their first trail drive together, after they come home." He grinned broadly at the memory. "Mr. Benjamin got hisself fired, third day out. So's he followed along behind the drag, saw some Injuns tryin' to rustle off some of the herd, and scared 'em off—got hisself rehired. Half pay, though. Didn't take none of the flash off him."

  "What did Garrison do when his friend got fired?"

  Amos shrugged. "Did his job. Always does."

  I waved that information in front of my overactive imagination—see why Benj is more interesting?—and asked, "Were you the trail boss then?"

  He guffawed at the very idea—but he also looked flattered. "No, miss!"

  Huh. Enjoying the companionship, I took off my floppy hat and leaned back on my narrow slice of seat to let the sun warm my face. In three hours I'd be miserable with the heat and the flies, but right now the sunlight was a caress. "What were they like back then? Benj and Garrison?"

  "Same as now, I reckon. Close as two peas in a pod." Since I hadn't exactly seen the two join hands to sing Kumbayah together, I slanted a skeptical glance in his direction. Amos nodded as if to say, really. "Even after Mr. Garrison got hisself married."

  I sat up, intrigued. "The Boss is married?" Benjamin had said something about a son, hadn't he? Maybe that explained why Garrison avoided me. Hi, honey, I'm home. This is that girl I found naked in a creek bed. Useless as a three-legged mule. Any idea what we can do with her?

  "Widowed some time now." Amos shook his head. "Sad doings, that."

  Oh. Or maybe he just doesn't like you, Lillabit. "How'd she die?"

  Amos said, "I don't reckon Mr. Garrison would want me tellin' his personal matters, child."

  "Probably not," I agreed with a sigh, putting my hat back on. It flopped on the sides, blocking my vision in a most annoying way. "He doesn't like me."

  "Now Miss Lillabit. There's few enough folks Mr. Garrison's fond of, but just as few he truly dislikes. 'Cause you ain't in one camp don't mean you're in t'other."

  "And he doesn't let me do anything."

  "Anything what could cause trouble, you mean." Wily man, this Amos. Garrison didn't pay him enough.

  Propping my elbows on my knees, I turned more fully to him. "Could you please tell me what kind of trouble we're avoiding? I thought it was the cowhands, but they're perfect gentlemen. Then I thought maybe it was Indians, or rustlers or something, but nothing's happened. Everyone keeps predicting some dire catastrophe but I've been here for three days and the worst I've seen are aggravations. Yes, I'm sorry about the sourdough—"

  Amos laughed, which made it hard to take myself so seriously, but it really was getting tiresome.

  "—but I'm supposed to... supposed to sit quiet, and be good, and pretend I'm not even here, just to avoid this big threat that doesn't even exist!"

  After several long moments of consideration—Amos rarely did anything fast—he said, "Do you know what folks fear most on a drive like this, Child?"

  "Their employer?"

  He grinned, but shook his head. "No, Miss Lillabit. Worst worry is a stampede. It's an eerie thing when this many cattle start runnin'. They don't make a sound, just jump off like rabbits so's all you hear is the rumble of them, like a twister comin'. Best possible end is they needs to be collected, and they reach market skinnier and spookier than they was and bring a lower price. That's no good.

  "Could be they'll trample some of their own, break legs, even run off a bluff and pile up on each other, dozens, even hundreds. That's worse. Or they can take down good men with 'em. Last year, when Mr. Garrison trailed a herd for some English gentlemen up to Montana, he lost him two boys in one run alone."

  Unsure why he was telling me this, I just said, "That's too bad."

  Amos nodded. "Anythin' can set them off, too, if the mood's right. A sneeze, a match, a clutch of sage hens takin' off. Other times, a gunshot won't move 'em. Only the cows know why. There's some drives, they run every few days—once they've run once, they're like to do it again.

  "Others drives, like this one, they go easy all the way. The longer they stay calm, the more likely they hold to it." He eyed me significantly. "It ain't likely to happen, Miss. But the boys still don't wear guns, and the most experienced hands still ride point where they can turn them, just in case."

  I finally got it—a cow metaphor. "Amos, is this yo
ur wise old cowboy way of telling me it's better to be safe than sorry?"

  "Can't rightly say, Miss Lillabit. I only know cows."

  Yeah. Right. I sighed. "Oh well. I guess I only have to be a demure, useless fluff-head for one more day, anyway."

  Amos looked one way, then the other, and then put the reins to the cart mule in my hands. "Every man, woman, and child needs to feel useful," he explained, looking away from my surprised smile. "I 'spect I know that as much as any man alive."

  "Could be trouble," I warned, teasing. "Considering my luck, if this mule goes berserk and runs right through the herd and stampedes them, just shoot me, okay?"

  "No, miss. Won't do that." He grinned, teasing back. "Boss'd do it hisself."

  At least he got me to laugh.

  I wasn't laughing by suppertime.

  For one thing, we rode extra hard and extra late in order to make the creek. The last few hours of that felt pretty tense, too; according to Amos, the cattle could smell the water and the cowboys were having to struggle to keep them from running for it. Amazingly, they succeeded. The point riders in particular rode repeatedly across their sharp-horned path, harassing the lead steers to stay back as determinedly as the drag riders normally harassed the slowpokes to keep up. They also forced the herd, which over the last few days had sometimes narrowed to a line of only ten or fifteen feet across, to spread out. This slowed them down some, and gave them all a more equitable chance at the water.

  By that point my hands were blistered, my cheeks sunburned, my eyes painfully dry. The Kansas sun, so comforting in the early hours of the day, had become miserable for the rest of it, with clouds of insistent flies. That the hot, dusty wind kept changing to grace us with the stench of two thousand cows didn't help.

  All of this meant I was almost as excited at the idea of a creek as the cows were. We'd been rationing water, after all. I hadn't bathed, not even a sponge-bath, since the morning after Garrison found me. So I hiked out to see it for myself, circling well upstream from the herd, before twilight took the last of our lighting away.