Oops. Not with the door half open behind me. Not around here. "He wants more information."
Then I plunked down a little pail of soup, compliments of Mrs. Rath—my respectable excuse for coming—and mouthed, Talk.
Everett the scum-pig blinked blearily at me, less-than quick on the uptake—and strangely fearful. "My colleague?"
I pointed to myself and widened my eyes.
He rolled his. "Oh for Chrissake!"
"Watch your language," I warned him. Oh God—I sounded like you-know-who. But I'd learned some valuable lessons about burning bridges, lately. "I am not just risking my own reputation by being here, Mr. Heard. So until the situation we discussed has been resolved...."
"Just shut the door," he suggested peevishly, pushing himself back against the wall to sit up in bed. He claimed the little soup pail and peeked under the checkered cloth napkin draped over its mouth.
Sure, just shut the door. You might think it would be that easy. "I don't believe it's considered proper to be alone in a room with you with the door shut."
He found the spoon tied to the handle. "You did it yesterday."
Yesterday, I thought I was a hooker. "And by local standards, I was wrong."
"Well you're over a hundred years from being a local."
"Then tell me how—" I caught myself, "—how you and your colleague can get home." Please. Please.
"Only if you take me with you," he challenged, between slurping spoonfuls of soup. The idea of bringing the poor, injured stranger some charity food had been a cover, nothing else. It hadn't occurred to me until this moment that he wasn't already eating just fine, here.
Trying not to let that bother me, I folded my arms. "Why would I be going anywhere? Do you mean your colleague...?"
He rolled his eyes, but clearly understood he was in no position to dictate the rules we were playing by. "Sorry about that, ma'am, it must be the medicine messing with my head again. Yeah, my colleague. I'm only talking if my colleague promises to take me with... him."
Why should I? The question hovered on the tip of my tongue, begging to be asked. If Everett hadn't flat-out groped me, then tried to blackmail the higher-ups at Closer Look to discount my sexual harassment claim, I wouldn't even be here! I didn't owe this man squat. And yet....
He was in bad shape. I could see it in his trembling hand, smell it in his sweat and dirty clothes, hear it in his ragged breathing. Probably he deserved it—but maybe this was extreme, even for him. God knew, I didn't like him. But through chance as much as anything, he was hurt and strung out on opiates, while I was healthy, well fed, and staying at a lovely boardinghouse.
One I hadn't exactly paid for myself.
If a certain responsible trail boss hadn't shown me kindness, I could be much worse off.
Besides, I didn't have the luxury of likes and dislikes. I cocked my head and said, "I don't suppose one could rightly leave you here."
If my smile confused him, he didn't admit it. "Promise?"
Like I'd say—no! Fake out! I peeked out the open door, to make sure the doc was toward the front of the store, then turned back to Everett and said, low, "If it is in my power to get us both home, I promise I will do it. That's the only way I'll be able to sue your ass and the combined asses of A Closer Look for everything they're worth, isn't it?"
He smiled woozily at me. "God, but you're sexy when you're litigious."
"If you don't want me to hurt you some more," I warned, very low now, "say nothing else except how to get home."
He sighed dramatically, then admitted, "I don't know."
I stared at him—and I felt fury. Absolute, buzzing-in-the-head fury. If I'd had a six-gun with me, I might have shot him right there. He didn't know?
I stepped to the bedside and yanked Carrie Rath's soup-pail away from him, spilling some of it on my precious skirt. "Then goodbye, you son-of-a—"
"Shh," Everett warned playfully, just in case Doc McCarty or a customer had returned to our end of the store. "Watch your language, little lady."
If he didn't already smell so bad, he would be wearing that soup. That, and my slow realization that he didn't seem particularly depressed, kept me from doing something very unladylike. I sank onto the chair. "What do you know that I don't?"
He reached for the soup, but I held it out of his reach. Yeah, I guess I could be a bitch. Yay, me.
"I don't technically know how my colleague and I can get home," he admitted. "But I know who does."
"Who?"
He shrugged. "There's some scientists doing long-term field research. As of last week they were still in the 1870s. So if anybody can help us...."
"You're lying," I whispered weakly. But when he reached for the soup again, I gave it to him.
"Hey, Rhinehart, I'm the one who's known about this project for months, not you. The team leader is Dr. Mitch Haywood," he offered, to prove me wrong. "He's living somewhere near Julesburg, Colorado, with at least two other analysts. All we have to do is meet up with them."
"In Colorado," I repeated, testing the idea. This was not the here's-the-time-machine or say-these-magic-words kind of solution I'd hoped for. "How?"
He blinked. "Huh?"
"First of all, you don't even know the scientists are still there! You say 'as of last week,' but you and your colleague were in a very different place, last week."
"It's a law of time travel," he said with a sigh, as if any second grader should know that. As if time travel was even real.
Then again, my button-hooked shoes made a pretty solid argument toward reality.
"We share personal timelines. Every day that passes while we're here, a day passes back home."
Nice to know—assuming I believed him. "Even if they're there, we've got to factor travel time, costs for meals and transportation...."
What we needed was someone who could take charge. So I took a deep breath—and did just that.
"I'll need to contact this Dr. Haywood, make sure he's still there and tell him you're coming." Without phones or email. "Then there's transportation, food, lodging." Without the Internet or a travel agent. "Can you manage any of that yourself?"
I also wanted to leave a refund for a certain trail boss, for clothing, food, and lodging. It wasn't like I could send him a check from home. And you know what?
I was going to do it all without endangering Garrison's reputation further than I already had.
Everett shook his head, useless, unlike other men of my recent acquaintance. So I collected my now-empty soup pail and turned to go. "Then just call me Boss," I told him.
"You promised," he called after me.
"Yep," I grumbled. And with a nod toward the good doctor, I left the City Drug Store onto Dodge City's dirt Front Street and into what passed for fresh air.
A stench from the cattle pens, not far outside town, made me smile. With my mouth closed, mind you, because they really did stink—we're talking tens of thousands of cows! But I'd found myself, and more. For the first time in days, I believed I could do anything.
Even this.
So I swept my long skirts out of the way of passing, dirty boots, and I squared my shoulders, and I set out to conquer the world in ways I'd never imagined.
Read more of the adventures of Elizabeth, Garrison, Cooper, and the cows in OVERTIME 2: TURNING, now available at Amazon.com.
NOTES and acknowledgements:
Although I took some poetic license, I tried to keep Overtime as historically accurate as possible. For example, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson were indeed in the Dodge city area when Lillabit arrived.
Cowboys were pretty rough, but hardly any on a trail drive (beyond the Boss and cook) were over thirty. Still, the majority of them respected women more than they resented her presence spoiling their party. Lillabit can easily think they're all nice.
I've got a complete, annotated bibliography on my website (YvonneJocks.com), but in particular wanted to note just some of the works that proved invaluable in my re
search: Works by old time cowboys such as "Teddy Blue" Abbott (We Pointed Them North), Baylis John Fletcher (Up the Trail in '79), and Andy Adams (Log of a Cowboy). Studies about women in the Old West, especially The Gentle Tamers (Dee Brown), Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery (Anne M. Butler), and The Cowgirls (Joyce Gibson Roach). Calico Chronicle by Betty J. Mills. Excellent visual resources, from Time Life's Old West collection to Ken Burns' The West documentaries.
I also must thank the Kansas Historical Society, which has a brilliant website. That's where I learned, late in my writing, that the Raths weren't in Dodge City during the summer of 1878 – they left in '77 and returned in '79. Since they were so representative of the city, I kept them there.
Again, I owe a debt of gratitude to Cheryl, Toni, Kayli & Matt, Erin, Pam, Juliet, Paige, Deb, for reading Lillabit's adventures, proofreading, and/or loving Garrison like I do….
… and to Laura, for the wonderful cover.
SPOILER ALERT! The continuing adventure of Overtime serves as a distant prequel to a series of historical romance novels, which I originally published with Leisure Books, called "The Rancher's Daughters" series: Forgetting Herself, Proving Herself, Explaining Herself, and Behaving Herself. Feel free to check them out (I will be making them available in ebook format starting 2013, or you're welcome to find used paperbacks). But remember—although "The Rancher's Daughters" series has no time travel/paranormal elements itself, the books give away the future for some key figures in Overtime.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yvonne Jocks , the author of twenty novels and a scattering of short stories, lives in Texas and teaches literature and creative writing at a community college. As Evelyn Vaughn, she won the 2005 Rita Award for Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements from the Romance Writers of America. She has loved the Old West since living two years (as a child) on a Navajo Reservation, and she's made Garrison's drive from Texas to Wyoming, far more quickly than cattle could, in a Subaru. Write her at [email protected].
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