She turned and looked past him to where Bud stood, shotgun still in his hands. A look of relief relaxed her strained features. “Mr. Henderson,” she said softly, stepping toward him. “Did my husband send you for us?”
Bud lowered the gun, shifting uneasily on his feet as he looked to Jerry for help. Politely Jerry took off the hat he’d borrowed from Bud and smiled. “Are these your neighbors, Bud?” he asked. “Mrs. Myers and her daughters?”
Bud shifted again from one worn boot to the other. “Reckon so,” he mumbled.
Jerry started to offer a handshake, but remembered just in time that a gentleman would wait for the woman to offer such a familiarity and bowed his head in greeting instead. “Jerry Caldecott,” he said. “I’m visiting with Mr. Henderson. Friend of the family,” he added the hasty explanation.
Esther, looking impossible young and almost pretty, frowned slightly as she nodded acknowledgement of the meeting. “But Bud,” she said. “Why didn’t Herman come for us himself? Is something wrong? Is he hurt or sick?”
“I reckon,” Bud stumbled over the reply.
Alarm made her stand even straighter. “Papa’s hurt?” one of the little girls asked and her mother squeezed her hand. “Hush, Ruthie, Mr. Henderson wouldn’t be here for us if Papa hadn’t sent him.”
“Mrs. Myers, your husband sent me for you,” Silver, smiling and cool-eyed, approached, delivering his correction in cultured, believable tones. “He asked me to see you home to where he’s recovering from a fall.”
“Oh?” Esther Myers turned to look questioningly at the stranger. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Mr. . . .”
“Constantine Silver, at your service. He put out his hand to grasp hers, shaking heartily until she pulled her gloved hand away, rubbing it while the two little girls clung to her skirts. “Mama, who is that man?” the older girl asked.
She didn’t answer the child, but only asked her own question. “Bud, is this true? Is Herman hurt?”
Bud almost choked on his own spit. “He was hurt, ma’am. Somebody beat him up.”
“Then take me to him, Bud. Take the girls and me home.”
“But Mrs. Myers,” Silver protested. Jerry brushed past him, hoping they wouldn’t be followed by the high-pitched sound of a buzz gun.
He turned back to see Silver glaring at him. “We’ll see the lady home,” he advised.
“You won’t find him there,” Silver called. “Your husband won’t be there, Mrs. Myers.”
Little Ruthie ran ahead of her mother. “Hurry, Mama,” she said. “I think that’s a bad man.”
The Lavender countryside of the previous century differed considerably from the 1913 landscape Mac was beginning to know. Homes were more scattered and considerably more modest, little cabins for the most part, roughly made dwellings where large families dwelled and as they drove past, ragged looking children crept out to watch their passing. The poverty of the post war years had reached even here, deep into Texas, and those same youngsters looked pale, thin and over-worked. Pigs roamed the farms, scouring for a living, and scrawny chickens graced each farm yard. Gardens grew vegetables, a significant addition to the humble lives.
She saw horses and cattle only at more affluent residences and these too spoke of a struggle for existence. The south had lost the war, sacrificing most of its assets for that loss, and two years after the conclusion of the conflict, recovery had barely begun.
When they reached the little creek near the border, they crossed into a wilder country and instead of stopping at the border, drove across into huge areas of uncut timber along rough uncertain roads that were hardly more than paths. The horses struggled through the overgrown countryside and they went miles without meeting another person.
Because of the tiring horses, they were forced to stop early and make a rough camp with the little tent Mrs. Myers had stowed within the buggy. They ate as though on a picnic from the bacon, beans and potatoes fried in an iron skillet over the camp fire and Mac, who had been indignant about the delay forced by the older woman’s preparations, fell asleep tucked in blankets on the hard ground and couldn’t help feeling grateful that her discomfort wasn’t much worse.
“We’ll get there tomorrow,” she whispered to her lover across the distances. “We’re coming, Jerry.”
She found herself put to the lie the following evening when, exhausted and hungry, they once again made camp, feeding and watering the weary horses before they saw to their own needs.
“I never knew fifty miles could be so far,” she said as she took on the task of helping Betsy make a simple supper so as to relieve Mrs. Myers who for the first time looked fully her age. Though she tried to put up a brave front, Esther Myers was finding that keeping up with the two younger women was a challenge.
On the final day, they stopped near a creek where water flowed freely, clean and sweet, to allow the horses a rest and refreshment, and bathed themselves in the water warmed by a bright sun, resuming somewhat reluctantly the clothing they’d been wearing since they left home.
Still they didn’t look bad considering, Mac decided, as she combed her brown hair with Mrs. Myers’ comb and was glad she didn’t have a mirror to observe her own face.
The older woman looked worn, lines creasing her forehead and stretching out on her rounded cheeks. Bluish bruises left by fatigue sagged under her eyes and her skin tone was grayish-white. Betsy, however, looked flushed and pink, her golden hair bright in the sunlight, and in her eyes a look of excitement. “We’re getting close,” she said.
As for Mac herself, she felt that excitement as a kind of pressure against her chest and a stirring in her stomach. This was no game they were playing, the three women who had set out to rescue Jerry and discover the truth about Herman Myers’ death.
They were risking real danger and the possibility of death for one or all. She could only pray that Betsy would survive to go back to Caleb and the children and that Esther Myers would live to enjoy her old age with her granddaughters and the family on Crockett Street.
As for herself, she was entirely comfortable with putting her life on the balance scales as she tried to save the man she loved.
Chapter Twenty
Esther paused in front of her own door, tracing the repairs with her gloved fingers, but pushing on inside to where blood had been cleaned from the floor and the chair splintered in the conflict had been removed. She glanced around quickly, “Where’s Herman?” she demanded.
Bud, in his long beard and rounded form, took on the look of a sheepish Santa and avoided her eyes. “Fact is, Miz Myers, he ain’t here.”
She looked fiercely from Bud to Jerry. “Where is my husband?” she asked. “And why did you bring me here if he’s elsewhere?”
He drew in a deep breath, clearly seeing a reflection of the older woman he’d known for most of his life. She would insist on knowing the truth and yet he wasn’t entirely sure what it was. He listened as the little girls tiptoed through the empty house, calling heartbreakingly to their father.
“We brought you here for safety’s sake,” he said calmly. “That man you saw in town means harm to all of us. We wanted to get you and your girls away from him.”
“But Herman . . what about Herman?” she queried anxiously.
“We don’t exactly know for sure,” this time Bud answered. “Leastways not for certain.”
The little girls were still in the back of the house, hopefully out of hearing range. “We know he was badly beaten by Silver and his men. We escaped from imprisonment here in your house together. He didn’t get far but thanks to him, I managed to get away.”
“You left him . . .”
Jerry didn’t try to make excuses for himself by saying that Herman Myers had urged him on. “He asked me to look after the three of you.”
“And we’re doing the best we can, Esther,” Bud said. “I mean, Miz Myers, now you got to consider Ruthie and Laura. It’s what Herman would want.”
Her eyes fixed on Jerry, she asked.
“You think my husband is dead?” in a raspingly harsh voice that was full of pain.
“Silver says he is.”
The girls came back then, the bigger one saying plaintively, “We can’t find Papa anywhere, Mama.”
“He isn’t here right now,” their mother explained in that strange, labored voice. “We’ll wait for him.” Her face was parchment white and her features strained. He could imagine how she felt. She’d taken off after the exchange of words with her husband, seeking a cooling period with relatives. And now she’d come back to find her whole world changed.
He couldn’t help admiring her as she began to marshal her troops. “Bud, will you be so kind as to see to the stock while I put together some supper for all of us. The girls haven’t had anything to eat since morning and I’m sure they’re hungry.”
As Bud hesitated, then walked obediently outside, she turned to Jerry. “You,” she said, “My husband keeps a gun and ammunition behind the bed in our room. Will you get it for me while I start cooking.”
He wanted to hug the family’s Mrs. Myers and tell her everything would be all right, but this woman didn’t know their connection and was close to his own age. No doubt she would misinterpret such sympathy. “Herman said they’d taken his gun,” he explained gently. “He used a knife to try to defend us. Got it from under a floorboard. He had it with him when they caught up to him.”
She seemed to sink, to melt into herself. He guessed that his words were confirmation that he’d actually met her husband. “Then we are without weapons.”
“Bud has a shotgun,” he reminded her. “And I’ve got my gun.” He touched the weapon holstered old-west style from his middle. No point now in telling her that both would be ineffectual weapons against the modern buzz gun Silver carried.
She nodded, swallowed hard, and her daughters following her closely, went to the little kitchen in the back of the house. He wondered if she would find any supplies there or if his kidnappers had plundered them all. “You might see if there are eggs in the hen house,” she called back. “And tell Bud to spare us some of the milk when he feeds the calves.”
The buggy broke down before they could get to town, a wheel coming off and sending them lurching to the side of the road, the horses tangled in their harness and the buggy ended up against a thick old tree.
Mac shook her head as Betsy, hearing the frightened shrieks of the team, took a quick accounting. “We’re all alive,” she said in relief, watching as Mrs. Myers began to stir and Mac touched a knot starting to form on her forehead.
“Injuries?” Betsy snapped, crawling toward the doorway even as she took account. “Bumps and bruises,” Mrs. Myers reported, “nothing more.”
“I’m fine,” Mac lied, knowing it was almost true. She might have a concussion from the way the world wheeled around her and her head ached, but there was nothing to do about that right now. She helped the older woman from the wreckage while Betsy went to work with the horses.
She felt drunk and nauseous when she tried to stand on her own feet on the grassy ground near where the buggy had wrecked and couldn’t seem to manage another step even though she watched as Mrs. Myers tottered over to help Betsy calm and free the horses. Somewhere inside herself she was thankful that the animals’ long legs still seemed able to support them and that the wild rolling of their eyes subsided as Betsy soothed them.
As darkness swooped in to engulf her, she sat down hard on her bottom, breathing hard to keep from passing out. After a moment, she rolled over on her stomach to vomit into the grass.
She felt grateful when the other two, busy with the frantic horses, didn’t seem to notice her condition. By the time the animals were relatively calmed and tied to the body of the buggy to prevent their frantic escape, she was feeling a little more herself.
“You all right?” Betsy asked after a closer look at her pale face, sounding much more like a modern American woman than the early twentieth century individual she’d been for most of her adult life. Somehow, Mac thought dreamily, Betsy managed to carry both roles off, but she didn’t know how. It seemed to her that the double existence would be so confusing that she would lose her way.
“Better,” she said, scraping dirt and dried leaves over the spot where she’d vomited.
Betsy looked worriedly toward the sky. “It’s getting dark. We either need to make camp or start out again.
Mac gestured toward the broken buggy. “How?” she asked.
“We’ll ride the horses. I don’t think it’s far to town.”
Mac looked at the buggy. Even in its overturned condition it would provide shelter of a sort. “I’m feeling a little queasy, Bets, and I’m not used to horses. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll wait here with the buggy until you can get someone to do repairs.”
They argued with her, hesitant about leaving her alone, but finally agreed reluctantly when she insisted. “Jogging along on a horse wouldn’t do her any good,” Esther decided, taking in her pale face and weakened condition. “We’ll leave her with what food we have left and the water bottle and hurry into town to look for help.”
Grateful not to have to attempt the trip, Mac watched them climb up on the still frightened horses, Betsy with easy grace and Mrs. Myers somewhat clumsily since, as she admitted, years had passed since she’d last mounted a horse.
They waved goodbye and rode off, moving cautiously through the woods.
Once they were gone, the silence fell heavily around Mac. Her head ached and her mouth tasted sour. Night would come early in the thickness of the woods, so she used a little of the water left in the bottle which Betsy had obtained for her to wash out her mouth before beginning to put together her nighttime shelter.
The buggy, lying on one side, seemed stable caught as it was against a tree, but she would have to climb up to the door that now faced the sky. Still there was nothing else to do, she sure didn’t want to be on the ground alone when whatever wild animals that lived in this time and place paid her nocturnal visits.
Her senses swam and she came close to fainting as she scrambled up on the fallen buggy, hanging on mostly because she must, and pulling open the door to crawl inside, collapsing against what would have been the side wall if the vehicle had been setting properly. The door crashed closed behind her.
She looked longingly at the cushioned seat, now uncomfortably vertical, then managed to pull out a well-worn pillow and blanket for her use and cuddled down to rest.
Aware that she might have suffered a concussion, she fought to stay awake, but eventually sleep overcame her and she was awakened only at the sound of rustling footsteps outside her shelter. Lying motionless, she tried to take comfort from the fact that no wildcat or bear would be likely to enter the buggy—she hoped. It seemed a fragile dwelling to protect her from the larger species of wild life. ‘But you don’t even know if they had bears here,’ she told herself. ‘Probably just squirrels, skunks and such.’
Nothing that could harm her. Not in here.
Then a man’s voice called. “Anyone in there?”
She felt a flash of relief. Help had come. Painfully, her head aching, she creaked up to push the door open a little. “In here,” she called. “We wrecked the buggy.”
“Hold on. I’ll help you out.”
Gratefully she waited for her rescue and soon found a man’s face looking down at her. Strong arms lifted her out and helped her to climb down from the buggy.
“Constantine Silver to the rescue,” a comforting voice assured her once she’d sank down on the ground. “You’re hurt?”
She waited a moment to allow her tumbling stomach to stabilize. “Thanks Mr. Silver. I’m not hurt badly. Just a bump on the head. My friends rode on into town looking for help.”
She swayed and he steadied her. Even though her vision was blurred and the woods darkened, she could see enough of the man in front of her to realize he was tall and attractive, dressed in rather stagy western clothes, and white-haired but appearing to be only in his thi
rties. But the hand against her shoulder was smooth, not the rough hand of a working westerner, and the face more sunburned than sun tanned. A frizzing of concern passed through her body, enough warning so that she didn’t give her real name. “Susan Blakely,” she introduced herself, borrowing the name of a much older coworker.
“You’re not feeling well, Susan,” he said. A local, she thought, would most likely have addressed a just met young woman more formally. Suspicion heightened and she began to wish she’d not been rescued.
Her head started to clear and she considered again his name. Silver. Constantine Silver. The name Jerry had mentioned in his letter. She was in the company of the enemy.
“My friends should be back any minute now,” she said hastily, anxious to let him know she wasn’t really alone. If he was Jerry’s pursuer, no doubt he would have seen photos of her. She could only hope that, dressed in period clothes, her face without makeup and her hair tumbled from the accident, he wouldn’t recognize her.
Surely he could not expect to see Jerry Caldecott’s girlfriend here near 19th century Korn.
Chapter Twenty One
The five of them sat at the little table, eating the supper of beans, cornbread and fried potatoes that Esther Myers had put together. Jerry thought it tasted good and looked forward to the home-canned peaches she’d retrieved from her cellar as dessert.
They all jumped at a sudden pounding at the door and Bud leaped up to reach for his shotgun while Jerry rose, his hand touching the gun at his side. “I’ll see who it is,” he cautioned Mrs. Myers who had started for the door. With a glance at her daughters, she nodded and stepped back.
She was a trooper, he thought now. Shocked from news of her husband’s death and bewildered by what was going on around her, she fought to keep her composure and see to the well-being of her girls. He would have expected nothing less from this younger version of the strong woman he knew.
The pounding came again and Jerry, though having small doubt who the visitor was, knew that the mended door offered little protection. He might as well open the door before Silver broke in. He glanced around to see that Bud’s shotgun was leveled in the direction of the doorway and unlatched it to open it a crack.
Missing in Lavender: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas series Book 6) Page 13
