Please God. Brought up in the modern world with little in the way of religious conviction, she was beginning to absorb some of the faith of the people of Lavender. Right now the four of them sure were in need of divine help.
At first she thought that horses had just given up and were ready to drop in the middle of the road and then realized Jerry was drawing them to a stand still.
“What the hell?” Silver exclaimed, moving toward Jerry. “Don’t stop now, we’re nearly there.”
Even as he threw himself across the narrow gap between him and the younger man, Betsy provided a distraction by yelling, “But don’t you see. That horse has lost a shoe. He’s limping.”
Silver only wasted an instant glancing in the direction she indicated, but it was enough for Jerry to close the distance between them and the two men fell against each other in fierce combat, fighting not to win, but to kill.
The team hardly posed any danger of a runaway, but Betsy hurtled herself into the driver’s seat to grab the reins while Mrs. Myers threw her small traveling bag straight at Silver’s head. Hardly aware that she was small and slim, Mac became a raging tiger and flung herself at the two struggling men, scratching and biting with nails and teeth in an attempt to help Jerry in his fight.
They flung her aside without hardly knowing she’d landed, rolling dangerously over her as they tumbled toward the door, pushing it open as they tumbled across the stairs and to the ground below.
The breath crushed from her, it took a moment for her to regain herself enough to scramble from the buggy after the other two women. “The gun!” Betsy screamed. “Get his gun!”
Mac tried to yell not to worry about the weapon. It was gone. But she found her voice only creaked, gone from having been squashed from her by the impact of two powerful male forms.
Before she could do more than stumble into the battle zone again, Jerry slammed Silver to the ground, overpowering him and began to hurriedly search his body with demanding hands, trying to find the gun.
Silver lay limp for an instant, then rolled over, leaping to his feet and racing toward the horses, reaching up to try to yank the nearest one from its harness, obviously intending to use it for his escape.
With Jerry right behind him, he tried to board the entangled and frightened animal, which had been pushed to the breaking point in the last few hours of flight. Both animals reared wildly, shrieking their hysteria, and Mac heard her own croaking scream of warning to Jerry as the nearest came crashing down on Silver, trampling him into the ground.
The man lay still and smashed on the ground even as Jerry and Betsy took control of the horses, risking their own lives to pull the two beasts away from the man, then beginning the nearly impossible task of trying to soothe and calm them before they did further damage to their own bodies within the still confining web of harness.
“Stay away!” Jerry yelled. “The gun may explode!”
Mac was the only one who knew there was no risk of the damaged gun going off. It lay safely in the weeds and grass miles behind them. Instead she focused on the man and found Mrs. Myers at her side, bending over him and then shaking her head.
Mac could see for herself that he was beyond any help, his form crashed from existence by the horse’s frantic hooves, but it wasn’t until she could determine that Jerry and Betsy were safe and the horses cut free from the confining harness that she allowed herself to try again to speak. This time her voice came out a hoarse whisper. “Gun’s gone. Took it. . .while he slept . . . tossed out miles back.”
Jerry made a kind of crowing sound of delight while Betsy and Mrs. Myers stared at her in astonishment. And then she was in Jerry’s arms, vomiting all over him as the terrible image of the dead man played behind her closed eyes.
“My darling,” he practically shouted, “my brave little darling,” and he held her, smelly vomit and all, tight in his arms.
The body wrapped in blankets and placed the buggy and the horses having escaped the troubled scene, though hopefully not too far away in their exhausted state, the little party trudged the rest of the way on foot.
Jerry thought they must be something less than a wholesome looking group. He and Mac stank of vomit, even though they’d cleaned up as best they could at a little stream they’d passed. Betsy’s hair curled in a maddened mass and her clothing was torn and dirty. Even Mrs. Myers looked anything but her usual tidy self while he was the worst of them all with ripped and soiled clothing, a face that looked destroyed and still leaked blood from half a dozen cuts. One arm dangled, obviously broken, and he was fairly sure he suffered from several painfully cracked ribs. Every step he took hurt, but his heart sang. They were still alive, the four of them, and jubilant as a kid, he couldn’t resist grabbing Mac every little bit for a careful hug.
As they entered town, three or four little boys trailed after them, keeping a safe distance, but calling out questions like, “Run into a bear, Mister?” and, “Are you damn Yankees?” Too elated to be irritated by their jibes, he reminded himself of the point in which their history now lay. They were only a couple of years out from the hatred of the war years and living in the reconstruction with its own heritage of bitterness. And they were small boys who found the entrance of any strangers into their little town both threatening and intriguing.
“We’re looking for Doc Stephens,” Betsy called back and one boy yelled acknowledgement and ran ahead to lead the way. A scattering of adults watched without comment as they moved down the dirt street and the smell of Lavender’s lovely scented flowers drifted on the summer air, a promise of better times to come.
When they got to the big house, their young escort stepped up to the summer kitchen at the side of the house and yelled, “Doc! Hurt people!” Then he joined the other boys, putting a distance of a couple of roomy yards between themselves and the newcomers.
The man he supposed was Dr. Stephens came out the door, stepping spritely in spite of his bent and aging figure, but turning to frown through the open doorway before addressing them. “Go inside the house and stay there, Betsy,” he ordered and Jerry shivered, wondering what could be the result of his cousin being in this place twice at the same time. Betsy stepped back as though realizing the same alarming thought.
“You found him,” Dr. Stephens said, regarding Jerry thoughtfully. “Though somewhat the worse for his experiences.”
Jerry grinned. “Just happy to be alive, sir. Considering the circumstances.”
He found an almost instant liking for the Gandalf-like man, seeing him as the wizard who had brought Lavender into his life. Or maybe he was simply euphoric from the day’s events and the relief that the four of them were still alive.
“Afraid we left your buggy outside town a way with a dead man inside and your horses are wandering the countryside. And some considerable distance toward Korn, there’s a small super weapon from the future hidden in weeds and tall grass.”
“Not exactly your horses, Doc,” Betsy corrected. “We had to trade them for another pair and these are about run off their hooves. “
Dr. Stephens nodded, taking it all in calmly. “I’ll send Caleb to take care of everything but the super weapon which I will see to myself,” he said, “but in the meantime I suppose the three of you are anxious to get home. Just give me a minute to make sure the passageway is clear and then you can be on your way.”
Betsy nodded. “I’d just as soon not run into myself,” she said.
“Not a good idea,” he agreed, then turned to go back inside, closing the door firmly behind him.
Betsy was looking a little pale, Jerry considered, and Mrs. Myers seemed thoughtful. Mac grinned at him.
When the doctor returned, he opened the door and waved them through. They moved in a clump, Betsy leading the way, but giving the old doctor a kiss as she moved past. As they entered, she gathered the other three against her and, creeping like an eight-legged creature, they went through the summer kitchen, through a passage way into the main house kitchen, stepping so
abruptly that his heart jolted into the 1913 version where Dottie looked up, startled, from the pie she was just putting into the oven.
“Granny!” she said and dropped the pie on the floor, splattering its surface with purple huckleberries. “Oh, Granny,” she said again and rushed to hug Mrs. Myers.
Epilogue
Noon dinner was always the main meal and the family gathered around a particularly festive table that day in September. The Caldecotts had come from western Oklahoma and, for the first time in a while, Zan and Eddie were in attendance. Some of the lines that were beginning to deepen in Zan’s broad forehead were nearly banished during this respite in peaceful Lavender.
This was a celebration of her engagement to Jerry, and Mac, seated between him and Mrs. Myers, could hardly eat her piece of apple pie that was served for dessert for admiring the stunning red-stoned ring that rested on that special finger of her left hand.
She couldn’t remember ever being this happy and for today at least, didn’t even dwell on the big question of where they would dwell when they were married. She wanted to live in Lavender with the people in the big house on Crockett Street as neighbors, but Jerry who shared a similar longing, felt he must go back to help Zan and Eddie fight the future battles for peace and the proper use of technology. She could only consider how she’d come so close to losing him only a month before.
But she wouldn’t think about that today. She would enjoy the best wishes of the family and the pleasure of wearing her new ring. When dinner was long finished and the conversation had lingered pleasantly, Jerry got to his feet. “Come on, Mac,” he said. “Let’s go for a nice long walk.”
Zan hooted and Betsy smiled. “Just an excuse for some alone time,” she teased her cousin.
“Nothing wrong with that,” her husband said with conviction. “Alone time becomes precious when the children come along.” His loving smile aimed in Betsy’s direction said that his own marriage was about as perfect as possible.
Little Ben had to be restrained from following them and had a hard time understanding that his company was not required on this particular stroll. His father managed to distract him by the promise of a ride on the new pony Grandpapa Forrest had given him and his sister and hand-in-hand Jerry and Mac slipped out of the house into the sunny September afternoon.
They said little as they walked aimlessly along streets beginning to show the first signs of on-coming fall. Trees were still adorned in green leaves as the frost lay in the near future, but summer flowers were fading and the extreme heat of that season had been replaced by pleasantly warm afternoons and cool nights.
They planned to be married at Christmas time and talked about how soon that would be and, at the same time, how slowly the months must pass.
“We both love Lavender,” Jerry said, “but the ranch in Oklahoma isn’t a bad place either.”
Still not having seen his childhood home, she nodded absent-minded agreement and thought how hard it would be to go back to the fears of the modern world. She didn’t know how she could bear living with the constant dread for her husband’s safely. But if this was what he felt he must do, than she would go with him just as Eddie did with Zan.
He stopped rather abruptly and, looking up, she saw where their ambling had taken them. They stood on the edge of the little cemetery where, she now saw, others were there before them.
Grandpapa Forrest stood back a ways while Esther Myers visited the gravesite of her young husband. Mac wondered what the woman was feeling who had long ago seen both her daughters laid to rest in this same piece of ground.
“People die even here in Lavender,” Jerry said gently, his hand tightening on hers. “I pray God grant us long years together.”
She smiled at the way he spoke the language, not of the future, but of Lavender. His was a shared heritage; he was a resident of Lavender and 21st century America at the same time. As she would be.
And then they watched together as Grandpapa Forrest took Esther’s hand and the two elderly people strolled together toward them.
The End
About the Author: Barbara Bartholomew learned to love fantasy and science fiction when as a little girl she listened to her grandfather talk of traveling through time and space, an interest enhanced as she slept with her family in the open under the starry summer skies of western Oklahoma.
Missing in Lavender: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas series Book 6) Page 16
