Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle

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Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 67

by Bobby Hutchinson


  Jackson was cursing steadily under his breath and limping badly.

  Two small boys bundled against the cold were playing with a ball in the middle of the street. They stopped and stared wide-eyed as the procession neared.

  “Hey, look, Willy, that copper’s caught some bad guys!” one hollered.

  “You takin’ them to jail, sir?” the other queried.

  “You gonna shoot ‘em or just string ‘em up? Kin we come and watch?”

  “Get lost, kid,” Jackson growled. “You been watchin’ too much TV.”

  “No TV, not for years yet,” Tom muttered under his breath.

  Jackson heard, shook his head, then turned a baleful look on Tom. “I want you to know I blame this whole sad, sorry mess on that old woman of yours,” he gritted out between his teeth. “We hadn’t gone to that cursed Center, this never would’a happened.”

  Tom, shivering in the cold, slogging through mud up to his ankles in expensive boots, which he’d carefully polished back in his own time, thought of Evelyn Lawrence and had to grin.

  With her passion for the historical events of this confounded valley, the old girl would probably trade her dentures for the chance to hear this story.

  I’ll tell you all about it, Evelyn, he promised desperately. When we get out of this, when we get back there, I promise you’ll hear every detail.

  If we get out of this, some cold and rational portion of his brain corrected as mud from the horses’ hooves splashed liberally over what had been clean jeans only hours before.

  Hours – and a hundred and a handful years.

  A Distant Echo: Chapter Six

  The North West Mounted Police Post consisted of a two-story log cabin situated beside a stream. Office, jail, and barracks took up the large, main floor room, with the members’ sleeping quarters upstairs.

  Like the town itself, the cabin huddled close against the steep side of Turtle Mountain, in a clearing punctuated with tall pine trees and poplars still naked from the winter.

  Several large tents were pitched nearby, sheltering food supplies and equipment, and two long clotheslines strung between trees held an assortment of long underwear, pants, shirts, and blankets washed and hung to dry. A corral with an open-sided lean-to provided shelter for the horses.

  Constable Liard dismounted and tied his horse in the shade. He loosened the cinch and untied the lariat, herding Tom and Jackson into the cabin and directly into one of the two crude but sturdy cells at the back of the main room. He undid their handcuffs and locked them in, turning a huge key in the lock on the cell door. It was a thick slab of wood with a small barred opening that looked into the main room. Another barred window, even smaller, allowed thin sunlight to stream into the dingy cell.

  “Corporal Allan will be back shortly. He’ll want to ask you some questions.” He hung the key on a nail and went outside.

  Jackson collapsed on one of the narrow beds, leaning over to rub the calf of his injured leg. “You figger they’ve even heard of cars yet, Tom?” He sounded both weary and plaintive.

  Tom slumped down on the other bunk, eyeing the high, barred window. There didn’t seem much chance of breaking out if they couldn’t beat the robbery charge. Neither his shoulders nor Jackson’s would ever fit through there, even if they managed to dislodge the bars.

  “Cars? It’s way too early for cars. I don’t think there were any around until the late twenties, when Henry Ford started making the Tin Lizzie.”

  Jackson groaned. “Swear to God, if we can’t get back to normal times in a hell of a hurry, I guess I’m just gonna have to learn to ride a horse. All this walkin’s gonna kill me years before I was ever born.”

  “That’s if they don’t hang us first.”

  “Naw, they won’t do that. Hell, no. Canadians are noted for being fair. The Mounties have always had a good reputation, even this North West lot. Way I see it, they don’t have a whole lot of evidence to charge us with a single damned thing anyhow, although it’s going to be tricky explaining where the blazes we were before we got here.”

  Jackson lay back on the bunk, gave a huge sigh, and closed his eyes. “No point stewing over it, might as well get some sleep. There’s not a blessed thing we can do until this Corporal Allan gets back from wherever he’s gone. Damn, it feels like I’ve been up for ninety years.” He signed deeply again, and in moments he was snoring.

  Tom had always envied Jackson’s ability to fall asleep under any circumstances. He was tired himself, way beyond tired, but he was too geared up even to think about sleeping.

  His brain went over and over the events of the past hours, like a rat in a maze that always ended up back at the beginning.

  There simply was no rational explanation for what had occurred. Through some unexplainable fluke, they’d been hurtled into the distant past, and now it seemed they were stuck there whether they liked it or not.

  And just as Jackson said, there was nothing they could do about it.

  At last Tom closed his eyes and in moments he, too, was asleep.

  It was a woman’s voice that woke him. Unusually husky and vibrant, it was filled with outrage and more than a touch of venom.

  “Explain to me, Corporal Allan, if you will---if you can---exactly which law you believe I was violating?” The voice had an appealing resonance, each word clearly articulated. “As far as I know, there’s nothing that prohibits a woman from giving a speech in a public place or from carrying placards, as long as she doesn’t engage in or encourage violence. Have you never heard of free speech? Do they not cover the rights of individuals in whatever scanty training they offer you lawmen?” Her tone was both sarcastic and scathing. “Although I’m quite certain you’ve never heard of women’s rights, sir. Under the present laws, it seems we have none.”

  The policeman had a gravelly voice and an English accent, and he sound exasperated. “You know Hugo Bateman laid a charge against you the last time you did this, Miss Ralston, and I warned you myself that if you continued to protest outside his establishment, I would have to arrest you. He has a legal license to sell liquor in this town.”

  Tom sat up and swung his feet to the floor, rubbing his hand over his face. He needed a shave. Jackson was still asleep, snoring softly. The sun was pouring in through the tiny window, and it felt to Tom as if hours had passed since he’d fallen asleep.

  Intrigued by the battle going on in the cabin, he got up and walked to the small barred opening in the cell door.

  Through the bars Tom saw a Mountie, not Liard, but a barrel-chested, ramrod-straight, middle-aged man in uniform, standing facing a tall, thin, young woman in a floor-length black coat.

  Her fiery red curly hair was escaping in all directions from under her straw hat. She had a generous sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and she was facing the policeman, her hands on her slender hops, her chin tilted at an aggressive angle.

  It was obvious she was very angry. “Hugo Bateman,” she snorted. “Don’t you dare talk to me about that---that criminal having a license. Or about him laying a charge against me, Corporal.”

  “Hugo has a license to operate a drinking establishment, Miss Ralston,” Allan repeated in a weary tone, sounding as if he’d been over this many times before.

  She glared at the policeman. She was as tall as he, and she stamped her booted foot in absolute fury.

  Tom grinned. He liked her spirit.

  “Hugo Bateman knows perfectly well that each time he sells spirits to Nestor Vandusen it’s Mrs. Vandusen and the children who suffer!” she yelled.

  She had good volume. Maybe she shouted a lot, Tom mused.

  “You know perfectly well that Nestor came home at two a.m. this morning, once again inebriated, and beat his wife most viciously.” Her voice was even louder. “My brother ran all the way out here and brought Constable Liard, who took Nestor off and then released him at six this morning to go to work. And mark my words, tonight he’ll do the same thing all over again. It’s Hugo Bateman, fo
r selling spirits, and Nestor Vandusen for drinking them, who you should be arresting, sir, not me.”

  Corporal Allan sighed, a long, deep, martyred sigh. It was plain that he, too, was losing his patience. “You know we can’t arrest Nestor for any length of time unless his wife lodges a complaint, which she refuses to do.”

  “Of course she refuses, you---you absolute ninny. She can barely speak English, for heaven’s sake. She’s totally dependent on that worm of a husband for food and shelter for herself and her children, and you do nothing to prevent his cruelty. For shame, Corporal. For shame.”

  Miss Ralston was losing it in earnest, Tom decided. He felt anxious for her. The law around here seemed all too eager to throw innocent people behind bars. Would they treat a woman any different?

  “She knows full well if she lays charges against him, he’ll lose his job,” she bellowed. “And just who’s going to hire Isabella, worn down as she is with beatings, even though she’d be a much better worker than that sodden excuse for a husband? It’s the men who are at fault here, Corporal, not the women. A chimpanzee could figure that out.”

  There was a charged silence. Corporal Allan’s rather florid face went from pink to purple. “Are you calling me a chimpanzee, Zelda Ralston?” His voice had dropped to an ominous purr. “Let me remind you, you’ve already kicked me soundly in the shins this morning. Attacking an officer of the law is a serious charge, and I warn you, one more outburst of this sort and I shall put you behind bars where you belong.”

  “Go right ahead, Corporal. I assure you that when I contact them, the Women’s Temperance Union will find me a lawyer, and the details of this disgraceful situation will be spread across the pages of The Frank Sentinel, as well as in newspapers throughout the West. You and the entire North West Mounted will look like the fools you are.”

  She was a dirty fighter if not a cautious one, Tom thought with admiration. He watched the play of emotions on her expressive face.

  She wasn’t exactly pretty. She was too thin, and her features were strongly drawn, but there was an electricity about her that seemed to light up the dingy cabin. She had sex appeal, and that hair was like living fire.

  Jackson was awake, too, and he came to stand beside Tom, peering out at the scene playing itself out a few feet away.

  Evidently her words were enough to drive the corporal over the edge. He grasped her by the upper arm and hustled her to the unoccupied cell beside Tom and Jackson. She took several good whacks at him with her other arm, and he grunted and held up a hand to ward them off.

  They couldn’t see him thrust her inside, but they heard the barred door slam and the key turn in the lock.

  “Whoooee.” Jackson whistled softly and shook his head. “Spitfire,” he whispered softly.

  “I advise you to sit down in there and collect yourself, Miss Ralston,” Corporal Allan advised in stentorian tones. “I’ve sent for your father. I plan to have a word with him, man to man. Surely, he has some control over your disgraceful behavior.”

  “I’m an adult, Corporal; I happen to be twenty-eight years of age.” Her voice was muffled by the cell door, but her outrage came through as powerfully as ever. “My father wouldn’t dream of trying to control me. He, at least, has respect for the individual, be they male or female.”

  “More’s the pity.” Allan walked to a desk and plopped into the chair, removing his Stetson to reveal a balding head. He used a large white handkerchief to blot at his shiny skull and his brow.

  Tom and Jackson looked at one another and grinned. They could hear the woman in the next cell making small exclamations of contempt and disgust, muttering under her breath. Her long skirts swished and rustled as she moved.

  The door of the building opened just then and Constable Liard appeared. The two policemen conferred for several minutes in low voices. Then Liard withdrew the cell key from its nail and unlocked the door to Jackson and Tom’s cell.

  “Word’s just come on the telegraphy that the bank robbers were apprehended an hour ago outside of Pincher Creek,” he announced. “I guess you two are free to go, soon as you pay me the money you owe Gertie for breakfast this morning. Fifty cents each, she said.”

  Tom grabbed the coat he’d left on the end of the bunk, and he and Jackson hurried out of the cell. Freedom had never felt as sweet. He drew out his wallet and withdrew a five-dollar Canadian bill.

  “Give this to Gertie,” he said, handing it to Liard. “Tell her to keep the change.”

  The constable glanced at first one side of the money and then the other. “Says Canada on it, but this must be some newfangled kind of money. I’ve never seen its like before, and I’ll wager it’s no good around here. Don’t go trying to pass if off in town, or I’ll arrest you all over again.” He gave Tom a stern look and handed the bill back. “That the only money you have?”

  “Constable, let me have a good look at that bill. It could possibly be counterfeit.” Corporal Allan began to get to his feet, and Tom’s heart sank.

  Until that moment, he hadn’t given a thought to the fact that along with everything else, money had probably changed drastically since 1902. Not only were he and Jackson stranded at the wrong end of the century, he now realized, they were also marooned there without usable cash. And if this Corporal Allan got it into his head they were counterfeiters, they could spend a lot longer than a few hours in this barracks.

  Tom had no choice but to hand over the money.

  Corporal Allan took it and sat back down at his desk. He laid it flat on a piece of paper and opened the desk drawer, retrieving a large, round magnifying glass with a handle. He peered through the glass at the five-dollar bill for what seemed to Tom an endless time, turning it over and over.

  “Come here and have a look at this, Constable,” he ordered.

  Liard moved quickly and took the magnifying glass.

  “This can’t be right, Corporal Allan,” he said in a puzzled tone. “The date on this bill is 1986.”

  “Let this be a lesson to you, Constable, to pay more attention to detail. You were about to release these men far too hastily.”

  Jackson was standing beside Tom, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. They exchanged a despondent look.

  Liard shot them an accusing look, and Allan peered at them suspiciously from under his bushy eyebrows. “Now, gentlemen. What were your names again?”

  “Tom Chapman.”

  “Jackson Zalco.”

  “Yes, quite. Well. There’s something amiss here, all right, and you both know it. This bill is unlike any I’ve ever seen. 1986, indeed.” He glared at them. “I intend to get to the bottom of this,” he said in the same quiet, lethal tone he’d used to address Miss Ralston. “And neither of you is going anywhere until I do. I think your best recourse at this point would be simply to tell me the unvarnished truth. Constable Liard, sit down over there and take notes on these proceedings.”

  “Damn,” Jackson swore.

  “I’ll thank you to watch your language, sir,” Allan snapped. “There’s a lady over there, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  Tom had almost forgotten Miss Ralston. He turned to the cell. She was standing with her face close to the bars, watching the scene with the same avid attention as he’d watched her a short time before. Through the bars, she wiggled her fingers at him in greeting.

  “Apologies, ma’am,” Jackson drawled.

  “I believe I’ve heard the expression before,” she purred. “And if the good corporal truly believed I was a lady, do you honestly think he’d have thrown me in here?” Her voice rose an octave. “And by the way, Corporal, this cell is a disgrace. It needs scrubbing down with lye and soap powder. I’m quite sure you have bugs in the bedding.”

  Corporal Allan rolled his eyes and did his best to ignore her.

  Tom was sick of standing and being interrogated while the corporal sat. “This is going to take awhile, Corporal. Mind if we sit down?”

  Allan nodded grudgingly, and Tom snag
ged a nearby chair and handed it to Jackson, then dragged one over for himself, trying to figure out how and where to begin.

  Jackson wasn’t being any help. When Tom shot him a questioning look, his partner just shrugged elaborately and made a motion with his hand that indicated the stage belonged to Tom.

  “We’re strangers here,” he finally began, trying to ease into it gradually. “We’re from another time and place, and I’m not too sure myself exactly how we got here, but I’ll explain it as best I can. See, we were watching this movie – ”

  “Movie?” Allan’s eyebrows were near his nonexistent hairline. “What, pray tell, is a movie?”

  It began to dawn on Tom just how difficult this was going to be. “A motion picture, a moving picture, a –” He stopped, unable to think of a way of explaining.

  “I believe it might be something like a stereoscope, Corporal, except the picture moves,” Miss Ralston offered in a superior tone. “I’ve recently read about a photographic gun that records motion photographs,” she went on in her husky voice. “It was devised by a French scientist named E.J. Marey.”

  She smiled straight at Tom through the bars. “You see, I’m a photographer when I’m not being unfairly incarcerated by the North West Mounted,” she explained just as if she was at some tea party instead of in a lockup. “In some of my publications, other photographers have mentioned this technique of making moving photographs, and it very much interests me. If you’ve actually witnessed this process, I’d like to discuss it with you, sir. Under more pleasant circumstances, of course.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am.” She had a wonderful smile, mischievous and winsome and wide. Tom grinned back at her, forgetting for a moment the gravity of the situation.

  “Well, Chapman? Are you quite ready to proceed?” Corporal Allan wasn’t long on patience.

  “Well, it was 2014, and we were watching this movie about the Frank Slide, and something went wrong.”

 

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