Lori slid into one of the chairs and leaned over to kiss Bo on the cheek.
“What’s for lunch,” she asked.
“Don’t know but it smells good though.”
Everyone was talking, some laughing, as it was the night before when people from the kitchen began to bring different dishes to the table until the table was full of food.
Jessie didn’t eat much but Lori was so hungry she ate until she was full. She felt so much better than she had this morning. After she ate, she went into her office to try to go over some bills for the month. She added the cost of the beef cow and the calf now dead. This was putting her expenses down but if there were no more dead animals, they would be alright. She made herself a note to talk to Bo about it. They would have to find out what was killing their animals. After an hour, her eyes began to hurt and she decided to go on-line and see if she could find out something about Jessie. She went through his name and came up with nothing. It was as if Jessie James McCoy was never born. Finally she gave up and got into her bathing suit and went out to the pool. After swimming for a while she lay in a chair by the water.
* * * * * * * *
As Jessie finished eating, Bo did too. Are you ready to go into the city,” Bo asked.
“Yes,” Jessie was frightened.
“Don’t be afraid Jessie. We are going to the city in the truck. You know, the one Lori was in when she found you yesterday.”
“Okay,” Jessie said bracing himself for whatever was coming next.
“Let’s go.” Bo led the way outside and around to the front of the house where the big truck was parked. Jessie looked at it from the corner of the house. Bo came over and placed his hand on Jessie’s shoulder.
“I know you’re scared, but think of this as a horseless buggy. Really that’s all it is.”
Bo led Jessie around to the passenger side of the truck and waited until he had climbed inside. By the time Bo walked around to the driver’s side and got under the wheel of the truck, he saw how Jessie was trembling. Bo started the truck and they began to move. Jessie sat quietly in the seat. Bo had helped him put this wide cord around him and he felt as if he were chocking. He pulled on the cord and held it out.
“That’s a seat belt, Jessie. The law makes us wear them. They save our lives if we have an accident,” Bo told him.
Jessie didn’t understand what Bo was talking about. It didn’t make sense to him. He looked out the window, lost in his own thoughts. This thing he was in was moving fast, faster than Jessie had ridden before. He could see some types of buildings and they were all so tall Jessie wondered how they were built so high and it wasn’t wood. He couldn’t seem to stop shaking. He was scared and all he wanted to do was go home into his old house where he missed Missy every day. Somehow he didn’t miss her as much here in this strange new world.
After about fifteen minutes, Bo said, “Here we are Jessie, this museum has different themes but we are only going to see the western theme. The man who owns this is a good friend of mine and has closed this part of the museum for you to view by yourself. Are you ready? You will feel right at home in here. Come on don’t be afraid.” Bo stopped the truck in a lot filled with other horseless buggies of all different colors and sizes.
Jessie sat in the seat until Bo came round and opened the door, and then he tried to slide out but had to wait for Bo to let him out of his seat belt. Then he slid out on to the hard black ground in which they had rode on. He kicked it and hurt his foot. He followed Bo into a door where they were met by a young woman in a dress cut off well above her knees.
“Hello,” Bo said. “Is Kenny here?”
“Yes, just a minute.”
The woman disappeared and in only a few minutes an older man came toward them. He was dressed in a suit and he smiled as he saw Bo.
“Hey Bo, here you are. Is this your friend?” The man pointed to Jessie.
“Yes, this is Jessie, he showed up at the ranch.”
Kenny held out his hand. “Nice to see you Jessie.”
“You too sir,” Jessie said as he shook his hand.
Kenny led them around to the side of the building and unlocked a door.
“Here you are Bo. Just the two of you in here. Jessie, these things are very old so they are kept behind glass to keep them safe. If we were to move them, some of them would fall apart.”
Bo stepped into the room and Jessie followed.
“Jessie, look all you want, I’ll be right here. No one else will come in but it’s like Kenny said, these things are old now, okay?”
Jessie nodded. He began to walk around the room. There were boots- one pair was like some Jessie had just last year. There were tags with the years when the items were from and most of them were things he knew: spurs, belt buckles, saddles, guns, and Indian stuff. He walked all around the room. Somehow he felt as if he were back home. He was almost back to Bo when he saw the dresses. Missy had worn dresses like each of them and his eyes began to fill up with tears but he wiped them away quickly. As he looked at the dresses, it made him miss Missy and he remembered the time she had made a dress for the first time. One sleeve was longer than the other and one side of the tail was half way to her knee. Both she and Jessie had laughed until they cried. He smiled as he remembered it. A lot of the women’s clothes reminded him of Missy. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore and began to walk back to Bo. It was then he saw the pictures. There were probably about twenty pictures hanging on the wall. Jessie stopped and looked at them. He saw a picture of Jessie James and his gang. The picture was old and it was hard to see who all was in the picture. Some were paintings, their colors were somewhat faded but still very clear. There were paintings of stage coaches, trains, and Indians. Then suddenly Jessie sucked in his breath. The painting was of Missy’s father’s saloon. Jessie composed himself and studied the picture. Most of the tables had someone sitting at them. In the back next to the swinging bar doors were six men playing poker. Another man was at the swinging doors ready to come in. At the bar were men drinking and several show girls around the men smiling.
The girls had their dresses held up to the knee and the neckline showed the top of their breasts. One young lady had her foot in a chair and was rubbing her leg while smiling at the young man seated beside her. Across the room there was a couple going upstairs, their arms around each other. Missy’s father was behind the bar pouring whiskey into a glass for a dirty looking cow poke.
As he looked at the painting, he remembered when he had met Missy. Then he caught his breath again as he looked at the kitchen side of the painting, for there was Missy coming from the kitchen carrying a tray with a steaming hot bowl on it, a smile on her face. He touched the glass the painting was enclosed in as if touching Missy. He felt as if he loved her now as much as he had the first time he had met her.
Why did she have to die? He wished he knew the answer. They could have still been so happy together and lived a long life. Then maybe he would not have ended up here, wherever here was. Suddenly he came back to himself. He thought everything happened for a reason even if he never knew the reason Missy had died in childbirth.
He looked back at the painting. Missy wasn’t dressed like the call girls. Her dress was blue and had a high collar. Her hair was pulled up in a bun at the top of her head. Jessie sighed aloud and moved on to some of the other paintings.
“Here you are Jessie, what did you think of all these,” Bo asked walking up beside him.
“Bo, I know all these things. They are from my world, and I miss it.” Jessie was shaking. “I want to know how I got here. I wish I could go back.”
“Jessie, Lori and I will go over some things with you and somehow we will find out how you got here. Want to head back to the ranch?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s go. I need to go by a store to get some flour and things for Cook, so we will go home a different way than we came.”
Jessie nodded as he climbed into the gray horseless carriage once again. Bo star
ted the thing and Jessie asked,
“Where are the horses?”
Bo laughed. “Some people say they are under the hood.”
Jessie was puzzled. “The hood, what’s the hood?”
Bo pulled out onto the road. “The hood is out there,” he pointed out the glass in front.
“I don’t see any,” Jessie leaned forward and touched the glass pulling back quickly as if he were burned.
“Under the hood is the engine but there are not any horses, there is horse power,” Bo told him.
Jessie didn’t understand- not real horses just their power. How did they get the horses’ power from the horses. And the round wheel Bo was holding, what was that? He didn’t ask because he knew he wouldn’t understand. He sat quietly looking out the window at the strange things they passed. He pulled out his watch and looked at the picture on it. He ran his fingers over the tiny picture before he opened it up to see the time. He began to look out the window again. Suddenly he yelled to Bo. “Stop.”
“What is it Jessie?”
“Stop please, I know this place.”
Bo found a place to pull over. “Okay Jessie, there’s nothing here. What place?”
“There,” Jessie was pointing to the bill board on the hill. “What do you call that?”
Bo smiled. “That’s Texas Motor Speedway. How do you know it?”
“It’s the picture on my watch.” He pulled out his pocket watch and gave it to Bo.
Bo took it and looked at the picture on the front of it, and Jessie was right. It was a picture of Texas Motor Speedway yet the watch seemed to be old.
“Tell me about this watch Jessie. Where did you get it?”
“Missy gave it to me for our first Christmas. It had been passed down through four generations given by the wife to the husband on their first Christmas. Neither me nor Missy knew what the picture was. We always thought it strange. Now here it is, up there. What is a speedway?”
It was Bo’s turn to be puzzled. Jessie had a watch made in the eighteen hundreds with a picture of a race track on it that wasn’t built until the nineteen hundreds. Aloud he said,
“It’s a race track where a lot of those,” he was pointing to cars going down the road, “get together and race each other. It’s a sport.”
Jessie shook his head. “I don’t understand, it must be an old race track.”
“No, that’s what doesn’t make sense to me. This track wasn’t built until nineteen ninety something. I’m not sure what year right now. Therefore it doesn’t make sense that this racetrack would be on your watch but then it doesn’t make sense that you would be here from the eighteen hundreds either.
“Bo, are you sure it’s this race track?”
Bo looked at the picture on the watch, then at the billboard.
“No question. It is Texas Motor Speedway. Let’s get back to the ranch and talk to Lori. Maybe she can go on-line and find out something for you. Don’t worry. We will figure all this out but it may take us a while.”
CHAPTER 5
When Jessie and Bo arrived back at the ranch, Lori met them out front.
“Adam found a dead horse. One I was getting ready to sell.”
“I’m sorry Jessie. We will have to deal with this,” Bo said.
Jessie knew this and all this had been puzzling too. Three animals in two days. If they kept losing animals, the ranch would lose money. Even if they sold some of their best beef cattle, they may not even break even. Jessie felt as if he should do something to help but he knew nothing about this world. It was all so different and strange.
Aloud, Jessie said. “It’s okay. I need to think about all this. I think I’ll just go back to my room.”
“Alright,” Bo said. “We’ll see you later.”
Back in his room, Jessie’s mind ran wild. He couldn’t understand any of this. He would just have to wait until tomorrow and see what Bo and Lori could find out. Stretching out on the bed, Jessie closed his eyes and the day’s events ran through his mind. Finally, after some time, he fell asleep.
Jessie awoke to the sound of rain on the roof. It was raining hard. He opened his eyes to see it was daylight but still a little dark. As he lay there, he went back over yesterday’s events once more. First, seeing the tree he and Missy had planted all big now, huge in fact. Then, seeing things he had seen every day that was now old and hanging on walls for everyone to see. On the way home, he had seen the picture on his watch. Bo hadn’t known what to think of it. His watch was old yet this race something wasn’t nearly as old, not old at all really. He didn’t understand what all this meant and wished he could just go back home; back to when the Indians were chasing him. His life seemed to be so much easier now in this new world though. The animals didn’t have to work now. There were machines to do that. There seemed to be machines for everything, and the women wore britches and showed almost all their bodies.
He sat on the edge of the bed and started to pull on his britches when he remembered Bo saying he had to bathe every day. “Okay,” he thought as he made his way into the small room with the tub. “It’s a waste of water and time,” he said aloud.
But he ran water in the tub and took a bath, shaved, and put on the clean clothes in his closet. He felt better. As he picked up his hat, he realized it smelled so he laid it back on the bed. He opened the door to his room. It had been raining sometime in the night but it wasn’t raining as hard now. He walked quickly to the main house for breakfast. Most of the men were going in as well and all spoke to Jessie asking him how he liked the ranch and would he like to play some poker later, just for fun mostly. Jessie was glad everyone was friendly. He liked it here even though it was a lot different. They ate breakfast and Bo asked several of the men if they had seen Lori this morning but only one had. Jessie was a little worried himself. She had been fine yesterday, just upset over the horse she had lost.
* * * * * * * *
Lori woke up a little later than usual. She swung her feet to the floor and suddenly began to feel sick. She laid back down thinking about the day before and the horse she had found dead and knew something was causing the animals to die but couldn’t figure out what it could be. She would have to call and get someone out here to check the ground, the water, and the feed. Maybe it was something in the feed. But if that were the case, why were more animals not dying? She then remembered Bo telling her that he and Jessie needed to talk to her about something but never got around to finding out what it could be.
She tried getting up again, more slowly this time but once again felt sick. She managed to get dressed and walked in to the dining room where everyone was eating.
“Bo, I, oh God…..” The maid swung by her with a pot of coffee and the odor made her sick. She tore from the room with Bo and Jessie behind her. She made it to the bathroom as the two men waited outside the door.
“What’s wrong with Lori,” Jessie asked Bo.
“Don’t know,” Bo answered.
Lori came out and leaned against the door facing.
“I’m going to the doctor Bo. I must have some virus or something. Yesterday I thought it was all over but I got up this morning and I’m even sicker.”
“Okay, want me to drive you in,” Bo asked.
“No, I’ll drive myself but call for me please. I’m going to go lay back down. Let me know what time I have the appointment.”
“Alright.” Bo went to the phone and Jessie followed.
“Will Lori be alright,” Jessie asked sounding worried.
“She’ll be fine once she sees the doctor and he gives her something.”
“You know Missy, my wife, she did that way when she was with child, at first I mean,” Jessie said. “Could Lori be?”
“I don’t think so Jessie but then I don’t know much about the private part of her life.”
Bo called and made Lori an appointment and turning from the phone he saw Lori leaning against the bathroom door holding her belly.
“You have an hour to get there, okay
?”
“Good thing I didn’t go lay down. I will have time to take a bath. I’m feeling a little better now,” Lori said smiling a little.
Jessie did notice the color was coming back to her face a little. He watched as one of the maids came by with some cleaning supplies and their smell was strong.
“Oh God.” Lori hit the bathroom again and this time she didn’t even close the door and both Bo and Jessie could see her on her knees as she threw up.
“You okay Miss Lori,” Bo asked sounding concerned.
“Yes, thanks,” she stood up again. “It seems the smell of everything makes me sick. I’m going to take a bath now.”
Bo and Jessie watched as she closed the door before they walked back toward the kitchen. They finished eating and Bo said,
“I have to talk to the people who are coming about the dead animals, will you be okay? Please don’t wander off anywhere, alright?”
Jessie nodded. “I’ll go back to my room and do something.”
“I’ll turn your television on to the western channel for you.”
Slowly the two men walked back toward the bunk house and Jessie’s room. Bo turned on Jessie’s television to the western channel and watched as a look of contentment came across Jessie’s face.
“Will you be alright, Jessie?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, you go on,” Jessie’s eyes were glued to the picture on the screen.
Bo smiled as he walked back out into the sunlight and toward the house. He was worried about Lori and Jessie. Could Jessie be right? Was there any way Lori could be pregnant? What was all this about the tree Jessie had planted in the eighteen hundreds and him having Texas Motor Speedway on a pocket watch his late wife had given him in the eighteen hundreds as well? Bo shook his head. Strange, all this was so strange.
Lori was already gone and Bo entered the study that was now Lori’s office. He sat behind the desk and studied the bills Lori had been working on. If they kept losing animals, they would not be turning a profit on the ranch. He took a piece of paper and wrote some notes about Jessie. He was in deep thought and jumped when one of the maids called to him, “Mr. Bo, some men from town are here to see you.”
Portals of Time Page 8
