by Ken Farmer
Bone looked toward the front window. “Sleet and ice are melting, I can see water dripping off the canopy out front.”
“I’m willing to guess we can leave early afternoon…Put us there before dark plus the horses will get to eat and drink their fill by the time we leave,” said Padrino.
“Works for me,” added Bone.
“You know what I think,” added Mason. “I’m sure Gomer won’t mind being acting sheriff.”
Molly came back to the table from the kitchen in about ten minutes with a large tray holding three plates on it. Ruth Ann followed behind her with another tray and two more plates. One had a stack of pancakes eight inches high and almost a half-pound of bacon on the side.
They started setting the plates in front of each person.
“Who do you think gets this one?” Ruth Ann took the tall stack plate from her tray. Melting butter from a large dollop was running off the top and down the sides.
They all pointed at Bone.
“I knew that,” she said with a grin and followed the plate with several metal pitchers of warm sorghum that she set in the center of the table.
“Can I have a big glass of milk, Ruth Ann?” Bone asked.
“Of course.”
“Make mine buttermilk,” said Bodie. “…and just keep bringin’ my pancakes till I say when, too.” He already had his white napkin tucked in his collar with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other.
“Say, Mason, did ya’ll have a chance to look at that property that adjoined the Wilson Ranch?” asked Bone.
“Oh, the Manier place? Did, did indeed. Robert and Suellyn Manier gave us the grand tour. They’re movin’ to Fort Worth to live with their daughter. She just had twins and her husband had been killed at his job as a bank teller in a holdup…Nice place. Plenty water and grass. Got some fine stock on it…Noticed some artifacts from an ancient Amerindian village…Made them an offer.”
“What did they say?” asked Loraine.
“Nothin’ yet…Said they’d get back to us by the end of the week.”
“Changes, they may be a coming,” said Padrino with a twinkle in his amber gold eyes.
Molly walked up to the table. “Need a few more, Bone?”
He looked up at her. “Just a few, Molly.” A grin spread across his face.
“Shakespeare said, ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more’…Henry V…I spend half my time cooking when Bone’s home,” said Padrino.
“Just a growing boy…” he replied as he poured syrup over the steaming platter of pancakes Molly had just set down.
“Thought as much…Already had those ready.” She looked at Bodie. “Ranger?”
He grinned too. “Just a few, an’ barely run my cup over with some hot coffee, if you please, my dear.”
“Annabel will be letting out your trousers, again, Bodie,” Loraine commented.
“I’ll just start wearin’ Bone’s old ones…” He winked at the big man.
“Touché, Ranger,” said Bone as he put a big forkful of pancakes in his mouth. “Ask me if I care.”
WILSON RANCH
“They’re coming back this afternoon…Should be here by supper time,” said Lucy as she set her cup back in its saucer.
“Oh, good. It seems like they’ve been gone forever. It’s the first time Mason and I have been apart since we got married…Can’t say that I care for it much.”
“I’m sure he’ll want to hear the Manier’s response to your offer,” commented Mary Lou.
§§§
EPILOGUE
BONE’S RANCH
COOKE COUNTY, TEXAS
2018
Stella Johnson and Peach Presley were house and dog sitting for Padrino and Bone. They had finished their breakfast and Stella was cleaning up the kitchen of the one hundred and thirty year old house.
Peach was doing additional searches on the Internet in Padrino’s office for anything about Bone and Loraine or him in 1898.
“Stella, Stella, Stella,” Peach screamed as she bounced up and down in her seat in front of Padrino’s desk top computer with its twenty-one inch monitor.
Stella walked into the room, drying her hands on a dish towel, Tyrin was at her heels.
“Goodness, Peach, get a grip. What is it?” She sat down in the other chair beside Peach at the screen.
“Look, look!” She pointed at a newspaper article from the Jacksboro Gazette, December 18, 1898. The headline read:
LAW OFFICERS THWART RUDABAUGH GANG
by Clyde DeLoach
‘Sheriff Mason Flynn led four others in an all-out gunfight with the notorious Rudabaugh Gang from New Mexico. Harlan and Frank Rudabaugh along with ten of their gunmen rolled into Jacksboro three days ago and took the entire town hostage, bent on ambushing Sheriff Flynn for killing their younger brother two years ago.
Sheriff Flynn, Deputy Darrell Bone, Deputy Loraine Bone, Texas Ranger Bodie Hickman and a friend of the Sheriff, Jethro Pereira, who goes by the name of Padrino, shot it out with the gang, killing them all’…
Both girls started screaming and jumping up and down.
“Jethro?” they said simultaneously. “No way!”
They screamed again and bumped fists. Tyrin cocked his head and looked first at Peach and then at Stella.
“Shut my mouth…Just like…”
Stella interrupted her. “Yeah!…That is way too cool. Who knew?”
“Is there is anything else?” asked Stella. “Keep scrolling the Jacksboro paper.”
Peach scrolled slowly down the file of pages from the newspaper in 1898.
“Oh, look here, goodness gracious, this is interestin’.” Peach pointed at a Personals Column.
Stella and Peach
Look behind the center receipts
drawer at the top of my roll top.
They looked at each other and ran to the other side of the room to Padrino’s antique roll top desk. Stella pulled the small center drawer, underneath the roll, all the way out and Peach reached up inside the opening to the back.
“Anything?” asked Stella.
Peach pulled out a yellowed envelope with a wax seal on the flap. The front was addressed to Stella Johnson and Peach Presley in cursive.
She opened it with a carved bone with an armadillo tail handle letter opener laying on top of the desk, extracted the letter and handed it to Stella.
“You open it.”
Stella gently unfolded the dry, yellowed paper to reveal a handwritten note to them both.
“Oh, my,” said Stella sucking in her breath.
“Well, la dee frickin’ dah…Don’t this blow your dress up?” added Peach.
WILSON RANCH
1898
Bone and Loraine and the others all dismounted at the gate to the front yard of the Wilson’s. Lucy had been waiting on the front stoop as she always did when someone was coming.
“You made good time,” she said.
“Turned off warm and we left earlier than we originally anticipated,” commented Bone.
Lucy grinned. “I know.”
“So happy none of ya’ll were hurt,” added Mary Lou hugging her brother after Fiona had hugged him.
Bone’s plan worked to perfection,” said Mason.
“Providence has a way of working things out. We don’t always see the rhyme or reason…Just need to accept that this is the way things were meant to be,” intoned Padrino.
“You sound like Anompoli Lawa,” said Lucy.
Padrino smiled. “Look forward to meeting him, soon.”
She matched his smile. “Might be sooner than later.”
“Ya’ll can visit later. Take care of your horses and come inside. Supper’s almost ready. Fiona and I fried up a couple of chickens and a bunch of pan steaks, your choice,” commented Mary Lou.
“Maybe both?” quizzed Bone.
Loraine swatted him across his chest with the side of her arm. “Bone!”
“It’s all right, Loraine, there’s plenty. I’v
e fed both he and Bodie before.” Mary Lou turned and headed inside. “Need to check on the creamed new potatoes, and the pecan pie. Cletus, you can help them with their mounts.”
He turned to Bone, Mason and Bodie. “The secret to a long and happy marriage, gentlemen, is two simple words.”
“They would be?” asked Bone.
“Yes, dear.”
“Pay attention, Bone,” said Loraine.
He looked at her, cocked his head, and arched his eyebrows, and then grinned. “Yes, dear.”
They turned and led their horses toward the barn behind Cletus.
Twenty minutes later, they were all sitting at the long handmade thick oak plank dining table. Cletus was at one end and Mary Lou at the other, nearest the kitchen.
Padrino said grace, “Our heavenly Father, we give thee thanks for seeing these wonderful people through the trials and tribulations of the last few days safely. We know you were watching over us. And bless the Wilson family, Cletus, Mary Lou and Lucy for their constant help. Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and our bodies to thy holy service…These things we ask in Jesus name…Amen.”
Amen’s were followed around the table.
Padrino, sitting next to Lucy, unclasped the bracelet on his wrist and handed it to her. “Came in real handy, Lucy. Right up to the point it ran out of power. Didn’t know how long it would take to recharge, so had Bone use his the next day.”
“Thank you, Padrino.”
“No, thank you, my sky queen.”
“I think we can dispense with the ‘sky queen’ title, Padrino, now.” She grinned and pecked him on the cheek. “It actually recharges in less than an hour.”
“Didn’t know since the sun had already set.”
“You remember me saying it charged through solar and cosmic rays? If the sun’s not available, it’s night or cloudy, the cosmic ray accumulator is working twenty-four hours a day…either or.”
“Oh, right. Should have paid better attention.”
“What’s a cosmic ray?” asked Bodie.
“Basically, high-energy radiation from outside the solar system…the entire galaxy, if you will, and are actually more powerful than solar radiation. It takes a specially tuned collector like our synthetic ruby on our bracelets, portable power generators, and aboard our ships.”
“If there were anything here that required power, we could use the generator I brought from my ship. It’s about the size of a deck of your cards.”
“Bone and I use it extensively on this ranch in our time. There are many pieces of equipment that require power…refrigerators, air conditioners, lights, communications and so on.”
“Lucy had it all set up, including wireless energy transmission inside the house when she is rescued in 2014,” added Bone.
“Well, ya’ll dig in before everything gets cold.”
Mary Lou had set the big platters of fried chicken and pan steaks in the center of the table with all the side dishes and a basket of hot, fragrant yeast rolls that seemed to be constantly on the move around from one to another.
After everyone had finished their meal and were working on slices of hot pecan pie—Bone and Bodie on their second—Padrino dabbed his mouth and his white mustache with his napkin and turned to Mary Lou.
“Do you have some writing materials, Mary Lou?”
“Of course, Padrino. There is a stack of stationary, along with pens and ink bottles in the roll top desk in my sewing room. There’s even a candle for wax sealing the envelopes.
“Who’re you writing a letter to, Padrino?” asked Bone.
He looked across the table at the big man. “Stella and Peach.”
“How?” asked Loraine.
The wily old man grinned. “Lucy told me something that Anompoli Lawa said about time travel.”
“That would be?” asked Bone.
“He said that if you travel to the past, then you are part of the past…and always have been. With that in mind, I went by the Jacksboro Gazette before we left town and placed a personal’s ad to Stella and Peach. I recognized Mary Lou’s roll top desk as the same one that sits in our office in our time…”
“Not following, Padrino,” said Loraine.
“Well, Captain St. John said he was sending Stella and Peach out to house and dog sit…this house…I knew they would continue the same research I had done in finding you and Bone in this time frame on the Internet…I sent them a note to look inside behind the middle receipts drawer at the top under the roll and above the desk. I’m going in there and write them a letter right now that they will find in 2018.”
“All this is givin’ me a headache,” said Bodie.
“Don’t feel alone, Ranger,” added Cletus.
“Excellent idea, Padrino,” commented Lucy.
He grinned as he got to his feet. “I know.”
“Now I know where Bone gets it,” said Loraine.
“What are you going to tell them?” asked Bone.
Padrino looked at Fiona. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to tell Mason about the Manier place?”
“None…yet.” She turned to her husband. “Robert and Suellyn Manier accepted our offer. We now own the section of land adjoining this property to the east, Mister Flynn…Merry Christmas.”
“Son of a gun,” he exclaimed. “We can enlarge that rock house they live in now a little while I finish out my term as sheriff of Jack County, like we talked about.”
“That property is vacant in our time,” said Padrino. “I wasn’t aware that Mason and Fiona owned it and lived there. I’m going to tell Stella and Peach to go into the county clerks office in Gainesville, find out who owns it and to buy it in our name.”
“With what?” asked Bone.
“You remember that box Lucy sent you when she is rescued in 2014?”
“The gold and diamonds!” exclaimed Lucy. “I had no need of them and bequeathed them to Bone along with this property. They’re in my metal case along with my space suit, helmet, and the power generator.”
“Don’t forget the keys to your 1930 Cord that you keep in the barn under a plastic cover,” added Bone.
She looked at him quizzically.
“You bought a brand new automobile in 1930, known as a Cord. You only drove it to town once a year to pay the property taxes. It’s a classic,” commented Bone.
“Oh, my, my,” she replied.
“Padrino and I haven’t needed any of the gold or the diamonds and put the box in the root cellar under the kitchen.”
“I’m going to tell the girls how to go down there and find it and see about acquiring your property back into the family,” said Padrino.
“Why?” asked Bone.
“Well, since I now know how to control the electromagnetic vortex with the moldivite crystal, we can go back…anytime we wish as often as we should wish.”
“If we should wish,” said Bone looking at Loraine. “No matter where you go…There you are.”
“What?” Bodie looked very confused.
She grinned, nodded and turned to Mason and Fiona. “We’ve decided we kind of like it here. At least for now. It’s such a unique and simpler time…Who knows what will happen, besides what’s in the history books.”
“History is oftentimes really almost as much a work of the imagination as is fiction and is not always what it seems…It’s what whoever writes about it wants it to be,” said Padrino.
BONE RANCH
2018
Stella and Peach finished reading the letter, looked at one another and ran to the kitchen followed by Tyrin. They moved the table and the throw rug underneath, and then opened the trap door down into the root and storm cellar.
They looked at each other again held hands and jumped up and down, screaming once more.
§§§§§
PREVIEW
OF
COMING ATTRACTIONS
BONE’S GOLD
CHAPTER ONE
WILSON RANCH
1898
&nb
sp; Bone, Loraine and Padrino were sitting in slatback rockers on the wide, wraparound porch, sipping on morning coffee.
“Padrino, I get a strong sense from you that you had more reason to stay than just liking the simplicity of the time here,” said Bone.
“You’re getting too good at that, Bone,” he replied.
“Good at what?” asked Loraine.
Padrino took a sip of the hot Arbuckles brew. “Reading other people’s thoughts like Lucy.”
Bone chuckled. “No, not even close. She was reading me over a hundred miles away, remember?”
“I’m just getting a feeling, is all.”
“Well, it’s close enough. When I figured out how I could control the electromagnetic vortex we traveled in, I figured it might be a good time to check out a legend.”
“About what?” asked Bone.
“You know about our heritage from the Nazca people of Peru?”
“You’ve told me some about that.”
“One of the things I’ve never bothered to tell you about was the gold treasure a sect of the Nazca took out of Peru during a disagreement with another tribal chieftain somewhere around 300 AD.”
“Oh, this is getting interesting, go on,” said Loraine leaning forward in her chair.
“The gold technology of the Nazca was of the cold hammered type, they hadn’t perfected smelting, so every artifact they created was almost pure gold…”
“Pure enough it was shaped into what they wanted…by hammering,” interrupted Bone.
“Correct. Almost ninety-nine percent pure…There were representations of animals, offerings to their god, even, I was told as a child, a statue of the aliens that visited them.”
“They built the lines and geoglyphs to honor them,” added Loraine.
“Yes, they built them to signal us to come back and somewhat of a homage thing that we told them wasn’t necessary,” Lucy said as she came out the screen door with her own coffee.
“You and I will have this discussion in 2014, Lucy. We discussed this and many other things for hours and hours,” commented Padrino.
