Crossroad (The Gunsmith Book 3)

by C. K. Crigger

  Conceding my hard-won battle to free myself from him, he swung his arms in a flamboyant indication of hospitality. “Welcome to the Great Empty, gunsmith. As an historical note, those few of us who still live here have given the area its common name. If you’re interested, Seattle is that way—” his head jerked to the west, “—and Spokane is there.” His head turned opposite. “We’re going south a small distance.”

  “I don’t want to ‘go south a small distance.’ I want to go home.” At least, I noted with relief, Spokane was in existence. We hadn’t gone farther back than that.

  His shoulders lifting as though he were giving a Gallic version of rolling his eyes, he swung back to me. “Your pardon, Ms. Irons. Please come with me to my. . . abode. I will provide you with my best hospitality. I promise you will be safe there.”

  “Safe from what?” I retorted

  His shoulders went up again. “Rattlesnakes.

  “I might have known there’d be snakes,” I grumbled, quite sure he hadn’t been altogether truthful in answering my questions. “With the king snake right up front.”

  Momentarily giving up on my bid for independence as he took my wrist again, lightly this time, I trailed after him. My position gave me a good view of the Weatherby, which he wore slung across his back in a custom-made holster, and my heart gave a little leap.

  The route he followed took us on a winding path among more rocks, sand, and a crop of dry grass that brushed my ankles with keen- edged blades. I envisioned an amplitude of ticks, all vying with each other and the above mentioned rattlesnakes to latch onto my flesh, and I cursed Teagun all the more soundly as I stumbled along in his tracks.

  If I had to make this trek, I would’ve preferred to do so in daylight. Either Teagun knew his way well enough to avoid every loose stone and snaggly bush, or his strange black eyes had the ability to see in the dark. He was still showing a paranoia of having his . . . our . . . presence discovered. By whom? Now that was a darn good question. So I asked it.

  “From whom are you hiding? The law?”

  He didn’t look at me. “I’ll tell you everything when we get to my place. Don’t talk. Save your breath for walking.”

  “I can do both at the same time,” I said. “I learned how when I was a baby.”

  Of course this was the moment for a loose rock to turn beneath my right foot. I yanked from his grip and fell, skinning the heels of both hands as I caught myself.

  “A baby, eh?” I thought I heard him say. But he let me walk by myself after that.

  We’d gone to the left as we came through the fissure, and I estimated we walked, without speaking, for about 30 minutes. A distance of two miles, give or take. This was the total sum of my knowledge of our whereabouts when Teagun led me through yet another cleft in the rocks. This one brought us to a well-hidden campsite. A pleasant scent of burned sage came from a tiny fire-pit; beneath a rock ledge, a double-size sleeping bag lay on top of a groundsheet. Plastic boxes, presumably holding food and cookware were placed like backrests close by the fire. All the comforts of home. Yes, indeedy.

  “Hospitality,” I snorted

  As the word left my mouth, I made a grab for the Weatherby. Like a strike from one of those rattlesnakes he’d mentioned, Teagun sidestepped, kicked out, and without seeming to hurry, swept my legs out from under me. At the same time he grunted, “Hai!”

  I, of course, landed on my rear. I glared up at him, cursing through the pain of a bitten tongue. He towered at ease above me, although he kept out of the way of my feet. Just what I needed, I fumed. He was a damn ninja along with everything else.

  I accepted the hand he reached out to help me up, though I scowled with the acceptance.

  “Don’t do that again,” he said, quite mildly. I didn’t make any promises.

  There was a lantern sitting on a ledge above the sleeping bag. The ledge, I saw, was wide enough to form a kind of shelter that might keep rain off the sleeper, or shield him from the sun. Or inhibit an eye-in- the-sky from sighting him should one chance to fly over. Water tinkled somewhere close by. Wow! The comforts of home and running water, too.

  Anyway, Teagun went over to the lantern and touched the bulb. Immediately, a soft glow, not overly bright, brought illumination to the whole camp, not solely that one spot. Whatever kind of lamp it was, I’d sure never seen one like it before. Certainly not made to burn kerosene, it wasn’t one of the newer, battery-pack LEDs, either. It was better, in that the fuel didn’t stink and glare didn’t obliterate your night vision. It also gave me the creeps.

  I have a notion Teagun would’ve just as soon been left in the dark. “Whoa,” I said. “What happened to you?

  He sank down on one of the plastic chests like he was glad to take the load off his feet, laid down my purse, and explored a bruised swelling over one cheekbone with an equally bruised and swollen hand. His fingers looked like colorful Italian sausages.

  Wise after the fact, I understood now why he’d flipped out when I bit him. He had not been having a good day.

  “Fight,” he said tersely, stating what seemed obvious.

  Seeing him under these lighting conditions, I wondered where he’d dug up the oomph to come and snatch me away from my home. He looked tired to the bone. Lord knows I’d been doing my level best to wrest myself from him. When we’d been kids and gotten into a wrestling match, Scott had always said I was tough, and as hard to pin down as a greased pig. I must’ve inflicted hurt on Teagun, but it hadn’t been enough.

  “I take it you lost,” I said, after studying him with what I hoped looked like cool amusement.

  At this, he lifted his head, stiff-necked with pride. “No,” he said. “I won.”

  I stared down the thin blade of my Irons family nose at him and sniffed, a sure indication I didn’t believe him. “I’d like to see the other guy.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. He’s dead.”

  That silenced me. I couldn’t think of what to say. I’m sorry? Congratulations? Did you murder him? Nothing seemed quite to suit the occasion. After a considering pause, I said, “Why? Who was he? What’s up, Mr. Dill? I think it’s time you told me why you brought me here, wherever here actually is.”

  He blinked, but didn’t speak.

  “Don’t rush into speech now,” I warned him. “You must let me guess. You’re going to say, ‘it’s a long story,’ and then you want me to deduce what the story is. Am I right?”

  I stretched out on his sleeping bag, which in the interest of accuracy, I’ll say felt like no other sleeping bag I’ve ever lain upon. Shutting my eyes, I savored the sensation, the remembrance drifting to me, that at this time last night, Caleb and I had been making wonderful, passion-filled love. As the song says, “what a difference a day makes.”

  My whole body jerked, suddenly awakened when Teagun broke the lengthy silence. I must have fallen asleep for a second.

  “He was nobody,” he said. He spoke with a total lack of remorse, utterly calm. “An outlaw. He deserved to die.”

  Teagun’s admission didn’t shock me nearly as much as he expected it to. I know because I watched him watching for my reaction. If shock was what he wanted, he’d picked the wrong girl. I considered telling him of the time the power had sent Caleb and me to 1811 and Dartmoor prison to help a man escape from that dour place. I killed men— soldiers – there myself. And only a couple of months ago, in 1918, I’d killed soldiers again; a growing body count to speak against me on judgment day. Had they deserved to die? I only know each and every one were trying to kill me.

  Hmm. Soldiers. A recurring theme in this time-travel thing.

  “What war is this?” I asked with growing suspicion. “Who is fighting who . . . whom . . . whatever?”

  “War!” He made a harrumphing sound.

  “Not a war?” I sat up. Once out of the sleeping bag’s cushioning warmth, I felt chilled, and no longer sleepy.

  If anything, Teagun looked more haggard. “No,” he said. “Or not in the way you mean. Warriors
would be men of honor. I told you, Ms. Irons, the man was an outlaw. One of a gang of looters. Scum, like what rises to the top of a pothole after the animals have rotted within.”

  As soon as that sank in, I started hoping I hadn’t heard right. I could argue the honor of soldiers—warriors, as he so quaintly called them. Not all I’d met had been on the up and up. On the other hand, Caleb had been a soldier, and he was the best man I knew. No, the soldier part of what Teagun had said wasn’t what bothered me. The way he called his enemies “outlaws,” I did find unsettling. That might be explained by his strange way of talking, though, so I could excuse that for the moment.

  It was the rest; the part about scum and potholes and rotten animals that really set me going. The trickle of water heard in the background no longer seemed so pleasant. The strangest notion entered my head—a bizarre connection

  Jumping to my feet, I went beyond the edge of lantern light and stared around at what I could see of the surrounding territory. Hills, some steep. Gullies made from old, dry washes. Rough basalt rocks, half-buried in drifts of sand-colored soil. Sagebrush, the only shrubbery. Clumps of bunch grass. I was looking at high desert country.

  I know I’d been kind of slow on the uptake, but the paradox between what my memory had stored in my brain, my observations of the last hour, and Teagun’s final obscure comment, led me to a weird conclusion.

  “Mr. Dill,” I said, my voice shrill. “What is this place?”

  No. That wasn’t right. Or—yes, partly right. The Great Empty, he’d called it. But the question of where was secondary to the other question. The really big question.

  “When is this, mister? What year? Damn you, what year?”

  Maybe I meant, what history? Maybe I was asking, what was in the pistol, encapsulated with historical power? I’d worked on only one gun for him—a new Weatherby V Accumark CFP. I’d felt power, but I’d truly believed it his power, somehow manifesting through the pistol.

  I didn’t think so anymore. Or I did, but with a twist. What if the power didn’t belong only to him? What if it really was history—the past? Which left the question, whose past? Whose power?

  My mind whirled, incapable of belief. My belly churned with nausea.

  And the most unexpected thing of all? There was nothing but total relief in him when he said, “You do know then. I wasn’t mistaken in you.”

  Returning to the circle of lamplight, I went to the bedroll, collapsing on it like a boneless, worthless sack of rags. Grasping a corner of the sleeping bag, I pulled the end over and around my shoulders like a shawl. Immediately, as if a motor—no, a fuel cell—had turned on, I became suffused in the fabric’s warmth

  Little Dorothy—or Boothenay—wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Or Spokane, Washington. Or even in the 21st century, for that matter

  “Are you cold?” Seeing me shiver, Teagun jumped to his feet, raising the lid of the chest he’d been sitting on. He poured liquid from a jug stored there into a cup. His swollen hand clumsy, he next found a tubular ring, and squeezed it tightly around the cup. A switch clicked on. Instantly, the tube glowed fiery red. Within ten seconds, he’d handed the cup to me, so hot I could barely hold onto it. Then, as the ring cooled as quickly as it had heated, set about fixing another for himself. That pliable ring was some handy little gadget to have along on a camping trip.

  I took a cautious sniff of the liquid. “What is this stuff?” I asked, trying to calm myself. “Liquefied pond scum?” What I smelled was spices and herbs.

  His dimple flashed once, in and out. “Taste it and see.”

  I sipped. It tasted of spice and herbs, too. Something in it started my internal burner going, and before long I’d warmed right up. I’d thrown a yellow cardigan, pretty though not warm, on over my short-sleeved shirt before I went to the movie, prepared for the air conditioning that always chilled my arms. A lightweight cotton knit is no match for the high desert in the middle of the night, but I found the tea was.

  But nothing, not the wondrous propensities of the sleeping bag material or the hot-flash tea heated by a magic ring, could make me stop trembling. They were part of my problem.

  Teagun slurped his drink and uncomfortably watched me shake. “You’re frightened,” he said at last. “I’m sorry.”

  He sounded like “sorry” was a word in a language he hadn’t bothered to learn.

  “I’m not frightened,” I denied, lying like crazy. “I’m mad. And I think I’m suffering from jet lag or something.” I waited, and when it began to look as if he wasn’t going to explain that cryptic thing he’d said about me knowing, I took the bull by the horns.

  “Are you sitting there reading my mind?” I asked, tart as lemon rind. “Because if you are, I have to tell you I’m not doing the same for you. All I’m getting is a big blank.”

  His dark eyes shifted toward me. “I can’t read your mind.”

  “Nice to know.” I reached down to scratch a spot on my ankle where the lashing of grass had raised welts as we walked to this place. When I rose up, I was holding the little N.A.A. Guardian .32 I’ve taken to wearing concealed in an ankle holster when I go out at night.

  He jumped like he thought I’d already pulled the trigger.

  “Surprise!” I said, then continued, “because if you could read minds, you’d have known I was going to pull this. I’m very tempted to put a bullet in you, just on general principles, to show that you can’t go around kidnapping people. If you could read minds, you’d know I’m very, very pissed. And you’d by God know if you don’t answer every single one of my questions, I will shoot you.”

  I’m afraid my voice kept rising, and by the time I got to the end of this harangue, I was yelling. The louder I got, the calmer Teagun became.

  When I was through, he waggled his white head and laughed. Laughed!

  “I told you before,” he said. “You lack the killer instinct. You should have shot, not talked. And talked and talked.”

  I ground my teeth together in frustration. “I may lack a murderer’s instinct,” I corrected him, “but don’t ever think I won’t shoot. The only reason you’re still alive is because dead men don’t talk. Make a move on me, pal, and you’ll see how fast I can pull this trigger.”

  He must have believed this, a strong element of truth finally getting through to him, for he raised his hands in surrender. “Ask.”

  I set the safety on the Guardian and jammed it back in the holster. “I wonder if you’re aware of being the single most infuriating man I’ve ever met? Did you deliberately set out to be that way?”

  Somehow he manufactured a hurt expression, combining it with apparent puzzlement. I rolled my eyes.

  “Tell me if I’m wrong,” I said, gesturing over my left shoulder. “That way is the Columbia, next the Cascades, next comes the coast.” He gestured approvingly, as if I were a prize pupil.

  “I told you so.”

  “That means we’re in pothole lake country.” I further identified. “The great Upland Plateau. About halfway between Spokane and Seattle.”

  He paused, brows puckering as though about to make a protest, before he acquiesced, confirming my guess. At least I knew where I was now, more or less. The when? In a rush, before I could change my mind, I said, “This is my future, isn’t it? You’ve gone back in time and brought me forward with you. Only for you, it’s your real time.”

  “Yes,” he said, some of the haggardness falling from him with my acceptance of the situation.

  Acceptance! If he only knew. What a good thing for him that he couldn’t hear me screaming inside. He’d have been deafened.

  His shoulders lifted. “I sensed your presence through the Weatherby. I didn’t realize you were a woman, you see. I expected a man. A man would be better.”

  “Hah! You’re going to have to explain that one.” I held up my hand to forestall a reply. “Right after you tell me what year this is.”

  The date he named was a jolt, I admit. More than one hundred years separated us. Or 116 to
be exact. I can’t say why going forward this many years seemed worse to me than going back, but it did. The distance worried me, too. No one—for no one, read Caleb Deane— could possibly guess where to look for me. Coming so soon after our time in WWI, and while he was still getting over his experiences there, he might not want to look. Caleb was new to his power, distrusted it, didn’t know how to exert control. The possibility existed for me to be lost here. The situation oozed danger like pus from an infected wound.

  What if I never found my way home? What if Teagun wouldn’t take me back?

  I tossed my head, refusing either option. I was the gunsmith. The power worked through me. I would do whatever was required of me to do, in order to fulfill the history already set within the Weatherby. Then it would release me and I would go home.

  First things first. “Why,” I asked Teagun, “have you brought me here?”

  CHAPTER 4

  Daybreak found Teagun and me lying belly down in the sand, concealed behind a pair of tumbled boulders. Below our hiding place stood the Crossroad Hotel, a finely preserved structure that Teagun said had been in the Dill family for more than one hundred years. It was a good-sized building made of notched and caulked pine logs. A huge skylight in the center split the green tile roof. There were one or two small outbuildings and a hard-packed dirt courtyard. Off to one side, a tiny patch of green lawn, a vegetable garden, and a small grove of trees formed an oasis in the desert landscape.

  “The lake is that way.” Teagun pointed to the south. “About four miles up the canyon, behind the hotel.”

  Two roads met in front of the hotel. The one going east and west, Teagun told me, was the main route between the inland cities and the coast. There was another, farther south. A crossroad, running north and south, connected with the highways and went all the way to Canada.

  “Is the road always this busy?” I asked. “Not rushed, but with this steady flow of traffic?”

  “Every day,” he said.

  Vehicles toiled past the crossroad without much variation in their speed. North and south traffic intersected that going east and west either by slowing or speeding through the breaks in the line. No one had to stop. The vehicles had automatic driving systems, Teagun explained, that allowed judicious positioning on the road, although the driver could override it if necessary.