OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (11 page)

Chapter 6 - Cowboys

If
anything
was real other than me—whoever I was—it was that snake. For an eternity, nothing else existed in my world. I wanted to yell. I wanted to run. I wanted to think, but my thoughts were drowned out by pure, panicked instinct—
kill it kill it kill it kill it
. Yeah, right. Like I could....

Then I remembered the whip.

While the snake buzzed at me, I leaned slowly—so very slowly—back, stretching my arm as far as I could... and got nothing. I grasped again, and had to risk looking away from the snake long enough to locate the black, leather-wrapped pole with the long, leather rope dangling down it. My fingers brushed it. I looked quickly back at the snake, hoping it hadn't figured out my plan—
where was it?
Oh yes, there, still coiled, drawing its nasty triangular snake-head back as if about to lunge at any second.

Kill it kill it kill it kill it
—my fingers brushed the whip again. If I leaned back much farther I'd fall on my butt in the tall grass, and that snake would probably be all over me. But damn it, I wasn't going to sit helplessly by again while anyone or anything....

Again?
I wondered, at full panic.

Later,
I told myself.

I managed to lean just a little more, my stiff muscles screaming protest, until my fingers closed around the whip. I lifted it slowly, trying to maintain eye contact with the beady little eyes of my enemy. Good snake. Nice snake....

The whip actually whistled as I brought it down on the snake. The rattling stopped but the snake wasn't dead—it was moving, a ripple in the grass, and the mules bellowed their outrage and began to hop around, so I hit it again. And again. Someone was screaming, and as I kept hitting the snake, trying to make it stop writhing and being dangerous, trying to make it dead, I realized that it was me screaming. My scream wobbled, loud with each blow, but inhaling between.

The snake stopped writhing, but I hit it a few more times for good measure, aware that Schmidty was suddenly there, stepping too close to the snake, then jabbering in German as he backed away.

One mule brayed, long and squeaky, rearing up to paw the ground and eyeing me as warily as it had eyed the snake. Two more mules ran away in a funny, hopping run, bucking for good measure. One lost its nose bag.

I panted for a moment. Then I thought I saw the snake move again and so I hit it again, vaguely aware of the sound of hoof beats. There was some sort of commotion to my right as a horse ran up, a rider swinging off before it had fully stopped, and then
Boss Garrison was shouldering between me and danger.

He looked down at the snake—no, the ex-snake. I
'd killed it.
Me
.

Then the cowboy turned to me, reached out one hand, and slowly—as if not to scare me—grasped my wrist and gently pried the whip from my death grip.

"You bit?" His rough voice sounded low and calming, like I'd been remembering it. Just like he'd talked to the horses.

I panted up at him, shivery gasps of residual fear and outrage.
That had been a rattlesnake
!

Garrison quietly handed the whip to Schmidty and took me by the shoulders. The strength of his grip, the calm steadiness of his gray gaze, sliced through some of my thrumming adrenaline. Besides, he was between me and the ex-snake. He repeated himself, more firmly. "Are you bit?"

Clinging to his calm—and, I realized, gouging my fingers into the material covering his solid arms—I managed to shake my head. I wasn't bit. I'd killed it first.

Schmidty put the whip away and then circled us to look more closely—much more closely—at my kill. Both Garrison and I watched him. To my horror, the husky cook crouched and picked the snake up. "Is dead," he said, and snorted in my direction. "Tender, too."

For a moment
that smile
brightened Garrison's expression, a rarity in his somber face. In another moment it was gone, and he'd dropped his comforting hands from me. "You're the cook," he told Schmidty.

I
'd barely started full-fledged trembling, and they sounded unconcerned!

I tried to say something, but it came out as a little gaspy noise. In the meantime, a whole percussion-section of hoof beats heralded the arrival of more riders. Cowboys! The dreaded rough men of the cow camp had arrived, at the worst possible time, and the traitorous Garrison was even peeling my hands off of him, first one and then the other, as concerned as he would brush off dust. Horses whickered, men
's voices called out—and Benj's horse circled around toward the two remaining mules, into my line of vision.

"Is the little gal all right?" he demanded of Garrison, as if I weren
't capable of answering on my own. Maybe, for the moment, I wasn't.

But I looked over at the dead snake and thought that, in a while, I might be.
All right
hovered as a decent goal, somewhere in the future.

The trail boss nodded. "Jest spooked. Kilt herself a snake."

Benj whistled and knuckled his hat back from his forehead, blue eyes dancing. "If that don't beat all."

And that
's what it took—a friendly face.
Now
I began to tremble in earnest. Since Benj was still mounted, Garrison eased me back toward the wagon, then pushed me firmly—yet gently—down toward the higher end of the thick, round wagon tongue. I didn't want to sit down. In fact, what I
really
wanted was a hug.

Yeah, right. I sat down like a good girl and trembled.

I also began to distinguish other voices:  "Who's that, Boss?" "That snake is dead, ain't it?" "What's
she
doin' here?"

Searching my face one last time, Garrison nodded at me as if to say I
'd live, then awkwardly patted my shoulder once before stepping back, turning to his men. But it wasn't Garrison who introduced me. It was Benj.

"Boys, this here is a new companion of our
'n 'till we strike Dodge. Miss Lillabit, these here are some of the boys in our outfit."

Garrison
's gaze slid back toward me, obviously surprised—he hadn't heard the name before. I focused on his brown-bearded face and shadowed eyes for one last boost of familiarity before risking the new faces, in my new identity as Lillabit. Here stood five of the rough men Peaves had warned me about. But if I could take on a rattlesnake....

Of the lot, two were African American, two Caucasian, and one was Hispanic. They looked high-school or maybe college age, despite light beards and some long, droopy moustaches. And they didn
't look at all as frightening as I expected—in fact they looked dirty, and tired, and really young, and as wary of me as I was of them. Their clothes were baggier than I'd expected, none of them wore guns, and two had ears that stuck out from under their hats in a really silly way. Was this the trouble Garrison had been warning me of?

I swallowed, trying to regain my composure. "Hello.
" It came out almost audibly.

There was a sudden fumbling for hats, and two of the men said, "Howdy."

"Lillabit, these here rascals are Milton, Shorty, Seth, Juan, and Ropes," continued Benj easily while, beside me, Garrison shifted his weight—worried about imminent trouble? I found myself automatically making mental notes by which to remember the names when I saw the men again.

"Ma
'am," said Shorty, one of the older white guys, which means he wasn't quite a teen. He also was indeed short. Ropes, a lanky black guy, said "Miss Lillabit." The others just nodded.

Then Garrison cleared his throat and folded his arms in feigned nonchalance. "Lost two of them wagon mules not to mention the cattle are like to try walkin
' to Dodge tonight less'n you plan on beddin' them down afore they done passed us."

Amazing. He said it all on one sarcastic breath, like the most casual of comments, but the effect on his men was instantaneous. Those who didn
't glance guiltily at one another swung their horses around and galloped off first; the others were at their tails. All except one.

"Trouble," said Garrison firmly to Benj, as if restating a point he
'd already argued.

Benj only laughed. "They
'da come just as quick if it was Schmidty hollerin, and you know it," he scolded, hopping nimbly down from his horse. "Leastwise, they survived seein' her in trousers."

"
Won't know she's here
," muttered Garrison—that rapier-like sarcasm again. Stalking over to the two remaining mules, he performed his personal magic, reaching toward their long noses and touching their shoulders, muttering assurances to them that they apparently believed. Their overlong ears began flicking toward him, and they stopped snorting and dancing.

They got a
lot
more comforting from him than I had.

"What trouble?" I demanded of Benj, and I sounded pouty even to my own ears. "
I'm
the one who almost became snake-kibble." I started to stand up, lest I appear weaker than I already had, but didn't make it and thumped back onto my butt. So much for impressing the men.

"A scattered herd would be trouble enough,
darlin'," explained Benj, extending a hand to help me stiffly up. I'd given him back his gloves when he left me with the wagon, and he was wearing them. He also looked dustier than before—almost as dusty as the boss. "Losin' mules might be even worse. But don't you fret your purdy head about it. I've seen a seasoned hand let out a yelp or two when a rattler surprised him."

My
yelling
was trouble? Scattered animals was trouble? I'd been picturing stampedes, gunfights, strangely slow-motion Indian attacks. "How stupid of me, to have not killed the snake in complete silence," I muttered. "So sorry to have caused problems."

Benj laughed. "You did just fine. And here the Boss figured you
'd be a helpless l'il piece of calico."

The boss in question stopped his Dr.
Doolittle routine to glance stonily back to us. "No good comes of women on a job," he stated firmly—to Benj.

The way he phrased that surprised me. Sure, there hadn
't been any women in the small group that had come and gone after the snake scare. Part of me had surely already guessed it, but now I faced the concept dead on, and found it foreign. "You mean you
never
have women on these drives?" Not even a
token
girl?

Garrison stared at me as if I were speaking French. Benj laughed again, as if I was joking.

That didn't seem right, somehow. Herding cattle might be a male-dominated profession, but there had to be
some
cowgirls who took to it. Didn't there? "Surely there are women competent enough to do the job too!"

Garrison sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. I was still there when he opened them; you
'd think he'd have figured that out by now. "A suffragette," he murmured, more to God—and as an accusation—than to me.

"As I understand it, Doc Barton
's wife did handily," interjected Benj. "Recollect hearin' tell of that, Jacob? I b'lieve it was six or seven years back...seems to me the cook kept her infant in his wagon while she helped trail the beeves."

Point made. I looked back to Garrison, to gauge his reaction. He didn
't like the story. His shadowed face, beneath his hat, looked darker.

I looked back to Benj, who continued cheerily. "And if I remember rightly, Colonel Snyder trailed with George Cluck
's wife and three young'uns. So I reckon you ain't quite the martyr you think you are."

Back to Garrison.

"They had buggies," he stated. Then he eyed me, displeased with whatever he saw. "And young 'uns. They was the owners' wives."

I waited for Benj to argue back—this had become an interesting spectator sport—but he disappointed me. "You
've got yourself a point, at that. Lillabit here ain't quite as off-limits as them blessed wives and mothers were."

Wait a minute. "I am
so
off limits." Despite that he'd kissed me.

Garrison nodded sharply in agreement and headed back for his horse.

"Unless we run across a preacher and the two of you marry up," Benj couldn't resist adding. "Though we ain't got time for no babies between here and Wyoming."

WHAT?
Garrison stopped and turned to stare again—still at Benj, and for once I was glad, because I didn't want to ever be the recipient of that kind of malevolence. How
dare
anyone suggest he'd marry me, even in jest?

Benj grinned brazenly.