OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (15 page)

I accepted that news with growing resignation, as I was accepting a lot of stuff nowadays. On a deep down instinctive level, it just didn
't seem right. But logically, why wouldn't it be? "The Civil War?" I clarified.

"Yes
'm. That one. I went with him and Mister Benjamin on their first trail drive together, after they come home." He grinned broadly at the memory. "Mr. Benjamin got hisself fired, third day out. So's he followed along behind the drag, saw some Injuns tryin' to rustle off some of the herd, and scared 'em off—got hisself rehired. Half pay, though. Didn't take none of the flash off him."

"What did Garrison do when his friend got fired?"

Amos shrugged. "Did his job. Always does."

I waved that information in front of my overactive imagination—see why Benj is more interesting?—and asked, "Were you the trail boss then?"

He guffawed at the very idea—but he also looked flattered. "No, miss!"

Huh. Enjoying the companionship, I took off my floppy hat and leaned back on my narrow slice of seat to let the sun warm my face. In three hours I
'd be miserable with the heat and the flies, but right now the sunlight was a caress. "What were they like back then? Benj and Garrison?"

"Same as now, I reckon. Close as two peas in a pod.
" Since I hadn't exactly seen the two join hands to sing
Kumbayah
together, I slanted a skeptical glance in his direction. Amos nodded as if to say,
really
. "Even after Mr. Garrison got hisself married."

I sat up, intrigued. "The Boss is married?
" Benjamin
had
said something about a son, hadn't he? Maybe
that
explained why Garrison avoided me.
Hi, honey, I'm home. This is that girl I found naked in a creek bed. Useless as a three-legged mule. Any idea what we can do with her?

"Widowed some time now.
" Amos shook his head. "Sad doings, that."

Oh.
Or maybe he just doesn't like you, Lillabit.
"How'd she die?"

Amos said, "I don
't reckon Mr. Garrison would want me tellin' his personal matters, child."

"Probably not," I agreed with a sigh, putting my hat back on. It flopped on the sides, blocking my vision in a most annoying way. "He doesn
't like me."

"Now Miss Lillabit. There
's few enough folks Mr. Garrison's fond of, but just as few he truly dislikes. 'Cause you ain't in one camp don't mean you're in t'other."

"And he doesn
't let me do anything."

"Anything what could cause trouble, you mean.
" Wily man, this Amos. Garrison didn't pay him enough.

Propping my elbows on my knees, I turned more fully to him. "Could you please tell me what kind of trouble we
're avoiding? I thought it was the cowhands, but they're perfect gentlemen. Then I thought maybe it was Indians, or rustlers or something, but nothing's happened. Everyone keeps predicting some dire catastrophe but I've been here for three days and the worst I've seen are aggravations. Yes, I'm
sorry
about the sourdough—"

Amos laughed, which made it hard to take myself so seriously
, but it really
was
getting tiresome.

"—but I
'm supposed to... supposed to sit quiet, and be good, and pretend I'm not even here, just to avoid this big threat that doesn't even exist!"

After several long moments of consideration—Amos rarely did anything fast—he said, "Do you know what folks fear most on a drive like this, Child?"

"Their employer?"

He grinned, but shook his head. "No, Miss Lillabit. Worst worry is a stampede. It
's an eerie thing when this many cattle start runnin'. They don't make a sound, just jump off like rabbits so's all you hear is the rumble of them, like a twister comin'. Best possible end is they needs to be collected, and they reach market skinnier and spookier than they was and bring a lower price. That's no good.

"
Could be they'll trample some of their own, break legs, even run off a bluff and pile up on each other, dozens, even hundreds. That's worse. Or they can take down good men with 'em. Last year, when Mr. Garrison trailed a herd for some English gentlemen up to Montana, he lost him two boys in one run alone."

Unsure why he was telling me this, I just said, "That
's too bad."

Amos nodded. "Anythin
' can set them off, too, if the mood's right. A sneeze, a match, a clutch of sage hens takin' off. Other times, a gunshot won't move 'em. Only the cows know why. There's some drives, they run every few days—once they've run once, they're like to do it again.

"
Others drives, like this one, they go easy all the way. The longer they stay calm, the more likely they hold to it." He eyed me significantly. "It ain't likely to happen, Miss. But the boys still don't wear guns, and the most experienced hands still ride point where they can turn them, just in case."

I finally got it—a cow metaphor. "Amos, is this your wise old cowboy way of telling me it
's better to be safe than sorry?"

"Can
't rightly say, Miss Lillabit. I only know cows."

Yeah. Right. I sighed. "Oh well. I guess I only have to be a demure, useless fluff-head for one more day, anyway."

Amos looked one way, then the other, and then put the reins to the cart mule in my hands. "Every man, woman, and child needs to feel useful," he explained, looking away from my surprised smile. "I 'spect I know that as much as any man alive."

"Could be trouble," I warned, teasing. "Considering my luck, if this mule goes berserk and runs right through the herd and stampedes them, just shoot me, okay?"

"No, miss. Won't do that." He grinned, teasing back. "Boss'd do it hisself."

At least he got me to laugh.

I wasn
't laughing by suppertime.

For one thing, we rode extra hard and extra late in order to make the creek.  The last few hours of that felt pretty tense, too; according to Amos, the cattle could smell the water and the cowboys were having to struggle to keep them from running for it. Amazingly, they succeeded. The point riders in particular rode
repeatedly across their sharp-horned path, harassing the lead steers to stay back as determinedly as the drag riders normally harassed the slowpokes to keep up. They also forced the herd, which over the last few days had sometimes narrowed to a line of only ten or fifteen feet across, to spread out. This slowed them down some, and gave them all a more equitable chance at the water.

By that point my hands were blistered, my cheeks sunburned, my eyes painfully dry.  The Kansas sun, so comforting in the early hours of the day, had become miserable for the rest of it
, with clouds of insistent flies. That the hot, dusty wind kept changing to grace us with the stench of two thousand cows didn't help.

All of this mean
t I was almost as excited at the idea of a creek as the cows were. We'd been rationing water, after all. I hadn't bathed, not even a sponge-bath, since the morning after Garrison found me. So I hiked out to see it for myself, circling well upstream from the herd, before twilight took the last of our lighting away.

The
"creek" turned out to be little more than an extended puddle—a cluster of scruffy trees following a muddy trickle, sometimes no wider and never deeper than a few inches. Not only that, but someone else's cows had been here already, tromping grass and smaller trees into the muck.

Knowing what shit-machines cows could be, I stuffed my kerchief back into my pocket without even bothering to wet it and, more distinctly than I had since the night we reached the herd, I felt displaced. It seemed to me there should be places to go to get out of the heat and the misery; I believed that more powerfully than seemed sane.
Places without real trees or even "soddies," like the Peaveses lived in, I couldn't imagine what those places would be. But damn it, they should be here!

Thus I was no happy camper by the time I dragged
myself back to the chuck wagon. I didn't think the cowboys would be any better off.

But they
'd remembered the promised party.

As I watched, refueled by beans and cornpone and coffee, two things got the post-dinner festivities going. One was that Milton, another of the black cowhands, opened a box with a fiddle in it and began to play, very well. And the other was, the Boss rode off from the fire to check on Ropes and Shorty as they
, the first-shift night-guard, headed to where the cattle were bedded quite some distance away.

I
'd noticed, over the last few days, that I wasn't the only person who felt safer when Garrison was nearby. Apparently, neither was I the only person who felt just a little less confined when he wasn't.

The music, sweet and clear in the starry night, eased exhaustion out of me. And then, as Milton launched into a faster tune, something wonderful happened. I knew some of the words! A round of "Oh! Susanna" with those wonderful, scruffy, smelly cowboys energized me more than that imagined bath
would have. Singing along with the chorus of "Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Blue-Tailed Fly" felt even better, and not just because it turns out I had a good singing voice, or that I loved music, which it turns out I did—getting music back felt like drinking after a long ride.

But also, f
or the first time in days, I felt like a whole human being with memories again.
We knew some of the same songs
! That meant I really did have some memory and that, on some level at least, I
did
belong here. Maybe not here on a cattle drive, but....

But somewhere in this world and on this planet, anyway.
I hadn't been sure.

Then Benj stood before me, hipshot, something hidden behind his back. "Darlin
' Miss Lillabit," he said, eyes dancing in the firelight. "You ain't been with us long enough to learn our customs, but you ought to know that generally, when we're of a mind to do some dancin', our only choice is for one or two of the boys here to get heifer branded."

I didn
't like the sound of
that
, though the way some of the cowboys chuckled, and the way Milton kept right on playing a slow, wordless song, kept my paranoia in check. "Heifer branded?"

"A man what
's been heifer branded wears this." With a dramatic flourish, Benj revealed a long apron. "Whoever wears it dances the part of the gal."

Was he kidding? From the way Lee and Clayton blush
ed and ducked their heads, he wasn't kidding.

Benj got my attention back, and quick, when he took my hands in his and bowed a dramatic, gentlemanly bow. "My dearest Miss Lillabit, of parts East.  Being as you will soon be gone from us, leaving us a sadder and lonelier crew, would you do me the greatest honor of a dance?"

Milton continued to play, but other than that—and the cows, and coyotes, and crickets of course—there wasn't a sound. That's how intently the "crew" waited for my reply.

"I
'm not sure I
can
dance," I admitted, torn. The part of me that belonged here, more tonight than ever, wanted to go right on belonging. But I'd made so many mistakes!

His eyes twinkled at me. "Darlin
', we are
more
than willin' to take that chance."

I might have demurred further if I hadn
't noticed, in the shadows beyond the reach of the cook-fire, a familiar silhouette of horse and rider. Garrison had returned but was hanging back out of everyone's way, one leg hooked over the saddle horn like cowboys sometimes did when they planned on sitting for awhile.   I couldn't read his expression... but surely if he had a problem with this, he would voice his objections. Not in many words, but he'd damned well voice them. And if he was testing me, expecting me to automatically know where to draw lines and where to cross them, then he deserved a little trouble.

His watchful presence gave me the extra confidence to stand and curtsey. "Why
, Mr. Cooper, I would be delighted."

Benj
's handsome face creased into a wide grin. Before I could say more he caught my waist and spun me into a quick waltz, the forgotten apron flaring from our joined hands. Cowboys whistled and whooped, even Schmidty smiled, and Milton broke into a snappy tune that, along with Benj's expert guidance, would have gotten me going even if I couldn't dance.

But I could. My body remembered, and apparently I
loved
to dance. Benj did too, and we managed a few bouncy turns that had the others cheering us on before the tune finally came to an end and he dipped me, a move so flashy that the others greeted it with awed silence. Benj's blue eyes were awfully close to mine and I thought: 
Oh my God, he's going to kiss me again
. In front of everybody!

Maybe the laughter fled from my face as quickly as it did from the rest of me. Benj just winked, lifted me back to my feet, and bowed formally again.