OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (19 page)

From the river, far down the slope ahead of me, I heard a laugh that was clearly Benjamin Cooper
's. Far to the right, I caught sight of Seth's ponytail, and way to the left, Romero's sombrero, as both put forth almost inhuman effort doing the same job. In the water, I caught sight of a mounted form that looked like the Boss, using his quirt to urge cattle further across the river, probably to make room for others behind them. Trust him not to join the swimmers in the fun, just yet. We were both kind of exiled from it, weren't we?

But only him by choice.

His world wasn't mine.  But as soon as I cleaned up, I was ready to reclaim my own. I owed these men a great deal, true.  Still....

How could civilization be anything but a vast improvement?

Chapter 9 - Fort Dodge

Guess who ended up taking me to the fort?

Yep, it was
deja vu
all over again. Garrison rode ahead of Valley Boy and me, silent for the entire three miles. Not that I said much myself, and not just because this morning hadn't done anything to strengthen our bonds of old dear friendship.

I was also scared... though I wasn
't sure why.

I
'd gotten Clayton to help me haul water from the river and to set up a kind of wigwam for privacy. The first thing I cleaned were Eb Peaves' clothes—no,
my
clothes—so that they could dry while I bathed. And if you think they didn't dry, you're underestimating the solar power of Kansas in late June as well as how long I stretched out my own washing. It was a bucket bath, true, with grass and dirt between my toes the whole time.  But it was a full body, hair-and-all bucket bath, and it felt wonderful!

Although it did seem somehow strange to use
the camp's big chunk of homemade soap on my hair.

I
lunched one more time with my cowboy friends—and enemies, by which I mean Seth—and then Garrison announced that he'd be taking me to the fort. Most of the outfit had made disparaging remarks about the Army, but these guys had been on the losing side of a war, right? Anyway, here I was.

In one horseback ride, everything would change again.

Reminding myself that it could only change for the better only brought so much comfort, since I still couldn't remember exactly what
for the better
meant.

Whatever I
'd been expecting, the fort—as it slowly came into view across the grassy plain—didn't quite seem to be it. Oh, it was civilization, all right. I could count six, seven,
eight
or more neat wooden buildings in the compound. They'd been painted white, with symmetrical roofs and a lot of chimneys. One building in the middle even looked to be two stories high. Off to our left, a horse-drawn wagon lumbered toward the fort on a real road, though it was a real dirt road. Beyond the very low fence—hardly a stockade—I could see soldiers and horses and life. An American flag billowed in the unending Kansas wind.

Civilization.

But...why wasn't the road paved? Why was someone fetching water at a well outside the fence? And as we drew even closer, what was it about the flag that seemed somehow off to me?

M
aybe I should be wondering why I expected anything different?

The fluttering in my stomach intensified to full-fledged convulsions. The routine of the cattle drive had taken an edge off my sense of loss and displacement. Now I had to start all over again. I didn
't know if I could do it.

But did I have a choice?

This was first-day-of-school jitters, I told myself firmly. That was all. Things would be
great
at the fort. Between my bath and my clean clothes and my hair-combing, I probably looked and smelled as good as could be hoped for until I reached....

Well, whatever awaited me here.

Garrison reined in his horse outside the fence. I did too—without bothering to catch up first.

             
It took a surprisingly long time for him to notice, the way he was staring at that fort.

Finally he twisted toward me in silent question.

Okay, so I'd been even more anxious than him to reach civilization, but
something was wrong.

I tried not to give him the satisfaction of looking terrified. I probably failed, because he said, "I
'll bring you in, explain yer situation."

He didn
't look enthusiastic, though, and I knew why. "You don't have to. Benj said you don't like the Army." Actually, he'd said that soldiers like him and Garrison
would rather pull a tooth or two than have truck with them danged bluecoats.

"I finish what I start,"
Garrison declared stubbornly. "Ain't got the luxury of like and dislike."

"
No
. You've done more than enough for me," I reminded him, reluctantly catching Boy up. Despite our disagreements about bad language, bigotry, and calves, this was true. I would never have made it this far if he hadn't taken me in. "Really. I can do this."

"As can I." Stubborn!

"I've got to stand on my own two feet sooner or later, right? Let me start now. Please."

To illustrate, I grasped a handful of Valley Boy
's mane with one hand, leaned onto his shoulder and slid off of him to the ground—on my own two feet. I left my arm slung over his broad back for longer than necessary, as if I could absorb some of his steady, horsey strength, while Garrison surprised me by also dismounting.

I
sure was going to miss this horse.

Garrison took off his hat—time for the formal good bye
? But what he said was, "Boys wanted to leave you with somethin'." With his free hand he reached into his coat pocket, then offered a tied lump of faded red bandana. When I took it, I could tell from the feel and weight that it held coins. "Ain't rightly proper, but they had kind intentions."

Tears threatened as I stared at the strange little present, then up at him. They
'd pooled their change for me? I said the first thing that came to mind. "They don't get paid until Wyoming, do they?"

He nodded jerkily
. "Best pocket that afore I take you to see—"

"No!" I put my hand briefly on his arm. "I think… I think that if you
're there with me, it'll just confuse me. Let's make a clean break. Please."

I could tell by his sigh that he didn
't wholly approve. But he nodded, collected Valley Boy's reins, and put his hat back on before remounting with that almost weightless ease of his. "Best of luck, ma'am."

My eyes burned, and my throat and my sinuses, at the effort of holding back tears. He
'd wheeled both his mount and mine—my loaner horse, I mean—away from me before I managed a choked, "Wait!"

"Ho!
" He turned in the saddle as his horse, seeming impatient at the false start, bunched its hindquarters and shifted its weight from hoof to hoof.

"Thank you, Mr. Garrison," I said. "Please say thank you to the boys for me, too. I apologize for any...
inconveniences."

His lips pressed together as he searched my face, as if he meant to say something of import, but in the end he just touched his hat brim, and
drawled, "Weren't nothin'."

That made me laugh a snoggy, nervous laugh. "
Nothing?
You liar! I made you as miserable as you made me!"

Oh, way to apologize there, Lillabit. His eyes hardened to
that flintiness that made me nervous. "Best behave yerself," he warned, bossy to the end, and made sure he had the last word by leaving.

Because I
did
owe him, I let him get away with it and didn't yell anything after him—not even
I will!
I half expected him to bolt from my presence like Indians were after him, but this was Jacob Garrison. He rode off as steadily and surely as he seemed to do everything...except maybe lose his temper. And he didn't look back. I know, because for some reason I kept watch until both horses had vanished over the rolling Kansas landscape.

And then I was really alone.

Okay, so I was only metaphorically alone—there were people here, all over the place. I walked right into the fort and as far as the parade grounds, surprised at how the soldiers in the guardhouse only glanced toward me instead of asking for an I.D., and I thought,
something is definitely wrong
. Not tingling-on-the-back-of-my-neck, "someone has a gun pointed at me" wrong; nothing that dramatic. More like the feeling of looking at your own name and suddenly wondering if you spelled it right; that kind of doubting-your-own-mind uneasiness. Not that I
did
know how to spell my own name, but you get the idea. Things seemed just "off" enough to make me nervous, but not "off" enough for me to put myself at ease by at least identifying the source of my uncertainties—though the American flag really was part of it. Certainly not "off" enough to send me chasing after Garrison and the cattle drive again.

I took a deep breath and realized that the air did not smell of cattle. Good start, Lillabit. Then I scanned the parade grounds before me, uncertain where to ask for directions, and wondered at the soldiers
' blue-and-gold uniforms—why were they dressed like pictures from the Civil War? Then I reminded myself that the Civil War hadn't been over for that long, so why wouldn't they be? I wondered about the wagons parked here and there—why did I expect something less rustic? And then I saw something that
really
impacted me.

Women. Girls, anyway.

They weren't soldiers—in fact,
none
of the soldiers were women, from what I could tell. No, these were two young civilian women, standing by a long, low building in the late-afternoon sun, eyeing me curiously. The term
old fashioned
screamed through me again as I eyed them back, uncertain. They were the first women I'd seen in a week, my own kind; for that reason alone, I headed in their direction.

But their clothes!

The smaller one, a blonde who was maybe sixteen years old, wore a one-piece dress of sedate green and her taller, black-haired friend—anywhere under twenty, I thought—wore a navy skirt and neat, pinstriped blouse. That wasn't what surprised me. What surprised me was the length of their skirts, which brushed the women's toes; the wide, full-length sleeves; the high collars. The green dress was also shaped so that the girl's butt stuck out. I knew the name for that: 
Bustle
. So why did seeing one throw me so terribly off balance?

Maybe because, considering that both had their hair swept up into neat buns, with stylish bonnets that matched their clothes, I felt pretty bedraggled in comparison? I
'd only pulled my hair into a braid, tied with rawhide. And I was wearing suspenders, for God's sake!

They stared warily at me, and then the taller woman, the one in pinstripes with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, challenged, "Is there something you want?"

She sounded vaguely Irish.

Her younger friend said, "Belle, don
't be like that! Can we be of assistance, honey?" She had a rounder shape, a rounder face. I decided I liked her better than Belle.

"I hope so.
" See, I
could
still talk. "I need to see somebody in charge, and I'm not sure where to...." My words faded off as the taller woman—Belle?—and I locked gazes again.
Don't push it, lady—you don't know the kind of week I've had!
"Is there something wrong?"

Her smile, direct and honest, both surprised and relieved me. "Mercy! Why in creation would you be dressing like that?"

I looked down at myself. Other than the suspenders, and the sheer ugliness of the boots, I didn't look that strange to
me
...but there were two of them dressed similarly, and I already knew not to trust my own sense of normalcy. "It's a long story," I fudged. "It ends with, 'And I just got off a cattle drive.'"

The blonde
's eyes flared in china-doll surprise.

Belle asked, "You poor dear—Texas cowboys?" in a way that was both humored and marvelously sympathetic. After days in the company of only men, I found myself drinking in both the conversation and the commiseration like I
'd expected those cows to drink of the Arkansas River.

"Well yes, but now that I
'm here—"

The blonde took my hand and patted it, echoing, "You poor thing! Mind you, they ain
't a bad lot, and the whole town would just roll over and die without their business, but my heavens—
just
cowboys? And with the cows right there? No wonder you came here instead of goin' straight into town! Me and Belle—I'm Dixie—we don't know what we'd do, without the soldiers."

I had the oddest feeling I was missing something. Then again, I also thought the flag looked wrong, and who was more likely to know about the flag—me, or the United States Army? "I just... I need to talk to someone in charge. Could you help me find someone?
"