OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (2 page)

His clothes
, I realized dully as he used a handkerchief to bind my injured ankle. When he jerked the knot tight, he felt particularly real too.

Well why wouldn
't he?

He drew quickly back and stood.
"Try that," he suggested, avoiding my gaze, so I did.

It still hurt, but I could stand on my own, now. This man had given me his hat, vest, and jacket—though why anyone needed to layer in this heat was a mystery. Now he
'd helped me stand, literally on my own two feet. When he ventured a glance back at me, I smiled my thanks.

He looked quickly away again, stepping no closer than to slide a hugely long rifle from a scabbard on my saddle. Surprise! I
'd been armed too. "Best check th'animals," he announced, and disappeared around the other horses. For a moment I felt disoriented by his absence. Stranger or not, he at least seemed to know who he was and what he was doing. And he hadn't tried to hurt me.

That I knew of.

Oh yeah—nature's call. I started to limp around my own horse too, for extra privacy, but the horse gave me a mean look, tossed its head and snorted. It seemed like a very big horse, and it really didn't want me on that side. Got it.

Rather than risk further gaff
es, I made do pretty much where I was, putting most of my weight on my left ankle as I squatted and, afterward, carefully wiping myself with dry grass. I hoped there weren't bugs or poison ivy in there. Whatever awful thing had happened, it had left me naked and gimpy and toilet-paperless. That didn't bode well.

An accident? Somehow, the idea of an accident didn
't seem so bad compared to—what?

My mind wouldn
't cooperate and welcomed the distraction of a bird flying by. The sun-paled sky overhead seemed like a clear-blue tent, pegged down close enough on the horizon to touch. I stood there, weak in the heat, waiting until my well-armed companion returned, and felt wary relief when he did. His presence distracted me from poking at the lost memory some part of my mind so desperately guarded against.

He touched a horse on the shoulder, and checked another one
's foot. That gave me a chance to watch him a moment. Every movement was sure. Though he walked a little stiffly, he didn't seem arthritic or injured. He just looked like he'd rather be on a horse. As he got closer I searched his plain, no-nonsense face for some sense of familiarity. I found nothing, nada, zip. He didn't exactly scare me, but with his beard and stern expression he looked fairly foreboding.

So did his firearms.

If we
did
know each other, I sure hoped we were on good terms. That he'd bound my ankle was a hopeful sign, wasn't it?

The hat string cut at my throat, so I took the whole thing off.
It was a cowboy hat, black and broad-brimmed and dusty. When he came close enough to holster the rifle onto my saddle with a leathery swoosh, I extended the hat to the man.

He glanced from the hat to me. "Best keep yer head covered." Despite the slow drawl, he didn
't sound stupid. Just deliberate.

"It blocks my view," I insisted, but his expression didn
't waver. And okay, the sun was already starting to scald my head, but I welcomed the sensation.
Real
. Heat must be baking his head, too, and I'd had the hat longer. Noticing the red cloth, at his bearded throat, hanging in folds halfway down his shirt, I added, "I could wear your bandana."

He considered that, then lifted the material over his head and handed it to me, reclaiming the hat. When I moved to shake the oversized bandana out, he suddenly had my wrist again.

"Spook the horses," he warned. Despite his near-monosyllabic conversation, I felt like the dumb one as I  smoothed out the scarf more carefully. For his part, he put on the hat—they were made for each other—and lifted a canteen from my saddle. He hesitated, then wiped its mouth on his shirt sleeve before handing it to me.

Though I had finished slipping the bandana over my hair, I wished he
'd gone first so I could see how much to drink. Ladies first, I guess. I took a swallow of the best-tasting warm, tinny water I've ever had—I imagine—then paused to okay it with him, then took another few swallows. He reached for the canteen, so I gave it back.

He took one long draw without wiping, then closed it—it didn
't screw shut—and hung it back on the saddle.

"Where am I?
" I might as well ask it; even if he was my father or uncle or brother, he might as well know that I wasn't running on full power.

"Kansas," he said. That alone seemed somehow… ironic.

"Who are you?" I tried.

After a moment
's pause, he removed the hat again. "Jacob Garrison, ma'am." He held the hat in both hands between us, like a shield.

Now for the biggie. "And who am I?"

His bright, shadowed eyes returned to my face, concern momentarily overriding the awkwardness of his courtesy. "You don't know?" he rasped.

"No—do you?"

Apparently not, and I suspected from the way he turned to scan the horizon as if for help, putting the hat back on, that he thought the second question even sillier than the first. Maybe it was. If he
had
known, he hardly seemed the type to say,
You tell me first!
Still, I didn't love feeling stupid with a man who pronounced "you" like
yee-ew
—almost two syllables.

Okay, so
the situation made me cranky.

An idea formed in my head, such a simple, blessed thing that I almost smiled. "Maybe I should see a doctor," I suggested.

"Best ride," he decided, taking hold of my horse's rope halter so that I could climb aboard. Best this, best that—Cowboy Garrison knows best.

"To a doctor?" I insisted, so that he either had to answer or just stand there.

He chose standing there for an amazing amount of time before answering. "Ain't none."

"No doctors at
all
?" At last I was good and surprised. Shouldn't doctors be everywhere?

Thank goodness I could talk, and knew what doctors and horses and bandanas were. That argued against, say, brain damage, didn
't it?

Still, something bad
had
happened. My body and soul remembered it, whether or not my mind shied away.

"Week
's ride," he conceded.

That surprised me enough that I gave up and tried to mount the horse. Clutching the
saddle horn, I bounced several times on my left toes, thinking I could maybe hurl myself across the saddle on my stomach without help from my right ankle. I didn't come close. It was so embarrassing.

"Herd's only a day on," Garrison volunteered, bending to grasp my naked left knee, then boosting me up into the saddle. He let me find my own stirrups. While I tried to discreetly rearrange the vest between my legs, he all but levitated onto his own barebacked horse without stirrups or saddle horn. Yeah, yeah, make it look easy. He gestured ahead of us. "Thataway."

From him that seemed positively chatty, but apparently the mood for gab left him just as quickly. He applied his spurred heels lightly to his horse and headed out, me and the five others in tow.

The herd... and he wore a cowboy hat. Maybe I was on a ranch. Though somehow disconcerting, that thought also pleased me—that I independently knew about ranches, too.

"If you don
't know who I am, how come I'm riding with you?" I asked.
Wearing your clothes
, I added silently.
Using your saddle
.

For a minute I thought he wouldn
't answer at all. He didn't turn to face me. Then he said, "Found you."

"When?"

After a similar pause, he said, "Mornin'."

"Where?
" He'd better not say Kansas—I had access to his rifle.

"Creek bed," he admitted, and his voice took on a hollow, confused tone. "No wagon. No tracks. No flood sign. Jest you."

He must have put clothes on me, hoisted me onto his horse, and ridden on. I wasn't sure what to feel about his having seen me naked. Modesty diminished in importance somehow, compared to lying unconscious in a creek bed with no memory.

Compared to fear, compared to abduction, compared—

I threw up some of the water, coughed on it, fought to catch my breath.
Don't think of that! It's not real!

Not anymore, anyway. Not at this hot, blue-skied, horse-scented moment.

I caught him peeking over his shoulder at me—disgusted? Concerned?

"Thank you."

"Couldn't rightly leave you." He didn't sound particularly enthusiastic. The same statement would work about helping some injured animal he might find.
Couldn't rightly leave it
.

Maybe enthusiasm is overrated. Whoever I was, whyever I was here—I was with someone who
'd given me water, and a bandage, and a potty break, and who kept me from getting sunstroke. Someone who could handle seven horses when I couldn't handle one. Someone competent.

Unlike me.

I could, at the moment, live without enthusiasm.

Chapter 2
–Garrison

Is silence natural? It didn't feel natural to me.

We rode through a harshly beautiful countryside, open and wild—and ungodly monotonous.
Flat, unmowed grass stretched around us, and pale sky domed above us. A hawk or an eagle or something—something big with wings, a vulture?—circled for awhile. Despite nature's bounty, or maybe because of it, the need to speak built in my chest. It didn't seem natural to go this long in another person's company without words, or music, or…
something
. I tried to distract myself, to discover further clues to my identity, but had too much—and too little—to think about.

Too damn quiet around here!

"So," I said finally, "these are your horses, huh?"

My companion didn
't even turn to look at me. On we rode.

"So," I tried again after a minute—maybe he hadn
't heard—and he said, "Ain't no horse thief."

Touchy! "I didn
't mean to imply you were! It's just... I don't think I've ever had a horse." I considered my discomfort about being this high up, my ignorance about which side to board and unboard on. "Or if I have, we weren't close," I conceded with a shaky grin.

We rode on in silence, between unending grass and unending sky. My grin got tired and went away, unseen.
And on we rode.

"So you
're pretty good with horses, huh?" I tried, after awhile. I didn't get a reaction—he just double-checked the rope leads. Then again, my compliments in the area of horsemanship wouldn't carry much weight. He probably figured I'd say the same thing to anyone who could climb on unassisted.

"You must like them," I prodded. "Huh?"

"They're horses," he said, as if that were self-explanatory. It wasn't. Did he mean,
of course I love them, they're that most wondrous of beasts, horses?
Or maybe,
Why would I? They're merely horses, after all?

"Do you own a lot of them?" I asked, and he finally glanced in my direction. His heavy brow was furrowed, giving him an oddly endearing, lost look for a cowboy—had I confused him?

"More than ten?" I clarified.

He nodded, and looked ahead.

"More than fifty?" I pursued.

Nod.

"More than a hundred?"

"Near
'bout."

Ask open-ended questions,
I prompted myself. "What do you use them for?"

He glanced toward me again, neither confused nor endearing, and I raised a hand to fend off what looked like annoyance. "Okay, okay, for riding, right? I guessed that much. What I meant was, do you race them or breed them or what?
" See, I knew about things—my tabula wasn't
completely
rasa. I just had to relax, and surely I would remember the rest.

I shuddered.
Assuming I really wanted to
.

He shook his head, more to himself than in response to my question, and sighed, and went back to his silent riding.

None of my business, I guessed. I tried being quiet again, since that seemed to be how the man liked it and he was in charge for now. But the insect-buzzing, hoof-beaten stillness bored into my head and echoed there. I had too much catching up to do, damn it. And the nightmarish bits of my past that edged in at my memory…?

That, I couldn
't deal with just yet.

"I didn
't mean to pry," I said finally. Even an apology was better than no distraction at all. "It's just that... I don't seem to know anything, especially not about me. Knowing about you, or your horses... anything would be better than knowing nothing." I studied my horse's mane and felt sorry for myself. "That's all."